“No, you’re not.” He smiled. “But after everything I put you through, you’ve still been there for me. Even though I know it still hurts and that you haven’t completely forgiven me.”

  I straightened. “What? I—”

  “I wouldn’t expect you to. Five years doesn’t disappear in forty-eight hours. And I can see it in your eyes sometimes.”

  I lowered my gaze.

  He turned his hand over and clasped our fingers together. “I don’t have any right to ask you to forgive and forget overnight, and I definitely didn’t expect you to take me in and be a shoulder for me to cry on, and to just…be there. But you have. And no amount of guilt or badgering or anything from my family is going to make me forget that.”

  I swallowed hard, struggling to keep my emotions in check. “This isn’t going to make things easier with your father.”

  “I don’t think anything can. But I can’t imagine anything harder than going through this shit without you.”

  We’d been like that too. Just stronger, better and smarter together, though I never felt like I was contributing quite as much as he did. I knew very well how much he gave me. I merely did what I could. What felt right. Maybe that was the whole secret of friendship. Ironic that we found a lot more Christian love with each other and in our friendship than the self-described righteous afforded either of us.

  “I’m scared you’re going to leave again.”

  “It’s not decided yet, Chris. I…I have to see what this place has to offer me compared to another Legion contract. Maybe I’ll settle somewhere completely different.”

  “Yeah. Too early to make that decision.” And not even the most important thing. “But promise me you won’t just up and go. That I’ll know at least whether you’re okay and alive and where the hell you are? I might even unlock my Facebook account for you.”

  He laughed and squeezed my hand, then got very serious. “You’ll be the first to know.”

  I felt a hell of a lot better, though I put the damn phone on silent and blocked the number my mother had used. It wouldn’t keep her from reaching me some other way, but it felt like it put a little bit of control back in my hands.

  Still, I’d have to go to work. Much as we tried, we couldn’t really live off sex and awkward conversations.

  We headed back to the apartment, where I filled the Pad Thai-shaped hole in my gut with a bowl of cereal, and then we showered and dressed.

  We’d begun to feel more natural around each other too. The improvised bed on the couch now looked out of place for different reasons, and whichever piece of his possessions tripped me up (visually, mostly, he was neat and tidy), it didn’t feel like an intrusion anymore. Nothing out of place or out of the ordinary. I wanted his razor to lie on the sink, and didn’t mind at all his deodorant standing right next to mine. With a boyfriend, that phase normally took about six weeks.

  “Um. If you want to move over into my bed…room. The mattress is a great deal better, and that is where you end up sleeping anyway.”

  He grinned. “I really don’t need any of those excuses.”

  I laughed. “Well, they’re there if you need them.” I glanced at my watch. “I should go. Liam gets annoyed when I’m late.”

  “Don’t be late.” He put his hands on my waist and kissed me lightly. “I’ll probably just watch some TV and go to sleep. It’s been a long day.”

  “Yeah, it has. You sure you’re—”

  “I’ll be fine on my own. I won’t use the stove or order any porn, or—”

  “Shut up,” I said, chuckling. “All right. I’ll try not to wake you up when I come in.” I kissed him again. “See you in the morning.”

  Chapter Twelve

  If there was one thing I wasn’t used to, it was sneaking back into my own apartment. I hadn’t had to worry about that since I’d lived with my last boyfriend, and even then I hadn’t really had to. The man had slept like the dead. Julien, I wasn’t so sure about.

  I toed off my dress shoes in the living room and took off my bow tie, belt, and cummerbund. I set them on the coffee table and then headed down the hall to the bedroom.

  The door was ajar and, fortunately, wasn’t prone to shrieking on its hinges. Still, I was careful as I pushed it open and stepped inside.

  Light from the parking lot spilled in through the blinds, illuminating the room just enough for me to get around without tripping and killing myself. It didn’t just light up the floor and furniture, though. Holy shit. He was sound asleep on my bed, lying on his stomach with the sheet just barely draped over him. No shirt, just bright stripes of light coming in through the blinds and tracing the contours of his back and shoulders. If he was wearing boxers, I couldn’t see them, and with one bare knee sticking out from beneath the sheet and the other leg partially exposed, he could have been completely naked for all I knew.

  I gulped. There were probably millions of men in this world who fantasized about coming home and finding their crush sprawled naked—or close to it—in their bed. I’d had that fantasy myself. A few times. And now…

  I grabbed a pair of boxers and slipped into the bathroom to change clothes. I was tempted to take care of this very persistent erection while I was in here, but not with a light sleeper in the next room. For all I knew, he was already awake, and it didn’t matter that he’d fucked me, I didn’t relish the awkward, Oh, hey, mind giving me a hand? moment of someone walking in on me.

  Boxers on—if not all that comfortably—I turned off the bathroom light and returned to the bedroom. He hadn’t moved. Arm under the pillow, the other dangling off the side of the mattress, he was exactly as I’d left him. Well, at least one of us would get some sleep tonight.

  I carefully crawled into bed on the other side, trying not to move too much. I didn’t want to disturb him, and besides, moving with a hard-on like this wasn’t exactly easy. A few inches away from him, I lay on my back and stared up at the ceiling. Normally by now, after a busy shift at Wilde’s, I would usually be dead asleep. That, or getting laid. One of the two.

  Slowly turning my head toward him, I grinned in the darkness. Maybe sleep wasn’t a possibility, but…

  I touched his shoulder with the backs of my fingers. Lightly at first, so I wouldn’t startle him too badly, and then trailed them down his side. He pulled in a deep breath and arched against me like a cat.

  “Didn’t hear you come in,” he murmured.

  “I tried to be quiet.”

  “Why? If you’re going to get into bed with me, you can wake me up.”

  “At three thirty in the morning?”

  He laughed softly, the pillow partly muting the sound. “Why not?”

  Well, if that wasn’t an invitation, I didn’t know what was. I turned on my side and slid closer to him. He shifted onto his side too, and as I molded my body to his, he reached back to pull my hip closer.

  “What’s this?” he asked with a grin in his voice as my cock pressed against his ass. “You definitely should’ve woken me up.”

  I kissed the back of his neck. “I just did.”

  He shifted and reached out to the nightstand, then pulled the lube and a strip of condoms closer. I took the lube, and he lifted up just enough to tear a condom packet open, then rolled onto his side. While he rolled the condom down over my cock, he kissed me sensuously. “Your turn.”

  “I figured.” I touched his face, curious to ask him whether he preferred one. He’d struck me as a top, but then, that impression could always be wrong. Sometimes the bossiest, most confident guys were mellow needy bottoms in bed. And that was fine. I could always adapt to my partner. I didn’t let something like superficial kinks and specialties get between me and post-orgasm bliss.

  “How do you want me?”

  “Like this?”

  He nodded, so I kissed him again and got on top, stretching out on him, though I kept most of my weight off him. I wanted to feel him all skin-to-skin, everywhere and still stay in control of this, wanted to allow him to move too, if he wanted—unless he preferred to simply lie down and take it, which I sometimes liked myself. He pushed up a bit and rubbed his ass against my groin, making me inhale sharply. “Come on. Give it to me.”

  Lube. Quickly.

  Then I pushed his legs farther apart with my knee and pressed against him. He moaned and pushed back, opening his legs and lifting his ass as my cock breached him. My eyes watered just from the intensity of being inside him, and my head spun as I worked myself deeper.

  “Like that?” I asked.

  “God, yes.”

  Jesus. The eager-slut side of him was so, so hot, and as I withdrew and pushed into him again, an image flickered through my mind of Julien—no, Joshua—with those four Legionnaires. Innocent and wild-eyed, uncertain and willing, the inexperienced kid in bed with men who knew how to please men, their uniforms in pieces on the floor along with his crisp white shirt and pressed black slacks. That thought made me shiver, and I fucked him harder, driving myself into him until I was hilted completely.

  “Oh my God,” I breathed.

  He just moaned. He arched beneath me, pushing back as much as this position allowed. That image with the Legionnaires came back, and I saw him begging for more, assuring the seasoned soldiers that he wanted everything they could give him, and calloused, suntanned hands sliding all over his body, tattooed bodies moving with his. It was probably a million miles away from what really happened, but God, it was hot in my mind.

  I leaned down and kissed behind his ear. “There’s something I want you to do.”

  “Anything.” He sounded almost on the verge of tears, completely surrendered and willing.

  I kissed down to his shoulder. “Do you have your uniform with you?”

  His breath caught slightly, which may have been from being puzzled or because just saying the words had made me fuck him even harder. “I… Yeah. I have it.”

  I bit his shoulder like he’d bitten mine. He cried out and shuddered so hard, I thought he might have come. “Wear it.”

  “What?” He turned his head slightly. “You—”

  “Wear it.” I kissed the spot I’d just bitten. “I want…you to wear it.”

  “To take it off again?”

  “Uh, yeah. Sexually.” He didn’t need to turn even more heads out on the street. But I wanted to see that. My only experience of the Legion was to jerk off after I’d watched Beau Geste and imagined all the hot things going on between the characters. The real thing? Hot too. Insanely hot, when I imagined that group fuck with Joshua right in the middle.

  He laughed. “They told me chicks love the fucking uniform…”

  “Well, duh.” I couldn’t help but laugh and kissed his neck. “You started that with your kinky exploits.”

  “I’m innocent.”

  I thrust hard, making him yelp and then groan. “And that’s the sound from an innocent, pure-as-the-driven-snow kinda guy.”

  “Chris?”

  “Yeah?”

  “Shut up and fuck me.”

  I gripped him harder and found just the perfect angle and a rhythm that wasn’t driving me insane, because, my God, his responses were killing me. Every small groan, every grinding of his hips, every time his fingers dug into the pillow with enough strength to rip the fabric, let alone the way his muscles tightened around me as I fucked him. I pushed back to kneel for more control, urged his hips up and closed my fingers around his hot dick. He went incoherent then. So did I.

  I hadn’t meant it to be so quick and forceful, but it felt like exactly the thing we both needed now. One day I wanted more time, more leisure, more teasing, hell, maybe even foreplay, because we sucked at that part, but right now, he was all mine and was pushing both back into my thrusts and forward into my hand, like his body and all its responses belonged to me. I wasn’t lucid enough to understand it then, but it soothed me, thrilled me at the same time. He didn’t get away now. Didn’t run now. All mine, right now.

  “Oh my God,” he moaned, the words sounding both strangled and slurred. “D-don’t stop. Just…like…”

  I dug my teeth into my lip and gave him everything I could, gripping his cock tighter and slamming my own into him as hard as I could, my legs burning from the exertion and the bed frame threatening to snap beneath us.

  He whimpered. Shuddered. Bowed his neck and pressed his forehead into the pillow. His cock stiffened in my hand, and he tightened around me, and then he released the most helpless sound just as hot semen coated my hand and his cock. His whole body shook. He tried to keep moving, still fucking my slick hand and driving me deep inside him, but any semblance of rhythm he had fell apart, and seconds later, mine did too, and the darkness behind my eyelids turned white.

  “Fuck.” Somehow, I forced out the single word, and then forgot how to speak altogether, my body moving like it had a mind of its own and my eyes rolling back as my orgasm just kept on going.

  Julien shivered and relaxed completely. I released his cock, and he released his breath, and I sank down over him. Somehow, I found the presence of mind to carefully pull out but couldn’t quite trust my legs yet, so I just stayed partway on top of him, forehead against the back of his neck as I tried to catch my breath.

  “If this…if this is what happens when you wake me up on your way in,” he said, “please don’t hesitate. Ever.”

  I laughed and kissed between his shoulder blades. “Duly noted.” Slowly, I sat up, then stood so I could get rid of the condom. “I’m going to grab a quick shower. Want to join me?”

  “I…in a minute.” He exhaled hard. “I don’t think I can stand.”

  “No rush.” I sat beside him on the bed and rubbed his shoulder. “I didn’t hurt you, did I?”

  He laughed softly and turned his head, stubble hissing across the pillow. “You’ll have to work a little harder than that to hurt me.”

  “That a challenge?”

  “That depends. You up for it?”

  “Absolutely.”

  “Good.” He carefully pushed himself up, and the sight of his back and shoulder muscles working beneath his skin, just barely illuminated by the streetlights, screwed up my already screwed-up pulse. He slid his hand over my thigh. “So, about that shower?”

  “Oh. Right.”

  We stood and moved into the bathroom. As the water warmed up, Julien wrapped his arms around me from behind and kissed my cheek. “I never knew you had a uniform kink.”

  “Uniforms are hot. Everyone knows that.”

  He chuckled. “Yeah, but I think you really like them.”

  I just want to see you in one. “So does that mean you’ll put it on?”

  “As long as you promise to take it off.”

  “Can’t promise it’ll be in one piece.”

  Julien laughed and kissed my neck. “It’s been repaired a few times. A few more stitches and patches won’t hurt it.”

  “Now that does sound like a challenge.”

  “Bring it on, Chris. Bring it on.”

  The water temperature finally rose, so I stepped in, and he followed me. It shouldn’t have surprised me that our primary focus wasn’t on getting cleaned up. We let the water run over us, and there was some soap involved, but mostly, we just lazily made out while we ran soap-slick hands over each other’s bodies.

  I was too exhausted to get turned on, and he probably was too, but this? This was absolute heaven. Wet, slippery skin against wet, slippery skin, our mouths moving together like we planned to do this all night—it didn’t get any better than this.

  Chapter Thirteen

  Remember what I said about Julien feeling like a part of my apartment and my life after something like forty-eight hours? Well, that. The next day, we did domestic things. I “forgot” to charge my phone and then left it on the charger when we headed out fairly early, nursing a number of aches and muscle twinges from last night.

  We had breakfast in a café, sharing grins and winks and likely touching enough to broadcast extremely loudly that we were fucking or at least best friends. Both, actually. I was to the point where I’d accepted that. No point denying I was attracted like mad, and the friendship—yeah, that had just somehow picked up where we’d left it and then been fed into the Large Hadron (hard-on?) Collider, and I was seeing stars. This was just fifteen levels above and beyond what I’d thought we might reach.

  Maybe the sole difference was that there was nobody keeping an eye on us, he wasn’t dating a girl he’d marry eventually, and we were both disgraced, but at least we were free and we had each other. And while that might still change, right now it seemed like the best thing I’d ever had. I had my best friend back plus some of the hottest sex in my life.

  We endured Safeway to get at least a few emergency supplies in—Julien displaying a worrying interest in protein and cereal bars, though considering that “the supply situation had at times been sketchy” where he’d been fighting, I guess I couldn’t blame him. We also got some milk and cereals and things like that, then brought our haul back to the apartment and shelved it all. Apart from the protein bars, half of which vanished into Julien’s backpack.

  We then had a late lunch, and this time I managed to actually eat my Pho without getting any nasty calls. After that, we turned in for an afternoon nap, which didn’t involve any sleep, and instead the mellowest, hottest sixty-nine sex I’d had in my life.

  Afterwards, Julien grinned and told me he’d preferred that because with my mouth full, at least I couldn’t ask any weird questions.

  I figured that was fair enough.

  And then the time came for me to head back to work, sore and sated and stupidly, blissfully happy. We couldn’t say that everything in our world—and especially his world—was perfect and glorious right now, but if we could ignore all that shit and just enjoy this for a little while, then I couldn’t complain.

  “Someone’s in a good mood tonight.” Kieran grinned. “Things a little better all of a sudden?”

  I shrugged as I wiped down the bar. It wasn’t a terribly busy night, and we’d hit a lull between clusters of customers. “Some things are, yes.”

 

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