ELEVEN

 

The moment the words left his mouth, Noah thought that maybe he should take them back. Was he really opening himself up like that? Was he really letting this step be taken? Because it was a step, across a line which, once they’d crossed it, he somehow knew they could never back away from.

They were on the edge, and one step would take them out over the edge of the cliff. But would they be falling into something good, or into utter disaster? Noah didn’t know, and that terrified him.

He saw the same fear when he looked at Darien, and it was that which made him sure that the other man was taking this seriously, and that this meant something to him. It might not be the exact same thing that it meant to Noah, but it wasn’t nothing.

That was enough. So he lay there, chest heaving, nerves clawing at his stomach, wondering if he was going to be doing this alone. Once before, he’d put himself out there for this man, and it hadn’t gone well back then.

Darien grinned at him. Only it wasn’t his normal cheerful, careless grin. It was an expression of happiness, and there was a depth to it that Noah had never seen before.

“Okay,” he whispered, and he reached over to his bedside table, opening a drawer and pulling out a bottle of lube and a crinkly, silver foil square packet which Noah knew was a condom.

He focused just on breathing. Drawing the air deep into his lungs, letting it soothe and relax him. With all of the things that he’d done, this was a line that he’d never crossed. He’d done things in foster care with the other boys, but not this. Never this.

He would never have imagined that he could trust someone enough to let this happen. He opened his mouth, wanting to tell Darien that it was his first time, and then shut it again. He had the impression that Darien knew, anyway, and then even if he didn’t, he would be careful and make it good.

Darien nudged Noah’s legs apart, and he spread them willingly, gazing down into the mischievous, but emotional, eyes of his former best friend. Or maybe Darien was his best friend. He was also a lot more than that, and he couldn’t look away as Darien’s lips parted and his clever little tongue came out, pink and hot against the aching head of Noah’s slick cock.

As he slowly tormented Noah with his mouth, Darien’s fingers, slick with lube, slid between the cheeks of his ass and he rubbed over his tight, clenched hole. He made no attempt to push inside of him, though. Instead, he just massaged the ring of muscle, and that, along with Noah’s deliberately slow breaths, gradually had him relaxing.

“Noah, are you …” Darien hesitated, and Noah fought down panic as he nodded a little. It was still scary to admit to personal, intimate things about himself, but each time he did it, Darien was there to catch him, to not let him fall, and slowly, he found that he was coming to trust the man more and more.

“Okay,” Darien murmured. “Wow. Okay. I’ll be careful.”

That helped. Noah closed his eyes for a moment as the tip of Darien’s finger breached him, but the sensation was more strange and foreign than painful. It wasn’t even uncomfortable, not with how slowly he was going, not with how slick his finger was, and as that finger delved more deeply inside of him, spreading slick, slippery lube the whole way, Noah found himself more and more able to relax.

“Noah, look at me,” Darien whispered, and even during sex, it seemed, he was the talkative one, whereas Noah was the one who tended to get lost in his own head. Still, he did as Darien so gently requested, parting his eyelids and looking down once more into the bright blue of Darien’s sweet, loving eyes.

Loving? Yes. Once or twice already, Noah had been utterly certain that he’d seen that look of love there, that Darien had nearly said three words which Noah was, a little to his own shock, so ready to hear.

Noah pushed his feelings, his emotions, into movement. He rocked his body up, slipping onto Darien’s finger, never breaking eye contact even as he took him deep. The slight discomfort soon subsided, and it was replaced by a feeling which he found hard to describe, even to himself. Fullness, in a way that he’d never felt, but also, a sense of deep satisfaction.

And that was before Darien’s fingertip moved inside of him, until he felt that finger rub over a spot deep inside of himself which he knew of, but had never experienced directly. His prostate. Darien was massaging his prostate, and all of a sudden, nothing mattered but getting more of that stimulation.

There were no more nerves. Nothing but pleasure, radiating out from his very core, from deep inside of his body, through to his fingertips and his toes. He gasped and then cried out, noisier than he ever was, than he ever let himself be.

“Darien. Darien!” Noah barely identified the voice as being his own. He was in the grasp of something beyond pleasure, and when Darien added another finger, rubbing at his most sensitive areas with both, the slight sting of being stretched didn’t bother him in the slightest.

He could come, just from this. Just from having his prostate massaged by those knowing fingertips. When Darien leaned down and his lips slid down the shaft of Noah’s dick, that was just too much, and he found himself writhing, seeking out that pleasure against his conscious will.

What had Darien said? He hadn’t wanted to come with their hands locked around each other, no matter how good it would be. And Noah didn’t want to come in Darien’s mouth, not this time. For this, the only thing that would do would be to have Darien deep inside him, his cock reaching places his fingers couldn’t.

“No, stop. Darien, stop,” Noah insisted, and Darien pulled away, a knowing little smirk on his lips, his eyes glistening as he gazed up at Noah. His fingers stilled and then slid out of him.

“Tell me what you want,” Darien murmured, his tone light and teasing, but in a playful way. There was nothing malicious about it, though Noah wasn’t sure that he would have believed that about any other person on the planet.

“I want … I want …” Noah heard himself stammering and deliberately firmed up his voice. It wasn’t easy for him to ask for what he needed, much less what he wanted. He was used to doing everything on his own, and Darien knew that, but he still asked him.

But he asked him because they both needed to hear it, Noah realized, and that gave him the strength to go on.

“I want you,” He whispered, with his voice growing stronger with each word. “I want you inside of me, baby. I want you to fill me up.”

It was so worth it to say those words when he saw the way that they affected Darien, and he saw the way that his eyes, with the pupils wide open with lust, seemed to darken, and he saw the hint of a flush rise to Darien’s cheeks.

There had never been anything as beautiful on the planet as this man when he was aroused. Nothing could compare. Darien was his everything, and even if he didn’t say the words, he certainly felt them. He could hold them back for a while, but sooner or later, they would come out, and he was going to have to hope that Darien felt enough for him not to mock him for them.

It took Darien only a moment to tear open the foil package of the condom and then roll it down over his dick, sheathing him completely. Noah lay there, not sure about what he was supposed to do. When he saw it in porn, this act was often done with the bottom on his hands and knees. Was that what Darien was going to ask for?

Once the condom was on, Darien sat on the bed, his back against the headboard. He beckoned, and Noah came to him, his heart hammering so strongly in his chest that he could feel it in the back of his throat.

“Come here,” Darien whispered, and he gripped Noah by the hips and guided him into place. Noah’s knees were on either side of Darien’s hips, straddling him, chest to chest, the tip of Darien’s cock slipping between the cheeks of Noah’s ass to press at the slick, open entrance to his body.

From there, it was easy to know what to do. His body just took over, and he sank down onto that erection, his arms going around Darien’s chest. In this position, he and Darien were eye to eye, and it was so easy to kiss him as he took Darien deep inside of himself.

The first time was supposed to hurt. That was the wisdom that Noah had always heard, at least. But there was no pain or any that there was soon burned out in rising flame of pleasure, of arousal. Of feeling so deeply linked, so connected, to this man, so that nothing else mattered to him in the slightest.

He had the control here, and that was comforting to Noah, too. Maybe Darien had known that it would be. The position was so deeply intimate, and they could rock together slowly, neither of them straining for their release but just building toward it, trusting that it would happen.

Slowly, they moved, Noah pressing down and Darien rocking his hips up. Noah had somehow known that having Darien inside of him would reach places that his fingers couldn’t, and he found that he had been right. Darien opened him up utterly, filling him flawlessly, sweat building on their bodies as they alternated between kissing and gazing deep into each other’s eyes.

Too soon, the pleasure started to become unbearable. Tension coiled inside of him, tighter and tighter, a spring that was going to need to be released soon. Noah whimpered because he didn’t want it to be over just yet. He had never felt like he was a part of something bigger than himself before, and the feeling proved to be intoxicating.

This human connection thing, maybe it wasn’t so bad after all.

“I’m sorry,” Darien whispered, his hands tightening on Noah’s ass so that he could feel the sharp little sting of his nails, short as they were, on the sensitive skin where the curve of Noah’s ass met his leg. “I don’t think I can …”

Darien trailed off, and Noah shook his head and gave him a soft smile.

“Me neither. It’s okay.”

It was more than okay. It was a relief to know that he wouldn’t be making an idiot of himself by coming too soon. Their eyes locked, Noah’s body so tight around Darien that it was nearly painful, probably for both of them, but in the most glorious way possible. They rocked together, their bodies seeming to know exactly what to do with each other, with none of the first time awkwardness that Noah would have expected.

All of a sudden, his orgasm took control of his body, snatching him up and flinging him up to breathtaking, dizzying heights. At the same time, he felt Darien twitch inside him, felt it, somehow, in some deep, intimate way, as the other man filled up the condom, and the most wonderful thing about all of this was that Darien was there to catch him when he came down from that release.

“I love you,” Noah’s voice came out as nearly a sob of pleasure, of satiation, that he hadn’t even known was possible. He hated himself for the words as soon as they came out, but they were true. They’d always been true. He just hadn’t intended to say them just yet, or maybe ever.

There was a moment of silence, with Darien still buried inside Noah’s body, and he braced himself for the loss of that connection. Surely, he had ruined everything with those reckless words. Surely, this was all over, and it was all Noah’s fault.

Noah closed his eyes. He simply was not brave enough to watch as the disgust came into Darien’s eyes. Or would pity be worse? Yes, upon reflection, he thought it would be. Much worse.

Instead of whatever he was expecting, Noah felt the soft brush of Darien’s lips against his own, and his eyes opened in surprise as the other man pulled back away from him, smiling.

“I love you, too, Noah,” Darien admitted, and only then did he pull out of Noah, deal with the condom, and then lie back down on the bed, pulling Noah into his warm embrace. Noah tried desperately to make sense of anything, of the mass of swirling, writhing emotions in his head, of the words Darien had just said, of the fact that he found himself so willing to give this a try.

Sex was a powerful thing, it seemed. This was more than sex though. As he snuggled back into Darien’s arms, he reminded himself of how Darien had bailed him out at the school. How Darien had gotten him a job, though he hadn’t had to do anything like that.

Whatever else, he had to believe that Darien cared for him, maybe even loved him, because why would he do those things otherwise? He held onto that like a talisman, clutching it as though it could ward him against the evils of distrust and fear.

“So are we doing this?” Darien asked, his hands tracing sweet little circles, fingertips whirling over his skin and making Noah arch toward them. “Are we really doing this?”

That was the question, and Noah found himself reaching out, just with his mind, toward Darien, allowing himself to believe, just for this night, maybe, that he could trust this man. That Darien wouldn’t leave him again, and that he could have everything that he’d wanted for nearly two years now.

“I want to do it,” Noah whispered, almost too softly to hear, but Darien did hear. Noah rolled onto his side, and Darien wrapped his arms around him and pulled him into a spooning position, hands warm and soft and gentle on Noah’s sensitive skin, flushed with pleasure as it still was.

“I want to do it, too,” Darien admitted, and just like that, it seemed, they were dating. It was terrifying. It was perfect. It was everything that he’d ever dreamed of, everything that he’d ever feared.

What it was, was irresistible. As long as Darien wanted him, how could he possibly resist?