11. The Shape of You

CHAPTER 11

The Shape of You

Zain

The afternoon was strangely sunny when we arrived at Harringford. It was so inviting and promising that Dominic suggested a walk in the forest.

“You never know, it could be the last chance before winter,” he said in his uniquely gloomy and the-worst-is-bound-to-happen style.

“ Carpe diem ,” I said after dropping off the suitcase of new clothes in my room despite Orwell’s insistence that he would do it. The man treated me like royalty, and I didn’t know what I’d done to deserve it.

I still chose my old clothes for the walk in the forest.

Dominic waited for me downstairs. He wore camo pants, a nice wool sweater, and a thick vest, looking nothing like the polished businessman he was at all hours of the day. It was sexy as hell, and I stopped to admire it. “That look suits you,” I said.

“Does it?” Dominic seemed genuinely surprised.

“You look like a hunter,” I said in a low voice. Despite myself, I realized I was being seductive. He turned me on in the craziest ways. “Tough, loyal, providing for his family no matter what it takes.”

Dominic threw his head back and laughed. It was an oddly warm sound, and I still wasn’t used to hearing it. Even so, it made my heart dance when he laughed. He was capable of such disarming smiles that I had to hold back against throwing myself at him.

We walked out into the brilliant sunshine, and Dominic pointed to the clouds gathering in the north. Dark and threatening, they warned of a storm that would bring the change in seasons.

“Today,” Dominic said carefully as we made some distance between us and the house. We walked down the side of a slope toward the forest. There was a foot trail that he must have taken often that we followed. “You seemed distressed when you returned.”

My heart clenched. Feelings I hadn’t had the time to process were still restless within me. “Is that why you thought I wanted to leave?”

Dominic nodded. “It’s likely that I would have seen a desire to leave in whatever you did just then.”

I couldn’t help but chuckle. It was a generous display of self-awareness.

“To be perfectly honest, I was in a terrible mood all morning,” he continued. We were near the forest now, and Dominic stopped to look at me. “Truly, Zain, I was selfish. I only thought about how to preserve myself, thinking you must have realized that last night had been a mistake.”

Did he have any idea how his words made me feel? Did I? It sparked such a storm of conflicting emotions that I wasn’t sure which to tackle first. “Was it?”

Dominic looked into my eyes with such intensity. “Not for me. Not at all.”

“There,” I said. “That’s all I needed to know.”

He smiled again. He was learning it quickly.

“Last night was beautiful,” I said. “And I want more of it.”

Dominic considered this briefly since I had told him so already. There was little to think about. What surprised me was that he offered me his hand now.

I took it without hesitation and let him lead me into the forest. Sunlight poured through the bare branches above us and kissed the orange and brown leaves on the forest floor.

Dominic spoke again in a tone that allowed no debate. “Then you can’t be my employee anymore.”

“Why not?” I asked without alarm. The fact of the matter was that I was getting much more comfortable with Dominic. I trusted him more than I had realized. I trusted that he considered my best interests.

His hand was warm around mine, his grip tightening. “My life’s built on contracts, Zain. All my relationships are built on signed agreements, so there’s no confusion later. I can’t be your boss. I can’t hold that power over you if we are going to be…involved.”

I bit my lip hard to avoid grinning at the way he phrased it.

“Personal matters and business don’t mix,” he said. “And I would rather have you in my private life in some capacity that suits you than to be your boss and stay away from you.”

“Are you asking me to be your boyfriend?” I asked.

Dominic’s cheeks were pink, and I wasn’t sure if he was blushing or cold. “I suppose that I am.” He said that in a way that it sounded like he’d only just realized it himself. He looked into my eyes. “That’s what I would like. I would like to date you.”

“That’s a big leap from thinking I’d made a mistake last night,” I said, tormenting him just a little.

Dominic folded his lips and halted, pulling me close to himself. “You convinced me when you kissed me.”

“Then let me convince you some more,” I offered, causing him to flash a grin. Once upon a time, I’d thought of it as wolfish. It was not. It radiated Dominic’s inner warmth beneath the layers of insecurity, and I found that it was the most beautiful thing I had ever seen.

Dominic didn’t resist as I rose to the tips of my toes and leaned against him for stability. He lowered his head enough to let me reach his lips with mine. The kiss warmed me more than my clothes ever could. The worries of the day behind me, the failures, the lies that tightened around my heart, it all eased a little when I kissed him.

But Dominic pulled his head away and looked into my eyes. “You’re avoiding something.”

“Huh?”

He ran the back of his finger down the side of my face and examined my face warmly. “What upset you while you were out?”

I exhaled and stepped back, then turned to face the forest. We both took a few steps deeper between the trees, and Dominic waited patiently until I simply shrugged. “I wanted to come out to them,” I said.

“Are you certain?” he asked, alarmed.

“I was,” I said and scratched the back of my head. “I was until the moment I sat down with them.”

“Why would you want to?” he asked. He sounded genuinely bewildered by it.

I shrugged. “I’ve always been close to them. And I thought…” I sighed. “I don’t know what I thought. Maybe that I was lying to them and to myself whenever I thought we were close. Maybe that they loved someone who didn’t exist.”

“But you’re putting so much at risk,” Dominic said with sheer concern in his voice.

“I’m not sure that’s what I was doing,” I admitted. “It’s like a cloud hanging over me. I can’t seem to move from its shadow until I tell them. They’re my parents.”

“I know, Zain, but they could hurt you if…” His words faltered, and he fell silent. After a time, he said, “They’re not the same as mine. Don’t let me influence you like this, but I worry. If that goes wrong, it’ll break your heart.”

I looked at Dominic softly and sadly. It was hard to parse through all these emotions. The sudden need to be honest with my parents seemed so urgent and important that I couldn’t see a happy life before that was out of the way. “But I’ll still have you, right?”

Dominic considered my words carefully before he stepped closer. He put his hands on my cheeks and lifted my head to look down into my eyes. “Always,” he said, his breath turning to mist between us. “Nothing will change.”

My heart grew so much so quickly that I felt happy tears well in my eyes. “Let’s go back,” I said.

He didn’t ask me why. He didn’t need to.

Dominic took my hand and led us out of the forest.

Dominic

He stepped out of the bathroom bathed in its bright, pale light, slender and lean, beautiful in every way. His shoulders were broad, doubtless from lifting crates of inventory, sculpted to perfect roundness of exercise and hard work. His hair, black and unruly, was still damp from showering, and his chest glistened with droplets of water.

The gentle yellow lamplights softened Zain’s features as he held his hands together in what almost passed for shyness. He stood that way, letting me observe every last bit of him, his eyes big and wide and impossibly brown.

My gaze kissed him slowly as it trailed the length of his torso. His hands were joined under his abdomen, just barely covering his cock and balls. His smooth legs with defined muscles stood slightly apart.

“What do you think?” he whispered.

I took a step toward him. “If it were up to me, you’d never wear anything at all.”

“Naughty,” Zain said. His tone was playfully scolding as he shifted his weight from one leg to the other, all his muscles bunching and stretching in the movement. “And what would you do with me if I granted you that request?”

“Can’t you imagine?” I asked, stepping closer to him.

“Paint me a picture,” Zain said, no longer playful. There was a distinct breathiness in his tone when he was feeling seductive.

“I’d much rather show you,” I purred, my left hand sliding to his hip and rising along the side of his torso.

Zain inhaled, shuddering, and removed his hands from his crotch. His dick was thickening quickly, rising to invite me to my knees. “It’s not fair,” Zain said, half-choked.

“Why not?”

“You’re still dressed,” he said as if it pained him.

“I’m sure we can do something about that,” I offered as my hand moved further in, feeling his back for a moment before I pulled him closer, pressing his naked body against my clothes.

Zain clutched my vest and pulled it over my shoulders, dragged it down my arms, and let it fall on the floor just as he pressed himself hard against me, leaning on me to rise to the tips of his toes and press his mouth over mine.

He kissed me sweetly, letting the tip of his tongue venture carefully out of his mouth.

I welcomed it eagerly, both because I wanted him to know he was doing great and because it turned me on beyond my wildest fantasies. He kissed me more freely after that, breathing out over my lips and kissing me harder, his arms rising to wrap around my neck, his body rubbing seductively against mine.

I was sure he could feel how interested I was. My pants, rough and baggy as they were, did little to conceal the raging erection that wiped out all other thoughts from my mind. I was singularly aware of only this: Zain, the scent of his bodywash, the warmth of his flesh, the softness of his kisses, and the hardness of his cock pressing against my leg.

To be accepted—and, more importantly, wanted—by him was the most incredible privilege. The desire that he so shamelessly displayed was everything to me. It went so far beyond the needs of our bodies and into the realm of philosophy and religion.

The realization that I wanted him beyond our bodies, beyond the pleasures of our passionate acts, filled me with sudden longing.

There was no way to express this feeling. No way other than to show him what I felt.

My hands reached down to his firm, round ass, and I lifted him abruptly, making him gasp and laugh before he hurriedly continued kissing me, now towering above me as I lifted him higher. His naked body pressed harder against me, resting on me effortlessly, and he wrapped his legs around my waist, kissing me deeply all along.

“I want you,” I murmured over his lips. “All of you.”

“Here I am,” he whispered, speaking between the kisses. “Take me. Have me.”

I turned around and carried him toward my large bed. When I reached the edge of it, I didn’t drop Zain in the heat of passion. I lowered him gently instead, never breaking the contact between our lips.

Zain quickly grabbed the bottom edge of my sweater and pulled it along my torso until I stepped back and allowed him to take it off. He threw it somewhere to the side and extended his arms toward me, calling me to join him, but I paused.

He was so devastatingly beautiful that it pained me somewhere in my chest. The immensity of the sensation made me stop, my gaze caressing his smooth, bronze skin. He was, to my eyes, the most beautiful mix of backgrounds, of heritage, of the boiling universe that created worlds and cultures and histories that converged in this one person’s skin and eyes and curls, this one person’s sense of justice and pride.

Zain batted his long eyelashes at me. “If you keep me waiting any longer, I’ll die, Dominic,” he said, and it didn’t sound like a hyperbole.

I slowly came to the bed, knees sinking into the mattress, one between his legs and the other beside him, my bare torso leaning down until it met Zain’s. Our heat combined and exchanged, prickles running over my flesh with the electric sensation of touching him.

Our limbs coiled and tangled, our lips explored each other’s bodies freely, and Zain lifted his hips off the bed, rubbing himself roughly against me, seeming to revel in the contrast in texture between my warm skin and my coarse pants.

I kissed his neck generously, making him wiggle and whimper, and he dragged his fingernails along my back, leaving a stinging trail that only made me wilder with possessive lust.

“Take me,” he cried. “Dominic. Please.”

I pushed myself up, slamming my mouth against his, and flipped him around, making him lie on his front as I sank hard against the length of his body. My pants rubbed against the smooth, soft skin of his ass and legs. My chest pressed against his shoulder blades.

As I kissed the length of his spine, Zain’s whimpers grew louder and more strained.

When my lips reached the sweet warmth between his finely curved cheeks, my tongue met his hole, and Zain shuddered under my hands. He groaned into the mattress, thrusting his butt higher and harder against my face.

I devoured him. My appetite for his body, his moans, and his pleasure was immense and growing. I licked and kissed and sucked him in turns, my hands dragging up his back and down again, holding his cheeks wide apart and kneading them with firmness and care. Every little more of my tongue reflected itself in Zain’s squirming, coiling body. His muscles strained and knotted in the heat of the passion. He held the cover on the bed like it was the only thing keeping him on the ground.

My lips trailed down his taint and to his balls, kissing and licking as I went, and Zain shuddered and laughed in surprise. “Fuck, that feels…” But my tongue returned to his hole, and he cried out with pleasure that made the rest of his words redundant.

Zain didn’t flinch when my index finger circled his wet hole, massaging him gently for a long time. I made slow motions, applying pressure just to test his readiness, and he accepted me with each move of my finger. With a generous amount of lube, I rubbed him slowly for a long time before I let my finger slide into him.

The shaking sigh he exhaled was the highest pleasure I could have imagined. It was a release of so much that he was holding down. It was the complete surrender of his body to my mercy with indestructible belief that I would take him to heaven and back.

My finger worked him gently, slicking him with lube before I switched my motions to loosen him a little. Each turn of my hand made his toes curl and his voice rise. “Please,” he whispered, thrusting his butt up toward my hand. “Yes. Yes. Like that.”

I had to remember how new this was to him. I had to keep myself in check and give him these sensations in small pieces, take care it didn’t hurt more than he could handle, and ease him into it so it wouldn’t overwhelm him.

His hole tightened around my finger when he gasped, a moan following a heartbeat later. I’d pressed my finger against his prostate, making his muscles twitch in the surprise wave of excitement and pleasure. It was all so fresh for him, and being with him made me experience these feelings in a new, almost innocent way.

When I added another finger, Zain’s breathing grew shallower, his moans dropped deeper, and he held the linens in a tighter grip. He took it bravely, encouraging me occasionally to keep going just like that.

And when two fingers seemed to slide into him easily, Zain took my wrist and held it hard, pushing my fingers into himself as deep as they could go and gasping for air for a heartbeat or two. “Need you,” he huffed. “Inside me.”

After a moment, he released my wrist, and I pulled my fingers out.

As I undid the button and the zipper on my pants, Zain turned to look at me. “Can you…keep them on?” he panted.

A smirk touched my lips before I could stop it. “Absolutely,” I purred.

The blush that appeared on his cheeks was well worth it. I lowered my underwear and pants just enough to release my painfully throbbing cock.

Zain spread his legs wide on the bed and lifted his ass higher, his back arching down and chest resting on the mattress. He put his hands on his butt, feeling it gently in a way that turned me on madly as soon as he began. Down between his legs, his balls were already lifting and tightening, his taint pronounced, and his hole glistening with lube and spit.

I slipped the condom on and rubbed myself with lube, kneeling carefully behind Zain. I made sure that his bare thighs could feel the fabric of my pants as I thrust my dick between his cheeks, rubbing him roughly against myself.

His moans told me just how much he enjoyed these feelings. My own heart was thundering in my chest uncontrollably.

“Please,” he whimpered. “Dominic, please, I can’t…” His hand moved around to touch his cock, but I sucked my teeth and grabbed his wrist.

“Not yet, baby,” I said firmly.

Prickles covered his upper arms, and he shuddered. “Fuck me,” he begged.

I held his wrist pressed against his lower back as I used my other hand to navigate my cock. The tip rubbed against his hole, the contact making him tighter for a moment, and I waited for him to relax. It was visible, his muscles loosening all over, and I ventured gently into him.

Zain’s voice strangled, and I pulled back, preparing him carefully before trying again. He was such a tender, inexperienced lover that it woke up something I hadn’t known had been sleeping in me. It awakened a protectiveness that made me want to wrap my arms around him and never let him experience pain again in his life. Not a moment of fear, sadness, or hurt would I let befall him.

But he was brave, too. In searching for the highest pleasure I could offer, he lifted himself higher and leaned against me, taking me deeper into his body and holding his breath until I knew that every trace of pain was gone. All of him relaxed again, warmth welcoming my cock as I slid deeper into him.

Zain’s fist was closed tightly on the small of his back. It relaxed now as I put my other hand on his hip and held him in the proper position, swinging my hips slowly back and forth and letting him get used to the sensation.

I watched the muscles of his back ripple as he took me deeper in. He lifted his torso and punched his free fist into the mattress, gritting his teeth and panting while I fucked him. Beads of sweat collected on his back as we worked together for mutual pleasure. My hips swayed slowly, then faster, testing his limits in this delicate dance we danced.

His eagerness won over his inexperience. It made up for any seeming lack of knowledge, as it always would. He didn’t need to know the particular ways of moving his body or some specific positions that would drive me crazy with wanting, so long as he expressed his desires as earnestly and honestly as he did. To see him strain to receive me or lift his head and grunt his pleasure was all I wanted. It was all I needed.

My chest tightened as I let go of his wrist and dragged my hands up his back, over his shoulders, and wrapped them around his neck. I neither tightened them nor moved them. They rested around his neck firmly, unflinchingly, as the muscles in my abdomen worked to keep me moving.

Our voices, low and high, mixed into a symphony of our own.

Our entire beings moved, connected, and transcended their physical form.

I gently tightened my hold on his neck and lifted Zain up, his torso rising straight as I impaled him on my length. His back pressed against my front; sweat and heat sealed us together, and I wrapped one arm around his tense torso, leaving the other to hold his throat.

Zain’s head fell on my shoulder, and I kissed his cheek.

His hands held on to my arms. Swinging his hips to match my rhythm, Zain thrust his butt against me, taking me in with newfound ease. And I knew he loved this. I knew he was glimmering with pride and confidence that he could do this. I remembered my own first time and the somewhat misguided sense of adulthood that came with knowing I was capable of this.

“Fuck me harder,” he pleaded hoarsely.

My legs rubbed against his, the fabric of my pants caressing him as I picked up my pace. I held back, of course, but I gave him enough intensity in this wandering exploration of physical pleasures that he cried out.

“Just like that,” he begged, clutching my arms so hard that his nails must have left marks on my flesh.

I held him tighter. My own body was out of my control. The oneness with Zain was all I could feel, all I was still aware of. I kissed his cheek, his ear, and his jawline and lost myself in the scent of his washed hair and the gentle, distant scents of sex and lube. I gave myself to the music of his moans and gasps and the intensifying wet slaps of flesh against flesh.

I didn’t stop him when he reached to touch himself. My hand followed his. I wrapped it around his fist and held him tightly and still, ramming myself into him and thrusting his hips forward. His cock pushed through his fist with each move I made, and the tension rising in his body was palpable. It culminated so perfectly in a rising cry of joy, a glorious display of pleasure, and his hot cum spilled on the bed and down the back of my hand.

He shuddered and trembled and moaned as I fucked him, my paces reaching a new high as I neared my climax. The sensation of the hot, wet spill down my fingers was enough to push me near the edge, and I hurried to seize the moment of bliss that was offered to me.

I lifted my left hand, Zain’s cum glistening white all over my fingers, and brought it around his neck to my lips. As I licked it, Zain turned to me, and I brought the fingers to his lips to watch him taste himself. Deviously, deliciously, Zain licked the whiteness off my fingers, and I lost every last ounce of restraint, slamming my lips against his and sharing the flavors of his cum between us.

My dick throbbed hard before I could pull it out and take the condom off. It jerked violently inside Zain’s tightening, pulsing hole, and I filled the condom while grunting and growling hard against his mouth.

The slow, unpredictable journey from a place of innocent beauty to devious desire brought us to a moment of complete unity. And when it was over, this blazing moment in time, I pulled my cock out of him, threw the condom aside, and brought Zain down to lie with me.

I didn’t want to lose him. Not even for a moment. Not even for as long as it took to shower the sweat off our bodies. I didn’t want to part with him just now.

So I held him as we caught our breaths.

Sweat cooled on our bodies, but the fire that had burned in us so hotly still gave off its heat.

“Boyfriend,” Zain whispered, looking at me from beneath those long, dark eyelashes.

I buried my head in the crook of his neck. I didn’t know why. Part of me wanted to hide my face. Part of me was still so desperate to preserve the shards of my heart from any hurt that could come my way that I didn’t want him to see how incapable I was of holding back a smile that one word dragged out of me.

I was happy.

I was so unspeakably happy that it terrified me.

So I kissed his neck and breathed slowly, holding him so tightly that neither of us could move.

Somewhere in this wonderland, we both fell asleep, and the night embraced us gently, taking us slowly to a new and exciting day.