I can feel him trembling. “I’m sorry, Paul.”
“It’s okay.”
“I can’t…you have no idea how much…” He pulls back, then leans his head against mine, hot puffs of his breath over my lips. Carefully, I bring one of his hands up to my mouth. I kiss the inside of his wrist. His palm. Up to the inside of his elbow. The place on his neck where his pulse beats in time to my own heart.
“I can’t believe you came here looking for me,” he whispers, his breath starting to calm. “No one has ever done that for me. No one. Ever.”
I curl my arms around him, hold him tight.
“I thought…” he says. “I thought maybe it was best. Since you’re going to leave your aunt’s and go somewhere one day and all. And I couldn’t blame you, pal. You’re just too good. Just too good for this world, I swear to God.” And then he steps back out of my arms and looks at me, his eyes search mine, begging almost. “I was going to leave a note, but I just thought maybe it was best. I didn’t want to get you into trouble, some fucking square comes along and sees you with me.”
There’s a collection of emotions on his face I’ve never seen before. At least not all at once. It unsettles me for a moment, but I step close to him again and press myself up against him. “I don’t care if anyone sees me with you.”
“They could hurt us, Paul.” His voice is heavy, then he lets out a breath, sinking into me, into my arms. “Fellas like us can get really hurt, you know? Bad shit can happen to us.” He looks me right in my eyes. “And you’re so smart, pal. All those books. The French. And me? What can I give you? What can I do but bore you, dumb you down.” He shakes his head. “And anyway, what can this, between us, ever really be?”
I don’t know what it could be. I know what I want it to be. Butcouldandwantare not the same. And he’s home now. His father gone, and his mother and brother will need him. I can’t be selfish. And I can’t be a fool anymore.
But now, right now, I can be with him.
I lay a hand over his chest, my palm flat over his breastbone. “It can be this.”
His blue gaze is steady now, a fog beginning to clear. He puts his hand over mine. “And what isthis?”
I look around us quickly, but it wouldn’t matter now. I kiss him, soft. I don’t even close my eyes and neither does he. When I pull away, I say, “I won’t let you go.”
One of us says it again, but it could have been both of us.I won’t let you go.
His lips mash against mine, shaking, as he kisses me again. And again. I think we’re going to swallow each other. I think we’re going to climb into each other’s skin. I think I’m going to fall into him and never find my way out. It’s such a waterfall of relief, of desire, washing over us.
When I think he might pull away, I just pull him closer. When I think he might stop, I just keep going.
I get the sense of him moving us toward something, but my eyes stay closed and my lips stay on his. And his hands are everywhere. Reaching around me to pull me close, grab my ass, unbuckle my belt, around my head. He’s got me up against the wall and it feels like the room around us has changed. There’s the smell of old leather in the air and the rain is pounding against wood, weathered and worn. He kisses all over my neck, my cheek, his nose nudging my glasses crooked and I take them off, put them in my shirt pocket. I open my eyes to blurry shapes that, when I squint, are the supplies and objects of a tack room.
His mouth is on mine again, hungry, and my hands dive for his zipper. Everything around me becomes sensations and sounds. His fingers around my cock, his breathy moans of my name in my ear, and he’s spitting, his palm slick, squeezing and stroking me. I feel almost too sensitive, when his thumb passes over the head, and I don’t want to come too quick. So I reach for him and he’s so hard, he’s so thick, and the scent of him—sweat and rainwater—I feel almost drunk from it. Everything feels messy and wet, saliva and precome, and sodesperate.
My pants slip to my ankles as his hand squeezes me again and again, pumping faster. I break our messy kisses to kick my pants away and drop down to my knees.
“Paul,” he says, like he missed the sound of it. His fingers slip into my hair.
I lick the tip of his cock, where he’s salty and slick, and take him into my mouth. His hips jerk, a low groan coming from deep in his belly. I attempt to take him deep, but there’s still a reflex. His wiry hairs tickle my nose as I move back and forth, trying, listening, and setting a pace. I feel the muscles of his thighs bunch under my hands and his fingers in my hair tighten and tug.
And then he pulls me up, suddenly, and turns me to face the wall. He spits again and I feel his fingers probing inside me, my teeth clenching, his breath on my neck. His dick leaves a wet trail of his precome and my saliva over my ass, and then he’s in me, but he’s not fucking me, he’s just in me, resting there, waiting. His breath is hot on my neck. I turn my head, see him in the corner of my eye leaning against me.
His voice is so soft, so tender. “Baby…”
“Baby…” I repeat just as tenderly.
My hands are splayed against the wood panels and he lays a hand over mine, and my eyes shift there, to the blurry, peachy image of our hands as he starts to move.
Slow.Slow.
I watch our hands. The way his fingers slip into the spaces between mine, because that’s what he does: fills in my spaces, my blanks, my caverns. And he’s trying not to hurt me, although it burns and stretches, but in a way that I want. I need to burn. I need to be open. But he’s trying, holding back. I see it in the way the tendons bulge in his blurry hand, just a shade darker than mine, hands that work and mold and meld and create and lift and grip.
His fingers bend and curl, holding tight, and then he’s going faster. He lashes his other arm around me, holding me to him, his cock deep inside me, his thrusts shallow and focused on the place that makes my legs shake, my eyes squeeze shut. Then he releases my hand, turns my chin and I come with his lips against mine, and the desperate sounds he makes as he stills and shudders and empties inside me.
It takes seven cigarettes before I get the whole story.
I count the butts on the dirt floor of the tack room. There’s a horse blanket around us as we lean against each other shoulder-to-shoulder, pants still off and dicks still out. I don’t know why I’m not as concerned that someone might walk in as I should be.
