“Do you want me to stop?”
“Fuck,
Thank goodness for that. I wasn’t really sure I could have stopped if he had said yes. I was speeding up now, both my thrusts and my hand pumping on him. “Stop fighting it, Matt,” I said softly. “Just let go.” And amazingly, he did. He went rigid and made a low, guttural cry into the pillows. He tightened around me, his whole body clenched and shaking underneath me, and I came, too, hanging onto him as tight as I could and hoping I didn’t actually leave teeth marks in his shoulder.
For a minute, we stayed that way, me on top of him but no longer inside of him, both of us breathing hard and trembling from the strength of our orgasms. And then he suddenly pulled away from me, turned around, and grabbed me. He rolled me so that he was on top of me and crushed me hard against him. He was still shaking.
I ran my hands up and down his back, feeling the tremors finally die away. We stayed like that for a while, just holding each other and running our hands over each other and letting our breathing get back to normal. He kissed my neck a little, but he didn’t say anything, and the longer we went without talking, the more I worried about it.
“Matt, are you okay?” I finally asked.
He laughed shakily. “Are you serious?”
“Yes.” I pulled back, grabbed his head and pulled him away from my neck so I could look into his eyes. “I’m serious. I want to know if you’re okay with what just happened.”
He smiled down at me, and I didn’t see any shame or regret in his eyes. He looked tired and sated and completely at ease. “Jared, I am somewhere way beyond ‘okay’.” He kissed me and pulled my hair so he could kiss my neck. “That was amazing. Although….”
That made me worry all over again. “What?”
“The aftershock is kind of strange.”
I relaxed again in his arms and laughed a little. “I know.”
“I feel sort of—I don’t know.
“I know what you mean.”
“It feels that way for you?”
“I always feel like my legs aren’t quite attached right anymore. Like they’re somehow loose in my hips. Like I’m a Barbie and somebody pulled my legs off—”
“No!” he growled fiercely into my ear, his hand pulling hard on my hair. “Not a Barbie!”
“Okay.” I laughed, surprised at his response. “Ken, then.”
He relaxed a little, but it felt forced, and when he looked down at me, he looked troubled. “You could pass for Ken. Long-hair, hippie Ken.” His hands pulled on my curls again, but not as hard this time.
I could tell he was trying to joke, but it didn’t quite come out right, and suddenly it wasn’t funny anymore. “What is it, Matt? Do you think it makes me a girl if you fuck me?”
He sighed and flopped down on his back next to me and stared up at the ceiling. “No. Not a girl.”
“But less of a man?”
He didn’t answer, which of course was an answer in and of itself. I tried not be bothered by it. After all, I had lost my virginity fifteen years earlier. Fifteen years and a half-dozen different relationships in that time to explore the dynamics of top or bottom. In most cases, it hadn’t mattered, but in some, it definitely had. I knew that it could become a power issue, and I tried to be grateful that he was being cautious of it. Still….
“Jared?” He was on his side now, facing me, his head propped up on his hand. “Are you mad?”
“I’m not sure yet,” I answered honestly.
He pulled me back into his arms. “Please don’t be. It’s not even so much that I think of you that way, as that I worry that you’ll think that I think of you that way and you’ll resent me for it. Does that make sense?” I was trying to unravel that, but he didn’t give me time to answer. “Anyway, I feel better about it now.” And it was true that he didn’t look troubled anymore at all and his voice sounded determined. “I feel better about what just happened than about the other way.”
I still wasn’t sure it made much sense to me, but so what? We had been together just over a month. Not long at all for a guy to go from insisting he was straight to where we were now. We had all the time in the world to make him more comfortable. And in the meantime, he preferred bottom? I’d have to be an idiot to object to that.
“Jared, are you okay?” he asked.
I smiled up at him and repeated his own words back to him. “Matt, I am somewhere way beyond ‘okay’.”
“Good.” He kissed me then, and it was slow and deep and passionate, and his hands were wandering down my body in a very familiar way, and I was surprised to feel that he was growing hard again already against my leg.
I laughed. “Already? I’m not sure I’m capable.”
“Sometimes,” he whispered jokingly into my ear, “you just don’t know when to shut up.”
He rolled back on top of me, lining us up the way he liked to do, and reached down to wrap his hands around both of us. He was fully erect again, and I was getting there. He was kissing me again, and his strokes were slow and deliberate. I wrapped one arm around him, put my other hand on top of his as it moved on us, closed my eyes, and gave up to the sensation of what he was doing. Fucking him had been incredible, but this was something else entirely. Sexually, maybe it was less, but emotionally, I knew it was more. I knew he was telling me something. It was in the slowness of his movements, the way he gripped me tight against him, the gentleness of his tongue running over my lips, the way he whispered my name.
I was still amazed that I could make him this way.
Nothing else mattered. Not his parents. Not having to spend a week apart. Not even Barbie and Ken.
CHAPTER 28
TWO days before Christmas, Lizzy and I were working in the shop. Brian was working on selling it, but until then, it was still ours. I hadn’t seen Matt for four days. My house felt terribly empty, but knowing it was temporary made it bearable. I had been spending a lot of time at Brian and Lizzy’s and had even done one night of babysitting with little James.
Lizzy was counting out change and talking about her favorite topic, my hair.
“Jarhead, you can’t teach like that. What will the kids think?”
“That I’m hip.”
“You are not hip. You’re scruffy. Not the same thing.”
“I thought girls liked scruffy guys.”
“Oh?” She grinned at me playfully. “Are you trying to attract girls now? Is there something you’re not telling me?” I tried to throw a pencil at her but missed by a mile.
Matt walked in at that moment, looking exhausted.
“Hey, Matt, I’m trying to convince Jared to cut his hair.”
He didn’t even acknowledge her but walked up to me and said quietly, “Can we go in back for a minute?”
I was surprised but said, “Sure.”
We went in the back room. He sat down on the edge of Lizzy’s desk, looking down at the floor, and didn’t say anything. Sitting on the desk, he was shorter than me, and all I could see was the top of his head. I could tell by looking at him that he was wound up tight. I waited for him to say something and finally realized he wasn’t going to.
“How’s it going with your parents?”
“Fabulous.” His voice was low and tight, full of sarcasm and anger. He didn’t look up and didn’t seem inclined to say anything else. The silence stretched on. It felt like he was getting ready to share bad news with me, and I tried to keep my pulse from racing.
“What’s wrong?”
