In the Middle of Somewhere (49 page)

There’s a little warm flame above my stomach but below my throat. It’s been there for a while, I think, but I didn’t notice. Everything with my dad and Philly and Colin and the Temple job got in the way, so I forgot about it. But last night, it roared back to life. Okay, so maybe I don’t know how to do this. But I can learn. I didn’t know how to be a student once, either, but I learned. I didn’t know how to teach, but I learned. I dug in and watched other people and I learned. Not just how to do it, but how to do it well. And I can learn this too.

I smile at Rex.

“I was just a little scared,” I admit. “But I’m okay, I think.”

He cocks his head a little, but he seems to get that I’m just working shit out.

“See?” he says. “Brave.”

I push him back into the pillows and kiss him. There’s a type of joy bubbling under my skin that I’ve never felt before. It’s light and hopeful and a little cautious, but it’s there.

We kiss for what feels like hours, mouths meeting and parting exquisitely, tongues tangling together passionately, then turning sweet. We just kiss and, after a while, every touch of Rex’s mouth is like a touch to my whole body. I feel electrified, so shaky with warm pleasure that I can’t imagine what I would do if Rex stopped kissing me.

He manages to get my clothes and his underwear off while barely breaking the kiss. My hands move over his face, his neck, and down to his broad shoulders and strong arms. I’m on top of him, but I feel weightless, like his touch is the only thing anchoring me to the bed, the room, the earth.

I’m dizzy and my mouth feels swollen when Rex finally pulls away. His eyes are sleepy with pleasure and his mouth is puffy. When he backs off, I can feel how raw my mouth and chin are from his stubble. Not distracted by his kisses anymore, I can also feel that we’re both rock hard, our erections caught between us.

I wrap my arms around Rex’s shoulders and kiss his throat and I can feel his cock jerk against my stomach. I push Rex’s thighs open on the bed and grind my hips into his. He groans, brokenly, and his arms come around me.

Flipping us like my hold on him was nothing, he pushes me into the bed, breathing hard. He shakes his head, as if to clear it, and leans down, hovering over me, and kisses me once more, just a press of swollen mouths.

“I love you, Daniel,” he says. “I love you and I want you so bad.”

His words send a wash of heat through my chest and a pulse of arousal through my groin. My hips strain upward to meet his, but he slides down the bed and rolls my hips up off the blanket, slinging my legs over his shoulders in one effortless motion.

“Fuck, I want you,” he says, and then his mouth is on me. He licks my straining hardness from base to tip and I can feel his moan against my skin. When his mouth closes around me it’s like I’m suspended in a bubble of pleasure so exquisite I can’t move for fear it will pop. He holds me in his mouth and swallows around the tip of my erection and I cry out, writhing on the bed.

Rex rolls my hips farther back, exposing my ass to his mouth, and he licks into me.

“Oh fuck,” I cry, the sensation so sudden that at first I try to get away.

But Rex’s grip on my hips, his big hands spreading me open, are undeniable.

He relaxes my clenching opening with his soft tongue, and it’s a sensation I’ll never get used to. How can something so soft feel this powerfully good? I’m totally helpless under his touch, my breath coming in gasps as he opens me and slides his tongue inside.

“Oh god. Rex,” I moan. I fumble in the drawer for the lube and pass it down to him, but he ignores it. He just keeps licking and sucking at my sensitive opening until my cock is leaking a constant stream of precome and I’m breathing so fast I’m dizzy.

When he finally draws back with one final, slow lick over my hole, I whimper and let out a breath, my hands fisting in the blanket because I don’t even have the strength to lift them to Rex’s hair.

“Unngh,” I say, which means
No one has ever made me feel like you do.
Rex kisses up my stomach, licking the precome that’s pooled there, and then he bites gently at my nipples. He kisses my throat and my jaw under my ear and I
mean
to return the favor, but my body is so lost in confused pleasure that I actually can’t move.

“What are you doing to me?” I manage to whisper, and when Rex kisses my mouth softly, I can taste myself on his lips, dusky and warm.

“Just loving you,” he says softly. He kisses the corners of my mouth and my eyebrows and then his slick fingers are at my opening.

He slides two fingers inside me and my eyes roll back at the jolt of pleasure his fingers send through my ass. Rex groans low in his throat and watches my face. He strokes me from the inside, curling his fingers over my prostate lightly so the pleasure flushes through me but doesn’t overwhelm. He leaves his fingers there, moving gently inside me, just exploring with no urgency. As if he has all the time in the world. This building pleasure has ratcheted up so slowly that when it catches up to me I feel torn apart by sensation. Rex’s fingers inside me, his muscular bulk hovering over me, the heaviness of his thick cock against my hip, and his mouth a breath away from mine.

His attention is so complete that I feel like, for just a moment, I’m seeing myself through his eyes, my body shaking with pleasure laid out before him, my lips trembling for his next kiss, my eyes wide and desperate. I’m pinned by his gaze, his body, his fingers inside me, and the love I can feel in his every touch.

Rex slides a third finger inside me, still just resting there, filling me up, stretching me with nothing but slow, gentle strokes, like seaweed inside me, undulating with an errant wave.

My eyes fill with tears. I’m not sad, just overwhelmed, full to the brim with his body and his attention and his love.

“You feel so good,” I say softly as he kisses away my tears. He slides even closer to me, the fingers inside me reaching deeper. His voice is a low, resonant growl.

“From the first moment I saw you, this is all I’ve been able to think about,” he says, eyes never leaving my face. “Being inside you in every way possible.”

I cry out at his words, my eyes squeezing shut as he pulses his finger against my prostate and my whole channel throbs with pleasure.

“Ohgod, ohgod, ohgod,” I’m muttering, barely aware I’m making a sound at all. “Please!”

“You want me inside of you, baby?” Rex growls, voice hot and possessive and just for me.

“Yes!” I’m shaking, my ass quivering and clenching around Rex’s thick fingers.

He teases my rim with his thumb and my opening spasms.

“Are you sure?” he asks, teasing edging into his voice. “I could bring you off this way, put my hand inside you and just stay here, like this.” He kisses me gently, almost a tease of lips. My whole body clenches at his words and my eyes go wide.

“You like that idea,” he says. “Being so full of me you can’t move. Just lie there and feel my fingers moving inside you.”

“Oh god.” I can’t even think. But I want Rex’s pleasure too. Want to see him come, smell it, feel it inside me. I shake my head a little.

“Later,” he says, and I nod frantically. “Right now I need to be inside you.” I can feel his erection, huge against my hip.

I hear the click of the lube, but I’m floating, my eyes on Rex’s. When he eases his fingers out of me, I cry out at the loss, and Rex kisses me, his mouth consuming mine as he pushes inside me.

I gasp into Rex’s mouth and he groans, burying his face in my neck. I can feel him trembling against me, and his hardness spreads me open so completely that my legs fall apart and I throw my head back.

“Oh, baby,” Rex says. He takes my ass in his hands and eases my hips back farther, then he readjusts his angle and thrusts the last bit into me. He feels deeper than he’s ever been, like he’s touching something inside of me that has never been touched before.

Eyes on mine, he pulls out and thrusts back in again, slowly, and the skin and muscle he so sensitized earlier tingles with delight. I’m caught, already on the edge, as if any movement of Rex’s might send me spiraling over. Rex is moving so slowly that I almost can’t tell when he’s pushing into me and when he’s sliding out. With my hips held off the bed, I’m totally at his mercy, my cock pulsing against my stomach with pleasure.

“Please,” I gasp into Rex’s mouth.

He pulls out and slams back inside me, nailing my prostate and causing my whole body to clench up in pleasure. He fucks me deep and hard, pulling my shoulders down to amplify his thrusts. I know I’m whimpering and babbling and I don’t care because he feels so good. He’s watching my every reaction and on his next thrust, he holds himself inside of me and pulls my hips down, penetrating me even deeper. I can feel the thickness of him pulsing inside my channel and pressing into my prostate, and as he holds me locked to him, he starts to move his hips, pushing impossibly deeper with tiny thrusts.

I can’t move away from this deeper penetration and I can’t control it. My mouth falls open and Rex licks my lips. He pulls my shoulders up, lifting me even closer into him, so my weight pushes him even deeper inside me.

“I can’t—” I say. “I need—” Rex kisses me hard and thrusts up into me. My insides are liquid, but his erection feels huge, so deep inside me I feel like we’re one. Rex cups my face in his hands as he kisses me and I wrap my arms around his neck.

“I love you,” Rex murmurs, “I love you.” He kisses me and lays me back down on the bed. I can’t think anymore. The whole world has narrowed to Rex. I try to say that I love him, but it comes out garbled, a mash of
I
and
love
and
you
that makes Rex smile.

“Keep your eyes on me,” he says, and he pulls out of me slowly, my muscles clenching and spasming around the emptiness he’s left behind. I feel bereft and I cry out, hating the sudden loss of him. He slides four fingers inside me, the fullness huge, but different, and presses on my prostate.

“Oh fuck, Rex, oh god!”

He fingers me, rubbing at my gland until I think I’m going to explode. Then he slams his cock back inside me and I erupt without him even touching my cock, spewing come between us, starbursts exploding through my ass and tingling up my spine as I clench around him. It’s a pleasure that isn’t just orgasm but the culmination of every touch he’s bestowed on me since we started kissing, like my whole body is answering Rex’s. I can tell he’s watching me and when I can open my eyes, finally, he’s breathing heavily.

“You’re so beautiful,” he says, his voice raw.

“Now you,” I say, my whole body sensitized. “I want to feel you come inside me.”

Rex groans and rolls his eyes like I’m killing him. He kisses my throat and then starts thrusting inside me again, the sensation so amplified after my orgasm that I know I won’t be able to take it for long. I scrape my fingertips down Rex’s spine, the muscles bunching as he pushes inside me. He’s groaning, hips pistoning, and then he freezes, muscles taut.

“Oh, Danny,” he says, and then he releases deep inside me, with pulse after pulse of branding heat. His hips keep moving, like he can’t control himself, sending little tingling aftershocks through my rectum. Finally, he collapses on top of me, lips soft and breath warm against my shoulder.

As he slides out of me, groaning, he slips his fingers back in to feel his release work its way out of me. He can never help himself. As he goes to move his hand, I catch his wrist, holding his fingers inside me.

“I like it,” I say. “I don’t feel so empty.” Rex’s face tells me how much he likes that. He kisses me deeply and is asleep within seconds. I lie awake a few more minutes, thinking that maybe I can do this whole love thing after all. That seemed like a pretty good start.

T
HE
WEEK
since Rex and I got back from Philly has been relaxing and feels intimate in a way that still catches me up short when I notice it in the moment.

It’s been years since I had this much time off with no school, no job, and nothing expected of me, so, of course, now I’m starting to feel guilty for not taking this time to work on my book. This morning, I dragged myself out of Rex’s bed early and borrowed Rex’s truck to slog to the library through the snow. I’ve fiddled with my car, but despite trying every trick I know, it’s like the car died with my father and refuses to be resurrected. I should just sell it for parts and buy another, but I can’t afford even that right now.

My dad’s death feels like a bruise, tender when I bump it unwittingly but otherwise dormant. I’m not sure if that’s how I should feel or not, but I’m trying to take a page out of Rex’s book and decide that I’m supposed to feel however I feel.

It’s Colin I’m worried about. Colin I can’t
stop
worrying about. He never returned my call, but I’m not really surprised. I mean, he’s been gay all this time and never called me before. It’s not like I think he’s psyched to bond over it or anything.

I work in the library until I realize Rex has left a message to ask if I want pasta or chicken for dinner and it hits me in a rush that, for the first time, I have things structuring my time other than the time the library closes or the amount of juice left in my laptop battery. It’s still a little strange to remember that if I worked all night, Rex would miss me. It’s even stranger to realize that I would miss him. I’ve only stayed at my apartment one night since we got back to Michigan, and it felt… depressing. Lonely. I don’t want to look around for another place, though, because what if I get the Temple job? It’s a long shot, I know, but Virginia seemed to think I have a real chance.

I haven’t been letting myself think about that, though, because thinking about it means thinking about leaving Rex, and thinking about leaving Rex makes me feel like I’m going to puke. I know he said we’d have time to talk about it, but I haven’t brought it up.

I text back
Chicken
as my stomach growls, in the vague hopes that maybe he means the roasted chicken that he’s made before.

I make a quick stop at Mr. Zoo’s because I’ve had Republica stuck in my head all day and am hoping I can pick up a used copy.