He dived swiftly back into the bucket again, sluicing the
water over his arms and chest, scrubbing at the wet skin
with the stick of soap. It was at this point that I realized that
he"d just slapped me with a hand covered in cow fluids and I
pulled a face, making a sound of protest. He laughed.
“Whassamatter, San Diego? You don"t like being dirty?”
“I object to vaginas,” I muttered, without thinking, and
hauled the shirt off over my head.
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36
My only thought, in that moment, was to get the thing
off
me. I don"t think there was really anything too disgusting
on Oro"s hand. He"d been washing himself between searches,
anyway—if you don"t do that, the cow"s liable to die of
infection, even if you managed to calve it properly—and I felt
nothing damp when he touched me. But the thought of
having any kind of cow stickiness smeared on my T-shirt
was more than a little off-putting. Wrestling it over my head
seemed the only reasonable response. It was only after I"d got
rid of it, when I was standing in the straw with my hair
sticking up at odd angles, that I realized what I"d said. What
I was
doing,
more to the point. And what Oro was doing,
crouched in just his jeans in front of me. His arms still
dripped water, rivulets streaming from his fingertips as he
rose slowly to his feet.
“I thought that might be the case,” he said.
My heart skipped nervously in my chest. “You—I"m
sorry?”
He laughed, stepping cleanly over the bucket. The cow
was now very engaged in cleaning off her calf, and there was
nothing else between us. I took a half-conscious step
backward and swallowed hard, part of my brain calculating
the percentage chance that this was just some incredibly
vivid dream. Stuff like this didn"t happen to guys like me.
Hell,
this
was probably just a misreading of the situation on
my part. This
was probably just—just—
Oro"s fingers grazing the bolt of my jaw, tracing gentle
and sure down to my chin. Oro"s smile, open-mouthed, not a
foot from my face. “I"ll tell you a secret,” he said, voice low-
pitched and soft. “Unless it"s an emergency—” he inched
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37
closer “—a
birthing
emergency—” I could feel his breath now,
warm on my cheek “—I object to vaginas, too.”
By this juncture, my entire body felt as if it had seized
up, arrested in place by the shock of his closeness, the
warmth of his chest half an inch away from mine. I tried to
breathe, failed, and turned my head for a second attempt,
my eyes closing of their own accord. He misinterpreted the
movement—or, perhaps, he perceived it correctly before I
understood it myself. At any rate, when I opened my mouth
for air, what it encountered were his lips, a soft warm press
with an edge of dampness. I stumbled, hand darting up to
clutch at his bicep. He chuckled, soft vibration of it against
my lips. The next thing I registered were his arms, the warm
strength of them supporting me as I clung to him, drawing
breath from his mouth. “Oro,” I breathed, question and
prayer and thanks. “Oro, maybe….”
I think he knew before I did that I had absolutely no
idea what I was going to say. Oro isn"t the type to bulldoze
another person"s opinions, if they want to exorcise them. But
Oro
knew
that I was only stalling for time, fumbling my way
around this strange new thing with words I hadn"t even
found before they were tripping out of my mouth. My hands
on his arms were altogether more reliable a guide to what my
body wanted as it angled itself toward his, my breath on his
mouth quickening as his hands palmed the muscles of my
back. The next word, whatever it was, was swallowed in his
mouth, one of his hands sweeping up my spine to tangle in
my hair as he licked across the curve of my lower lip.
It occurred to me, as the tip of his tongue sought
entrance, stroking over the seam of my mouth, that I had
never envisioned this, in all my surreptitious thoughts of
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38
Oro. I had thought of his arms, the strength of them holding
me steady; of myself on my knees, his cock smearing stickily
over my lips. But I had never paused to wonder if he might
kiss like this, his tongue stroking over mine, learning the
insides of my teeth and the ridges of my soft palate. Perhaps
it had seemed too intimate, too presumptuous, even, for a
fantasy of an untouchable co-worker, a man I was already
desperate to call my friend. Kissing was somehow more than
fucking, more than me
working hard for Oro.
Kissing wasn"t
wanting sex, but wanting
me.
Oro was kissing me now, fervent and deep, licking fully
to the back of my mouth as his jaw worked mine loose and
open for him. Oro was kissing me like he wanted this as
much as I did. I brought up my hands; raked them through
his thick dark hair, curling damply where his sweat had
caught it at his hairline. Oro made a desperate sound in the
back of his throat, and thrust me back blindly against the
wall.
The unexpected collision was harsh on my back, and
jarring; our teeth clicked together for a moment before he
found his pace again, and went on kissing me. Part of me
wanted just to submit to it; to arch into the gentle touches
his fingers were now trailing down over my arms and sides;
to dig my fingernails into his back and pull him flush against
me. But the rest of me had suddenly registered exactly where
we were and what we were doing: consuming each other,
half-crazed and half-naked, in a barn where a cow had just
completed a difficult birth. Someone must have sent Oro up
here to help with the calving; what if he came back to make
sure everything had gone smoothly? Even without that, it
was a little weird to be doing this in front of a cow and, well,
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39
a cow and a half. I had no doubt that the cow would
probably not mind in the slightest, but I did. I gripped Oro
firmly by the shoulders, and steered him away, detaching my
mouth from his reluctantly, catching it again; licking
apologetically at the corner of it and then withdrawing, my
hands in his hair holding him at arm"s length.
“Oro,” I breathed, fighting a sudden urge to laugh, “I
don"t think—the cow—”
“I don"t think she cares,” Oro pointed out, mouth
turning upwards. It was the expression of his that had
charmed me so much in the first place, and seeing it now
almost undid me, my resolve weakening under the urge to
lick the amusement right off his face. But the cow, blessedly,
chose that moment to moo sonorously in our direction, and I
raised an eyebrow pointedly in Oro"s direction.
“
I
care,” I said. “Can we just—maybe in there?”
I gestured, vaguely and one-handed, in the direction of
the little room adjoining the barn, where the sink was
plumbed. Oro realized then, I think, that I had no intention
at all of
stopping
him, of detaching myself from the onslaught
of his kisses for good. After that, the idea of moving didn"t
seem to bother him. He shrugged, and smiled, and leaned in
to kiss me again. “There"s not much room,” he murmured
against my mouth, “but if you insist.”
He was tugging at my arms, half-lifting me away from
the wall. I let myself melt into him, let him guide me; his
arms encircled my waist, holding me steady. He knew this
barn like the back of his hand, I knew; knew every divot in
the flagstones, every obstacle in our path. I trusted him, and
I let him haul me across the room. The next thing I knew
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40
was the slam of the door behind us, and coolness at my back
as he pressed me unceremoniously up against it, his mouth
seeking out my pulse-point, laving the fine skin below my
ear. I squirmed at that, one hand coming up to clutch at his
hair. “You like—
fuck—
you like taking charge, don"t you?” I
accused him, breathless and amused.
“You like it when I do it,” he murmured, his smile
tangible against my skin. His mouth drifted, down to the
hollow of my throat, and lower, to trace the jut of my clavicle.
His hand was drifting, too, tracing circles down over my
chest and stomach and then shifting to press between my
legs, palming the evidence of just how much I liked it. I
surged up, hips bucking involuntarily against his hand, back
arching away from the wall.
“Christ—Oro—”
I could feel him humming his pleasure at my reaction,
the soft sound setting my skin trembling. His fingers traced
the outline of my cock through my jeans, drawing a teasing
trail of diffuse pressure from root to tip. When he reached
the crown, he waited a moment, and then pressed
,
the tips of
two fingers finding me and pushing directly through denim
already faintly damp with pre-come. I cried out again,
despite a half-hearted resolution not to. I"ve never quite
mastered the art of discretion during sex.
“Oro,” I gasped, lips stumbling over the word even as my
fingers skittered over his shoulders. “Oro—God,
please—”
“Please?” he prompted, sealing his mouth in the hollow
of my throat. His fingers resumed their stroking as he
sucked, drawing the blood firm and fierce to the surface of
my skin. The suddenness of it was startling, almost painful,
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41
but what pain there was found an echo of electricity in my
cock, so that I tipped back my head and moaned. Oro laved
at the sore spot on my throat; kissed it with near-reverent
gentleness. “Please what, Alex?” He nipped at my clavicle;
licked at the bone under the skin. “Tell me what you need.”
I panted helplessly, a hard rush of air that brought with
it a mewling, involuntary whimper. “Anything,” I managed,
as my hands stroked over his shoulders, palming the
muscle, feeling it glide sweat-slick under my hands. “Fuck,
Oro, God, Oro.” And my fingers were pushing, constant and
unconscious and clear. Oro smiled, and let himself be
pushed, falling to his knees on the floor and stroking his
hands up the insides of my thighs through my jeans.
I hadn"t
meant
to be so ungentlemanly about it,
honestly. The gripping and tugging and pushing of my hands
had been barely more than a reflex, somewhere beyond my
conscious control. But now that he was down there, grinning
up at me as he worked open the button of my jeans, I
wanted nothing so much as to submerge myself in him; to
thrust into his mouth and spend myself in his throat and
then, lax with release, have him fuck me to a second coming.
As far as I could gather, Oro seemed in full agreement with
this plan. He tugged down my zipper; spread wide the flaps
of my jeans, and smoothed the denim gently, teasingly flat
over my hipbones. Unconstrained, now, by the unforgiving
fabric, my cock swelled toward him through the thin cotton
of my boxers, already mostly translucent where my slick had
soaked through. Oro leaned forward, mouthing at the shape
of it through my underwear, and I could not hold back the
shout that rose up in my throat, my hands fumbling and
clutching at the back of his hair. “
Fuck
,” I rasped, as he
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42
nuzzled me, wet-kissing through the fabric, “Oh, fuck,
please, come
on
.”
Oro"s breath was stuttering, now, too, and when he let
out a moan against my shaft, I felt it resonate right to the
base of my spine. “I want to fuck you,” he said, in a voice
gone smoky with want, rough in a way I could almost taste.
His fingers slipped deftly under the waistband of my jeans
and underwear together, tugging them down over my hips,
freeing my cock entirely. It separated stickily from my
underwear, clear fluid pooled at the tip of it, smearing