Forever Promised (38 page)

“Jeffy nirvana and time well spent,” Collin said, smiling at him. Jeffy swished into the kitchen, bringing with him cold November air and a hint of his aftershave, which was surprisingly dark for someone who liked to claim he had more air than iron in his spine. (This was a complete fabrication, of course. Collin knew few people as strong as Jeff Beauchamp-Waters, but Jeff didn’t like people to think about him that way. It messed up his hair—at least that’s what he claimed.)

Collin’s stomach clenched at the scent, though. Jeff also smelled like he’d been cooking in the kitchen with Crick, and there must have been bacon involved, and that was one of Collin’s favorite foods
ever.

But it was more than that. It was that it was
Jeff
, and the way he smiled at Collin and dished all the news—that was
home.

You told the truth at home.

“So,” he said quietly, smiling at Jeff with all his heart so Jeff wouldn’t worry. “So Benny’s going to be okay?”

Jeff nodded and poked into the soup. After Joshua had left, Collin had rolled out some pasta with some fresh Romano and made little tortellini dumplings. As soon as Jeff had come in, Collin emptied them from the bowl to the boiling soup, and they’d be done in about two minutes.

“Yeah. Crick and Deacon were so worried, though. And not just about the baby, either. You could tell.” Jeff sniffed at the soup and tried an experimental sip of the broth. Collin had gone a little bit spicy, but since the chicken broth was mostly mild and he’d stayed away from too much salt, he figured the spice should be okay. “
Nice
,” Jeff said and turned his head to grin.

Collin captured his mouth effortlessly, and very carefully he moved Jeff away from all combustibles and pushed him back against the opposite counter for a very deep, very fulfilling kiss.

Ah, Jeff—his mouth was hot and wet, and he whimpered and gave almost immediately. Collin shivered and spread his hand at Jeff’s throat, feeling his Adam’s apple bob at the vee of his thumb and forefinger. Jeff brought his hands up to frame Collin’s face and push back his hair, which had been falling out of his queue. Collin used his other hand to reach behind Jeff and pull him tighter so their groins ground up together, and he could feel Jeff responding, just as fast and just as hard as Collin had come to expect him to be over the last few years.

Jeff groaned and frotted closer, and Collin pulled back for a minute because taking him on the kitchen table would mean moving the cats, and they might not go willingly.

They panted and rubbed their lips gently along cheekbones and jawlines, and Collin heard the glug of soup that was perilously close to simmering over.

“Oh crap!” He pulled away quickly and turned the gas burner off under the soup, then stirred it once for good measure to make sure all of the tortellini didn’t end up on the bottom of the stew pot.

Jeff moved up behind him as he worked, coming just close enough to rub his hands along Collin’s backside.

“Wow,” he sighed, his voice dreamy as only Collin’s boy-princess could get. “That was amazing—what brought that on?”

Collin blurted out the five words designed to shrink the boner of any man, gay or straight, who had ever existed on the planet.

“I want to have kids,” he said, stepping sideways so he could lean against the uncluttered counter instead of the stove.

Jeff rucked up his shirt and started planting little kisses on his suddenly bare shoulder blades. “Yeah?”

“Ye—eah…,” Collin sighed, as those kisses lined up his spine.

“That’s gonna be a tough one, Sparky. You know that, right? Lots of applications, lots of waiting, lots of scoping out the old house for the authorities… you know how that goes, right?”

But Jeff wasn’t mad or outraged… or even put off. He was dropping gentle kisses on the back of Collin’s neck now, and when he pulled the sweater up past Collin’s armpits and hefted it over his head, Collin let him, barely shivering in the stove-heated air of the kitchen. Jeff pressed up against his back and kissed the side of Collin’s neck, by his ear.

“You’ve thought about this,” Collin managed, and Jeff trilled in his ear.

“Watching you coach soccer was a real revelation,” he rumbled. “You were such a good dad, and those kids would have actually learned to play
if only you’d asked them!”

Collin choked back a laugh, and then just choked as Jeff thrust his hands down the front of Collin’s jeans, in front of his belt.

“I can’t believe this is turning you on!” He wasn’t complaining, but he couldn’t believe it either.

“You turn me on,” Jeff purred, and he did the two hand-knead, one on the shaft, one on the man-i-folds, and Collin tried to wrap his brain around Jeffy-the-incurable-gossip and Jeffy-the-man-eater, but failed. He pulled Jeff’s hands out of his pants so he could turn around and kiss his brown-eyed boy again.

“You’re funny,” Collin purred, pulling them groin-to-groin because he knew Jeff would wrap one leg around his thighs and try to climb him like a tree.

“Funny ha-ha or funny I-want-you-more-than-soup?” Jeff asked, and this time Collin stuck his hands down
Jeff’s
pants to knead his skinny backside, because skinny or not, it was just
so
sensitive. Jeff purred and started rubbing Collin’s chest. Collin’s blond hair started growing on his chest as he neared thirty. He’d offered to wax, but Jeff had growled sexy about Daddy bears, and the fact that Collin was ten years younger seemed even less of an obstacle in light of that growing blond patch of fur between Collin’s pecs.

“Funny that I thought this would scare you shitless. You’re the man who didn’t think he had a future, remember?”

Jeff pulled back and narrowed lazy brown eyes at him. “You’re the moron who told me I did, remember? If I’m going to have a future with you, Sparky, I’m thinking it needs to be the best future we can make it.”

Collin nodded soberly. “It’s… I mean, it’s going to be hard. All the shit you had to do for Kimmy—we’re going to need that.”

Jeff hmmed and leaned forward to hook his chin on Collin’s shoulder and tilted his head against Collin’s cheek. He and Collin were nearly the same height, so he had to bow his back a little to make that happen, but Collin felt the boneless, trusting way his Jeffy leaned into him, and there was a total faith there. Collin could bear his weight.

“We should probably save all of our drama until Benny’s done and married, you know that, right?”

Collin closed his eyes tight. It was like they had the same brain sometimes. “We can look into it before then and, you know, have our ducks in a row.”

“Mmm-hmm….” Jeff pulled back and kissed him again, and that quickly, the moment became hot. “Great, Sparky. Ducks in a row. Think we can get our ducks off before that soup gets cold?”

The kisses—strong, intense, wet kisses—kept going out of the kitchen, all the way down the hallway, and into the bedroom. When they got to the bedroom, Collin paused.

Jeff was wearing a nice cashmere cardigan, gray, with little cables running up and down like long snakes—a metaphor that made Jeff’s upper lip crinkle in terror every time Collin used it. The buttons were made of polished wood, and the yarn was fingering weight cashmere/merino/alpaca, hand spun, hand dyed, and overdyed with a subtle indigo shimmer. Collin would normally neither know nor
give a ripe shit about all of those details, but Jeff had knitted the sweater just for Collin, and Collin knew he stole it on days when he wanted comfort, or cheering up, or just to feel good about himself.

So Collin stood there, listening to Jeff’s breath coming in quick pants and feeling Jeff’s hands kneading his shoulders and his chest, while very carefully, with utmost respect, he unbuttoned his husband’s boyfriend sweater, one wooden button at a time.

“Could you do this any slower?” Jeff complained as Collin got down to the buttons right over the placket of Jeff’s slacks.

“Nope,” Collin breathed. Underneath the cardigan was a simple white T-shirt, and Collin could see the definition of Jeff’s waxed chest underneath. After the last button had popped free and Jeff had shrugged out of the sweater and draped it over the bedroom chair, Collin lowered his head and suckled one shell-pink nipple into his mouth through that white T-shirt. He felt the hard tremble in Jeff’s biceps as Jeff grabbed his head and urged him to suck harder.

“
Oh sweet Jebus!
” Jeff tugged at Collin’s hair, but Collin sat it out and enjoyed the sting. When the wave passed, Jeff started pulling at Collin’s sweatshirt with bony, careless fingers. “Naked, Sparky,
now!
”

Collin moved his hands to Jeff’s belt, and when that was done he fumbled with the stays of Jeff’s slacks.

“Naked?” Jeff whimpered, and Collin obliged him, letting go of the nipple and ducking so Jeff could pull the sweatshirt and shirt over his head. Collin went to shove Jeff’s pants down and Jeff went to work Collin’s nipple, and there was that awkward tangle of limbs that can sometimes make catastrophe of even the hottest passion. Collin led, though—that’s what he did. That’s what Jeff had needed so badly from the moment Collin had looked at him, as an adult, and said, “I want you.”

“Here, Jeffy,” Collin murmured, holding his shoulders. He kissed his lips tenderly, and then down his jaw, and then down his throat. One kiss at a time (and a couple of sucks guaranteed to leave marks on Jeff’s pale skin), he moved down Jeff’s body, pulling the slacks down and letting Jeff lean on him while he removed his loafers.

“You’re still not naked,” Jeff whispered, but his voice was breathy, and when Collin ran a pointed tongue from his balls to the tip of his cock, Jeff stopped trying to make sense altogether. “
Nungh
….”

Collin took Jeff’s whole erection into his mouth, and Jeff’s noise went deep throat too.

“
Whoa
….”

Collin chuckled around his length and swallowed, then wrapped his fist around it and started stroking while he sucked on the head. Jeff’s noises got louder and his hands on Collin’s shoulders, neck, and face moved in frenetic patterns while Collin concentrated his efforts. He wrapped one arm around Jeff’s thighs and pulled him deeper and deeper until Jeff finally found his voice.

“I got one go, here,” he rasped. “How about you get busy and
fuck me
!”

“Mummf ngo!” Collin let Jeff’s cock slurp out of his mouth with a pop. “One go! As if!” But he kissed his way back up, and this time, he let Jeff pop open the fly of his jeans and get rid of
his
pants and boxers. He kept his hands firmly on Jeff’s skinny little hips, though, as he stepped out of everything, letting his moccasins go as he did.

Jeff let out a little moan and took his mouth again, wrapping his arms around Collin’s shoulders with an almost absurd grace to keep from going too fast.

That little flick of his wrist, the way those long-fingered hands stayed lightly fisted—those moments when Jeff seemed the most delicate were the ones when Collin loved having Jeff’s hard, wiry body against him the most.

Collin took as much of his mouth as humanly possible. He dominated, thrusting his tongue inside, tasting, mastering, until a pliant sigh told him Jeffy was his, his for the taking, the using, the needing.

Jeff backed up until he could sit on the bed, and Collin let him scoot backward and push the navy-blue comforter and sheets down. At the head of the bed, he spread out on the sheets, his knees splayed, his cock hard between his thighs, and his fingers plucking restlessly on his nipples.

Collin took a deep breath and prayed for fortitude before grabbing for the end table and the condoms and lubricant.

Some nights he took his time and teased Jeff, massaged his rim, spread him open and licked him until he screamed, but not tonight.

Tonight was all about need, and possession, and, yes, about having hot, sweaty chimp sex before the fresh pasta turned to glue in the bottom of the soup pot.

Collin was so quick and so practiced with the glove and the love by now, as he covered Jeff’s body and poised his erection at Jeff’s entrance, he actually looked down and checked to make sure he and Jeff were being as safe as possible. The sight of it—Jeff’s pale flesh, the dark hair at his groin, Collin’s body about to penetrate him—drove Collin into his body with a groan.

The speed, the force, the urgency—that was sex with
Jeff
, and as Collin rode him, fast, hard, until he felt prickles of sweat chilling on the back of his neck, Collin stopped thinking about the goodness of it and started
living
it. He lived the beauty of Jeff’s kiss-swollen lips as he took them, bruised them, made them red and puffy instead of pink and lean. Every sexy little grunt/whimper Jeff made when Collin surged forward into his body sent goose bumps along the back of Collin’s arms, down his spine, down the crease of his ass and straight to his balls. He
lived
those chills,
lived
Jeff’s strong fingers pulling on his nipples,
lived
Jeff’s half-closed eyes, his frantic breaths as he lost himself in the passion.

Collin growled and sat back on his knees, pulling Jeff’s hips up so they could stay joined. It was time to close his eyes and fuck like a champion, time to make Jeffy scream. “Grab your cock, Jeffy,” Collin panted. “I’m almost there.”

Jeff did, and Jeff’s strokes were hard and slow, no matter how bullet-fast the fuck. And then Collin’s head tilted back all on its own, and his eyes closed, and it was all sex, exploding through his body, even as Jeff cried out on a spurt of come.

Jeff’s convulsions around his body were all Collin needed, and he groaned from the pit of his stomach and fell forward, not minding the wet mess between them. He wanted to kiss Jeff again, kiss him hard, tremble down from the peak with him, because that was always the best way, and Jeff kissed him back the same.

Eventually Collin sighed and rolled sideways, trying to get himself together enough to clean up and go get dinner. He startled awake a few minutes later, when Jeff thrust a wet washcloth in his hand.

“Easy, Sparky,” Jeff chided, and when Collin opened his eyes, he saw Jeff was wearing his sweats too.