How The Shadows Move

He came to me in my dream. A presence made known only by the shifting of moonlight and shadows cast against the walls in this room full of memories.

It started the first night after returning to my childhood home for my cousins wedding. The train from London Bridge to Brighton had been delayed as usual so I was late for dinner, another excuse for my mother to be disappointed in me. I ate reheated stew as she sat before me, judgment written all over her face as she questioned me relentlessly about work, my finances and finally, how my novel was coming along.

"Fine," I replied evenly. "I have a publishing house interested, but they want two more chapters drafted by the end of next month."

"And is that possible?" She asked doubtfully. "It's taken you three years just to send the first one."

"Two. And I'll manage just fine. Simon said..."

"Simon?" She interrupted, her voice rising in both volume and octave, "Who's Simon?"

"He's from the publishers." I sighed and laid my fork quietly on the plate of half-eaten food. "Listen Mum, just because I'm gay doesn't mean I'm fucking every man whose name happens to come up in conversation." I watched, feeling some small sense of satisfaction as she grimaced at my language. It was offensive I know, but after years of being unable to gain her approval for any aspect of my life, my ability to shock and offend her gave me a pathetic sense of achievement.

Recovering quickly, she schooled her features and stood from the table picking up my plate, and moved to the sink. Turning her back to me she scraped the unfinished meal into the rubbish bin and began loading the dishwasher before she spoke again. "I just don't understand, Matthew. It's not as if you never had a girlfriend. I honestly thought you would have grown out of this phase by now. If your father were still alive..." She shook her head slightly and began clearing the kitchen in earnest.

I smiled bitterly and rose to walk towards her, placing my hand on her shoulder to stop her flurry of movements. "Are we really going to argue about this again?" I asked quietly, memories of screaming rows, unshed tears and slamming doors assaulting my mind as I gently rubbed my hand over her arm.

She turned to me and smiled a little, and although I could see it did not reach her eyes, I was grateful to my mother for the temporary ceasefire. "No," she replied quietly, "It's getting late and I have a lot to do before the wedding tomorrow." She reached up and patted my cheek with her hand. "You must be tired from working and writing all week. Why don't you go and get an early night?"

"I nodded and kissed her cheek. "Goodnight mum. Thanks for dinner." I turned and walked out of the kitchen and up the stairs to my room, pretending the entire time that I could not hear my mother crying downstairs.

Sleep was hard to come by that night. After showering and getting into bed I balanced my laptop on my legs and wrote solidly until two in the morning because for some twisted reason confrontations with my family always gave my muse a good kick in the pants. But when I read through what I had written I realised most of it was narcissistic drivel and the delete button became my best friend for the next half hour.

I tried to sleep after that but my mind kept wandering back to the conversation at the kitchen table -- a mere photocopy of the hundreds of conversations we had had before about my sexuality. It's not that I hated her for her beliefs, my mother had me when she was forty and now at the age of sixty five it would be impossible to ask her to change her lifelong opinions, but what I couldn't understand is that seven years after I told her I was gay and she still couldn't accept me for who I am, still hoping and praying to an unforgiving God that this whole thing was a phase and one day I would wake up with the urge to run out and find a pretty girl to marry and settle down with. To have two-point-four children, a house in the suburbs with a mortgage and a Labrador and just be...normal.

I must have dozed off soon after saving the latest edition of chapter four because I awoke at around five in the morning with my open laptop weighing heavy on my lap and a crick in my neck. I felt the small hairs on my arms standing on end and in the over-warm room I could immediately sense that something wasn't right.

Slowly, and with my heart rate increased to a thundering in my ears, I closed my computer and placed it gently on the floor beside the bed. Then I reached for the lamp and with shaking fingers and a dry mouth, I bathed the room in light.

Nothing.

Everything was exactly as I had left it when I had retired that evening; as I had left it seven years ago. Across the room from where I lay my bookshelf was still heaving with well-read texts and above that, the model aeroplane my uncle had made with me in a failed attempt at bonding after my fathers death hung at an angle from the ceiling, the string snapped off on the left wing making the fighter jet seem more pathetic than majestic.

To my left, a chest of drawers, the stickers I had placed on it as a child, and torn off as a teenager leaving behind scraps of white, glued forever to the mahogany, and to the right a mirrored closet, the contents within now only the suit I had bought for the wedding and my old Spiderman costume, Moth-eaten and dusty with age.

My childhood toys had long since been donated to other family members, or placed on charity shop doorsteps, but the costume I understood, was my Mothers way of clinging desperately to the past; to my innocence and to a time when she was in control.

I grimaced at my reflection in the mirror on the closet door. My pale skin and darkened eyes telling stories of too many late nights staying up writing and too many early mornings getting up for work and going to a job I hated just to pay the bills.

I ran my hands through my sleep-tousled brown hair and glared at myself for a moment, brown eyes looking back at me, accusing me of crimes I had no right to commit. Breaking my mothers heart, upsetting the ones I loved. I absently scratched at my chest as I replayed another row in my head, this time not with my mother, but an argument just as hurtful, just as guilt-ridden.

Unable to bear another sleepless night replaying bitter memories, I switched off the lamp once more and lay down in my bed, closing my eyes to block out the faint glow of moonlight seeping through the curtains.

And that's when I first felt his touch. At that moment in Limbo, that relaxed state when the body is no longer conscious, but not quite asleep, he came to me. And although I should have been afraid; should have been terrified, in that moment, after everything and perhaps because of everything I had been through the past seven years, I welcomed him.

He was gentle to begin with, so soft I wondered if I was imagining it. I could feel a gentle feather-light touch on my face, a finger caressing me from my forehead, down my right cheek and across my jaw. Then the touch became firmer, so much so that I could differentiate between fingertip and knuckle as he turned his hand this way and that.

I could feel his breath on my face and a part of me wanted to wake up, to open my eyes but with every caress I was being dragged further down into this dream.

Everything became so much more intense as one of his hands stroked its way down my neck and under the bedcovers to flit restlessly over my chest. I sucked in a sharp breath as my T-Shirt was pulled up and the hand, warm and smooth, lay flat against my torso.

I could feel my world spinning around me as the duvet cover was torn away and I was bared to this stranger. I could hear his sigh, but no words were spoken as he lifted my shirt higher and caressed my stomach, gently kneading my sides and tickling my ribs as he explored.

As he reached my nipples I arched wantonly against his touch, my eyes remaining firmly closed, but my other senses on high alert. I could hear his breathing as he lowered his head to kiss then lick at each tightened nub in turn, making me whimper quietly in need, all thoughts of turbulent family matters being washed away by clever hands and soft, sensual lips. I wanted this, needed this. I deserved this.

I could feel the wetness of his mouth, his tongue, and the firmness of his fingers as he continued his exploration, his hands forever moving over me, making me squirm, my body begging without words. I could smell the mustiness of a room rarely aired, along with the scent of this man, this ghostlike creature who smelled of heat and salt and pure masculinity, the combination of which assaulted my senses and gave rise to my cock, making me harder that I had been in a very long time.

He kissed me then and the circle was complete. His lips were soft, but insistent as he persuaded my mouth to open with his, his teeth nipping gently at my bottom lip until I acquiesced. As soon as I did, the tempo changed and a sense of urgency took over us both. His tongue plunged into my mouth and pillaged and raped as it saw fit, causing us both to moan with desire and the bed to dip as I finally took control of my body and grabbed the man by the arms, pulling him down on top of me.

The feel of another hard body pressed so hard caused us both to release each others mouths and gasp aloud as each of our cocks rubbed ruthlessly against the others. But there were still too many clothes in the way and I needed to tell him so.

Taking a deep breath, terrified that my next action would end this dream, I opened my eyes.

The room seemed darker somehow than it had before and even though the moonlight still shone through the flimsy bedroom curtains, all I could make out before me was the silhouette of a man; broad shouldered and muscular. My heart skipped at beat at the realisation that this dream had not ended and my grip tightened on my partner's arms in satisfaction and sheer arousal.

The shadows shifted around the room as the figure lying across me moved slightly. "Please," I murmured as he bent his head to nip at my collarbone. For a writer, it seemed odd that I could not form the words I so desperately needed to say. I tried again, this time tugging at his shirt in desperation. "Please."

Though I couldn't see anything more than shades of black, I could feel his nod as he lifted off of me and began to shed his clothes. It soon became a race as I tore the shirt from my body and skimmed the jogging bottoms down my legs before reaching blindly for the stranger in my room, never once stopping to think of how absurd, how deviant, how blatantly wrong this situation should have been.

We crashed together, a tangle of limbs desperate to be closer than scientifically possible and I raised my legs to encompass his, drawing him in, encircling him in the heat of my body as we ground together, groaning and gasping, kissing and biting at whatever parts of each others skin we could reach.

He felt muscular and strong, but he allowed me to flip him on his back so I could kiss and tease my way down his body, desperate for a taste of him. I reached his stomach and it quivered beneath my tongue, encouragement enough for me to linger awhile. But my hand could not be stilled and it carried on the journey south until I was holding his rigid, heavy cock in my hand, pulling firmly and teasing both the tumescent organ and the cries from his mouth.

Moving down the bed I reached the point where my hand joined with his body and took a moment to inhale the very core of him. I took pleasure in the faint aroma of sweat and arousal mixed with his own unique scent and could have stayed longer, just learning about this man, but for the pained noise that came from above.

Hearing his arousal increased my sense of urgency tenfold and hardened my cock to the point of pain and so I continued my journey of discovery the only way possible -- by opening wide and taking this man's cock in my mouth.

Immediately his hips reared up off the bed and I was forced to move over him and place my hands on his hips so as not to choke. Once settled, I began tasting him in earnest, sucking and licking for all I was worth, eliciting cries and groans from the man beneath my touch and at the same time absently marvelling at the taste, feel and size of his impressive penis.

I opened my throat and took him down as far as possible, causing him to buck and groan once more. I wondered how he would react if I began to hum and so I did and immediately I tasted the sign of impending orgasm as he cried out my name. The first words he had spoken and he chose my name. The thought, terrifying though it should have been, served only to arouse me impossibly further.

"Stop," he whispered as he gently cradled my face in his hands. I released his cock with an audible pop, my gasp loud enough for the world to hear as he said "I want to come inside you."

Nodding at the darkness, I moved across the bed and lay on my stomach, bringing my legs up underneath me. But he had other ideas. "Not like that," he said as he rolled me onto my back. "I want to see your face when you come." He moved his hands over me, stroking down my body and grasping my cock, squeezing and teasing as he fondled my balls with the other hand. "You are so beautiful like this."

"How can you see in this light?" I asked, my voice shaking as I arched into his touch, but he just laughed and leaned over, shifting the shadows once again until I could feel his lips caressing mine.

The room had a sudden chill as his body left mine to fumble around in the dark, but he was back a moment later and I could hear the distinct sounds of a wrapper being torn apart. "Are you ready?" He said pinched my nipple and moved over me once more.

I nodded to the darkness, assuming his eyesight would be good enough to pick up the signal and within seconds I felt the coldness of a lubricated finger entering me as the other hand continued to tease, but this time moving from my chest to my leaking cock.

"More," I begged as the finger plunged in and out of my body, teasing and tormenting my body until I could bear it no longer. "Hurry."

Another finger joined the first, more urgent this time and he scissored them apart before bringing them together once more and curling them until the brushed against my prostate, causing me to cry out. "Please," I begged. I want..."

But he knew what I wanted and within moments the fingers were withdrawn and at the entrance to my body I could feel the blunt hardness of his cock, demanding entry.

I willed my body to relax as he pushed his way in, but he was so big that despite lubrication and preparation the pain was still evident. I gasped at the first invasion and immediately he ceased all movement. "Are you okay?" He asked, his shadow hovering above me.

I reached up and felt the tension in his arms, tendons tight as guitar strings and I nodded. "More," I said once again, and after only a moments hesitation he began to move again, sliding further inside me until he was fully sheathed in my body, his balls brushing up against my backside.

He lowered his body until he was resting on his elbows. At the same time I lifted my legs so that they were wrapped around his waist and moved my hands down his back to cup his behind. Raising my head to meet his, I kissed his lips gently, before nuzzling my way to his ear. Once there, I took the lobe between my teeth, biting down once, gently, before saying very clearly, "Move."

That word alone seemed to kick him into action because everything became much more frenzied. I felt him get better leverage on the bed with his feet before he began ploughing into me hard and fast. This was not making love as it had begun to be, nor was it sex. This man was fucking me into the mattress and it was all I could do not to scream every time he thrust into me.

I locked my heels together behind his back and crossed my arms around him before simply holding on for dear life. His movements seemed to get impossibly stronger with each rocking motion and when he shifted the angle slightly he managed to hit my prostate every time. From then on I really was crying out and within seconds I was coming harder than I ever had before, my balls drawn up tight into my body and my cock pulsing liquid cum between our two heaving stomachs.

As if on cue, the man arched up suddenly and his movements stilled as he cried out once before shooting deep inside me. I could feel through the latex protection the heat of his release and I wondered in my post-orgasm haze whether his own climax would have been enough to tear a hole in the condom.

The sheer ridiculousness of the thought made me laugh out loud as the man collapsed exhausted on top of me. I could feel his head move from my shoulder as he wiped the hair from my face to ask me what I was laughing at.

"Nothing, just a moment of madness," I replied sleepily as we moved against each other until I was curled in his arms.

"You should write it down," He whispered as I drifted off to sleep. "Might be good for your book."

-*-

The next day was frantic. After too little sleep and waking up to an empty bed, I managed to convince myself it had all been a dream, but going downstairs to face my mother was still nerve-wracking as memories of cries and screams of pleasure came flooding back.

"Morning," I said as I slowly entered the room, my body still aching from the night before and my heart beating a nervous tattoo. Dream or not, I certainly had the feel of being well and truly fucked.

Mum looked up from her sewing. "Good morning. Sleep well?" and without waiting for a reply she resumed her task

I nodded. "Fine thanks. Except..." My pause gave her cause to look up again.

"Oh dear," She frowned. "Did next doors dog keep you awake? I meant to warn you about that animal. Barks until all hours. That's why I sleep with ear plugs now." She moved over to the kettle and switched it on. "Could have sworn Sheila said they were going camping this weekend though," she murmured as she began making tea before shrugging and smiling at me. "Must have left this morning instead."

I nodded, trying to hide my relief with a grateful smile as I accepted the drink and moved to leave the kitchen. "Better go take a shower," I said. "We have to leave soon."

I walked back up the stairs and into my bedroom, shutting the door behind me before I turned to look at the man lying naked on my bed.

"I was in the bathroom when you got up. Did she hear anything last night?" he asked quietly as I took a moment to appreciate his form in the daylight.

I shook my head and smiled, placing my drink on the bedside table. "Earplugs. Next doors dog gets a bit noisy apparently." I moved over to the bed and crawled over him until I was lying face to face with the man from the shadows.

"And you're sure she won't come in here," he said, more fact than question, but I nodded anyway. "The one thing my Mother has always respected is my right to privacy." I settled on his perfect body for a moment, fitting myself comfortably in the curves and angles of his form. "I'm glad you found the key I left." I said after a minute, "And I'm so sorry about before..."

He shook his head and wound his arms around my waist. "Forget about it Matt. I understand."

"She just wouldn't understand about you. About us."

He sighed, but smiled, so understanding, so patient. "I know. She's not ready. You're not ready."

I nodded and laid my head against his chest for a moment, listening to his heart beating. But I knew I had to end this moment. Had to hurry or I would be late for the wedding.

I just couldn't bring myself to leave him.

My mind was made up. "Simon?" I asked after a moment.

"Hmm?"

"I looked up at my lover, my partner and the man I trusted more than anything in the world. "Want to go to a wedding?"