Only You (3 page)

Maybe that was why she’d chosen him as her successor, Barrett thought, stirring the beef bourguignon with a shallow wooden spoon. Because she knew he could keep a secret. He and Nick hadn’t been living together as a bonded pair when the elder woman still lived, although they’d talked about it. Plenty.

And maybe she’d known that, too. Gran always had been sharp no matter how old she got. The recipe book hadn’t been all she’d left Barrett—she’d tucked a check inside for enough to put a down payment on the old pile they’d wrangled back into being a house. A home.

Mmm.
The stew smelled like heaven, caressing his senses, tickling them awake. Barrett snuck a sip of the broth and moaned at the rich earthiness of the flavor.

He wasn’t surprised, not at all, to hear the soft tread of Nick’s bare feet padding across the hard tiles delineating a kitchen floor. Someday they’d buy a few more rag rugs and suchlike to soften the effect in there, but it hadn’t happened so far. Might be cold in winter, but it couldn’t be beat during summertime.

Warm arms slipped around Barrett from behind, linked loosely about his waist. Nick’s favorite embrace. Barrett tipped his head to one side to give Nick room to rest against his shoulder and hook his chin there. His stubble tickled Barrett, making him laugh. He gave the man an affectionate push that accomplished nothing, but hadn’t really been intended to. “Hungry?”

Nick’s stomach rumbled an answer his mouth expanded on. “Starving. Beer and pretzels are great for a game night snack, but not for daily rations, and we didn’t feel like stopping for drive-through on the way back. You know Abram.” Nick nuzzled Barrett’s ear, catching the lobe between his teeth. Barrett shivered, and not from the cold. “What is it again, stew?”

“Technically, I suppose so.” Barrett lightly swatted Nick’s hand away from a sneaky foray toward the wooden spoon. “Granddad always kicked up a fuss if we called it anything else. ‘If I’m going to eat it, I’d damned well better be able to spell it!’”

Nick chuckled, warm lips curving next to Barrett’s temple. “I remember. He could roar like a lion, couldn’t he?”

“More like a cranky old bear.” Barrett crinkled his nose. “All bark, no bite. He liked you for standing up to him. So did Gran.”

Nick laughed. “God, but she was a pistol. I remember how she’d threaten to get out the old school readers and make him practice writing ‘bourguignon’ twenty times, or until it took.” He tried again to sneak the spoon away from Barrett.

“You wouldn’t be trying to start something, would you?” Barrett asked, pretending to dodge Nick’s quick kiss on his temple. He flipped the spoon from one hand to the other. “You’re not
that
hungry.”

“Me? Nope. Heaven forbid.” Nick rested his weight on Barrett, covering him as warmly as a cape or a blanket. He nosed under the opened collar of Barrett’s shirt. “I’m just appreciating the way you handle a good piece of beef. Smells better than usual. Makes my mouth water.”

“Uh-huh,” Barrett said, amused. He bent his head to give Nick more room, and took Nick’s hand in his where it rested over his belt buckle. “Are we still talking about the stew?”

“Of course,” Nick said, innocent as a field full of lambs, which was Barrett’s cue not to believe a word. Actions spoke louder than words, anyway, and Nick slipping his hand lower on Barrett’s groin wasn’t exactly a subtle move. “If you minded, you could always tell me to stop.”

Barrett knocked his head lightly against Nick’s. “I didn’t say
that
.”

Nick’s lips rested soft and hot next to Barrett’s nape. “Good,” he rumbled, voice a tame wildcat’s growl, a rasping purr that reverberated and hummed along Barrett’s skin. Barrett sighed and shivered at the light scrape of teeth over his pulse, then— “Ouch!” He pushed Nick harder that time, not playing now. “Careful, would you?”

To be fair, Nick looked startled. His eyes were a bit wider than normal, and his lips parted in surprise and chagrin. “Shit, Barrett. I’m sorry. I didn’t break the skin, did I?”

Barrett touched the tips of his fingers to the stinging spot. They came away clean and dry. The skin stung, but no real damage done. “Don’t think so.” He craned his neck, trying to get a better look at Nick. He couldn’t tell for sure, given the odd angle, but something seemed off, his skin a couple of degrees too warm and dry. He blinked several times, as if his vision had gone blurry for a moment. “Are you all right?”

“Yeah, I…” Nick trailed off. He touched his lips to the place he’d bitten, soothing the sting with tiny sweeps of his tongue. Even so, he seemed as distracted as he was sheepish—and well he should be. Only soulmates bit like that, and there, when they were staking a claim. “I don’t know why I did that.”

So he said. Barrett would eat the spoon and given Nick every drop of stew if he hadn’t picked up some kind of bug at the game, but…well. It didn’t hurt any longer, and odd as it seemed to Barrett, he couldn’t be bothered to care. Distracted. Too fascinated with Nick’s kittenish licking. Strange, the way that felt. The touch tugged at something far deeper down than skin. Nothing sexual, not really. Something with timbre and roots that curled around his chest and through his ribs.

Something that wasn’t sexual to start with, no, but got there pretty damned fast.

Barrett steadied his feet and took a better hold on the granite countertop to keep himself from falling over. Good thing, too. Nick never had taken his hand away. As Barrett moved to accommodate him, he spread his fingers wide to stroke Barrett’s rising cock and made his palm a firm cup to push against. If Barrett had got hard then Nick was harder still, pressed tight and close to him. He rocked into Barrett with tiny nudges of his hips in time with the movements of his lips, his tongue, his fingers.

“Not…” Barrett licked his lips, dry from breathing shallowly through his mouth. Always did, when he got worked up. “Not trying to start anything, you said?”

Nick’s stubble scraped his jaw. “I might have lied. Unintentionally.”

“Unintentionally, sure. Are you sure you’re…hmm.” Barrett nudged back with one elbow, just giving himself room to move and turn and kiss Nick properly. He tasted of pepper, dark and spicy, and made Barrett’s lips tingle, wanting more.

He pressed into the kiss and forgot what he’d meant to ask in the first place.

Though Nick hadn’t had much left to lose, he considered it now his mission to strip Barrett just as bare. Barrett, happily enough, didn’t mind a bit. Between the two of them, they’d left a trail of clothing that stretched from kitchen range to the edge of their bed, and Nick’s determination left them naked by the time he pushed Barrett onto the sheets.

Barrett had his arms around Nick and gotten back to kissing before the bed stopped bouncing. Nick let him, gladly, and gave back with interest.

Nick had grown up on stories of soulmates. Everyone did. Teenagers just old enough to have figured out they could do more with their dicks than piss gathered like clusters of hormonal hand grenades to whisper to each other. Girls were more likely to pass around novels with dog-eared pages, and guys to scribble graffiti on their gym lockers, but it all came to the same end. Sex was one thing. No harm in having sex with someone before you found your mate. Probably better if you did, was the sensible opinion. Keep it safe and sane, and when you do find your mate, you’d actually have a clue about what to do with them.

And it wasn’t cheating if you hadn’t met your mate yet. Not if the bond hadn’t formed and the soulmark didn’t show. It’d be a long and lonely life without human contact, and if that meant someone to play around with in bed, well. Everyone did it.

That was how he and Barrett had started. Back when they’d been spotty-faced and bored to death, putting in their time in Drivers’ Ed and shop. Sneaking around under the bleachers, joy-riding when they had their licenses, oh, all the clichés, and they’d enjoyed every last one.

The thing was, most people stopped, or at least slowed down, as they grew older. Little passions ran their course and petered out, and children grew out of boyhood crushes. Such was the way of the world.

But not for them. Not him and Barrett. Never had, not once.

There were stories about people who never generated a soulmark. No one knew why. Science could barely wrap its head around the existence of soulmarks, let alone the tangles theologians made of them. But they existed, for whatever reason, and so did those who stood outside the norm. The born bachelors. The aberrant. The outliers.

Those with soulmarks usually tried not to discriminate. Mankind wasn’t made to be alone, even if flukes of biology worked against them. The unmarked could shack up with one another and no one would bat an eye. All understandable, neat and tidy.

Only when that wasn’t enough—when a man without a mark could feel the pull, the ache, the longing for
more
—

Maybe some of them did what Nick and Barrett did. Nick had no idea. He wouldn’t know who to ask, even if anyone were willing to tell.

Their secret. Theirs.

Nick licked his lips. His teeth kept catching on his tongue, as if it’d gotten too thick for his mouth. It hadn’t. Just to be sure, he flipped himself and his lover over and spread Barrett out beneath him. He checked the tongue for himself against the twin dimples at the small of Barrett’s back where waist met hips in a dip and swell.

Barrett yelped, surprised but pleased. “What’s gotten into you?”

“Missed you, that’s all,” Nick said. He guided Barrett more steadily onto his stomach so he could taste those dimples again. “Couldn’t sleep last night, thinking about you.”

“You’re going to tell me what the hell happened at that game. Just so you know,” Barrett warned as he let Nick manhandle him without complaint. He stretched out beneath the blanketing weight of Nick’s body with a noise like a contented cat and raised his hips just high enough to tempt.

“I will.” Nick rewarded him with a light slap on one ass cheek. “Later.” He stroked a twin path of fingertip rubs down Barrett’s back, with the slightest bit of a scratch to keep him lively, then spat in his hand and pressed his thumbs deep in the cleft of Barrett’s ass. He braced himself over Barrett, taking all his weight on his left arm to better work with his right hand.

Funny, really
. He really hadn’t meant to start anything except dinner when he’d caught up with Barrett in the kitchen, no matter what Barrett likely imagined. Daniel could come knocking on the door at any moment, for Pete’s sake.

Just, once he had his hands on the man…

And he’d thought he’d want it fast and rough. All the way over to the bed, he’d thought so, feverish with the notion of flipping Barrett onto the mattress and pinning him down. Of taking Barrett’s cock in his mouth and sucking him dry, but…

But now he could have gone fast, somehow he didn’t want to. He’d rather lie atop Barrett, their legs tangled together, Barrett’s body warm and firm beneath him. In this position he could lavish all the attention he wanted on the side and nape of Barrett’s neck and yet keep the man lying mostly submissive by virtue of one leg draped over both of his. He lined his cock up to nudge between Barrett’s parted thighs and stroked shallowly between them to bump beneath the heavy fullness of Barrett’s softly furred sac.

“Like that?” he asked by Barrett’s ear as he curled two fingers deep inside and stroked. “Good that way? Or more?”

Barrett hissed between his teeth and struggled to raise himself on his arms. Nick moved with him as he canted his hips and widened the stretch of his legs, inviting Nick to slide beneath them. He moved as slowly as Nick, as if moving languidly through warm golden syrup, or waking from a nap on a cloudless summer afternoon, but with definite intent. He turned to look over his shoulder. At the odd angle, Nick couldn’t see much more than Barrett’s profile, but he got the message loud and clear in the parting of Barrett’s lips and the heavy, dark heat in the gleam of his eye.

More
.

Nick pressed his mouth to the back of Barrett’s neck and licked up the salt-sweetness of the skin there. His cock surged, almost slipping in his hand, and his hips took over from there with a rough jolt that jarred them both forward.

“Again,” Barrett demanded, rolling his shoulders in a shimmy that undulated clear down the length of his back and on through his legs. He pushed against Nick in lazy half-circles, half-demanding, half-begging. “Want you inside. Fuck me.”

The demand sizzled with a nearly electric shock. A good one, tingling clear down to his toes, but it caught Nick by surprise. He didn’t bite Barrett’s neck again, but only because he’d pulled back to take a breath. What was wrong with him? He’d never had a nibbling fetish before. Annoyed with himself, Nick shook his hair back to clear his head.

Good luck with that.
Nick’s body heat, dry and tight as the desert, swamped his head. He rubbed hard, brisk circles around the rim of Barrett’s hole, relaxed and open for him, then took hold of himself, setting his cock in place but not pushing, not yet. “All right?”

Barrett rose up instead of answering Nick in words, rutting back into him. Nick swiped his forearm across his face in a quick attempt to wipe the sweat away from his eyes, gave it up, and guided himself inside slow and steady, not stopping until the rounds of Barrett’s ass were nestled against his hips.

He rubbed his forehead across Barrett’s back and knotted his fists into the disheveled sheets. Ordinarily, he liked to get a hand around Barrett’s cock, though ‘ordinary’ didn’t mean much when they used this position maybe once in a blue moon. He liked hugging from behind, but he’d rather watch Barrett’s face when they fucked. Would rather kiss him than have his mouth strung open and useless.

They could change positions, Nick knew, but—

Barrett moved, body rippling, and rose to demand more. Nick couldn’t help giving it to him. Arm around Barrett’s waist, he splayed his fingers wide on Barrett’s stomach.
Getting close
. He pressed his hand harder over the flexing muscles and counted the ragged edges of Barrett’s breathing.

Seemed like they’d been there for ages. Like they’d always been there, tucked up in bed together, the tight heat of Barrett snug around his cock as he drove into the man. His hair fell forward and blurred his vision, so he closed his eyes tight, kept his teeth to himself, and let himself go. The
snap
and
slap
of skin on skin never got louder than the frayed rasp of their breathing in greedy gulps of air, but close enough to make the rest of the world fade into white noise.