Bad Influence (29 page)

“I know of one,” Quinn said.

“Yeah. That about sums up my history.” Eli’s vow of silence lasted all of a tenth of a second.

“And?” Silver asked.

“He never went home,” Quinn said in the same flat tone.

“Seriously?”

Eli smirked.

“Lesbian.” Silver sneered.

“Excuse me?” Eli cupped his dick.

Quinn put an arm around him. “What does a lesbian bring on the second date?”

Eli tipped his head up at Quinn.

“A U-Haul.” To Silver, Quinn added, “It actually took him a few trips on the bus to get most of his stuff up here.”

“For which you are eternally grateful, asshole.” Eli straddled him.

Quinn’s repetition started out robotic. “For which I am eternally—unf—”

The doorbell rang and spared Silver witnessing whatever game they were about to get into as he escaped into the hall and opened the door. Only to get smacked with a paralyzing wave of unaccustomed shyness when Zeb stepped in, clothes on a hanger over one shoulder, a soft laptop case slung over the other one. “Hi.”

“Hi.” After that he was stumped for a minute since it was as far as he’d gotten in planning what to say. For fuck’s sake he wasn’t a virgin, not by a long shot, and this wasn’t their damned wedding night. At least Zeb’s stuff gave Silver something to do. “I’ll hang that up for you.”

Zeb handed over the hanger, and Silver headed upstairs. He had it hooked over the bar in the closet in record time, but Zeb was at the door when Silver turned around.

Zeb put his computer bag on the floor under the desk. “Thanks. Is that where the magic happens?”

“Huh?” Silver looked at the bed.
Not a virgin. Not a wedding night.
Only—what had Marco called it?—an all-night guest.

“Eli’s photography. The digital work he does.” Zeb pointed at the NASA-like screens Eli had.

Silver was pretty sure the screens multiplied while he was sleeping. “Yeah. That’s his setup. You want a drink? Water? Iced tea?” He tried to move past Zeb.

Zeb put a hand up across the doorframe. “I want you.”

Silver stopped. Looked at Zeb. His serious eyes, his familiar face, the trace of a day’s stubble on his chin and jaw.

Lowering his arm, Zeb went on, “I know you said you were tired. We don’t have to do anything. But I came here to be with you.”

Silver started to answer, then nodded. But he didn’t exactly know what he’d agreed to. If they were wound up, hungry for each other, he’d know how to do this. But this, being so careful with each other, it was hard. He didn’t want to be the one to fuck things up.

Zeb leaned forward and kissed him, firm deliberate pressure. The crazy anxiousness in Silver’s head went quiet. Zeb knew where they were going. That made one of them.

Lifting his head, he asked, “Do you need to take a pill before bed?”

“No.”

“Go brush your teeth. You taste like peanut butter.”

Silver grinned. “You’re a freak. How does anyone not like peanut butter?”

Zeb was under the covers when Silver got back and closed the door.

“You’re not brushing your teeth?” Silver tossed his shirts and shorts on the desk chair. Sometimes he stripped the boxer briefs too. Not tonight.

Zeb blew a
ha
at Silver as he climbed in the bed. “I got all minty fresh and ready at my apartment. I should have asked. Do you have a side you like to sleep on?”

Silver saved himself from stupidly blurting
My stomach
as his brain caught up. Side of the bed, Zeb meant. Anytime Silver had slept with a guy—really slept in the unconscious sense—they’d just ended up wherever they were when they were done fucking.

“No. I don’t care.” Jealousy stung, left an itch no amount of reason could quiet. Silver settled on his back. “Do you?”

“I’ve never had any reason to get used to one.”

“Okay.” Irrational or not, Silver liked the answer.

Although it was only a bit after ten, if he were alone, he’d probably be in bed. The nights he didn’t work, he was tired enough to crash early. He reached over to switch off the lamp, and when he settled back, found Zeb wrapped around him. Warm, bare skin against his back, Zeb’s arm over Silver’s waist, a kiss on his shoulder. They fit, equal heights lining them up. It felt nice. He could deal with being the little spoon.

He put his hand over Zeb’s, fingers tracing the scars. It was a part of Zeb Silver knew nothing about. He rubbed the oddly smooth part where a piece was missing from the outside of the index finger.

“What happened?”

“Improper use of a machete.”

Silver reared up and spun around. “Someone—”

“Me. I was the one with a machete. Trying to cut something I was holding on to at the time. Bad decision.”

Silver settled back down and lifted Zeb’s hand, tracing the ragged one from pinky all the way across his hand.

“Torn on a nail. And yes, I’d had a tetanus shot.”

Silver pulled the other hand out from where it was under Zeb’s head and pillow.

Without the question, Zeb said, “Crushed. Concrete block. They’re a little hard to bend in rainy weather, but I can still write. And make enough of a fist for other purposes.”

Silver couldn’t really see Zeb’s wry smile but heard it in his voice. Normally he’d dive right into the opportunity for dirty jokes, but he didn’t feel like it now. “I thought you were teaching.”

“And helping to build the school. And houses and churches. Where I was, if there were four walls and a roof, it was a luxury. Tents were the best accommodations.”

“Why did you stay?”

“I liked teaching kids who really wanted to learn. Not that it isn’t fun trying to trick bored tenth graders into liking geometry. But the kids there, they had to go through so much to get to school, they wanted to be there.”

Silver remembered Gavin talking about passion. This was Zeb’s. And Silver had almost cost him the chance to ever do it again. “Sorry you didn’t get to stay until you were ready to leave.”

“I’m not. Things happen for a reason.”

Before Silver could roll his eyes about God having a plan that included Silver being HIV positive, Zeb said, “I know that’s not something you’re interested in talking about, so call it Fate or whatever, but I’m glad we got the chance to see each other, put all that behind us.”

“It wasn’t all bad.” Silver’s voice came out as a whisper.

“No. Definitely not.”

Silver found Zeb’s mouth in the dark, kissed the smile there. Kept on kissing him because if Silver stopped, he was afraid the hard lump he was swallowing around would turn into actual tears, and that would ruin everything.

Zeb’s lips opened, and Silver fell into the feeling of how right it was when their tongues slid past each other. Every time they kissed it felt like the first time, like he had found something he’d always needed. He held on to the sides of Zeb’s face to keep him there, because the way things worked in Silver’s world, there was no telling how long he’d get to have this.

Zeb wrapped his arms around Silver and rolled him under, Zeb’s weight so perfectly balanced on Silver they fit together like puzzle pieces.

And tired or not, there was definitely the potential for interlocking pieces if Zeb kept rubbing against Silver like that.

“Want you.” Zeb’s words were so close to Silver’s mouth it was like they were his own. “Want to suck you. Please.”

Silver bucked his hips, dick on board despite Silver’s big head being slow to follow.

Zeb’s lips and tongue shifted under Silver’s chin, down his neck, onto his breastbone.

“Pull off,” he warned.

“I will.” Zeb was already kissing his way onto Silver’s belly.

He lifted his hips to help Zeb tug off the boxer briefs Silver should have ditched with the rest of his clothes, and then Zeb’s mouth was there, tight around the tip, hot and wet and a flicking tongue.

Silver’d had better, more practiced blow jobs. But that didn’t matter when Zeb’s silky hair brushed his thighs, when it was the shine of Zeb’s eyes meeting Silver’s as he stared down.

Zeb might not have learned every trick, but with one hand cupping and lifting Silver’s balls and the other on the shaft matching the bob of Zeb’s head, Silver thought those tricks were overrated. A holy-fuck intensity was just fine. He wanted Zeb’s tongue to rub the head like that forever, until the pressure from the roof of his mouth felt even better. Back and forth between the sensations with hard friction on the shaft.

Silver’s neck arched, head flung over the pillow, hands dropping to Zeb’s hair as the sensation built, an arc toward the sky, a long swing up as the pleasure spiked in his balls. They tightened, and Zeb’s hand fell away. A drop of tension on the return swing, and then it rushed back in, stronger, bigger. Flooding into his cock, buzzing, rushing with his blood.

He pushed deeper into the wet heat, surprising a gasp and a hum from Zeb’s lips, and he hit the edge. With a frantic shove at Zeb’s head, he spat, “Off. Oh fuck, off.”

Zeb moved, and Silver’s hips bucked, and if he didn’t hit the ceiling with the first shot, it sure as hell felt like it. He grabbed his cock to finish it, pulling out a rope that hit his shoulder, and then shit, two more on his belly.

Zeb’s hair tickled the insides of Silver’s thighs, head resting on Silver’s hip.

Silver let out a long breath. “Fuck.” He didn’t know if he’d ever come so hard before.

Zeb dragged a finger through the puddle on Silver’s stomach and put a soft, wet kiss on his hipbone.

Everything in him wanted to drag Zeb up like a blanket and sink into sleep, but he really should offer reciprocation.

He took another deep breath of the come-sweat smell of them and shifted into motion. His ankle slid through a cooling wet spot.

Guess he knew where the hand on his balls had gone off to. “Yeah?”

“Didn’t think I’d want to after double action today, but when you made that sound…things got urgent.”

Silver didn’t remember making a sound, but after swallowing, he realized his throat hurt. “Oh shit.” Eli would rag on him forever.

“I really thought tonight we could just sleep.” There was an apology in Zeb’s tone.

A blow job before bed was not the kind of thing that should require an apology. Silver rubbed a thumb across Zeb’s mouth. “How do you like to sleep?”

The mouth under Silver’s thumb curved.

“On my back.”

“Perfect.” Silver rolled to the far edge of the bed to make room for Zeb to shift out of the wet spot. As soon as he was settled, Silver crawled up onto his chest and tangled their legs together.

Zeb sighed. “I should shower.”

“It’s down the hall,” Silver said through a yawn.

“Are you going to let me up?”

“Wasn’t planning on it.”

“Good.” Zeb wrapped his arms around Silver.

Gray light met Silver’s eyes when he opened them. Despite the hard surface of Zeb’s chest, and the dried come sticking their chests together, Silver hadn’t woken once during the night. Now Zeb’s fingers slipped through Silver’s hair, and even the nudge of his bladder wasn’t enough to keep him from drifting back to sleep.

Until his pillow heaved a sigh. “Gotta shower.”

“Yeah, you do. You reek of sex.” Silver hitched his arm tighter around Zeb’s ribs.

The rumble under Silver’s head warned him of the laugh before it gusted across his ear.

“You really aren’t helpful at all.”

“If that means I can sleep here for a few more minutes, it’s good.”

The stroke of Zeb’s hand sent tingles down Silver’s spine, spreading out like warmth to his fingers and toes.

“Do you have a shift today?”

“No.”

Again, he could hear the change in Zeb’s mood, the gathering of air in his chest as he hesitated.

Silver lifted his head. “What?”

“I wondered if you wanted to maybe go out tonight. To a movie?”

Silver lowered his head again and worked his hand to reach the base of Zeb’s spine. “Or we could just have sex.”

Because after months of being uninterested, suddenly it was on his brain every minute. If his dick wasn’t sore enough to register a protest, he’d have started grinding against Zeb the minute they woke up.

“I’d like that too.” Zeb squeezed him. “I know it might sound stupid, but it’s something I wished we could have done before. And I know how much you love movies.”

Silver did. But money to waste on a movie hadn’t exactly been part of his financial situation for the last couple of years.

“I don’t know about you,” Zeb murmured, “but no matter how much I want to again right now, my dick needs a few more hours off.”

Silver laughed. “A movie is good.”

“I’ll see you here when I get out.”

It was probably good Silver had fallen back asleep by the time Zeb got back from the shower, or Silver might have tried to see if wanting was stronger than the ouch-not-now. But he got up on his own for breakfast and his pill, which turned out to be good because Eli seemed really distracted.