I didn’t remember at all, and then suddenly I did. The street festival. He’d wanted to buy the sky pictures for me. For our house, he’d said. And he’d been so adamant. I’d put up a fuss about carrying them or something, and it had been dropped.
“I can’t believe you remember those.”
“I remember everything, Ronnie,” he said.
There was a chance that, when I looked back at how everything went wrong, I would pick this moment as when I took off the brakes and just let myself get hurt again.
“You want to talk about photography some more?” I shut the door.
“No,” he said and wrapped me in his arms. His warm skin all over mine. We felt so soft together. “l don’t.”
We kissed and he let me push him back to the bed. When his legs hit the mattress he sat down and began to lean back, pulling me over his body. I knew what would happen if I let him take charge. He’d wiggle me out of my jeans and before I could say blow job he’d have his mouth on me.
“Hold on,” I said and stood up, grabbing the pillow from the top of the bed. I tossed it on the floor between his feet.
“Ronnie,” he breathed, his fingers running through my hair. “You don’t have to—”
“You always say that. What do you have against blow jobs, Clayton? Did someone hurt you in the past?” Suddenly I gasped, recognizing what this must be. “Oh, my God, it’s me. It’s my blow jobs. I do them wrong. You don’t like—”
He cupped my face. “I love your blow jobs,” he said. “You do them perfectly.”
Well, I doubted that was true, but considering he taught me how to give them, and no one else had ever gotten one from me, I was going to have to take his word on it.
“Well, then, get ready, buddy. Because it’s happening. One Veronica King expert blowjob coming your way.”
He exhaled slowly, his eyes closing as if even thinking about it he had to get a grip. I loved that. I loved that so much I squeezed my legs together. “You going to let me?”
“I don’t think I can stop you.”
“That’s right,” I said with bravado. “You can’t.”
For a second we grinned at each other, like the moment was just so pure. Like we were just…so happy. And that moment was more intimate than what we were going to do to each other.
I looked away and went to my knees in front of him. His pants were already mostly unzipped and the hard swell of his cock strained against his black underwear. I gripped him through the cotton and he hissed. He was leaning back on his hands, watching me with heavy-lidded eyes.
So. Fucking. Hot.
“Help me take your pants off,” I said and lifted his hips so I could yank them down to his knees. His black boxer briefs I left there. I’d forgotten how big he was. How he felt in my hand. Filled my fist. My mouth.
Suddenly, all my bravado dried up.
It had been a long time.
“I’m still the same,” he said, lifting my chin so he could look me in the eyes. His face was soft. His eyes and mouth relaxed. “We are still the same.”
I loved him like this, I thought and it wasn’t a terrible thought. For five years I’d believed my feelings for this man made me weaker. But I wanted to be wrong about that. I wanted my feelings to make me stronger. Braver.
“I love it when you do this, remember?” he asked gently.
You suck me so good. The words had been the sexiest thing I’d ever heard in my life. And remembering them now fired me back up.
I leaned forward, setting my open mouth against the hard length of his cock. Breathing warm air through the cotton.
“Yes,” he moaned. I sucked him through the cotton and squeezed him, pushing him between his belly and my palm until he arched up into my hand.
“More?”
“Fuck. Yes.”
I slipped my fingers under the waistband of his boxers and began to pull them off, but I was too slow. He lifted his hips and yanked then down to his knees and I was face-to-face with his dick again.
I missed you, I thought, like a dummy. And then I leaned forward and licked him from his balls to the tip.
Clayton moaned and whispered dirty things, his hand cupping the back of my head, pulling my hair, and I remembered that, for such a quiet man, he talked a lot during sex. Between my legs I was hot and wet. I squeezed my thighs together again, setting off sparks.
They came back to me, the things he liked. The things I liked. I ached to put my hand between my legs so I could come when he did. But both my hands were busy.