Page 16 of Becoming Ben

My body convulses violently, each slow pull of Trey’s hand pulling a new spasm through me and coating his shirtfront with the evidence of my enjoyment.

I collapse against his chest when I’m finished, and he puts his arms around me, kissing the top of my head. “So good for me,” he whispers, and I shiver.

When the shaking stops, I sit up and look at him, and I feel the blood rush to my face. He’s coated in my spunk, streams of it making his dress shirt see-through. He looks down at himself, then grins at me. “Good job,” he says.

“Oh my god,” I groan in embarrassment, then it’s forgotten when I realize he hasn’t finished yet. Suddenly the fantasies of earlier tonight have come to life. “Oh… Do you– Can I–?”

He shifts his hip, and oh, yes, he’s still hard–Holy shit, he’s big!

It feels like he can read my thoughts when he chuckles. “I’d love a hand if you’re comfortable,” he says. “No pressure.”

I laugh a little as well. “I think there’s probably quite a bit of pressure,” I tease, sitting back enough to work his pants open. He groans when I get him out and weigh him in my palm. Big hands, big feet, big…

I brace myself on his shoulder to give myself enough room to work, kissing him again as I stroke. I may not have done this to anyone else, but even I know how to jack off. His hips shift under me, and we find the rhythm that seems to work for him. I alternate between kissing him and watching his face in awe while I work him just like I imagined. His breathing grows harsh, and I pull back slightly to marvel at the sight of him erupting all over my hand. Just seeing it has my own dick twitching valiantly. I sigh in satisfaction, dropping my head to his shoulder.

Trey reaches over and cradles my face, lifting me up and pressing a soft kiss to my lips. “So good,” he murmurs and holds me against him while we both catch our breath.

14

Trey

Iwalk Ben to bed and say good night with sweet kisses and a promise to see him in the morning. I fall asleep quickly, feeling content and satisfied. Unfortunately, it doesn’t last. The morning dawns with a weighty sense of guilt. The reason I don’t do casual sex is because I don’t feel it’s fair to have that kind of intimate contact with someone who doesn’t know my past. And my past isn’t the kind of thing I casually talk about. I have to come clean with Ben and hope that the revelations won’t change how he feels about me. There’s a very real chance that after he’s had a chance to think, he’ll be freaked out about last night and that what I have to tell him will freak him out more.

It’s Sunday, so we have lots of time. I kind of wish I had to rush off to work so I could put it off, but I know that avoidance isn’t the answer. Washing myself in the shower gives me flashbacks of Ben’s face last night. Watching him lose control was amazing. Afterward, the feel of his hand on me put everything that had come before to shame. When I had thought about telling him everything prior to today, I had worried about my place to live and whether he would want me to stay away from Mandy. Now, those seem trivial, next to the fear that I might not be able to hold him again.

The kitchen is filled with the scent of eggs, sausage, and coffee. I intended to get a cup of coffee and sit Ben down for a talk. I walk behind him on the way to the coffee maker, and my feet stop of their own accord. He’s rolling up breakfast burritos on the work surface next to the stove, and I can’t help myself. I wrap my arms around him from behind and bury my face in the cradle between his neck and shoulder. “Good morning,” I mumble into his skin.

Ben lets out a little “eep” noise and a gorgeous full-body shiver. I feel goosebumps break out on his skin. I squeeze him a little tighter and press an open mouth kiss to his neck before I reluctantly let him go in favor of coffee.

“Good morning,” Ben replies belatedly, just a little high and squeaky. “Did you sleep well?”

I lean against the counter and smile at him over my coffee cup. I’m so reluctant to start this conversation, but literally every time I see him, he becomes more important to me. I have to do it right now before a rejection becomes something I can’t recover from. I feel my hands gripping my cup too tight. “I did. I slept great. Can we sit down and talk? Do you have time this morning?”

Ben’s hands make a nervous little kneading gesture, and I watch him take a deep breath before he answers. “Sure, of course. I just made food, we can sit and eat. I mean, obviously, I just made food. It’s not like breakfast burritos fell from the sky. That was a pretty good book, though. Did you ever read it?”

Even with my nerves twisting up my stomach, I have to grin at him. I have no idea what he’s talking about, but the nervous rambling is really, really cute. “I have not read a book about burritos falling from the sky. You’ll have to tell me about it sometime.” I pick up a plate and sit at the table. I’m sure I won’t be able to eat with the way I feel, but doing something together while you talk works with the kids at the shelter, so I might as well try it here.

Ben gets his own plate and sits across from me. As soon as he sits down, he starts apologizing. “I’m sorry if I did something wrong last night,” he begins, but I raise a hand to stop him before he goes any farther.

“Last night was wonderful, Ben. Seriously, look at me,” I coax him to meet my eyes. “It was incredible. You didn’t do anything wrong, and I hope it was as amazing for you as it was for me. However, because it happened and because you asked me about drinking, I need to tell you about my past. It’s not a great story, and I need you to listen and let me get it out before you ask any questions, all right?”

Ben looks concerned. “I’ll try not to interrupt, I promise.”

“Okay, when I was fifteen, I told my parents I was gay. They kicked me out that day with the clothes on my back.”

Ben makes a strangled noise and inhales like he’s going to say something, then physically claps his hand over his mouth and gestures for me to continue. I have to smile at the effort.

“My mom’s mom lived in Denver, and I hitchhiked there from Arizona. I had to give a trucker a handjob, but I told myself it wasn’t that bad because I was gay, right?” At this point, Ben’s face goes dead white and then fire-engine red, but he doesn’t say anything. “My grandma lived in an apartment building, and it took me a couple of days to find which one, but eventually, I managed. She was happy to see me and furious with my mom and dad. I never told her the things I did to eat and sleep until I found her, but they ate me up inside.” Ben starts to say something at this point, and I raise my hand again. I need to get as far as I can in this story before he interrupts me. He needs to hear all of it. “She got my parents to fill out custody papers, and they made me and her promise they would never hear from us again. We were both disowned. She enrolled me in school, and we did okay for a while. I got into some trouble with fighting, smoking weed, and drinking. I know now that I was trying to cope with trauma, but all I knew then was that I was angry and unhappy, and getting high or drinking made me feel better.”

I take a deep breath and a drink of my coffee, and Ben watches me over our untouched breakfast, obviously making an effort to give me space to talk. Now for the hard part. “I don’t know if I would have outgrown that and graduated high school if Grandma had lived, but she didn’t. Halfway through my junior year, I came home to find she was dead on the floor. She had a heart attack, and no one was around. Social services called my parents, and they said I wasn’t their problem anymore, so I went into foster care. The first house I was in was fine. The people were nice, but it was only short-term. The next house was a religious couple, and there was lots of going to church and praying. That would have been fine, but the foster dad kept coming into my room at night. I’d wake up to him watching me sometimes. Then, one night, I woke up, and I was awake, but I couldn’t move, and he had his hands on my junk. I’m pretty sure he put something in my dinner. I wasn’t there the next night. I packed a backpack, stole some cash from her purse, and ran. I don’t know what the foster parents told social services because I never got caught. I lived on the street from just before my seventeenth birthday until I was twenty-two.”

“Jesus!” Ben exclaims, finally losing his control.

“Just let me finish, please,” I beg him. “This is hard, and it gets worse. I needed money and a place to stay. You can’t just be outside in Denver in the winter. I couldn’t go to a shelter because they had to report to social services. There are pretty much two choices when you’re on the street at sixteen. I chose sex work over dealing drugs, but the drugs got me anyway. It just didn’t seem like a big deal at first. A lot of the customers want to get high with you, and the pimps like addicts because they’re easier to control. At about twenty or twenty-one, though, my addiction got out of hand, and I got too big to make much money. Too intimidating for johns. I was just scrambling from one fix to another any way I could. Eventually, the only way I could get money or drugs was stealing or violence, and I hated myself for that. Even if I was ‘only’ beating up dealers, I hated using my size against someone. I only hit a few dealers before one of the gangs came around and beat me up bad enough to hospitalize me. They said it was the only warning I’d get, that they’d kill me next time.”

I take another quick drink of my coffee. This is the first time I’ve ever told the whole story from start to finish like this. Even Mandy got pieces over time. Ben is leaning back in his chair now like he’s trying to get away from me. My heart sinks in my chest, but I’m determined to finish it.

“They kicked me out of the hospital as soon as they were sure I wouldn’t die immediately, with a set of crutches and a painkiller prescription. I had no money to fill the prescription and no place to go. I was making a plan to rob a convenience store for the money to fill the script and then sell what pills I didn’t take right away, but someone kicked one of my crutches, and I fell flat on my face right in front of the shelter I work at now. Somebody who worked there picked me up and got me inside. They filled the prescription for me, but they would only give me the amount it said on the bottle. It was a long road back to being human, and there were some stumbles, but by the time I was twenty-three, I had twelve months of sobriety and my GED. I needed a lot of therapy to deal with the trauma of the sexual assaults and sex work in general, as well as the worthless feeling that living on the streets gives you. One of my counselors asked what I wanted to do with my life, and all I could think of was helping other people make their way back from where I’d been. They helped me navigate college admission and scholarships, and here I am.”

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