Stay Lucky

by Halsey Harlow

  Grant pulled and tugged, using Leo’s flailing movements to position him the way he wanted. He pushed Leo’s legs up and apart, holding him open and vulnerable. He bit his ass cheeks and slapped them gently before diving in again to suck, lick, and gnaw at Leo’s asshole. Every squirm and surprised yelp made his own cock convulse and leak pre-come. Quickly, a relentless tremor took over Leo’s whole body.

  Grant knew the moment had come. Leo went very still instead of moving and twisting, and ducked his head into the pillow muffling his own breath as he tensed all over. Part of Grant wanted to make Leo come like this, to reach between his legs and jerk him while eating his ass until he spilled everywhere, but more than that, he wanted to see Leo come.

  Grant pulled away, holding back his laughter at Leo’s frustrated whine, and urged Leo to flip over. Leo’s face was astounding. His cheeks were flushed and his eyes open. His expression was incredibly vulnerable and hot, like Grant had just ripped away defenses that neither of them had realized were even there.

  “I want to see you come now,” Grant said, and his voice sounded thick to his own ears.

  “Yeah, okay,” Leo said. “I need to. So much.”

  “I know. If it’s okay, I’m going to put these inside,” Grant said, holding up two fingers, and then slicking them with spit. “And I’m going to make you come.”

  Leo nodded wordlessly, his eyes glassy and huge, and when Grant tapped against Leo’s slick, worked-over asshole, his fingers sunk in easily, just as he’d known they would. He smiled at Leo’s surprised gasp.

  Leo’s steel-hard cock jerked, so on edge and ready to come for him.

  “Please,” Leo murmured, moving on Grant’s fingers experimentally, and then groaning, obviously loving it. “Oh, God, it’s been so long. Please.”

  “It’s okay. I’ve got you,” Grant murmured. “Just a little longer.”

  He wanted to make it last, wanted to see Leo squirming on his fingers for at least the next three days of his life, but it wasn’t meant to be. Leo grabbed Grant’s free hand, forced it to grip Leo’s cock, and showed him the pace he liked. Then Leo clawed at the sheets as his face crumpled, and his body drew up on itself.

  “Please, bite me,” Leo whimpered.

  Grant took a bit of inner thigh flesh into his mouth, biting down hard. Leo froze under him, seemed to struggle for a moment, and then Grant felt the tell-tale rhythmic clench around his fingers. Leo shouted as he came, shooting up onto his chest, hitting his own chin and even the wooden headboard, with seemingly endless, thick spurts.

  Leo shuddered for a long time, and Grant left his fingers in Leo’s ass until he’d calmed down. He ran his other hand over Leo’s stomach, down his side, and then up to wipe the come from Leo’s chin, raising his hand to lick it from his fingers. His own cock was aching and so hard he felt like he was going to lose his mind. But this was Leo’s moment, his time, and Grant wanted him to feel as good as possible right now.

  He withdrew his fingers from Leo’s ass and turned to get something to clean up when Leo surprised him. He sat up quickly, pushing Grant down, and enthusiastically held him against the mattress with the weight of his body. Leo’s eyes were still hot, but less shocked, more challenging as he murmured, “That was hot, but I think you forgot something.”

  “I—uh, yeah?” Grant swallowed hard.

  “Oh, yeah,” Leo said. “Definitely forgot the most important part.”

  “Oh,” Grant said, his cock flexing against his stomach, his balls drawn up so tight.

  “You forgot how much I want to have you inside me,” Leo said, and Grant thought he’d lost his mind for a second, until Leo’s mouth suddenly descended onto his cock, and, holy fuck, he was good at this, really damn good.

  Grant’s head fell to the pillow and he gripped Leo’s hair in his fist. He didn’t pull Leo down on his cock or hold him in place. Instead he let Leo do his work and simply felt him there, under his command.

  Quickly, Grant’s legs drew up, his knees spreading, his stomach tensing, and his heart thudding so hard that the only thing he could hear over it were his own groans. And then, God, Leo made a deep sucking noise and Grant’s cock lodged deep in Leo’s throat.

  Grant pulled Leo’s hair hard and came like the world was collapsing in on the bed. The orgasm was almost as harsh as it was sweet, and he jerked and trembled for long, powerful seconds after. His whole body twitching wildly, until Leo’s voice brought him down.

  “That was incredibly hot.”

  Grant groaned and shivered again.

  Leo grinned; his mouth still looked wet and bruised from their kisses and the blow job. “I left you speechless? Not gonna say anything about your own greatness in bed?” Leo teased.

  “What’s to say? I just showed you.”

  Leo collapsed against Grant’s chest, his body sweaty and heaving, out of breath from his efforts. Grant held him there, thinking about how long it’d been since he’d felt this content, and coming to the conclusion that it was never. Never. Not even once.

  “I liked it,” Leo said, softly, as though a little embarrassed.

  “I know,” Grant said.

  Leo batted at him and said, “I mean…your fingers. I liked that. I’ve never enjoyed it before.”

  “Well, there’s an art to it,” Grant said.

  “Yeah?”

  “It’s called getting someone really turned on and then really wet and slippery down there. It’s pretty simple, really.”

  Leo twisted and sighed as though both wanting to talk about it and not.

  “Didn’t you do it to yourself, ever?” Grant asked.

  “I did. I do. I just…I don’t know. I’d get tense, I guess, when I was with Curtis,” Leo said, sounding guilty.

  Grant said nothing as he stroked Leo’s hair and willed him to drop the subject. He didn’t want to talk about Curtis Banks every time they fucked. Or didn’t fuck. As the case may be.

  “I, uh, also like it when you, um,” Leo laughed. “When you bite me. Or slap my ass. I don’t know. Is that…don’t you think that’s a little—”

  “Hot. It’s hot. I like it. You like it. That’s all there is to it.”

  “Okay,” Leo said, and this relief was so obvious that Grant kissed the top of his head. Leo nuzzled Grant’s neck. “I’m thirsty,” he said. “I need to get some water.”

  Grant watched him get up, admiring his body as he walked, the fuzzy hair on his ass, the length of his legs, the way his shoulders tapered up to his neck. Leo paused in the doorway to the living room.

  “Hey,” Leo said.

  “Mmm?”

  Leo smiled fondly. “I, uh, well…how can I put this so that you’ll understand?”

  Grant waited.

  “Grant, I like you better than bacon.”

  Grant laughed and Leo grinned, his eyes lighting up as he turned to go into the living room.

  Grant called out, “Leo, wait.”

  “Yeah?”

  Grant sat up, narrowed his eyes, and said seriously, “The feeling is mutual. But, don’t tell bacon.”

  “Never,” Leo said, beaming. “Do you want some water, too?”

  “Sure,” Grant answered, suddenly exhausted. He slumped down onto the bed. “Absolutely.”

  But he was asleep before the water came, and when he woke up Leo was gone.

  There was just a note that read: Seriously. Better than bacon. <3 Leo.

  Chapter Eleven

  Seven Months Ago

  A month after the first time they’d played orgasm-friends together, Grant was coasting along, finding the ebb and flow of their relationship much more sanguine than he’d ever imagined.

  Grant texted with Leo off and on every day, spoke to him at night if he hadn’t seen him, and had sex with him as often as he could justify. The cog in that particular work was not the kid, which would have been Grant’s original assumption. No, Lucky was asleep like clockwork by eight-thirty pm, and she slept more soundly than a patient under anesthesia.
r />   Nor was the problem lack of desire. Grant couldn’t ever remember being anywhere near as hot for another guy as he was for Leo. Grant wanted Leo all the time. He wanted to see him with his head back, his mouth open, and come splashing over his chest more then he wanted to anything else in life, and that was saying something so huge that if Grant really thought about it a massive hole of terror opened up under his feet.

  And it was obvious that Leo was on fire for Grant, too. It’d surprised and delighted Grant to discover that Leo was far kinkier than he would have ever expected from someone who usually projected such a wholesome image. He secretly gloated over the fact that it’d surprised Leo, too, and he reveled in the knowledge that a certain ex had never discovered that Leo had a thing for pain.

  As much as Leo liked sappy stuff like candlelit dinners and walks out by the farm’s pond holding hands, those things didn’t turn Leo on even a fraction as much as when Grant forcefully demanded, “Get on your knees and suck me.” Grant was half convinced that if Leo was asked what turned him on more, having Grant’s mouth wrapped around his own cock or being ordered to suck Grant’s cock, Leo would pick the latter.

  No, the issue with sex was that Leo was still a sick man, and he had days of extreme fatigue and physical discomfort. On those days Grant usually brought take-out to the farm and helped get Lucky into bed. Sometimes he’d fall asleep sitting up on the farm’s old, comfy living room sofa, holding Leo’s feet on his lap, and wake up the next morning tucked up in a blanket with a soft pillow under his head.

  Alec, of course, had to have his say, and he gloated so much about Grant and Leo’s whatever-they-had-going that Grant had threatened to stop taking his phone calls.

  “Admit it,” Alec said. “You like it.”

  “I’m not denying it.”

  And, yeah, Grant liked it all. He never imagined that he could ever be the kind of man who would walk into the Wal-Mart for a few frozen dinners, and leave with an Encyclopedia of the Human Body for Kids tucked under his arm simply because he’d walked past it on a display shelf and remembered Lucky asking him about the way kidneys worked.

  He liked Leo’s laugh, the way he smelled, the way he tasted, and the way he talked. Leo was, in so many ways, an endless mystery to Grant.

  Leo was a bundle of emotion that Grant didn’t understand. He was warm, and affectionate, but also unpredictable. He was at turns playful, strong and determined, manipulative when he needed to be, and incredibly purposeful, and then he’d turn around and be timid, uncertain, and oversensitive. Their tender moments together, when Leo was so earnestly open and warm, Grant sometimes had a hard time believing that it was all for real. But it was; it was always real with Leo.

  Grant also learned to like Leo’s extended family, especially when they left him alone at the corner of the crowded table, stuffing his face with good food. In the sprawling Garner clan of cousins, there was always someone who was in love, or brokenhearted, or angry, or doing drugs, or having illegitimate babies, or getting caught in affairs or other unsavory activities. Or, as in Leo’s case, someone who was sick.

  One night, after an accidental family dinner at the farm—Grant had come over expecting Leo and Lucky to be alone, only to find Blaine, Felice, Meryl, Chuck, and four other people that Grant couldn’t remember the names of despite seeing them around town for years—Leo asked, “So, did you learn anything interesting?”

  “Yeah, I learned that chances are good you’re going to look exactly like your mother in twenty years.”

  “Twenty years?” Leo had asked. “Are you planning to be around in twenty years to see it?”

  “Well, why play small?”

  That night Grant had the honor of receiving Leo Garner’s tongue in his ass, and while it seemed like it was probably the first time Leo had ever attempted such a thing, it was an incredibly rewarding experience, and Grant desperately wanted it to happen again. Soon.

  Sitting alone in the cafeteria, pretending to read a newspaper, and shoveling green beans and mashed potatoes into his mouth, Grant made mental plans on how, exactly, to get Leo’s tongue down there again. He alternated between going with a command—“Lick my hole”—and going with a reward approach—“I’ll lick your ass if you lick my ass.” He was sure either one would work. It was just that the commanding approach would probably make Leo so hot that he’d be extra enthusiastic in carrying out the order, but the reward approach would reap Leo’s bashful, sexy smile that made Grant’s cock jerk just thinking about it.

  His mind was lingering on such thoughts when, from the other side of the newspaper, he heard Leo’s voice say, “Yeah, Grant’s pretty amazing once you get to know him.”

  He opened his mouth to agree, but it was full. In the time it took for him to swallow, though, he changed his mind about announcing himself.

  It wasn’t as though Grant planned to listen to the conversation between Leo and his friends. It was just so…easy. After all, he was the one who was eating in the hospital cafeteria first. Was it his fault that they hadn’t seen him behind the newspaper, or that he’d only just realized they were even there? He peaked around the corner of his paper to see whom Leo was talking to.

  “Do not even begin to tell any sex stories about him,” said Riley McCall, a friend of Leo’s from high school who was currently working in radiology, according to what Leo had said last week. “I don’t even want to know.”

  Ellen, Riley’s nurse girlfriend, said, “Look at that smug smile, Riley. He’s the cat who ate the cream.”

  “Got the cream!” Riley said, horrified. “That innuendo is gross enough without you making it worse. I’m telling you now, man, if you spill about the sex stuff, I’m so outta here, and I won’t babysit for Lucky anymore, no matter how bad you beg.”

  “Oh, beg,” Ellen said. “You asked for it, Riley. Look at him blush. Dr. Anderson totally makes him beg.”

  “That’s it! I’m done!” Riley declared, and there was the sound of chairs scraping on the floor, and Leo’s exclamation of innocence—“Ellen said it, not me!”—and then, once the laughter settled down, they were back to chatting again.

  “So, I guess this is awkward and all, ’cause I know you’re with Dr. Anderson now, but, Curtis was our friend back in the day, too, so I guess we’d like to know.”

  “Know what?” Leo asked.

  Ellen answered for Riley, “What’s going on with Curtis? Are you guys really done for good?”

  Leo dragged some air though his teeth and let out a long sigh. “Looks like it. The forms have been signed, pretty reluctantly on his part, but I have them. Well, my attorney has them now.”

  “But why?” Riley asked.

  “Yeah, Leo,” Ellen said. “You guys were together a long time. How do you just turn your back on that?”

  Leo sighed. “Ask Curtis. He turned his back on me and Lucky every chance he got. At first, it was the little things. Like refusing to include me in his decision-making or his filming schedules. And then he expected me to still be standing right where he’d left me when he wanted to come home. So I dealt with that for a long time.”

  “You couldn’t travel with him?”

  “No. He didn’t want me around. He said I pulled focus from his work.”

  “What’s that supposed to mean?” Riley asked.

  “That I wanted too much attention and asked too much of him. But honestly, I don’t think I asked enough. When I was sick with myocarditis, and Lucky needed him, he sent a nanny to take care of her instead. He didn’t even leave his filming location when I had the transplant. He said there was nothing he could do for me, really, so he just stayed on location and kept working.”

  “Oh,” Ellen said. “My God, Leo. We had no idea.”

  “Yeah, it would be one thing if I’d chosen to put up with that kind of half-love for myself, but it’s an entirely different thing to stay there and let it happen to your kid.” Leo said, and his voice sounded tight.

  Grant wanted to stand up and put a stop to it. Le
o shouldn’t have to explain himself. He didn’t owe that to anybody.

  Leo sighed. “I shouldn’t have ever left Blountville with him. When he came back here, sought me out, promising me the world, I was swept up in the romance of it all. He’d just landed that big movie deal. I thought our lives would be a fairy tale. Ridiculous, right?”

  “We all thought that,” Ellen murmured.

  Riley huffed.

  “But the truth is, that was all for show, too. He wanted to be out and his agent said that having a steady, non-celebrity boyfriend would make him look wholesome. Can you believe that? It was all for appearance’s sake. And I thought it was love.”

  “Leo, man,” Riley sounded pissed.

  Grant couldn’t blame him. He was pissed, too.

  “Yeah, so, that’s the truth. Curtis loved his work more than he loved me and Lucky. Not that he doesn’t love Lucky, mind you. Because he does. In his way. But being famous, or trying to be, consumed him. For a long time I blamed myself. I thought it was my fault for being so…I don’t know, so me that he couldn’t put me first. But, in the end, when I got sick again, when my kidneys failed, and he couldn’t be bothered to stay home to help me? That should have been the final straw, but, if you can believe it, it wasn’t until he started doing shoving Lucky’s needs aside and then trying to use his money to buy her love that I knew I had to go.”

  “So you came back to Blountville. I get that. It’s home,” Ellen said.

  “No, not at first. I didn’t really spread the word about all of this, because I was ashamed. I felt like a failure. But, for the last year before I came home, I didn’t live with Curtis. I moved out of our house and took Lucky with me.”

  “Oh, Leo, you could have told us.”

  “Yeah, man, you know we’ve got your back,” Riley said.

  Leo kept talking, like now that he was spilling his guts, he had to get it all out. “I got a house not too far from Curtis and I tried to make it work. Or I told myself I was trying to make it work, but the truth is, I knew I wanted to leave L.A. and I’d known that for a long time.”