Salvation (21 page)

“Yes, absolutely.”

“Then come in. I won’t let anything
happen to you.” Instead of waiting for a response, he began gliding toward the
shallow end of the pool. “Bring my glasses, please,” he called.

I hesitated for only a moment before
picking up his glasses and padding to the far end of the pool, where I took a
couple cautious steps down the stairs into the sparkling turquoise water. It
really did feel good. I sat down on the third step, my lower half submerged,
and when Vincent floated over to me, I gave him his glasses.

After he put them on, he said with a
smile, “Ah, so much better. I can see you again.” He took my hands and gently
guided me up off the stairs, and I followed a bit hesitantly. The water in the
shallow end was up to my waist, but he guided me just a bit deeper, then took
me in his arms and leaned back.

I gasped and grabbed onto him when my
feet came up off the bottom, but he floated effortlessly and said gently, “The
key is not to fight it. If you start to struggle, you sink. But if you let
yourself relax, you’ll float on the surface.”

“Okay. Just don’t let go of me.” My arms
were around his neck, and I tried to concentrate on not choking him in my
near-panic.

“I won’t, I promise.” He rubbed my back
while holding me firmly with his other arm, and I let myself exhale, relaxing
very slightly. I soon realized that this wasn’t nearly as frightening as I’d
expected it to be, especially with Vincent holding me, and I let a little more
of my tension fall away.

“This has been a day of some truly
astonishing firsts,” I said. “Not only in terms of sex, but you actually got me
into a pool. I never thought I’d be able to do this.”

“You can do anything, Trevor. You’re an
incredibly strong, capable person.”

“Thanks. I don’t feel that way, though.”

“No?”

“I feel like so much of me is defined by
my lack of self-confidence.”

“Maybe you should rethink that
definition of yourself, because that’s not at all what I see in you.”

“I’ll take that under advisement,” I
said with a grin.

We floated for a long time, tranquil in
the cool water, the sun warming my back as the sound of the ocean far below
soothed us with its steady rhythm. “Can I ask you a question?” I murmured after
a while.

“Of course.”

“How old were you when you lost your
virginity?”

“Seventeen. I barely remember it.
Mostly, what I remember is that it hurt.”

I raised my head to look at him. “How
can you barely remember your first time?”

“At that point in my life I was heavily
addicted to heroin, and the first time I had sex, I was totally strung out.” He
added quietly, “It wasn’t rape. Not exactly, because I agreed to it. But I was
too caught up in my addiction to really make a coherent decision.”

“Oh God,” I whispered.

“This is really pathetic, but I lost my
virginity to my thirty-five-year-old drug dealer. I came to him in desperate
need of a fix, but I didn’t have any cash on me. He told me I could pay him
with sex, and I was such a fucked up mess that I actually agreed to that. He
got me high first, then put me on my knees in the middle of his living room and
fucked me. I don’t remember if he used anything for lube. Like I said, I don’t
remember much besides the pain. It really wasn’t until the next day when I woke
up and found blood and semen in my underwear that I really grasped what had
happened, what I’d agreed to.”

Vincent fell silent for a while before
saying, “Given how reckless I was back then, I really don’t know how I got through
those years more or less unscathed. I should have died from an overdose a
hundred times over, or wound up with an STD, or crashed my car, or done some
other lasting damage to myself.”

“Thank God you got through it,” I
whispered, wrapping my arms around him tightly.

“I probably shouldn’t have told you all
of that,” he said. “Not now anyway, so early on. It goes back to what I was
saying earlier about opening up the flood gates.”

“I love the fact that you feel
comfortable enough with me to tell me these things.”

We floated for a long time before
Vincent said, “You’re starting to shiver a little, let’s go back to the lounge
chair.”

“Okay.”

He piloted me to the stairs and when we
returned to the chaise, we immediately started kissing. After a while, I reached
down and fondled his cock. When it hardened in my hand, I slid down so I was
nestled between his thighs and ran my tongue up his shaft. “You taste saltier
than I’d expected,” I murmured before going back for another lick.

Vincent grinned at that. “It’s because
the pool’s filled with salt water. Didn’t you notice?”

“Nope. I was too busy noticing the fact
that I had a gorgeous, sexy guy in my arms. Oh, and also, marveling over the
fact that I was in deep water without panicking and drowning.” After a few more
licks, I took the head of his cock between my lips and sucked him
experimentally. Since I’d never done that before, I immediately began to doubt
myself. I stopped what I was doing and looked up at him as I stroked his shaft.
“You have to tell me if I do this wrong. Please? Don’t spare my feelings.”

He reached down and caressed my cheek.
“As long as you’re careful with your teeth, there’s really no getting it wrong.
Please don’t feel you have to do this, though. If you’re not ready, we can hold
off. Today has already been full of firsts, and we can leave a few things on
our to-do list for further down the road.”    

“We
can
, but I don’t want to,” I
said with a little grin, then wrapped my lips around his cock again.

Despite the fact that I was pretty clueless,
Vincent relaxed against the chaise and began moaning softly as I sucked him. I
figured out really fast that I had a fierce gag reflex and could only take half
his cock in my mouth, so I ended up stroking the lower half of his shaft and
caressing his balls while I sucked the end. I was disappointed in myself. I
wanted to be able to give him what he’d given me earlier in the outdoor shower,
but I didn’t know how to take him any deeper.

I finally sat back with a sigh and said,
“I don’t know what’s wrong with me. I just can’t seem to get it right.”

“Why do you think you’re not getting it
right?”

“Well, because I can’t seem to take more
than half your cock without making super flattering gagging sounds.”

“Who says you need to take it deeper
than that?”

“Don’t I?”

“What you were doing felt incredible.
The only reason I haven’t cum yet is because I came really hard earlier.”

“Oh. Well, good to know. I still hate
being so clueless and inexperienced, though. It has to be annoying for you,
even though you’re being nice about it.”

He smiled and said, “I’m going to let
you in on a little secret, Trevor. This is all new to me, too. I’ve never had a
normal relationship, one where my partner and I could just take our time and
get to know each other’s bodies. Early on, all I had was anonymous sex with
people I met in bars or clubs. Then there was my thing with Liam, which is a
million miles away from you and me.” He reached out and ran his fingertip along
my lower lip, then said, “All of that was a long way of saying I’m right there
with you.”

I grinned at him and said, “Do you want
more of what I was doing?”

“Yes.”

I bent down and went back to sucking
him, feeling him swell and harden between my lips as I stroked the base of his
shaft. When a little of his precum leaked onto my tongue, I moaned with
pleasure, which seemed to get him more excited. He began breathing harder and
rocking his hips ever-so-slightly, which completely turned me on.

I relaxed a bit, looking up at Vincent
as I sucked him. His lids were closed, but when he opened them and we made eye
contact it was riveting. I forgot about technique altogether and just
concentrated on him. I watched how he responded when I made slight adjustments
to what I was doing, and within a few minutes he murmured, “Oh God Trevor, I’m
going to cum.”

No way was I going to miss that by
pulling off him. I sucked harder and faster until he arched up, grabbing my
head, his warm jizz filling my mouth. Without hesitation, I swallowed him down
because that was what felt completely right in the moment, my hands grasping
his hips, holding him to me so I could get every drop.

When he finally collapsed back against
the chair, he was grinning. I rested my head on his thigh, my palm idly
stroking his taut stomach, and he said, “You’re a really fast learner.”

I grinned at that, too. “Turns out it
was just a matter of paying attention.”

After a while we put on our swim trunks
and sunglasses, retrieved a couple floating loungers from the cabana and went
back in the pool. We held hands as we drifted lazily, becoming engrossed in
conversation, a game of twenty questions giving way to long, meandering
tangents.

“I couldn’t imagine a better birthday
than this, Vincent,” I murmured hours later as the sun was sinking over the
horizon, streaking the sky with gold and orange.

“Well, damn,” he said. “I’ll have to
think long and hard about what to do for your twenty-second birthday, so it
doesn’t pale in comparison.”

I grinned at that. It was a sweet
notion, that he and I would still be together a year from now. The part of my
brain that had gotten far too used to disappointment over the years whispered
don’t
count on it
. But some usually ignored little romantic part of me allowed me
to hope.

As soon as the sun went down and the
breeze picked up a bit, I shivered and said, “Maybe we should move this party
indoors.”

“Good idea.” Vincent slid gracefully off
his lounger, then held out his arms to me, treading water easily. My own
dismount was more of a gangly near-belly flop, but he caught me and kissed me
before I could completely embarrass myself, and swam us both to the stairs.

We rinsed off in the outdoor shower,
then hurried inside. As I dressed in my new outfit I exclaimed, “Holy crap, I
actually got a tan, even with SPF 70!”

“I noticed,” he said with a smile. “The
sun also brought out a few adorable freckles, here,” he kissed one of my
cheeks, “and here.” He kissed the other.

Once we were both clothed we went to the
kitchen, where he finally got to fill and frost my birthday cake, ganache on
the inside, a light chocolate buttercream on the outside. As he worked, he
started throwing out suggestions for elaborate dinners, but I told him I really
only wanted the cake. When he finished what he was doing, he rummaged in the
drawers and found a few assorted birthday candles, which he stood up in the
thick frosting and lit with a wooden match. “Okay, don’t laugh. I have a
terrible voice, but I insist on doing this for you,” he said. He then proceeded
to quickly run through the birthday song, before ducking his head embarrassedly
as I smiled and clapped my hands. “Make a wish and blow out the candles,” he
said.

My wish was a single word:
Vincent
.
That was what I wanted more than anything. I blew out the candles and grinned
at him. “Don’t tell me what you wished for or it won’t come true,” he said as
he plucked the candles out again and deposited them on a napkin.

He served up two big slices of cake and
two glasses of milk, and we sat down around the kitchen island. “This is
delicious,” I said after my first bite. “Thanks for doing this.”

“You’re welcome.”

“A man, that can garden, bake, and
conduct high speed car chases. You’re a keeper.”

Vincent grinned at that. “Those aren’t
reasons enough to want to keep me, but I’ll try to give you more.”

After we ate, he cleared away the plates
and then disappeared down to the wine cellar through a door off the kitchen. I
went to the sink and began rinsing our dishes, and I heard Vincent yell from
downstairs, “Stop it!”

“Stop what?”

“I can hear you doing the dishes, and
that’s strictly forbidden on your birthday!”

I grinned and kept going. He bounded up
the stairs a few moments later, champagne bottle in hand, and grabbed me in a
fireman’s carry as I burst out laughing. He used the bottle to shut off the
water, then carried me over to a cabinet and swung around so I was facing it.
“Grab a couple glasses, please, the good ones on the bottom right.”

I did as I was told, and he then
proceeded to carry me upstairs while I laughed and protested. Finally he set me
down in a spacious home theater and said, “We can do whatever you want tonight,
but I wanted to show you this option.”

“This is a great idea. What should we
watch?” I went over to a wall lined with hundreds of DVDs and began browsing
titles.

“You pick.”

“I can’t. There are too many choices,
I’m instantly overwhelmed. Come here and help me.”

“Okay. One sec.” He’d removed the foil
and little wire cage from the bottle of champagne, and used his thumbs to send
the cork flying with a loud pop. Once he’d filled the two glasses, he crossed
the room to me and handed me one. “Cheers.” We clinked our glasses, then sipped
the bubbly as we perused the titles.