Chapter 9: The Best Worst Fantasy
The scent of hay and leather clung to Noah’s skin like a guilty secret. He’d showered, scrubbing until his skin was raw, but he could still smell it. Or maybe he was just imagining it. Maybe it was the memory of it, the ghost of Taichi’s sweat and cheap detergent woven into the fabric of his own awareness.His dorm room was too quiet. The hum of his laptop, playing a rodeo highlight reel on mute, was a feeble defense against the thoughts. His dad’s face smiled from the framed photo on his desk, a flat, two-dimensional pride that felt like a wall. Noah lay on his narrow bed, the coarse institutional sheets scratching his back. He stared at the water stain on the ceiling tile, its shape morphing in the low lamp light.It looked like a lasso.It looked like a contorted body.
His body was a live wire. Every nerve ending reported back the same data: the solid pressure of Taichi’s spine against his chest.The heat where their thighs had pressed together. The shock of Taichi’s head resting on his shoulder, that moment of impossible surrender. His own reaction, the instant, betraying hardness he’d prayed Taichi hadn’t felt.
A groan escaped him, low and frustrated.He turned onto his side, punching the thin pillow.It was no use. The silence was a vacuum, and it filled instantly with the phantom sensation. His cock, traitorous and eager, thickened against his thigh. Denial was a cold stone in his gut, but his body was a furnace.He’d spent a lifetime building a dam against this tide. Tonight, the cracks were too many.“Fuck,” he whispered to the empty room.
His hand slid down his stomach, rough fingers skimming the waistband of his boxer briefs.He stopped. His heart hammered against his ribs.This was the line.Thinking was one thing. Touching, while thinking of him, was a different country.But his mind had already crossed the border. It painted the picture in brutal, beautiful detail.Not some faceless man.Taichi. Taichi on his back on this very bed, his lean soccer player’s body splayed open for Noah.Those dark, watchful eyes glazed and desperate.That quiet mouth, swollen and begging.
Noah’s breath hitched.He gave in.
He pushed his briefs down, his cock springing free, already fully hard and leaking a smear of wetness across his belly. It looked obscene in the lamplight, a stark betrayal of everything he was supposed to be. He spit into his palm, a crude, purposeful sound, and wrapped his calloused fingers around his shaft.
A sharp hiss tore from his lips.The friction was glorious, immediate. He closed his eyes, and Taichi was there.Not the polite, guarded Taichi from the hallway. This Taichi was wanton. His legs were hooked over Noah’s shoulders, his body arched, presenting himself.“Noah,” he’d say, his voice a broken thing. “Please.”
In his mind, Noah positioned himself. He saw his own hands, big and rough, spreading Taichi apart. He saw the tight, clenching pucker of Taichi’s ass, and he imagined pushing against it, the incredible resistance giving way to slick, hot acceptance. He’d use more spit, his own this time, working it in with his thumb, feeling Taichi shudder and push back for more.
“You want it?” Noah growled to the fantasy, his own hips jerking into his fist. “You want my cock?”
“Yes,” Taichi moaned, his head thrashing on the pillow.“Fuck me, Noah.I’ve wanted it. I’ve wanted you.”
The admission, even imagined, sent a bolt of lightning down Noah’s spine.His hand moved faster, his grip tight and punishing. He pictured sinking in, the impossibly tight, wet heat swallowing him inch by torturous inch. Taichi would be so tight it almost hurt, muscles fluttering around him, trying to draw him deeper. He imagined the sounds—the wet slap of their skin, Taichi’s choked-off cries, his own guttural grunts.
“Take it,” he’d snarl, driving into him, burying himself to the hilt.He imagined the angle, the brutal, perfect friction that would make Taichi see stars. “Take all of it, you fucking gorgeous bastard.”
His thumb swiped over the dripping head of his cock, smearing pre-come down the length. The room filled with the raw, animal sound of his stroking.His balls drew up tight, a fierce ache building. In his mind, Taichi was clenching around him, milking him, his own cock hard and leaking against his stomach. Noah’s free hand groped blindly, imagining it was Taichi’s ass, gripping the firm muscle, forcing him down onto his thrusts.
“Gonna come,” Noah gasped, his back arching off the bed.“Gonna fill you up. You gonna feel me inside you for days.”
The fantasy was perfect, filthy, and complete. Taichi’s legs locked around his waist, pulling him in impossibly deeper. The image of his release, hot and pulsing deep inside Taichi’s body, was the final trigger.
Reality crashed back in a wave of intense, shuddering sensation.His orgasm ripped through him, violent and convulsive. “Shit—Taichi—” he choked out, the name a ragged, forbidden prayer. Thick, hot stripes of come shot across his stomach and chest, some spattering his own chin. He kept stroking, through the oversensitivity, until he was spent, shaking, emptied.
The highlight reel on his laptop had looped back to the beginning. A cowboy was triumphantly raising his hat to the crowd.The silence rushed back in, heavier now, polluted.
He lay there, sticky and cold, his breath sawing in and out of his lungs. The shame came not as a wave, but as a slow, sinking chill, starting in his gut and spreading to his limbs. He looked at the mess on his torso.The physical proof of his sin.
He had jacked off to another man.Not just any man.Taichi. He had fantasized about fucking him, claiming him, filling him. The vivid, crude specifics echoed in his head, and he flinched.Rolling off the bed, he stumbled to the small connected bathroom. He avoided his own eyes in the mirror.The fluorescent light was unforgiving. He cleaned himself up with a wet washcloth, the motions robotic.The post-release clarity was a merciless judge.He was a fraud. A disgusting, twisted fraud.He had a girlfriend.He had a family. He had a life that looked right in that framed photograph.
He splashed cold water on his face, but it didn’t wash away the feeling of Taichi’s phantom body against his, or the imagined tight, wet heat.It was burned into him now.The dam hadn’t just cracked. A piece of it had sheared off entirely.He didn’t know how to rebuild it. He wasn’t sure, in the trembling quiet of his own heart, that he wanted to.