“I have fantasized about fucking you again for years,” he murmured, his accent thick and sexy in my ear. “We were so rushed last time. Never got to have any”—his hand slipped beneath the waistband of my boxers— “foreplay.”

  I bit my lip and moaned. “All the time in the world now.”

  “Mm-hmm.” His fingers grazed my cock but then retreated, drifting back out of my pants to my hip. The other hand left my neck. “Plenty of time.”

  Out of nowhere, he shoved me forward onto the bed. Then he pushed my jeans down over my hips.

  “Plenty of time,” he murmured again. “But I can’t wait.”

  I reached behind and tried to pull my boxers down and then get rid of the jeans. I only got as far as the boxers. When I tried to pull the jeans farther down, he was already kneeling between my legs, partway on the jeans, and opening his fly. My head was still spinning, but the response was almost Pavlovian. He pulled his cock out, and I wanted it so bad I’d have begged for it if necessary. It wasn’t. He put a hand flat on my back, pushed me down somewhat, then ripped the condom open and, as I looked over my shoulder at him, rolled it down over his cock.

  Back then, I hadn’t actually paid any attention to his cock at all and had nothing but my own to compare it to. What I remembered of that first time was the soreness, and how interesting it was to fly like sixteen hours or so, still feeling that phantom pain of an unskilled, heartfelt fucking all the way to Korea.

  Now, though, I wasn’t the nervous virgin who’d wanted his friend Joshua to be the first and thought that fucking was what gay guys did, and that of all people, he wouldn’t hurt me and I wanted it to be him. I had a few years worth of hookups and boyfriends to compare it to, and in all honestly, his cock was probably the most mouthwatering. For one, it was thick, really nice and thick, bent just slightly to the left, above-average length, but I thought that hung-like-a-horse thing was stupid anyway. I preferred them like this. Maybe he was the reason why I preferred them that way, but that thought just kinda suffered a white-out when he pushed the lubed head against me.

  Pressure, tightness, and I was maybe just a bit too nervous and wound up to let go of the tension—maybe still wanted to get out of my jeans and clothes, maybe still adjusting to everything that had happened. In any case, I didn’t quite yield that easily and grunted in frustration when he didn’t manage to get in on the first try.

  Julien chuckled, withdrew, then I felt his lubed fingers run into my crack, tease the muscle. Rough pads. Strong fingers. He shifted his weight and pushed my legs farther apart, and I pressed back against him. I wanted this, God damn it, wanted it right away.

  “Just try again.”

  The fingers slipped through the muscle, and he hit the spot immediately. Tunnel vision. Sparks. Lightning. Fucking need. Couldn’t speak. I rocked back against him, fucking myself on his fingers, and distantly heard him murmur something that might have been, “Oh God.”

  “J-Julien.” I let my head fall forward as the comforter gathered in my clawing hands. “Just fuck me.”

  “I will.” He slid his fingers in and out. “Don’t want to hurt you.”

  “Fuck. Me. Now.” I looked over my shoulder again. “Or I won’t be the one getting hurt.”

  His fingers stopped. Then he laughed softly as he withdrew them. “Well, all right, then. If that’s how you feel about it.” His other hand appeared between my shoulder blades and pushed me almost all the way down onto the bed so my nipples brushed the comforter, and then he pressed his cock against me again. Being held down wasn’t my favorite thing in the world, but with him, it was hot.

  Hand still on my back, he pushed his dick into me. My vision went white for a second, and I tightened my fists around the handfuls of the comforter as he worked himself deeper. This wasn’t that clueless, fumbling fuck from years ago. This couldn’t even be the same man who’d fucked me. He felt too good, too skilled, and far, far too rough. As my body yielded to him and took every inch of him—God, why can’t every man have a cock like this?—he pushed down harder on my shoulders, pinning me and holding me still while he fucked me faster.

  The position was awkward, probably less than dignified, but hot. Oh my God, mind-blowingly hot. I was totally at Julien’s mercy, could do nothing except lie there and let him fuck me like a man possessed. The first time, I couldn’t have even imagined sex like this existed, never mind that I would like it this much, or that I’d be so close to losing it already, or that it wouldn’t last because I was just too turned on and immobile and surrendered.

  I moaned into the comforter and shuddered. He must’ve known I was close, because he took his hand off my shoulders, grabbed my hips and fucked me harder than I could ever remember being fucked. It hurt, and I loved it, and I lost it, crying out something I didn’t even understand as I came. I never came just from being fucked. Never. But I did, and it was so intense I thought I blacked out for a few seconds.

  Julien slowed down a little, backing off enough that it wouldn’t be too painful for me now that I’d come. His hand slid up from the small of my back to my neck, then into my hair, and when he jerked my head back again, goose bumps prickled from my scalp all the way down my spine. His weight shifted, and he leaned down and kissed my neck, thrusting hard and erratically.

  “Next time,” he whispered just beneath my ear, “I want to see your face.”

  I bit my lip. All I could do was nod, and even that was challenging because of the grip he had on my hair.

  He kissed my neck again, then picked up speed, groaned softly, and—oh, fuck, he bit my shoulder. Hard. Not enough to break the skin but enough to surely leave a mark, and there wasn’t an inch of my flesh that wasn’t covered in goose bumps now.

  He murmured something in French, and then he buried his face against my neck, thrust a few more times, shuddered. More breathless French in my ear, more shuddering, and then he exhaled hard and relaxed.

  And all I could do was breathe.

  So that was what I did for a while, at least until he pulled out—then I just lay down flat, in the wet spot, really not caring about anything else. Flying on adrenaline and endorphins and Julien.

  He ran a rough hand over my back and got up. “Back in a moment.”

  I appreciated the sentiment, but I was too floaty to really care whether that was his hit-and-run moment or whether he would actually come back. I hoped he did. I wanted to do that again.

  He vanished into the bathroom, then I heard water run, and he was back out before I could drift off to sleep. The mattress moved, and I faintly remembered something about boxers and jeans and socks, but all I managed was to roll over onto my side and face him.

  There was only one pillow on my bed, and he’d taken it, so the best way to rest was on his shoulder. And what a shoulder. That leanness? He was cut. I stared at what lay right before my eyes until I managed to solve the puzzle of what it was I was seeing. You got the usual gym bodies, or sometimes even people who were just running and eating healthily and looked amazing. Julien looked fit, and he also looked efficient, and cut in a way that suggested more a lack of water than food. Tanned as he was, with that dark hair, he could have been a Berber with extremely striking eyes.

  “You all right?”

  I managed to focus long enough to finally wriggle out of my jeans and just drop them on the floor, and the boxers too. “I’m not in Kansas anymore, am I?”

  He laughed. “I’m fairly certain what we just did is illegal in Kansas, so it’s just as well.”

  I chuckled as I lay beside him again. I was about to speak, but something along his rib cage caught my eye. A streak of distinctly paler flesh standing out against his tan, and on a second look, thicker, slightly knotted tissue. “Where did that come from?”

  He traced a finger over it, as if he’d forgotten it was there. Then he shrugged as he withdrew his hand. “Nobody goes to war without bringing home a few souvenirs.”

  “Yeah, but how—”

  “Don’t.” He took my hand and brought it up to his lips. “There are things I don’t really want to think about from the last few years, and you probably don’t want to know about.”

  My gaze drifted back to the scar. It was long, maybe three or four inches. A knife wound? No, that would have been thinner. A bullet grazing him? That seemed oddly…plausible. The flesh had been stitched back together, judging by the slight scalloping along the edges, but I could imagine it had been created by maybe a handgun? A rifle of a larger caliber than a .22 but probably not too large? It—

  “Chris.” He squeezed my hand and shifted so his arm covered the scar. “Leave it alone.”

  I held his gaze, unsure if the request was for his benefit, mine, or both. I moved onto my side, propping myself up on my arm. “Are you feeling any better? From earlier?”

  He smiled sleepily. “I am.” The smile faltered slightly. The longer he looked in my eyes, the weaker the smile became, and finally he stared up at the ceiling.

  “What’s wrong?”

  Julien moistened his lips. “There aren’t a great many people who will accept me back after everything. Leaving a mission and not dying doesn’t really fly with the Church, and everyone I know here is part of the Church.” His thumb ran back and forth across the back of mine. “I suspect once my family gets over the shock that I’m home, they’re going to start asking questions, and…and I don’t know what will happen.” He turned his head toward me again. “You’re one of the only people I have left, and I don’t want to make things weird between us.”

  “Weird?” I raised my eyebrows. “Is that a delicate way of saying we shouldn’t have fucked, and we shouldn’t do it again?”

  His gaze returned to the ceiling, and he sighed heavily, but he didn’t let go of my hand. “No. I mean, maybe we shouldn’t have, and maybe we shouldn’t. I don’t know. Yesterday, you didn’t even know I was alive. Now we’re in bed together.”

  “It doesn’t have to get weird.”

  He scrubbed his other hand over his face. “No, it doesn’t. I guess I’m just scared of losing the one person who might not shun me for turning my back on the Church.”

  “If you think I’m going to choose the Church over you…” I laughed bitterly. “I haven’t been a member for a long time. My family will barely speak to me over it.”

  “It’s not that. But you’re my best friend.” He faced me again. “I put you through hell, and I know that. I just don’t want to give you a reason to walk away from me.”

  “I won’t.” I gently freed my hand and touched his cheek. “Not after I lived without you for all this time.” Before he could say anything, I pressed my lips to his. He hesitated, but then curved his hand around the back of my neck and opened to my kiss. This was an altogether different kiss from earlier, or the one last night, or even the one years ago. Comfortable. Intimate. Something I’d have shared with a boyfriend during a conversation about cosigning leases and paying a visit to City Hall.

  Yeah, I’d kissed a guy or two like this before. And a guy or two had kissed me back like this before. When we were in love.

  Fuck.

  This was going to get weird, wasn’t it?

  Was there safe ground? “We have time to figure things out. Our friendship. Where we stand. This.” I kissed him again, and yep, it felt totally natural, like something I wanted to do again and again. Too familiar, almost. The whole cliché—like it was meant to be this way, like I’d only waited for it, like we both belonged right here, lying so close together, breath mingling, brushing, touching with every movement. Our bodies apparently had decided that six years didn’t matter at all. Maybe they didn’t. Or maybe we were just papering things over with sex.

  “Maybe, what worries me…”

  “Yes?”

  “What worries me is not me walking away, but you. I mean, are you going to stay? Are you going to…” Be the same guy, same name? “Change your name back?”

  “No. I’m—” He shifted and faced me fully. “This is who I am now. As far as I’m concerned, Joshua Hawthorne is dead and gone and has never come back.”

  Was it illegal to fake your own death and then come back? It wasn’t so much faked as…he’d just let it run its course.

  “But you still have your American citizenship, don’t you?”

  “It takes a lot of effort to renounce it. You have to go to a consulate and all.”

  The way he said it indicated he’d definitely thought about it. “But why not make it easy and just go back to your old name? It would make everything a lot less complicated.”

  He didn’t answer. When I searched his gaze, there was absolutely no yielding in there. He was Julien now, end of story. Nonnegotiable.

  I gave a sigh. “All right.”

  “You’ll have to understand—”

  “I do. It’s important to you. I even get why.”

  He kissed my forehead. Nothing more necessary. I got him. He knew. We were clearly back to being friends again, just accepting each other and standing side by side with each other, no judgment, really. We were way too fond of each other to waste time quarrelling about that. Sure, we’d bantered and joked and teased, but there was a line we’d never really crossed. When I’d told him way back then that I wasn’t sure what I was feeling for him, only that I wanted to kiss him so badly, he’d simply kissed me. That was the kind of friendship I’d thought I’d lost. That I had back now, I hoped.

  Chapter Eight

  As tempting as it was to lie next to Julien and doze off, I had to be at work by six, so I got up to get ready. Showering with him was also tempting, but we both knew damn well I’d never get to work on time if we did that.

  While Julien showered, I dressed. I was just tying my black bow tie when he stepped out of the bathroom, freshly shaved and with only a towel around his waist. Instantly, my fingers forgot how a bow tie worked. I fumbled with it, swearing under my breath.

  Julien grinned. “Still have trouble with bow ties?”

  I glared at him and pulled the tie free to start over. “I wear this thing every night. I know how to tie it.”

  “Mm-hmm.” His eyebrow arched. “Need a hand?”

  “I’ve got it.”

  I didn’t. I so didn’t. What the hell? Okay, I’d tied this thing hundreds and hundreds of times, but in all fairness, never while I had an extremely fit, tanned and half-naked Julien standing just a few feet away. Especially after we’d unexpectedly fucked.

  “Here.” He came closer, his grin caught somewhere between playful and cautious. “Let me help.”

  Pride wanted to tell him to back off, that I had this, but I knew damn well I’d be fumbling with it for an embarrassingly long time if I tried, so I lowered my hands.

  He stepped in front of me and took the ends of the bow tie. “It’s prom night all over again, isn’t it?”

  I managed a quiet, forced laugh. “Yeah, except you weren’t wearing a towel that night.”

  His hands paused, and he smirked. “Do you want me to take the towel off?”

  Fuck, dude. I cleared my throat. “Uh…”

  “I’m kidding. Relax.” He resumed tying the bow tie, furrowing his brow as he did. “It’s been a while since I’ve…okay, I think it goes like…ah, there.” He lowered his hands and checked out his handiwork. “Done.”

  I inspected the bow tie in the mirror, and yes, he’d tied it perfectly. Straight, symmetrical, exactly like he’d done on prom night before we’d left to pick up our dates. I wondered if he’d known that night that we’d ever wind up in bed together. No, of course not. Everyone knew he and Kelly were going to wind up married after he came back from his mission. The perfect couple, sealed in the temple like good Mormon kids so they could start producing an army of kids of their own.

  Kelly. Did she know?

  “Something wrong?” Julien met my eyes in the mirror. “I, uh, might be a bit rusty. Is it—”

  “The bow tie is fine.” I turned around and faced him. “Out of curiosity, does Kelly know you’re”—alive?—”here?”

  He shook his head. “You and Deb are the only ones who know. She wouldn’t recognize me anyway.”

  True. That would be weird—like I was one of two people who could see and interact with a ghost. This was just way too Sixth Sense for me.

  I fuck dead people.

  He looked at me quizzically. “How’s she doing anyway?”

  “Uh.” How far had they gotten? Despite how close I’d been with Joshua, I wasn’t entirely sure how many bases they’d covered, so to speak. To be honest, by that point, my own emotions had been so all over the place that I had done my damned best to not know. “She’s married now. To Elijah.”

  “Him? Really?” Julien shook his head. “She deserves better.”

  Well, yeah, because you and Elijah were always competing. Still can’t deal with him ‘winning’ that one, can you?

  “I left the Church a while ago, so I’m a bit out of the loop. They’ve got at least two kids by now. I think I heard they’ve got another on the way, but, like I said, out of the loop.”

  “Yeah, she always wanted that.” What about him? Did he want kids now or later? How easy was that, shedding what was expected of a Good Little Mormon? Even I had struggled for a fair while. Still sometimes missed the community, the acceptance and my family. I’d told myself those were the drug cravings of a junkie, but it took a lot of effort to be so cynical. I simply missed them, but there was no way I’d return to the fold. I’d take my “meaningless life of disgrace and debauchery,” thank you very much.

  “It will make the rounds, you know. Certainly in the Church.”

  “Let them.” He set his jaw. “Joshua’s dead, and they’ll make their peace with it.”

  I rolled my eyes and turned to grab my cummerbund off the dresser. “You know damn well that’s not going to happen.” As I reached back to fasten the cummerbund behind my back, I added, “They still keep trying to drag me back.”

  Julien said nothing. His hands stopped mine. I didn’t fight him, and moved my hands out of the way so he could fasten the strap for me.

 

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