Page 22 of Gay for Pray (Arport Sacred Sacrament University #1)

Chapter Twenty-Two

Theodore

I DON’T MAKE IT one step into Jude’s room before his mouth is on me.

He yanks me inside by the front of my shirt, our lips slamming together.

I hear the door close, but don’t see it, my body responding the second Jude is on me.

His touch annihilates every doubt, every fear, every stab of guilt I’ve wrestled with since the last time I was in this room.

He pulls away slowly, chewing on his bottom lip in that way that turns me into a helpless puddle of goo.

“Come on,” Jude says, his voice husky from the kissing. “I’ve got plans for you.”

He tugs me along by the front of my shirt like I’m takeout he ordered for dinner. I certainly get the impression he’s about to devour me when he throws me into his room, not bothering to close the door before he shoves me onto his bed.

Jude pulls off his shirt in one swift motion and climbs onto the bed.

He straddles my waist, kissing me down into the mattress before I have an opportunity to appreciate his naked torso.

I soak him up by touch rather than sight, hands running up the smooth plane of his back as he kisses me breathless atop his bed.

This time, he pushes me down as he pulls away, peering down at me like a hawk about to swoop at a mouse. His messy hair falls around his face, his eyes bright with the sort of mischief that’s had me in agony this entire semester.

“Tonight,” he says, “I need your cock in me.”

I blink, struggling to process the words. I know that’s a thing people do, but never in my wildest imagination did I believe it was a thing I would do. I’m not sure how it works, but there isn’t a single stutter of doubt on Jude’s face.

“I, um, I wouldn’t really know…how to do that,” I say.

“I know,” he says, “but I do. Just do as you’re told.”

Jude takes charge, rucking my shirt up before I can respond.

He climbs off me so he can pull the clothing off me, then hastily works on the shoes I never got a chance to remove.

He rushes through the process, an urgency we didn’t experience in our previous encounters infusing this one.

As we sit up to take off our pants, I have a moment to wonder what has him so frantic.

This started with us sleeping cuddled around each other because I was too high to be alone.

Then I came over here and we spent the whole night touching each other as though we meant to memorize each other’s bodies.

But this is pure chaos and motion, a flurry of flung clothes and grasping hands.

Somewhere in the pit of my stomach, I know this is my fault, but as the clothes come off, I set that thought aside, a worry for another day. For now, there’s only this. There’s only him and me and us, living out this fantasy that can only exist in the liminal space of his bedroom.

Jude hops off the bed, walking around naked without a flicker of self-consciousness.

He digs around in the drawer beside the bed, which I now know contains lube.

But that’s not all he throws onto the bed.

A condom follows, as well as an item I’ve only ever seen in internet ads.

The long silicon device is flared at one end.

As Jude strokes lube onto it, my cock plumps, remembering the feel of that tempting hand.

Then, inexplicably, he hands the dildo to me. I have to stand up on my knees to take it.

“Don’t get flustered on me now, Theo,” he says, and the nickname tingles all through me.

No one calls me that except him, and hearing it here in the dark, warm heat of his bedroom brings an extra thrill.

“Rub that over me. I’ll help.” He climbs on the bed and stands on his knees facing me, his lips a breath from mine.

“It’ll get me all loose and ready for your big, thick cock. ”

I almost drop the toy when he seals that with a kiss. Even as our tongues prod, he takes my wrist, moving my arm downward. He guides me to his ass, and I rub the slick toy over him like he said. I know I’m doing it right when he moans into my mouth, teeth seizing my bottom lip.

I adjust, searching for anything that might draw out more of those moans. When I fit the toy between his cheeks, he rewards me with a deeper, sweeter noise. I can feel the tip catch against his hole, but I let it slide along him, not sure if I’m supposed to do more than that yet.

Jude grows impatient with my timid approach, reaching behind himself and grabbing the toy to aim it at himself. I gasp when it pushes at his hole. I can feel it pressing inside him, the tightness shivering up the silicon and into my hand.

“Slow,” Jude breathes against my lips. “Just like that. Mmm.”

My knees ache from standing up on them. My cock is throbbing for attention. But I go slow, easing the toy into Jude bit by bit.

The way I’m holding it prevents it from going all the way inside, but when I go as far as I can, he says, “Pump it. Fuck me with it.”

Fireworks explode inside my head as I struggle to process words I couldn’t have fathomed a day ago, yet my body responds on pure instinct.

I pull the toy out as slowly as I inserted it, then press it back inside, surprised to find it a little easier this time.

Jude hugs me against him, nails digging into my back as he clings to me and moans.

The next time I move the toy, he moves his hips with me, pushing himself down the toy as I press it at him.

His breaths puff against my shoulder, then he lowers his head and sinks his teeth into me, his groan muffled by my skin.

I move faster, the toy sliding in and out of him more easily than I thought it could, but I’ve barely gotten a rhythm going before Jude reaches back and grabs me by the wrist to halt me.

“Enough,” he pants. “I need the real thing.”

My brain trips over those words, churning them over and over but coming up with nothing. Because there is no way the son of a deacon, a boy destined for the priesthood since his first breath, is about to do that .

At Jude’s urging, I ease the toy out of him. My aching knees get a break when he shoves me roughly onto my back, wasting no time getting me ready and slick. In what feels like a mere blink, he’s climbing over me, wielding my cock the way he wielded that toy.

And maybe that’s really all it is to him. Maybe it’s that simple. He isn’t weighed down with the guilt and responsibility and spiritual hangups I’m carrying. Maybe for Jude this is just fun, and I’m just a useful implement.

That shouldn’t hurt, not after the way I’ve distanced myself from him in public, but cruelly, unfairly, it does.

“Fuck, you’re bigger than that toy,” Jude groans, drawing me back into the moment.

I realize with a jolt that the head of my cock is pressing against his hole, about to go inside him. I have no idea what to expect, much less what to do, so I lie there while Jude positions my cock how he wants it and sits down on top of me.

There’s a moment of intense pressure, then I’m sliding into him, enveloped by a tight heat that grasps not just my cock but also my brain.

Holy shit, holy shit, holy shit, my mind screams, expelling more expletives than I’ve uttered in the past nineteen years. There aren’t enough confessional booths in the world for this, either the cursing on repeat inside my head or the physical act unfolding around and atop me.

More and more keeps coming, Jude’s moan lost amid mine as his body clenches around me. Every time I think he must have reached his limit, he keeps going, until I’m trembling and squeezing my eyes shut.

He pants when he sits all the way down me, taking me so deep I can’t fathom how he’s managing it. Stars pop behind my eyes, and Jude’s nails bite into my chest as he braces on my pecs.

“Hey,” he says, even breathier than before, “open your eyes, Theo. I want to see you.”

I obey without a thought, meeting his bright blue gaze. It makes my hips want to jerk, but I still myself with an effort and slide my hands up his straining thighs to his hips.

“That’s it,” he says, panting and broken. “Don’t look away.”

He gazes directly into my eyes as he starts moving his hips. I struggle to hold that look, struggle not to close my eyes as he works himself up and down my cock, but something inside me can’t refuse him.

As he builds a rhythm, I find myself moving with him, my hips rolling to match him, my breaths gusting out to mingle with his in the hot cloud building between our bodies.

He claws my chest, but the prickle is as sweet as the tight heat of his body gripping my cock, and I welcome all of it like a swimmer letting a wave wash over them.

The tide of Jude’s body drags me with it, pulling me deeper and deeper with every roll of his hips.

He rides me in earnest, his body loose, my body obeying his, sweat and heat and moans building up between us. Unlike when we’re at choir practice, I can’t tell the difference between his voice and mine, both of us singing in the same ragged range.

“Touch my cock,” he rasps.

I grab him, and for a second he closes his eyes so he can throw his head back and moan.

His body clenches somehow tighter around me when I stroke him, but I never disobey his order to look at him, watching his face as pleasure twists through it.

It’s like the light that pours in through the stained glass windows of the church, illuminating a scene of religious rapture, of purest ecstasy.

And then the glass breaks.

I can’t keep looking at him, though the image of him bowing his back and moaning and riding my cock sticks to the back of my eyelids as they slam shut and my whole body goes rigid.

I jam my hips up, and Jude shouts at his ceiling, likely alerting three floors worth of sophomores to the worshipful mania unfolding in this room.

His body holds me tight, and mine breaks, shatters utterly and completely.

I disintegrate into a million shining shards and a pleasure I was never supposed to know pours out of me in wave after battering wave.

Jude claws at my chest and moans all the while. His hot spend splatters over my chest and strikes my chin. He jerks himself up and down me a few more times, and then he begins to slow, and I wither down onto the bed, my limbs utterly flaccid and cock already softening inside him.

I lie there panting, eyes creaking softly open.

I quiver faintly from the furious storm that just rushed through me, but I can’t so much as twitch a finger anymore.

I’m spent down to the pit of my soul, wrung out like a wet towel until not a drop remains.

And honestly, I could stay this way forever.

All the things I’m supposed to be, all the expectations I’ve carried for my entire life—it all seems so distant, so absurd, as my body thrums with satiation and Jude withers atop me to lie on my chest.

He shifts to get my softening cock out of him, but even that doesn’t inspire either of us to move quite yet.

We’ll deal with the necessary eventually, but right now, we need our chests pressing together as we catch our breath, our sweaty skin cooling except where it touches, our hearts tapping as though trying to reach each other.

“Fuck,” Jude breathes, and even though it’s a curse word, it’s so full of joy that it sounds almost like a prayer.

He drags himself off me, and I follow awkwardly so we can take care of the things demanding our attention.

The moment we can, we go right back to his bed, falling into the position we recently abandoned with me stretched out on my back and Jude nestled atop my chest. I drag my fingers idly through his hair, savoring the softness of the strands after the desperate flurry of what we just did.

I’m not sure I quite believe it was really me in this room.

It’s tough matching that guy with the one who will spend the rest of his weekend either studying or at Mass, but somehow I have to be both people, at least for now.

Even I know that tension can’t last, that it’ll break before long, that I’m setting myself up for a fall, but I can’t seem to get myself to stop no matter how wrong this is.

“I like this,” Jude says softly atop me. His fingers are wandering along my torso, sending tickling shivers through my exhausted body.

“I do too,” I admit.

“I like you ,” Jude says. “This you. The guy I only see in my bed. He’s different from the Theo I see everywhere else.”

Tension steals through my body, a thief pillaging my languid contentment. “I can’t be this Theodore everywhere else.”

Jude pushes up, propping himself on my chest so he can gaze down at me. “Why not?”

It should be obvious. Surely, he knows as well as I do, yet he’s forcing me to say it out loud.

“People need me to be someone else,” I say.

“Who cares what they need? What do you need?”

You.

I physically clench my teeth to bite back the word. If I ever admitted that out loud my entire world would come crashing down around me.

“It doesn’t matter what I need,” I say. “I have certain obligations, and I can’t j—”

Jude rolls his eyes. “Fuck your obligations, Theo. Christ, are you going to live your whole life for other people? I’m not sure if you’ve noticed, but you’re gay, or at least queer. Are you really going to pretend otherwise for the rest of your life?”

Every word strikes like hail raining down on me, stripping away the defenses I’ve used to maintain this double life. I’ve known since I was a kid, but no one, not even me, has ever said the word out loud to me. Gay. I’m gay. And it isn’t going away no matter how many Hail Marys I recite.

The frustration in Jude’s face melts to something far worse—pity. “Don’t you know God loves you exactly the way you are? Isn’t that, like, His whole deal?”

I manage to speak around the sudden lump in my throat. “No one’s ever loved me the way I am.”

“Maybe they should have.”

Jude holds my gaze, furious and on the verge of tears all at once.

Combined with his words, it’s more than I can take when I’m stripped naked not just in body, but in soul as well.

I guide him to my mouth, but this kiss is different from all the rest. It isn’t the frantic passion that started this or even something seductive and longing.

It’s closer to an apology. Or perhaps a goodbye.

Come morning, I can’t be his “Theo” anymore, and we both know it.