Second Hand (Tucker Springs) (20 page)

And what if Stacey came back again, this time for good?

El’s fingers teased my wrist, and I remembered all the things we’d done the night before, that we were about to do all over again and maybe more. I remembered that I didn’t want Stacey anymore, even if she wanted me. I stopped wondering about whether or not I was really gay, and I forgot, at least for the moment, that I was supposed to care.

As El followed Paul inside, he thought about the pensiveness he’d seen on his lover’s face and acknowledged they were in a kind of honeymoon phase, a happy little bubble before the other shoe fell and reality set in. Even if Paul wasn’t voicing his concerns out loud, Paul’s lack of a poker face was on par with his obliviousness about who was interested in him. As Denver would say, Strawberry Shortcake hadn’t even begun to grapple with the complexities of coming out. El would lay even odds that Paul was deep in the “maybe it’s a mistake and I’m confused, not gay” stage. He didn’t want to think about Paul being bi, which was probably unfair, but man, he wanted to hear Paul say, “Stacey was a mistake. I only want you.” Which could happen either way, but boy it would feel good to give the woman that kind of kick in the teeth.

Okay, so he was an asshole on that count. Bi, gay—whatever way Paul went, he had quite a road ahead of him.

El thought about telling his own coming-out story: how he knew in high school but kept it on the down-low until he’d graduated, how he’d sweated bullets over telling his family, how they’d cried when he had. That left him feeling far too vulnerable, though, so he considered offering up the tale of losing his virginity, of the terrifying and wonderful experience of being pinned down on a hotel bed by a biker daddy. He thought about simply assuring Paul this was a journey, that he should take his time. He wanted to reassure Paul and emphasize that he shouldn’t let anyone rush him, not even El.

When he came into the bedroom after setting MoJo up with some water and her favorite toys in the kitchen, though, one look at his lover on the edge of the bed, shoes off and bare toes curling around each other protectively as he hunched his shoulders, his eyes radiating the now-heady cocktail of want and terror and naked lust, El found he couldn’t say anything at all. He simply tugged his T-shirt over his head, kicked off his shoes, and reached for his fly.

He loved the way Paul’s gaze raked him, greedily taking in every inch of flesh as it appeared. Paul’s hands echoed the path of the denim, fingers ghosting over El’s flesh as Paul’s lusty gaze burned. “Your skin is amazing. It’s like the color of coffee with just the right amount of cream.”

El smiled and let his own hands sink into that beautiful red-brown hair. “And you’re Snow White, perfect porcelain skin. Except for where you have those adorable freckles. Then of course there’s this delicious strawberry hair.”

Normally that would have made Paul blush, but he seemed too fixated on El’s abdomen. His lips parted, his tongue stealing out to wet them. “I just want to lick you,” he whispered.

Inside his briefs, El’s cock twitched with a surge of arousal. “Go right ahead.”

Paul’s gaze, drunk with lust instead of rum, lifted to El’s. For long moments they regarded each other, El daring, Paul . . . well, El didn’t know what Paul was doing.

Paul’s pink tongue darted out and traced a circle around El’s belly button. Their eyes stayed locked the entire time.

It took everything El had, though, to keep his stomach muscles from flexing, to keep from grabbing Paul’s head and pulling him close, to not groan and drag Paul’s head to his nipples or his cock and beg him to suck. It was delicious torture, watching Paul explore and being the terrain on which he did so.

When the licks turned to nips and cool fingers tugged the elastic of El’s briefs down, freeing his fully erect cock, he shuddered, tightened his grip on Paul’s hair, and held on as Paul took his cock firmly in hand.

When El found himself longing to guide Paul’s greedy fingers around to the back, he drew away with a kiss, padded naked to the bag he’d brought over and left by the closet, and came back with a tube of lube, which he handed to Paul. “Use it if you want to,” he said, directing Paul’s hand to the crack of his own ass, which had begun to ache with yearning for what he hoped was coming.

“You—you’d let me—” Paul trailed off, clearly embarrassed, but he had lust in his gaze.

“Fuck me? Yeah.” El pressed Paul’s fingers directly against his hole. “Let you? I’ll beg you, if you want.”

When Paul’s grip pulled El open, something deep, deep inside him let go, let want and desire flood through his whole body. Paul, oblivious to this, stared at El’s eager cock as his fingers played tentatively at El’s ass. “I thought . . . I figured—well, that you’d want to do me again.”

“Oh, I do. Believe me. But I’d love this too.” The fingers at his back door got braver, knocking his cock against Paul’s neck. “That’s the fun of gay sex, you know. Everybody gets to try everything, if they want to.”

The fingers exploring El faltered, and Paul ducked his head. “Sorry. I’m still . . .”

“Getting used to hearing the word
gay
attached to you and the sex you might have?” When Paul flinched, El stroked his hair. He should have brought up the bi possibility, but he could only manage, “It’s okay, baby. I understand.”

“It’s all so new still,” Paul whispered. His fingers weren’t moving at all now. None of him was, except for the shallow rise and fall of his chest as he drew nervous breaths. “It feels like a dream, like I’ll wake up.”

God, yes. “It’s okay.”

“I want this.” Paul gripped El’s cheeks. “I do. But I don’t want—well, what if this
is
a dream? I mean, what if I’m not? What if I’m . . . curious, or whatever?”

“It’s okay.” That reassurance was a lie, but El made himself say it anyway. It wasn’t okay, but he’d have to find a way to make it that way. Sliding his hands to Paul’s face, El tipped his lover’s mouth up for a long, slow kiss. By the end of it, he had Paul on his back while he fumbled with the other man’s fly. No sooner did he have that beautiful cock free, though, than he was the one flat on the mattress, Paul undressing with shaking hands before crushing their bodies together, catching his own long, thin cock with El’s thicker one, sliding their heads together, arching against El’s chest, gasping into his ear.

El nipped Paul’s jaw and whispered, “Fuck me, baby.”

He loved the way Paul groaned and fumbled for the lube. He pulled his own knees up, giving Paul’s slicked fingers access, gasping when the tip of Paul’s index finger breached him. In stuttering whispers, he coached his lover through the mechanics of anal sex, of stretching and coaxing muscles, of where he’d tucked the condoms into his bag. He helped Paul’s trembling fingers navigate the condom, though his own hands weren’t exactly steady either.

He sucked in his breath, both from the pain and the catch in his heart when Paul entered him, because El’s gaze never left his lover’s face. He caught the wonder there, mixed with lust, peppered liberally with euphoria and the triumph of sex, real sex, of fucking done right, of figuring out that the jigsaw puzzle pieces really could line up, of discovering there wasn’t anything in the world like being encased in the tight, dry heat of another man’s ass.

When Paul began to move, El let his eyes close, let his ankles wrap around Paul’s waist, his arms around the slim barrel of Paul’s chest. He let his body open all the way as he took Paul inside him, as the rhythm became deeper and harder and faster, until his lover tensed over and inside him, preparing to fly. Without opening his eyes, El slipped a hand down between them to help himself along, and he caught the wave too, letting go of absolutely everything as he came, including the lie that if Paul did close the door on this for fear of what it meant or for any reason at all, it wasn’t going to burn El like nothing ever had before.

I wasn’t sure if it was pent-up lust or the need to get as much of El as I could before my mother arrived, but the days before her flight landed in Grand Junction saw us together almost all the time I wasn’t working. We had plenty of—at least for me—inventive sex, but we hung out a lot too, making dinner and watching mindless TV together.

It was great, and I tried to enjoy myself. I couldn’t shake the feeling, though, that any second now it could all turn, that something would make this beautiful moment end.

One night the lights flickered while we were making spaghetti, and when the stove snapped as I turned a burner off, El got very concerned. “It shouldn’t do that.”

“I know. I’ve called the landlord I don’t know how many times.”

He had the top of the stove lifted up before I got done speaking, and he wouldn’t eat until he’d checked all the wires. Eventually he was convinced my kitchen wouldn’t go up in flames the next time I made lunch, and after filling our bellies, we went back to bed, even though it was still light outside.

It wasn’t when we went to sleep, though.

Stacey and I hadn’t been inventive at all. It was missionary or bust most of the time, and in hindsight I was so busy worrying that she could get off that I mostly came and went, so to speak, during the final act. Not with El. Even when El wasn’t sucking me off or touching me or kissing me, everything turned me on, and everything felt like it was about me. Tonight he started by teasing me with his fingers as he kissed me, sliding my knee up onto his thigh and slicking me up with some lube. When his index finger speared me to the hilt, I grabbed at his shoulders.

Then he brushed my prostate, and I
bit
his shoulder.

He leaned over me and reached into the drawer. I told myself it wouldn’t hurt as much this time, that I wouldn’t be as sore after. But before there was any telltale crinkle of foil, something pushed up against me, something cold and hard. When it pushed inside me, I gasped.

When it moved inside me, I moaned.

“Like that, baby?” El whispered, smiling against my lips before he swallowed my next sound with a deep kiss. A dildo, I guess, that’s what he’d put inside me, and yes, I did like it. It felt a little weird, but it also felt very, very good, especially when it almost pulled out and went all the way back in again. Pretty soon I was panting and gripping El’s shoulders, not because I was in pain but because I wanted him to push the dildo into me a lot harder.

He didn’t. He pulled it out and laid me flat on my back, drawing my legs up to drape over his shoulders. His gaze held mine as that foil sound finally came. He held it while he pushed my legs higher and moved against me.

He held it as he pressed his cock up against my hole, as he breached me and buried himself deep, deep inside.

I couldn’t decide what I liked more, feeling El inside me or watching him roll his hips, his body bumping hard against the back of my thighs as he slid in and out of me. I’d never felt so exposed and vulnerable and yet so powerful and safe all at the same time.

It felt, really, like sex was supposed to be.

He stayed over at my house again the night before my mom was due to arrive, and this time we had sex until we literally couldn’t anymore. I fucked him over the back of a chair. He blew me on the couch. We rubbed against each other in the shower and nearly killed ourselves slipping on the wet tiles, then got out and finished the job on the mat, me behind him again as MoJo watched with her head cocked in confusion from the door, making us laugh. We kissed and blew each other in the bed. And as a sort of last hurrah in the morning, El bent me in half and made love to my mouth with his as he pumped inside me one last time.

He lay in the bed after, sated and smug as he watched me getting dressed.

“Bring your mom by the shop,” he told me. “You can decide when you get there whether or not you want to tell her I fucked you up the ass before you went to the airport.”

I smiled to myself as I fished through my jeans for my wallet and keys. When I stood, though, I froze as I saw El sitting up in bed, holding Stacey’s ring in his hand.

“What are you doing?” I asked, probably a little sharper than I should have.

He raised an eyebrow at me. “I was going to appraise it for you. Figured you’d need a down payment for those vet tech classes.” When I didn’t say anything, the smile at the corner of his mouth died. “Unless, of course, you want to check if Stacey wants another go.”