“Saint,” I gasp as he wipes his mouth along his forearm.
“Tastes so good,” he says. “One day, we’ll go somewhere hot where nobody knows us, and I’ll tie you to the bed and do that over and over until you don’t know which way is up.”
I grin at the idea. “I like the sound of that.”
“Good. But for now ...” He reaches for my hips and flips me onto my stomach. I can’t help but laugh as he puts on a condom. When he finally pulls me to my knees and enters me from behind, it’s heaven.
He places his hand between my shoulder blades and pushes my forehead to the bed. “Fuck, you look good like this.”
The bed creaks and the headboard hits the wall as he thrusts into me. I reach forward, pressing my hands against it to stop sliding forward. Saint kneads my ass, digging his fingers into my skin, holding me wide.
His thumb brushes over my other hole, making me tremble.
“Like that,” I say. “Please ...”
Using my own wetness as lube, he eases him thumb inside me a fraction and I feel so full.
In moments I come hard, reveling in the fact I orgasmed twice, even as stars dance in my peripheral vision. It’s like my body is a cornfield in the middle of a drought and Saint is the rainstorm.
He grips the back of my neck and pushes me down on the bed again. “Wrists, now. Hands behind your back.” His tone is raw with need.
I do as he says, and he grips them.
It takes him a moment to come, and I love the sharp shout of his release.
My body is sated, but my heart trips when he lies us back down and kisses my wrists, which still have the marks left by the cuffs and ropes.
“It’s good, right?” he asks. “This. You and me.”
I think about all the conversations I’ve had with my pop. I’m not sure how to trust what I’m feeling. It feels like the early days after a crisis are not the right time to fall in love. Heck, they aren’t even the right time to cut your own bangs.
But he’s right. I reach for this hand. “Yes, it does feel good.”
We’re yin and yang in so many different ways. Somehow, we’re working.
I think about it as we drive into the city after lunch. “Do you love the energy of New York?”
Saint navigates the Manhattan streets to the address I gave him. The sidewalks are clogged, and the roads jammed. “Not feeling it right now, I gotta be honest.”
I laugh. “I grew up in a Rust Belt city. Dad worked in the steel industry in Gary, Indiana. But the rise of foreign steel and automation meant less American steel, which meant fewer workers, which meant less businesses. He’s always believed in honest pay for an honest day’s work. Except the company he works for is always cost cutting. Dad just takes it; he’s stopped being angry about soaring company profits and CEO salaries. He lives with the illusion of job security. As a result, there were times when it felt like I was living in a ghost town.”
Saint takes my hand and squeezes it. “You wanted to get out of there?”
“I did. Don’t think my parents will ever leave. Especially Dad. You know, he’s never been on an airplane. He thought I was getting ideas above my station by going to college and that it was stupid to ‘get a degree in drawing.’ I mean, he was proud when I got a scholarship, but he still thinks people with degrees don’t get the real world. And I understand his perspective, because the people shafting him left, right, and center are fancy consultants with fancier degrees. I wonder if his fears are because the world he’s built for himself is all he knows, and there’s safety in that.”
“You see similar kinds of thinking regarding the army. Some of the kids who enlist are straight-up army brats. Grandfather was army, dad was army, and now they are third generation who want a piece of it. But others only enlist because they’ve been told since birth that this was their path out. And it works for some. It really does. Ask Spark and he’ll tell you that he found a freedom in the discipline. I found freedom in the work. But it’s never gonna work for everyone.”
I look out of the window and see the deli, the laundromat, the bodega, the ballpark, all the yellow cabs, and the diversity of the people on the sidewalk. “At least they travelled with the army. Saw something of the world. Although there are better places to go than a war zone. If you’re born in Indiana and encouraged to stay in Indiana, you never get the chance to broaden your worldview.”
Saint bites down on his lip for a second. “I suppose it depends whether you are running from something or to something. Whether you are staying because you are scared or because you feel perfectly happy where you are. Like me, I was running from my homelife. The army was simply the vehicle. My dad believed spare the rod, spoil the child. He’d beat us with whatever was within arm’s reach. A shoe, a whip, the Bible.”
I turn to face him and place my arm on his bicep. “Ryker, that’s horrific. I’m so sorry.”
He glances at me. “Saint.”
“Shit. Sorry. But you can’t tell me something so sad and not expect me to feel for you.”
“And that’s why we never use real names, so you don’t feel compelled to. But there was a time or two when Dad would wave that Bible about and get folks at church to touch it for some reason, and I would bite back laughter, knowing the last surface the good book touched was my teen ass.”
