Inside Out, page 14
“That’s some bed,” Julius said. “I’ve never seen anything like it.”
I looked at him, but his eyes were locked on the four-poster bed made of cherry wood and wrought iron. I didn’t think he saw any other part of my room besides the bed. Why did he sound nervous suddenly? It was just a bed. Yes, the headboard and footboard were made of intricate metal work that formed lotus flowers, but it shouldn’t have been cause for concern. Then it occurred to me.
“Peter didn’t make the bed,” I said. “I bought it when I moved to Blissville. You’ve never seen anything like it because I had it custom made.”
“It’s a work of art, Rome.”
I tugged on Jules’s hand so he would turn to face me. “I probably said the same thing when I saw the bed for the first time but seeing you in my room makes me realize I was wrong. That,” I said, pointing at the bed, “is a piece of furniture. You are the work of art, and together, we’re going to make something devastatingly beautiful.”
“English lit majors are such smooth talkers,” he said, but I saw how much my words moved him.
“Would you expect anything different from a guy named Romeo?” I teased. “I meant every word.” I leaned in for a long, tender kiss then pulled back because there was something important I needed him to hear. “There’s been no one else in that bed other than me.” I released his hand to remove my shirt. “And I want you there with me. Only you. Over me, under me, or beside me. I just want you there.” I placed Jules’s palm over my heart, letting him feel the way it raced for him. Only him.
“You completely unravel me, Rome. You seduce me with your body, heart, and your brain. The perfect trifecta, and I want to make you mine.”
“I want to be yours.” God, I hadn’t wanted anything so bad for a very long time. I reached for the hem of his shirt and pulled it over his head, revealing his smooth chest and flawless skin. My hands immediately went to his pecs while he pulled me to him for a hot, needy kiss. I moaned into his mouth as I slid my hands up to wrap around his shoulders and pull him flush against me, needing that skin-on-skin contact. Jules’s skin blazed like he had a fever and was burning up from the inside out.
Jules pulled back from the kiss, breathing hard. “Bed.”
I missed his heat the second I stepped out of our embrace, but the sooner we undressed, the sooner I could have all of him against me. The fooling around on his sofa the previous evening was amazing, but I wanted—needed—to feel all of him pressed against me, moving inside me.
“Baby, are you sure?” Jules asked once we were completely naked. “I know this”—he wrapped his left hand around my aching dick—“is ready, but are you ready here?” He pressed his right hand over my heart then raised his hand to gently caress my temple. “Or here?”
“So ready, Jules.”
The walk to my bed felt more like floating on air. Jules pulled back the duvet then slid between my sheets and I followed until every part of me was touching every part of him. First-time sex between a couple tended to be awkward, at least until passion overrode insecurities and bodies took over and did what they were made to do. In my eagerness to taste Jules’s lips again, I leaned forward to recapture his mouth at the same time he started to lower his head to lick my nipple. My lips smacked hard against his forehead.
“God, I’m sorry,” Jules said. He ran his finger gently over my lips to make sure they hadn’t split. In response, I sucked his finger in my mouth and pretended it was his cock. I loved the way his pupils expanded until there was only a thin rim of color showing around the obsidian circles. Alice had her rabbit hole, and I was teetering on the edge of falling into Julius’s eyes.
I suddenly rolled him to his back and my knee caught the inside of his thigh when I tried to position myself between them. Julius groaned, and my only recourse was to slide lower in the bed so I could kiss it better. The scent of his arousal drove me insane, and my body took over, driving away my inept clumsiness. I gripped his cock and laved it with my tongue, savoring his taste and the way Julius fisted my hair. I wanted to make him writhe, pant, and moan, so I took him to the back of my throat.
“Unh,” Jules grunted. “Maybe we do that when I’m not so worked up, yeah?”
I released his cock from my mouth and circled the flared head with my tongue. “Feels good?”
“Too good. C’mere.” I was torn. I wanted to stay right where I was and work his cock with my mouth until his entire body shook with his pending release. Even then, I was tempted to suck and lick until he came, hoping he would shout my name as he spilled down my throat. His pleading eyes were the deciding factor. “I need you now.”
Jules’s lips met mine when I crawled back up his body then he rolled and pinned me beneath him. Unfortunately, he misjudged the distance to the edge of the bed and cracked his elbow on the nightstand.
“Fuck!” he yelled. I cringed because I knew how bad that had to hurt. We both burst into laughter when he looked down into my eyes. I’d always heard that laughter in bed was a bad thing, but I loved the way Jules’s body shook with mirth when I pulled him into my arms. “Have you seen anything more ridiculous in your life?” Jules asked when he could speak again.
“I’ve never seen anything more beautiful in my life.” I sounded like a besotted, sappy fool, but so what. I was too old to be coy with the man I was falling so hard for. “And the night has just begun.”
I lifted my head, needing to taste Julius’s smile on his lips. We fell into sync then. Our hands sliding over smooth flesh, learning the dips and planes of one another’s bodies while needy moans echoed off the walls of my room. I clung to Jules, unable to get enough of him and wishing I could absorb him into my body. Having his dick inside me would be as close as I could get, so I retrieved the lube and condom from the drawer and handed them to him.
He didn’t double check to see if I was sure; he saw the certainty in my eyes and the steadiness of my hands. Jules took his time stretching me open while kissing me until I was vibrating with need. His fingers grazed over my prostate but never lingered long enough to put me out of my misery. Once he was certain I was ready, he slid the condom down his erect length and slicked it with more lube.
“Go slow,” I urged when the broad head of his cock pressed against my pucker, reminding him it had been a long time for me.
Jules responded by lowering his head and kissing me as he slowly worked his cock inside my body one glorious inch at a time. It was painful at first but then I just felt stretched and full by the time he was buried to the hilt. Jules raised his head and looked down at me. “Still with me?”
“Make me yours,” I whispered breathlessly.
Jules began to move then, slow and languid at first, allowing my body time to adjust, then sped up at my urging. “God, yes. More.” In case my words weren’t enough, I raked my nails down his back until I gripped his ass with both hands and raised my hips up to meet his thrusts. Our sweat-slicked bodies slapped together as we chased our climax, panting and groaning. It was too much and not enough at the same time. I was desperate to come but frantic to make it last at the same time.
I came first with Jules’s name on my lips then held him tight in my arms as my spasming clench pulled him over the edge with me. Jules’s body stiffened and stilled in my arms for a heartbeat before he started rutting inside me again. I felt the scalding heat from his release through the thin latex barrier as he cried out my name. He didn’t stop until I’d milked the last drop from him.
We lay there together touching and kissing for several minutes before he carefully eased out of me.
“Now can I feed you?”
“Shower first?” he countered.
“Sure. I’ll go heat up a plate while you—”
“Join me?”
I wasn’t passing that up. It turned out the only thing more beautiful than Julius Shepherd naked in my bed was him naked and wet in my shower. My greedy hands touched his strong, muscled body everywhere while I washed him with my body wash. Man, did I like that he smelled like me.
“How do you feel about delaying dinner a little longer?” I asked, looking down at his erect penis in my hand.
Jules lowered himself to the shower floor in front of me, gripped my cock, and looked up at me. “Feed me.”
So I did.
“The only source of knowledge is experience.”
~Albert Einstein
“Don’t stop until you get it right.”
~Julius Shepherd
“In class today, we’re going to be making our own bouncy polymer,” I announced to my seventh period science class. “Which is basically Silly Putty.”
“Silly Putty?” Anastasia Collins asked. “We’re making kids’ toys in chemistry class? I thought this was supposed to be a hardcore science class. I didn’t play with Silly Putty as a kid, Mr. Shepherd. I certainly don’t want to start now.”
“That’s great news,” I replied. “I didn’t say anything about playing with our creation. Anastasia. I said we were going to make it.”
“Why?” she asked.
“Because chemistry is the study of matter, and how matter behaves and interacts with other kinds of matter. This experiment is a study of both chemical properties and chemical reactions.”
“Surely, there are other things we could make as an experiment. I heard that first period made bubbles.”
“Bubbles?” Billy Hill asked from the corner. “You think making bubbles is more mature than Silly Putty? That’s just…silly.”
“No one asked you, Hillbilly,” she fired back.
“Hey, now,” I said, holding up my hands. “We’re not about to start criticizing each other or revert to name-calling. Anastasia,” I said calmly. “Did you know that some of our most common household items are results of failed NASA experiments? Most of the items were deemed unsuitable for our rockets but are extremely useful in our everyday lives.”
She rolled her eyes in response and snidely said, “Whatever.” That kind of attitude would never fly in my classroom.
“And now you get to write a detailed report about what those household items are and why the experiments failed. It will be due on Monday.”
“What?” she asked. “It’s Thursday already.”
“Keep it up, and it will be due tomorrow.”
She pursed her lips together in a firm line indicating just how displeased she was with me, but at least she was pouting silently.
“I know that this is a small school, and you’ve likely heard what the other classes made today. I introduced a series of experiments today to all my chemistry classes with various levels of difficulty. I will rotate each of the experiments around so that all of you will get a chance to make these projects. Your first experiment will be making Silly Putty. If anyone here doesn’t agree with my lesson plan, they can take a zero on the assignment and hang out in the office.” I sounded more and more like my mother every day. The woman took no prisoners, and neither would I.
I passed the project worksheet out that included the objective, materials, and procedure. “You’ll see under the procedure section there are columns for observations and physical properties beside each ration combination of glue and borax solution. A critical part of being a scientist is recording the data. I will knock a ton of points off your grade if you present me with a perfect specimen of bouncy polymer but don’t include your observations. Am I clear?”
“Yes, sir,” most everyone said.
“You will fail this assignment if you aren’t wearing the appropriate safety gear. Lab coats, safety goggles, and disposable gloves are required as stated in the instructions. Am I clear on that too?”
“Yes, sir.”
One person from each team retrieved the safety gear while their lab partner collected the materials they’d need. Once the kids had their backs turned to me, I permitted my gaze to land on the sexy, silver fox observing my class. Looking at him then, no one would guess that we had spent the past three nights together. He was cool, calm, and the ultimate professional who judged my performance in the classroom. He had cheerfully greeted the kids and asked that they pretend he wasn’t there. Some of the kids had joked that they’d seen him in several of their classes over the week. Only I knew the magnetism his fancy suit, flesh, and bones hid from the rest of the world.
I had known Rome would be stopping by and had braced myself for the impact of seeing him in my space while surrounded by my students. I didn’t speak to him directly when he entered the room, nor did I allow myself to meet his crystalline eyes even though I felt his regard on me. Rome’s presence wasn’t an official evaluation, we had decided it wouldn’t be appropriate, but the board had implemented a new plan for the school district. They wanted him to be familiar with the teachers, their styles, and the classes our school district offered. I knew from dinner conversations how impressed he was by the teachers, students, and curriculum. He was looking forward to doing the same with the elementary and middle schools too.
“I feel like I’ve waited my whole life to work in a school district where I can have a real impact on the students’ lives,” he’d said while brushing his teeth last night. Rome’s joy and enthusiasm, both in and out of bed, were invigorating and inspiring to me.
I returned my attention to the class once they started to file back to their tables. “My good pal Einstein said, ‘The only source of knowledge is experience.’ That means we don’t stop until we get it right.”
“Isn’t that a Michael Jackson song?” Aaron Harbinger asked.
“No, Aaron. That’s ‘Don’t Stop ’Til You Get Enough.’ Close though,” I said. “I simply mean you have to start over if you don’t get it right the first time. Work together as a team.”
By the time the bell rang, each of the teams had successfully made bouncy polymer in various colors since food coloring was permitted. I could tell Anastasia was more impressed with her “toy” than she anticipated, but I didn’t comment on it. Most importantly, they each documented their observations.
“Nice job, everyone! See you tomorrow.”
Rome slowly rose to his feet but didn’t make his move toward me until the last student crossed the threshold. His strides were predatory, and his pale blue eyes burned with intensity. When Rome reached me, I noticed the skin on his face looked like it was stretched tighter. His body was rock hard and rigid with tension, and he practically shook with how badly he wanted to touch me. I reached for my bottle of water to moisten my mouth which had gone dry.
“Last class,” he said tersely.
I smiled then because I knew he wasn’t mad. “Was that the final bell?”
“Yes.”
“I’m not sure what I’m going to do after school since tennis practice was canceled due to the bad weather. Do you have any ideas about what I could do with my free time?”
“Dinner at my house. Five thirty.” That had already been the plan, so I was disappointed I wouldn’t be seeing him sooner. “I have to meet with the board to go over our agenda for tomorrow’s meeting.” I filed away my disappointment because he had something very important to do.
“Duh. It’s the ‘gay agenda.’ Haven’t you read the petition?”
Rome snorted. “You know I read every word on the petition at least twice the last time I was naked in bed with you living our ‘gay agenda,’ or have you forgotten?”
“Not in a million years could I forget that. I’ll go home and do some laundry while you’re busy so it won’t cut into our time together later.”
“I’m sorry,” Rome said, looking and sounding conflicted.
“Don’t be. You’re doing something amazing, and I’m going to be so proud of you tomorrow night when you get in front of everyone and stick up for our kids and every marginalized person who’s needed a champion.”
“Our kids?” Rome quirked a brow.
“An educator doesn’t look at their students as just another face or just another number. The students become our kids and their success becomes our motivation. We take every slight against them personally, and we do something about it. You, sexy man, are taking on that fight with the full support of the board and the high school faculty. That POS leader has picked the wrong man, the wrong school, and the wrong town to mess with.”
“I really like this side of you, Julius.” He leaned closer and lowered his voice another notch. “If I can find a yardstick, can we play bad teacher later tonight? That scolding you delivered was so fucking hot.”
“Rome, I need to ask you to leave my classroom now,” I said in a stern voice. His response was a needy little whimper in the back of his throat. “Five thirty.”
He nodded. “Five thirty,” he managed to rasp out.
When I pulled into the driveway, Dare was dumping a plastic tub of recyclables into the bigger bin we hauled out with the trash each week. “Well, hello there, Mr. Shepherd. Did you have a good day at school?”
“I certainly did,” I said, smiling from ear to ear. “Did you have a good day?”
“There’s never a dull day at Curl Up and Dye.”
“Really?” I asked. “And just because your day wasn’t dull doesn’t mean it was good.”
“True, but I got enough material from today to laugh about it for weeks. If I wasn’t heading over to see my grandpa, I’d tell you all about it. As it is, I’m running behind. Grandpa signed us up for another euchre tournament. He and another resident at his nursing home are locked in a vicious battle until one of them dies. It used to be an annual tournament but the two guys had nagged and griped until it’s now a quarterly tournament. We have signals and all kinds of ridiculousness.”
“Rome’s aunt Astrid would fit right in there.”
Dare started walking backward to his house. “You’d just have to bring up his name when I don’t have time to grill you. Don’t think I haven’t noticed your car missing in the driveway a few mornings this week.”
I shrugged my shoulders. “I’m not trying to hide anything.”
