Page 36 of Break For Me
"That's not a clinical response," he says. His voice is quiet. Stripped. The surgeon's tone gone, replaced by something raw.
"No shit."
"It's a physiological?—"
"It's not physiological. It's you." I pull his wrist. The motion is sharp, undeniable. His hand slides from my thigh to my hip. His palm presses against the bone. The grip is no longer diagnostic. The grip is holding on.
"This is a bad idea," he says.
"Everything about this is a bad idea. You're still here."
He looks at me. The glasses reflect the caged work lamp. Then he tilts his head and the reflection shifts. I see what's underneath. Fear. Want. The agonized calculus of a man who knows every reason he should leave and is choosing, right now, to stay.
His hand moves from my hip. Down. His fingers wrap around me. The contact is a detonation. My spine arches. My head drops back. The sound I make is not a word. It's the thing that lives below words.
He strokes. Once. Slow. The motion is controlled—measured, deliberate—but the intent has left the clinical building entirely. His thumb traces the ridge on the upstroke. My vision whites out. My good hand finds the back of his neck and grips.
"Look at me," I say.
He looks. His face is wrecked. The composure is gone. His lips are parted. His breathing is ragged. His pupils are blown so wide the blue is a thin ring around the black.
"This doesn't mean anything," he says.
"I know."
"This is a physiological response?—"
"Shut up."
He shuts up. His hand tightens. His rhythm accelerates—still precise, but faster. I'm close. The fever and the want have merged. His hand is the only thing in the world that exists.
I pull him. My hand on his neck, closing the distance. He resists for a half-second—the last protest of the clinical mind—and then he comes. His mouth finds mine.
The kiss is a collision. My lips are cracked and hot. His are dry. His teeth catch my lower lip. The pain is irrelevant. His tongue is in my mouth and his hand is on my cock and my hand is in his hair. His free hand braces against my chest, palm flat on the Madonna. I can feel his pulse hammering through his palm.
I reach for him. My good hand drops to his waist and finds him hard through his trousers. He makes a sound into my mouth. Small. Involuntary. The sound of a man who has not been touched in a very long time and has forgotten what it costs.
I free him. The button. The zipper. He's hard and hot and smooth. When my hand closes around him, his entire body shudders—a seismic response.
We find a rhythm. His hand on me. My hand on him. The coordination is imperfect. The cot is too narrow. We are two men on a canvas rack in a room that smells like motor oil, jerking each other off with the desperate, graceless urgency of a thing that has been denied too long.
He breaks the kiss. His forehead drops against mine. His glasses press into the bridge of my nose.
"Rocco—"
"Don't stop."
He doesn't. His grip tightens. My hips rock into his fist. The cot creaks under us.
I come first. The orgasm tears through me. My body locks—the fever and the pleasure fusing into a single white-hot flash. I spill over his hand, onto my stomach. His name is trapped behind my teeth because saying it would make this real.
He follows. My hand feels the moment he crosses over—the telltale rigidity, the hips thrusting forward. He comes with his forehead pressed against mine and a sound that is barely a breath—a long, shaking exhale that carries the weight of every wall he's ever built.
The silence after is enormous.
He pulls back. His hand withdraws. He reaches for the fever cloth and wipes his hand. He wipes my stomach. The motions are efficient. Mechanical. The surgeon cleaning a field after a procedure.
He doesn't look at me.
