11. Christian

ELEVEN

CHRISTIAN

Milo had rummaged through his wardrobe and produced an oversized hoodie, a pair of sweatpants, and a pair of dark blue briefs for me to take into the shower. Sweat had soaked through my clothes by the time we returned to his place. It had also cooled down significantly, making any attempts at existing inside my clothes unbearable.

It was the waiting afterward that brought on the waves of flutters in my belly. While Milo was in the shower, singing joyfully, I sat at the small dining table with my hands folded in my lap, looking around the place. The subdued lights that gave off warmth mixed with the countless candles that had clearly been in use for some time. They were everywhere—on every windowsill and every empty surface. They spoke of romance and aphrodisiacs, of clear signals and open invitations. And I wondered if that was what we were doing.

Would he want to?

Would I?

My heart stumbled nervously whenever I thought about it. It was sex, pure and simple, yet it scared me in ways I hadn’t felt before.

My foot tapped the floor restlessly until I forced it to calm.

A few heartbeats later, the water was off in the bathroom. My foot resumed its tapping, and I failed to stop it this time around. My hands were slick with cool sweat as I reached for the glass of water on the table and drank some. I suddenly forgot what it looked like to be a normal human being. I forgot how to sit or where to look. Was I slouching? No, my back was too stiff. I shifted in the chair, squirmed really, and balled a fist on which I rested my chin, except that my elbow had nowhere to rest, so I decided it looked silly and scrapped the whole plan.

How long did it take an average person to dry and dress after a shower? And was anything about Milo average? And what would I do with this information if I had it?

I licked my lips, wished I had some balm, remembered exactly where in my room I had left it, then had some more water.

Outside, a light dusting of snow was coming down from the sky, and I was suddenly grateful we were inside his little studio. It felt like the perfect place to be on a cold winter night. After rolling in the snow, it was lucky we had a place as nice and cozy as this to warm ourselves up. And Milo had turned on the heating so high that it felt like a deliberate effort to undress me.

Had he thought of that? I doubted it. But if he had, it was starting to work.

The anticipation of looking into his eyes once he stepped out of the bathroom grew tighter in my chest. It felt like an invisible hand squeezed me mercilessly.

Would he even dress himself before stepping out? My imagination, colorful and fast, took hold of my conscious mind. It launched me into a vision of Milo stepping out in a cloud of steam, naked and willing. My chest shuddered with an inexplicable combination of longing and fear. Wouldn’t that solve just about everything? It would relieve the pressure off me in having to make decisions and moves. I would simply know where we stood. And aside from the certain mechanics—and let’s face it, I had my best friend with me to show me the way—I would know what to do. As it was, I sat in this silence, waiting to face him, waiting to face the choices I had made, and to either stand up and take what my heart desired or let doubts creep in once again in the slow and painful journey between a maybe and a yes.

I held my breath as light footsteps moved through the bathroom, and the knob slowly turned. White light poured into the narrow hallway as Milo stepped out. He wore a light gray sweater and matching sweatpants, his bony feet bare on the wooden floor, his hands busy with a towel soaking up the water from his hair. There was no thick cloud of steam that would slowly reveal his nakedness. Instead, his face was flushed and his eyes bright. His wet hair took on a honey-brown color that was nothing like the bright gold when it was dry. His long, dark lashes framed his eyes and invited my heart when he blinked.

“Want some tea?” he asked.

I thought about it. “No.”

He stepped closer, shaking his hair and tossing the towel over the back of the chair. “I’m sure I have cards somewhere if you want to play.”

We had spent countless winter nights playing cards. But… “I don’t think I want to play cards just now.”

“What do you want?” he asked softly, patiently, without a hint of hope or pressure. It was a forward question that begged a forward answer.

And all my doubts fell away as I rose to my feet. It really was very simple when you didn’t overthink it. “I want you,” I said.

Although the hot shower had left his face a little red, the blush that crept into his cheeks was sudden and obvious. He folded his lips momentarily, but a bright smile prevailed. He extended both arms toward me, palms up, and I took them, pulling him into a warm embrace.

I could do this without a hitch. I could do it without fear and doubt. Because this wasn’t some random act of exploration. This was Milo. Things were always special with Milo.

As our bodies came close, he let go of one of my hands and put his on the back of my head, gently stroking it from the top to the back of my neck. His cheek brushed against mine as our torsos pressed together.

“You know, if you just want to make out, we don’t need to…” The words trailed off for a heartbeat.

I snatched that opportunity like it was a firefly in the depths of a summer night. “I want everything.”

Breath hitched audibly in Milo’s throat, and I put a hand on the small of his back, nudging his waist closer. When his crotch pressed against mine, the sensation was much sweeter than back in the field by the Old Ridge Road. This time, I was expecting it. More than that, I was hoping for it.

Milo was hard, his bulge pressing gently against me and air dragging into his lungs with immense effort.

My lips hovered an inch away from his, teasing his patience until he used the hand that was on the back of my head to bring our mouths together. Lips on lips, body against body, we kissed in a moment of brilliant heat and light, sharing something we had never shared before. Not this morning, not in the field; we kissed like lovers, eager and unrestrained. There was no testing the waters here. We had left the experiments behind us and kissed with a purpose. I wanted him, body and soul, and he was willing. He. My past raced before my eyes, and all the doomed relationships played out in a quick slideshow of memories. The bare minimums, the passionless mechanics of sex, the steps one needed to take in order to move from point A to point B only to then shower and sleep the deep, dreamless sleep. It had been a waste of time, a waste of life.

This was something else completely. Milo, with his tender and hopeful hold on me and his parting lips welcoming my tongue, was unlike anyone I’d kissed before. The quietest moans coming from him were like the winds that spread a wildfire through my body. The gentlest touches were the embers that brought on a blaze of lust.

His most tender shifting from left to right made me desperate with longing.

I wanted to shake and shiver, to cry in the face of such beauty, and to fall onto my knees before him. I wanted to show him the affection that he rightfully deserved. But all I knew to do was kiss him.

My hands moved over his back, rising and falling, feeling the bunching muscles that only vaguely and distantly reminded me that Milo was a man, a whole new style. I kissed him freely, no longer afraid of making some terrible blunder. If I couldn’t trust him, then who could I trust at all? If I couldn’t make an embarrassing mistake with my Milo, what was the point of trying anything ever again?

As if a divine force filled me with power, I felt my muscles swelling and strength rising through me. I held on to him, pressing us close and hard, letting our torsos get familiar with one another, rubbing our bulging dicks together, and breathing in and out our mingling breaths. Every little moan that left his lips came into my mouth, the tips of our tongues fearfully playing with one another.

The lingering knowledge that Milo was a guy—though never just any guy—no longer terrified me. I pushed aside the implications. Instead, it served to fuel the fire of passion between us.

I wondered, somewhere in the distant back of my mind, if the fact that we were both men made this somehow hotter. The forbidden element of it, the novelty, the surprise. Or maybe I had been voluntarily blind to the fact that I liked boys this much. Maybe it had nothing to do with the excitement of the unforeseen.

My right hand reached the back of Milo’s head, fingers threading through his rich, beautiful hair, fist closing gently and pulling his head back. It was another thing I had never done to a girl. I had never seen a face with such pained desire gaze up at me, lips parted and eyes needy. With shallow breaths, Milo put his hands on my hips, pressing us together to the point it hurt. How odd that pain, when inflicted kindly, could bring so much pleasure.

My cock throbbed, and my fist tightened around his head, making Milo lift his chin higher. And as he stood like that, unmoving, I brought my lips down on his. A kiss, desperate and sloppy, broke another barrier in my heart.

But I reminded myself that this was not about me alone. This was not my little experiment that rightfully belonged in college dormitories and drunken parties. Milo had wanted this for so long that whatever I did now, I had to do it carefully. I wasn’t going to break his heart for the sake of a new experience.

So I released his hair and cupped the back of his head, making a step forward that pushed Milo back. One more, then another, and the edge of the bed was behind Milo.

He ran his hands up and down my arms, kissing me back with hunger that no food could satisfy.

He gasped, pulling his head back. “Are you okay?” he asked.

“Yeah,” I huffed, only now realizing I was breathless. “And you?”

“I’m in heaven,” he whispered, his hands finding my hips again.

A grin stretched the corners of my lips at the sound of his voice. His hands slipped under my hoodie, which was pretty much a perfect fit for me, and shivers raced through my body. That was his bare skin on mine, his fingers on my flesh.

The novel desire was instant. I wanted him to like my body. We were fifteen years older now, and the childish feelings had become something else altogether. We were men now, and I wanted Milo to see me and like me.

It hadn’t crossed my mind that he might not until this moment. It hadn’t crossed my mind that what he longed for was to go back in time instead.

Sending these fears back to hell from where they’d come, I hooked the edge of my hoodie with both hands and lifted it over my head. See me , I thought. All of me .

Milo made a small, strangled sound when I threw my hoodie on the floor, and his eyes were wide and filled with desire as he looked at my torso. He lifted one slender, long-fingered hand and hesitated before touching me, his lips parted and air flowing carefully in and out of his lungs. He touched me with reverence as if I were something special, a feeling nobody had sparked in me my entire life.

And when his flesh connected with mine, everything in the world was good. Everything was exactly right.

“Let me see you,” I said softly, not ashamed, not overthinking, not worrying what he would think. And instead of waiting for him to make a move, I reached over and took the edge of his hoodie in my hands, then lifted it along his wiry torso. Only then did he help me, lifting his arms high and letting me undress him.

He was lean, the muscles of his torso lightly defined. The lightness of his body made his hips more pronounced, as well as Apollo’s Belt forming on the sides of his waist and leading down under his sweatpants. His abs, mostly flat under his taut skin, were a contrast to mine, which showed more clearly. His chest was broader than the hoodie had led me to think, his shoulders round and his biceps swollen. He was, in short, the most magnificent thing I had ever laid my gaze on.

“You can touch me,” Milo said with an undertone of bubbly humor.

And I did. I put my hands on his waist, surprised by the warmth of his body, and moved them carefully and deliberately up his torso. I pulled him in, making his abs touch mine while leaning my upper torso back to leave room for my hands. His nipples, small and dark, were a sharp contrast to his smooth skin once my thumbs moved over them. A small shudder passing through him told me they were more sensitive than mine. The flat chest with light definition and petite muscles was so different from what I was used to, yet moving my hands over it was profoundly and breathtakingly wonderful.

Milo moved closer with abrupt swiftness, as if he had been holding himself back until this instant and lost the battle at last, slamming his mouth against mine and kissing me so hard that it drained all the air out of my lungs and left me not caring about anything but the sweetness of his lips.

We kissed harder, almost grappling with one another as boys did, his hands slapping my biceps and holding on to me while I clung to his torso. He was so lithe that I feared any roughness would leave a bruise on him. It felt sacrilegious to bruise a body as ethereally beautiful as Milo’s.

Even so, I found myself holding on to him harder, my fingers sinking into his flesh, my lips moving over his as if it were the only thing keeping me alive, and my crotch rubbing against his with the growing desire to be free of our remaining clothes.

“I want you,” I whispered against his lips. “I want you so bad, Milo.”

He moaned at the sound of my voice, bringing himself closer to me. He turned us around so that the edge of the bed pressed against the back of my legs, just under my knees, and I lost my balance precisely as Milo had intended. I dropped onto the mattress, sitting down and looking up, while Milo stepped back, tilting his head a little. “Are you really ready for this?”

I didn’t hesitate. “Yes.”

He bit his lower lip, his hair falling on both sides of his face, framing its slender length and high cheekbones beautifully. He hooked his thumbs inside his sweatpants teasingly, but my arms shot forward, and I grabbed his hips, bringing him closer to me.

I wanted to tell him to let me do it, but my lips pressed silently against his flat stomach, and I kissed his heated flesh with careful and deliberate moves, going up and down while gently tugging on his sweatpants and pulling the back down over his firm, round ass. His briefs were pastel pink, something that made my heart hammer way more than it reasonably should have. I pulled my head back, still dragging his sweatpants down, and watched as the waistband got slowed down by his bulge, then slipped over it to reveal a hard length that was barely contained by the size of Milo’s briefs. At the very tip, where his cock stretched the fabric thin, a dark spot had formed. The sight of his precum made the butterflies in my stomach catch fire. My blood simmered with desire as my gaze locked onto it, my mouth watering and dick throbbing, all these new sensations racing through my nervous system.

Milo’s sweatpants dropped to his ankles, and I dragged my hands up his legs. He shaved his legs, I realized. They were smooth as silk, not a hair on his body. And as I discovered this, I learned that I liked it. Perhaps I would have liked him hairy had he chosen that. Perhaps my type was precisely what Milo was. Whatever the case, I couldn’t get enough of his smooth skin under my fingertips, my hands rising and falling on the outside of his legs, then circling back and inward to feel his thighs. And when I reached high enough to cup his ass, my heart skipped every other beat.

The feel of it was perfect, as if someone had sculpted his body to the exact measurements of my hands. Everywhere I touched him, he was my perfect fit.

“I want to see all of you,” Milo murmured.

In one sweeping motion, I lifted myself off the bed for long enough to slide both the sweatpants and the briefs down. In the next heartbeat, Milo’s hands were on my shoulders, pushing me back to sprawl on the bed.

I could see the shameless delight on his face and deep in his eyes. He gazed at my hard cock and the trimmed bush around it, at the happy trail leading up to my belly button and the smooth skin of the rest of my torso. And he slowly sank to his knees, hands on the waistband of my underwear, tugging slowly as he caressed me with his hungry gaze.

A total awareness of my naked body sprawling before him came over me. It wasn’t an unpleasant feeling. It was simply very new. There was a glimmer of excitement rising within me, born from the knowledge that the best man in the world was kneeling by the bed and dragging his beautiful gaze all over my body. And more than anything, this excitement came from knowing that Milo and I no longer had anything to hide.

All those wonderful years, we had been as close as two people could be, yet even so, some things had remained deeply hidden. Not anymore.

Milo skillfully released my ankles of the sweatpants and briefs that tangled there, then ran his slender hands up my legs, my thighs, and around my crotch to the sides of my waist. On their way back down, his hands grazed my hard cock gently, and I hissed despite myself. It was a sensation so disproportionately more exciting than the sum of its parts. A brushing, a thumb, a moving gesture, yet it vibrated through my insides until I could barely breathe.

“Do you want me to suck you?” Milo asked, his face tilting forward and his gaze hidden under his long lashes.

“Do you want to?” I asked, answering his question with a question.

Milo lifted his gaze, his hands still caressing my legs and sending tingles straight into my heart. The way he looked at me rendered words unnecessary. Of course I would , he said. I’ve been dying for it .

And I believed him. Perhaps out of vanity or, more likely, out of the place of safety with Milo. I believed that he wanted to, so I propped myself up on my elbows and scooted closer to the edge of the bed, bringing myself near his beautiful face while my heart thundered with thrills.

I held my breath as our gazes locked on one another’s faces, Milo’s hands rising along my thighs to the spot where they normally paused and pulled back. Not now. He continued upward, caressing the smoother skin of my inner thighs until the arches between his thumbs and hands came all the way to my groin, curves fitting together like pieces of a puzzle, the sensation of such an intimate touch making my dick leap.

Milo’s fingers moved inward and under my cock, and then he moved his hands around and held me in his right hand, stroking me slowly right before his face, never taking his gaze off my eyes. To be seen by him, watched so intently by him, while he held me in his hand felt like my soul lay bare before a god. A god of all things beautiful and fine. A god of unimaginable pleasure. A god of small joys and big.

I shuddered and held my breath calmingly. My teeth clamped around my lower lip as Milo slowly leaned in and helped me plunge with him into a completely different kind of life and pleasure. We crossed the threshold together when his sexy red lips wrapped around my dick, his head bobbing down slowly and his eyes melting with all his dreams coming true. And this time, I knew it wasn’t my vanity speaking. I knew what Milo looked like when he got what he wanted the most. Only now, his wishes were far more mature, but the joy in those big, wonderful sapphires was impossibly familiar.

A moan ripped from me as my cock filled Milo’s mouth. His gaze pierced me, watching for any sign of discomfort or doubt and finding none. Milo’s hands sank into the mattress on either side of my body, and he used his mouth to give me the pleasures I hadn’t dreamed of. When he tilted his head lower, I could no longer look into his eyes. Instead, my gaze traced his torso.

He was kneeling, but he had lifted himself high enough to sink on me from above, his back flat and arms spread, his shoulder blades sticking out, his hair tucked behind his ears, and falling over the sides of his face stubbornly. It was divine, more so than anything holy I had ever come across.

Milo’s muscles bunched and relaxed as he sucked me, his pace steadily increasing as he dipped his head lower, taking me in deeper by a fraction of an inch every time. His breath, hot and hurried, came from his nose, washing over my abdomen and taking in my scents whenever he inhaled. He sucked me harder, deeper, taking me into his throat; I could feel it constricting around the tip of my cock, and I could feel myself teetering on the edge of an orgasm I wanted so desperately to delay.

My fists clutched the linens, and Milo’s hands wrapped tightly around my wrists. Inseparable, but in a whole different way, we found a rhythm that was dictated purely by our bodies, and yet we matched one another’s tunes in perfect harmony.

And when I no longer trusted myself to hold back against the splashing, crushing waves of pleasure, I grunted and told him to wait. Slowly, Milo lifted his head, his eyes glassy with lust and his face heated with desire. He licked his lips, although his chin was wet and glistening, and my cock throbbed as air cooled down the hot wetness that covered it.

“I want to…” I said and halted, unsure of the feel of these words on my tongue. “I want you in my mouth.”

“Are you sure?” Milo asked, slightly alarmed.

I nodded fervently. “Absolutely.”

He hesitated only a moment longer, then moved back from me with an air of determination. “Slowly,” he said. “No need to rush.”

I nodded. “Tell me if I…hurt you.”

As he stood up, the dark spot of precum was larger, making the rest of his strawberry milkshake briefs seem paler in comparison. He hooked his thumbs inside the white stripe of the waistband, circled around his waist to the back, and turned slightly away from me. I wasn’t sure if he had done it intentionally, but the gesture made it possible to see his front and back as he undressed. He pulled his briefs down over his smooth, firm butt, making my heart leap into my throat. As he bent down to drag his underwear to his ankles, my gaze followed. This was definitely something I wanted far more than I had ever expected, yet it was something I must have been wanting for longer than I realized.

It felt right. It felt so much more right than any intimate encounter of my life.

As I sat up on the edge of the bed, Milo stepped out of his briefs, leaving them on the floor and turning to me, his cock long and hard, swaying heavily as he moved around. And when he stood, one hand lingered on his flat stomach, and the other hung limply on his side.

My gaze moved over the smooth skin of Milo’s crotch, the length of his cock that pushed over eight and a half inches without a doubt, and the plump, smooth balls hanging between his legs.

With a watering mouth and wide eyes, I lifted my head. “You’re so pretty,” I whispered, failing to fully capture my meaning in words. Pretty? That was not even close to what I had meant to say. He was the embodiment of all the light in the universe. He was the god of erotic pleasure himself. He was the perfect counterpart to my lost and wandering soul.

And yet, Milo’s face lit up as if I had said all this and not just one well-worn word.

Giddiness filled me as I moved closer to him, my hands resting on his hips as I slid off the bed and knelt before him. At twenty-eight, it was a shockingly new perspective to kneel before someone and look up at them with lust-filled eyes, but I loved that I was here, all the way down, while Milo watched me from up there.

“Slowly,” Milo whispered as I opened my mouth.

Else you’ll choke , he didn’t say, but I deduced a thing or two about it.

I parted my lips wider, perhaps a little too wide, and wrapped my hand around his cock. Even holding it felt strange to me, somehow odd after years of holding only my own dick in that hand, but I brushed that off and inhaled deeply as I leaned in. The dominant scent of cinnamon and almond and honey body wash made itself known first, but the underlying hint of Milo’s natural musk was the thing that made my heart hammer faster. It was wonderful, as if designed solely for my nostrils and my pleasure. The slickness of the tip of his cock invited me, and I closed the distance between us, taking him inside my mouth, the tip rubbing against the middle of my tongue. A peculiar flavor I couldn’t pour into words if I had a million years, and all the dictionaries in the world were both sweet and savory, yet the word that came to mind was “soft.” Could a flavor be soft?

My lips closer around Milo’s cock, and he throbbed inside my mouth, causing a smile to tug the corner of my lips. My face tensed in the moment of smiling, and Milo laughed as he felt it. He laughed shortly and joyfully, not mockingly. And it was at that moment that I knew just how safe I was in his hands.

It was alright to laugh. It wasn’t a performance for an audience under the stern tutelage of Madame Giry but a deeply intimate act between two people who were just so comfortable with each other.

And after that, I relaxed, taking him into my mouth and making my heart do somersaults with every new barrier coming down and every new record getting beaten by the next.

Milo’s hands rested on my shoulder and the back of my neck, but he didn’t swing his hips or thrust himself deeper into my mouth. He allowed me to find my boundaries, so I did. Slowly and deliberately, I sucked him, making sounds that he hadn’t made when the roles had been reversed. And when I felt him reaching close to my throat, I couldn’t force it to relax the way Milo had his. Each attempt only made my eyes water and my heart pound.

Yet the sound of Milo’s pleasure-filled moans was the finest music I had ever heard. At a glance from down below, I could see the way the muscles of his torso tensed and shivered with exertion, and I could tell he enjoyed this. He rose to the tips of his toes and returned in intervals that had no clear pattern, but somehow, they were answers to the things I did with my tongue. And while I couldn’t take him even half as deep as he had taken me, my throat refusing to relax for him, I could move the tip of my tongue over the rim of his cock’s head and across the slit in a way that made him shudder.

Milo tore free of me and heaved a deep breath into his lungs, then ran his fingers through his hair and looked into my eyes. “Fuck,” he whispered. “Christian…”

“Come here,” I said, rising to my feet. My cock stood at full mast, so hard that it hurt, and straightening my back sent a bolt of pain through its length that I had to let a moment pass before I could move again. “This is so hot.”

Milo’s eyes widened briefly in reply. “Do you want to fuck me, Christian?”

My heart grew twice its size, and my dick pulsed painfully. “Fuck yeah,” I said in a low whisper. It was the best I could do.

Milo climbed into the bed on all four, his lower back bent inward and his ass lifted high. Seeing him kneel in front of me, seeing the shape of his body and the tender flesh between his cheeks extending down to a thick taint and heavy balls, made me dizzy with a fresh wave of lust.

I wanted to taste him. I wanted to put my lips all over him and give him wild, world-shattering pleasures that nobody else ever could, yet I knew I was an amateur, and my skill only went so far, no matter the size of my intentions. Even so, I followed him into the bed while he reached over to the nightstand and produced condoms and lube. Before taking them, I put my hands on his lower back and dragged them closer to feel his peachy ass. Leaning down, I exhaled as if in a warning, and Milo moaned before folding his arms under his head. He lowered his head and upper torso to the bed, leaving his ass high up, and whimpered as soon as my lips touched the skin of his left cheek, moving inward until I was met with the warmth of his hole.

Now, nothing worried me at all. In fact, every cell in my body screamed with a desire to taste him. And if there had been any time I feared I might wake up from this trance and realize I had made a mistake, this had been its cue. Instead, I melted into him. My face buried between his cheeks, and my tongue dragged over his hole. The scent of honey and almond was strong, cinnamon existing somewhere in the background, and I kissed and licked him the way I would have done had he been a woman and I still been in denial about my desires.

Holding his hips so strongly that my fingers sank into his flesh, I yanked him back and pressed my face against him, sucking and licking his hole with growing intensity. I breathed through my mouth, making him moan whenever I exhaled, and minutes passed in blissful pleasure.

“Your finger,” Milo croaked in the heat of the moment.

He didn’t need to tell me more. My index finger appeared between my tongue and his hole in the moment that followed, and the pressure increased painfully slowly. This was, I realized, something I worried about. I couldn’t help myself. No previous experience resembled anything like this. I had sucked his cock the way he had sucked mine, no different from anything other people had done to me before. Yet this was new, and I feared I would hurt him. It was a fear so deeply rooted within me that it froze me, and I merely rubbed his tender hole in circles.

Either driven by lust or frustration with my careful movements, Milo reached back and grabbed my wrist, adding just enough pressure to direct me where he wanted me. My finger sank into the soft warmth of his body, and oxygen drained out of my lungs. It was incredible, every glimmering moment of it, to feel him tightening around my knuckle and relaxing. His hand gripped my wrist and showed me how to work him, nudging me back almost all the way out and pulling me back in, causing him to tense up and relax in erratic, unpredictable waves of sensations.

My finger worked him smoothly, my hand turning this way and that once I understood that it wouldn’t cause him pain. And Milo moved his hips in slow motions, pushing his butt back against me and pulling himself away from me as I worked him.

I leaned down, letting the tip of my tongue feel the upper rim of his hole just where my finger entered him, and I rested my other hand on the middle of his upper back, just between his bony shoulder blades.

“More,” he huffed in a strained voice. “Put one more.”

I did it with more courage than before, although I was careful when I felt him clenching around the first finger. I fumbled around the bed with my free hand and found the small bottle of lube, then brought it above Milo and squeezed a few generous drops over my fingers and his hole.

A pained cry ripped from him when my middle finger joined the first, the tightness of his hole bringing them both close before he relaxed a little.

“Are you okay?” I whispered.

“Perfect,” he said, and I believed him. He wouldn’t have lied to me, not about this. So I pushed my fingers deep into him, causing moans to rise from his lips and sweat to break under my hand on the middle of his back. He breathed in the rhythm of my fingers working him, then skipped that rhythm every now and then only to hurry and catch up.

My hand moved steadily in and out, stretching him and slicking him for my cock. It made sense to me on a very practical level, but that was nothing compared to the pleasure I received from seeing Milo coil and hearing him moan.

“I’m ready,” he said, his voice thin and frail as I pulled my fingers out. They were slick with lube and saliva, and his hole throbbed and glistened with wetness under the many small lights around the bed.

Milo turned around and lay on his back while I reached for the condom. He watched me, kindness and neediness mixing in his eyes. He displayed these things so freely, wearing his heart on his sleeve and his intentions on his face. It was a lifelong wish, yet it was even better because I was doing this out of my own desire, not just to do what he wanted.

“Do you want me like this?” Milo asked.

I had just slipped the condom down my cock—luckily, we wore the same size—and poured lube over my fingers. I paused and looked at him. He lay on his back, legs bent and spread wide for me, his balls resting between his legs and his dick hard and thick, lying on his lower abdomen. “Milo, I want you any way you like.”

A smile appeared on his face, and he nodded. “Good. Because I want to look at you.”

“Yes,” I agreed. I wanted to look at his face when he came. I wanted to look into his eyes in that moment of lust and pleasure and see that we had made all the right choices for once.

I rubbed myself with a slick hand while Milo tucked a pillow under his lower back.

I inched between his legs and leaned down. Milo wrapped his legs around my waist while I rubbed the tip of my cock up and down his taint, suppressing worry as I looked for his hole.

Milo’s hand came between us, and he took me, looking into my eyes with the kind of longing that had clearly withstood fifteen years of disappointment. No hurt existed there, only pride for prevailing against the odds.

I felt him relax as the tip of my cock pressed against his hole, his hand holding me firmly.

“Slowly,” he said. “And don’t worry. I’ll take care of us.”

My heart wanted to explode in my chest. It inflated with feelings that were beyond anything I could describe. And as these emotions spread through my body, I let my weight bring me down and inside of him.

Milo opened his mouth wider, but no sound escaped him. He tensed, I could feel it, and he relaxed. His hand moved from my dick and pressed my abdomen, slowing me down and pushing me back. Then, he nodded, urging me to return and sink deeper into him.

My dick throbbed wildly, threatening to end the fun just as it was beginning, but I held my breath and focused on his beautiful eyes as our bodies connected, merged into one being that was and had always been inseparable. We had always been the two halves of a broken locket, always been two threads of one unspooled friendship bracelet, and now we were whole. We were complete.

As Milo’s hands moved away from my abdomen and came all the way to my neck, his legs tightened around my waist, and I picked up the pace, penetrating him deeper and matching his moans with mine. Our breaths were synchronized, and so were our heartbeats. The joy of doing this with him was so impossibly big that I didn’t understand how so much of it could fit inside my chest. How was it not breaking me apart?

I never want to be without you , I thought as I brought us together as close as we could possibly get, my cock sliding all the way into him and sweat trickling down my back. Milo’s voice, finer than a bird’s song, rose as he switched between panting and moaning.

My grunts were low and throaty as I leaned a little lower, hips swinging now that I learned how to move more gracefully, our torsos occasionally touching. Milo kept his hands on the back of my neck and head while I ran my fingers through his rich, silky hair. And I kissed him. I kissed him with all the need to do it that could fit into me. I kissed him with an endless desire that only welled and welled, like a river that was about to spill out of its bed.

We made love for what felt like an entire night, yet the concept of time was erased from my mind. I didn’t know how long it lasted, and I didn’t need to. It lasted a lifetime and a second. It was everything and forever, yet it was over too soon.

Milo’s body convulsed under me as he slipped one hand between us. His dick was trapped between my stomach and his, but he held himself firmly and clenched his teeth as he gazed into my eyes. His breaths came in hisses between his teeth as I rammed my cock deep into him, never hurrying, always making sure we both felt the extent of pleasure that was given to us.

Milo shuddered while I fucked him, his hand wiggling and jerking, and his eyes rolled briefly. He rubbed the back of his head against the pillow, his cheeks flushed as if he’d run a mile and his muscles tensing everywhere, even down there, where it made my cock pulse madly to feel such tightness.

When he cried out that he was coming, I was holding on to my sanity with all I had, but it wasn’t much. In fact, I knew just how quickly I was losing my mind.

My dick throbbed faster and harder as Milo’s orgasm thundered through his body. His hole clenched and relaxed so quickly that I couldn’t have counted the times even if I’d tried. Instead, the sensation spilled through all of me, making my toes curl as I rammed myself into him, ripping a cry of pleasure and pain from Milo as hot ribbons of cum splashed and smeared between us.

My orgasm shattered what little sanity was left to me. It propelled my soul out of the Milky Way and across the stars, but Milo’s was there, too. In fact, it was impossible to tell them apart.

I blinked and found myself in Milo’s bed, our bodies coiled and tangled together, our breaths shallow and quick, our strengths spent to the last atoms. Yet we found the strength to kiss anyway. We kissed slowly and lazily, and the last lingering fears that I would regret it all afterward faded away.

There was nothing to regret. Nothing at all. Except, maybe, that we hadn’t stayed in touch and that we hadn’t gotten together sooner.

But as I couldn’t turn back time, I decided to be happy. And even that decision made me the happiest I had ever been.