The Pairing(73)

I don’t want to rush. I want to take care, to touch them how they deserve to be touched.

I direct their hands behind their back, onto the rim of the fountain. Like this, holding their palms down against the marble, my body brackets theirs. Another inch and our chests would be flush, our hips aligned, so I make sure to let neither happen when I kiss their neck. Theo sucks in a sharp breath and releases it as another laugh.

They keep laughing as I drag kisses up their neck and across their jaw, to their cheek and temple. Their skin is warm and salty under my lips, tinged with that essentially Theo scent of bitter orange leaves and spice. Soon, they’re not laughing anymore.

“Come on.” Their body strains forward, but I hold myself back, even when they try stomping on my foot.

“Patience,” I remind them.

Theo groans, but they don’t stomp on my foot again.

I switch to the other side of their neck and treat it the same way, and Theo’s grunts and huffs of frustration begin to melt into sighs. I kiss and tease and swipe my tongue until their body goes slack, until I realize they’ve stopped making any sounds at all.

When I pull back to look at them, there’s tension in their brow and the corners of their mouth, the kind I know from trying not to let my own face show what I feel. That’s how it looks to be overwhelmed by the enormity of a feeling, afraid it’s going to burst out before it’s meant to.

My eyes speak for me. What are you hiding?

Theirs respond, Please don’t ask.

Part of me wants to keep teasing until they crack. But so much more of me wants to be sweet. I’d want them to show mercy to me.

“Same rules?” I ask, with my voice this time.

Theo nods. “Same rules.”

“Tell me if anything is too much.”

I tug on their wrist to turn them around and set their hands on the fountain again, their back to me, their face turned toward Venus so I can’t see it. At last, I press my body flush with theirs, chest to back, hips to ass, legs tangling. I nose under their collar and bite at their shoulder until they moan and tilt their hips back and spread their knees apart. My hands skim their forearms, the muscles flexing as they grip the marble, then their stomach, the softness and hardness there.

With my hand on their belt buckle, I ask again, “Same rules?”

“Same fucking rules,” Theo snaps, struggling heroically to keep their hips still.

Finally arriving at the end of my own patience, I wrench their belt loose and push my hand down the front of their pants until the flat of my hand finds the warm, soft swell between their legs.

The first contact hits us both hard. Theo chokes out a low, desperate sound. I’ve been inside someone’s mouth this week, slid my tongue over the cleft of a stranger’s ass, and still, holding Theo in my palm over their underwear—not even going deeper, not even being touched myself—feels more intense, more intimate.

They’re wearing the same kind of silky boy shorts they wore in Barcelona, thin enough to let sensation through, loose enough to allow movement. I delve deeper, trace my middle finger over the contours of the split at their center, the suggestion of a parting. Theo responds with a desperate whine, the treads of their boots scuffling on the stone floor as they widen their stance.

My free hand floats to their throat, not squeezing, just holding with loose, splayed fingers, feeling the quick rise and fall of their breath. I tip their chin to the side, scrape my teeth gently against the hinge of their jaw and then, lower, their pulse. Its thrum is faster now, and I could dissolve with gratitude at being close enough for long enough to measure and compare.

“Have I been patient enough yet?” they beg.

I nod into their hair, smiling at the irascible edge to their voice, and finally give them what they ask.

My fingers easily find their destination, swollen and obvious even through the barrier of dampening cloth, confirmed with Theo’s short, shocked cry. It’s simple to adjust my wrist and find the correct angle, like navigating my apartment with the lights off, not needing to see to know where things are in my own home.

I touch them how I remember they like, strong and steady and unrelenting, and they meet every movement, making too much noise as they get closer. My hand moves from their throat to their mouth; they bite into the meat.

When they finally come, it’s with a sharp jerk of their hips and a furious growl. I hold them through it, until they spit out my hand with a faint, panting laugh.

“Fuck,” they exhale. “I didn’t know I could come from that.”

“See?” I say, kissing them behind the ear. “Patience.”

“Fuck off.” They release their grip on the fountain and turn to me, their face flushed and sated, rippled by a half smile. “Do you want me to—?”

They glance down. I’m halfway hard, more than a little aching, but I can’t have what I want most. Not here, not now.

“It’ll be fine,” I tell them. “This was just for you.”

An emotion complicates their expression, tightening the corners of their eyes. This time, they smooth it away before I can read it.

“Fine, then,” they say. “I’ll buy lunch. Are you hungry?”

With them, I always am.


“Focaccia,” Theo says the next day.

“Schiacciata.”

“Focaccia?”