Mine, All Mine Ch. 02

"I know, right? Anything new on the home front?"

"I'm just trying to get on with this project," she said. "Oh. And my mom wants me to go up there and help them move again."

"Again?"

"Again." She raised her eyebrows and gave a little nod for emphasis.

"Wow, dude. Same reason as last time?"

"Mmhmm," Taylor answered through a mouthful of water. "I'm surprised there's a landlord left in Las Cruces that'll rent to 'em."

"Yeesh."

"How about you? You heard from your grandmother lately?"

"Uh, yeah, a couple weeks ago, actually." His turkey and Swiss was already gone and he was now rooting in the pack for one of the granola bars. "I guess she's knee deep in ruffles and corsets. Some French Revolution movie she's working on."

"Oh?" Taylor fished out a bar of her own. "I thought she retired."

"She did, but this guy she worked with before really wanted her to do his costuming again, so she gave in. That's Hollywood for you." Ian wadded up the wrapper from the granola bar and the plastic baggie from the sandwich and shoved them back down into the pack.

"You California types," she teased. "Probably why you thought it was a good idea to come down here in shorts."

"Dude, let it go." He was done eating now and had laced his fingers together between his knees. She watched those pale green eyes of his scan out over the rocks and bristly little bushes.

"So how's Amy?"

"She's good."

Taylor felt her eyebrows migrate north to a different latitude. "What does that mean?" She knew his tones, and this one smacked of avoidance. He sighed, looked down at his knuckles.

"She's fine, I guess. I don't know. Things are just ..."

"Just ...?" She wasn't letting him escape that easily.

"You know the last time I saw her was when all five of us were together? In May?"

"In May? Why?"

"I don't know." He started rolling a softball-sized rock around under his shoe. "I don't want to bore you with all my personal shit. It's just whining, anyway."

She shook her head. "Ian, Seriously. Who else are you going to vent to? Nick?"

"I am definitely not going to talk to Nick about it." Their friend was fun, but people called him 'Nick the Dick' for a reason.

"Well then? Just get it out of your system. This is a safe space," she said the last bit in her best overwrought therapist voice, stretching her feet out in front of her.

Another sigh.

"We're just ... arguing a lot lately. We seem to have ... different goals."

"What do you mean, 'different goals'?"

"I mean different"—he flapped his hands, looking for words—"ideas about what should happen in a relationship. How much attention we need to pay to each other. Affection?"

"Affection?" The puzzle snapped together in one word. "Oh, Jesus Christ, are you two having bedroom problems?"

Ian rolled his eyes, shifting on his rock seat. "OK, I knew I shouldn't have started talking about this."

"Oh, calm down. Nobody's judging you."

"We just want different things!" Taylor leaned back at her friend's burst of vehemence. So much for not wanting to talk about it. "And it's driving me crazy because it's pretty much the only problem we have. My issue is, I can't decide if I'm getting all butthurt over something that isn't really that important in the whole scheme of the relationship"—here he made a global gesture—"or if this is something I'm not going to want to live with forever. Like it's gonna be a deal breaker."

"Listen, Captain Vague," she put in after his mini-rant, "what things? What is going on here?"

"I want things she doesn't want," he said, the stress turning the dial up on his voice. "She wants thingsI don't want."

"Ian." He looked over at her. "We're grown adults. I know what mommies and daddies do when they love each other very very much. Just spit it out."

A disgruntled noise came from his throat and he looked out into the distance again. "I can't believe I'm telling you this."

Taylor waited, silent.

"Well, I mean ..." He stalled. "OK, this is just one example, but ... if one person is going to go down on their partner, I feel like the other person should be returning the favor."

"Dude."

"That's just one thing," Ian said, deflecting. "That's not the whole problem. There's other things."

"All right, just stop right there," she said, leaning forward again to put her elbows on her knees. "She doesn't go down on you? Like, ever?"

...

"Ian!" His eyes avoided her incredulous stare. "For four years? Seriously?"

He thinned his lips.

"Seriously?"

"Well, there was this one time," he said, shuffling some pebbles around underfoot. "But ... it was so bad. We never even talked about it again. I mean, I could tell she was way not into it. Not even a little."

"One time?" She couldn't contain herself.

"OK, now who needs to calm down? Jesus."

"I just don't understand how you're putting up with that." Taylor opened the floodgates. "What year is this? Who the fuck doesn't go down anymore? You're telling me you've only had one half-assed blow job in four years?"

"It doesn't matter," he said, shaking his head.

"The fuck it doesn't."

"You know, I appreciate how angry you're getting on behalf of my dick, Sharpie, but it's not going to solve any of my problems."

She huffed air out through her nose and screwed up her face. "I'm sorry. That's just crazy to me. I didn't mean to freak out."

"Well, now you know why I didn't want to say anything."

They both took sips of water, letting some of the tension diffuse. Still, Taylor couldn't shut her brain off about it.

"Did she ever say why? Like what her problem was?"

"We literally did not talk about it ever again. It just became The Thing That Must Not Be Discussed," he said in a dramatic announcer voice.

"That sucks, man." Or doesn't, when you think about it. She shook her head and chewed down the last few bites of her sandwich.

Taylor couldn't think of one of the few guys she'd dated who would have stuck around through some kind of nonsense like that. At least not and they were going to town on her and then she just expected to sit there like a pillow princess. Even that toolbag Rob from her freshman year had understood the whole concept of share and share alike.

And forget all that. Ian was a good guy—a great guy, even—he didn't deserve to be in a situation where it was all take and no give. It was hard enough for her to figure out how to be social with Amy to begin with; they had almost no common interests. But now, knowing this?

It's only oral, for god's sake. So what? They can still fuck all day long and do all sorts of other stuff.

But he'd said there were other problems. That this had been just one example. And if this was the thing he'd been least embarrassed to tell her ...

There are times in a person's life where they need to choose a path at a fork in the road. So they sit down at a table or flop on the couch and grab a notepad and the last chewed-up Bic in the house with no lid on it. They make two columns on their little yellow pad: one for pros and one for cons. And on one side they write down all the good things that could come of cranking up some AC/DC and riding that Highway to Hell, and on the other side: all the unpleasant fallout that would warn against it.

Line by line, point by point they'd see the score adding up, and sooner or later it would become clear. Right there in front of them would be the reasonable, rational answer and, regardless of what they wanted in their greedy little hearts, they could put their finger square on the best choice. Knowing they'd examined all possibilities, they could take the path that wouldn't bite them in the ass later.

For Taylor Sharpe, sitting at the entrance of an abandoned mine in the middle of nowhere with her best friend Ian, right now was not one of those times.

"You ever heard the term 'bro-job'?" She punctuated the question with another swig from her water bottle to avoid having to make eye contact.

"Uhm, no." He laughed. "Do I even want to?"

"Well, I'd tell you to look it up, but it's not like there's Wi-Fi out here."

"OK? So?"

What the fuck are you doing, Sharpe?

"It's when two straight dudes who're friends help each other out in the blow job department." He was already snorting. "One of them's going through a dry spell and the other one scratches his back. Or well ... you know."

"Um, I am not asking Nick for a bro-job, Sharpie," he said, making a double-handed gesture of negation beneath climbing eyebrows that spoke of confused amusement. "Thought you'd know me better than that by now."

Just stop. Laugh it off.

"I'm not talking about Nick, dumbass. I mean, Me."

The first traces of nerves showed when he sat up a little straighter on his rock. "I don't think it counts if a girl does it." The humor was still in his voice, but things had just jumped off the ledge into Weird. Some mature, responsible part of her sighed somewhere, turned off the lights, and shut the door, knowing the whole thing was beyond saving.

"Oh stop," she said. "I've been one of the boys since the day we met. Probably why I keep going through boyfriends. They think they're getting a girl and then, BAM! Wrong again!"

"Yeah well, except for that one time at New Year's," he said, looking at the dirt with a wry grin.

"Eh. There was alcohol. That doesn't count." She waved him off with a hand.

Ian looked up at her then, forehead wrinkled in incredulity. "Hey, uhh ... if you're fuckin' serious—I mean ... I appreciate the offer and all that but ..."

"But what?" Taylor said, standing. "I am serious. Free bro-job. Right now." She took two steps in his direction and his eyebrows shot back up.

"You can't suck my dick," he said, scooting his ass backward on the rock. The 'can't' spoke volumes. He didn't think she was incapable. He wasn't opposed to the idea. This 'can't' feared consequences.

"Why not?" She came to a stop a foot from his bent knees.

You cannot come back from this, you know.

"Because Amy, genius." Those green eyes searched her, lost and possibly unsure of her grip on reality.

"So you're gonna narc me out?" she asked, putting a hand on her hip.

"Yes, the first thing I'm going to do is go running to Amy and be like, 'Hey, guess who gave me a blow job?' "

"So what's the problem, then?" she said, throwing her hands in the air only to let them slap down at her thighs again. "No one's going to see, and no one's going to tell."

"Taylor ..." The weak shake of his head told her he was at a total loss. To be fair, it wasn't as if she'd seen the situation coming, either.

She leaned down to put her palms on his knees for momentary support and knelt in the dirt between them, an array of tiny rocks presenting an immediate annoyance. Taylor ignored them.

"And think of this," she said, dropping the irritation and volume of her voice, "once someone gives you some decent head, it might help you decide whether it's something you're willing to go without. For the long term."

Taylor knelt upright and they were almost eye to eye. Ian had done nothing to back away or get her out of his space. When her eyes flicked down between them, she noted a new shape to his cargo shorts that was neither a phone nor a wallet.

This isn't fair. You know he's not thinking straight right now.

She put a selfish hand on the top of his thigh and scooted a few inches closer. "And Ian." He blinked at her and she leaned in, letting her next words go quietly at his ear. "I'm good at it. I like it."

When she pulled away, it wasn't as far back as she'd been before, and they sat there, still, teetering on the edge in the immense silence of the desert. Eye contact was too much. They both focused instead on her splayed fingers resting on his leg. She could hear him exhale.

"OK."

The assent was so tiny, as if he meant to hide it even from himself. And Taylor knew better. Oh, did she know better. But some mistakes were too good not to make.

It was almost as if they both thought his OK alone would set things into motion and, for a long moment, neither moved a muscle.

Well? You started this.

Taylor's hand slid further up his thigh, moving over the fabric of his shorts until her thumb hit a speedbump. He inhaled at a hiss and they still couldn't lock eyes.

"Ian."

Pounding heartbeats. She felt him twitch against her thumb.

"One of us is going to have to unbutton you."

They watched his fingers come up to nudge his tee shirt out of the way and fumble the copper button undone. He left the zipper, perhaps wanting her to take the last step as a way of absolving himself from blame.

The metal tab was between her fingers and she insinuated her upper body closer to his, her ear at his cheekbone, lips set to conspire in secret where there was no one around to hear.

"Tell me to stop," she whispered, the last exit before the Point of No Return.

"Don't."

Her breath seized. She let go the zipper. Pulled her fingers back an inch.

"Don't stop."

Zzzzzzzp.

He was in her hand. Hard. Hot, even through his boxers. A slide of her palm reported his size; curled fingers dipped to cradle his balls. She may or may not have groaned.

Goddammit, I want this.

"Sharpie. I don't think bros kiss on the neck."

Huh?

"Right," she said, getting her shit under control again. "Sorry. Guess I was just trying to set the mood."

He gave a nervous chuckle. "The mood is, I'm gonna have a heart attack."

Jokes. Jokes were good. That was familiar territory. She gave him another healthy squeeze.

"I haven't even started yet."

"I know!" They both laughed, but it was short-lived.

Taylor sat on her heels and dared to look at his face. She bit her lower lip knowing at some point she'd have to take the only possible next step.

"I can't believe you're going to do this." Those green eyes were so clear in the daylight. She didn't know what to say anymore. It was time.

"Sit back."

He angled himself back, supporting his weight on his palms, eyes on her every movement, mesmerized. She brought him out, tucking his boxers and shorts below his sack. For several breaths, Taylor could only stare.

Ian Killbourne's cock was out, right in front of her. And she was going to suck it.

We're through the looking glass now, people.

Her other hand came into the picture, thumb and forefinger circling him at the base, or at least getting most of the way around, pressing downward against his pubic bone, stretching the skin taut over his shaft and pointing it straight at the ceiling of the tunnel entrance. The first hand tested out a light caress, a smooth upward stroke with a feather-light grip.

Some low sound vibrated up from his chest. Encouraged, Taylor firmed up her hold for a series of slow, legitimate pumps. Her reward was watching him grit his teeth as though he were in pain.

He was not in pain.

All right. You said blow job, not hand job. Get to it.

But an opportunity like this would not come again, and Taylor wouldn't rush.

His skin was such perfect silk when she ran him over her cheeks, her chin, her lips. Like catnip, she could have rolled in his scent, turned upside down and kicked her legs in the air.

A crystal bead had formed at the end of the pink head and she angled him low to claim it with the first contact of her tongue. This was the time she chose to meet his eyes again.

"Ohhh, god."

Strange, she thought, how the anticipation of terror and extreme pleasure both elicited the same tone of dread.

He was in her mouth. Warm. Thick. She held him just long enough to get a sense of how much would fit before pulling off and stroking her own saliva down his length. His noises told her he'd given up control of the situation.

Taylor went to work.

From base to tip and back again, her tongue set out to rasp him free of worries about anything outside of the glorious present. When her wet track reached its lowest point, she'd dip down at every pass to tease his balls, sometimes pulling just skin between her lips, and other times taking in one of the heavy jewels to suckle all on its own. Both let her feel the muscles of his buttocks and thighs melting in surrender, and Taylor wanted more.

She tried again to test her capacity, using a spit-slick hand to aim and press him to the back of her throat. She swallowed, pulling him deeper.

"Ffffuck, Taylor."

His abandonment of her nickname flipped some internal switch in her brain.

Ian, goddammit.

She reached with her right hand and grabbed up his left. Set it on the back of her head. Curled her fingers around his to fist them into her hair before letting go. It seemed he was too afraid for a real grip, but he let his hand rest there, and the sensation was enough.

Taylor devoured his cock.

She bobbed, she slurped. She moaned on it as the plump, velvety head rubbed the roof of her mouth. She gulped him down and whined in desperation at her own gluttonous choking sounds.

The silence of the desert left them with a perfect soundscape of each hiss and groan, each damp slap of her fist pumping over his dick. With every noisy, wet break of suction when she reached the limits of her depth, Taylor felt herself hum at a higher pitch.

While the part of her that pretended to be in charge insisted this was just a bro-job, another awe-struck part of her, awakened on a New Year's Eve back in her freshman year, had irrational hopes.

Maybe, it thought, as she sucked and stroked, maybe he'll see. He'll see what a raw deal he's getting with Amy. He'll see how much better it could be with someone else.

With me.

But the part of her that pretended to be in charge cracked the whip, and her hopeful self cowered and shut up.

No, not with you. That's not the deal with the devil we made today, is it?

Ian's hips were flexing now and his hand held her hair up out of her face. She looked up into his eyes as he pushed himself past her lips. His lovely dark brows came together in concentration.

"Taylor."

If he knew how wet I was, would that turn him on, or freak him out?

She said his name back, but it came as a mewl around the girth parting her jaws.

"Taylor, fu-uuck!"

She palmed his balls, kneading and gently drawing them away from his body with circled fingers. He ripened to that last tight measure of fullness in her mouth.

Now.

Taylor surged forward, planting her nose in his curls, her chin on his sack, and swallowed.

"Oh god! Shhhhhit! Nnghhh!"

She swallowed some more.

He gave her everything and she took it, drawing it out, tremor after tremor, eating up his every jerk and groan.

At some point, Taylor knew she'd have to release him, but it was a moment she wanted to draw out for as long as she thought he might allow. Her tongue and throat followed him down for each aftershock with a languid milking. The knuckles of her right hand stroked over his tightened scrotum while her other palm smoothed up over the taut muscles of his belly.

She felt him exhale, felt the tension release. Her time was up.

Taylor leaned away, letting him slide from her mouth and bounce back against his body. Like a doctor after an embarrassing exam, she lifted his boxers back into place and brought the two halves of his fly together. It was abrupt, but she didn't know what else to really do.

"Well," she said, resting her hands on her thighs, forcing herself to offer a casual face. "That happened."

"Uh ... yeah it did."

Neither of them had anything more profound to say than that. She could ask him if he'd enjoyed it, but the taste at the back of her tongue spoke for itself. She ran shaky fingers through her hair.