The Second Time I Gave Myself to Another Man

It was nearly midnight and Rosario remained awake beyond the window. From the apartment’s fourth floor came the constant hum of cars crossing the avenue, a distant sound mingling with our breathing. Inside, though, everything was still. Our bodies rested after the first surrender, and my mind drifted in that blurry border between sleep and wakefulness, worn out by the physical and emotional strain of that first time.

We had left the hallway light on, a yellow strip that slipped under the door and barely outlined the furniture. The bed smelled of us, of sweat and of something new I wouldn’t know how to name. Bruno was asleep beside me, face down, one arm crossed over my chest as if he were afraid I’d leave while he wasn’t looking.

Everything suggested that this newly discovered happiness would not break that night. And deep down I knew it would never break. Our souls seemed to have fitted themselves to our bodies in a way neither of us had foreseen. Naked, embraced, still bearing the dried traces of the first encounter on our skin, we slept half-awake, without letting go completely.

I don’t know how much time passed. What brought me back to the world wasn’t a noise or a light, but a caress. Through the haze of sleep and unconsciousness I began to feel his hands. Bruno was tracing my chest with his fingertips, slowly, circling my nipples, sliding down the center of my abdomen until stopping just before reaching lower.

I opened my eyes slightly. The room was still dark and he was a silhouette moving over the sheets. I felt his mouth follow the path his fingers had opened: a kiss on my shoulder, another on my neck, a soft bite on my collarbone that sent a shiver through me.

I thought I was dreaming.

I wasn’t dreaming. When his mouth went all the way down and took possession of me, a fierce heat ran up my spine. He sucked me slowly, savoring even the remnants of the earlier encounter, as if he wanted to know every part of me with his tongue before we began again.

—Bruno… —I murmured, my voice broken by sleep and pleasure—. Love…

He lifted his gaze to me, let go of me for a moment, and spoke in a low voice, almost a whisper against my skin.

—Let me love you —he said—. Let me taste you. Then I want to be yours again, before dawn.

I didn’t know what to answer. There was no need. I stroked his head and let him continue, let him clean me, kiss me with that devotion I still found hard to believe was directed at me. He went down to my balls and ran his lips over them slowly, while one hand slid up the inner side of my thigh.

Only a few hours earlier I wouldn’t even have imagined myself in that bed. We had met by chance, talking for weeks without daring to say what we both knew. That night, after too much circling and too much silence, a single look held just one second longer had been enough for everything to overflow. And now I was there, letting myself be loved by another man as I had never let anyone love me before.

Pleasure wasn’t a blow, but the tide rising. It lifted me to the sky with his mouth, without urgency, stopping every time my breathing quickened too much, as if he wanted to prolong the moment as much as possible. Then his hands searched lower. He stroked me, kissed me where no one had ever kissed me before, spat, and slid two fingers inside me with a care that undid me completely.

—Easy —he said when I tensed up—. It’s me.

And that was enough. I relaxed against the mattress and let him explore me. Every movement of his fingers opened something new, a sensation I had no words for because until a few hours earlier I hadn’t even known it existed.

***

When he noticed that my erection was as firm as his, Bruno stopped. He sat up in the dimness, took a deep breath, and lay down on his back beside me. He groped for the bottle of lubricant we had left on the nightstand, rubbed himself with it, and spread his legs while looking into my eyes.

—Make me yours —he said—. Fuck me like this, facing me. I want to see your face.

It was hard to move. Not for lack of desire, but for the opposite: it was so much that it paralyzed me. Nothing came easily to us in that first experience. Everything was clumsy, everything was trial and error, everything was trying to imitate what we had once seen in some video, without really knowing if we were doing it right.

But none of it was grotesque. Everything was tenderness. Everything was fire, desire, and an immense need to take care of each other while we lost ourselves in one another.

I positioned myself between his legs. He lifted them and rested them against my waist. I felt the heat of his body against mine, his ragged breathing, his hands closing around my forearms. I pressed the tip to his entrance and began to push, slowly, watching every expression on his face.

—Stop if it hurts —I asked him.

—Don’t stop —he answered—. Keep going.

I pushed just a little. When my glans passed the first ring of his body, Bruno squeezed his eyelids shut and let out a groan that wasn’t of pain but of something deeper. I paused, waited for him to get used to it, and then let myself sink into him until I was chest to chest with him.

I felt his erect cock trapped between our bellies, throbbing at the same rhythm as mine. That single thought—his dick brushing against my skin while I was inside him—took me to a level of arousal I had never known before. It wasn’t just penetrating him. It was being inside and outside him at the same time, receiving and giving in the same motion.

I started to move. Slowly at first, with short, careful thrusts, measuring every reaction. Bruno dug his heels into my lower back, searched for my mouth, bit my lip. Every time I went a little deeper, he moaned against my neck and I felt his body open to receive me.

—Like that —he said—. Don’t stop, please.

I did as he asked. The rhythm became firmer, surer, a wordless conversation between our bodies. Every thrust of mine found an answer in his hips, rising to meet me. The bed creaked beneath us and the murmur of the avenue drifted far away, as if the whole world had shrunk to that room, that bed, those two bodies trying to fuse into one.

I kissed him as I moved. I kissed his eyelids, his sweat-beaded forehead, the corner of his mouth. He held my gaze in the dark and in those eyes I saw everything I was feeling too: fear, wonder, tenderness, and a desire we could no longer deny.

At some point I took the hand he had free and laced my fingers through his against the pillow. It wasn’t just sex and we both knew it. Every thrust, every pause, every shared breath was leaving a mark that wouldn’t be erased by morning. I felt that with each movement I was giving him more than my body, and that he was giving it back to me multiplied.

I felt his cock dampening my belly with each rub and knew he was as close as I was. I didn’t want it to end. I would have given anything to stretch that instant out, to stay inside him forever, feeling him breathe, feeling him mine.

—I’m close —I warned him in a whisper.

—Me too —he said—. Together.

***

And that moment came without haste, without pause, like a natural consequence of everything we had been living. There were no great exclamations or shouts. It was that sublime instant in which the silence of inner pleasure bursts through the body, that wordless explosion in which one gives the best of oneself to the other.

I emptied myself inside him in a series of spasms that left me breathless. Almost at the same time I felt his heat between our bellies, his release spilling between our two pressed-together bodies, joining us on the outside too. We stayed there, embraced, trembling, not wanting to separate even a millimeter.

I stayed on top of him for a long while, still inside, listening to his heart slowly calm beneath my chest. Bruno was stroking my back with the tips of his fingers, drawing invisible lines, and now and then he kissed my temple.

—Now you’re mine for real —he said softly, smiling in the dark.

—I always was —I answered.

Everything was calm, depth, and shared love. When at last I slid to one side, I pulled him against me and let him rest his head on my shoulder. Outside, Rosario was still awake, indifferent to what was happening on that fourth floor. Inside, two men who loved each other had just discovered that surrender wasn’t measured in a single time.

We stayed silent, watching the strip of light under the door, letting each other’s breathing lull us. No more words were needed. Before dawn we were asleep again, entangled, certain that many nights still lay ahead for us to keep getting to know each other.