Out of Nowhere(51)
“I want to watch you jerk off.” Oh god, did I just say that?
Rafe groans. “Fuck. Whatever you want.” He pushes his briefs down his thighs but doesn’t bother taking them all the way off. “Won’t take much.” He shakes his head and presses his thumb to my mouth, distracting me from staring at his dick, which is thick and uncut, straining against his muscled stomach. “Practically came just watching you.” His words are matter-of-fact but his voice is raw, and it fucking gets to me.
He palms his erection and looks at me through lowered lashes. I nod, my mouth dry. Rafe starts to move, slowly at first, like he’s trying to make it last, but he’s looking at me like he’s barely paying attention to what he’s doing. His mouth falls open and he catches his full bottom lip between sharp teeth. His eyes keep darting down to my hand so I reach out to him.
I’m expecting him to pull my hand down between his legs, but he just holds it while he strokes himself with the other, squeezing my hand as he arches into his own. It’s… shit, it’s so hot. Like I’m jerking him off by extension. But then it’s not enough and I lean against his shoulder and reach down, tentatively resting my hand on his erection. Rafe startles.
“Hey, you don’t have to.”
I roll my eyes and shake my head. He releases himself. I move my hand on him and I guess it’s not so mysterious, since I do it to myself, but the feel of him, hot and hard and straining, makes my heart pound and sends a jolt of electricity through me. Rafe squeezes my hand and gulps.
“That feels amazing,” he says, bringing our hands to his mouth and kissing my knuckles. I squeeze him tighter and stroke him hard, twisting my hand a little over his foreskin. He shudders and groans and his head tips back. I press closer to him so I can feel the tremors running through him.
As I move my hand faster, Rafe lets out a string of curses and clamps his free hand down over mine. He strokes both of our hands up and down twice, and then he’s coming with a growl, his muscles rigid, our hands twisted up together.
He hisses as he strokes himself gently a few more times. I turn my head and press a kiss to his shoulder, and he leans into me.
“Thank you,” he murmurs. And it doesn’t really sound stupid at all.
Chapter 8
OVER THE next weeks, every few evenings after work, Rafe’ll come over, we’ll go running, eat dinner, and talk through movies I don’t care about. Rafe thinks about movies analytically, and he connects everything to politics and social justice. He’s explained a lot about the political organizing he’s involved with, but to be honest, I don’t get half of what he says. Fundraising and campaigns and direct actions and… well, really, a lot of it sounds like a shit-ton of meetings, and I’m not totally clear on what the end goals are. I try to listen but I kinda space out.
One night I guess I failed to hide my spacing out when Rafe was saying something about zoning exemptions, race, and charter schools, and he gave up and asked me to teach him the trick with the coin and the glass I showed the kids one Saturday.
I showed him over and over—coin in the center of the palm, tap the glass, slide the coin down, hit with the glass to pop the coin up and in—but he was hilariously hopeless, fumbling the coin and almost dropping the glass every time. He got frustrated at himself, and I teased him about taking everything so seriously. His very serious protests that he doesn’t take everything seriously cracked me up, and I finally got him to laugh too. Rafe doesn’t laugh much. Almost never. So when he does, it’s a total win. I celebrated by climbing on top of him and kissing him silly, narrowly avoiding shattering the glass.
He’s also told me a lot about his family. His two younger sisters are both crazy about him. Gabriela has two kids and is a nurse at Temple Hospital, and her husband, Alejandro, is some big-time contractor. She’s always inviting Rafe over for dinner so she can lecture him about settling down.
Luz calls Rafe to ask for advice about men, about problems with her apartment, and to talk about Camille, her fifteen-year-old daughter. Luz had Camille when she was sixteen and Rafe feels guilty about it because he thinks if he’d been home instead of in prison, she never would’ve gotten pregnant and dropped out of high school. Rafe has a major soft spot for Luz and Camille, though, so I doubt he’d actually want to change anything. Whenever Luz calls asking about a leaky faucet or a stuck window, Rafe goes over and fixes it for her right away, even though her landlord lives down the street.
Saturday workshops have been going well. It’s clearer and clearer that the kids are up for learning anything if they like the person who’s teaching it to them, but what they really want is a chance to hang out with each other in a place where they feel comfortable. Sometimes Rafe and I end up just standing around while they gossip or talk about movies and music and TV.