In my head he leaned forward. Pressed his mouth to the inside of my knee, dry and warm, barely a touch, and the phantom sensation of it moved up the inside of my thigh like current. I felt my own muscles lock against it, felt the involuntary flex of my legs spreading wider against the floor, and my hands faltered for a second before I got them back under control.
“You said you wanted me,” I said, low and rough, to the reflection. “Back then and still now.”
My thumb dragged across the head on the upstroke and I hissed between my teeth, hips jerking up before I could stop them.
Dream-Soren's mouth curved. His chin lifted. He shifted his weight between my knees like he had all the time in the world and absolutely no intention of being rushed, and the specific unhurried quality of it was so precisely him that my grip tightened involuntarily.
In the fantasy he pressed his lips to my inner thigh, higher now, and I felt the scrape of stubble against the skin there and my whole leg shuddered. He turned his head and looked up at me without moving away, mouth still pressed to my thigh, and the dark eyes in the glass were watching me with an expression so close to the real thing that my chest ached with it.
“Stop fucking teasing me,” I said, rough and uneven, my voice gone lower than usual. “You've been doing it all night and you know exactly what it does.”
The reflection didn't speak. Dream-Soren looked at me with those dark eyes and pressed his palms flat against my inner thighs and I felt the phantom warmth of it like actual pressure against actual skin. In my head his mouth moved higher, unhurried, along the crease where my thigh met my hip, and my hips rolled up hard into my own grip and the sound that came out of me was not quiet.
I thought about his mouth on my cock.
The thought landed with the precision of a blade. His lips parting, the warmth of his breath, the particular way his eyes would have stayed on mine even while he took me in, watching my face with that focused attentive look he had when he was paying close attention to something he cared about. I thought about the sounds he'd make, low and unself-conscious, and the thought of that alone was almost enough.
My right hand was working in earnest now, short fast strokes at the top while the left held steady below, the dual friction of both hands something my body recognised and was leaning into hard. My abs had gone rigid and my thighs were shaking slightly and my cock was flushed dark and slick in both fists and I was fully inside it now, past the part where I was supposed to be watching this from some dignified remove, down on my living room floor with both hands on my cock and Soren's reflection between my knees looking up at me like everything I'd ever wanted and hadn't known how to ask for.
I gathered more spit and let it fall from my lips directly onto the head of my cock and watched it run down over my knuckles and felt the drag change, wetter and filthier, and the groan that tore out of my chest was raw and real and had no polish left in it whatsoever.
I worked both hands faster. The slick obscene sound of it filled the quiet room and I let it, let all of it, my hips moving freely now in short sharp thrusts up into my own grip like my body had stopped asking permission for anything. The sensation was building from the base of my spine outward in a slow unstoppable pull and there was nothing left between me and it.
“Soren.” His name came out on a breath. Rough and private and specific, not a word so much as a sound — the specific sound of something that had been held back for too long finally getting out. “Soren, I swear to god?—”
My left hand held tight at the base and my right moved faster and the image in the glass held steady, dark eyes and dark hair and phantom hands warm against my thighs, and I came so hard my vision went white at the edges and both my fists locked up and my whole body went rigid for one suspended second before the wave broke and released and came through me in long rolling pulses that wrung sounds out of my chest I couldn't have stopped if I'd tried. My cock pulsed hard in both hands, the orgasm moving through me in waves that left me shaking, both palms slicked and warm, my thighs trembling against the cold floor, my chest heaving with each breath like I'd taken a hit I hadn't seen coming.
I sat there for a long time.
The house was quiet. The ocean moved.
I became aware, slowly, of the mess. Got up and dealt with it. Washed my hands at the kitchen sink in the dark. Came back and picked up the wine bottle and finished what was left in two long swallows and set it on the counter.
Then I stood in the middle of my living room in my boxer briefs and stared at the ocean through the glass and tried to figure out what the fuck I was supposed to do with all of this.
I'd just come in my own hand thinking about a man.
Not abstractly. Not in some generalized blur of bodies and sensation where I could walk it back in the morning and tell myself it didn't mean anything. Specifically. With his name in my mouth at the end like a confession I hadn't meant to make out loud.
The ocean moved. The moon did its job. The house stayed quiet around me in the particular way of a house that had only ever had one person in it.
I stood there until the cold started coming through the glass, and then I went to bed, and I lay in the dark with my eyes open for a long time before sleep finally decided to take pity on me.
I didn't dream about anything.
But when I woke up at seven with the light coming through the curtains and my phone on the nightstand and the whole previous night sitting right there at the front of my consciousness exactly where I'd left it, the first thing I did was reach for my phone.
And the first name I looked at in my contacts was his.
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
practice makes trouble
SOREN
The morning dragged itself forward like it had weights tied to its ankles, and I moved through it on autopilot because that was the only speed available to me right now. My head was a dull, persistent throb sitting just behind my eyes, my mouth tasted like bad decisions, and the kitchen light was doing me no favors. I was already at the stove when Talia emerged, dressed for work and looking far more put together than anyone had a right to at this hour.
She took one look at me and didn't even bother with good morning.
