Page 72 of Empty Net
The name in my mouth is the sound of a lock turning.
When he opens his eyes, I am already moving.
The kiss is not urgent at first. This surprises me. I expected hunger, the easy kind, the kind that can hide panic under heat. Instead, my hand goes to his face and stays there. His jaw under my palm. Stubble. Warm skin. The small motion of his breath.
I kiss him once.
Then again.
He lets me set the pace. Of course he does. But this time I do not use his patience as a wall. I use it as ground.
His hands come to my waist.
I look at him.
The looking is sustained.
He feels the difference. I know he does because his fingers tighten once, not pulling, not pushing. Holding the moment carefully so neither of us drops it.
"Nolan," he says.
"I'm here."
The sentence comes out before I understand it.
Caleb's face changes in a way I cannot file. It is too open. Too much. I almost look away.
I don't.
We make it to the bedroom slowly. Not because the want is less. Because nothing needs to outrun the silence tonight. My hands are on him and his are on me and every piece of clothing removed feels less like armor being stripped and more like a door being opened from the inside.
I say his name again when his shirt comes off.
Caleb.
It does not get easier. It gets truer.
He touches the bruise on my side with the backs of his fingers. I let him. He kisses the scar near my ribs. I let him. He looks at me before touching the waistband of my pants, and I answer before he asks.
"Yes."
The word is enough. The word is also everything.
In bed, I do not turn away.
The first time in this room, I used walls and counters and doorframes. Surfaces that let me be a body without a face. Tonight there is nowhere to hide except in him, and hiding in him is not hiding at all.
He is careful about the hip. I let him be. That is another kind of yes.
When he moves over me, his weight distributed through his arms, I put a hand on the back of his neck and keep him close. His forehead touches mine. We breathe the same air for three seconds. Four. Five.
The film-room kiss was five seconds and I ran from it.
This time, I stay inside the five seconds until it becomes something larger.
The sex is different.
Not soft exactly. We are not soft men, not in the clean way people mean when they say the word. There is heat. Grip. Teeth at a shoulder. My hands in his hair. His breath breaking when I say his name again, rougher this time, because I can feel what it does to him and I want to do it. That want is new too. Not just to be wanted. To affect him. To see the effect and stay.
