Messy Love (Stumbling into Love 3)

Behind me, Danny cried out. His cock jerked inside me, and I knew he was coming, filling the condom, and damned if I didn’t wish there was nothing between us, that he could have taken me bare.

I collapsed onto the bed, and Danny lay beside me. I wasn’t facing him, my head turned the other way, resting on my arm.

He kissed my shoulder over and over, played with my hair and tickled my nape, danced his fingers down my spine. “You okay?” he finally asked. “No regrets? You can fuck me from now on if that’s what you want.”

I turned, looked at him. Smiled. “I’m perfect.” Laughing like a crazy person, I grabbed Danny and kissed him. Suddenly, I was swallowing down his chuckle too. He relaxed against me, making me see how important it was to him that he treated me right.

“Thank God. I don’t want to mess up with you. It…you mean too much.”

“You mean too much to me too.”

Danny pressed another kiss to my lips, said, “I’ll be right back,” and went into the bathroom. I heard water running, and then he came back. He was flaccid now, his cock hanging between his legs without the condom, which he must have gotten rid of. He had a washcloth in his hand, and he cleaned me up, wiped the sweat and come from my body, taking care of me. Like I was precious to him.

It was everything to me.

“It’s embarrassing, but…I like this—how I feel inside when you do things for me.” The voice in my head that told me I shouldn’t want something like that was quieter than it had ever been.

“Me too.”

I wanted to give him something too—well, something besides my ass. “I’ll, um…be right back.”

I went into my room and grabbed my sketchbook, which I’d filled. When I climbed back into bed with him, I handed it over.

“Are you sure?”

“Yes.”

Danny’s hand shook slightly as he opened it, flipped through the pages.

“I’m out of practice. The stuff in the beginning is even worse than the stuff toward the end. I haven’t drawn since I was a kid.”

He looked over at me, surprise in his whiskey eyes. “You’re an artist.”

“Not really.”

“Yes, you are.” He kept turning pages. “You mentioned art that first time when I asked you for three things about you, but I forgot. This is really fucking good. Tell me you know that. Wow…” Danny stopped on a sketch of him. He was curled up on the corner of the couch, watching TV. The next he was standing in the kitchen in his underwear, making coffee. He kept turning, drawings of him in between pages of other things. I wasn’t a crazy stalker, but there was a lot of him—Danny laughing, playing baseball, cooking…on his knees for me, my cock between his lips. “Holy fuck…baby. Jesus, this is hot.”

The next was us, sleeping in bed together. He lingered on it, ran his finger over the scratchy lines.

“This probably looks like I’m obsessed with you. Is this weird? Fuck, this is weird.”

“No, it’s really not. It’s perfect. I’m honored to be in these pages. Why don’t you do something with your art?”

I closed my eyes, wrapped an arm around him. “After…when my dad caught me with my best friend in the treehouse? He was weird about me drawing. Later, he found a sketch I’d drawn of Bill. He was…so disappointed in me. Said what I was doing was for sissies. And despite that…I loved him. All I’d ever wanted was to live up to the standards my dad set for me. I wanted to make him proud, and I thought that would make everything else easier. That I could be the man he wanted me to be, the one I was supposed to be. So I stopped drawing.”

“Fuck that. There’s no reason you can’t draw. It’s not for sissies, and what the fuck is wrong with being a sissy? I hate that shit. I can’t believe he made you feel that way. You’re good, and you clearly love it. You don’t have to be who he wanted you to be anymore. Baby…you can just be you.”

“I know.” And I did. “I’m working on it.”

“I know you are.” He set the book down and hugged me to him. “I’m so proud of you, and I feel like a fucking king or something. Like how did I get you? How do I deserve to be on those pages so much?”

I laughed and rolled my eyes. “I’m not that good.”

“You are to me.” He kissed the top of my head. “He wasn’t like that with Will?”

“Yes and no. He mostly ignored Will. It angered him more with me. He expected something different from me, I guess. No one knew—none of it. They didn’t know about the treehouse, except for Will. They didn’t know why I stopped drawing. I don’t know if Will even remembers I used to do it.”