“Should we close our eyes?” suggested Romeo.
“Yeah,” I mumbled. “Sure.”
He reached down and circled my shaft and then let his eyelids slide shut. He was tentative at first, his touch toosoft and then a little too hard, but his hand was hot. Hot and meaty and more intoxicating than anything I’d ever felt.
He shifted his hips, a subtle nudge to remind me what I was supposed to be doing. I acted immediately. I sprang into action without a second’s pause. I reached down and took his dick in my hand, curling my fingers around him right near the base. I touched it as if it were mine. As if I knew exactly what to do. How to touch him. How to make him feel good.
I did make him feel good. I must have because his eyelids fluttered as if he were dreaming and his head rolled back, nestling into the sofa. He kept his eyes closed. I barely blinked. I watched as my hand slid slowly up and down his erection. He was uncut and beautiful. Solid steel sheathed in velvet. Dusty-pink velvet that moved with my hand. Up, then down.
He started moving his hand too. He matched his movements with mine exactly. For once, it was hard to say who was leading and who was following.
Our hands kept moving. Slow. Steady. His grip was a little softer than how I touched myself and it drove me crazy. It felt so good I thought I’d lose my mind. Too little. Too much. Too good. Good, so good. Everything felt good. Everything. My body. My mind.All of it was perfect. Our hands kept moving in a slow, slick rhythm. Now and again, I rolled my thumb over the swell of his head and worked the bead of precum I found there into his skin. He did the same to me and nearly turned me inside out from the effort. When it didn’t provide quite enough lubrication, I brought my hand to my mouth and licked my palm.
When I touched him again, he moaned. It was a soft, helpless sound. The most beautiful sound I’d ever heard. A sound I caught and held to my chest. The most perfect, precious thing I’d ever owned.
Beside me, Romeo stiffened. Without looking, I could feel tension bleed into every part of his body. His abs clenched and he grabbed the sofa cushion with his free hand, fingernails digging into the soft fabric. His grip on my dick tightened, and I couldn’t tell if he was pouring pleasure into me or dragging it out. The sofa rocked gently as his hips started to buck. The hand on my cock started moving faster. Mine moved faster too. Faster and faster until we lost our rhythm and our movements grew jerky as we both chased our pleasure.
Romeo’s head tilted back. He clenched his teeth and bit his bottom lip hard, staining it red. “I’m gonna…”
That was all it took. Those words. That husky voice. Romeo’s voice saying those words.
I exploded.
White-hot pleasure ripped through me. The room disappeared. The walls. The TV. Even the God-awful, half-manic sound of the World War Z theme fell silent. It all disappeared, and all that was left was Romeo and me. Our hands and our cocks. Our chests rising and falling. The twin strangled sounds of our orgasms.
“Holy shit,” Romeo said after we’d shoved our dicks back into our pants and order had started returning to chaos. “If that’s what a hand is like, imagine what a mouth feels like.”
The night before I left for Ohio State, Romeo and I sixty-nined on that very same sofa in our basement. It was late and dark. The only light in the room came from the TV. It felt other. Like something that happened outside of me. Something bigger and better than anything that had happened to me in real life. It felt like a story Romeo had told me. One of those stories where his eyes would glaze over and go dreamy, and I’d feel like I’d been catapulted through the air and ravaged by the time it was over.
12
“A winged messenger of heaven”
Then
College was different fromwhat I had expected. I was different, and that surprised me. Without the weight of the expectations of people who’d known me all my life, I felt free, and I hadn’t expected that. I hadn’t even really realized I hadn’t felt free in Alabaster.
I didn’t go out nearly as much as I thought I would, and I enjoyed the actual course work a hell of a lot more than I had expected. There was a weird peace to having my mind properly challenged that I’d never experienced before. I never even knew it was missing. I loved the library. I loved being somewhere with an active queer community. Even though the closest I came to participating was lurking on the periphery, it felt good to know there were others like me out there.
Romeo and I messaged incessantly. Barely a thought crossed either of our minds without us making sure the other knew about it.
Jude. Urgent. Do you think I should have another doughnut?
No.
It has sprinkles.
Still no.
Why not???
You already had two.
That was like four hours ago.
It was today, and that’s how you know you don’t need another one.
Two doughnuts per day? That’s it? Is that what you’re trying to say?
