Chapter 17: The Second Time
The cold pizza was gone. Two plates sat in the sink, the greasy cardboard box folded neatly beside the trash—a small, ordered gesture in the otherwise sun-washed chaos of Nathan’s kitchen. Michael washed his hands, the water scalding, scrubbing at fingers that felt strangely disconnected from his body. The phantom ache in his hips, the tender memory of fullness, warred with a cold dread settling in his stomach.
He walked back to the bedroom, his steps silent on the wooden floor. Nathan was stripping the bed, pulling the sheets stained with sweat and spend. He worked with a quiet, methodical efficiency, a counterpoint to the violence of their morning. He didn’t look up as Michael lingered in the doorway.
“I’ll do laundry later,” Nathan said, bundling the linens into a heap. The mundane statement hung in the air, a bridge between the sacred and the ordinary.
Michael didn’t move. He watched the play of muscle in Nathan’s back as he bent, the new sheets crisp and clean in his hands. The skylight poured gold over the fresh cotton, a false promise of innocence. The room still smelled of them, of sex and lavender soap.
Nathan straightened, finally looking at him. His gaze was calm, observant. He saw the tension in Michael’s shoulders, the way his eyes wouldn’t settle. “Hey.” The word was soft.
Michael tried to smile. It faltered. He walked to the edge of the newly made bed and sat, his hands clasped between his knees. He stared at them: the slender fingers, the pale skin. Instruments that had created magic for millions, now trembling slightly in his lap.
The mattress dipped as Nathan knelt before him on the rug. He didn’t touch him. Just knelt, putting himself in Michael’s downcast line of sight. “Talk to me.”
The gentleness undid him. The morning’s raw passion had been a language he understood—a claiming, an affirmation. This quiet, patient regard was more terrifying.
“Was it just the storm?” Michael’s voice was a whisper, frayed at the edges. “The… the intensity of last night? The confession?” He forced his eyes up, meeting Nathan’s. “Was it just… a thing? That happens? Because of the weather?”
Nathan’s expression didn’t change, but his eyes darkened, the blue deepening to something storm-tossed. He reached out, a single finger under Michael’s chin, tilting his face up. “Look at me.” He waited until Michael’s full attention was his. “You think I fucked you like that because of the weather?”
“I don’t know what to think,” Michael admitted, the confession leaving him hollow. “It felt real. It felt… like everything. But things that feel like everything to me… often are just moments to other people.”
A low sound, part sigh, part growl, escaped Nathan’s throat. “You are so fucking wrong.” The words were not angry, but fiercely certain. “Let me show you.”
He stood, his movement fluid, and pushed Michael back onto the bed. The clean sheets were cool against his spine. Nathan followed him down, bracing himself over him, a cage of warmth and intention. He didn’t kiss him. He just looked, his eyes tracing the lines of Michael’s face, his throat, the visible beat of his pulse.
“I’m going to take you apart slowly this time,” Nathan said, his voice a rough whisper. “I’m going to make you understand.”
He started with Michael’s shirt, unbuttoning it with a maddening slowness that made Michael’s breath shudder. Each inch of skin revealed was met not with a kiss, but with the heat of Nathan’s breath, the ghost of a touch. He pushed the fabric aside, baring Michael’s torso. His head dipped, and his mouth closed over a nipple.
Michael gasped, back arching. Nathan laved it with his tongue, then bit down, just shy of pain. The sharp, bright sensation shot straight to Michael’s groin. Nathan moved to the other, giving it the same torturous attention, his hand splayed possessively over Michael’s ribs, feeling the frantic heart beneath.
He kissed a trail down the quivering plane of Michael’s stomach, to the waistband of his sweatpants. He hooked his fingers in them and dragged them down, along with Michael’s boxers, in one deliberate pull. Michael’s cock sprang free, already hard and leaking against his belly.
Nathan looked at it, a stark, hungry appreciation in his gaze. He wrapped his hand around the base, his grip firm. “So pretty,” he murmured, before lowering his head.
The first touch of his tongue to the sensitive head was electric. Michael cried out, his fists tangling in the clean sheets. Nathan didn’t take him deep immediately. He teased. He licked up the length, swirled his tongue around the crown, suckled just the tip, his free hand pinning Michael’s hip to the bed. It was excruciating. Michael thrashed, wordless pleas falling from his lips.
“Nathan… please…”
“Please what?” Nathan asked, his breath hot on Michael’s wet skin.
“I need… more.”
With a dark hum of satisfaction, Nathan opened his mouth and took him in, deep, his throat working around him. The sudden, hot, engulfing pressure was devastating. Michael’s vision whited out at the edges. Nathan began to move, a steady, sucking rhythm, his hand working in tandem with his mouth. The wet, filthy sounds filled the room, louder than Michael’s choked moans. Nathan’s other hand slid beneath him, cupping his ass, a finger pressing insistently against his entrance, still loose and tender from the morning.
The dual assault was too much, too soon. Michael felt the coil in his belly tightening rapidly, a spring wound to breaking. “I’m gonna… Nathan, I’m close…”
Nathan pulled off with a wet pop, leaving Michael shaking and desperate. “Not yet,” he said, his voice thick. He flipped Michael onto his stomach with effortless strength. The world became the scent of clean cotton and the golden light from above. Nathan’s hands were on his hips, lifting his ass into the air, spreading his cheeks. Michael felt exposed, vulnerable, utterly at his mercy.
He heard the snick of the lube cap. A cold drizzle between his thighs. Then Nathan’s fingers, one, then two, pressing back inside, stretching him anew. The stretch burned faintly, a reminder of earlier use. Michael pushed back against the intrusion, a silent plea.
Nathan removed his fingers. He positioned himself, the blunt, slick head of his cock nudging against Michael’s opening. He leaned forward, his chest pressed to Michael’s back, his mouth at his ear. “This isn’t about the storm,” he breathed, and pushed in.
It was a slow, inexorable invasion. Michael bit the pillow to stifle a scream as he was filled, so deeply, so completely. Nathan seated himself to the hilt and stayed there, his body trembling with the effort of restraint. He wrapped one arm around Michael’s chest, holding him flush, his other hand fisting in Michael’s dark hair, pulling his head back.
“This,” Nathan growled, his lips against Michael’s throat, “is because you’re you. And you’re here. And you’re mine.”
He began to move. A slow, deep, rolling rhythm that was somehow more possessive than the morning’ frantic pace. Each withdrawal was agonizing, each thrust home a revelation. He fucked him with a devastating precision, angling his hips to grind against that aching spot inside with every stroke. The bed rocked gently, a counterpoint to the brutal, beautiful claiming.
“You feel that?” Nathan grunted, his breath coming in hot gusts. “You feel how deep I am in you? That’s where I’m staying.”
Michael could only moan, a continuous, broken sound muffled by the pillow. The pleasure was a deep, mounting wave, intensified by the raw words in his ear, the unshakeable grip in his hair, the unrelenting fullness. He was being unmade, rewritten.
Nathan’s hand slid from his chest, down his slick stomach, wrapping around Michael’s weeping cock. He stroked him in time with his thrusts, a tight, perfect friction.
“Come for me,” Nathan commanded, his voice cracking. “Let me feel you come on my cock.”
The command, the stimulation, the overwhelming sensation of being possessed—it shattered him. Michael’s climax ripped through him with a silent, seizing intensity. His body clamped down around Nathan’s shaft, milking him as stripes of white painted the clean sheets beneath him. The pleasure was so acute it bordered on pain, wracking sobs shaking his frame.
Nathan swore, a filthy, beautiful word, and drove home one last, punishing time. He buried himself and came with a choked-off roar, his release flooding into Michael, hot and endless. He collapsed over him, his weight a solid, anchoring comfort.
They lay like that, joined, spent, the only sound their ragged breathing slowing into sync. Nathan gently released his grip on Michael’s hair, his hand smoothing the strands instead. He pressed a kiss to his shoulder blade.
Eventually, he softened and slipped out. Michael felt the familiar, intimate trickle. Nathan rolled them onto their sides, pulling Michael back against his chest, holding him as the aftershocks trembled through them both.
The fear was gone. In its place was a weary, quiet certainty. The outside world, with its headlines and its hatred, was a distant rumble. Here, in this sunlit room that smelled of sex and fresh linen, there was only this: the solid beat of a heart against his back, the arm locked around him, and a truth that needed no more words.
Nathan nuzzled into his hair. “The laundry can wait,” he mumbled, his voice thick with spent desire and sleep.
Michael smiled, a real one this time, and let his eyes close. The new sheets were already ruined. He couldn’t bring himself to care.