by Beth Bolden
“Wait,” Gabe gasped out, but Sean just pushed him harder and higher until maybe he wasn’t on solid ground anymore—instead he was flying, shuddering through his release.
He only realized when he heard Sean cough into his hand that he probably hadn’t prepared him well enough, and god, he was a fucking idiot. How long had it been since Sean had given a blowjob? And he’d just blasted right through good blowjob etiquette by not warning him first.
“Shit,” Gabriel said, leaning down and cupping Sean’s face. He didn’t look too rough, a little dribble of come on his cheek, but honestly, the only thing that Gabriel noticed was that he’d never seen his eyes so peaceful and relaxed, like a calm blue ocean.
“It’s alright, seriously,” Sean said, wiping his mouth with the back of his hand. “I guess it’s not quite like riding a bike, after all.”
“I’m so sorry, I should have been more . . .”
But before Gabriel could finish his apology, Sean was rising up, interrupting him. “No,” he said firmly. “You were incredible. So worried about me and my pleasure and my control.” He looked dreamy, almost, as he thought about what they’d just done together. “It was all amazing. I’m so glad; I was a little bit worried, but I shouldn’t have been.”
Gabe didn’t know whether to be relieved or offended. “Oh?”
“I guess it was probably inevitable,” Sean admitted, flopping down next to him on the bed. Still, half-clothed. Gabe reached over and tugged that white tank over his head, so he was just as naked as Gabriel was. “But I didn’t want you to know it.”
“I knew it,” Gabriel said.
“Oh,” Sean said, chuckling under his breath, “I guess I didn’t hide it very well.”
He had, actually. Gabriel had just gotten very good at reading him. Plus, how could he not be nervous? It’d been a long time since he’d had sex. And it had been even longer since he’d had sex with someone that he wasn’t married to. Once Gabe had guessed, it had been easy enough to watch Sean carefully and see the hesitancy and the nerves in his eyes.
“You’re good now, though?” Gabriel asked. Held his breath. Sean didn’t seem disappointed, but what if, deep down, he wished that he hadn’t picked Gabriel to end his celibacy with? What if it hadn’t been worth it?
“I’m good,” Sean said, and his smile was like the brightest sunrise after a late-night storm. He straight-up giggled. “I’m so good.”
“That,” Gabriel said, “means you obviously waited too long.”
“Too long?” Sean laughed again. “I was trying, but you kept putting me off.”
“For a week!” Gabriel heard his voice go high and squeaky. He’d have been embarrassed but Sean looked so amused, so charmed, that he let it go, putting his arm around Sean’s shoulders, and tugging him closer. “I meant . . . maybe you should have thought about it before last week.”
Gabriel wasn’t stupid. He wanted Sean to say something like, oh, big awesome man who gives great orgasms, I’ve been waiting for you. But he knew that Sean hadn’t been; it was all about the timing.
“I just wasn’t ready,” Sean said simply. “And then I was.”
“Well, I’m glad I was hanging around and happened to be standing there the moment you decided you were ready,” Gabriel said flippantly.
“Me too,” Sean said with an earnest smile. So earnest, it made Gabe’s heart twist in his chest—even as he reminded himself that none of this meant anything. Sean had been as straightforward as possible, and in taking him up on his offer, Gabe had agreed to abide by that rule. They were just going to have sex. That was all.
It was the last thing he wanted to do, but Gabriel pushed himself upright. Away from Sean. Cuddling after sex? Probably not something friends with benefits did. He couldn’t imagine Ren doing that with any of his hookups. And that, he realized, as much as he loathed the idea, was going to have to be his litmus test: what would Ren do?
“Where are you going?” Sean wondered.
Suddenly Gabriel wasn’t sure. He wanted to do the right thing, whatever that was, but even though he’d promised Sean a second round, it was way too early for that. Would it be weird to say he was hanging around until that was possible?
“Um,” Gabriel said. “I wasn’t . . . I don’t know what you want to do.”
Ren had told him to be confident. To set the parameters. To not give too much. To not take too much.
The problem was that Gabe wanted it all.
“What I want is a quesadilla,” Sean announced, sitting up too. “You want a quesadilla?”
It was definitely not what Gabriel had expected him to say, but food was always a good answer to unsolvable problems. “Uh, sure?”
“Good,” Sean said. He stood up, unapologetically, gloriously naked. Gabriel had wanted to get him naked more than he’d wanted to take his next breath, and now he wanted to keep getting him naked. He glanced around. “Where’s my briefs?”
Gabriel grinned. “You weren’t wearing any, which, let me just say, was a very nice surprise for me.”
“I figured, why waste time?” Sean said with a laugh. He opened a drawer on the big, turquoise dresser in the corner, and pulled out a pair, tugging them on.
“I’m glad we were on the same page,” Gabriel said. He reached down, finding his own boxers in the tangle of his clothes on the floor.
“Let’s go make a quesadilla,” Sean said, and sounded so goddamn excited about the concept that Gabriel didn’t even argue, just followed him like a lovesick idiot back through the living room and into the kitchen.
Sean flipped on the light and it glinted off the golden strands in his hair, tucked between the lighter brown. Gabriel reached over and ruffled it. “I didn’t realize how blond you were.”
“Just in the summer,” Sean said, his voice muffled as he was deep in the fridge, pulling out ingredients haphazardly and setting them on the counter. “All that sun, you know. Especially since I moved to LA.”
“Why did you move to LA?” Gabriel asked as he watched Sean grab a frying pan from the rack hanging above the stove. For a small townhouse, Sean’s kitchen was surprisingly bright and well laid out. His own kitchen at the loft he shared with Ren was not nearly as nice as this one.
“Well, like I said the other night, I wanted a fresh start. I wanted to stay on the West Coast, and let’s face it,” Sean said, shooting him a lopsided grin, “Seattle wasn’t really an option. Plus, second best place for food trucks, other than Portland, is Los Angeles.”
“Why not Seattle?”
“More rain than Portland? No, thank you,” Sean said. “Don’t get me wrong, it’s a great city, at least to visit. But to live? I wanted a little more sun in my life.”
“Nobody could blame you for wanting that.” Gabriel could only imagine how gray and dismal the years after Milo’s death must have seemed to Sean. He couldn’t blame him for chasing the sun. “You need any help?”
“If you can find the salsa, I think I forgot to grab it,” Sean said as he drizzled oil into the skillet and slid a tortilla in, covering it liberally with cheese.
“Cheese? Salsa?” Gabriel teased as he pulled open the fridge door and poked around, finally unearthing a tub of pico de gallo. “What would Health Food Nut and Wrap God Sean say to that?”
“I serve things that aren’t healthy,” Sean protested.
“No,” Gabe said. “You serve salad dressed up in a shell that resembles salad more than it does any kind of delicious carb-like item.”
Sean flipped the quesadilla with so much confidence Gabriel knew he’d done it a hundred times. A thousand. He’d clearly won the jackpot and was lucky enough to be privy to a very common post-work routine for Sean.
“I know you like my wraps,” Sean said, and he was still smiling. “You can pretend all you want. Sometimes you can’t eat another garlic butter-slathered roll loaded with cheese.”
“Sometimes,” Gabriel admitted with a laugh. “You know,” he added, patting his (mostly) flat belly, “I gotta s
tay hot for the guys who are desperate to get me naked.”
“And who are these guys?” Sean asked, arching an eyebrow as he slid the beautifully crisp and browned tortilla, melty cheese leaking out of the sides, onto a plate. “I wasn’t aware that there was a queue. Unless we’re counting Ren’s queue as your own.”
“We’re not,” Gabriel said, taking the plate from Sean. He dumped a good spoonful of pico on the quesadilla, and then drizzled it with another squeeze bottle he’d found in the fridge.
“What is that?” Sean exclaimed as he started the next quesadilla cooking. “Did you just ruin my beautiful meal by pouring ranch all over it?”
“Fun story: ranch is delicious with tortillas and cheese,” Gabriel proclaimed.
Sean just shook his head. “And here I thought you were some kind of purist.”
“I’m Italian, baby, not Mexican,” he reminded him.
Sean rolled his eyes, but the corners of his mouth were still upturned in a smile. Like he couldn’t quite help himself. “You’re ridiculous,” he said.
“Ridiculously brilliant,” Gabe said. He sat down on one of the barstools across from the stove, and dug into the quesadilla. It was the perfect salty-crunchy combination. Why had he never considered quesadillas as the ideal post-coital snack?
Probably because he was Italian.
“But hey,” Gabe said, after he chewed and swallowed, “you’re pretty goddamned brilliant too, it turns out.”
“Thanks,” Sean said, and grabbing his own plate, sat down next to Gabe. As they ate, his foot was swinging, and more than once, it tapped Gabriel’s. He was pretty sure that he was trying to play footsy with him, but why would he? They were just supposed to be having sex. Their feet weren’t necessarily involved in that—unless Sean was into shit that he hadn’t told Gabriel about yet.
“That was fucking delicious,” Gabriel said, after they both finished. “If the wrap thing doesn’t ever work out, you can always branch into Mexican food.”
“I kind of thought about diversifying a bit,” Sean said thoughtfully. “Quesadillas aren’t that much different from wraps, you know? And I thought I could do some really fun stuff with the fillings.”
“Cheese is where it’s at, baby,” Gabriel teased him. “Stick to the classics. Look at Tate, and what he’s done to the grilled cheese sandwich.”
“He’s got all kinds of different variations, though,” Sean pointed out. “He’s got the classic, yeah, but he’s got other kinds too. Just like I have the chicken caesar salad wrap, and that’s always a bestseller, but the peanut butter tofu wrap? It’s a dark horse.”
“I find that hard to believe,” Gabriel said. “But then this is LA, right? People like tofu here.”
“People like tofu a lot of different places,” Sean pointed out.
“I’ll have to take your word for that.”
“Yes, you will,” Sean said. “Have you thought about trying some meat alternatives for your meatballs? There’s a vegetarian and health-conscious crowd that hangs out at the lot, and I know Tony’s done really well attracting them, and Lucas’ new vegan truck is killing it.”
“And you,” Gabriel said. “You’ve been courting them too.” He sighed. “I’m not . . . it’s not my kind of thing. That’s all.”
Sean elbowed him sharply. “Why? Because you’re Italian? Don’t be silly.”
It wasn’t about that at all. Gabriel just . . . well, he did what he knew. He’d always done what he knew, and what his family knew was meatballs and sauce and garlic bread and the best goddamn baked ziti and carbonara that anyone had ever tasted. He didn’t know how to adapt. The only way he’d ever figured out how to break out was to put the same ingredients into one easy-to-carry roll.
That was it.
He hadn’t built a business from scratch the way that Sean had. He’d had his family’s backing, and his nonna’s recipes. It was practically a no-fail venture.
He shifted uncomfortably in his seat. “That’s not really why.”
“Then why?” Sean sounded like he really wanted to know. His blue eyes gleamed with genuine interest. “You’re a great cook.”
He’d fooled Sean, too, like he’d fooled everyone else. “I’m not, really,” he admitted. “I’m good at following a recipe, that’s all.”
“I find that hard to believe,” Sean said, forehead creasing, like he couldn’t quite envision a world in which Gabriel wasn’t his normal overly confident self.
But Sean had confessed about Milo. He could tell Sean about his nonna.
“You know my family’s in restaurants, right?”
Sean nodded. “Yeah, up in Napa, right?”
“Yeah,” Gabriel said. “My parents run the restaurants still, though my brother, Luca, he’s taken over now that they’ve retired to Florida.”
“Restaurants? I didn’t realize there was more than one.”
“Five, actually,” Gabriel said. “I could have worked in one of them. Everyone else does, and they’re happy to do it.”
“But you weren’t,” Sean stated, rather than asked. Like he’d already seen deep into Gabriel—knew how he ticked and how he hadn’t wanted to just be another Moretti, making ziti and lasagna and throwing pizzas for the lunch crowd.
“I wanted some space,” Gabe admitted. “I needed some space. And then Ren came with me, and that helped too, but I took all the family recipes with me. Even took the name, at least before I changed it.” Sean made a face, and maybe before a week ago, that would have led to another round of bickering, but tonight he just let it slide. “So no, I’m not some great chef. I’m just . . . a guy with a really talented nonna.”
“But you could be,” Sean said.
“Hardly,” Gabriel scoffed.
“I just think you should at least think about it. I’m always trying new stuff. I know a lot of the other trucks are, too, and sometimes it really pays off for them. Look at Tony. He was all about meat and now he’s helping Lucas with his vegan truck. And he’s totally on board.”
“He’s also totally in love,” Gabriel pointed out.
“Yeah, but I don’t think that’s why.” Sean stood and picked up their plates, heading towards the sink. “Just because it’s something you’ve done forever doesn’t mean it’s something you have to keep doing. I learned that, when Milo died. I stayed in this horrible gray rut of misery for months and months. Years, actually, and I didn’t need to. Milo wouldn’t have wanted me to stay there. He’d have been just as upset as I was that I was only just existing.”
“So you came here,” Gabriel said.
“Yeah.” Sean turned on the faucet and began to rinse the plates. “But it’s not just about living with grief. You can do something different. You just have to make it happen. You already did it once.”
“Yeah, I took Luca’s loan and came down here with Ren. That . . .” Gabriel swallowed hard. “That wasn’t exactly going out on a limb.”
“Doesn’t matter,” Sean said matter-of-factly. “You still did it.”
Gabe didn’t want to tell Sean that he was wrong, but he was pretty sure he was. Instead, he stood. “I think . . . I think maybe I should go now.”
Sean looked over, surprise in his eyes. “Okay,” he said. “I thought . . . thought you might want to . . .”
“I want to,” Gabriel said.
What he wanted was to stay. To sleep next to Sean and watch the way the morning light shone in his hair. But that was not going to happen anytime soon.
Sean wrapped his arms around him and then they were kissing again.
Gabriel knew he’d promised a second round, had hoped it would happen, but he’d never imagined that Sean would be so eager. Or that he’d be the one tugging him towards the bedroom again.
They were kind-of friends. And they were having sex. Again.
If Gabe kept reminding himself of these two facts, maybe he’d figure out how to keep his heart out of it. He knew that his heart was already in it. His heart had always been in it. As Sean wrappe
d his hand around Gabriel’s cock and he reciprocated, he swore he could feel it skip a beat.
No matter how good the sex was, Gabriel was always going to want more.
Chapter Seven
Sean told himself that he was not disappointed that Gabriel hadn’t stayed.
After all, he was the one who’d set the expectations. They were going to have sex, and scratch a mutual itch, and that was it.
He just hadn’t expected to like spending non-naked time—and naked time—with Gabriel so much. He’d known him for two years now, and it was not exactly a mystery that they hadn’t really liked each other. The guy had thrown a meatball at Sean. He’d been floored when he’d discovered how much he wanted to have sex with him. But discovering that he actually enjoyed spending time with him? That was a discovery that was throwing him a hell of a lot more.
“You’re frowning at that kale mix like it did something to you,” Tate said, as they sat in the shade, eating a late lunch together. “Does it need to apologize?”
“What?” Sean’s head jerked up. He’d been lost in his thoughts. He’d had too many questions recently. Like, why had it been three days since Gabriel had been over and he hadn’t asked if Sean wanted to get together again?
Sean was thinking he might have to ask him himself, and that thought made him both hot and cold all over.
With nerves, and with undeniable anticipation.
It had been so good the first—and the second—time. How good would it be the third?
“Does your salad need to apologize?” Tate asked again, still patient. Always so patient. He deserved a better friend than Sean was being.
“No, no, I’m just . . . thinking,” Sean said. About Gabriel.
“About Gabe?” Tate asked, so casually that for a split second, Sean was terrified that he’d actually said that part out loud.
“No!” Sean said quickly. “No, of course not. Why would I be thinking about him?”
Tate chewed his wrap thoughtfully. “Maybe because you had sex with him?”
“I . . . we . . .” Sean spluttered, and Tate rolled his eyes.
“You were all over each other at the party and then you left together. You definitely had sex.”
