Page 44 of Single Player

“God, yessssssssss, you are.” Silas closed his eyes, feeling helpless and turned on and totally lost. “Oh please, don’t stop.”

“Tell me how much you like this.” Matthew’s voice was quiet, murmured into skin, and Silas felt Matthew’s hot breath ghost over his hip before his teeth dug into that same spot with a harsh bite. Silas yelped, twisting away, but the contact made his arousal more acute rather than abating. His vision was blurry when he opened his eyes, and the fight had gone out of him. He wanted to come so badly it hurt.

He lifted his head up to look Matthew in the eyes, feeling desperate. “I like this, yes, I love this, please, please don’t stop. Please make me come.”

Matthew smiled, poised over Silas’s cock. “Oh, now how can I turn down a beautiful plea like that?”

When he felt the warm, wet suction of Matthew’s mouth again, Silas let his head flop back against the pillow. He was still close, his body tingling. Matthew sucked harder, holding Silas down in his viselike grip again as he was brought steadily to the edge. Silas felt his whole body trembling, caught fast, the pleasure building up to an impossible peak, and then he was coming. He shook and quivered but couldn’t thrust, his hips still held down, Matthew sucking him hard through the orgasm with an intensity bordering on pain. It was blissful, overwhelming, uncontrolled, and it went on forever before he collapsed down in a shivering, boneless heap.

Immediately, Matthew was loosening his wrist ties. Silas’s hands had gone a bit cold from lack of circulation, and he let his limbs flop to the bed. He could feel himself smiling a stupid smile, blissed out, and he watched Matthew with an unfocused gaze. “You all right there?” Matthew asked, rubbing Silas’s hands. “You still with me?”

“Mmm-hmm.” Silas nodded. He was regaining his energy by the moment, but his body felt lax and spent. Matthew moved into his field of view, still obviously erect, and Silas suddenly felt like the worst sex partner in the world for leaving him hanging like that. “You’re not done,” he said, stupidly, because it was obvious Matthew wasn’t done.

Matthew waved a hand in dismissal. “I’ll get mine soon. Look at you. You’re a mess.” He laughed. “You need something to drink? Looks like that orgasm shook all your brains out.”

Silas laughed as well, a lazy chuckle. “Sure. I’ll take a drink. I can get it, though.” He managed to sit up, his head swimming as he did so, and he pressed a palm to his forehead. “Oh. Maybe not.”

“No, stay there. I got you.” Matthew got up and went into the kitchen, still naked. Silas watched his ass as he went. A minute later, he came back with a glass of water. “Drink this.”

Silas obediently drank, then set the glass aside. Matthew stretched out on the bed beside him, just waiting, not asking for anything else. “Why are you doing this?” Silas asked, lying down next to him.

“Doing what?”

“Being so nice to me.”

“That’s what people do for each other.” Matthew looked confused. “Especially people who are seeing each other. What, have you only dated assholes?”

“No, I’ve been with some nice guys. But they generally didn’t stick around long.” Silas remembered how his work schedule kept coming up in arguments, first with Jim back in college, then with Gary shortly thereafter. None of them had respected how important his job was to his life, to his sense of meaning. He had a sense that even though Matthew had different priorities, they had begun to understand each other more.

Silas leaned over to kiss Matthew. For this, he could lose himself, put work aside, make the entire experience about pleasure. That was what Matthew was trying to teach him, right? He could do that. He pushed Matthew over onto his back and slid down his body, kissing along the way, before taking his cock in his mouth.

“Oh fuck.” Matthew’s voice was breathy. “Yeah, just like that.”

Silas liked doing this. There was an element of curiosity in finding out what a partner liked, fact-finding and experimenting, aspects of the act that appealed to his analytical side. And then there were the purely physical aspects, the taste and smell and weight, that were just as arousing. He used his hand around the base of Matthew’s cock and listened to the noises he was making, the wonderful caught-up noises.

When he knew Matthew was close, though, he lifted his head.

“You fucking little tease.” Matthew was grinning, his eyes still closed. “Turnabout is fair play I guess, huh?”

“Mm-hmm.” Silas switched to his hands for a little while, enjoying how he could watch Matthew’s face like this. Matthew’s mouth had fallen open in pleasure, body tight with the tension of being on the edge. When Matthew was close again, Silas stopped for a moment, then took him back into his mouth and sucked. This time, when Matthew’s body tightened beneath his hands, beginning to arch, he sucked harder and brought him all the way to climax.

When he had finished, Matthew relaxed, spent. “Fuck. Me.” He started laughing. “You’ve got a hell of a mouth on you, Silas.”

“I try.” Silas drank the rest of his water, his mouth dry. Matthew lay slack for a little while, his body limp.

Matthew let out a giant yawn, then sat up. “Damn, I’m exhausted all of a sudden. If I don’t get up, I’m going to fall asleep right here.” He got to his feet unsteadily. “I’m going to set Zuul up for the night, take her out of her chair. There’s an extra toothbrush in the cabinet, unopened. Help yourself.”

Sharing a bed with a partner was quite strange. Silas hadn’t shared a bed in years, and in that time, he had forgotten about the oddities of feeling another body next to him. He could have taken the couch, and Matthew offered to give him the whole bed, but they were apparently in some sort of relationship and sleeping separately seemed weird. Now, though, despite the novelty of sharing a bed, he was glad he had, because it was soothing to have Matthew there beside him. Matthew had conked out immediately upon getting into bed, leaving Silas awake, but he was used to being awake at night. Insomnia didn’t just disappear. Even so, the deep, even breathing of his partner soothed him. Matthew rolled over in his sleep, facing Silas, and reached an arm around him, bringing him closer. Silas went willingly. This was cuddling, no question about it. He’d never seen himself as a cuddler. With Matthew, though, he wanted to lie here and be held. He couldn’t remember having felt so relaxed before. He closed his eyes and exhaled, letting his mind drift.

His last thought before falling into a deep, dreamless sleep was that maybe love could start with something as simple as a one-night stand in the coatroom of a club.

When Matthew woke up the next morning, he blinked blearily at the space next to him, where Silas was snoring lightly into his pillow. In his bed.

He smiled. He hadn’t expected to feel this sort of affection for the guy, but what had started out as simple teasing and sex had somehow morphed into something deeper. He hadn’t gone into this looking for a boyfriend, but it had happened anyway, and now he wasn’t sure he minded at all. Even if Silas did come with some baggage, he seemed to be working through his issues, and hey, Matthew wasn’t perfect, either.

Silas looked like he could use the sleep, and it was only nine, so Matthew got up quietly and went into the other room. Zuul was lying in her crate, despite the open door, preferring the nest of blankets to any of her other options for sleep. She woke up when he walked by, opening one eye to watch him, and then let out a piteous meow and zombie-crawled over to her empty food dish. Chuckling, he refilled her dish with a can of wet food for kittens. “You eat more than any of us, you know that?” he said, reaching down to pet her behind the ears. She flicked one ear at him as she devoured her food. The vet said kittens could eat twice as much as adult cats, but he wasn’t sure where she was putting this vast quantity of food to be eating as much as she was. While Zuul ate, Matthew opened up the new coffee brewing system he’d ordered and set it up to make some coffee as a wake-up surprise for Silas.

While the water heated, he sat down at the computer and checked his email, first personal, then work. He sorted and deleted his new work emails, leaving the internal job posting memo at the top of his list. After a moment’s indecision, he opened it back up to read the specifications. It was a lot of work. It was more money, too, but it was a ton of responsibility. There was something permanent about a leadership role that Matthew had never considered before he was facing one, but stepping into that position felt like saying, “Yes, I’m going to be here for my career.” And that’s what he wanted, wasn’t it? To stay a programmer? His life would change. Become more settled. First a boyfriend, now a promotion? What happened to the player who had hookups and a fun, social bartending job? He’d have to give up Gigi’s; this was a job that would likely spill over into some night and weekend time, especially when there were deadlines coming up. He liked the club. He was working another shift there tonight, and he was looking forward to it. Giving up Gigi’s felt like saying goodbye to a big portion of his life, and he didn’t want to do that just to prove to Silas that he was a grown-up. No, he didn’t need to prove that to Silas, though. Silas liked him exactly as he was.