Good Bones (22 page)

After he ended the call, Dylan wandered back downstairs, where the smells were even better than before and the table was carefully set. “Don’t get any ideas,” Chris said as he tipped pasta into a bowl. “I ain’t gonna put on no frilly aprons or start meetin’ you at the door with a cocktail in my hand.”

Dylan gave Chris’s ass a healthy squeeze. “Too bad. I bet you’d look good in an apron and nothing else.” He smirked as he avoided Chris’s clumsy swat and then sat down at the table.

Dinner was delicious. Possibly the best meal he’d ever eaten. The meat was nice and rare and practically melted on his tongue, the vegetable pasta tasted like spring, and by the time he finished off a big slice of cake, his stomach was full enough to make him groan. “That meal was a work of art.”

Chris ducked his head, hiding his face under a fall of hair and pretending he wasn’t beaming with pleasure.

Dylan did the washing up. Chris had told him it could wait, but Dylan hated to leave the kitchen a mess overnight. It took a while to package up the leftovers and to scrub the pots and pans and dishes. Chris watched him work the entire time, drumming his fingers impatiently on the table.

Finally, Dylan toweled his hands dry. “Wanna come over to my place and watch TV?” Chris asked. Dylan’s own television was still packed away in a box, mostly because he didn’t have any living room furniture yet. Maybe the futon queens would give him a deal on a fold-up couch.

“It’s been a long day. I think I’m going to turn in,” Dylan said.

“It’s nine o’clock, dude.”

“Aren’t farmers supposed to be early to bed, early to rise?”

“Yeah, but you ain’t growin’ nothin’ but blackberries and weeds.”

“And overgrown Christmas trees.” Dylan walked across the kitchen, hauled Chris to his feet and hooked a finger in his belt loop, drawing their hips together. “Come upstairs with me.”

Chris nibbled at the scarred piercing on Dylan’s earlobe—the earring had fallen out the first time he changed to a wolf, and the hole had closed when he was human again—but then Chris paused. “You think I’m that easy?”

“I think if an architect gets a big kiss to wish him luck, he deserves a hell of a lot more when his presentation blows them away.”

After pretending to consider this for a moment, Chris nodded. “Fair enough.”

They didn’t wait until they got upstairs to begin undressing. They kicked their shoes off as they crossed the kitchen and almost fell down the stairs when they tried to pull one another’s T-shirts off. They fumbled with their flies as they stumbled down the hallway. Dylan stumbled and grabbed Chris’s arm for support as his jeans got caught around his shins. By the time they got to the bed, Chris was wearing nothing but a pair of white socks and an impressive erection. Dylan still had his boxers on, but Chris tugged at them impatiently.

“Whaddaya want?” Chris asked him.

Dylan looked his lover over from head to toe and couldn’t answer. What didn’t he want? It was like asking someone to choose only one of the thirty-one flavors. “Not vanilla,” he thought, and then realized he’d said it out loud.

That earned him a raised eyebrow. “I been too tame for you?”

Dylan had to laugh at that, and he caught Chris around the waist to bring him close. “Never. What I meant was you are never vanilla.”

“What am I then?” More with the eyebrow.

“I think… I think I’m still too full to think in terms of food metaphors. You’re goddamn perfect is what you are. My muse.”

“So now you want me in a white gown with a harp or somethin’? Leafy thing around my head?”

Dylan kissed his cheek and at the same time settled his palms on Chris’s bare ass. “No, I think I’m pretty satisfied with you just like this, thanks. But you still helped me out with that house, you know.”

“How?”

“You… you had confidence in me. And you taught me that maybe doing something… unusual… is a good idea.”

Chris hummed his approval, undulating slightly against Dylan and licking at his shoulder. “Ain’t never been a muse before.”

“Well, you’re awfully damn good at it.” And Dylan suddenly fell to his knees, hard enough to hurt, grasped Chris’s hips in his hands and nuzzled deeply around the root of his cock. “Smell good too.”

If Chris was planning to answer, he didn’t get a chance: Dylan slid the crown of Chris’s cock between his lips and sucked lightly, and Chris just gasped and grabbed Dylan’s hair for support. Dylan liked the taste of him as much as the scent, the bit of saltiness that reminded him of blood, the slick feel against his tongue. He liked knowing that Chris’s femoral pulse was so near to him—so near he could almost hear it—and when he moved one hand to Chris’s thigh he liked the feel of the hairs against taut skin.

Dylan took Chris in just a little more. He slid his hand to the inside of the thigh and brushed his fingers against the skin behind Chris’s balls. Chris huffed out a breath and widened his stance a little, easing Dylan’s access. Dylan rewarded him by taking him deeper still and stroking the puckered entrance to Chris’s body.

Ignoring his own aching erection, Dylan bobbed his head up and down, sometimes pausing to lick the big vein that ran under Chris’s cock or to nibble very lightly around the glans, and all the time he was nudging his finger just barely inside Chris, mindful of the fact that they hadn’t yet retrieved the lube.

Almost experimentally, like he wasn’t sure how Dylan would react, Chris thrust his hips slightly forward and then back. When Dylan didn’t object, Chris repeated the motion. His fingers curled tightly in Dylan’s hair, and his breaths came loud and ragged.

“Dyl….” Chris said hoarsely. Dylan would have been willing to continue. But Chris jerked backward slightly, his cock sliding out of Dylan’s mouth and banging against his chin. “I want more,” Chris said. He held a hand out to help Dylan to his feet, and, although Chris was reaching for the nightstand and the bottle of K-Y, Dylan grabbed at him first and stole a kiss. His lover tasted of the cake’s cinnamon and sugar and cloves.

Eventually they collapsed onto the bed. Sometimes when they had sex there was an urgency to it, like teenagers fucking in a car, but as eager as they’d been to undress one another, this time they took it slow. Dylan knew by now which parts of Chris he could caress to incite moans and shudders and pleas for more. Not just the obvious parts, either—although those were plenty fun—but also the creases where legs met torso, the inside of elbows and, most satisfyingly to Dylan, the tender nape of Chris’s neck. Chris would purr when Dylan carded fingers through long dark hair and whimper when Dylan sucked on broad, calloused fingers.

Dylan had never had the opportunity to learn another person’s body like this, to know its specifics more intimately than he knew his own. The knowledge made him feel giddy and powerful and capable all at once.

And at the same time, Chris was studying him. A diligent scholar, Chris knew that Dylan wanted to smell and taste, and he offered himself up freely, like a feast. Chris had figured out that Dylan didn’t mind just a little pain with his pleasure—nothing much, just a soft bite here and a gentle twist there—adding layers of sensation like spices in a meal. And Chris knew when to roll the condom over Dylan’s desperate cock, when to spread himself wide and plead to be filled.

They rocked together, joined and sweating, and they gasped each other’s names when they came.

“Stay here tonight,” Dylan mumbled sleepily when they were done. They were still entwined, neither having the energy to clean up. And then he remembered what Kay had said to him earlier that evening. He couldn’t tell Chris about the wolf, he just couldn’t. But at least he could open up about the only other secret he held.

“I love you,” he whispered, half hoping Chris was already asleep.

But Chris’s breathing hitched, and his muscles went tense. Dylan could see his face even in the darkness; Chris’s eyes were wide with shock. Without turning his head to look at Dylan, Chris said, “You don’t have to say that. I ain’t… you can have me anyway. You don’t gotta pretend—”

“Not pretending.”

Then Chris did turn, and he made one of those sounds that wasn’t quite a sob before grabbing Dylan’s hair in his fists and drawing their foreheads together. “Fuckin’ hell,” he rasped, and Dylan smiled.

Chapter 19

C
HRIS
spent four nights in a row in Dylan’s bed. Since Chris usually fell asleep first, Dylan liked to lie there in the dark and listen to him breathe, to burrow his nose into the crook of the sleeping man’s neck and inhale the scents of sweat and food and shampoo and soap and sex and himself. Especially himself—it gave him a strange thrill to know that Chris smelled of him, as if it were a sign of belonging that everyone would recognize. Nobody would, of course, at least nobody entirely human, but Dylan knew, and that was enough.

Four nights in a row, Dylan fell asleep feeling the rise and fall of Chris’s chest beside him. And Dylan would wake up two or three times—he’d always been a light sleeper—and notice the way Chris was touching him in his sleep. A hand thrown casually on top of Dylan’s stomach, a naked thigh pressed against his, a foot hooked over one of Dylan’s legs. Chris was a heavy sleeper, and Dylan learned that he could brush the dark hair away from Chris’s face and trace a finger over full, slightly slack lips, and Chris would barely twitch. Dylan liked that as well. It made him feel protective, which was strange, because what was there to protect Chris from in his own home? Except Dylan himself, of course, but that didn’t bear thinking of.

And four mornings in a row Chris awakened first and slithered under the blankets so that Dylan was aroused—in both senses of the word—by a tongue on his cock or by a mouth gently sucking on his balls. He was pretty sure that was the best possible way to begin the morning.

Even better, while Dylan still lazed in bed, cozy under the blankets and groggy in his postcoital doze, Chris went downstairs and made eggs or french toast or pancakes. He didn’t go so far as to bring it to Dylan in bed on a tray—instead he bellowed from downstairs when it was ready—but it was still heavenly for Dylan to slip on a pair of sweats and a tee and pad down to the kitchen and discover hot food and coffee and a hotter boyfriend waiting for him.

After eating, the two of them would work on Dylan’s house for a while, giving him hope that the place would someday be fully habitable. Maybe he’d invite Rick and Kay over for dinner, if Chris was willing to cook for them. Maybe Matty could come over too. She kept hinting about wanting to see the place. Dylan had abandoned his few other friends after he became a werewolf, but even though his current circle remained small, he was pleased with its caliber. Chris never mentioned friends of his own, and Dylan hadn’t wanted to push, but maybe soon there would be a good opportunity to ask a few gentle questions.

Dylan made them lunch every day. He could manage sandwiches and chips, at least.

In the afternoons, Chris went back to his own place. Sometimes he tinkered with his cars and returned later, smelling like oil and metal. Sometimes he read or watched TV. In the meantime, Dylan would Skype Matty, and they’d e-mail files back and forth, tinkering with the Beaverton plans. Chris would start dinner while Dylan was still working, and soon wonderful smells would start distracting him. Dylan and Matty would sign off, the meal would be served, and then there was TV and sex, or sex and TV, or sometimes both at the same time. Cuddling tended to follow, although Dylan didn’t quite admit that part to himself, and probably neither did Chris.

It was all much more domestic than Dylan had ever imagined, and he was happy. But when he woke up on the fourth morning, his skin was itching strangely, and he remembered with a start that the moon would be full that night.

He tried to go about the day as normally as possible, but Chris kept frowning at him as if he were trying to figure out what was wrong. Finally, as they struggled to install a cabinet, Chris went one way and Dylan went the other and the result was a sharp impact of wood on Dylan’s foot. “Goddamn it!” he snapped.

“What the hell’s wrong with you?” Chris demanded.

“You just dropped a hundred fucking pounds on me, that’s what’s wrong.”

“Didn’t drop it by myself, dude, and you’re wearin’ boots. Pull up your panties and deal.”

Dylan just growled at him and stomped out of the room. He wanted to throw things or punch things or just fucking bite. Instead he stood at his window, glaring at a jay that was scolding noisily from a nearby fir branch.

Maybe five minutes later, muted footsteps approached. Chris didn’t say anything, and Dylan didn’t turn around. Eventually, Dylan allowed his stiff shoulders to slump a little. “Sorry,” he muttered.

“Am I doin’ somethin’ to piss you off? ’Cause if so you better tell me—I ain’t gonna figure it out on my own. No fancy college degree, remember?”

Dylan turned around to find that little smile curling at the corner of Chris’s lips, but there was a softness in his eyes that reminded Dylan a little of the fawn he’d killed the previous month. He sighed and settled one hand on Chris’s broad shoulder. “You’re not doing anything wrong. I just….” He closed his eyes for a moment and then opened them. “Maybe I need a little space.”