His Mouth Still Tasted Like the Rain

The rain had been working the roof of the South Side warehouse since noon, a hard Pittsburgh drum that turned the skylight into running glass. I was on the scaffold with a brush loaded in iron-red, finishing the last panel of the mural his sister had commissioned: a river bending through brick, bottles, and the black shoulders of bridges. My shirt was off. Paint had dried in the crease of my elbow and along one knuckle. The loft smelled like mineral spirits and wet concrete.

He came up the freight stairs without calling out. Grant Holley filled the doorway in a soaked gray henley, thirty-six, broad through the chest the way a man gets from lifting kegs instead of posing for a gym mirror. Water ran off his hair and into his collar. He looked at the wall, then at me, and something in his face went still.

- Eli. She said you would be done by dark.
- Dark left an hour ago. The road is a river. I was not walking to the bus in this.
- You could have texted.
- I did. Your phone is probably drowning in that pocket.

He pulled the phone out. The screen was black with rain. He laughed once, short, and set it on a paint-splattered table. I climbed down. Up close he smelled like wet wool and the faint sweet of malt. His eyes were the color of the river I had just painted, gray going green at the edges. I was thirty-one, lean from ladders and long days, and I felt every inch of the air between his mouth and mine.

- You always work half naked?
- Only when the building forgets it has air.
- It is not forgetting now. Thunder sat down on the roof. The one working bulb flickered and held. He did not step back. I did not either.

- If I kiss you, Grant, I am not stopping at a kiss.
- Then do not stop. That was the last thing either of us said for a long while. I put my paint-stained hand on the back of his neck and pulled him in.

His mouth was cold from the rain and then it was not. He tasted like rain and salt and the sweet edge of malt, and he kissed like a man who had been deciding all week and was finished deciding. His tongue slid against mine, slow, then deeper, and the sound he made went straight down my spine and settled low in my gut. I shoved the henley up. His stomach was warm under my palms, haired in a dark line, muscle jumping when I dragged my thumb along it. He yanked the shirt off over his head and dropped it in a wet heap. Rainwater and skin. I mouthed the hollow of his throat, bit the tendon there, and felt his pulse kick. His hands were blunt and sure on my belt. He got it open, shoved my jeans and briefs down in one rough pass, and cool air hit my cock a second before his fist did. He wrapped me and stroked once from root to tip, thumb skating the slick at my slit, and my knees went unreliable.

He turned me and walked me backward until my shoulders met the unpainted brick beside the mural. The brick was cold. His chest was not. He went to his knees on the drop cloth without ceremony, looked up once with his eyes gone dark, and took me into his mouth. Heat closed over me, wet and sudden. The flat of his tongue pressed under the head, then he sank, slow, until his nose brushed the hair at my base and his throat flexed around me. I braced a hand in his wet hair and did not push. He did not need it. He worked me with a steady pull, cheeks hollowed, spit shining on his lip when he came off to breathe and went down again, faster, filthy and focused. One hand rolled my balls, heavy and careful. The other spread on my hip and held me where he wanted me. The sound of it was loud under the rain, wet and obscene, and my thighs started to shake. I tugged his hair. He pulled off, lips swollen and red, and stood to kiss me so I tasted myself on his tongue, salt and rain and him.

He turned me to face the brick. I heard his belt, the zipper, the wet sound of him spitting into his palm. Two fingers, slick and hot, pressed between my cheeks and circled my hole, patient and filthy, until I pushed back and he slid one in to the knuckle. The stretch burned sweet. He worked it, crooked, found the place that made my cock jump and leak against the cold brick, then added a second finger and opened me with slow thrusts until I was panting and fucking myself back onto his hand. He withdrew. I heard him spit again. The blunt head of his cock, thick and scalding, notched against me and held. He waited one breath. I reached back, gripped the hard muscle of his thigh, and pulled him in.

He sank in inch by inch, a deep burn that stole my air and gave it back hotter. When his hips met my ass he held still, chest to my back, mouth on my shoulder, one arm barred across my chest, the other hand wrapped around my cock. Then he moved. Long strokes first, dragging almost out and driving home until the wet slap of him filled the loft. Every thrust found that spot inside me. I made a broken sound I did not know I owned. He fucked me harder, thick and relentless, until the burn turned into a greedy ache and I shoved back for all of him, the weight, the grunt in my ear, sweat sealing our skin. He spun me, hooked my thigh on his hip, and pushed in face to face. His fist stroked in time, thumb smearing the mess at my slit. I clawed his shoulders. He drove deep, ground, pulled to the head, and slammed home. I came over his fingers and my stomach in thick pulses, clenching so hard his rhythm broke. He buried himself to the root and stayed, heat flooding me, cock throbbing as he emptied himself inside me and held me against the brick.

We stayed stuck together, breathing. His come leaked warm down my thigh when he eased out. He kissed my jaw and rested his forehead on mine while the rain kept its pace on the glass.