Page 44 of Boy Blue
Leaning down, scooting back, I sensed him close his eyes, his head pressed into the pillow, one hand reaching for me, the other digging into the top sheet, a handhold in a shifting sea. Nuzzling his belly, I inhaled his scent, up close, sweet and deep, and traced the line of hair beneath his belly button with my tongue. Then I tasted him, the wild male taste of him, my tongue at the base of his cock.
The silky skin sizzled against my tongue, wet against dry. My mouth watered and, letting go of his hand, I curled my fingers around his hardness, running my tongue along his length. Heard the sound he made, uttered from behind clenched teeth, and thought of all those times, all those men, faceless, nameless, Wolfe’s passion and tenderness a thing to be traded for noodles. It made me want to scream.
Instead, focusing on the moment, I licked a swirl around the head of his cock, tasting the slick that had formed, savoring it, then took him in my mouth. Then pulled off, leaving a trail of spit behind, smiling as the sounds from his throat deepened.
What I was doing would erase what they’d done to him. I would do it every day to make sure it did. I licked him up and down, sucked hard and then soft, gripped the base of his cock, and loosened my grip. Tightened it. His cock was hard and red and he writhed beneath me, head thrown back, mouth open, wordless sighs coming from him.
This was pleasure. This was giving. A new memory I would keep in my heart: this moment between us as he came in my mouth, hard, salty pulses, his thighs trembling, sweaty beneath my palm as I stroked him to soothe him.
I pulled my mouth off gently, swallowing, wiped my chin with the back of my hand and waited a breath, perhaps several, before starfishing over his chest, my head tucked in the curveof his neck, half on his body, half off, hearing him sigh as his breathing slowed.
His arm was around my waist again, tucking me to him, as though making sure I wouldn’t leave. As if I would. As if I would.
CHAPTER 19
blue
“I’m warm now,” Wolfe said, kicking off everything but the cotton sheet, which had draped itself across his body as though some artist had painted it there, soft dips and swirls of cloth against bare skin, the white in contrast with the dark hair on his thighs, the flat curls on his chest.
My favorite part was when he did not leap out of bed, getting up to get on with his day. Part of him wanted to. I saw a muscle over his hip twitch with the impulse.
The feelings that rose in my chest as I placed a hand on that hip were new. Everything was. Each touch. Each kiss. Each moment. Had I experienced any of this before, surely all of it would be familiar to me. A known thing, bringing back memories. Filtering through the dense fog that had slid between me and my past and refused to budge.
Wolfe was a felon, but what was I? Maybe I’d done worse than he. Maybe I’d sold drugs to kids or actually killed someone. That idea stalled my hand on Wolfe’s warm hip from sweeping upward to his ribs. That I’d hurt someone, possibly beyond repair. A rip in a relationship that had never been on steady ground. I shut my eyes.
“Blue?”
Wolfe’s voice came, a soft movement in the air. He pulled me to him so I could rest my head against his shoulder, the sheet settling over me.
“It’s nothing.” Nothing compared to the cozy softness of the bed, of being nestled against Wolfe’s body, his arm around me as he rubbed at his eyes with his fingers.
“This is all new to me.”
“What?” I asked. I raised my head to look at him, at his flushed face, the way his eyes glittered in a way that made me think he was fighting bad memories.
“This,” he said. A sweep of hand over the two of us. “In prison, sex was currency for trading. Before prison, my plan was to marry a gal who was nice to me. Any gal. The redhead who handed out shoes at the bowling alley. The girl at the Sonic who was always nice enough to give me two corn dogs instead of just the one.” He looked down at me, a flick of dark eyelash, his fingers in my hair, focused as though making sure I was understanding him. “All girls,” he clarified. “Nice women with soft bosoms and curvy hips.” He made a gesture that might have been meant to encompass everything he’d been through, everything he couldn’t say. “Women,” he clarified. “Not men.”
“And I’m a man,” I said, as that clarity enveloped me, surrounded by the question as to whether before I’d developed all those blank places in my head, I had liked women. I didn’t think so, but it was just a feeling, faint, more fog. “Did you want to go back—to women?” I wasn’t sure why he was telling me.
“No,” he said. A shake of his head, a low sound in his chest, those arms around me. I inhaled his scent from his skin, pressing my forehead to his chest. “You are not my first. But you are the sweetest. You make me feel clean.”
That was an accomplishment then. To do that for him. When he’d told me about all those men, all those deals, he looked half-sick about it, a pull to his jaw, a flinty hard look in his eyes.
Then he did an odd thing. He pulled his arms from me and covered his eyes with his forearms, on his back, looking as though he was expecting some type of attack from above. He said something under his breath. I watched his throat move, his Adam’s apple jerk.
“What?” I asked, leaning close.
I kissed his temple, prepared to keep at it until he told me what he’d said. But I didn’t have to wait. He turned his head toward me on the pillow and peered through the space between his forearms. His eyes were dark stones, and everything was still.
“You’re like an angel,” he said, quite clearly. “When I thought all the angels had gone.”
There was nothing more important than responding to that, but my throat felt thick and I couldn’t find the words.
I slithered back into his arms, into the warm nest we had made together, thinking if I really had wings I would lay them over him, a divine shelter, creating a place of respite. But I wasn’t an angel, because if I had that kind of power, I would know who I was and where I’d come from. And if that were true, I might be compelled to go back to that life, and I didn’t want to do that.
So, angel or no, I curled my arm around his chest and made myself close, so close I could have crawled into his skin. And maybe somewhere, in my mind, or across the white waves of snow in the crystal-clear air, I could hear feathers touch the earth.
We dozed. The brightness in the room grew and, finally, it seemed, Wolfe had enough, and crawled over me to get out of bed. Naked, he stood at the side of the bed and bent to kiss me.
