I’m staring at the ground when the side door to Alex’s basement swings open, and consequently, the first thing I see is a pair of gray-and-black-checkered Vans peeking out from the bottoms of skin-tight black jeans. I smile, first at the shoes, and then up at Ben’s face.
I am getting laid tonight.
“Hello, gorgeous,” I say. He laughs softly and steps to the side to let me in. I take extra care to press my body against his far more than is necessary.
Moving near me, can feel the heat of his skin even through the fabric of his t-shirt, want to – need to – going to touch him, but then he’s past me, into the hall, leaving nothing but cold air and the smell of his coconut shampoo. “And it bothers you, I take it?” “I didn’t say that.”
Ben is saying something to me, but I can’t seem to focus on it. I take a step closer to him – too close, probably – and duck down a little to put my lips almost against his ear.
“It’s loud as fuck in here. What did you say?” I say. He seems momentarily stunned by my sudden proximity, but after a moment, he twists slightly towards me. Green light.
“I asked if you wanted something to drink. Alex is around here somewhere, but he’s wasted, and a shitty host regardless,” he says. I nod and follow him across the basement to an old white refrigerator. He swings the door open to reveal several six packs of cheap beer and one two-liter of Pepsi. I can clearly visualize Dad’s disappointed face and Sergeant Smitth’s purple, screaming one, so I gesture reluctantly to the Pepsi.
“I don’t drink,” I say. “Alcohol, that is. You know… anymore.”
Ben glances at me, clearly surprised, but lets his mouth twitch into a smile and takes out the bottle. “Me either. Never really did.”
“What, you mean ever?” I ask. He shakes his head.
“I’ve had it a few times, at family functions or whatever, but I just don’t like the taste,” he says. I watch him pour two cups of soda, and accept the one he offers to me. He takes a sip, I watch him swallow, and he watches me watch him. After a minute of expectant silence, I finally take a sip of my own drink and lean back against the counter.
“I was big into partying at Patton. Drinking and stuff. A lot. And, uh…” I hesitate. This is the deal-breaker, this is the one that’ll ruin Lakewood for me completely, but Ben’s eyes are so wide and so blue and so honest that I can’t not say it. “Coke.” His eyebrows shoot up, as if to punctuate the syllable, so I continue quickly. “I’m off it now. And I was never an addict or anything. I-I’d do it maybe… I dunno, twice a month? And I was fine without it, I just used to do it at parties and shit, and I uh… this is coming out all wrong.”
“Are you worried about making a bad impression on me?” Ben asks, his eyes on his drink. After a brief pause, they flicker up to meet mine. And fuck if they’re not smoldering. I wish I could stop time, if only for the second, the minute, the lifetime it would take me to actually make up my mind about this.
On the one hand, I can start the nurturing process of a long, twisted obsession with my possibly-straight, soon-to-be-stepbrother. I can continue thinking about him every second of the day. I can continue flirting as much as I think I can without getting punched in the face. I can wait it out and try my best and pray to gods I probably don’t even believe in, and maybe, maybe, maybe it’ll work out someday. But probably not.
On the other hand, I can fuck Ben McCutcheon into oblivion. I can do what comes most naturally to me, and I can do at Lakewood High School exactly what I did at Patton Military Academy, and I can maybe fuck up everything again, but it could maybe be worth it.
“I’m concerned for your virtue,” I say, staring at his mouth. Make up my mind for me, Benjamin. You know you want to.
He laughs, a low, husky ghost of a laugh. “You’d probably have to be even more concerned if you could read my mind right now.”
Mind made up.
“It really is loud in here,” I say. “We should go someplace quieter to talk.”
“Talk?” he echoes, amused. I press my palm to the small of his back to shift him closer to me and lean down slightly so my lips are right against his ear again.
“Well, when I say ‘talk,’ what I really mean is that I want to take off all your clothes and lick you all over,” I say. To illustrate my point, I knot the fingers of my free hand in his hair and run the tip of my tongue along the outer shell of his ear and down to the lobe, which I take gently between my teeth. His breathing stops short. I pull back just enough to press my lips to his neck. “What do you say?”
“I say, Alex’s parents are out for the night, and there’s a spare bedroom upstairs,” he says. That’s all the invitation I need. I glance around the room once, then pull Ben towards the stairs. He darts past me on the way up and pushes open the door leading to the rest of the house. There are no lights on, and Ben grabs my wrist when I reach for the switch.
“Come on,” he says, tugging me down the hall to another set of stairs. It occurs to me, as I’m stumbling up the stairs after him, that he’s gotta be half-bat in order to be able to see right now, but he finds the door to the spare bedroom easily enough, so I’m not complaining. The second the door is shut behind us, I pin him to it and kiss him.
You can tell more about a person from one kiss than you can from any conversation you will ever have with him. And based on this kiss, Ben is pretty much my soul mate. I smile slightly against his lips, trying not to think about the fact that Jamie would kick my ass for thinking that. Jesus, Garen, he’d say with an eye roll, you think every guy you kiss is your soul mate, right up until you find somebody who can do it better. When are you gonna realize that your heart’s not in your damn pants? Clearly, I will never learn.
I yank down the zipper of his sweatshirt and blink hard, trying to adjust to both the darkness and the realization that he’s not wearing any shirt under the hoodie. He pushes my jacket off and dips a hand under the hem of my t-shirt, dragging his nails down my chest a little harder than expected. I shiver and press against him. Suddenly, he grips my hips and spins me around, slamming me back against the door so hard it creaks. So that’s how he likes it. I’m almost surprised. Almost.
“Come on,” I whisper, nudging him back towards the bed. The second the back of his legs touch the floral bedspread, I push him so he’s flat on his back. He reaches for me, but I knock his hand away and take a step back. In the dim lamplight glow, I see a flash of apprehension move across his face. I tug my shirt off over my head and start to unbuckle my belt.
“Putting on a show?” Ben asks, his voice barely more than a harsh whisper.
“Uh huh,” I say, grinning. He reaches for me again, and this time, I join him on the bed, straddling his hips and pinning his wrists down. He makes a brief attempt to get free, and then settles instead for grinding up against me. I shift both of his wrists to one hand and use the free one to rub the front of his jeans.
“Tell me what you want me to do to you,” I murmur against his throat. He makes a small sound, and I shake my head. “Come on, love, I need more than that. Tell me.”
“Fuck me,” he says, raising his hips to press them to mine. I unzip his jeans and tug them down over his hips, and he makes another small sound. I smile against his mouth and start to slide my hand up and down his cock. His eyes flutter shut and his lips part slightly, but no sound comes out.
“Say it again. Tell me what you want,” I whisper. He wrenches his wrists away from my grip and attacks the fly of my jeans.
“I want you to fuck me,” he says, and this time, it’s an order. I fish a condom out of my back pocket and roll off him just long enough to pull off my jeans. By the time I move back towards him, he’s out of his jeans as well, and tugging the foil square out of my hand to rip it open with his teeth. I lean back and shift him into a sitting position just enough to push his sweatshirt the rest of the way off. He tenses suddenly, and after a few seconds, I realize why. His wrists are decorated in criss-crossed scars, and he seems eager to cover them back up again. He scrambles for his hoodie, but I toss it onto the floor.
“If you want me to ignore those for right now, I will,” I say, and he nods quickly.
“Yeah. Yeah, thanks,” he mutters.
“Hey. Hey, Ben, look at me,” I say. I brush my palm against his cheek and kiss him again, this time gently. “We’re talking about this later, though. Okay?” He nods again, and I nudge him back down onto the mattress. It only takes a few more seconds of grinding my hard-on against his before he’s ready again, scars almost forgotten. He rolls the condom down over my cock and grips my hips.
“Fuck me,” he says, “hard.”
Suddenly, it’s not so surprising that he likes a little pain with his pleasure.
“Hang on, hang on, hang on,” I murmur. I slip two fingers in my mouth and roll my tongue over them until they’re coated in a fine layer of spit, then drop my hand between his legs and slowly push them inside. Ben makes a harsh sound in the back of his throat and clenches his fists around the sheets. I trace his collarbone with my tongue, and he knots his fingers in my hair, yanking my face up to his to kiss me again while he rocks his hips back and forth, fucking my fingers.
“You ready?” I whisper, and he nods.
“Yeah, I’m ready. Fuck me,” he says, and I press into him. He wraps an arm around my neck, and I can feel the raised scars on his wrists rubbing against my skin. I try to slow down, go a little more gently, because clearly he’s fucked up, he’s broken, he’s just a little bit delicate. But he shakes his head and thrusts up to meet me.
“Fuck, Garen, you can do more than that,” he hisses. “Stop treating me like I’m a doll. Fuck me like you mean it.”
“I don’t wanna hurt you,” I murmur, but he is whispering in my ear, telling me harder, faster, more, more, more, and after a while, I give up on trying to be delicate with him. He likes that. He digs his nails into my skin, bites my lip, gasps into my mouth as I pound into him.
If this is how the boys in Lakewood fuck, I think I’m going to like it here.
I come before he does, but slip a hand between us to stroke his cock, and he comes before I’ve even had time to pull out. We sprawl out on the bed together, side by side, both with our eyes closed and our breathing labored. When I have finally come down, I roll onto my side and kiss Ben’s shoulder.
“You… are a wild thing,” I whisper, and he lets out a breathy little laugh.
“Thank you? I think?” he says.
“Oh, it’s definitely a compliment,” I say. I sit up halfway and glance around. “Where the hell did my pants go?”
“Forget them,” Ben says, grabbing my arm and pulling me back down next to him. “You can find them later.”
“Alex won’t mind us staying in here?” I ask. Ben shakes his head.
“Alex is probably passed out by now, and we usually stay over after his parties anyway. ‘We’ being me, Jer, and Mason. And you now, I suppose,” he says. I grin.
“I’m flattered,” I say, and he smirks at me. His eyes flutter shut, and I can tell he’s seconds away from sleep. Not that I’m surprised, considering the amount of energy he just put out. I pull one of the blankets over both of us, let him curl up against my side, and press one last soft kiss to his mouth.
“Night, Wild Thing,” I say. He hums softly in acknowledgement.
The second my eyes are closed, it is impossible to remember that I am in Alex’s house with Ben, and not back in my own bedroom, with the gorgeous freckled psycho I have been obsessing over for a week now. I can feel the edge of my mouth twitch up into a small smile. It’s a good image, really. Travis would fit perfectly in the curve of my arm. When we looked at each other, I would lose myself in his blue-gray eyes the same way every boy I’ve ever been with has said he has lost himself in my green ones. We would be perfect together. Heartbreakingly, painfully perfect.
I grit my teeth together and force my eyes open, determined to stay awake and forgetting Travis for as long as I possibly can.
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I am getting laid tonight.
“Hello, gorgeous,” I say. He laughs softly and steps to the side to let me in. I take extra care to press my body against his far more than is necessary.
Moving near me, can feel the heat of his skin even through the fabric of his t-shirt, want to – need to – going to touch him, but then he’s past me, into the hall, leaving nothing but cold air and the smell of his coconut shampoo. “And it bothers you, I take it?” “I didn’t say that.”
Ben is saying something to me, but I can’t seem to focus on it. I take a step closer to him – too close, probably – and duck down a little to put my lips almost against his ear.
“It’s loud as fuck in here. What did you say?” I say. He seems momentarily stunned by my sudden proximity, but after a moment, he twists slightly towards me. Green light.
“I asked if you wanted something to drink. Alex is around here somewhere, but he’s wasted, and a shitty host regardless,” he says. I nod and follow him across the basement to an old white refrigerator. He swings the door open to reveal several six packs of cheap beer and one two-liter of Pepsi. I can clearly visualize Dad’s disappointed face and Sergeant Smitth’s purple, screaming one, so I gesture reluctantly to the Pepsi.
“I don’t drink,” I say. “Alcohol, that is. You know… anymore.”
Ben glances at me, clearly surprised, but lets his mouth twitch into a smile and takes out the bottle. “Me either. Never really did.”
“What, you mean ever?” I ask. He shakes his head.
“I’ve had it a few times, at family functions or whatever, but I just don’t like the taste,” he says. I watch him pour two cups of soda, and accept the one he offers to me. He takes a sip, I watch him swallow, and he watches me watch him. After a minute of expectant silence, I finally take a sip of my own drink and lean back against the counter.
“I was big into partying at Patton. Drinking and stuff. A lot. And, uh…” I hesitate. This is the deal-breaker, this is the one that’ll ruin Lakewood for me completely, but Ben’s eyes are so wide and so blue and so honest that I can’t not say it. “Coke.” His eyebrows shoot up, as if to punctuate the syllable, so I continue quickly. “I’m off it now. And I was never an addict or anything. I-I’d do it maybe… I dunno, twice a month? And I was fine without it, I just used to do it at parties and shit, and I uh… this is coming out all wrong.”
“Are you worried about making a bad impression on me?” Ben asks, his eyes on his drink. After a brief pause, they flicker up to meet mine. And fuck if they’re not smoldering. I wish I could stop time, if only for the second, the minute, the lifetime it would take me to actually make up my mind about this.
On the one hand, I can start the nurturing process of a long, twisted obsession with my possibly-straight, soon-to-be-stepbrother. I can continue thinking about him every second of the day. I can continue flirting as much as I think I can without getting punched in the face. I can wait it out and try my best and pray to gods I probably don’t even believe in, and maybe, maybe, maybe it’ll work out someday. But probably not.
On the other hand, I can fuck Ben McCutcheon into oblivion. I can do what comes most naturally to me, and I can do at Lakewood High School exactly what I did at Patton Military Academy, and I can maybe fuck up everything again, but it could maybe be worth it.
“I’m concerned for your virtue,” I say, staring at his mouth. Make up my mind for me, Benjamin. You know you want to.
He laughs, a low, husky ghost of a laugh. “You’d probably have to be even more concerned if you could read my mind right now.”
Mind made up.
“It really is loud in here,” I say. “We should go someplace quieter to talk.”
“Talk?” he echoes, amused. I press my palm to the small of his back to shift him closer to me and lean down slightly so my lips are right against his ear again.
“Well, when I say ‘talk,’ what I really mean is that I want to take off all your clothes and lick you all over,” I say. To illustrate my point, I knot the fingers of my free hand in his hair and run the tip of my tongue along the outer shell of his ear and down to the lobe, which I take gently between my teeth. His breathing stops short. I pull back just enough to press my lips to his neck. “What do you say?”
“I say, Alex’s parents are out for the night, and there’s a spare bedroom upstairs,” he says. That’s all the invitation I need. I glance around the room once, then pull Ben towards the stairs. He darts past me on the way up and pushes open the door leading to the rest of the house. There are no lights on, and Ben grabs my wrist when I reach for the switch.
“Come on,” he says, tugging me down the hall to another set of stairs. It occurs to me, as I’m stumbling up the stairs after him, that he’s gotta be half-bat in order to be able to see right now, but he finds the door to the spare bedroom easily enough, so I’m not complaining. The second the door is shut behind us, I pin him to it and kiss him.
You can tell more about a person from one kiss than you can from any conversation you will ever have with him. And based on this kiss, Ben is pretty much my soul mate. I smile slightly against his lips, trying not to think about the fact that Jamie would kick my ass for thinking that. Jesus, Garen, he’d say with an eye roll, you think every guy you kiss is your soul mate, right up until you find somebody who can do it better. When are you gonna realize that your heart’s not in your damn pants? Clearly, I will never learn.
I yank down the zipper of his sweatshirt and blink hard, trying to adjust to both the darkness and the realization that he’s not wearing any shirt under the hoodie. He pushes my jacket off and dips a hand under the hem of my t-shirt, dragging his nails down my chest a little harder than expected. I shiver and press against him. Suddenly, he grips my hips and spins me around, slamming me back against the door so hard it creaks. So that’s how he likes it. I’m almost surprised. Almost.
“Come on,” I whisper, nudging him back towards the bed. The second the back of his legs touch the floral bedspread, I push him so he’s flat on his back. He reaches for me, but I knock his hand away and take a step back. In the dim lamplight glow, I see a flash of apprehension move across his face. I tug my shirt off over my head and start to unbuckle my belt.
“Putting on a show?” Ben asks, his voice barely more than a harsh whisper.
“Uh huh,” I say, grinning. He reaches for me again, and this time, I join him on the bed, straddling his hips and pinning his wrists down. He makes a brief attempt to get free, and then settles instead for grinding up against me. I shift both of his wrists to one hand and use the free one to rub the front of his jeans.
“Tell me what you want me to do to you,” I murmur against his throat. He makes a small sound, and I shake my head. “Come on, love, I need more than that. Tell me.”
“Fuck me,” he says, raising his hips to press them to mine. I unzip his jeans and tug them down over his hips, and he makes another small sound. I smile against his mouth and start to slide my hand up and down his cock. His eyes flutter shut and his lips part slightly, but no sound comes out.
“Say it again. Tell me what you want,” I whisper. He wrenches his wrists away from my grip and attacks the fly of my jeans.
“I want you to fuck me,” he says, and this time, it’s an order. I fish a condom out of my back pocket and roll off him just long enough to pull off my jeans. By the time I move back towards him, he’s out of his jeans as well, and tugging the foil square out of my hand to rip it open with his teeth. I lean back and shift him into a sitting position just enough to push his sweatshirt the rest of the way off. He tenses suddenly, and after a few seconds, I realize why. His wrists are decorated in criss-crossed scars, and he seems eager to cover them back up again. He scrambles for his hoodie, but I toss it onto the floor.
“If you want me to ignore those for right now, I will,” I say, and he nods quickly.
“Yeah. Yeah, thanks,” he mutters.
“Hey. Hey, Ben, look at me,” I say. I brush my palm against his cheek and kiss him again, this time gently. “We’re talking about this later, though. Okay?” He nods again, and I nudge him back down onto the mattress. It only takes a few more seconds of grinding my hard-on against his before he’s ready again, scars almost forgotten. He rolls the condom down over my cock and grips my hips.
“Fuck me,” he says, “hard.”
Suddenly, it’s not so surprising that he likes a little pain with his pleasure.
“Hang on, hang on, hang on,” I murmur. I slip two fingers in my mouth and roll my tongue over them until they’re coated in a fine layer of spit, then drop my hand between his legs and slowly push them inside. Ben makes a harsh sound in the back of his throat and clenches his fists around the sheets. I trace his collarbone with my tongue, and he knots his fingers in my hair, yanking my face up to his to kiss me again while he rocks his hips back and forth, fucking my fingers.
“You ready?” I whisper, and he nods.
“Yeah, I’m ready. Fuck me,” he says, and I press into him. He wraps an arm around my neck, and I can feel the raised scars on his wrists rubbing against my skin. I try to slow down, go a little more gently, because clearly he’s fucked up, he’s broken, he’s just a little bit delicate. But he shakes his head and thrusts up to meet me.
“Fuck, Garen, you can do more than that,” he hisses. “Stop treating me like I’m a doll. Fuck me like you mean it.”
“I don’t wanna hurt you,” I murmur, but he is whispering in my ear, telling me harder, faster, more, more, more, and after a while, I give up on trying to be delicate with him. He likes that. He digs his nails into my skin, bites my lip, gasps into my mouth as I pound into him.
If this is how the boys in Lakewood fuck, I think I’m going to like it here.
I come before he does, but slip a hand between us to stroke his cock, and he comes before I’ve even had time to pull out. We sprawl out on the bed together, side by side, both with our eyes closed and our breathing labored. When I have finally come down, I roll onto my side and kiss Ben’s shoulder.
“You… are a wild thing,” I whisper, and he lets out a breathy little laugh.
“Thank you? I think?” he says.
“Oh, it’s definitely a compliment,” I say. I sit up halfway and glance around. “Where the hell did my pants go?”
“Forget them,” Ben says, grabbing my arm and pulling me back down next to him. “You can find them later.”
“Alex won’t mind us staying in here?” I ask. Ben shakes his head.
“Alex is probably passed out by now, and we usually stay over after his parties anyway. ‘We’ being me, Jer, and Mason. And you now, I suppose,” he says. I grin.
“I’m flattered,” I say, and he smirks at me. His eyes flutter shut, and I can tell he’s seconds away from sleep. Not that I’m surprised, considering the amount of energy he just put out. I pull one of the blankets over both of us, let him curl up against my side, and press one last soft kiss to his mouth.
“Night, Wild Thing,” I say. He hums softly in acknowledgement.
The second my eyes are closed, it is impossible to remember that I am in Alex’s house with Ben, and not back in my own bedroom, with the gorgeous freckled psycho I have been obsessing over for a week now. I can feel the edge of my mouth twitch up into a small smile. It’s a good image, really. Travis would fit perfectly in the curve of my arm. When we looked at each other, I would lose myself in his blue-gray eyes the same way every boy I’ve ever been with has said he has lost himself in my green ones. We would be perfect together. Heartbreakingly, painfully perfect.
I grit my teeth together and force my eyes open, determined to stay awake and forgetting Travis for as long as I possibly can.
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