Taking a few steps back, I widened the door. “Um, sorry for a taking a minute to answer. I just got out of a shower.”
“All good,” Micah said as he stepped inside, his keys spinning around his finger as he did a quick visual sweep of my living room. It wasn’t much to look at, just a small TV that sat on a stand I’d snagged from a yard sale at the Collective. The rest of my furniture was a clash of colors next to each other, secondhand purchases I’d found through Facebook Marketplace.
They’d been with me through the years, and despite being able to afford a whole new setup, I couldn’t bring myself to do it, not with the nightmares of being back on the streets haunting me.
Micah stopped to check out the bookcase I kept in the corner. It’d been a birthday gift Chance made for me last year. The first two shelves were covered in pottery I’d made over the last few months. Some I was damn proud of, most were failures, and still others brought comedic relief.
The third shelf was for photos. Kickball teams Tristan and I coached, including the kickball tournament the Collective had a couple years before. A snapshot of me and Duncan at his wedding, laughing during the reception about something I couldn’t remember. A small trophy Duncan got me for when I celebrated being one year sober.
Micah took in each shelf, his fingertips running along the pointed side of the shelf with the pottery. It left a funny flutter in my throat that I couldn’t swallow.
I waited for a comment on the condition of the apartment, but all Micah did was point to the empty side table next to the couch. “Mind if I put my stuff here?”
He had on a skintight black shirt with bright green lettering for the Hard Knox Roller Derby. I didn’t have the slightest clue what the hell that was, but I appreciated how much it showed off the firmness of his chest and stomach. And his black skinny jeans clung to him like a second skin. Those pants were too distracting.
He cleared his throat and pointed to the side table with a questioning look on his face. I blinked, coming back to my senses. “No, yeah, it’s totally cool.”
Micah set down his wallet and phone and walked to me, his eyes roaming down my body to my toes and slowly roving back up, stopping at my lips. “I have a question.”
“Okay,” I said, my pulse jackhammering so hard in my throat the word felt numb on my tongue.
His eyes locked on to mine, a devil’s smile curling at the corner of his mouth. “If we fuck now, how long will it take for you to go again?”
Well, that was definitely not the question I was expecting to be asked. “Dunno. Haven’t tried it before.”
Micah brushed his thumb over my bottom lip, eyes assessing as he pulled it slightly downward. “Wanna find out tonight?”
I licked the tip of his thumb, then pushed out my tongue so that he could run the flat of his finger along the middle. My cock immediately hardened, my entire body already on fire. I tilted my head away so I could say, “Hell yeah, let’s do it.”
A smile played around Micah’s lips as he joined me in the middle for a kiss. By the way he’d been checking me out, I expected things to start off in a similar fashion as they did the first three times, but they didn’t.
Micah ran the tip of his tongue teasingly over the seam of my mouth, coaxing it open and dipping inside for a taste. His hands were just as busy as his mouth, one palm running over my chest and stomach, the fingers of the other tangling through my hair, nails scratching along my scalp.
With his wily tongue taking the lead in this slow dance of a kiss, I somehow activated the two functional brain cells I still had and pushed him against the wall with a little more force than I meant to. The impact pried our mouths apart, and I pawed at his shirt and said, “Get this off.”
Micah breathed a husky chuckle, crossed his arms in front of him, removed the T-shirt, and dropped it onto the floor. He canted his hips forward, accentuating the dark trail of hair on his long torso, a bulge straining in those low-rise jeans that clung to him more like a second skin than actual clothing.
There was a flush spread across his chest, and I leaned in to run the flat of my tongue along it, humming happily at the way he groaned. I licked toward his nipple, circling a path around the hardened bud before latching my mouth on to it.
“Hm, yeah,” Micah murmured, his fingers tightening in my hair and holding me in place. “Suck it.”
Micah’s words didn’t sound like a command. It was a plea. His voice quivering on the edge of begging. I latched on to the hard nub, humming encouragingly at the resulting moan. As I switched between teeth and tongue, Micah continued his hums of approval, his grip on my hair unwavering.
This was good. So good. The question that’d been pounding in my head at practice was answered by the hitch of Micah’s breath, the trembling muscles of his stomach. Being with him felt dangerous, but worth it.
A part of me wanted us to take it slower than we had before, coax more sounds out of him, and learn how to make Micah melt under my touch. There was still so much to learn and catalogue, so many places to explore, but I also wanted to get these fucking clothes off.
Micah let out a confused hum when I released his nipple and pulled his hand out of my hair. His eyebrows scrunched together when I stepped out of his reach when he tried to rock his hips against mine. My hard-on was just as frustrated, but I didn’t want this to end too quickly, even if there was the promise of a round two.
I reached out to Micah’s belt and dragged the leather strap out of the buckle, the metal tinkling after I let go. He watched me work open the fly of his pants, and when I slipped my hand inside his briefs to release his cock, he exhaled a harsh breath.
“Fuck, I was so close to just doing that myself,” he said, his head hitting the back of the wall with a small thump. “Thought you were trying to edge me or something for a second.”
“Naw, that ain’t my thing,” I said while I carefully tugged his jeans over his ass and down his thighs.
I brushed my knuckles over the newly exposed skin and ran my fingertips across the crease where Micah’s thigh and hip met, coming dangerously close to the base of his cock. He hissed a breath between his teeth, his hips jerking forward, nose flaring. I could see he was gearing up to say something, but I reached for his hand and wrapped it around his cock.
Micah’s eyebrows rose, and I watched, mesmerized, as his long fingers adjusted into position before he slowly jacked himself off. He kept a steady pace for a bit, pressing his hard-on against his stomach as his other hand slithered below and touched his balls.
He exhaled a breath that held a hint of a groan before his other hand took a hold of his cock again, the art adorning the muscles of his arms dancing as he picked up a rhythm.
A fever took control of my body, burning my blood and making my skin itchy. Desperately, I yanked my joggers low enough to free my cock, the relief so good my knees went weak. I planted a hand on the wall, spat into the other, and matched Micah’s pace.
Sex was, in general, a messy process from start to finish, and it usually took a few rounds to leave the awkward stage and into more familiar territory. I half expected the awkwardness to show up, but it didn’t, even when our wrists knocked into each other or an elbow got in the way when one of us tried to adjust. It felt natural, sharing moans and breaths, swears, and declarations to god.
“Nik, look at me,” Micah said, the words choked but his voice pleading.
I’d heard these words before, out of the mouths of countless people: lovers, family, friends, dealers. There were people I’d had to do things with out of desperation for a fix, them spitting out a command while holding on to my throat.
I’d heard it through the sob of heartbreak from people who loved me, my body shaky to get back to my dealer, holding back the bile that threatened to punch out of my mouth.
But no one had ever comeas close to saying it the way Micah said my name, hushed and special, filled with heat, arousal, and desperation all at once; it was an experience branded in my mind forever.
Being witness to Micah like this—bottom lip wet and reddened from his teeth, cheeks flushed, and mouth parted as small bursts of air pushed out of him—was also something I knew I’d never forget. It was startling to know that I had made him look like this.
That knowledge also spurred me to the edge, until Micah’s eyes widened a little, and his mouth dropped, and he let out a shocked moan. Warmth splashed on my stomach and my hand, evidence of Micah’s orgasm, and the warmth of it was the very thing to rush mine to the finish line.
Without warning, I pitched forward and sunk my teeth into his shoulder, screaming into the heat of his skin while I came so hard my knees nearly gave out. Micah’s shocked gasp was distant over the roar in my ears, his fingernails abrading a sinuous trail down my spine to my ass.
I ripped my mouth off his shoulder with a pop, stroking my tongue around the indentations and pressing a small kiss on it. Hopefully, he wouldn’t be pissed about me ripping into him. “Sorry, I didn’t realize what I was doing until it was too late.”
The snort I got in return vanquished any worry. “I don’t break that easily. Don’t worry.” Micah shifted under me, and as we separated, I caught the wrinkle bunching up along the sharp slope of his nose. “And these jeans are done. Mind if I borrow something? I promise not to do any untoward harm to them.”
“Sure. Try not to move. I’ll be back,” I said, carefully untangling myself so that I wouldn’t end up with more mess than I already had. I gave a quick assessment and lifted a hand.
It was certainly comical having to walk to the bathroom with my joggers still hanging off my ass, but the giggle it got out of Micah was worth it.
“Next time we’re doing this in the bedroom,” I said, handing the washcloth to Micah to clean up his hand. “At least there I have baby wipes on the bedside table.”
Micah smirked at me for a moment and returned to cleaning up a rather impressive spot on his jeans. “Won’t hear me complain about that.”
“Hey, you hungry?” I asked as I walked into my bedroom to grab two options of sweats from my dresser and one of my shirts with sleeves that covered my elbows. I put the shirt on, catching Micah walking toward my bedroom out of the corner of my eye.
“Starving, actually,” Micah said, leaning in the doorway, his fly still open. He hadn’t fully adjusted his briefs yet, a patch of moist pubic hair exposed. Jesus, he was like a walking sex idol even with a jizz stain on his skinny jeans.
I held up a black pair and a gray pair of sweats, lifting my eyebrows in question, and Micah pointed to the black ones.
A lamp I snagged at Goodwill for cheap on my nightstand was the only source of light I had in the room. It was awful at its job, but even in the weak glow, Micah was the hottest dude I’d ever hooked up with. He shimmied out of his pants before sitting on the bed so he could tug and wiggle the ankle loose enough to free a leg.
