The Luckiest (21 page)

“I’m not! These questions are just so
general
.”

Nik rolls his eyes at him and then softens this by coming back to kiss his neck again. “Fine. Do you still like topping?”

He lifts his chin toward the ceiling and thinks about it, about how badly he wants to fuck Nik, to feel him around his dick. “Oh, yeah. Yes, I do.”

“And how about bottoming?”

There,
now
Nik is moving this along a little, sliding his hand across Aaron’s torso, shoving the sheet back with his wrist and letting his mouth drift down to follow. He pep­pers Aaron’s chest with small kisses, pausing to lick-suck-bite-pull at a nipple.

“Mmm, sometimes.”

“You were never that comfortable before.”

“It’s still not my favorite. It’s…. well. You know.”

Nik kisses back up his chest until he’s whispering in Aaron’s ear again. “I know how it is for me. Tell me how it is for you.”

He can’t think with Nik’s tongue there—Nik knows that spot just behind his ear, and this is so unfair—so he answers. “It’s messy, and it’s so close. I get hot and stuffy and overwhelmed and… it’s a lot. I like my space.”

“Yeah.” Nik straddles and crouches down over him, slowly, gently sinking his teeth into the curve of Aaron’s neck and licking it, and God, that spot, too—Aaron sinks his hand into Nik’s damp hair, holding his head there and moaning, low and steady.

“I like it best when I’m bottoming from the top—riding somebody is just… God, fuck, that’s so good.” He’s not sure if he means Nik’s mouth on him or what he’s remembering. Both, maybe.

Nik blows over the place he’s just left wet. “Mmm. I bet you like that—being over him, him looking up at you while you have all the control.” Aaron remembers, remembers riding Nik like that the few times he’d bottomed when they were together. It had been easier then, they both thought, easier for Aaron to set the pace and go with his comfort level.

“Yeah.”

“Yeah.” Nik has pulled back to look at him, and for once Aaron can’t read him at all.

So he says, “What about you?” Now he can reach up to run his hands over Nik’s chest—as much as he loves the smooth skin of Nik’s back, he loves this too, the soft scratch of Nik’s hair, the patterns it grows and swirls into.

“Ah. Well. A little of everything—I still like bottoming, I love it, but right now… mostly I just want you,” Nik says.

Aaron smiles up at him, his face soft and fond. “So where does that leave us for tonight?”

Nik watches him for a moment and says, “I want to try some­thing. Something that’s still somehow new, for you and for us together and… in some ways, for me, too.”

Nik leans down again, lowering himself so that he’s right back in Aaron’s space, nuzzling their noses and faces together and speaking low, every breath a gust across Aaron’s cheek, every slow blink a brush of his eyelashes against Aaron’s skin. “I want to spend some time with you, with your body. I want to touch you and taste you everywhere. And then I want to stretch you out underneath me, and I want you to taste my skin and smell
me
with every breath and I want you to watch me while I fuck you. That’s what I want—I want to fuck you, and I want to be in your space and I want to overwhelm you, and I want you to try not to forget, even for a second, that that’s exactly what’s happening.”

Aaron’s breath comes out in a rush. Now he knows; now he knows why this is so scary, why Nik is so solemn. It’s because Nik doesn’t just want sex; he wants
everything.
Nik is pushing again, he’s upping the ante, and Aaron pants, “Oh,” and takes a moment to try to think about what
he
wants, beyond Nik’s mouth back on his.

Nik is so close right now, so incredibly physically
present.
Aaron wants to go back in time and take Nik to New York with him; wants to rage at his younger self and make him listen to what Nik was trying to tell him; wants to have never let him go.

But he also wants to have had these years, these years on his own in the city when he learned so much about himself, when he fearlessly explored some parts of himself and hid from some others. He wants to stop regretting their breakup and regretting his last hookup, and he wants to find a way to be as bold and fearless here, right now, as he is in so many other places. And he wants
this,
he wants it too, every bit of Nik that he can get, right here, and the best way to reach out and take him is to let himself go, let Nik take him wherever he wants to. It’s not at all what he’s used to, but maybe that’s the point.

Nik is still just rubbing their cheeks together, maybe waiting for him, and it shouldn’t feel so sensuous but his words still ring in Aaron’s ears and Aaron is so turned on by the thought, by the images that Nik has planted in him. He reaches up and frames Nik’s face in his hands, pushing him gently back and taking a moment to look at him, serious and so, so loved, God, before he pulls him down into a kiss. “Yes,” he says against Nik’s mouth, nodding. “Yes, I want that.”

Nik lets his torso fall against Aaron, pinning him to the bed, and slides his tongue into Aaron’s mouth with a heady moan. He kisses him wetly for a long time, and then pulls away breathless. “I thought you wouldn’t.”

“Then why did you ask?”

“Because I wanted you to say yes.”

Aaron laughs,
finally
lets the tension crack a little and breathes out heavily through his nose with a wide smile. Nik grins against him, forehead to forehead, and says, “Yeah, I know.”

“No. I just… I think the likelihood of me saying no to you right now is pretty slim.”

Nik pulls away and sits up tall, beaming down at him. “Well, in
that
case—” Aaron grabs at him, pulling him back down.

“No, that I
will
complain about. Don’t go anywhere—stay here with me. I want you close.” Aaron pulls Nik into a kiss and slides his tongue into Nik’s mouth, tangling his hands in his hair again. Then he pulls back, pressing his head into the pillow. “What you said—I want that. I want you to fuck me.”

Nik groans and grinds against him, once. “Say that again.”

Aaron grins. “You have me repeating myself a lot this week.”

“You keep catching me off guard, and some things are worth committing to memory.” Nik suckles Aaron’s earlobe and slides against him, his cock dragging against Aaron’s balls, and Aaron moans into the movement. “Say it again, Aaron,” he whispers against his ear. “Ask me again.”

“I want you all the way inside of me. Stay close to me, wrap me up in you and fuck me, Nik.”

Nik groans, and Aaron shakes. “Do you like it hard? Slow? Tell me what you want.”

“Let’s find out,” Aaron whispers as he pulls Nik’s head back toward his for a kiss.

Nik was serious about taking his time; Aaron watches him slowly, slowly kiss from Aaron’s chest to his belly. He sucks Aaron’s balls into his mouth, tender and slow, bathing them in broad, soft strokes, and then has to drop his head back and pant at the ceiling. He teases the back of Aaron’s knees with his tongue, holding Aaron’s legs so he can draw designs there. Aaron finally hands down a pillow for Nik to shove under his ass and slides his hands behind his knees, still slick from Nik’s mouth, and holds himself open. Nik moans against him while he rims him open, sliding his wet tongue and fingers wet insistently over Aaron’s hole. When Aaron’s fingers start to shake, Nik tugs on his knees, pulls his legs down and turns him over.

Nik fingers him for a long time, raining kisses across his ass and adding more lube when he needs to. Aaron breathes through the stretch.

“God, look at you,” Nik says. “This ass is a fucking crime, so damn sweet.”

Aaron is open, vulnerable and bare, and Nik presses two fingers inside him and curves them to press there,
just
there. He slides his tongue down to flick around Aaron’s opening again.

Aaron breathes through it and thinks about how Nik must look right now, thinks about his eyes closed and his forehead wrinkled in a moan, about his tongue extended and the look on his face. It
is
overwhelming, and he’s ready before Nik is. He cries out, “Please, Nik,
please
.”

Through the haze he laughs at the irony: begging to be fucked! He’s heard it plenty of times and never under­stood it, but now he’s so full and not full enough, feeling strangely
alone,
stimulated but incomplete.

Nik pulls his fingers away and Aaron whines with the loss, and then Nik is turning him and crawling up his body. Aaron grabs at his head and pulls him down—he needs him, needs him close, connected, and Nik groans into the kiss and presses himself against Aaron, pushing his tongue closer into Aaron’s mouth to sweep through and take him.

Nik pulls back to roll on a condom and lube it up. He is flushed, sweaty, his hair is askew and his hands are shaking, his body trembling.

“I love you,” Aaron says, desperate to keep Nik close even when he’s so far away, to let his words tie them back together.

Nik glances up from where he fiddles with the condom. “God, Aaron.” He shoves the pillow under Aaron’s hips again and tips him up. Then Nik pushes into him, hot and wide, and Aaron gasps from the stretch and the slide.

He panics for a second, clutching at Nik’s hip and his hair, and then Nik is kissing him again. He smells like sex, tastes like Aaron’s body and the salt of his sweat, and he’s thick, so thick inside of him. Aaron flushes with the heat of their connection and their bodies so close together, and Nik is right there, familiar green eyes blown wide and staring into his. The push and drag of Nik’s cock aches, so sweet and so right, and Aaron wants to close his eyes against it but Nik is so present, watching him, so he can’t, he
can’t.
Nik moves slowly, steadily, his gaze a brand while he drags it out even longer, staggering his perfect rhythm with sudden, syncopated, strong thrusts so that Aaron cries out for him every time, his breath pooling hot between them. Nik watches, taking him in as he comes apart over and over in between kisses that linger, lips clinging as Aaron gasps into Nik’s mouth with each sharp push and reaches down to grab Nik’s thighs high, right below his ass, to anchor him there, inside of him, hot and so thick and
God.

Nik moans, “Aaron, Aaron, I
want
you,” into his mouth.

Aaron says, “I’m here, yeah,” but he knows it’s not enough, it can’t be enough, because the sex will end, and it’s just their bodies, not their
selves,
and he can’t stop
wanting.
He wants to swallow Nik whole so he can keep him, wants to absorb him through his skin so he’ll always be here, close, close, just like this.

“Please,
please,
” Nik gasps. Aaron pulls him closer, gives up on kissing and watching so their faces are pressed together, sharing breath between them. They’re both sweating; their foreheads slide while Nik pumps into him, back to steady and slow, and Aaron breaks apart and winds tighter and tighter with each shove of Nik’s belly against his cock. Aaron gasps against Nik with each push in and slow drag back out. He winds his legs around Nik to keep him close and wraps his arms around Nik’s shoulders and buries his hands in his hair and keeps him.

Nik moans his name, “Aaron, God,
Aaron—
” and suddenly his hips stutter and he’s groaning out his orgasm against Aaron’s mouth. Aaron
feels
him, feels him swell and their rhythm fall, irregular and broken, and he’s so close he wants to tip over, to come with him but it’s not enough, he’s not there yet. So while Nik presses into him in long, shuddering, desperate strokes, Aaron shoves a hand between them to curl over his own dick, to strip and pull at it.

“Yeah, yeah,” Nik groans, and before Nik is finished riding out his climax, Aaron roars and spills between them, clench­ing around Nik’s barely softening cock and God, there,
yes.
Nik’s breath catches once, twice, and then he’s kissing Aaron through it, lick­ing into his open mouth to get that little bit closer. Aaron can’t breathe, because everything is
Nik
—the weight on top of him, the air in his lungs, the taste in his mouth—and every time he catches a breath it’s Nik,
Nik,
steal­ing it right out of him again.

Aaron shoves at Nik’s shoulders, starting to panic again, and Nik shifts his weight to his knees so Aaron’s lungs can expand but he doesn’t stop kissing him, doesn’t pull his mouth or his body away. He keeps his hands firmly in Aaron’s hair and presses his tongue, sloppy and wet, against Aaron’s. Aaron breathes in deeply through his nose and smells sex, bleachy spunk and clean sweat. His fingertips tingle where they slide against the sweaty skin of Nik’s back, and Nik’s rapid breath is hot against his cheek and loud over the roaring in his ears. Nik is everywhere,
everywhere,
and the same thing that left him panicking is now what calms him, because he isn’t alone, Nik is here, still hard within him and around him and a part of him.

And then Nik’s hips shift and he pulls back just far enough to look Aaron in the eye, intent and so goddamn
predatory,
and he presses into Aaron again and says, his voice rough, “I’m not done with you yet,” and it’s long and slow, a thick, stinging pull that’s God, yes, please, God,
yes.

In Their Own Words

A
post from
the blog
A Lone Star in Manhattan
, Sunday,
December 28, 2014:

I’m back in my apartment after a week at my mom’s place for the holidays. It was, as always, great to be there at Christmas. My mother continues to be a breathtakingly good cook and an outstanding host, and the bar will forever be set by how lovely she can make a holiday. I ate too much, surprising nobody; we watched a lot of movies and cleaned out more than one closet; I saw a lot of my friends from high school; and I spent a lot of time outside. That last is unusual for me, but at the holidays the warm weather is such a novelty that it drives me outside. We walked over to the churchyard where my grandparents are buried, and I spent some time walking the path the county just built next to the bayou at the end of our street. My cousin even drove me out to his deer lease, where I sat for whole minutes before the stillness of it made me a little bit crazy. It was good.

One of the things I did while I was home was go to a Christ­mas light display with some old friends of mine. Every year this park near my house goes all out and has a walk-through light display and it’s a very big deal where I grew up—tour buses come and the whole thing. When I was in high school we used to man the concession stand to raise money for the school newspaper, and it was with some of the same friends I used to sling popcorn with—and the group we’ve gathered around us—that I went this year.

One point of tradition is to take comfort in the familiar, and so it’s appropriate that this visit to this park reminded me of how little people really change. Besides my mom and my aunt, there are three constant women in my life: let’s call them A, J and S. They have seen me through everything. Latina, white and African-American, they are my muses and my confidantes and my competitors and my very own Three Wise Women.

There was a moment last week, standing in a clutch of trees, surrounded by millions of white twinkling lights, when A was laughing with her boyfriend at some running joke that is just between them and J and S were squabbling over com­peting memories of who was elected homecoming queen our sophomore year of high school. All three of them were eating from the same bucket of popcorn, timing their handfuls as if they eat together every day, as if it was still four years ago when we were the ones filling the popcorn buckets and living in each others’ backpack pockets. It was the simplest passing moment, and there is no way they remember it happening, but I saw them there, just as I had seen the three of them so many times years ago, and it hit something inside of me. That “something” is the same thing that makes mothers cry at graduations, I think; it’s the same thing that makes us walk over to my grandparents’ place in the cemetery every Christmas. It’s tradition, and growth, and how, even as we change and everything changes around us, little artifacts of who we are and those we have loved stay with us and take root within us, shaping us forever. And it’s a really trivial thing that these three beloved women know how to share a bucket of popcorn without any awkwardness or hesitation—and let me be clear: They were going at it; these women like to eat— but it’s also kind of beautiful, at least to me, at least right now.

We all graduate from college in just a few months. I don’t know exactly what happens to all of us then—I don’t even know exactly what happens to ME then. I don’t know how many more evenings like that one the four of us will have together, and I’m not sure when the next one will be.

But I’ve loved the ones we have had, and as we get ready to move into 2015 (it’s the future!), I want to be more aware of all of these little moments. My resolution for 2015 is to pay more attention, to try to see better and hear better and slow down enough to maybe even savor my life. If nothing else, I’m sure it will make me a better writer. It has to, doesn’t it?

We’ll see. For now I have a weekend full of parties ahead of me, and 2015 and everything it might bring can wait just a few more days.