“Brian?” Daniel asked, and I was immediately irritated. Clearly he wanted to ask Brian something and Pop handed the phone to me instead. I spun around to ask Pop, but he’d gone inside.
“No, it’s me. What’s going on?”
“Hey, Colin,” he said, sounding anxious. “How’s it going?”
I hated that. Daniel always sounded nervous around me, and I didn’t do anything. It was like he was holding his breath, just waiting for me to fuck up. Prick.
“Uh, fine,” I’d said, hoping he’d cut to the chase, but he cleared his throat. “What did you need?” I’d asked, eye on the clock. It was after five and I wanted to get out of there in the next hour.
“Damn, Colin, I don’t need anything. I just wanted to say hey. Christ.”
What the fuck did that mean? Daniel never called me to say hello. “Well,” I said, hesitantly, “hey, then.” I paused but he didn’t say anything. “I’m gonna get back to work,” I said, my mind already back on the cars.
“Oh, yeah,” Daniel said, his voice gone poisonous. I’d never heard him sound like that before. “Got to go get some hearts and flowers tattooed to match your manly butterfly?”
My heart had felt like it was being squeezed in my chest. What the fuck? How in the hell had he…? I realized Ginger must have told him.
There was nothing to say. I was right back there. That night years ago. So drunk I didn’t even remember leaving the party. Barely remembered staggering into the tattoo parlor, consumed by thoughts of what things might be like if my mom were still alive and some vague notion that the pain of the needle of was, at least, a pain I could choose.
My heart was beating fast—too fast—and my mouth was dry, but I had to silence Daniel’s smug superiority.
“Fuck you, you little bitch,” I spat out, and I smashed the phone into the wall.
Rafe reaches out to me, but I pull away from him and get out of the shower, wrapping a towel around my waist.
“Nothing. I just don’t like it,” I say.
“Okay,” Rafe says, clearly not buying it. “Did you like it when you got it?”
“I don’t remember, man. I was wasted.” Rafe’s frown deepens and I sigh. “It was for my mom, kind of. It was after high school and I was just having a bad time and—” I shake my head, not wanting to talk about that. “Honestly, I don’t remember asking for the butterfly. I must have, but….” I shrug.
The next morning when I saw it in the mirror, bleary and hungover, I was so confused by what I saw that it took a moment for the lines to coalesce into something recognizable. A fucking butterfly. Something delicate and vulnerable and… gay. It was like I’d been branded with an emblem of everything I wanted to hide. And now Daniel knows about it.
Rafe starts to say something but stops himself at whatever he sees in my face and nods, going back to toweling his hair dry. I’m just relieved he’s not going to push it. I go into the bedroom, throw on sweatpants, and fiddle with the window, trying to get some air.
“Colin.” I startle at Rafe’s voice and turn around. He slides his hands underneath my sweatpants and over my ass. He squeezes and I shudder against him. “Mmm. Have I told you what a gorgeous ass you have?”
My face heats up in an instant. Every time Rafe talks to me like this, it turns me on faster than anything. And I’m happy to be distracted.
Rafe pulls me toward him and scoots back on the bed to make room for me between his legs. His mouth is hot and I can’t get enough of the way he tastes. When his arms come around me, I let myself relax on top of him, just wanting more contact. Rafe runs a hand down my back as we kiss, but he doesn’t stop; he trails his fingers down to the top of my ass and into the crease there. I startle.
“Is this okay?” Rafe asks, looking at me seriously. He stops moving until I nod. I’m not sure if it’s okay. Rafe just looks at me. I start to kiss his neck because it’s awkward.
“Wait a second, okay?” he says.
Slow as honey, Rafe pulls my cheeks apart, squeezing in a way that makes my breath come short. Rafe’s eyes go hot and his eyelids lower to half-mast.
“Good?”
I nod, but my breathing starts to come too fast and I feel too hot. Things I don’t want to think about crowd the edges of my thoughts, and I shake my head to banish them.
He slides a finger down and runs it lightly over my hole, and I jerk against him. At first, I can’t tell if I’m turned on or freaked out. Both. Definitely both. Rafe doesn’t move, just looks at me steadily.
“Bad?” Rafe asks, his voice neutral.
I shake my head, confused. “No, I—” I duck my head to his shoulder, but after a minute, he lifts my chin to look at him again.
“Tell me.”
“I don’t—uh—I don’t have much basis for comparison,” I mutter.
“Okay.” Rafe kisses me and his voice is soft. “You don’t have much. But you do have some?”
And there it is. What I’ve been avoiding thinking about. Almost like talk of my damn tattoo conjured it.
Rafe’s expression is neutral but I can tell he’s paying close attention. I look out the window.
“Only once. And it… wasn’t a good thing.” That’s a fucking understatement. Rafe’s hands on me tighten, and he bites his lip, like he’s waiting for me to go on. “I don’t want to talk about it.” He narrows his eyes like he’s going to push it, and I prime myself to get up and leave if he does.
But then he just pulls me closer and hugs me. After a minute or so, I relax against him.
“Is that what you want?” I ask. My face is near his ear so I only have to breathe the words. “To… to fuck me?” The words feel odd in my mouth.
“Mmm. Well.” His voice is a rumble. “I would love to fuck you. But there are lots of other things we can do if you don’t want that. I want it to be good for you.”
I nod.
“Or you could fuck me,” he says. “If you want.”
And damn, the idea of being inside Rafe wakes my dick right up. But I don’t really want that. Not now. Don’t want the responsibility. The idea that I could hurt him is too awful.
“No. Uh, I mean, no thanks.”
Rafe smiles. “You want to go watch a movie or something?”
I shake my head and kiss his neck, feeling his pulse speed up beneath my lips. I kiss his ear and down his jaw to his mouth. We kiss slowly at first, but then I bite at Rafe’s lip and we start really going at it, feeding on each other’s mouths and grinding together.
I need this. Need to feel in control of it. And Rafe’s good at that. I take his hand and he curls his fingers around mine as if we were walking down the waterfront hand in hand. I move his hand to my ass and slide down so our hips are aligned. Then I grind hard into him and he grabs my ass just like I knew he would.
“Want to try?” he asks, and I nod. Rafe runs both hands over my ass as we kiss. He strokes fingertips over my hole and the skin around it and I shiver as nerve endings wake up. It’s turning me on in the strangest way. A way that has nothing to do with my dick and more to do with the heat that’s started buzzing inside me. After a minute, I’m shaking in Rafe’s arms and my dick is rock hard. Rafe groans and kisses me desperately. Then he rolls me off him and turns to his side to face me, his erection heavy between us. He runs a hand down my neck.
“I want you,” he says. “I want to be inside you. I’ll make it good for you, I promise.” He sounds so serious. “But we won’t do anything you don’t want.”
Can I do this? I’m not sure. I shake my head.
“Okay,” Rafe says. “Then we won’t.”
“No, I—I was just thinking.”
I’m starting to tense up the longer I have nothing to say. I’m just scared, I guess, though I hate to admit it. Scared I’ll panic, thinking about before. Scared I won’t like it.
“When I touch you here—” Rafe runs his fingers over my hole again and I shiver hard. “Fuck. The way you respond… I think you’ll love the way it feels to be filled.” He presses against my hole for a second, keeping the pressure light. “The way it feels to be open to me, trusting that I’ll make you feel good.” He squeezes my ass hard and runs his fingers down behind my balls, pressing in. I jerk against him. “Mmm,” he hums, rolling us so I’m back on top of him. “Hear something you like?”
I can’t think of a thing to say to that. He lifts my face away a few inches, looking at me. I don’t know how he can keep eye contact the way he does without feeling awkward. I close my eyes and kiss him, hoping he’ll just keep doing what he’s doing.
“Okay,” he says, as if he’s answering a question I didn’t ask. “Let’s go with that. I say or do something you like, you kiss me. Is that easier?” I wrap my arms around his shoulders and kiss him, relieved. He squeezes me back. “Okay.”
“Um, am I crushing you?” I ask.
“No.” He takes a tube from his pocket. “Spread your legs for me.” And, oh god, that should not turn me on like it does.
When he touches me again, his fingers are slick against my skin. I stare at the tube of lube sitting on the comforter next to Rafe’s hip, and it’s like I’ve fallen into someone else’s life. When the tip of his finger slides inside me, I gasp and my whole body clenches around it. Rafe bites his lip.
“You okay?” I nod. He must be getting seriously sick of asking me that. “Try and relax if you can.” He pushes deeper inside me, and I can feel it with each beat of my heart. He strokes up and down my back with his other hand, and I squeeze my eyes closed. But that’s no good because it lets me imagine it isn’t Rafe touching me and then my mind starts to spiral to places I don’t want it to go, so I open them.
Every time he slides in and out of me, I feel these jolts of sensation inside. It doesn’t feel anything like the last time. It’s pleasure, yeah, but it also kind of feels like….
Heat flushes my cheeks and I pull away.
“What’s wrong?” Rafe asks immediately.
“It’s—I—is it—”
“What is it?”
I shake my head. “I—it—I don’t—it feels like I’m gonna….” Oh god, this is so embarrassing. I cringe away from Rafe’s gaze, but he just nods.
“It feels like you have to go to the bathroom?”
I nod, wincing.
“Yeah. You won’t, though, don’t worry. It’s just the sensation of having something inside you. You’ll get used to it and it won’t feel like that anymore. The more you can relax, the less it’ll feel that way, too. Do you want me to stop?”
I take a deep breath and shake my head. I want this over with.
“Try to push my finger out,” he says softly, still stroking my back. It’s like this isn’t embarrassing him at all. He kisses me lightly on the mouth. When I do it, he slides back inside me, deeper this time, and the feeling fades a little.
“Good. You’re doing great.”
I huff out a laugh. Yeah, right.
He slides in and out of me slowly and reaches between us. He strokes my erection lightly while his finger is inside me and it feels amazing. Like everything is amplified. I kiss him and feel him smile a little into the kiss.
He slides out, and this time when he slides back in, it’s more. My breathing is shallow but suddenly I’m so turned on I can hardly think. I kiss Rafe with everything I have.
“Mmm. Good?” he asks. I kiss him again. “How about now?” Rafe shifts his fingers inside me and I nearly scream.
“Oh Christ,” Rafe groans.
“Fuck, fuck, fuck, what the fuck did you do?”
Rafe looks amused and turned on at the same time. “That’s your prostate,” he says against my lips. He’s using that voice that I love, the one that sounds intimate and filthy, like a promise. “Can you imagine how that will feel when I’m inside you? When it’s my cock touching you here”—he crooks his fingers again and bolts of electricity shoot through me—“instead of my fingers?”
“Oh god.”
He’s rubbing that spot inside me and I’m writhing on top of him, not sure if I want to get away or feel more.
“I—fuck, I can’t—fuck!”
Rafe kisses me deeply, sliding in and out of me slowly, then he slides a third finger in. It hurts for a moment, but my body adjusts quickly. I’m so lost in sensation that I hardly notice when Rafe stops kissing me. His cheeks are flushed and his lips swollen.
“How’re you doing?” he asks, running his free hand over my hair. I nod and kiss him.
“I want—I think—can we try?”
Rafe’s expression is serious and his hand on my cheek is gentle. “Yeah,” he says, voice rough. He kisses me as he eases his fingers out. He eases me down onto the bed like I weigh nothing and takes a condom out of his pocket.
“You, uh, you always carry lube and condoms in your pocket?”
“I put them in the bag with my running stuff. Just in case.” He pulls his underwear off and he’s hard and leaking. He rubs more lube inside me.
“Oh god, Rafe.”
“Roll over on your hands and knees, okay?” He taps my hip. I do what he says automatically, but the second he grabs on to my hips from behind, my stomach starts to lurch. I try to ignore it as he kisses down my spine and puts on the condom. I try to ignore it as he slicks himself up. But then I feel him coming toward me and I can’t.
I twist away on the bed, needing to see his face.
“Not like that, okay?” I say, shaking my head, my breaths coming too shallowly.
Rafe’s cupping my face, talking to me softly, but I don’t hear anything he’s saying over the rushing in my ears.
“Come here,” I hear finally. Rafe wraps his arms around me and pulls me to his chest. When I let him move me closer, I can feel the steady thump of his heart beneath his ribs, and I try to match my breathing to his. He runs his hand over my hair and strokes my back and I start to feel really pathetic. Then mad as hell at myself for
failing
to have sex.
“Fuck, I’m sorry,” I say. “I’m okay.” Lie.
“I don’t think so.” He leans back and pulls me close to his side, stroking from my head to the base of my spine. After a few minutes, I’m breathing okay and the shaking has stopped and I just feel foolish.
“I know you don’t want to talk about it, but—”
“I want to try again,” I say. I kiss his neck, his jaw, loving the feeling of stubble against my lips as I move toward his mouth.
He shakes his head, but I can feel how turned on he is.
“I don’t think it’s a good idea,” he says. But his eyes are burning into mine and I’m pretty sure I can convince him.
“No, come on. I just—I think I just need to see you. Can we… you
can
do it that way, right?”