Promises

CHAPTER 27

“I GOT the beer!” Matt called as he came in the door.

“It’s about time! You missed kick-off.” It was Sunday, eight days before Christmas. We had been looking forward to this day for weeks, when our two favorite teams would be playing each other again.

“Anybody score yet?”

“No, but it’s only a matter of time before the Broncos pound your pansyass Chiefs into the ground.”

He laughed. “We’ll see, Jarhead! Loser buys dinner.”

It was a close game. We had a blast, harassing each other as first one team took the lead and then the other. With two seconds left, the Broncos were up by one point. The Chiefs were lining up for a field goal. If they missed it, I won. If they made it, he did. It’s the folly of sports fans everywhere that we think we can affect the game from our living room. I was yelling, “Miss it! Miss it!” Matt had a white knuckle grip on the coffee table in front of him.

The kick was good. I groaned. Matt let out a victorious whoop and turned and pounced on me from the other end of the couch. It was embarrassing how quickly he could pin me. He grabbed my face and kissed me. Not a romantic kiss, but a big, loud, triumphant smack on my lips, and then pulled back to look at me with a huge smile on his face.

“So what are you buying me for dinner?”

“A Lean Cuisine! You’re heavy!”

The phone rang, and I reached over my head to grab it off the side table behind me.

“Hello?” He hadn’t moved off of me but had moved down. He had my shirt pulled up and was trying to distract me by kissing his way down my stomach.

“Matt?” a woman’s voice asked.

“No, this is Jared.”

“Jared? Do I have the wrong number? I’m trying to reach Matt Richards. He told me this was his new number.”

He was pushing my sweats lower, and his lips were at the top of my patch of hair. The attempt to distract me was proven successful when I said, “He’s on, hang here.” He started laughing against my stomach as I handed him the phone.

But the happy look left his face pretty fast once he started talking. I figured out right away that it was his mother and was surprised that he had given them my number. Then I realized he didn’t really live at the apartment anymore, so maybe it made sense.

He was sitting up now. “No, Mom, I wish you wouldn’t. We’re really busy right now. It’s just not a good time.” Oh shit. I knew by the look he was giving me that his feelings were the same. “Are you renting a car, or do you need me to pick you up?” He put his elbows on his knees and his head in his hands. The remainder of the conversation was nothing but one word answers on his end. “Yes. Yes. Right. Okay. Bye.” He dropped the phone, and his head fell almost to the level of his knees.

“Fuck, Jared. This is bad.”

Despite his obvious distress, I found that I wasn’t too worried about any of it. It would only be for a few days, and then we would be back to normal. And lately, “normal” for us was unbelievably good. Now that we weren’t fighting anymore, everything felt perfect. Nothing could darken my mood much. So my voice was light as I asked, “They’re coming to visit?”

“Yes.”

“For Christmas?”

“Yes.”

“When do they get here?”

“The day after tomorrow.”

“How long will they be here?”

“A week.”

Neither of us spoke for a minute, but finally I said, as gently as I could, “You don’t want them to know, do you?”

“I’m sorry.” It came out a whisper.

“After all that shit you gave me about being willing to face people?” But I said it teasingly. I knew what his father was like. I knew how hard it would be for him. I couldn’t be mad at him for wanting to avoid it.

“I know,” he said quietly.

“Your Dad’s gonna totally ruin Christmas.” I was still teasing, trying to cheer him up.

“I know.” I was happy to hear that it seemed to be working.

“And Lizzy is going to blow a fucking gasket.”

“I KNOW!” There was at least a hint of laughter in his voice now.

But he still hadn’t looked at me. I got down on my knees in front of him and put my hands on his shoulders. I waited for him to look up at me and smiled at him.

“It’s okay,” I told him.

He shook his head. “It’s not okay. I’m being a hypocrite. Why aren’t you pissed at me?”

“Because your Dad’s an angry, belligerent, antagonistic asshole.”

He laughed just a little. “First time I’ve ever had reason to be happy about that.”

I rubbed the top of his head playfully. “Cheer up. It’s not so bad. It sucks that we can’t spend Christmas together. And I’ll hate not seeing you for a week. But we’ll get through this. It’ll be fine.”

Finally, he relaxed and even smiled a little. “You’re really okay with this?”

“I promise.”

He pulled me against him tight enough to take my breath away.

“Thank you.”

I turned and kissed his cheek and then pulled back so I could look at him.

“I assume you’re going to stay at the apartment while they’re here?” His lease wasn’t up yet, and although it sucked that he still had to pay the rent, it was definitely going to make things easier.

“I’ll have to. The motel they use is right across the street. I don’t know what to do about the phone, though. I gave them this number. But if they try to call me from the motel….”

“I’ll forward the phone to your old number.” It wasn’t like anybody ever called for me anyway.

I was thinking about the fact that we only had two nights together before we would be sleeping alone again for a week. “You wait here,” I told him. I went back to the bedroom and got the lube and then came back and knelt again in front of him, between his knees. He was looking at me with one eyebrow up and half a grin on his face.

“What are you up to?”

I pushed him back on the couch and started to undo his pants. “I thought I’d give you a reason to hurry home.”

“You think I don’t already have a reason?” he asked with some amusement. But he lifted his hips and let me slide his pants off.

I just smiled at him. “Now you’ll have two.” I pulled him toward me, so that his ass was almost starting to hang off of the couch. Always, I had to start at the amazing, alluring trail of hair leading down from his navel, kissing it and tasting it. His hands were immediately tangled in my curls. “Have you always had a hair fetish?” I asked him without looking up.

“No.” He pulled on it a little, playfully. “Only with you.”

That made me smile, and I ran my tongue again up that trail and then started to work my way back down.

“I should ask you the same question,” he said teasingly.

Only half of my brain was thinking about his words. I was thinking about the close-cropped hair on his head. “What are you talking about? You don’t have any hair.”

He laughed, sort of a low rumble that caused his stomach to tremble beneath me. Then one hand tugged on my hair, pulling my face away from him, and his other hand moved to cover his stomach from his navel to his crotch. Covering that beautiful trail of hair.

“Hey!”

I looked up to see him grinning wolfishly down at me. “Now do you know what I’m talking about?”

That made me laugh, and I pushed his hand away and kissed him there again. “Ever since our first camping trip. Do you remember me talking in my sleep?”

“About mountain biking.”

“Right,” I said sarcastically.

“You said something about ‘follow the trail’.”

“Right,” I said again and traced my finger down it.

He laughed again. “I thought you were acting funny that morning.”

“I woke up with such a hard on for you, I had to jack off in the tent before I could face you.”

He moaned when I said that, and his erection, which had been lying against my cheek as I kissed him, jumped against me. When I looked up, he was giving me a wicked, sexy grin. “That is hot,” he said huskily. “I have a sudden urge to pitch a tent in the back yard tonight.”

I laughed and then put my tongue on the base of his cock and ran it all the way up his shaft. His eyes drifted closed, and I felt a shudder go through him. I did it again, and his hips lifted toward me as I pulled away. His eyes opened again, and he watched me as I teased my tongue over his slit and then took him in my mouth. He groaned. His fingers clenched in my hair, but he didn’t push. He never pushed—until he came. Then he would lose his iron control a little bit, and I loved that I could do that to him.

I grabbed the base of his cock and started rubbing my thumb down his perineum. I had been slowly working my way toward his hole over the last few weeks, and he had finally stopped tensing up every time and had even started to enjoy it the last couple of times. This time, he did tense up again, but only for a second, before he relaxed again. I increased the pressure, heard him groan, and felt him pushing against me.

I quickly uncapped the lube and spread a little on my fingers.

“You can tell me to stop at any time,” I told him, and I started to suck him again before he could respond. Then, very gently, I started to rub one finger up and down the crack of his ass. Light pressure, no penetration, just slowly rubbing from his balls down past his hole and then back again. At first, he started to tense up again. I kept moving up and down, up and down, still sucking at the same time, just letting repetition soften him up. After a few passes, he relaxed again. A couple more passes, and I heard his breathing start to change, and soon after that, the rhythm of my finger rubbing him had him moaning and moving his hips a little to prolong the contact to the best spots. “Doing okay?” I asked quietly.

“Yeeeesssss.” It came out a long moan.

I started circling my finger around his rim and then applied the slightest bit of pressure against his hole. He responded beautifully, moaning and pushing down against my hand. I slipped one finger inside of him and heard his breath hiss out between his teeth. Very slowly, I moved in and out, in and out. He was making soft whimpering sounds now, pushing toward me, his fingers tight in my hair. I reached just a bit and brushed my finger on the bunch of nerves I had been carefully avoiding so far.

His reaction was almost enough to make me come. He bucked underneath me, his hands pulling hard on my hair, and gasped out, “Holy fuck!”

I pulled back away from it again. “You didn’t know about that?”

“No.” And that, too, was a moan. I reached and touched it again, just barely, just to see him writhing at the unexpected pleasure of it, just to hear the low whimper in his voice. Then I continued with the gentle in and out, in and out.

“Do you want more?” I asked. I didn’t look up at him, just went back to sucking him as soon as the question was out of my mouth.

“No.” It was sort of a whimper. I kept sucking, kept my finger moving slowly in and out, and then a second later, in barely a whisper, he said, “Yes.”

I slid a second finger in, and he moaned again, pushing against me so that my fingers went in faster than before. Two or three strokes, in and out, and then I reached up for his prostate. I felt him jump, heard him gasp out, “Jesus Christ, that’s amazing.” And then suddenly he was pushing me away, pushing me hard onto my back on the floor, pulling my sweats and boxers off of me frantically. He lay down on top of me, and I felt his hand between my legs, his fingers pushing against me.

“Tell me how. I want to do it to you.”

“Lube!” I managed to squeak out, just as he started to push in.

He laughed shakily, sat up and put some on his fingers, and then was back on top of me, his eyes intense on mine. “Tell me.”

“It kind of feels like a lump on the front wall. You’ll know.” And then his fingers were sliding into me, and I couldn’t talk any more. My hips rose to meet him. My back arched, my eyes closed. His fingers were moving torturously slow, in and out. After all of that time sucking him and teasing him, I was ready to explode.

I started to stroke my own erection with one hand and his with the other, but he pulled away. “Too close,” he whispered, and then his fingers found what they had been searching for. That incredible shock of pleasure hit me. I groaned and arched against him and heard him groan in response. I opened my eyes and looked up at him. His eyes looked greener than usual, heavy-lidded, sensual and unbelievably sexy, and he was smiling at me a little.

“God, I love to watch you,” he said, and then he touched it again.

“Is this what you feel,” he whispered as he touched it a third time. “Is this what you feel when I’m inside of you?”

I couldn’t possibly formulate a rational response at that moment. All I managed was some kind of whimper. He didn’t seem to mind.

“Jared.” His cheeks were bright red, but he still said, “I really want to fuck you right now.”

Just hearing him say those words was almost enough to make me come. I managed to say, “I thought you’d never ask.” He smiled, sat up, and started digging through the drawer in the coffee table, looking for a condom. Funny how we seemed to have them stashed all over the house now. I started to turn over, but he stopped me.

“I want to see you.”

He hooked one of my knees in his elbow. I felt the pressure of his cock against me, and then slowly, very slowly, he pushed in deep, watching my face the entire time. The intensity of his gaze always unnerved me. I closed my eyes and relaxed into that tight, full feeling of having him crammed into me. That gentle friction, moving in and out. He was going so slow, but I was peaking fast. Part of me wanted him to tease forever, but part of me felt like I had to come soon or I’d lose my mind. He pushed my leg up onto his shoulder and then used that hand to start stroking my cock while he thrust in and out. Jesus, when did he get so good at this?

“Jared,” he said softly, “I want to be where you are.” He was still thrusting, still stroking. “I want to know what you’re feeling right now. I want to know what it’s like to have you inside of me.” His words were definitely pushing me over the edge. I was trying to find something to hang onto, and my hands found the legs of the coffee table. His thrusting and the stroking were both speeding up. “Oh Jesus, Jared.” I opened my eyes then, looked into his, and saw surprise and confusion and a whole lot of raw desire there. “I think I really want you to fuck me.”

The thought of him on his hands and knees in front of me popped into my mind, and that was it. Everything exploded. I was coming, and so was he, and before the quaking had even stopped, his arms were around me, and he was kissing me. “Well,” he said quietly, his lips brushing mine, “maybe next time.”

“NEXT time” turned out to be the next night. I was dozing on the couch when he got home from work.

He smiled down at me. “Bed time,” he said before pulling me off of the couch and pushing me toward the bedroom. I was still half asleep. I got undressed, got into bed. But instead of getting in behind me and wrapping around me like he normally did, he got into bed on the other side and slid over so that his back was against my stomach.

I drowsily wrapped my arm around him, slid my hand down, and discovered that he was completely naked. I started to wake up a little more then.

“Hope you’re not too tired,” he said lightly, and then he took my hand and placed a little jar of scented massage oil into it.

Suddenly I was wide awake, and my cock was about to explode just at the thought of what his words meant.

“Are you sure? You don’t have to.”

“Shut up, Jared.” He rolled onto his stomach. “I’m sure. I’m still nervous as hell, but I’m sure.”

“Maybe you should be on top. Then you’ll have more control.”

He thought about it for a second but then shook his head.

“Okay.” I wiggled out of my boxers and then sat across his ass. He immediately tensed underneath me. “Just relax. I’m not going to do anything yet.”

I poured the oil into my hands and started to massage him. I started on his shoulders, which were so big and tense that I feared my hands would be tired before I got any further. But I kept rubbing. Squeezing his shoulders and then rubbing along his biceps, then up and down his back, until he finally started to unwind. Slowly, the tension began to leave him. Still I rubbed, feeling the smooth muscles loosen under my fingers. His body was so beautiful and perfect and strong, and I still couldn’t quite believe that he was really mine. I don’t know how long I massaged him. My hands were starting to burn, but he was so relaxed that I actually thought he might be sleeping.

I moved down, and knelt between his legs. He tensed a little when I touched his ass but only for a second, and then he made an obvious effort to relax again. I rubbed his legs a little, although I found the sensation of the hairs and the oil against my hands a little strange. Then I slowly moved back up. I poured more oil onto my hands, rubbed some on my cock so I wouldn’t have to stop later.

For a minute, I just looked at him, that amazing body glistening from the oil. He was just lying there, hard muscle and smooth, tan skin, legs spread wide, looking unbelievably sexy, waiting for me to fuck him. It made me a little giddy.

He turned his head a little and looked back at me, one eyebrow up.

“Jesus, Matt, I think I could come just looking at you.”

He laughed a little and turned back into the pillow, so his voice was a little muffled, but I could still hear the laughter in it when he said, “You better not.”

I leaned down over him so that most of my weight was against his back. My cock, which was definitely wide awake and wondering when the party was really going to get started, was wedged down along his crack, pointing toward his scrotum. He barely flinched at all when I put my fingers against his rim and started rubbing gently, just as I had done the night before.

He slid one hand underneath his hips to stroke himself and arched against my hand. I rubbed around his rim while he pumped and heard his breathing becoming frantic. I increased the pressure a little. He was straining hard against me. I pushed in just the tiniest bit and then pulled back out.

“Jared.” He sounded frantic. “Please don’t tease me.”

I slid two fingers into him, and I swear the timbre of his moans dropped an octave.

“Jesus, I still can’t believe how good that feels.”

I was going faster than I had the night before, moving my fingers in and out, biting a little at his shoulders. He was pushing his ass up into me, gasping and whimpering, and it was making me crazy. I was dying to finally fuck him, thinking that if I had to wait much longer, I wouldn’t even make it past penetration before I came. And like he was reading my mind, he suddenly said, “Now, Jared.”

I kept my fingers moving in and out while I moved myself into position. Then, as smoothly as I could manage in my extremely aroused state, I pulled out my fingers and slid my cock in without breaking rhythm. It worked well. I was all the way in before he realized and tensed back up. This time, I didn’t think it was an objection, just reflex. I froze, waiting for it to pass. “Are you in pain?”

A heartbeat, and then, “No. Not pain.”

“Good.” I used the hand that wasn’t propping me up to gently rub his shoulders some more. “I know it feels strange right now. I know it feels like there’s no room for me, but there is. Just try to relax like you were a minute ago.” He took a couple of deep breaths, and then I felt him relax around me. “Good.” Still, I didn’t move, although it was one of the hardest things I had ever done. “Tell me when you’re ready.” I knew exactly how, after a few seconds, that first feeling of fullness and discomfort and slight pain would start to feel like something much better.

I kissed the back of his neck and felt him squirming a little under me, trying to accommodate me. Then his breath caught. He let out a soft moan. Then his whole body seemed to relax a little more, and he pushed his ass up against me.

That was good enough for me. Very slowly, I started to move. Only two or three strokes and he was with me, panting underneath me, arching his back against me. I knew I wouldn’t last much longer. I slid my hand underneath him. His hand was still there, although it wasn’t moving. I pushed it away and grabbed his cock, started to pump it in time with my thrusts. He lifted his hips up off the bed, which gave my hand more room to work and allowed me to penetrate a little deeper at the same time.

“Oh Jesus, Jared.” It was almost a sob. “Oh Jesus, I can’t….”

“Can’t what?”

He didn’t answer, just shook his head.

“What’s wrong?”

Nothing seemed to be wrong. He was definitely pushing against me, breathing hard, his erection thrusting in and out of my hand as I pushed in and out of him, and I knew he had to be close.

“It’s too much,” he managed to gasp out.

“Do you want me to stop?”

“Fuck, no!”

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. Soft.”

“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.