Switch Ch. 01

"Really?" Dario sounded so happy. So happy, I wanted to give him more.

"That moment when they let the tablecloth they're folding slip out of their hands, that moment of suspense, waiting for their fingertips to meet, it's so maddening." I had to stop. I didn't know why saying those things was exacerbating that aching throbbing in my cock.

"Maddening," he mused. "In a good way? Or a bad way?"

I tried to keep my voice even, to meet his eyes without blushing again. "Well, like I . . . the reader will want it to happen."

"Want what to happen?"

I couldn't get my breathing back to normal. "They'll want them to touch. To . . . be together." Fuck. That smile. Triumphant as a conquering warrior. A conquering king. Which was strange when I thought about it, because I'd more or less told him something was missing. And strange because I couldn't tell if that triumphant smile made me feel like I was beside him, doing the conquering, or if it made me feel like one of the vanquished.

"Because I told you it was pornographic and you were expecting sex?" he asked.

"Because they're in love." God, he suddenly looked moved. Vulnerable. So much so, it was like holding his beating heart in my hand. "Are you still going to add that part?" I asked, maybe to make him think about something else so he'd stop looking at me that way.

It worked. That vulnerable, searching look melted back into a slightly diminished version of the vanquishing grin. "In this case, I think delayed gratification is ultimately more satisfying," he said in an intimate tone that made me as uncomfortable as if he'd been sitting there naked. I couldn't meet his eyes but in my peripheral vision I could see that he was watching my face closely as he said, "You don't need to be embarrassed."

"About what?"

"About liking it. Don't worry, I won't tell anyone."

"I'm not embarrassed," I said, obviously lying.

"No?"

"Of course not."

"That's good," he said, his magnetic confidence suddenly back in his voice. Then he touched my wrist. Never in my life have I felt such a sudden, physical jolt of panic, because I knew the next thing he was going to do, and, still staring kind of down and in front of me, trying to escape that probing look of his, I let him do it. With no force at all, almost as if it were me doing it instead of him, he pulled my wrist toward him, so the tablet wasn't hiding my hard-on anymore. And as soon as he did it I realized he'd known the whole time that I was hard, and his little comment about me not liking the story, him getting up and walking away had been his way of letting me get away without confessing what the story had done to me. He'd given me a pass, and I'd squandered it.

"You know," he said, his voice lower and softer now, "my book got a rave review from the New York Times. But I like this review better."

I was nervous. I babbled, "You should actually be really proud, because thinking about two guys has never had an effect like this on me before. Not even close."

"No?"

"No." I forced myself to finally look at him, and I tried to give him a smile, you know, just to make the whole thing less weird, with me avoiding his eyes.

"There's never been . . . some small experiment? A kiss, maybe?"

The question shocked me. I mean, that literal, physical response where your blood pressure feels like it bottoms out. Except my cock felt like it was at about two hundred PSI. "No," I said, and it came out weak and warbly instead of like the stern warning I meant it to be. But then when he started to lean in, instead of pushing him away or getting up, I just waited. Waited for him to lean in the rest of the way. When he took the tablet out of my hand and set it on the coffee table, though, that weird moment of surrender ruptured. "I should go," I said.

"I want you to stay."

I blushed. I mean, I felt my face go hotter than I can remember it ever being before.

"Do you want to stay, Martin?"

"I don't know." I've never been so confused in my life.

"This is a first for me, too," he said in that soft low voice I'd never heard before.

"What's a first?" I asked, feeling like every word was a little life preserver holding me above the thrashing waves of panic drowning me.

"I've never hit on a straight guy before." I had to turn away from that earnest, searching gaze of his. After a few more seconds he said, "I'd like to touch you. But I don't want to scare you."

I almost said something like, "that's ridiculous. Why would I be scared?" But I was scared. Terrified, even though rationally I knew that whatever was happening between us, whatever might happen, it was fine. He was sitting there, looking at me, trying to read my expression or waiting for me to say no. Or yes. Finally I said, "I don't know."

"What don't you know?" he asked with a guru-like serenity, his voice making me feel safe, almost like a caress.

"I think that if you touch me, I won't want it anymore." A cowardly way of confessing. Yes, I did want it, even though I was shaking and I felt like I couldn't breathe. But also true, because I was half convinced that the second he touched me my hard-on would wither.

But he said, "Then I'm going to touch you. I'm going to touch you until you tell me to stop."

Slowly—it felt like I saw it coming minutes before it actually happened—he laid his hand on my thigh. Half way between my knee and my erection. And that was the second huge shock of the night, because instead of going limp my dick got even harder. And, as he'd said, when I didn't tell him not to, he kept touching me.

He touched me in a way I'd never been touched before, not by Avalyn, not by any of my high school or college girlfriends or any of the girls I hooked up with on weekends at the loft. He didn't just do everything slowly and gently. He was touching me so carefully it felt almost tentative, but at the same time with the same easy assurance that was so profoundly part of his way of being and his unusual magnetism. First his hand moving lightly over my trousers, then my alarm and my breathless, aching need went through the roof as his fingers worked the button of my fly open, as I heard that unmistakable zipper sound and saw my fly open in a V above his descending fingers, and he slipped his hand inside, over my shorts, and I was really trembling as if it were my first time getting felt up, as if just being touched so gently were overwhelming, which it was. He hadn't kissed me yet but he was nuzzling against my cheek, the warmth of his skin and his soft hair comforting me against that devastating, strange pleasure, and his other hand combing into my hair, kind of cradling my head while he went on fondling me, his hand down my trousers. Then he slipped his fingers through the fly of my shorts, and it was his warm soft skin against my skin, not even really stroking, just caressing, and suddenly the pleasure just swallowed me whole, and I whispered two or three times, quickly, mortified, "Stop, stop," but it was already too late and the sudden spasm hit, seizing, spurting, fuck, it was really happening, another cock-wringing contraction, I'd really let him stroke me off, I was really unloading into his hand, still caressing, oh God, impossible, another gushing expulsion, and everything seemed to slow down until it was almost like time stopped, and I was aware of how he cradled my head between the palm of his hand and his cheek and it was almost like an embrace, and how he sighed, as if the pleasure wringing my body were his pleasure, how his fingers encircled me, gently squeezing me and how that boosted the intensity of it all just when I thought it must be almost over and it felt like the waves would never stop rising over me, me quivering and shuddering and curling in on myself with the spasms.

I was about to apologize, or mumble some excuse, but Dario said, "Be still." The encircling embrace of his fingers slowly loosened around my unbearably hyper-sensitized cock, then gradually released me, which almost drove a cry of discomfort mingled with . . . I guess sadness that that perfect act had come to an end, and looked at his hand, covered in my semen. Actually, it was just three of his fingers, the index, middle and ring fingers, that were glistening and gooey, and looking over at me with a playful grin he put those three fingers deep in his mouth and sucked them clean.

After that he sat there looking at me for a few seconds, and somehow I wasn't too embarrassed to meet that earnest gaze. I don't know what he read in my expression—I'm pretty sure I was sitting there half composing an excuse to flee, and half hoping he'd start undressing me—but he gave me a serene smile and said, very quietly, very intimately, in what echoes in my memory as a seductive tone completely incongruous with his words, "Now I think you should go."

Totally taken aback I said, "Aren't you even going to kiss me?" I'd tried to make it a joke, but it came out sounding as disappointed as I felt.

"God, yes," he said, the words like a pensive, hopeful sigh. "If you want me to. But not tonight."