by Alexa Land
Dante asked, “Want me to come over and keep you company? Charlie and Jayden made lasagna for dinner, and I could bring you some.”
“Thanks for the offer, but I’m just going to crash out early and sleep it off.”
“Okay. I’ll see you next week then.”
“Yup, I’ll be there.”
After we disconnected, I glanced at the phone in my hand and chewed my lip for a moment. It was really fucking late in Barcelona, but Ignacio was both a raging insomniac and basically nocturnal, so I decided to send him a text. I kept it to: Hey, you awake? Apparently the answer was no, since I didn’t receive a reply. I sighed quietly and pulled the blanket up to my chin.
Chapter Five
I awoke with a start a few hours later. I’d been having such a nice dream. It was so simple but utterly perfect, just Ignacio and me holding hands and talking as we walked down a sunlit street. When he smiled at me, I’d felt pure happiness. I tried to remember what we’d been talking about, but it was like trying to grab a handful of smoke. The whole thing dissipated almost instantly.
I blinked a couple of times and looked around. I was still in the recliner, and somehow I was still holding my phone, which informed me it was almost three a.m. when I tapped the home button. What the hell had awakened me?
The answer revealed itself a few moments later, when someone knocked on the door. I was instantly irritated. It had to be one of my neighbors, since the security gate was always locked and no one had rung my buzzer to be let in. What the hell did they want at this hour? I tossed the phone on the end table as I got up and tried to massage away the headache brewing in my temples as I crossed the apartment.
When I opened the door a crack and glanced into the hallway, my heart skipped a beat. I threw it open, and as Ignacio tackled me in an embrace, I yelled, “Holy shit!”
He dropped a messenger bag on the floor and kissed me as the door swung shut behind him. I returned the kiss passionately, and when I began kissing his neck and jaw, he murmured, “God, I missed you.”
I couldn’t get enough of him. I felt a tremor go through his body, or maybe mine, as I ran my tongue up the side of his neck. We swung each other around and knocked over the table beside the front door. Something fell and broke. I didn’t care.
We swung around again, and he slammed me up against the wall and slid his tongue in my mouth, which made my cock throb. I pulled off his leather jacket and ran my hands under the hem of his T-shirt. I needed to feel his skin, and that little taste wasn’t enough. I nearly tore the soft, black fabric in my frenzy to get the shirt off him, and once his chest was exposed, I licked and sucked his nipples while my shaking hands fumbled with his button fly.
He bent down for a moment and pulled off his cowboy boots and socks, flinging them aside while I tangled my fingers in his thick, silky hair. While he was down there, he rubbed his cheek against the bulge in my pants, and the sound that came from me was nearly a growl. As soon as he straightened up again, I yanked down his jeans and briefs, and his stiff cock sprang up against his stomach.
Ignacio stepped out of his clothes, and I ran my hands down his naked body. Then I pushed him against the wall and quickly searched my pockets. It was surprising that some tiny part of my brain remembered the lube and condoms I’d picked up earlier at his apartment, since all rational thought had abandoned me by that point.
My heart was racing. I needed to fuck him like I needed air. Ignacio unzipped my pants and pulled out my cock while I squirted way too much lube onto my hand. He met my gaze and wrapped his right leg around my thigh as I slid a finger into him. We kissed deeply while I worked him open. After a couple of minutes, he took the condoms from me, ripped one open with his teeth, and rolled it down my shaft. His eyes never left mine as he did that.
I eased my finger from him and ran my slick palm over my cock. Then I wiped my hand on a towel that happened to be strewn over a nearby chair, and Ignacio grabbed my ass and pulled me close. As I entered him with one long thrust, I murmured, “Oh fuck.”
Ignacio drove himself onto me forcefully as we established a rhythm. His back was pressed to the wall, and he wrapped his arms and one of his legs around me as I kissed him. When I reached between us and started jerking him off, he began slamming himself onto my cock as I pounded his tight hole.
A few minutes later, he started to cum. His cock twitched in my grasp, and Ignacio cried out as his fingers dug into me through my clothes. Soon after, my orgasm tore through me. I never knew it was possible to cum that hard. My head spun, and I clutched his body as I thrust into him. That earth-shattering orgasm rolled through me in waves, and I shot again and again until my legs shook and my body felt like it was on the brink of collapse.
Afterwards, I slid my cock from him and we both dropped into a seated position with our backs against the wall. As we caught our breath and my heartbeat leveled out, I peeled off the condom and tied it. Then I used the towel to clean both of us up a bit before zipping my pants.
I gathered him in an embrace and kissed his lips, his cheeks, his jaw as he burrowed into my arms. There was no playing it cool. That just wasn’t even an option. As I held him tight, I whispered, “I can’t believe you’re really here.”
“I had to come home. I missed you.”
I kissed him again before asking, “Did you abandon the mural project?”
He straddled my hips and pulled off my tie. Then he began unbuttoning my shirt as he told me, “I decided they were done and left before the project manager could complain again and make me change everything.”
“You didn’t tell me you were flying home.”
“I wanted to surprise you.”
“Best surprise ever.” I kissed him once more before asking, “Out of curiosity, how did you get past the security gate downstairs?”
“I jimmied the latch with a credit card, because I thought a knock would be a lot less jarring than a buzzer in the middle of the night. I hate to tell you, but your security gate is far from secure.”
“It’s mostly for show. Where’s your luggage?”
“Out in the hall. Is it okay if I spend the night here? It’s pretty late to try to find a hotel.”
“Of course.” Once my shirt was unbuttoned, he slid his arms inside it and held on to me. But then he shivered a little, so I asked, “Want to move to the bed? It’s much warmer.”
“Actually, I’d love a hot shower, but in a little while. I don’t want to let go of you yet.”
I kissed his bare shoulder and ran my hands down his back, and when I felt goosebumps, I said, “Come on, I’ll go with you.”
He got up and held his hand out, and after he pulled me to my feet, he followed me to the bathroom. I turned on the water and stripped as it warmed up, then stepped into the tub with him and closed the blue striped shower curtain. Ignacio wrapped his arms around me as he tilted his head back and dampened his hair, and then he rested his cheek on my shoulder while the hot water ran down his back. I nuzzled his ear, and after a few moments, I admitted, “I was dreaming about you when you knocked on my door.”
“Really?”
I nodded. “I was so disappointed when I woke up, because I didn’t want it to end. But now you’re here, and I feel like I must still be dreaming.” That was corny as hell and I knew it, but I just couldn’t make myself shut up.
Ignacio took my face between his palms and kissed me. It was so tender. I lost myself in it for a long moment, as a wonderful feeling of contentment washed over me.
I felt the need to take care of him, for reasons I couldn’t really explain, so I lathered his hair while he wrapped his hands around my waist. When he tipped his head to rinse out the shampoo, I kissed his throat, and then I picked up the soap and washed him gently while he trailed his wet fingers over my cheek and along my jaw.
There was an intensity to his gaze, which I’d noticed during our first night together and our many video-chats. Maybe that was the artist in him, not just looking but observing and filing away
bits of information. I wondered what he saw when he looked at me. All I noticed in the mirror anymore was someone pale and tired who’d learned to move through life almost invisibly. My bland suits and overcoats had become a form of camouflage, adopted even before he who should not be named and the incidents of a year ago. Any optimism I’d possessed in my twenties had long since dissipated, replaced with a kind of weariness as relationship after relationship failed, culminating in the total devastation of the last one.
At least, that was what I’d started to believe. But here I was, naked in the shower with a gorgeous man, and damned if I didn’t feel the tiniest glimmer of optimism. I wouldn’t have thought myself capable of it.
Even though I felt exposed by the intensity of his gaze, I didn’t look away. Instead, I studied him just as closely as he was studying me and found myself whispering, “You’re so beautiful.”
What an understatement. He was breathtaking. A few tendrils of his thick, wet hair fell across his face, and his full lips parted slightly as my soapy hands ran across his broad chest. I wished I had a photograph of him in that moment, so I’d never forget a single detail.
After he rinsed off, I took a quick turn under the water and cleaned up a bit, and as we got out and dried off I asked, “Are you hungry? I’m not sure what I have here, but there are a couple of places in the city with twenty-four-hour delivery.”
“Actually, I brought you something from Barcelona. It’s good with coffee if you have some.”
“That’s the one thing I make sure to never run out of.”
While I got the coffee pot going, Ignacio retrieved his luggage from the hall, then picked up his messenger bag and brought it into the kitchenette. I couldn’t help but notice he’d remained completely naked, while I’d fastened a towel around my hips. As he pulled a white bakery box from his satchel, he said, “You didn’t know what Xuxos de crema were when we spoke on the phone, so I wanted to show you. They’re better fresh, but you’ll get the idea.”
We took our coffee, the box, and his messenger bag back to bed, and Ignacio and I leaned against the wall side-by-side. He picked up an oval pastry from the box and held it to my lips, and I bit into it and murmured, “Oh wow.” It was similar to a donut with a light cream filling and a dusting of sugar, and it was absolutely delicious.
“You like it?”
“I love it. Thank you.” As he glanced at our surroundings, I said, “Just so you know, I picked up your paintings this afternoon, and I was planning on storing them for you first thing tomorrow. I’m sorry. I know they’re private, but I wanted one night to enjoy them, especially since I knew you planned to get rid of them when you got back.”
“I like the fact that you put them on display. It makes me think you really did miss me.”
“Of course I did.”
He draped his leg over mine, and after we shared the pastry, he licked his fingers and pulled a sketch pad from his bag. Then he flipped to a vivid watercolor painting and said, “I wanted to show you what I went with for the final mural at the community center. It’s on a building used for daycare and children’s programs. What do you think?”
I put my coffee cup on the nightstand and took the pad from him. The scene he’d painted was whimsical and utterly charming. Children and animals ran and played in and around a castle with spires on every corner, which was surrounded with tropical plants and flowers. I exclaimed, “It’s fantastic!”
“I know a fairytale castle isn’t very original. But it meant a lot to me, so I really wanted to go with this.”
“It makes me wish I could visit that place. It’s magical.”
“I actually encountered a castle very much like this in Portugal a few years ago, but I’ve been drawing and painting my version since I was little. I desperately wanted to step into that world and be someplace safe and beautiful, where I was surrounded by other children.”
After a pause, he said softly, “I was alone a lot as a kid. It wasn’t my mother’s fault. She had to work two jobs to support us, so she often wouldn’t get home until late at night. She worried about me going out on my own because we lived in a bad neighborhood, so I’d rattle around our apartment by myself for hours on end.”
“You must have been so lonely.”
He pulled the blanket over us and curled up against my side. “I hate talking about this,” he said as I put my arm around him. “She was a great mom, and I don’t want you to think she neglected me. She had no choice but to work a lot so we’d have food to eat and a roof over our heads. I feel like I’m dishonoring her memory by talking about this.”
“You’re not,” I said gently. “It’s okay to admit you were lonely when she was gone.”
He set aside the drawing pad and the remaining pastries, and then he wrapped his arms around me. After a while, he said, “Two men broke into the apartment one night when she was at work. We were dirt poor, so I don’t know what they hoped to find. Drugs maybe? There weren’t any, of course, and we had nothing worth taking. I grabbed my mom’s tape player, which to me was our most valuable possession, and I hid in the space under the kitchen sink while they tore up our apartment. I was this scrawny ten-year-old with no way to defend myself, and I was terrified of being discovered.”
I murmured, “My God.”
“I never told anyone about that night, not even my mother. After the men left, I cleaned up the mess they’d made and repaired the security chain, which had snapped when they kicked the door open. I knew my mom would have felt guilty, and she’d have been worried sick about leaving me alone after that, so I thought it was best if she never found out. I kept expecting her to notice one of the links on the chain was flattened from the way I’d repaired it with some pliers, but she never did.”
“I’m so sorry you had to go through that.”
“I don’t know why I’m telling you all of this, except…I guess I wanted you to understand why the mural was important to me. That imaginary castle was my safe place when I was little, and I wanted to share it with the kids at the community center, in case one of them took comfort in it, too. I’m sure the project manager will probably hate it like everything else I did, and I didn’t want to wait around to hear him criticize something that meant so much to me.”
“I’m glad you left.”
He glanced up at me after a minute and asked, “Did you have a safe place as a kid, real or imaginary?”
I nodded. “Before my parents divorced, they argued all the time, and I couldn’t stand it. As soon as the yelling started, I’d run to one of my hiding places, either under the bed, or in a crawl space beneath the stairs, or a storage closet in the kitchen, whichever was closest. It didn’t really help because I still heard everything, but it made me feel more secure, somehow.”
“What did they fight about?”
“My dad was just really irresponsible, and it would infuriate my mum. He’d do things like losing the rent money on illegal gambling, or investing it in ridiculous get-rich-quick schemes that never panned out. I’m surprised my mother put up with it for as long as she did.”
Ignacio asked, “What happened after they divorced?”
“Well, the fighting stopped, but then I had a whole new set of problems to deal with after my mum moved us to San Francisco,” I said. “The city wasn’t all that different from Dublin really, except that all of a sudden, I was the weird kid in school who talked funny. I tried so hard to Americanize my accent, but I needn’t have bothered. I was hopeless at fitting in. I told you once that I was a nerdy, skinny kid with science books and a violin. That didn’t fly in the U.S. any more than it did in Ireland.”
“Did you miss your father?”
“Yeah, especially at first. As I got older though, our relationship changed. He and I started arguing way too often, about the stupidest stuff. It got to the point where I dreaded our visits, then began making excuses not to go. It’s been about three years now, and I know I should go see him, but somehow I just…don’t.”
He ask
ed, “Does he have a problem with the fact that you’re gay?”
“Not really, which was a surprise. Actually, he has more of a problem with the fact that I went into law enforcement. He’s been in trouble with the police more times than I can count, and his side of the family has been on the wrong side of the law for generations. I think he honestly believes I chose my career just to spite him, or to try to make myself seem like I’m better than him.”
“My mom never wanted me to have anything to do with my father,” Ignacio said. “I don’t even know his name. She told me he was cruel and didn’t deserve to be a part of my life, which is why he’s not even listed on my birth certificate. I have to believe she was right and that I’m better off without him, since I have no way of ever finding out who he is.”
“It probably really is for the best.”
He stretched out under the covers and drew me into his arms as he asked, “Where’s your mom now?”
“She got remarried and moved to Florida about ten years ago. Her husband’s retired, and they spend a hell of a lot of time taking cruises, which seems to make her happy. We were never all that close, and now our relationship basically consists of birthday cards and the obligatory monthly phone call to say hello. I sometimes think she took me with her when she moved to California just to spite my father, as opposed to actually wanting to be a part of my life.” I sighed and said, “But enough of that. We should be celebrating our reunion, not dwelling on the past.”
“Agreed.”
I brushed his hair from his eyes and asked, “Do you need anything? We could still call for delivery if you want to.”
He grinned as he pulled the towel off me and tossed it aside. “I have everything I need right here. Thank you, though.” He slid closer, so the entire length of his body was pressed to mine. Then he kissed me and said, “You’re supposed to work tomorrow, right?” When I nodded, he said, “Play hooky.”
