Chapter Text
Sunday school had never given you much, just a paranoia of the omniscient and a few chocolate chip granola bars. A few lessons stuck, but you grew up to become agnostic, and skeptic, and hadn’t so much as entered a church since your grandparents had passed. You looked to the man on your left and wondered what he knew of God. What he knew of the world outside his home.
You thought of sweltering Arkansas summers. A tiny, pink bible with silvery pages that you’d only ever bothered to skim. You always got bored of Genesis, the begat, begat, begat of a million sons and a million daughters. You didn’t know much about God, or brimstone, or damnation. But your frumpy, hateful Sunday school teacher had been right about one thing: life began in the garden.
You saw no snakes, no languorous fruit trees doling out temptation. But there was a man, and there was a woman.
And there was knowledge to be had. There was a world beyond this.
For a while, the two of you sat on the bench. The sun in thin ribbons, draped on your shoulders, the birds tittering amongst themselves, nosy little gossips. Watching. Waiting.
But for what?
You weren’t sure.
You were beside Brahms, pressed thigh-to-thigh on a wooden bench, framed in ferns. His boulder of a hand clutching yours, his eyes on the wood line. Watching squirrels skitter, and the grass sway. Watching the world breathe and bustle in the morning sun for the first time in twenty years. The light was soft on his face. His pale, scruffy face. Half worry lines, half knotted burns, all beard that needed a good trim.
And your eyes were on him. Just watching. Just wondering.
Finally, you asked it:
“Why?”
It was the only thing you could articulate. It was multipurpose question. You needed a thousand answers. Why break the mask? Why the change of heart? Why now? Why not a decade ago? Why not a dozen nannies ago? Why you and not the others? Why today and not tomorrow?
Why do it at all?
He looked to you then, and you were given the gift of his face.
Oh, his face. Scarred, scared. Sacred. A holy, hurting thing. The flesh of it moved and articulated like water, morphed with each thought as it bloomed across his face. A microscopic raise of his eyebrow that deepened the crease in his forehead, a flutter of his eyelids, the sage and gold of the irises. The bruising dark circles and the chapped pink lips that trembled, ever-so-slightly as he shook his head and swallowed.
He answered, “It was time.”
Your heart was in your throat, your nails were biting into the back of his hand, to keep the tremble out of your fingers. You were whispering, you really didn’t know why.
“For what?”
There was a twitch, a just a hair’s breadth, at the corner of his mouth. A half-second smile. Then, there was a long pause.
Finally, he answered. “To grow up.”
His voice rumbled deep in your chest.
“Do you want to leave?”
The question like a knife against the throat. Like a gun to the skull. Loaded. Dangerous. There was a part of you that didn’t want to go. You’d grown to love that big, lonely house, just as much as you loved that big, lonely man. The idea of him in the world, among the people, was exhilarating. And it was terrifying. You tried to picture him in a grocery store. At the doctor, a cold speculum against his chest, a stranger’s hands on his throat. You thought of him on the beach in the Mediterranean, wandering the shore, the world lapping at his feet. Him, lit up in the sun.
He needed to grow up, to stretch out. To be free. He deserved a chance, at least.
You thought suddenly of tigers in the zoo, pacing their pits in mindless circles. Handfed, hobbled. From birth till death in a cage because the cage corrupts. Because if they’re put back in the wild, they can’t hunt, and they can’t compete, and they die.
And Brahms Heelshire was already dead. Burnt up as a boy. Had been for twenty years.
It was his life. You couldn’t keep it from him. But you could worry.
You could help.
(That is, if he wanted it.)
The grass was suddenly still, the breeze baited its breath. Even the birds were quiet. Watching. Waiting.
The man at your side stared into your face, and you watched as little prickling tears crystalized in the corners of his eyes. He shook his head, that near-imperceptible tremble there in his lip again. (The cage like a featherbed. Like a chain on the wrist.)
His voice was soft, cracked at the edges. “I don’t know.”
Your hand was on his cheek, reveled in that delicious feeling of warm, real skin. You swiped the tear from his eye, leaned into his face. “What do you not know, baby?”
His Adam’s apple bobbed with the force of his swallow. His teeth were slightly crooked, but strong and white. He smiled, without a trace of humor. He said your name in an exasperated little sigh, “I don’t know anything.”
He was twenty years behind. He couldn’t drive. Couldn’t cook. Couldn’t make an appointment. Couldn’t hold a normal conversation. His temper was on a hair-trigger and his strength was superhuman. His first kiss had happened eight hours prior. And this was the first time in two decades he’d felt the sun on his face.
He was a twenty-nine-year-old virgin.
An orphan. Alone.
Well, not quite. He had you. He would always have you.
“I’ll teach you.” Your voice, that sweet stranger in your throat. So resolute. So much surer than you felt. The stranger repeated herself then, for emphasis. “What do you need to know?”
There was something in those green eyes, a shine. A naked, keening thing.
A hungry thing. An aching.
You offered the fruit, so that he might eat of it.
“I need to know everything.” Your hand was still on his face, stroking the powerful arch of his jaw; the juxtaposition of its angle against the peony pink of his lips made your hands shake.
“Okay,” you whispered, smiling as you leaned in. “I can teach you that.”
There was fear in his eyes; something more frightening still. Hope, hauled up from the bottom of that broken man like a fish to the shore. He pressed forward, across that meager distance, to reach you.
He was a quick study, your man. He knew the signal. His eyes half-lidded, his hands on your waist, one sliding around to cradle your hip. The heat of it seeping through your thin knit skirt. He tipped his chin, to catch your lips. He tasted like coffee. Cream. Something sweeter still. You parted your lips, and unbidden, his tongue brushed yours in perfect synchronicity. A lesson he learned from the night before.
One more thing he knew. One step closer to the door.
His hand under your blouse, burning on your back. No bra to obstruct him. His fingers searching the expanse of your skin. He grabbed you around the middle, pulled you onto his lap. Like you were nothing, lighter than snow. Never breaking that hungry kiss. He was an ox, a demigod. Herculean and hard as a rock. That day, you’d dressed quickly. A simple sweater and a long skirt, no underwear. Your pelvis to his pelvis, your aching clit sat right on top of his bulge. His teeth nipping at your bottom lip, an accident, but electric. You let out a little yelp and you felt, beneath you, as his cock twitched. You ground against it, thoughtless, animal, so, so hungry.
He moaned into your mouth, one hand squeezing bruisingly on your ass, the other cupping your face. You pulled back, just long enough to meet his eyes. His lips swollen, his eyes in full desperate glow. Face flushed, chest red and heaving.
The thought pulsating between you like a strobe light, your promise to him. Half-bent, but still standing.
(When you can be naked with me, I’ll be naked with you.)
“Do you want—” you didn’t get a chance to finish your sentence, he gave you one frantic nod.
Okay, then.
He was tugging at the hem of your shirt, dragging upwards. You did him the favor of pulling it off, one easy movement. His breath hitched in his chest, your breasts exposed, heavy and peaking in the open air, inches from his mouth. His hands grazing up your sides to gather both into his huge, calloused palms and squeeze. His head dipping forward to catch your left nipple in his mouth and suck.
His tongue and his teeth and his greedy, gasping hands. Whiskers scratching against the delicate skin, the breeze and his curls tickling your exposed throat. Your back arched, just slightly, to give him better access. Arching from the simple pleasure of it. The blend of gentle suction and nibbling as he dipped his head from the left to the right. His fingers fiddling the unattended breast while his mouth worked. You sighed his name, and your cunt, your naked, burning cunt, ground his against his bulge, growing impossibly hard beneath it.
“Do you like that?” you asked, his throaty moan was your answer. Lightning right to your clit. His frantic nod against your skin.
You were still talking, your voice a gentle incantation in his ear. “We could do this anywhere, you know that?”
His eyes on you then, head between your breasts, licking a flat broad stripe up your sternum, clumsy and chaotic and perfect. He paused by your jaw, teeth grazing as he croaked, “We could?”
“Yes,” you breathed. “Anywhere in the world. Deep in the jungles on a bed of moss. On the beach, in the waves.”
You reached then, between your bodies, ran your hand down the length of his hot, hairy chest, over his filthy white undershirt to the waistband of his trousers. Watched his expression, his glorious, gaping expression, as you undid the snap of his pants. As you pulled down the zipper, and he sprang free.
His cock, an easy seven inches. Thick around as a coke bottle and bobbing under its own weight. Pink, and throbbing against the dark thicket of his pubic hair, the tip weeping. Uncircumcised, as was the custom in England. You’d read about it once, in a smutty book a long time ago. The sight of it made your mouth water. Made your cunt ache so sweetly you could scarcely breathe. You put on hand on his shoulder, to steady yourself.
“You could fuck me in Italy, in a vineyard full of grapes.”
He loved grapes. Loved the sweetness, love the crunch. Loved the sun. Loved you.
Your hand sweeping up the length of him, a teasing stroke that left his head lolling, eyes twisted in pained kind of pleasure that made your teeth ache.
“You could drive, Brahms. You could take a train. Take a plane. We could go anywhere and do this. Anywhere you wanted.”
He whined then; eyes twisted like you were torturing him. The palm of your hand circling the tip of his cock like a joystick. Toying with it. Toying with him.
“Anywhere I wanted—” he panted, his words slurred, his eyes unfocused.
You smiled, nodded slow. Your hand gliding down to hold him steady at the base of his cock. It felt like steel, like velvet. Like fire against your skin.
“Please,” he murmured, lips barely moving. “Oh, please.”
You were already so wet it was running down your thighs. You pulled yourself up, just enough to hover above it. Greedily, you swiped the tip, ever so gently, against your throbbing clit. You let out a moan at that alone, the delicious feeling of his skin on your skin. He threw his head back and gasped.
“Look at me,” you commanded. “Keep your eyes on me.” You needed to see his face.
His brow knit together, mouth gaped and panting. His eyes in full plea. But open. But right on you. Perfect. Beautiful and pitiful and absolutely perfect.
You lined yourself on the tip of his cock, and brought your hand, to cup his chin. You leaned into his face, mouths open but not touching, eyes half-lidded, but still only on you.
And then, you sank down.
If you were to only see his eyes, you’d think he was dying. The look, the mix of anxious agony, of inscrutable ecstasy, of a man inside of a woman for the very first time. His cock, so thick it was suffocating, pressing up, inch by burning inch. The stretch equal parts torture and delicacy. You felt skewered, fractured. Pierced clean through.
And you loved it. Oh, you loved it.
You sat for a moment, full and flush to his hips. You could have sworn you felt him near your heart, twitching against your ribcage. For a hysterical half-second, you’re afraid to move. You squeezed him, then, milking with the muscles of your cunt, to adjust to the girth of it. Shocks of sensation came jolting up your spine, a flash of pain, a tender pleasure, and a fullness so smothering it was splitting you apart. You didn’t want to move. Didn’t want to breathe. Your muscles clenching around him in a maddening rhythm. The man underneath you let out a groan.
“Are you alright?” You brushed your hands through his curls, sweat damp and mussed. His face shifted, something dark slipping past those unfocused eyes. Your heart stuttered over a beat, and his mouth found yours, his tongue your only answer.
He growled into your mouth. Your pulse in pandemonium, your head a scrambled mess. All you could do was moan in return.
His hands locked on your hips. The brute force of it, of him, sent every cell into full hum. Your cunt singing, pulsing. You couldn’t breathe.
He brought your whole body swiftly up, almost all the way off his cock, you broke the kiss long enough to gasp. The world slipped from Atlas’s shoulder, and he slammed you back down again.
“Brah—” before you could finish the word his mouth caught yours again. He sucked your lower lip decadently. There were stars in your eyes, his name in your throat, a sound like a tsunami ripping through your head as he picked you up, in that same beautiful brutal tempo, to slam you back down again.
Your nails in his shoulders, your teeth in his lip. His cock, that holy hammering thing, pounding against your g-spot in one, two, three, four, five powerful strokes that had you, for the first time in your entire life, gushing onto his lap.
(You’d been with a man for years who couldn’t make you cum, let alone squirt. You didn’t even know that you could. Brahms Heelshire did it in five strokes. If you could have breathed, you might have laughed.)
He broke the kiss long enough to curse, a breathy little “fuck” from the back of his throat, more a prayer than a swear. He picked you up, a sixth time, and brought you back down again, his face twisted and red and buried against your breast, a whimpering cry against you skin, and then you felt it.
A gushing warmth against your cervix, the sudden heat spilling up, then out.
He’d come inside of you.
His whiskers and wet lips chaos against your skin. Your cunt still throbbing, still milking. Your heart in your mouth, his skin to your skin. His cum and your cum mingling on his shaft, in his lap, in you.
Infinity in flesh, no beginning, and no end. Two people, melded into one. Breathing in tandem, hearts beating in the same steady tattoo.
His head snapped up, suddenly. His strong hands lifting you up and off until you were hovering above him. The front of his pants, the hem of his shirt, soaked in you. His eyes panicked, his mouth agape. His cock half limp and coated in you.
“Baby?” It was the only word you could articulate.
“Oh, Christ, I’m sorry,” his head against your collar, shaking against your skin. Looked at you with this baleful, bereft uncertainty and then shook his head again. “I’m so sorry.”
“Why are you apologizing?” Your hand on his chin, lifting his face to look at you, your core aching and empty. Your brain was buzzing, the calamity of the last few minutes whirling through your skull like a hurricane.
You had just fucked Brahms. Or rather, he had just fucked you. So hard, so fast, so well, you were beginning to cramp. You let out a huff of air, somewhere between a gasp of disbelief and a delirious little laugh.
“I didn’t mean to—” he stopped himself, scrubbing a free hand over his face, tears welling in the corners of his eyes. “I’m so sorry. I didn’t want it to be over so soon.” Sweat crowning his forehead, veins bulging in his neck from the strain. His chest red. Holding something back.
“Oh, baby—” you kissed him on his forehead, his nose. Pecked between his burnt and unburnt cheeks, back and forth on each eye lid. Lean until you’re right against the shell of his ear. “It was good, Brahms. It was so good.”
He was covered in you. You were full of him.
How much more could you need?
“Are you telling the truth?” His voice, a hoarse, haggard thing. Exasperated, you took his hand from your hip, slid it down between your bodies, to that mingled place. To you, to him.
“Feel,” you commanded.
He did. His brow furrowed as he looked between you, feeling the soaked fabric, your swollen folds. Met your gaze again, totally lost. Shook his head, just a little.
“You’re not the only one who came,” you said. You reached between your bodies, gently stroked over his half-hard cock, lolling against your cunt. You ran the length of it, gentle with the tender tip. The veins of his hands straining against his skin, his breath hitching in his throat. Then, you touched yourself, your aching clit, your bruised labia. Covered in you. Covered in him. You were salivating at the thought, drunk and dizzy and dangerous.
You brought your hand up.
And then you took your own soaked fingers to your mouth, gently eclipsing the tips with your lips. Licked them clean. The taste, of him, of you, like ocean water. Musky, and animal, and delicious. He watched, half lidded. Barely breathing.
You brought those same fingers to his lips, watched rapt as he took your fingers, tentatively into his mouth, and sucked. Closing his eyes as his tongue laved the tips, a rumble of pleasure in his throat. Your cunt throbbed in time with his ministrations. You pulled your fingers from his lips with a little pop.
His eyes like a campfire, low smolder. Licking the remnant from his lips like savoring a decadent wine.
“Do you like how we taste?” That stranger in your throat. That sweet, savage stranger. Taking his heart in her hands and squeezing.
He uttered no words, just moved his head. One languid, hypnotized nod.
“You could taste me, anywhere.”
“Anywhere?” he breathed. His eyes closed in a dazed contemplation. Fluttered open again, glazed wide on your face.
Between you, his cock stirred. You gave him a sweet, little grin.
He was ready to do it again, raised like a white flag. Fear, doubt, uncertainty in full surrender. And that, more than anything, felt damn good.
And then you stood. Rose off of him like a vapor. He gaped up at you; you naked from the waist up, him naked from the waist down. In the middle of the garden, with the titter of the birds and the nodding heads of the last few flowers before autumn came creeping through to smother them. Adam, with the scars of knowledge blazed on his face. Adam, with the gift of knowledge drying on his skin. It was something from scripture. It was something from a dream.
The sun draping your shoulders, like a stole. Your breasts, covered in little tooth marks and spit, your skin glowing in the midmorning. A cramp in your stomach. A throbbing in you, bright and sweet as a fresh bruise. Your legs liquid, but your spine rigid. The man in the garden looked up at you. And for a moment, you felt like Eve. And like the snake. And like the apple. Some mesh of it all. A mad little god, with the world running down her thighs, the wind tousling her hair. Hand, extended.
Oh, my boy. Oh, my man.
There’s so much to learn. And I know you’re hungry.
Come with me. Eat.
There was the barest pause. You waited, you watched. Eyes even and expectant on his face. His eyes on yours, the expression like none you’d even seen. A trepidation. A need. Something deeper still, something you couldn’t quite read.
Even the wind stopped blowing. The birds all held their breath.
Wordlessly, he reached out, and took your hand. Rose, to his full height.
You smiled up at the man, your heart aglow. He was ready to learn. And you were ready to teach him. Together, you ghosted through the garden, padded up the walkway, crossed that yawning threshold. Behind you, the garden door whispered closed.