Page 64 of This Might Hurt
JUDE
“Lena managed to get you a ticket to the ceremony,” I announce, pushing aside the takeout container that once held really shitty teriyaki pork and flourishing the e-ticket on my phone for the Kearns High Commencement Ceremony. “She says she had a lot of tragedy points to cash in with the school.”
“That’s good.” Andrew just shrugs. The tone of his voice tells me he had absolutely no intention of sending me into the graduation alone whether he had a ticket or not, which makes me feel giddy and special.
Pulling a sour face, he tosses his half-eaten veggie stir-fry in the trash.
He shockingly didn’t want anything from the Pancake House for dinner, so Grant got paid to drive fifty minutes each way to a teriyaki place.
I warned Andrew it wasn’t going to be good, but he didn’t listen. Now he’s about to be hangry again.
All the families have settled down, leaving it blessedly quiet. Our TV is on but muted, because it wouldn’t stop playing ads for hunting blinds and really expensive coolers. Andrew checks his phone for the forty-fifth time in the last hour, like a reflex, even though he has it in airplane mode.
“Did you really sneak out without ever talking to your family about the interview?” I ask. “How did they react?”
He sets his phone face down on the TV stand. “They’ve been very busy arranging the funeral and trying to win Daxton’s family back. I’m sure they’ll have plenty to say later.”
“Do you regret missing the funeral?” He still feels off to me, but given that I’m currently ten different kinds of fucked up, I might be projecting.
“God no.” He shakes his head firmly. “Not even a little.”
He stands up restlessly and collects all the takeout containers and the cans of Arnold Palmer we enjoyed a lot more than the food.
For some reason he carries them all the way outside to the dumpster, and when he comes back, he checks the air conditioner before confirming that our shirts and slacks for tomorrow are hung up neatly.
He’s nice to look at, wearing a thin white t-shirt and boxers, but the pacing is getting on my nerves.
“You’re making me itchy just watching you,” I comment finally.
He turns off the overhead light, dropping the room into half-darkness. “When do we need to be there in the morning?”
I check the ticket on my phone. “Seating starts at nine thirty.”
He sets an alarm, then sits down on his side of the bed and grimaces at the TV. “They’re still selling those fly-fishing tours?”
“No, these are different fly-fishing tours.”
“God.” He turns the TV off emphatically and throws the remote aside.
His stormy eyes fall on me where I’m sitting cross-legged and confused on the bed, and for the first time it feels like he’s assessing me instead of the other way around, trying to decide what he wants from me.
It sends a shiver down my spine that’s not all bad or all good.
His sigh sounds loud in the silence. He leans across the bed, propping one hand on the far side of my legs, until our noses are touching.
His skin feels heated when I spread my palm against his cheek.
It's not like we haven’t kissed today, but he lets out a relieved groan in his chest when our lips meet.
This time there’s no acclimation, just open mouths and tongues and spit, as deep as we can go without disappearing inside each other.
It feels familiar, like home, like I recognized the echoes of this moment the first time I saw him.
He wraps gentle fingers around my throat and presses back in, deeper and less kind in a way he’s never done before. I close my eyes and let him do whatever he needs to. I let it hurt a little.
He pulls away suddenly and scrambles off the bed, grabbing a bottle of lube from the top of his suitcase and throwing it on the mattress by my thigh.
He strips off his t-shirt and drops it on the floor as I sit up on my knees so we meet face-to-face on the edge of the mattress.
Our tongues fight while his hands push down the back of my briefs and grope my ass.
He grunts into my mouth and tilts his hips forward, like his animal brain wants me to appreciate the hard-on tenting his boxers.
I oblige him by cupping my palm around it, hooking my fingers under his balls.
His erection issues never came back after that night at Ramona’s, probably because he dealt with his mental hang-ups.
But I like to pretend it was all me. Like if he ever left me for someone else he’d try and try, only to come crawling back and beg on his knees for me to touch him because I’m the only one who can make him hard.
He’d rut my palm and pant hot breath into my neck, like he’s doing right now.
“Please,” he croaks against my skin, shivering. He’s made of an untouched need that started the day he was born and built up into something so vast that the only thing which can match it is the rotten lake of unwanted love in my chest.
I push him back until I can see his face. “Please what?”
He looks fretful and urgent, hazy eyes flicking between mine as he pants for breath. “Please fill me. I’m empty. I hate it so much.”
This is different from the slow, unraveling worship of last time. He’s like a disease; he makes me sick and unkind, makes everything feel like a fever, his skin so fucking hot on mine.
When I stand up, he yanks down his underwear and drops onto the mattress, scooting back on his elbows as he watches me undress.
His solid, smooth chest and shoulders look beautiful in the low light, his sweaty thighs already spreading instinctively, his stiff cock leaking onto his belly.
His eyes follow me as I climb onto the bed and sit cross-legged with my back against the headboard.
He whines softly, fighting to stay still as he stares at my half-hard junk resting on the calf of my folded leg, like he doesn’t remember how to use his words at all.
“Settle down,” I murmur, patting my lap. “Come here.”
He scrambles quickly, ungracefully to rest his heavy head on my legs. His troubled eyes search out mine upside-down. “Jude, please.” He’s never been so pushy and so submissive at the same time, and it fascinates me.
He twitches when I drop the cold plastic lube bottle on his chest. “Go ahead.”
“What?” His eyebrows furrow in indignation, fading into a moan as I trace his chest, circling the swell of each pale brown nipple without touching it.
“You can prep yourself for me,” I tell him, sliding my fingers up to push between his lips. His eyes drift half shut as he tips his head back. “I want to bully you a little, okay? What do you think?”
He chokes on my fingers and rocks his hips up, making his cock bounce.
I prop my elbows on my knees and my chin on my fists, looking right down into his face. “Are you going to start any time this century or should I go to sleep and check in later?” A spark flashes behind his dazed expression, and he holds a hand up an inch in front of my face to flip me off.
“Yeah, like that. But in your ass.”
His growl collapses into a low, helpless laugh, but all that disappears when he picks up the lube and starts tentatively drizzling it up and down his fingers.
Satisfaction buzzes sweet and lazy through my veins as I watch.
He slips his arm down between his legs, pulling up his knees, then hesitates like he has no clue what to do next.
I stretch out my hands on either side of him. “Want me to hold your knees up?” I ask generously, imagining the obscene position he’ll have to curl into.
He must see it too, because he groans, “Oh, god. I can’t.”
I stroke the bridge of his nose. “You know you’re going to do it eventually. What’s the point of pretending you won’t?”
With a frustrated breath, ragged with arousal, he closes his eyes and grabs his thighs to fold them into my hands.
His spine curls, his ass coming up, cock hanging, and I can just barely see his hole now.
He lies there for a minute getting used to it, his face flushed and his eyes still closed while I trace soothing circles on the backs of his thighs and wish that I had something to rub my aching cock against.
It feels like it takes him an hour to get the first finger in even a little.
I don’t mind at all, not when he pants and whines and presses into me.
He’s just so scared. He’s never played with his body.
He doesn’t like the visceral feeling of the ring of muscle or the fear of what’s inside.
His whole body goes rigid with a sob when it gives and his body swallows his finger halfway.
“Good boy,” I croon, letting go of his left knee so I can pet his hair. “Almost there.”
His eyes open and find mine, latching on with a strange kind of desperation that sinks claws deep into my brain.
I don’t see him take more fingers, because I can’t look away from him.
I watch it happen on his face, the flashes of pain followed by relief, over and over.
When I finally glance up, he’s halfway through working three fingers to the base and his cock is dripping precum all over his abs, his balls drawn up tight.
I jolt in surprise when something brushes my dick. Andrew turns his head further, rubbing his cheek and nose up and down my hard-on, trying to reach my balls with his tongue. I haven't breathed in such a long time that my vision is starting to go weird.
“Fuck,” I murmur as he forces his neck to twist until he can lick under my balls, right in the softest, most sensitive spot I didn’t even know existed.
I buck under him with a feral noise. “Look at me,” I croak, tapping his cheek.
He goes still and studies me carefully. “Are you gonna let my cum fall out this time?”
He shakes his head immediately, like he’s been thinking about this question for days. “No.”
“Are you gonna come before me?” I don’t actually mind either way. It was really hot the first time, when he lost control before he could even stop it. Mostly I just want to fuck with his head and see what comes out.
I’m kind of surprised when he shakes his head again, even more decisively.
“Why not?” I trace the line of his Adam’s apple and up under his chin, tilting his head back even more.
His nostrils flare and he clears his throat, his voice weak but demanding. “You have to swallow me. You promised. The connection’s not finished until you do.”
I blink at him. I was one-hundred percent sure that was just a post-orgasm-haze joke. But he’s so serious and wound up I’m almost scared he’s going to start crying. “God, yeah, okay. I will. Just breathe for a second.”
He closes his eyes and inhales deeply. “Promise you won’t let me come before that.”
I’m not all the way hard yet, so I cradle his head in my hands and rub my slick erection slowly along his cheek. “I promise.”
When I’m ready and he’s not freaking out anymore, I prop his head on a pillow and crawl right over the top of him to settle between his legs. Fuck, he still has fingers wedged in there, lube leaking out between them. “Okay, princess, take them out and let me see how you did.”
It’s disgusting in the most perfect possible way to see his clean, well-groomed little hole all wet and stretched, pulsing when he leaves it empty. “Not bad.” He grunts and tries to kick me, apparently not happy with his performance review, but his body is too sloppy and messed up to work right.
I was going to tell him to stare into my eyes while I fucked him, but after the way he looked at me just now, I’m not sure I can take it.
I’ve always thought I was the one pushing us further, addicted to how perfectly he comes apart for me.
Now I’m starting to wonder if I’ve been blindly following him deeper this whole time until I look around and realize I don’t know where I am.
All I have left is him and the sinking feeling that loving him isn’t the same as understanding what’s going on in his head.
Shutting my brain off, I squeeze a quick stripe of lube up my cock. His feet are back on the bed, but he bends his knees and spreads his thighs wide with no hesitation, like even though he gives off total virgin vibes his body knows what it’s for when it’s around me.
“You’re being really, really good,” I breathe as I lean over him and lick up his throat, feeling it move under my tongue. My perfectionist boy did such a careful job that when I line up my cock, it slips in all the way before either of us can brace for it.
“Jesus Christ.” He throws his arms over his face, shuddering.
Fucking usually involves pulling out so you can push back in, but I can’t make myself do it.
He has to stay completely filled with me.
We both need it. Grinding my hips against his ass, I reach down and stroke his cock a couple of times to clean the extra lube off my hand.
He jolts, whining “don’t”, and spreads his arms to glare at me through the gap between them.
“You finger yourself and you’re that close? You’re so easy you should be embarrassed.” I show him my thumb and forefinger in a circle, then wrap them around the base of his erection so tight that he groans low in his throat. “Try to hold yourself together.”
He watches me through his arms as I trap his cock and start working my hips.
His eyes are so dark and primal, like he’s not totally inside his own head.
I’m still not willing to pull out even halfway, so I just stay deep and rub my hips against him hard enough that his whole body rocks back and forth.
My dick misses the friction, but when my head finds his prostate his inner walls start gripping, clenching in rhythms he can’t control.
He keens softly, trying to push himself even tighter against me.
“Listen,” I gasp when I’m close, leaning over and propping my sweaty forehead against his arms. “It’s okay. You’re never gonna be empty again. You don’t have to be sad, please.”
I really hoped he would answer me. That he would tell me this is all he needed. But he just untangles himself and laces fingers in my hair, burying his nose under my ear as I come inside him in an endless, aching orgasm like nothing I’ve felt in my life.