In the Middle of Somewhere (40 page)

About five minutes later, he texted back:
Come here when yore done?
It made my heart beat with anticipation. I didn’t exactly mean to sequester myself, but I know from long experience that the only way I can make grading bearable is to tackle it all at once, so I’ve been motoring through it all for the last few days. I’ve been grabbing to-go food from the diner or eating out of the vending machine in the basement and I really need a shower, but I’ll be goddamned if I’m not done by tonight. I’ll submit my grades to the registrar, drop my essay selections in the main office, and then I’m done for a blissful month. Just thinking about it makes me giddy with desperation to finish.

I text Rex back—
Absolutely. See you tonight
—and then dive back in. Now that I’m so close to seeing Rex, though, I’m back to what’s been distracting me for weeks. Will’s comments before Thanksgiving about whether or not I was in Michigan for the long haul. Whether I was with Rex for the long haul. I’m fucking crazy about Rex. That much I know. But I don’t even really know what a long-term relationship would look like. I’ve just never thought about it before. Does it mean, like, holidays and vacations? Barbecues and choosing paint colors?

There’s a hollow feeling in my stomach thinking about it. But it isn’t precisely anxiety. It’s something more tentatively… hopeful? What would it even look like to do those things with Rex? To be responsible for someone else—
to
someone else?

I shake my head to clear the fog and squint at the stack of essays in front of me. It’s page after page of potential and futurity and possibility and, for the first time in a long time, those seem like good things to me.

“H
I
,” R
EX
calls as I drag myself through the door, my vision practically blurry from staring at papers for four days straight.

I drop my stuff by the door, scratch Marilyn’s soft ears, and slouch into the kitchen with her trailing behind me. I didn’t even go home to change before coming here, I was so desperate to feel the sense of calm that only Rex can provide.

The whole house smells wonderful: a combination of wood smoke, trees, snow, and cooking that smells like, well, home. Rex is wearing a tight navy blue henley worn almost transparent in places. It’s pushed up over his powerful forearms and he’s doing something at the stove when I walk into the kitchen. His smile warms me immediately, and before he can turn toward me, I plaster myself across his back and hug him from behind.

“Hi,” I say, and it comes out as a tired moan.

Rex turns in my arms and leans back to contemplate my face. He strokes my cheekbones and rests his thumbs under my eyes.

“You look beat,” he says. I drop my head forward to rest on his breastbone and he holds me close. Every few seconds, I wonder if he wants me to let go—I know most guys don’t love to hug—but it’s as if he can read my mind, because each time the thought occurs to me, he gathers me tighter against him. I must fall asleep for a microsecond because the next thing I know, Rex is guiding me down onto one of the stools and I feel that lurch in my chest that happens when I’m awakened suddenly.

“You’re all done?”

“Yeah, thank god,” I say.

We talk a little bit about a new commission Rex has for a sleigh bed and he makes magic happen on the stove and the next thing I know, my forehead cracks against the counter. I have such a clear memory of this kid, Martin, in tenth grade who was always falling asleep during class. We’d all watch his head start to slump and usually he’d jerk himself awake. But once a week or so, he’d fall out of his chair, waking up halfway down and scrambling to catch his balance. At the time, I thought it was hilarious. Now I wonder what shit job he was working until late to make him that tired at fifteen.

“Jesus, are you okay?” Rex asks, rounding the counter toward me.

“Shit,” I say, rubbing my head. “Sorry, what were you saying?”

“You’re asleep on your feet, sweetheart,” Rex says. “Why don’t you go take a hot shower? When you’re done, dinner will be ready and then you can crash.”

“Do I smell that bad?” I tease as he hoists me up by the elbow.

“Only a little,” he says, brushing my hair out of my eyes. “Go on.”

I manage to stay awake in the shower. Under the hot water, my mind wanders to my apartment and I realize that I should make sure to start running the taps every day so they don’t freeze. At my old apartment in Philly, the kitchen taps would sometimes freeze because I never used them.

I feel a little better after my shower—more floaty than lightheaded—and wander back into the kitchen to find Rex putting what looks like roast chicken, mashed potatoes, and peas on the table.

“Oh my god,” I groan. “That’s, like, the dinner I’ve been waiting for my whole life.” It smells amazing and looks perfect, like one of those fake dinners on a 1950s TV show.

Rex crosses to me in three steps and practically knocks me over when he kisses me, hard.

“You look so fucking hot in my clothes,” he growls, and kisses my neck. His smallest T-shirts are baggy on me and I’m wearing the sweatpants he left out for me the night we met.

“Got a binder clip?” I tease and Rex smirks.

“Nope,” he says wolfishly, looking torn between pulling my sweatpants down himself and waiting for them to inevitably succumb to gravity.

The chicken is as amazing as it smells and I basically stuff my face while I tell him about finishing my grading. He gets a pained look on his face when I mention accidentally falling asleep in my office last night, but doesn’t say anything. I have all sorts of elaborate plans for how I’ll let go of my borrowed sweatpants, letting them fall tantalizingly to the floor in the hopes that Rex will follow through on the promises of seduction that his eyes have made throughout dinner, but when the moment comes, all I can really do is stagger to the bedroom and let Rex guide me down to the bed.

My eyes close the second the soft mattress and warm smell of Rex cradle me, and I reach out a hand to where I thought Rex would be but he isn’t there.

“Hmm?” he says, and I must’ve made a sound.

“Are you sleeping too?” I ask.

“Yeah, I’ll be right in,” he says, even though I catch sight of his alarm clock and it’s only 9:36. I wake up a few minutes later when he settles into bed beside me and roll toward him. He puts on headphones and settles in on his back, propped up on a few pillows. I put my head on his chest and sling an arm and a leg over him.

“What’re you listening to?” I ask, but if he answers I’m already asleep.

I
WAKE
feeling the kind of rested that only ever happens after being totally exhausted. A glance at the clock tells me I slept for twelve hours. I hear the shower running and slide out of bed, suddenly desperate to feel Rex’s skin against mine. I knock on the door because I still can’t imagine barging in on someone while they’re in the bathroom, even if it is Rex. He opens the door, not even in the shower yet, and pulls me in.

“You’re up,” he says. “Perfect timing.”

I watch him strip in the mirror as I brush my teeth, a glob of minty spit falling into the sink when he drops his boxers, revealing his thick erection.

“Can I be of some service?” he asks, smiling at my open mouth and stepping into the shower.

I rinse my mouth and practically trip over my clothes to join him. I’m barely even under the water before I reach for his gorgeous cock, the skin like velvet over steel, and he murmurs his approval, caressing my nipples with his thumbs. He drags me under the water with him and takes my mouth, hard, groaning as I squeeze the base of his erection. He pulls me into him, clutching my ass roughly as he grinds our hips together. We kiss, straining together, hands roaming one another like it’s been months rather than days since we were last together like this.

I nip at Rex’s neck and he practically lifts me off the ground, crushing me to his chest.

“Please, baby, I need you,” he grits out, voice rough with lust. His pupils are huge in his whiskey-colored eyes, wet eyelashes shadowing them, making him look intense and desperate. His cock is so hard he’s pulsing against me and I can tell it took some effort to even form the words. I nod at him, tacit permission for him to take whatever he needs from me. I love when he gets like this.

Rex spins me around and squeezes conditioner from the bottle to slick me up. He kneads my asscheeks as he spreads the slickness at my opening and slides two fingers in. Christ, his fingers are big. It takes my body a moment to adjust, but when my muscles rearrange themselves, a bolt of desire shoots from my ass right up my spine and leaves me shivering.

“All right?” Rex asks, more growl than query, and I nod frantically.

“Now you, please.”

He swears, and squeezes more conditioner out to slick himself up. He takes my hands and puts them on the bar inside the shower door, bending me over and lifting my ass to him.

“Stay,” he says.

He swipes his fingers over my hole one more time, making me clench in anticipation and moan when that’s all there is. Then I feel his heat hovering over my back, and he slides against me, filling me slowly. I can feel the trembling in his thighs as he seats himself fully inside me. He’s so tall he has to crouch to fuck me like this, and that tremble makes everything more intense, like he’s willing to do anything to get inside.

“Oh god,” he moans, resting his forehead at the nape of my neck. I clench around him and he swears, curling his hands around my shoulders from the front, and dragging me down even farther onto his cock. As he penetrates me this last little bit, it sends shock waves of pleasure through my ass, and I can’t help but clench up again.

“Move,” I beg, so of course he stays still, kissing and sucking the back of my neck. I can feel him, pulsing inside me with the beat of his heart. Now that we’re not using condoms, it’s like I can feel his blood close to the surface, his heat always just about to merge with mine. Then he starts to move, tiny little pulses of his hips that seem to stir my pleasure so slowly that I’m moaning and panting before I even realize I’m doing it. He reaches down and spreads me open wider, and I can see our blurry reflections in the mirror through the shower door. Rex is looking down at where we’re joined and I wish I could see us through his eyes. Our hazy shapes in the mirror look like smears, shaking against each other with desire, straining to become one.

Rex ghosts his finger over my hole, around his erection, then pushes at my rim experimentally. My breath catches and I go still, my body tensed, every bit of my attention focused on the spot. He just keeps running his finger around my hole, sending shivers through me, until he flexes his finger slightly, sliding it in alongside his cock. I shudder, the sensation of being too full making me writhe away for a moment. But when he eases his finger out, I immediately want it back.

“Do that again,” I breathe, dropping my head down and trying to relax.

Rex pulls out and slams into me, that first stroke catching me so off-guard that I cry out. He fucks me deeply for a few more strokes, then surges in to the hilt and pauses again. He squeezes more conditioner and then his finger is back, sliding gently into me alongside his erection. Rex moans and I shiver, my breath coming fast. Rex slowly pulls out, leaving just his finger inside me, and he curls it to nail my prostate. I cry out, the sudden bright pleasure so intense and so different than the diffuse pressure of his cock that it’s shocking. He leaves his finger inside me and slowly slides back in, filling me.

“Oh, fuck, fuck,” I mutter, trying to squirm away, but he won’t let me. He’s trembling again, clutching at my hip with his other hand. As his erection slides in, it presses his finger against my prostate, turning my insides to liquid heat. I tentatively clench my internal muscles around him and pleasure shoots through my channel. Rex convulses against my back, groaning. I can’t take much more of this. I feel wracked on Rex’s cock and finger, my whole body straining simultaneously to get away and to move closer. I can hear myself moaning brokenly but it sounds like it’s coming from miles away. The water sounds close, though, like we’re fucking under a waterfall.

Rex gives one more flex of his finger against my prostate, then slides his finger out. I’m panting, my legs barely able to hold me up. I’ve left my hands where Rex put them: on the door rail. As Rex starts to fuck me in earnest, long, deep strokes that fill me so perfectly, I let go to grab my own rock-hard erection. Rex, his hand now free, catches my wrist before I can, and guides it back to the door rail, squeezing his own over it.

“No,” he says roughly, and I groan in frustration, but can’t seem to form actual words of protest.

Rex pulls my hips up farther, so I’m almost on my tiptoes, and keeps fucking me. The heat prickles in my lower back and I can see my erection jump each time Rex’s hard cock slides past my prostate. I squeeze my eyes shut, trying to concentrate on not stroking myself off. There’s something about the way Rex tells me what to do when we’re fucking that makes me want to do whatever he says. It’s like he owns my body and controls it. And I let him.

Rex puts a hand to my belly, just above my groin, holding me tight to him. Then he starts thrusting up into me, changing his angle so he penetrates me even deeper. I can feel my whole channel throbbing with pleasure and a little bit of soreness from his powerful thrusts. Then Rex slides his hand down and starts jerking me off. The second his rough hand closes around my erection, I’m done for. My balls are pulled up so tight I can’t believe I haven’t come yet, and every nerve ending in my body feels electric. Rex thrusts into me a few more times, and my orgasm shoots through me, the fingers of pleasure stroking me inside and out, pushed out of me by Rex’s cock and pulled from me by his hand.

My whole body clenches in white-hot pleasure and I can hear Rex cry out, distantly, as I clench around him. His hand is shaky on my cock as he gives a few last thrusts, and then he’s coming too, legs trembling, chest heaving, and cock branding me inside with heat. My own cock gives a final, sympathetic pulse, a few last beads of pleasure welling from me as Rex collapses on my back, his breath loud in my ear.