DEREK

This was it. No turning back.

Not that I wanted to. All my inhibitions were gone, annihilated by my physical need to have this man. To take him. To know, once and for all.

I could barely contain myself as I tore open the condom packet and eased it over my aching cock. My fingers shook. It was a different kind of excitement than I’d ever felt—a storming, swirling mass of nerves, desire, anticipation, fear, hope, dread, greed, thrill. And at the center of it all, the eye of the storm, was my awareness of him. Maxim. It wasn’t only that I wanted the answer to a question. I wanted him.

After coming home from Carolyn’s, I’d tried to numb myself with whiskey—would I never fucking learn—and forget the feelings I’d had watching him flirt with those women. But it was no use. I knew it was no use the moment I heard his key in the lock. I knew what I was going to do the moment I saw him from where I sat in the lonely dark. I just hoped he’d have the good sense to stop me.

But he hadn’t. And the more we kissed and touched and struggled against what I finally saw as the inevitable conclusion of such passion, the more I wanted to surrender to it.

So I had—I shed every last doubt and let my deepest instincts take over. And now I was being rewarded for it.

His body beneath mine. His cock in my mouth. His cum down my throat. His tight, hot ass grinding against my fingers. His hand on his dick.

Easy, easy now.

My heart was pounding. I couldn’t breathe. Maxim’s sweet, low voice in the dark was like a secret I wanted to keep forever.

He closed his eyes, his expression tense and his breaths deep and measured as I gently pushed the tip of my cock inside him.

I couldn’t talk. I didn’t even have sentences in my head—just words that jumbled together as my brain tried to process what I was feeling as I slid deeper, inch by inch. Fuck. Yes. Hot. Tight. This. More. Want.

When I was buried inside him, I fell forward, bracing myself above him, my lips an inch from his. I closed my eyes. “Sweet Jesus.”

He wrapped his arms and legs around me. “Does it feel good?”

I swallowed, afraid to move, because I knew I would come in two thrusts. “Yes.”

He kissed me, his tongue teasing between my lips. “I want this to be everything you imagined.”

But I hadn’t imagined anything even close to this.

Slowly, with control that shocked me, I began to roll my hips, easing in and out of that unbelievable heat. He moaned against my lips, and I loved the sound of it so much, I moved a little faster, a little harder, just so he’d do it again. It’s so good, so fucking good. I’d never felt anything like it.

“You’re perfect,” he whispered, “so fucking perfect.”

It was all perfect, every single thing—his legs around me, his hands on my back, his breath on my lips. It made me feel close to him. Like what we were doing wasn’t just about sex—it was about us. I lifted my head up slightly to see his face, and our eyes locked. Fuck. Right then, I understood why he’d come so quickly in the living room when I’d looked up at him. There was something so intimate, so powerful, so blistering hot about eye contact in a moment like that. It was more than contact. It was connection, and it was intense.

My body reacted, moving faster and harder and deeper until I was bucking wildly over him, every brutal thrust punctuated with a sound from the back of my throat and the slap of skin on skin. I grabbed the headboard, almost desperately, as if I needed to hold on. He brought a hand back to his cock and jerked himself as unrestrainedly as I was fucking him, all the muscles in his arm and abs and chest flexing, his legs tightening around me. It’s everything I’d always wanted sex to be—sweaty and hard and rough and animalistic and fuck, fuck, I’m going to come and then it was the sight of him losing control beneath me that finally pushed me over.

But it wasn’t the sight of his muscles or his hand or his cock. I wasn’t even looking at it.

It was his eyes. It was the connection. It was the answer to everything, because it wasn’t only a connection to him—it was a connection to myself, a path to understanding a part of me I’d always found incomprehensible, foreign, ugly.

With Maxim, it made sense. It was as much a part of me as the heart beating in my chest or the blood rushing through my veins. And it was beautiful.

With him, it was beautiful.

* * *

I collapsed on his chest, my face buried in his neck. “Oh my God.”

His hands slid up and down my sides. “I think you were lying to me.”

“About what?”

“About never being with a guy before.”

“I wasn’t lying. You’re the first.”

“I’m really happy about that.”

“I am too.” For a moment, I wondered if there would even have been a first without Maxim’s appearance in my life. I couldn’t imagine there was any other guy in the universe who could have driven me to this. It was all him.

“So you’re okay with this?”

“Yeah. I think so.” I took a breath. “But I don’t know where we go from here.”

“Where do you want to go?”

I thought for a moment. “I don’t know. I’d be lying if I said I could walk away from this.”

“Good.” He kissed my head. “I don’t want to walk away either.”

“But you and me together…” I lifted my chest off him, braced myself with my fists on the mattress. “I have no idea what that looks like. How we go about it. I’m not ready to go public.”

“I get it. And I’m not really a public person in that respect, anyway.”

“So we just…what? Hang out here together?”

“Sure.”

“Does that mean you’re not leaving tomorrow?”

He smiled. “Yeah. That’s what it means.”

“Good.”

“But I am leaving in two weeks. You’ll be tired of me by then, anyway.”

I laughed, but a few minutes later, when I was alone in my bathroom washing my hands, I wondered if he was right. Would I grow tired of him? Was this going to be a brief, passionate fling? As short as it was intense? Were we going to play house here for a couple weeks and then be done with each other when he moved out? In a way, it was probably what I should hope for. That whatever this thing was between us would burn out before it affected my life on any long-term basis. Chemistry as hot as ours wasn’t sustainable anyway, right? That kind of spark always fizzled, whether you were gay or straight. I heard about it all the time from married friends.

So I decided not to beat myself up over what we were doing. It wouldn’t last long, I’d get it out of my system, and we’d both move on, free to pursue our larger goals. This was like a little side trip. All in fun. How long had it been since I’d done something just for fun? Something spontaneous, purely for pleasure?

Satisfied with that, I brushed my teeth, turned off the light and went back into my bedroom. Maxim wasn’t there, and his clothing was gone too. I wandered into the hallway, and saw that he wasn’t in the bathroom. His bedroom door was half-open, and the lamp was on.

I frowned. Should I say goodnight? We hadn’t really said it before. I’d sort of just gotten up to use the bathroom and he’d done the same. I don’t know why I assumed he’d come back to my bed. I wasn’t even sure I wanted him to. But this seemed like kind of an anti-climactic ending to a magnificently climactic night.

His lamp clicked off, and I went back into my room, feeling slightly disappointed, and then aggravated with myself for it. Don’t get weird. He’s not your boyfriend. He’s more like a…fuck buddy. Remember those? They don’t stay the night.

Right. It was better to keep some clear boundaries. Clearly even Maxim recognized that. What a relief we were on the same page. Turning back the covers, I got into bed, set my alarm, and switched off my lamp. When I lay back on my pillow, I realized I could still smell him on the sheets.

I closed my eyes and inhaled deeply.