Ex-Daredevil by Zoe Lee
Chapter 20
Gavin
The ballet started out slow, just like I’d always imagined ballets to be, with little fussy steps and hand gestures. The dancers looked so fragile, the bones sharp in their upper bodies and the women’s ankles, and the costumes were stiff and strange. Even from our seats in the beautiful Auditorium Theatre, I could see their heavy-handed stage makeup.
The moment the first dancer leapt into the air, I gasped and reached out to grab Eliott’s hand. I couldn’t help thinking, How can bodies that look so easily broken do that and not fall?
But the woman landed as if she had wings, a man there to take her hand and waist and send her into spins even though I couldn’t figure out how she’d gotten the momentum.
I was transported and enchanted, suddenly and completely.
There were lulls, sequences that seemed like standards, or like they were designed to show off the technical skills of the dancers as they moved with perfect synchronicity. But as the performance went on, I started to think that maybe they were almost like the lulls in action and horror movies, building the tension. They kept me on edge, waiting for the next explosion of bodies into fantastical, inhuman shapes that somehow conveyed deeply human emotions. I wasn’t able to follow the story, unfamiliar with this language, but I didn’t care.
I was almost dazed when it was done, clapping as wildly as I would have at the end of a favorite song at a concert, knowing it was too frenzied for this atmosphere.
Eliott looked over at me as he slid the hand closer to me through his hair, and there was something shimmering, this certainty that he’d surprised me again. That he’d given me a gift that I hadn’t known I could ever possibly expect or appreciate. A month ago, it would have pissed me off, sure he was being smug that he’d taught me a lesson. Tonight, though, there was this certainty in my guts that it was sincere happiness because I really liked it.
There was no way to understand why things were flowing so well that, even though it hadn’t been much time at all. I was already outgrowing the idea of just going out. But I wasn’t sure I could be the first one to say something about it, because it felt like an admission of weakness, something that someone could hold against me.
Maybe not Eliott. But he wasn’t the first man I’d had these thoughts about, wanting to shift from casual sex or flirtation into something more, only to be dismissed. Even if I thought it was a good idea, I didn’t have the experience to tell him how it felt different to me now, more than sex or a bet.
But I did know that I wanted him to take me back to his place, to ease this ache in one way if I wasn’t ready to try to ease it in any other, scarier ways.
Outside, I breathed in the mellow night air as we made our way back to his car.
“You liked it,” Eliott stated in that quiet, collected way he had, as he started driving.
I wanted to play it cool, but I was a little weak right then, given my state of mind, so I blurted out, “It’s like an extreme sport! I can’t believe what those dancers can do!”
We talked about our favorite parts and I asked if different movements or poses had a certain meaning in the language of ballet, and before I knew it, we were in his garage.
“Do you want to come up for a drink?” he asked.
“Is that code for you’re going to put out?” I retorted, a dumb question for a dumb question. He only laughed and brought me upstairs and into his kitchen, where he got out a bottle of scotch, glasses, and ice cubes. I watched him make the drinks, inhaling the unique scent of the liquor, and flipped through all of the things I wanted to do with him.
He handed me a glass then knocked his into it gently, murmuring, “À votre santé.”
“What does that mean?” I asked after my first sip of the strong drink.
“To your health,” he answered. “It’s what the French say instead of cheers.” I tipped my head in curiosity and he obliged the movement. “My paternal grandparents are French, from near Bordeaux. They put aside most of their traditions when they came here, wanting to assimilate and become American, you know. But they kept a few superstitions and traditions—mostly having to do with food, of course—and I like to keep them going.”
“The cookies,” I remembered, thinking of a picture of a dessert he’d sent me a photo of early on in our texting. He nodded, sending me a little smile.
“It wasn’t like that where I grew up; everyone is big on Irish pride. Although maybe not the food part,” I laughed, “the Irish aren’t particularly known for their cooking, or so my relatives tell me.”
He relaxed against the counter, crossing one ankle over the other.
The ache was still strong and present, but I had felt so special having deep conversations with him recently. I didn’t want to spoil this moment by cutting it off in favor of jumping him. So I indulged, letting the conversation about our families flow, and felt this strange flutter in my stomach when we learned there were important similarities between ours. The strongest was how they supported us in our sexuality, which was something extraordinary and precious, even though it made me angry and upset on behalf of everyone whose families weren’t. But the mood wasn’t somber, it was richer than that, a powerful desire to share and be heard and really learn about Eliott, to put it all together.
I got the sense he was feeling the same thing, because as soon as we’d finished our scotches, he put the glasses in the sink very deliberately before he turned back.
His eyes were warm, his body as at ease as I’d seen it, and he stepped into me, not going in for the kill with a hot, wet kiss or cupping my half-hard dick. Instead he slid his nose up my throat and over my cheek, exhaling a little unsteadily as his hands slid gently under my shirt to trace over my stomach and lower back. I let out a quiet moan.
Then we kissed, soft, careful, deep kisses, exchanging who had the lead graciously, without any of the hot challenge we had had at other times, and it made my head swim.
“Come to bed,” he murmured eventually.
The walk wasn’t long, Eliott nonchalantly taking off his jacket, shirt, tie, and belt and leaving them in the best trail of candy. With every item, desire pulsed out from my chest, and the ache came back to the forefront of my mind, along with unprecedented nerves.
But he didn’t seem to be in any rush, despite his rigid cock distorting the perfect line of his suit pants, as he slid his arms around me once we were beside his bed. He stroked his hands back up under my shirt, all the way up to the base of my throat and my shoulders, detouring to rub his thumbs lightly over my nipples, all the while kissing me.
I tended to prefer bottoming and plenty of people, including some of the partners I had bottomed for, thought it was the same as being more submissive or passive, but it wasn’t true. I liked to lead the dance, tending towards bossiness if not aggressiveness. But tonight, the revelation I’d had earlier that I wished I could say be my boyfriend to Eliott was guiding me. The fear that it was a weakness, that Eliott would reject the idea and me, made me unable to take the lead away from him, despite knowing he liked that too.
So I stood, my arms over his shoulders and my fingers wound tight through each other behind his neck, and let him kiss me, let him stroke over me. I took off my shoes when he murmured to do it, let him slide my clothes off my body, and then let him lay me down in the middle of his delightful bed. I curled my legs up around his hips when he laid on top of me after he took off the rest of his own clothes, cradling his body with mine, welcoming the weight and the hot, powerful cock rubbing against my own. I was too deep in my pool of desire and fear and emotionality to do more than keep moaning softly.
All the possibilities for what to do tonight that I’d considered earlier floated away.
So when Eliott’s mouth left mine and began to slowly map out what felt like every inch of the front of my body, all I could do was let my hands drop to the pillow above my head and gasp softly, over and over. There was nothing sharp or urgent about it, but I felt his desire and intentionality loud and clear all the same. When he finally took the head of my cock into his mouth, I had to bite back sobs of relief and gratitude as he lapped my precome and the notch under the head. He took me deeper in increments, pulling up to taste my precome again without any discernible rhythm so all I could think was that he was just doing what he wanted, exploring and enjoying me, undoing me in the process.
My hips curled up higher and higher every time he rose up, and so when I felt his fingers ghost over my hole, I shouted out desperately before I knew I even needed to.
“Yeah?” Eliott breathed out.
My whimper cracked apart the silence even more than my shout just had.
His fingers spread over my hips with such deliberation that I shuddered and dug my head back into my pillow, knowing if I so much as glanced down, I’d lose it immediately.
Then his tongue flicked my perineum and I began to come undone anyway, shuddering and writhing beneath his beautiful, inexorable hold as his tongue drifted down to my hole. It was the exact opposite of the way he’d rimmed me the first time, which had been frenzied and sexy as fuck, and it was unlike anything I’d ever experienced.
This was… this was worship, I couldn’t help but feel somewhere deep in my soul.
Not the way I’d ever thought of or heard anyone else describe this act, but it was.
One of his fingers eased into me, his mouth drifting back a bit higher, then another finger or maybe two, fluttering so carefully inside me over my prostate. And then he made a completely sophisticated and genteel purr of satisfaction against my balls.
And that was it.
Pulse after pulse of ecstasy moved through me, and I wasn’t even aware that his other hand had come up to lightly stroke my cock to help cause it until I was totally spent.
I was having trouble catching my breath and little pulses kept going off throughout my body, and I didn’t think I could move unless my life depended on it. It was nearly impossible to even open my eyes, but I had to, to see what Eliott looked like. I needed to see what expression was on his face, to try to figure out what on God’s green earth that had been.
His chin was on my spread open thigh, his other hand smoothing up and down my other thigh, and I could just see the shape of his ass over one of his shoulders. His light green eyes were barely visible beneath heavy-lidded, drowsy lids, his mouth bruised and red and glistening with spit. There were scattered beads of sweat at his temples. I still couldn’t read his expression, whether it was worship or like or lust or something else entirely that hadn’t even crossed my mind, but I didn’t want to disrupt this moment.
Eliott’s mouth quirked, appealing and younger somehow than he usually looked. “I thought we would get back here and dive right into spanking or something,” he rasped.
“We should probably start with our vanilla do’s and don’ts,” I said, my voice as ruined as his from all the noises I’d held back and all the ones that had gotten free.
“I feel confident saying that we like giving and receiving handjobs and blowjobs,” he said, letting his head turn so his cheek was on my thigh, looking loose-limbed like a cat who has sprawled out in a patch of sunlight streaming in through a window. “Also yes to mutual handjobs, frottage, and kissing. Yes to me rimming you. Yes to assplay for you.”
It took my mind a minute to process Eliott using the word assplay as though it were just another everyday word you’d find in the dictionary, before I agreed, “All true.”
“I like it too,” he murmured, “and being rimmed.”
I curled up so I could prop myself up on my elbows and ran my eyes down his body, his body supine and his long, his soft cock nestled in the crease of his hip.
“It would be a shame if you don’t like anal,” I blabbed indelicately. “Also I love riding cocks and yours seems like it would hit my spot just right. It’s not a dealbreaker, but I—”
Eliott burst out laughing, burying his face in my groin, which felt really strange but also really intimate in a new way.
Once he’d gotten it all out, he lifted his head again, a little flushed from that. “Good thing I’m not a power top,” he said, his eyebrow crooking before he let out one last laugh. “Or a total bottom. Usually I have this discussion six months before the kinks discussion, but everything is all out of order with you as always, Gavin.”
I pursed my lips and then had to know, “Is that a good or bad thing?”
His gaze dropped and followed his hand as it feathered over my hip bone, and he sighed as if it were a grave confession, “It turns out, I think it’s a good thing.”
He looked uncomfortable, and I still didn’t feel brave enough to push, so I made myself reply as light-heartedly as possible, “So you’ll let me fuck you sometimes, too?”
His eyes flashed up to mine immediately, his fingers freezing on my hip bone as he sucked in a ragged breath. “I haven’t let anyone in a long time, but you can earn it.”
“Earn it?” I repeated, my heart pounding even though my body was too well fucking satisfied from earlier to react in any other way. But that was okay, because it meant we were both focused on the conversation and not distracted by a round two. “How?”
“Show me how much you trust me, and you’ll earn my trust back,” he explained.
Sitting up gracefully, he sprawled out with his head on my chest this time, an arm and a leg thrown with such casual elegance over my body. I toyed with the short, baby soft hair at the nape of his neck and said finally, “I’ll do my very best, Eliott.”
Before he answered, he used one foot to hook the blankets from where he’d pushed them to the end of the bed before we started and pulled them over us. He resettled, snuggling me, grip tightening, and arched his neck to push his head into my touch more.
“I know you will,” he agreed drowsily, finally answering, so sure and serious.