Page 49 of Lace

There was a dimension to having another man inside him, to being the one taken over, that he’d never anticipated from the other end of the stick. The skirt might have felt comfortable and right when he’d finally allowed himself to put it on for real. This was more. This was complete. This was everything he hadn’t known he’d been missing, wanting, craving.

“Okay?” Levi asked.

In answer, Caleb reached and dug fingers into Levi’s thighs, drawing him closer. “Don’t stop,” he panted. “Just…don’t ever stop.” He rocked harder, meeting Levi’s increasing thrusts with movement of his own, wanting this sensation as deep as he could get it, where it would become a part of him that he’d never lose.

“Need to…” Levi adjusted his weight, shifting his position until Caleb felt the weight of him pressing his whole body intothe bed and had Levi’s arms wrapped as tightly around him as his body was around Levi.

Their rocking was a hard, animal movement without much rhythm or delicacy, and not even a lot of friction, but Caleb relished the tight hold, the safety of being completely engulfed in Levi.

He had enough pressure on his own cock that he knew he wasn’t going to hold out long. Despite wanting this moment, the one and only time it could be his first time, to last, he knew it wouldn’t, and he didn’t have much warning for his lover when his balls drew tight and that tingle started in the pit of his gut. Hot cum spurted between them, slicking their stomachs, and Caleb’s body tightened and curled into Levi, his breath coming hard and short.

Levi’s fingers dug like steel into the muscles of his back and he knew when the other man let go of the careful, fierce control he’d exercised over the entire event. He could feel the throb of his cock against the tight stretch of his hole and recognised the sounds of orgasm his Levi uttered as he came.

For long moments, there was no other sound in the room. Just the heavy breathing of two men trying to hold onto an impossible, fleeting thing. Caleb knew as soon as one of them spoke or moved, a little bit of that first-time magic would dissipate. He knew wanting to hold onto it was that same side of him that wanted the lace and the skirts and acceptance. That part of him that made him different, mismatched to what he was on the outside.

“Don’t want to let go,” Levi whispered, lips moving against the crook of Caleb’s neck as he spoke. “Never want to let go.”

Caleb tightened his embrace and said nothing. He concentrated on how Levi’s heart thumped hard enough he could feel it against his own chest—like that, too, had made its way inside him. The weight and warmth of his lover crushinghim into the mattress was welcome, but at some point, he’d have to move or his hip would seize up and his back would complain. The trickle of cooling dampness oozing between his cheeks finally convinced him he should do something, and he turned his head to kiss Levi on the closest available surface—his ear.

“I love you so much,” he whispered.

Levi shifted, rolled to one side and helped ease Caleb to a more comfortable position. “I kept expecting you to stop me,” he confessed.

Caleb shook his head, tracing his fingers along Levi’s jaw, trailing them over his lips and face. “No.” He smiled. “Might even let you do it again, but don’t think this is always how it’s going to be.”

Some days, he wasn’t going to be able to let even Levi see this much. Not right away.

“So this was just to get me back, was it?” Levi hiked up onto one elbow and grinned down at him. “Just to lure me back?”

Hooking Levi with one leg, Caleb smiled and shook his head. “No. Well…yes. But no. Those elevator doors opened, and you didn’t see the skirt. You saw me. That’s when I knew what I had. I was so careful to make every detail right, show you everything I want, everything I am, and you looked right past it all like it was nothing.”

“It’s not nothing.”

“I know.” Caleb pecked his lips and ran a finger over them. “I know. I didn’t mean it in a bad way. It’s just, that isn’t what you see when you look at me. Or, you’ve always seen what it is that makes me that way, and just…” He shrugged. “All my life, it’s been this thing shadowing me, hanging around, that elephant in the room?—”

“In a pink tutu.” Levi grinned.

“Shut up.” Caleb slapped him, but he couldn’t help the wide smile and the joy that Levi could make the joke in the first place.“Pink is so not my colour. But all this time, I’ve been waiting for you to remark on it, todosomething about it, and all along, you were waiting for me to realise…”

“Realise what?”

“All you were ever going to do about it was love me.” He shifted to face Levi better. “People see this about me, and they wonder what it is inside me that makes me this way. They judge, and even if they come down on the side of accepting that I’m different and deciding it’s okay, they start from a place of making a judgment. You never did. You just…didn’t see me as different in the first place, maybe? I didn’t know how to deal with that. I thought you just couldn’t possibly know, or realise how deep it went. That when you did realise, you’d bolt. Or kick me to the curb.”

He sighed and laid his head down on Levi’s arm under him. “I judgedyouinstead, before you could do it to me, and I got it so wrong. I’m sorry.”

“Oh, trust me, Cally, I saw the skirt. And my greedy little mind went straight to imagining the black lace. I’ve wanted so bad, for so long, to get you to see yourself how I see you. And then to watch Mitchell peel away the layers and get you to see it… I couldn’t handle it.”

Caleb couldn’t stand the look of pain on Levi’s face. He pulled him down, intent on kissing away the hurt, showing him that whatever Mitchell had got that Levi might have wanted, there was so much more that only Levi would ever have.

“We both screwed up,” Levi said when they parted.

“Yeah.” Caleb cupped his cheek. “I bet we both will again, but we can get past screwing up. We did this time.”

“Yeah. I guess we did, huh?”

“Yes. And to prove we’ll keep doing it, I am a sticky mess, inside and out, and you have no shower.”

“We can go down the hall.”

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