Where We Left Off

  “You buy the fucked-up ones on purpose,” Will said slowly.

  “They’re not fucked-up—they’re still totally good! They shouldn’t have to get thrown away just because they look funny.”

  Will was shaking his head at me.

  “Oh my god, you personify produce.”

  I started to say something, to defend myself. But he backed me against the counter and slid close, kissing me until my mouth felt as bruised as those rescued apples.

  AFTER DINNER a few days later, Will groaned as a text appeared on his phone, and stalked over to the intercom to buzz someone up, muttering.

  “Fucking Gus!” he said, like his coworker’s presence was the most outrageous intrusion he could imagine.

  “Did he just show up?”

  “No, he told me earlier.”

  “Jesus, you’re so cute,” I said. Will’s grouchy, shocked at the burden of other people thing really did it for me. It was like, maybe since he let me hang around and didn’t seem as horrified by me as he did by others, then I was special.

  I don’t know what I’d pictured, exactly. But based on what Will had said about Gus I had definitely not imagined the totally average-looking white guy in his midforties who walked in the door wearing gray corduroys, a red-and-blue sweater, and a black overcoat. Will had called him arrogant, pushy, obsessive—hell, he’d referred to him as Captain Ahab at some point. This guy looked like… an accountant.

  “Gus, Leo. Leo, this is Gus Martelli.”

  Gus smiled at me and shook my hand. I suddenly felt very weird being here, dressed in sweats and one of Will’s perfectly cut white T-shirts (which was totally not perfectly cut for me).

  “Um, should I just….” I gestured toward the bedroom, to indicate giving them some privacy, but immediately blushed because that made it seem like I was a fuck toy or something, waiting for Will in bed when he was done with his business meeting.

  Will snorted like he could read my mind.

  “You’re fine here. If you’re interested, that is. I’m certainly not sure whether I am or not yet. You want a beer, Martelli?”

  “Oh, it’s Martelli now, huh?” Gus turned to me. “He only calls me that when he’s trying to remind me that we aren’t friends.” He winked, like we shared a secret about Will.

  “I don’t know why I’d need to remind you of something so completely self-evident, but whatever. Beer?”

  “Sure.”

  “Want one?” Will asked me, hand on my arm.

  “Oh. Um, okay. Thanks.” I didn’t really, but I wanted to feel like I belonged there with them.

  As Will took Gus’ coat and got beers, Gus started complaining about things at work. They were things Will had complained to me about before, but he didn’t agree with Gus, just let him talk.

  “God, do you ever find yourself thinking, ‘How the hell did this become my life’?” Gus said finally when he’d tired himself out.

  “No,” Will said. “The only people who think that are the ones who assume their lives will turn out great from the beginning.”

  Gus opened his mouth, then shut it again and nodded, like he was evaluating Will’s mood and recalibrating.

  We sat at the kitchen table because that’s where Will put the beers, as if he wanted no confusion that this was a business discussion.

  “Okay,” Will said, leaning back and crossing his legs, drinking deeply from the beer. “Convince me this isn’t idiotic.”

  I decided I liked Gus when, rather than bristling at Will’s challenge or taking it as a criticism, he leaned forward, excited, and started to talk.

  “Okay, so,” he began. And then he proceeded to lay out what sounded to me, at least, like a pretty compelling list of reasons why he and Will were not only qualified to strike out on their own but would actually benefit from it, both in terms of money and job satisfaction.

  Will listened, beer dangling between two casual fingers and eyes slightly narrowed, but I thought he was intrigued at the very least. He wasn’t doing the impatient thing he does where his jaw and nostrils are tensed as if stuck in a constant inhale trying to draw breath to interrupt something that bored or irritated him. Little by little he started asking questions, leaned forward slightly, and got another beer for him and for Gus without asking if he wanted one.

  When he sat back down at the table, he held his beer out for me. I took a sip and passed it back and he barely looked at me, but he’d known. Known that I wouldn’t want another but had wanted me to know he hadn’t forgotten about me.

  Will herded Gus out when he’d finished his beer, and cleaned up the empties.

  “So, what do you think?”

  “You want my opinion?” I asked, startled.

  Will didn’t respond, just wiped down the counters.

  “Um. Well, I don’t really know much about your business, and… you’re way better at reading people than me….”

  “I know that. Just, what did you think?”

  “It seemed great. Like, I don’t get why you wouldn’t want to do it, great.”

  Will sighed. “Yeah.”

  “So… why wouldn’t you?”

  Will was staring out the window like maybe the answer was out there.

  “It’s a lot,” he said slowly. “To just start over. Start from scratch.”

  “Yeah, I know, right?”

  He looked over, startled, as if he’d forgotten that starting over from scratch was exactly what I’d done when I moved here.

  “JESUS GOD,” Will muttered. Sweat trickled down his chest, and he clawed at the sheets.

  For thirty minutes I’d kept him on the edge, touching, licking, biting, kissing, but not letting him come.

  I had a theory that Will was secretly a hedonist, but he disguised it as an insistence that he just had good taste. It was little things that’d made me think so. The way he inhaled from his coffee cup before taking the first sip of the morning. He bought beans from a shop on the corner and ground them himself. He boiled water and poured it over the coffee, taking note of the time so he got the extraction right. With most things he was all about convenience, but he liked his coffee this way, and he liked the ritual of making it.

  It was other things too, though. How he’d adjust a flower in an arrangement on a restaurant table to make it more pleasing. How he kept the heat turned a few degrees warmer than was practical so that he could sleep naked in the winter because he liked the feel of the sheets on his skin. The way he leaned into my hand if I touched his hair, like a cat deepening a caress. He loved food, too, even though he ate like an animal, his terrible table manners oddly out of step with the rest of his polished persona.

  I knew that Will was way more experienced than me, that he’d been with a ton of men who were probably better than I was in bed. But ever since the other night, I couldn’t get this fantasy out of my head. The fantasy where Will came totally undone. Where he dropped his guard and forgot that he was the sexpert and I basically knew jack squat. Where he begged me. Gave himself over to me and showed me something vulnerable. Something real. Something that he didn’t show any of the other men he was with.

  Because if I could make sex totally satisfying for him then he wouldn’t need to go sleep with all those other people. Right?

  So in pursuit of my fantasy, I’d decided to test the theory. No way was I going to be able to fuck Will as well as those other men with a ton of experience. Not yet, anyway. So I had to use other means at my disposal to get him so wound up that by the time I did fuck him, he was desperate for it. And so far I thought it was going pretty well.

  At first he’d been all, “What are you doing, Leo? Quit it and fuck me.” Once he realized that I was committed to driving him out of his mind, though, he’d relaxed a little bit.

  Will’s skin was like velvet, his hair like silk, and I could’ve touched him forever, even without the added bonus that it was making him fall apart.

  I traced the line of his ribs with my tongue, feeling his heartbeat beneath his
flushed skin. Every breath and swallow sank me deeper into the sense that I knew this man whose body I was exploring. I knew him, I saw him, I could touch him however I wanted, and he’d let me. Will, who was usually bossy and impatient and a know-it-all, was lying on the bed, hair clumped with sweat and eyes blazing, completely open to me.

  I followed the cut of his abdomen down to the groove of his thigh, hot and salty, and pressed his knees up and apart. I lapped at the base of his cock, holding his hips down when he tried to thrust. He was leaking precome, and I rolled the taste of him around on my tongue. I couldn’t take him all the way into my mouth yet, so I licked every inch, the feel of him straining beneath me exhilarating and intimidating.

  “Fuck, Leo, I’m gonna—”

  I grabbed the base of his dick and shook my head. Will threw his head back and groaned, cursing me again.

  I kissed him as he calmed back down a little bit, loving the feel of his full lips on mine, his needy tongue playing against my own. He wrapped his arms around my neck, pressed tight against me. I hadn’t realized how intoxicating it would be, the power I had to control Will’s pleasure. To watch him made desperate at my hands.

  I moved down his body, licking the cut of his stomach muscles, nipping at a hip bone. I scraped my teeth lightly around the base of his erection and smiled as he hissed, thrusting his hips up and clutching my shoulders. I rubbed up and down his thighs, encouraging his legs farther apart for me, then I rolled his balls in my hand and tugged gently, making him cry out. I kissed beneath them, following the thin skin to his ass. I rolled his hips up and tentatively traced his hole with my tongue.

  “Oh shit, shit, shit,” he groaned, voice gone tight.

  “Is that—do you like that?” I asked. It seemed only polite.

  “Yes,” he said so quickly I almost laughed. But then Will groaned as I increased the pressure and it was anything but funny.

  I wasn’t exactly sure what I was supposed to do, but I figured being thorough was always a good policy? I pressed into the muscle around his hole with my thumbs, massaging it while I licked and sucked.

  “Holy hell, Leo.”

  I made an inquisitive sound and Will made a confirmatory one, and then I lost track of everything but the slick and give of his skin, the muskiness of his scent here, the muscular clutch of his legs around me, everything in his body clenching and quivering as I worked him open with my tongue.

  I loved this. Loved him like this. Loved routing all my attention to the place where I could actually be inside Will, be a part of him. A place where he opened to me. I squeezed his ass and pressed deeper into his hole with my thumbs so I could taste him inside. He relaxed to me and groaned, letting out a shaky laugh.

  “That’s like full-on merit badge material, kid.”

  “Gah! Don’t call me kid when I’m… erm….”

  “When you’re what, Leo?” he purred. “What are you doing? Tell me.”

  “When I’m… you know.”

  Will chuckled and that was not what I wanted to hear from him right now. I wanted him back in the state where he was so desperate his only words were curses and he barely had breath for them anyway.

  “Why don’t you tell me what I’m doing to you since you’re feeling so chatty, and I’ll just keep on doing it,” I said, with far more bravado than I felt. “And,” I added, “if you stop talking, I’ll stop doing it.” I thought Will might tell me to piss off, but he gave a shaky moan and started talking.

  “You’re stretching my hole with your fingers and licking all around—ungh, shit—inside me. Sliding the tip of your tongue in and out of my ass. Licking—fuck…!”

  He went on and on, the filthy narration creating a feedback loop of arousal. I did something to Will, Will described it, and it turned me on even more. Which was sort of a problem since the whole point of this was to get Will so turned-on that I could maximize my, uh, staying power. So I kissed Will’s hole and pulled away, sliding up his body.

  I ran a finger up the length of his erection, smearing precome when I got to the tip. He moaned, words gone, and I did it again. I kept the pressure light as a whisper, tracing patterns on his skin until he was panting and his face and throat were flushed, his lips wet. He had one arm flung over his eyes and he was trembling.

  “Just a little harder, please,” he whispered, but he made no attempt to touch himself. I leaned down and touched my tongue to the tip of his cock, tasting the bead of moisture there, and Will jerked, every muscle tightening, and cried out. I grabbed the root of his cock to make sure he didn’t come, and he whimpered.

  “Do you want me?” I asked, and he nodded immediately, eyes still covered by his arm. “Tell me.” I kissed his mouth.

  “I want you.”

  “Look at me and tell me,” I said against his lips.

  He moved his arm. His eyelashes were clumped together wetly, his lids half lowered. “I want you,” he said, looking at me.

  He was the most beautiful thing I’d ever seen. They were the most beautiful words I’d ever heard.

  I knelt, just looking at him for a moment. He looked like a debauched angel. Like if a classical painter had ever rendered sex scenes. His flushed skin made him look like he glowed from within. His soft mouth was a daub of glistening paint, his blue eyes heated and bright, blond hair mussed and stuck together with sweat like it had been put in with the hard edge of a palette knife. He looked inhuman. But then he smiled, and he was Will. My Will, who I could taste on my tongue.

  “You gonna fuck me finally?” He’d found his attitude again, but his voice was raw.

  “Yeah.” I nodded.

  He flipped the condom at me and lay back, an arm beneath his head like he was sitting on a chaise longue around the pool, his grin a challenge now that he knew he was going to get what he wanted.

  I leaned forward and licked the powdery pale skin on the inside of his arm, the muscle sliding as he tensed. I had the sudden conviction that I had to kiss every inch of his skin. That somewhere on his body lay a place that I hadn’t attended to and that, if I didn’t taste it, I would be leaving something important unfinished. Then his mouth was so close that I couldn’t help but kiss that too.

  I ran my fingertips up and down the tendon at the back of his neck, the skin hot and sweat-damp, and kissed him, wanting to layer every taste of him on my tongue. I handed the condom back to him.

  “Put it on me,” I murmured into his mouth. “So I can keep kissing you.”

  I could feel his intake of breath in the kiss, and then felt the slick touch of the condom.

  “Yeah, come on,” he said against my lips, positioning me where he wanted me, the challenge in his voice replaced by want.

  I tilted his hips up, and slid inside him, the clutch of skin and muscle ripping a groan from my mouth. I sank into him, shaking with the sudden buzz of pressure along my cock.

  “Fuck, fuck,” I muttered into his neck, overcome. With one finger, I traced his opening, felt the place where we were connected. I’d tasted him here. Speared him open with my tongue as he moaned, totally undone.

  I was so turned-on I was shaking. Will started to move his hips but I grabbed them and held them down.

  “Wait, just wait.”

  I tried to slow my breathing so the arousal would recede enough for me to actually… do something.

  “Leo.”

  “Hmm?”

  “Are you doing yoga breathing right now?”

  “Um. Yeah, I’m trying not to come.” It wasn’t working very well. The creep of arousal wasn’t receding. If anything, just the knowledge that I was inside Will’s body got me amped up all over again. “This is basically like plank pose, so.” I nodded to the way my arms were braced on either side of Will’s body.

  “You’d better fucking plank me right now.”

  I started laughing, which helped a little.

  “Come on, Leo, fuck me.” Will was breathless, pressing me deeper inside him.

  I did as he said. “You’re. So. Fu
cking. Bossy,” I said as I thrust into him.

  “You love it,” he gasped. And it was true. I loved that I didn’t have to guess what Will wanted because he always told me. That I wasn’t left wondering if he was faking his reactions to anything because he would never bother. But that all paled in comparison to how much I loved, at this moment, the feeling of fucking him. The cling of his skin and the way he clutched my ass to pull me to him were quickly becoming my favorite things in the world.

  Will changed the angle of his hips and started moaning as I slammed into him, tightening his ass around me. I was so turned-on I lost the rhythm completely, almost wincing away from the pleasure skittering up my spine and spreading through my lower belly.

  “Lemme just—” Will pulled off me and flipped onto his hands and knees, reaching a hand back to me. I slid back inside him and froze so I wouldn’t come at the sound of his groan. He dropped down to his forearms, his gorgeous ass in the air, and I fucked down into him as his ass bounced against my hips, his perfect profile like a cameo against the pillow.

  “Will, I’m gonna—”

  He made a broken sound and started jerking himself off.

  “Oh fuck,” I gasped. “That’s too hot. Shit.”

  I closed my eyes and dropped my forehead down to his spine to try and get myself away from the edge, but it was no good. Even with one sense blocked, the rest were saturated with him. The smell and taste of sweat and precome and Will were in my nose and my mouth and the sounds of his moans and his breathing in my ears, and his skin was slick and hot beneath my mouth and my hands.

  “Oh god,” Will moaned as I thrust into him, holding him at the hip and shoulder. He shook against me, muscles tightening, caught on the edge of his pleasure with his head thrown back and his throat bared.

  I pressed even deeper inside him, pulled almost all the way out, and slammed back in. Will let out a sharp cry and came over his hand and his expensive sheets. As he clenched up, pleasure blasted through me, blackening my vision and making me shudder. I let myself fully focus on the feeling of him still clenching around me, his slick heat pulsing around my dick, the gorgeous curve of ass and thigh slick with sweat. I stayed deep inside him, giving short thrusts and feeling every inch of my dick sliding against muscle and skin. The pleasure skittered down my spine, throbbed in my gut, and exploded from me, my orgasm taking me over completely.