“Are you sure?” I smooth my hand down his spine. God, he still has all those moles down his back. I think back to all those afternoons I spent tracing them, imagining they were constellations, that Cole belonged in the stars. “Back then, you didn’t like it this way.”
“I do now.” Cole’s voice wavers a little, but when he looks over his shoulder at me, he puts on a smile. “If we’re gonna do this, ithasto be no strings — no feelings —please, Ezra —”
“Okay.” I straighten up, moving to kneel behind him. “Uh, do you have —”
“In the bedside table.”
I reach across the bed, finding the bottle of lube and a condom. It feels wrong, not kissing him as I slick two fingers, dipping into his cleft to find the furled muscle there, to help him relax. But I’m grateful when he leans back against my chest, riding my fingers with his eyes shut, tilting his head to offer the column of his throat to my mouth. And I think I could stay here, watching the flush heating his cheeks, his eyelashes fluttering as he licks his lips. I could reach around to finish him off and not even worry about myself, and somehow it would bean evening well spent. But then he opens his eyes, hazily focusing on my face as his head lolls against my shoulder.
“You know I’m not a virgin,” he slurs.
“Are you trying to tell me I’m going too slow?” I drag two fingertips down the midline of his torso, and he shivers as I brush over his cock.
“No, I’m just saying that I remember how good your cock feels, and I want that.” He pulls away from me, splaying his hands out on the mattress in front of him, showing off the sway of his spine, and peeks over his shoulder at me with one eyebrow raised. “I know you want it too.”
“Fuck yeah, I do.”
And then I’m budging up behind him, grasping his hips as I find my wayin, pushing past his resistance, giving him time to adjust, to breathe. When I bottom out, we both sigh, leaning into each other. And then I’m setting a pace, not too fast, trying to keep myself under control, not to spill too early as I feel him clenching around me. He’s a vision, even if I can’t see his face, his shoulders flexing as he braces himself, spine bending as he rolls back to meet me, to take me deeper inside him. I know that I must be a disappointment in a lot of ways — that Cole must see that the years have only made me more brittle, less open to change, that I’m chafing inside this skin that has never fit. Butthis— keeping my hips moving, listening to every little intake of breath toknow when I’m hitting him exactly where he needs me, giving him what he wants in this moment, right now —thisI can do, even if I fuck everything else up. And so I tamp down the heat roiling in my belly, burning in my thighs, the urge tolet go— and I fill my mind withhim.
He’s whimpering, percussive little cries with each thrust, going down on one elbow as he reaches to wrap his hand around his cock, to finish himself off. And I can feel us both teetering on the edge, my jaw aching as I clench my teeth, as I give him everything I have, as I push him over —
“Ezra —fuck— I’m so —”
It’s not until I feel him convulsing, until his walls are clenching around me, that I dare to let myself go, to spill deep with a groan that shakes my very foundations. And then I’m draping myself over his back, peppering kisses between his shoulder blades, both of us sinking onto the mattress, drunk on pure sensation as we drift.
I think I hear a deep sniff, and I gather Cole’s hair from the nape of his neck. “Are you okay?”
“I’mfine.” Cole sounds like he’s under water, but I’m not going to make him tell me anything unless he wants to. He rolls onto his side, facing away from me as he curls up into a ball, and I curve myself around him as well as I can, draping my arm across his waist.
I’m not sure how long we lie there, but the longer the silence stretches out, the more I can feel the airchange in the room, all that snap and crackle that brought us here turning to dust. I’m feeling out of place again, sitting alone at the bottom of a well while my arms and legs bumble around of their own volition. So I pull away, rolling onto my back as I prepare to stand up and gather my things.
Cole reaches for my arm in a flash, his fingers descending vice-like around my wrist. “Where the fuck are you going?”
I shrug apologetically. “Um, the Q isn’t running on weekends right now? So if I don’t go, I’ll never get back to Brooklyn.”
“Nope — you arenotfucking doing this again.” He rolls on top of me, throwing one leg over my hips, sitting up as he pins me to the bed. “You’re not going anywhere until we figure out what the fuck we’re doing here.”
Even though my cock is completely spent, it twitches hopefully as Cole settles over me. “Hey, it’s not fair to ask me to negotiate while you’re sitting up there looking likethat.”
Cole grabs both of my wrists, pinning them on either side of my head as he leans down, ghosting his breath over my face. “No, babe —not fairwas waiting until after I finished blowing you to tell me that I mean nothing to you.”
God, the accusation in his eyes. “I’m really sorry about that,” I blurt, not thinking about the words. “It wasjust — seeing you again, out of nowhere. And my family — I wasn’t — I freaked out,” I finish lamely.
“And what do you think now?”
His tone isn’t unkind, but my brain is a jumble, tectonic plates shifting under my feet. I’m not — I’m notgoodenough, we’re too different, Cole is —Cole, and I don’t belong in his world, not the way I am. And there’s too much hurt, knot after knot that we’ll never be able to unpick, and I just can’t —
“I —” I don’t even know where to begin.
Cole softens, the fight going out of him as he rolls to the side, pulling me with him until we’re sharing a pillow, one of his long legs thrown over my thigh. He takes my hand, twining our fingers together and kissing my knuckles before folding my hand against his chest. “Can I tell you what I think?”
“Okay.” I shift a little closer, our foreheads nearly touching.
“I think this is a fucking mess. You didn’t ask for it, and I didn’t ask for it, and all the shit — I dunno, I’m not ready to touch it either. I can’t do this if it’s going to be about rehashing the past. We’re never gonna be what we were. But now we’re thrown together, and there’s this wedding, and — fuck, I can sit here and promise you that I’m gonna leave you alone, but I just know in my bones that the next time I see you in a suit and tie I’m just gonna shove you in a broom closet and blow you again. Know what I mean?”
The giggle that slips out of me is profoundly unlike me. “Yeah.”
“And — I dunno. I’m not seeing anybody right now. I’ve never really been a relationship guy, at least not since —” He pauses and looks away quickly, swallowing hard. “Anyway, it doesn’t matter. What I’m saying is — if you want to keep this up, no strings, I don’t think we’d be hurting anybody.”
