Page 122 of Hamartia

He lets out a tormented sound. “Your tongue…please…put it back…I want to feel it inside.”

The last part is whispered against the wall but he doesn’t need to ask again. I want it too. I nose upward from the back of his balls past the hole, inhaling him. It’s intense here. Sex and skin and heat. My mouth waters and I collect the wetness on my tongue and lick it over his hole, past the ring of muscle into the soft heat inside. Its resistant, slow to open, but as I flick and press I feel it begin to soften, yielding to me. I lose myself to it. Hours maybe. Flicking and sucking and kissing it. Worshiping it with my tongue and then my fingers, so that when I stand and slide my cock into it, I think it’s never felt as loose.

His back arches and his head drops backwards onto my shoulder making it easy for me to grip hold of his hair, hard. It’s rough. Rougher than it’s ever been between us. Desperate raw fucking half dressed in a dark hallway. It only turns me on more. He uses the wall for leverage to lower himself and fuck backwards onto me, then he gives up, goes loose and begs for it. I’m certain I bite his throat. I know I pull on his nipples, and when I feel him reach for his dick, I bat it out of the way and take hold of it instead.

Even after I feel him come all over my hand I keep jerking him off. He’s loose-limbed and begging for me to come but I can’t. I can’t really think past the feel of him wrapped, clenching, and gasping around my cock. Skin hot and slicked with sweat. Just when I’m certain the ability to come has been wiped out by the drugs and soju, it rushes up at me in a wave. I suck in a deep breath and let it drown me.

Pulse after pulse after fizzing pulse. It sparks and pops through my entire body. I’m not even sure how I’m still standing not to mention how I’m managing to hold Jae upright. I stay inside him until my breathing evens out, which takes longer than normal.

“You’re so perfect…” I tell him through kisses I press against his hair and his cheek. “Fucking hell, that was incredible.”

“It was.” He laughs, breathless. “Let’s go to bed and do it again.”

I groan because I think I need to sleep for a week before I can do that again. But then I’m slipping out of him and he’s moving away from me down the hallway with my come dripping out of his ass, and I think that just maybe I might be able to rally.

I’m not asleep long, I know that much. My eyes popping open only a few hours later. Coke does that, I find. My phone tells me it’s just after five and that Camille has tried calling again. There’s a text too.

Call me, Rapha. It is urgent.

My chest does a weird flipping thing. I worry that maybe she’s found out about Jae but I don’t know how that would be possible. I’ve a horrible thought and I flip open Twitter and search through my name but there’s nothing new and nothing about Jae, so I relax a little.

Next to me he’s dead to the world asleep. Naked as sin and his lips pouting and pink.

I’m on edge now though. Camille’s text prodding at any chance I have of going back to sleep. What can she have to tell me that’s urgent?

I slip out of bed quietly so not to wake him and move through the apartment to the kitchen without putting on the lights. Shiro appears from the shadows, languid and yawning in the pre-dawn light. I feed him a couple of his treats, though it’s likely too early, then I gulp down a glass of water. I pour another and carry it to the sectional and take a seat in the dark. I stare into space for a bit before dialing her number.

She answers on the third ring. “Rapha…”

“Yeah, it’s me. Is everything okay?”

She laughs a little, empty and sad. “Not really. I am pregnant.”

Everything stops. My breath, my heart, the world around. Everything just stops. Then it all rushes back in, bigger and louder than before.

“Since when?” I manage to get out. “I mean, how? I don’t understand how…” She’s on birth control.

“I don’t know how. It just happened.”

Do these things just happen? I didn’t think they did. I feel sick. I’m silent for a long time until she prompts me.

“Say something, Raphael.”

“Did you know when we spoke on Christmas Eve? Did you know then?”

“Yes.”

“Why didn’t you tell me?”

She says nothing and it gives me the answer I’m looking for.

“You were going to…” She was going to get rid of it. “Without telling me?” My voice is harsh in the darkness of Jae’s living room.”

She sniffs. “I thought about it, yes. But I cannot do that—I am not that person. But I thought that if you do not love me anymore and I did not want to be a single mom…”

I close my eyes and lean forward, pinching the bridge of my nose.

“I never said I didn’t love you anymore, Cam. That’s not…”