Page 9

9

Tallus

D arkness had fallen by the time we got back to the Jeep. A coating of ice covered the parking lot, and Diem insisted on holding my arm, grumbling something about inappropriate footwear and did I want to break my neck because his insurance didn’t cover stupidity.

I let him grumble it out. He was upset because we’d learned diddly, which meant another night at the B&B in a room with only one bed. Diem was a big man with big feelings, and sometimes, it took a while for him to process them all. He was more apt to take side quests until they ran out rather than face the final dragon before he was ready.

With the heat running, melting the ice that had formed on the windshield, we sat in silence, puzzling the ineffective interview we’d had with the English teacher who, in the end, had kindly told us to fuck off exactly as Diem had predicted.

I held my hands to the heat pumping from the vents, but it did nothing to stop the inner tremble I’d developed from having worn soaking-wet clothes for over half an hour. My jaw ached from trying to prevent my teeth from chattering, knowing if they did, Diem would launch into a lecture that would end with a well-earned “I told you so.”

“I say we go back to our rented room and have a nice, long, hot, aromatic bath together. Then, we can order food and eat in bed under the warm, pink, frilly comforter— together —as we chat about how we intend to infiltrate a high school writing club without getting ourselves in trouble… Together. Notice my emphasis on the word together?”

Diem put the Jeep in gear instead of participating in the conversation or offering an opinion, but he didn’t take us toward the highway and home, aiming instead for the B&B in the center of town.

I did not gloat out loud lest I find myself single on the side of the road with no way back to Toronto.

“Delaney might know when the writing club meets. We could call her in the morning. Talk with dear old Irvin again,” I said.

Diem ignored the suggestion.

“Or we could chat about how I’m going to cuddle the stuffing out of you later when we share a bed… after a bath of course.”

“I wish those goddamn fucking kids had still been in the cafeteria when we left.” Diem punched the steering wheel. “We could have asked them about the club. If they knew Weston, they might have been able to tell us who his fucking friends were or where we might find the girlfriend. I knew that fucknuts teacher was going to give us nothing. Asshole.”

“Bump in the road, D. Tomorrow is another day. We aren’t done yet.”

“He’s a fucking liar. I could see it on his face. He knew the writing was different but didn’t want to contradict what he told the police. Wanna bet whoever investigated this before was simply entertaining Delaney? Crossing their t’s and dotting their i’s. They didn’t fucking care. They didn’t believe it from the start. Probably thought it was a goddamn joke. They devised a viable reason for the story and encouraged Mr. Too-Hot-for-His-Own-Good English Teacher to go along with it to save themselves a pile of paperwork. I fucking hate cops. Lazy pieces of shit are what they are. Then I get stuck cleaning up their mess for half the pay. Every fucking time. It’s bullshit.”

Diem seethed at a red light, and I patted his thigh. “That’s good, babe. Let it all out. It’s not healthy when the ugly gets stuck inside. And, Guns, when you’re calmer, you better tell me I’m hotter than that old stiff at the high school because your comment hurt my feelings. I know he had amazing hair, but that one attribute does not a hottie make.”

The light turned green.

Diem drove.

After half a block, his shoulders came down, and he moved a hand from the steering wheel and took mine, weaving our fingers together. “He’s got nothing on you. Trust me.”

I smiled. Then, to be an ass, I belted out the opening lyrics to “November Rain” like I’d done earlier. “Do you hear it? This could be our song.” I gasped. “Guns and Roses. It’s fate. You’re Guns and I’m Roses. It’s perfect. Sing it with me.”

I gave Diem props for trying to scowl, but it didn’t land, and before we got to the B&B, around the time I was massacring the chorus, Diem chuckled and shook his head. “You’re such a fucking shit.”

Yes, yes, I was, and I kept right on singing, off-key and with stage-worthy dramatics. Nothing beat Diem’s smile but getting him to laugh was better than winning the lottery.

When we entered our room, I stripped off my wet clothes and left them on the floor. Diem’s nose was stuck in a perpetual snarl—the overpowering scent of potpourri if I had to guess—but I caught him staring as I unveiled miles of pale skin.

I had no shame and took my time, strutting naked to the bathroom and giving Diem a long lingering chance to ogle the goods. At the door, I turned back and winked, crooking a finger.

He shook his head.

“Come on, Guns. I know you wanna.”

The tub was full of clocks and I puzzled them a moment before collecting them in the comforter we’d draped on top and hauled them into the bedroom.

I was met by a six-and-a-half-foot brick wall preventing me from going more than a foot beyond the threshold.

“Nuh-uh. You aren’t bringing those in here.”

“But we’re having a bath.”

“ You’re having a bath. I’m ordering pizza.”

“Excellent. Tell them we don’t want it for another hour yet.” I bumped him out of the way and scanned the room, dropping the Santa-wrapped bundle of clocks into the corner and ensuring they were tightly tucked inside the blanket.

The contents cried noisily from within, barely restrained.

Diem swore and grabbed his keys.

“Where are you going?”

“The hardware store.”

I snagged his arm, drawing him away from the door. “You don’t need to buy a hammer. Stop being dramatic.”

Diem eyed me, then the mound of wrapped clocks. “You’re right. A boot will work fine.”

Before he could move to put them on, I dragged him into the bathroom.

“Tallus—”

“We’re having a tubbie. Get over it.”

“I don’t bathe,” he said through clenched teeth.

“I’ll teach you. It’s fun and super relaxing.” With a warning glare, I let go of his arm and fit the plug in the drain before turning on the water. Temperature adjusted, I sized Diem up and down, deciding where and how to begin.

“I don’t need to relax.” His jaw was so tense the words came out garbled. Every muscle in his body screamed with tension.

“Guns, you’re ten seconds away from needing dental surgery. Now, arms up.” I pushed them above his head, knowing he wouldn’t do it without help. Also knowing he wouldn’t resist, and he didn’t.

I shed his T-shirt and tossed it aside, humming approval at his broad, hairy chest. “That’s what I’m talking about.”

I raked my fingernails over his pecs and down the ridges of his abdomen. Goose bumps rose the hairs on his arms.

“Are you cold?”

“No.” He couldn’t look at me, his stormy gray eyes full of uncertainty.

Diem remained motionless. Although he didn’t help, he allowed me to strip him bare. Not once did he try to stop me. He was a fine specimen under the clothes. Years of lifting weights for his mental health showed, but Diem’s firm and defined exterior did not adequately represent what was inside. Under layers of muscle, Diem harbored mistrust for a world that had treated him poorly. He’d built a shield to protect himself. Few people saw the man behind the steel barricade, so I treasured the moments when Diem offered glimpses into his troubled soul.

Naked meant vulnerable to Diem. It exposed his scars, physical and psychological. In the six weeks we’d been dating, his comfort level when naked had improved, but he still showed signs of distress.

I wrapped my arms around him and pressed my naked body to his, resting my chin in the center of his chest and peering up into his stormy gray eyes. “Are you doing okay?”

“I’m uncomfortable.”

“I know.” Taking pity, I asked, “Do you want to get dressed and order pizza instead?”

Diem glanced at the bathtub, the wheels inside his brain spinning and spinning. Twice, he tried to speak, but no words escaped. If I pushed limits, I always gave him a chance to back out. He needed a shove sometimes, but I also wasn’t an asshole looking to perpetuate an anxiety attack. Diem had learned to communicate when he wasn’t okay with something. He may not like vulnerability, but he trusted me not to take him anywhere he didn’t want to go.

“This will make sleeping beside me feel like a walk in the park. Come on.”

I took his hand and guided him to the tub. He didn’t resist, and when I stepped in, I encouraged him to follow.

“I won’t fit.”

“You will. If you lie down first, I’ll squeeze between your thighs.”

He hesitated for a long time. Processing, processing, processing. I let him. Then he followed me into the tub.

The water level had gotten out of control, and the minute Diem lowered himself, it climbed and spilled over the edge.

“Shit.” He scrambled to stand but slipped and landed on his ass, sending waves cascading everywhere.

I laughed, snagging a towel from a nearby rack and throwing it over the small lake he’d created. I shut the water off and unplugged the drain for a minute to let some water out so we wouldn’t get sued for flooding the B&B.

Problem rectified, I faced Diem, who couldn’t have looked more awkward and out of place if he tried. Arms braced on either side of the tub, panic written in creases on his forehead, he lay—rigidly—against the sloped back of the porcelain tub, hanging on for dear life like he was in a sinking ship.

“Stop acting like this is torture.”

He scowled.

I fondled myself.

His attention slipped to the goods and darted back to my face. “Are you going to lie down, or what?”

I hit him with all the sultry mischief I could muster, licking my lips salaciously. “Yes, Guns. Are you ready because it will mean getting cozy?”

“No, I’m not fucking ready. Just do it.”

I joined him, nestling between his tree trunk thighs and lying my back against his concrete front. It was a tight fit. Even the oversized claw-foot wasn’t meant for two grown men, especially when one of them was built like a tank. It was a good thing I had some twink qualities.

I spent a minute silently evaluating Diem’s reaction, giving him time for more processing while tuning into his breathing. I sensed the staggering rise and fall of his chest beneath me. When it changed from short, tight struggles to draw oxygen to longer, easier inhales and exhales, I tipped my head and peered at him upside down.

“Doing okay, big guy?”

He offered a jerky nod.

“Uncomfortable?”

“What do you think?”

I faced forward and peeled his fingers from where he held a death grip on the tub’s edge, moving them so he wrapped both arms around me. I pressed his palms to my abdomen, encouraging contact, urging him to explore my naked flesh. In time, his tension waned, and after a few lazy strokes, when the earth didn’t crack open and swallow him whole, he grew more confident.

Diem’s past had taught him touch was synonymous with hatred, not love. Touch was violent and punitive, never tender, and at no time used to show affection. His therapist had explained it would take time to rewrite those pathways in his brain, but his wasn’t a hopeless case. I didn’t think Diem always believed him, so we practiced. A lot.

I stopped guiding Diem’s hands and brought mine to his spread thighs. He’d needed to bend his long legs to fit in the tub, and his knees stuck out of the water on either side of my body. I caressed the coarse, wet hair over his quads and down his shins as I waited to see what he’d do without assistance.

Diem still required guidance and many hand-over-hand demonstrations before he felt comfortable enough to venture out on his own. Even then, his exploration was hindered by his self-consciousness and doubt.

It took a minute, but the soft brush of uncertain fingers over my navel tingled my blood to life. I closed my eyes and absorbed all he was willing to give. Patience was a virtue when it came to Diem and intimacy. When he felt brave enough to explore on his own, I floated on cloud nine.

Baby steps.

I hummed with pleasure when he grew brave enough to flatten a palm against my sternum. At the first pinch of his thumb and pointer over a nipple, I hissed and dug my nails into his legs, arching my back.

He paused, but sensing my reaction was positive, he did it again.

“It’s good, D. Don’t stop.”

The entire time, his ragged breaths ghosted my ear. His thundering heart rate echoed through him into me.

Sex between us had always been a work in progress. I dreamed of a day when Diem would take me to bed and worship my body without hesitation or second-guessing. I wanted to cut the puppet strings and see him act of his own free will.

His lips brushed my neck, but I knew he wouldn’t progress unless I demanded it, no matter how much I hinted by tipping my head to the side and moaning his name.

The fact that he was able to run his hands over my sternum and abdomen with a modicum of confidence was already huge. Playing with my nipples was a line he’d never crossed.

My cock ached and swelled when he skated his fingers lower, teasing the top of my groomed pubes, but they stilled, only going so far. Under the small of my back, Diem’s erection grew to a pillar.

“You’re so fucking hot,” he said, his voice choked.

Unable to resist any longer, I rolled in his arms, sloshing water over the edge and struggling with the tight confines of the tub, but I wasn’t a quitter. Face-to-face, I attacked his mouth, kissing him aggressively and hungrily, growling as he often did, and hoping he took it for the frustration it was.

The touch he’d been so carefully administering vanished, and I broke from his mouth to glare. “You’d better put those hands back on my body right now, Guns, or we’re gonna have a problem.”

It wasn’t often Diem looked punch drunk, and it could have been the heat of the water making his cheeks flush, but I didn’t think so. The lust swelling his pupils was something I’d been seeing more of lately when his walls came down.

With renewed reticence, he took hold of my sides and glided his palms up and down.

“You can do better than that. You like touching me, remember. You like this naked body.”

The bear in his chest rumbled as we kissed more.

I rocked our hard lengths together, igniting a fire. Nothing was about to happen with the limited space of the tub, but that wasn’t the point. The point was Diem learning to be comfortable sharing space. Touching.

He glided his hands to my ass. At first tentative, then with more assuredness, he squeezed each globe in his monstrous hands, drawing me against him. We rutted, throwing more kindling on a fire quickly getting out of control.

Diem grunted a strangled noise of pleasure. Our teeth clacked, and the kiss became bruising as he forgot to be gentle, and his yearning took over.

Yes, this was what I wanted. Diem lost in pleasure. Diem out of control with want and desire.

I had a feeling that the day Diem’s wall fully crumbled, when he felt safe enough to be himself, the man would utterly destroy me heart and soul, and I couldn’t fucking wait.

Water sloshed and spilled over the lip of the tub as Diem wedged a hand between our bodies and took us together.

“Fuck, D. You have no idea how turned on you make me when you take control.” I knotted my fingers in the bit of hair he’d grown and attacked his mouth with brutality. Coming up for air, panting, I added, “But we have to get out… I can’t… There’s not enough room. Don’t you want to be in my ass?”

He growled in response, furiously nodding.

The only towel within reach was the one on the floor, soaking up the puddle we’d made. I dripped into the bedroom to snag a few from the pile I’d noticed earlier—pink and frilly but soft and big enough to cover Diem’s body.

We dried hastily, and I kept one eye on the big guy, certain his bravado would vanish by the time we relocated and hating that we’d had to transition at all.

I encouraged him into the room and onto the bed before finding supplies in my backpack. Diem wasn’t an initiator or an experimenter. Maybe down the line, but we were a long way off. Sex in a bed was new. Since we started dating, it was a thing I insisted upon. Certain unspoken rules applied. The major rule being we always fucked face-to-face. None of the cold, dissociated sex we’d had in the beginning. I wanted him present.

It wasn’t that I was against quick fucks in random locations around the house, and I wasn’t opposed to being railed from behind. In fact, I quite enjoyed it occasionally, but the goal with Diem had been affection and intimacy.

He lay in the center of the mattress, naked body on display. In the beginning, Diem’s self-consciousness over his scars and tattoos meant he went out of his way to stay partly dressed during sex. Once he understood that I would never push to hear the stories behind either, he relaxed.

When Diem was ready to share, I would listen. Slowly, he shone a light on his tragic past.

The lion and the compass inked on his thighs represented something personal to Diem. Under those particular tattoos lived scars of a different variety. Ones made with a careful hand and a sharp blade. I’d surmised their raison d’être long ago—a broken child had become a trouble, self-injurious teen with no other means of purging the anger that grew insidiously in his core.

I crawled over him, kissing the lion and compass on my journey to his mouth. Bracing a hand on either side of his head, I peered down at the tormented man who had captivated me some months ago. My cuddle bear. I wanted to shelter him with my body. I wanted Diem to know he was safe.

“Hey, Guns.” I playfully smirked. “You’re all flush and warm now. How’d you enjoy your first bath with your boyfriend?”

“It was wet.” His voice croaked, and he swallowed before clearing his throat.

I chuckled. “That’s all? Wet?”

He licked his lips, gaze flicking over my nakedness. “It was… really fucking erotic.”

“It was.” I dragged my erection over his. “Wanna fuck me?”

He couldn’t have nodded faster.

I kissed him, giving him time to find his feet and regain his courage. Without having to be told, Diem brought his hands to my waist and drew me down until we lay flush together. We spent a long time lip-locked, tongues dueling for control, lower bodies rutting lazily.

Diem struggled to express his emotions on a good day, but I knew he enjoyed this lazy kissing, the weight of me. So I let him absorb.

Process.

When our breathing turned ragged, and lust bloomed, I whispered against his mouth, “Prep me.”

Diem found the lube and complied.

I groaned at the intrusion of his fingers, panting against his mouth. Diem loved it when I got vocal. It seemed to send a thrill through him, and he forgot to worry.

He took his time, ensuring I was good and ready. Considering the man was hung like a fucking horse, I didn’t complain about the foreplay. It was that or I’d be walking funny by morning.

I helped with the condom and straddled his waist. From my knees, I guided him inside, slowly sinking down until I was fully seated.

“Fuck my life,” I said through gritted teeth. “I will never get used to the size of you.”

He didn’t smile, but it was a close thing.

Diem was a watcher with intimate encounters. He absorbed every action with parted lips and a look of awe like he couldn’t believe it was happening, like I was an illusion or a dream, and he feared looking away.

It always took him a second to remember to participate, but he did. Hands on my hips, his body moved in time with mine. As though remembering how much I’d enjoyed my nipples being tweaked in the tub, he tentatively glided a hand over my pecs and thumbed the pebbled nubs.

“You can do better than that.”

He massaged them between his finger and thumb.

I groaned. “Harder, D.”

He pinched me, and a sting rippled through my blood. “Oh yeah… fuck me. That’s it. Again.”

I rode his cock, instructing him the entire time because I had no doubt he feared hurting me. It took grinding my teeth and spitting. “Fucking harder, D,” for him to get it right. Lust bloomed in his eyes as I shuddered and moved faster on his cock.

Was it the best sex of my life? Not even close, but there was something powerful in knowing that Diem had never had this with anyone else before. This bonding. This growing sense of freedom and comfort. This peace.

That was what made it worth it.