Page 8 of Feeding the Grump

I follow his instructions, and suddenly he arches into my touch, gasping my name in a way that makes every hair on my body stand at attention.

The only thing that stops me from feeling embarrassed by my obvious lack of experience is the look in Benji’s eyes. I’m pretty sure no one has ever looked at me like this.

“Another finger,” he instructs, his voice strangled.

I work a second finger alongside the first, the tight heat making my breath stutter. My hands, usually so confident with machinery and livestock, feel clumsy and uncertain.

“Like this?” I ask, and I barely recognize my own voice, it’s so husky.

“Perfect,” he breathes.

Benji’s eyes flutter closed, his head tipping back against the pillows, exposing the line of his throat. Seeing him like this, him trusting me to take care of him, feels like a gift.

When I twist my wrist slightly, he makes a strangled noise that sounds nothing like his usual articulate banter.

His knees fall wider apart, an invitation I can’t misinterpret even with my limited experience.

His skin is flushed all the way down his chest, and I press gentle kisses along his collarbone as my fingers establish a tentative rhythm.

“Deeper,” he gasps. “And angle up a bit.”

When my fingers brush against a spot inside him, his whole body jolts like he’s been struck by summer lightning.

“Fuck, David,” he breathes, voice cracking on my name. His tone is raw, stripped of his usual composure.

“Yeah,” I manage to grunt. I can’t take my eyes off his face, the way his lips part slightly and his pupils have all but swallowed the green.

“I’m ready,” he says breathlessly.

I’m happy for Benji to take the lead, and when he pushes me on my back, I follow without hesitation, grateful for his guidance.

He trails open-mouthed kisses along my neck, finding a particularly sensitive spot that makes me curse under my breath. His chuckle against my skin tells me he’s filing that information away for future torture.

Then he pulls back, sitting up to straddle me, and for a moment, I forget how to breathe.

“Oh, holy fuck,” I say as he starts to sink down on me. The shock of sensation is so intense my vision blurs at the edges. My entire body feels electrified like I’ve touched an ungrounded fence wire with both hands.

I grab his hips hard, trying to anchor myself, hoping I’m not leaving bruises.

But Benji doesn’t seem to be feeling anything but bliss right now as he continues to take me in inch by inch, his thighs trembling with the effort of controlling his descent, his bottom lip caught between his teeth like he’s trying to hold back something that might break us both.

His usual perfect hair is a disaster, and absurd pride shoots through me, knowing my hands are responsible.

When he catches my eye, he gives me one of his mischievous smiles, though it wavers when I give a tentative thrust, turning into something more desperate.

This is a sight I’ll remember forever. Benji above me, his usual snarkiness stripped away to show something raw and real, something that matches the ache in my own chest.

He starts to move with maddening slowness, and I’m drowning in sensation. The slick slide of skin against skin, the weight of him above me, the way his breath hitches every time I hit just the right spot.

I reach up with one hand, tugging him down for a messy kiss. He moans into my mouth, his usual smartass comments replaced by broken syllables of praise.

I reach out and wrap a hand around his cock. His whole body jerks at my touch, and the sound he makes, halfway between a gasp and my name, sends heat rushing through me.

His hips stutter between thrusting into my grip and grinding down on my cock, like he can’t decide which sensation he needs more.

Shit. The need to claim him, to mark him as mine in the most primal way possible, overwhelms me.

Going purely on instinct, I grab his hips and flip us in one smooth motion.

He lands beneath me with a soft ‘oof’ that transforms into a laugh, then a gasp as I settle between his thighs.

This new angle lets me push deeper, and the sensation nearly blinds me. I brace myself on my forearms, wanting to see his face as I withdraw almost completely before sinking back in.

Fuck. The feel of him around me is better than anything I’ve known.

The room is filled with the sounds of our breathing, the soft creak of a bedframe that has known only my solitary weight until now. His eyelids flutter shut. Each thrust brings new sounds from him, soft grunts and half-formed pleas that I greedily collect.

I find a steady pace, careful at first, then with growing confidence.

His hands travel up my arms, fingers tracing the work-hardened muscle. When they reach my face, cupping my jaw with unexpected tenderness, something in my chest cracks open as wide as the Canterbury sky.

When I wrap my fingers around his cock, his clever mouth gives a silent gasp. For once in his life, Benji Gange is completely speechless, and the power of that goes straight to my head.

Sweat gathers in the hollow of his throat, catching the late evening light filtering through my bedroom window, and I’m struck by how bloody beautiful he is like this.

And I suddenly realize we’ve been speaking this language all along. In vegetables left on doorsteps and meals cooked just for me, in arguments that were really just excuses to stay in each other’s orbit.

I guess because I was slower to realize what was happening between us, it’s fitting that I shatter first.

My usual stoic control deserts me completely as I fall over the edge. Heat surges through me like a current, whiting out my vision as pleasure seizes every muscle. My body pulses and trembles, caught in something so intense I can barely remember my own name.

Benji’s eyes lock on mine like he’s memorizing this moment.

Fucking hell. Why the hell did it take me so many years to experience this?

I withdraw from him gently, taking care not to hurt him, though the loss of connection makes me ache in ways I hadn’t anticipated.

I take care of the condom quickly, then turn my attention back to him because I’m never someone who leaves a job half-finished.

Benji’s curled on his side to watch me, his chest rising and falling rapidly, lips parted and swollen from our kisses.

I lean forward to take his cock into my mouth, pushing him onto his back and filling him with my fingers until he gasps a broken sound.

I pull off just as his body shudders and his fingers tangle in my hair as he comes all over his chest.

Satisfaction sweeps through me. I did this. I reduced clever, articulate Benji Gange to a speechless, panting mess.

I press kisses to his trembling thighs as he catches his breath, his skin flushed and gleaming in the fading light.

He looks thoroughly claimed, with marks scattered across his throat, his usual perfect hair completely destroyed, and his green eyes heavy-lidded with satisfaction.

When he pulls me up for a kiss, it’s slow and deep and perfect.

We lie tangled together, my heartbeat slowly returning to its normal rhythm. I brush a strand of hair from his forehead, letting my touch linger longer than necessary, just because I can.

“That was different from what I expected.” Benji finally breaks the silence between us.

My stomach drops. All the warmth I was feeling suddenly freezes solid.

“Not sure if ‘different’ was what I was going for,” I manage to say.

“Oh no, no.” He’s seen the look on my face, and he pushes himself up on one arm to meet my gaze. “That was incredible. Absolutely incredible. I guess I just always assumed that the first time between us would be explosive hate sex after we argued about something.”

The relief flowing through me means it takes me a moment to find my voice.

“I’ll give you explosive hate sex next time you leave the boundary gate open,” I finally say, and he laughs, the sound vibrating through me.

Next time.

The word seems to hang in the air between us.

“I’ll take that as a promise,” Benji says as he snuggles back into me, his head on my chest.

His weight against my chest feels right, like when the wool press clicks perfectly into place.

I never knew I was waiting for this, but now it seems so bloody obvious.

His eyes flutter closed as his breathing evens out, and I lie there thinking about tomorrow and the next day and the day after that.

Everything suddenly seems so much brighter.

Because I now have a future full of next times.