Vegas Boys

Banner by Insane Gravity. <3

Save for the sounds of my soft, shuddering intakes of breath as I struggled to calm down, Brendon and I were silent all the way to his apartment. We didn't touch, and we didn't look at each other. We didn't make any kind of mention aloud of what had just happened--perhaps for fear of validating it, or maybe just because we were too busy dealing with our own thoughts.

When we got out of Brendon's car and walked towards the apartment building, keeping our distance from each other, it was very late. A spray of twinkling stars blanketed the black desert sky, and the streetlights punctuated the darkened streets with pools of pale orange light. This was Vegas, so there was still plenty of life and noise going on at this hour--but I was so engulfed in my own inner turmoil that everything around me felt still and silent.

I had turned the tables on my mother, and it should have felt good. But it didn't. Not when I had abandoned her for the one city, the one person she had always warned me against. I had completely turned my back on her and the mindset she had purposely raised me in.

But it wasn't until Brendon and I were on the third floor of the apartment building and he was twisting his keys in the lock that the full impact of what had just happened hit me. He must have realized it, too, in the same instant, because his hand froze on the cool metal doorknob and he met my gaze.

His brown eyes were full of some kind of deep pain that I couldn't comprehend, oddly coupled with a devastated sort of affection. It was clear he was thinking exactly the same thing I was: Oh my God...I almost lost you.

I started to cry. He left the keys dangling in the door as he pulled me into him.

"Shhhh," he comforted me. It didn't do much good, because his voice was shaking and I half wondered if he was crying, too. "It's okay. I'm here. I'm still here."

Well, of courseyou're here, I couldn't help but think sarcastically to myself. I'm the one who should be on a plane headed for New York right now.

But if I had known what he knew then, I would have understood.

He wrapped his arms around me, tight, and stroked my hair, murmuring comforts into my ear. After a few minutes I drew a shaky, rattling breath, and pulled my head up from where it had been buried in his shoulder and kissed him. And I didn't mean to, but I put so much into it--so much more than I ever had before--maybe because I was just so grateful for him, so relieved. And yet there was all this tension, this pent-up agression building up inside of me, rising to a boiling point, and it turned my skin fiery hot against his.

He kissed me back just as fiercely, and for a moment I told myself that he had just taken it the wrong way again, like he had that day a few weeks ago, when we had barely managed to stop ourselves. But as he threw the door open and then shut it behind us, and pushed me up against it, and kissed me and held me and touched me desperately, like I was essential to his very survival--I realized then that this was exactly what I wanted.

And he seemed to feel the same way.

All the lights were out in the apartment, and the dim glow of the square digits on the microwave was the only source of light. The light switch was right there on the wall, about a foot to the left of where Brendon was currently kissing my neck, but neither of us reached for it; it was unneccesary. Instead, he took my hand and pulled me away, and together, we stumbled through the darkened apartment to his bedroom.

It was much easier to see in there. Moonlight poured in through the huge window on the left side of the room, and suddenly everything was lit up in the eerie glow of midnight: the concentrated, pained, passionate look on his face; the wadded-up clothes and trash and CDs and magazines on the floor; his neatly made bed....

The sight of the bed made my heart skip a few beats. The fact that it was made up and clean-looking was crucial: if it had been messy, I probably wouldn't have slid in between the sheets and pulled Brendon in with me like I did then.

I wrapped my arms around his waist, and he came willingly, pausing with his feet off the bed long enough to kick his shoes off. They fell onto the floor with a thoroughly unromantic plop, and as he swung his legs over mine, pulling the sheets in close around us and planting kisses on my neck, I looked over his shoulder and watched them hit the floor. They landed squarely alongside mine.

Brendon squirmed, and I felt him up against me in places that made my breathing come heavier and all rational thinking fall away. I arched my back slightly, tilting my head back so that he kissed the tender skin of my throat, and I shivered. His lips grazed my ear as he whispered something I didn't catch, and then he was trailing kisses along my jawline again.

His hands competed for my attention. They wasted no time in sliding down my body to the top button of my jeans, and seconds later, my pants were on the floor. Supporting himself with his right hand placed firmly on the mattress, his left touched my knee and hovered there, warm against my skin; and then it moved up the inside of my thigh, slowly, until it finally came to rest on the point of no return. And he was so unbelievably gentle--as urgent as his shallow, rasping breaths sounded in my ear, his touch was not demanding in the least. I felt myself relaxing, eyes shut and rolling up into the back of my head as I just focused on his lips on my collarbone, his left hand....

It only took a few minutes of this for me to decide that I couldn't wait any longer.

I sat up, and he did too, so that he was sitting on the backs of his heels and I was halfway in his lap with my bare legs thrown over both of his. I shifted, moving forward so that I was straddling him, my thighs clamped firmly around his waist. I had pulled both of our shirts off over our heads, and was kissing him again, the bare skin of our abdomens rubbing together, when he untangled his hands from my hair and pushed me away from him slightly, holding my face in his hands.

"Kelsey..." he panted. "We don't have to do this."

"I know." The calm, matter-of-fact tone of my voice contrasted sharply with my uneven breathing and sputtering heartbeat, and I was mildly surprised at myself. "I want to."

By the pale moonlight illuminating only half of his face, I could see his dark eyes flickering back and forth over my face as he studied my expression. "Are you sure?"

"Yes." I had never been so sure of anything in my life.

His adam's apple bobbed as he swallowed, hard, and licked his wide, cushioned lips. Brendon was nervous. But he was never nervous--why was he nervous? "I don't want to--I don't want to pressure you..." he stammered.

I shook my head slowly, pushing his dark bangs out of his eyes, the strands of hair sticking together with sweat. His whole face was wet with it, and his chest gleamed. It should have been disgusting, but it only made me want him more.

"I'm not pressured," I reassured him, calmly. "This is what I want."

"I don't..." Brendon eyed me uneasily, then avoided my gaze altogether. "I don't think we should."

Besides the rapid heartbeat, something trembled in my chest, and I knew I couldn't take another rejection, no matter what the reason behind it was.

"Brendon, please," I whispered to him, desperately. I turned my head and caught his lips in mine, and when I pulled away again, he finally looked at me. "Please. I want this. I need this."

There was an answer to this ready on his tongue, but before he could get it out, I wriggled my hips around a little and pressed down into him, and he let out a wonderful noise that was something between a gasp and a groan. He licked his lips again, and took in a few sharp, ragged breaths, and I saw my chance and took it.

"I want you." I swiveled my hips again, moving against him there, and he closed his eyes and bit his lip and let his head tilt backwards. "Please, Brendon. I need you."

Brendon gritted his teeth and choked out, eyes still shut as he resisted me, "I don't want to...rush you.... It's...too soon--"

"No," I argued breathlessly, "no, it's not. Brendon, I need you. I need you right now."

Maybe it was because I was still pressing against him in all the right places, or maybe because my seductive pleading was such an integral part of the cliche male fantasy, or maybe because I reached around behind me and undid my bra clasp and let it fall to the floor in that moment. Or maybe it had nothing to do with any physical needs; maybe, after coming so close to losing me tonight, he just wasn't about to deny me something like this.

But, for whatever reason, Brendon swallowed hard and looked me up and down with eyes that made it quite obvious that he was not going to argue or try and stop me anymore.

He pushed me down onto the mattress, the bare skin of my back sliding against the cool sheets, and I forced myself not to think about anything but the bright, eager, urgent lookthat suddenly glinted there in his eyes.

I wasn't going to worry about all the morals and values I'd been spoon-fed from birth, that I was completely throwing out the window now. In the face of everything I had been through in the past few months, they seemed trivial to me now.

I wasn't going to worry about Mom, sitting alone on a late-night flight from Vegas to New York. The empty seat next to hers was never meant for me.

And I wasn't going to worry about Dad, who I knew would wait up for me all night, pacing and mumbling to himself under his breath, worried, anxious, afraid. It was all in vain: I was not coming home tonight.