by Ophelia Bell
“Not a problem. It’s December. Nobody’s out in this shit anyway. Just give me a minute to lock up. You can head upstairs and grab a beer. The lift is unlocked.”
It feels oddly familiar, comfortable even, when I push through the employees-only door then step into his clanky old elevator and hit the button to take me to his loft. I grab a beer and stand in his kitchen, leaning against the counter while I drink, mentally rehearsing what now sound like completely ridiculous lines.
A few minutes later, my spine tingles in recognition of some shift in the building, then the sound of the elevator kicks on. I take a deep breath, close my eyes, and force myself into stillness. My body is lit up like I’m about to dive into a fight, adrenaline pumping through my veins enough to make me half hard.
I chug the beer and stare at the new photos he has on his wall—he took the sexy ones down and replaced them with shots of some of the residents of LA’s streets. My brother and I would have landed there ourselves if it weren’t for Gustavo, the bastard. He picked Manny out of all the gangbangers in La Valla and took him under his wing. Manny was always the more ambitious of the two of us, but he still had a heart, and not even Gustavo’s influence managed to corrupt him. I always believed it was working that closely with Arturo that made Gustavo the brutal bastard he was, but now that I spend my days with Papá, I’ve seen how carefully he runs things, how reasonable he really is. The only time I’ve ever seen the man show emotion is around Celeste or Elena and her family. And with me. That’s what makes it so easy to do whatever he asks—he’s like the father I never had.
What the fuck am I doing here? Why is Celeste’s offer so fucking important that I need to risk a friendship to have it? My life is good now. Why do I need more?
I’ve calmed down by the time the elevator gate creaks open and Maddox strides toward me. He brushes past me to the fridge, and a waft of balsa hits my nose. The confusion rises again. The way he smells reminds me of Celeste for some crazy reason. Or is it just because we’ve fucked a couple times in his bed? Once with him actually in the room. During that entire session, I couldn’t get the question out of my head: Which one of us he was really into watching more, me or Celeste?
He grabs a beer and twists off the cap, then leans back against the counter across from me as he takes a swig. “Whatever’s weighing on you, you can let it out now. No judgment.”
My dark little detour staring at the photos calmed me down, but now I’m riled up again for no good reason. When I don’t answer, he shifts his stance and sets down his beer, bracing his hands on the counter at his sides. “We can play twenty questions if you want. Is it related to your tattoo or the photos I took?”
Shaking my head, I resolve to get it out. “Celeste wants . . . That is, she offered . . .” What the actual fuck is wrong with me? I’m used to choosing my words easily, so being at a loss is frustrating as fuck. If I were actually in a fight, I’d have no issue confronting the problem fists-first, but punching the man is not the answer here.
Maddox leans forward, brows raised. His gray eyes look wary, but also curious and a little excited. “This is about Celeste? What did she offer? To bake me cookies?”
I barely hear his questions. The words just won’t come. My gaze fixates on his mouth, the slight cleft in his chin that never really registered until now, the day’s worth of growth that covers his cheeks and chin. I struggle a little more and then just blurt, “Ah, fuck it.”
Surging forward, I grab the back of his neck. My gaze is still on his lips, heart thumping like a drum, and I’m abstractly conscious that my dick has gone hard as a rock again as I close the distance and cover his mouth with mine. He jerks back and sucks in a breath, but I hold him tight, tilting my head and easing the pressure until our lips grapple in a proper kiss.
He’s frozen for a second until I touch my tongue to his lower lip and ease my body tighter to his, refusing to slacken my hold on his head. Then he releases a desperate moan and opens, kissing me back like he’s starving for my mouth.
A jolt of pure, unexpected lust jacks through me when his tongue thrusts in and fights with mine. The kiss is strange but familiar all at once, his lips a soft contrast to the scrape of his stubble against my shaved cheeks. He doesn’t kiss like Celeste—there’s nothing sweet or tentative or submissive about it. He kisses back with hungry abandon, his hands coming up to tangle in my hair. He pulls hard, yanking my head back and holding. We stare at each other, breath coming in heavy pants, apparently at a stalemate of sorts.
“What the fuck are you doing?”
I lick my lips, my tongue lingering over a tender spot at the corner where his rough stubble rubbed me raw. Do I do this to Celeste when I haven’t shaved? His fingers tighten painfully in my hair, and he shakes me a little. I force myself to look into his eyes for the first time. His hungry look is spiked with both hope and fear. All I want is to fall back into that maelstrom and see where it leads, but I came here for a reason.
“Breaking the ice.”
“Breaking the— Fucking hell, dude, you’ve burned it to the goddamn ground. I need you to explain this shit because I’m having a hard time figuring out what the hell is going on here.”
My blood is too hot for my brain to find words. If I thought kissing him would help clarify things, I was dead wrong. I try to pull away from his hold, eyeing his mouth, but he has a death grip on my hair and is strong enough to resist my pull on the back of his neck. But when I shift, our groins graze, and a shock of awareness hits me that he’s just as hard as I am, so I tilt closer, pressing my hips into his.
His grip slackens, and he shudders, looking down between us, incredulous for a split second before he shoves me hard enough to make me stumble back. He slips away and I spin, a wash of cold shock dampening the confusion of lust that had control of me a moment ago.
“Jesus, wait! I didn’t mean to . . . I just needed to see . . . Fuck!” I trail off when he stops with the kitchen island between us and braces his hands on it, staring at me like I’m a wild animal and he’s afraid I might attack.
“Didn’t mean to what, Leo? Didn’t mean to shove your goddamn tongue down my throat? To rub your dick on me? You’re with Celeste, you fuck! What the hell are you doing?”
It hits me how this looks to him, and a wave of shame overtakes me. “Shit. I did this all wrong.” I sigh and shove both hands into my hair, groaning. “I’m sorry. I just don’t fucking know how this is supposed to work.”
“What?” he bellows. “You don’t know how what is supposed to work? Cheating on your goddamn girlfriend with me?”
“No! I’m not cheating. Celeste and I have a—a proposition for you. It’s just hard to come right out and ask, and I wasn’t even sure I could stomach it so I needed to find out first and I shouldn’t have—” I wince and grit my teeth, realizing I just effectively assaulted him for the sake of testing my limits. “I’m sorry.” I hold up my hands in surrender. “Can we start over?”
Maddox narrows his eyes and relaxes just a little but remains safely on the other side of the counter. “I’m listening.”
“It sounds so fucking stupid now.”
“Fucking hell, dude, if you backtrack now I’ll deck you,” he snaps before I can say more.
I sigh. “Fine. You remember how skittish she was about me playing with her ass last weekend, right? Every time I try, she brushes me off.”
He snorts. “It’s her body. If she doesn’t like ass play, it’s her loss.”
“Right. Well, she finally offered. She said she’d let me fuck her ass, except . . .” I meet his gaze, look away, clear my throat, then decide I have to look him in the eye when I come out and say it. He’s more relaxed, leaning both elbows on the counter now, a knowing smirk on his lips, and I have a feeling he’s already guessed where I’m going with this. “Except she wants me to go first. As in, get fucked in the ass. By you.”
The motherfucker has the audacity to grin. I glare at him, and then he laughs, but it’s a humorless laug
h, almost manic. I stare at him in confusion, unsure whether I should join in or not because I don’t find the moment particularly amusing. I’m mortified, if I’m being honest with myself, and my erection has disappeared, the arousal replaced by faint nausea.
“No fucking way,” he finally says when his laughter subsides.
“What do you mean? I thought you were bi.”
“Jesus Christ, Leo. You can’t distill me down to my sexuality and expect me to perform for your entertainment. I’m not a goddamn toy. Yes, okay? Objectively, I’d love to fuck you, but it’s a lot more complicated than that. I could spend hours listing all the reasons why it’s a bad idea. But I’m done here.” He backs up and points to the elevator. “You need to go. Maybe Celeste will take pity on you and let you live out your little anal fantasy. Or, I don’t know, maybe you’ll decide it really isn’t that fucking important in the grand scheme of things.”
I grit my teeth, unwilling to admit defeat. I’m well out of my comfort zone already and determined to see it through, to at least get to the heart of his resistance.
“What’s so fucking complicated you can’t take the risk, huh? Tell me that and I’ll leave. It’s just sex.” I round the counter and position myself in front of him, filling the few feet of space he’s put between himself and the counter again. He still has the upper hand, and I even shove mine into my pockets so he doesn’t perceive me as a threat.
“You just don’t get it, do you?” His voice is gruff, almost pleading, and he shakes his head. His eyes are red rimmed, and I frown when his jaw clenches hard. “It isn’t just sex.”
“Tell me what it is, Maddox.”
He clenches his fists and roars at the ceiling. “Fuck!” He’s breathing heavy when he looks at me again, eyes a little wild, nostrils flaring. “Remember that day of the photo shoot? The first one, just you and me and your tattoo. The day I told you I was bi. When you showed up I was with someone . . .”
“I remember.” I nod, glad he’s finally talking. “You wanted me to think it was a dude you were with.”
He’s shaking his head. “No, I just didn’t want you to catch on to who it was. It was Celeste, Leo. Celeste was the girl. Then I had to come up here and watch you take your clothes off and flaunt that.” He waves his hand at my body, eyes focused at my hips.
But I’m frozen by the revelation, mouth dry as it sinks in. I try to speak but the words catch and I cough once, then manage to say, “You fucked her that day?”
His shoulders sag. “No. I might’ve if you hadn’t shown up. I just ate her out, then she came to her senses and left. I haven’t fucked her since we were teens. I—I loved her back then. So goddamn much. I still do.”
This is a lot to process, and so much more than I was prepared for when I asked him to talk. I decide to focus on it a piece at a time. “You only said she was your first kiss.”
“I lied, okay? She was more. So, so much more. You’d spent all night confessing your undying love for her. I wasn’t about to tell you the truth, because it didn’t fucking matter. I just wanted you to know that I knew who she was. That I understood the risks of getting close. That you weren’t alone.”
I’m incredulous. “How can you stand it? The night Manny died . . . we were in your bed. We made love in your bed.” I furrow my brows and stare off toward his bathroom, a hazy memory skirting the dark edges of my mind. Their voices together in there with the shower running, my despair at the belief that I’d lost her too, then the certainty the next day that it had all been a bad dream when I woke up with her beside me. “You could have had her the night I got shot, couldn’t you?”
“Not if I didn’t want to destroy you.” He looks dejected, lost, his hands hanging by his sides.
“I don’t understand. Why would you do that if you love her? Why stand by and let me have her all this time?”
“Leo,” he chokes out. “Don’t you get it? I love you too.”
28
Maddox
Those are the three words he was never supposed to hear me speak. His knowing the truth doesn’t fix a goddamn thing. It complicates everything. But he asked, and I relented, because there was no way I’d get him out of my apartment without spilling my guts.
He doesn’t respond for several seconds, but his dark eyes remain fixed on mine. The silence is pure torture. I need to elaborate, so I take a breath. “Do you get why I can’t go through with this now? The photo shoot was one thing, but actual sex would kill me, because there is no way it’s happening without both of you here, fully invested. It would destroy me to be with you and not be able to keep you, and if we did it, there’d be no going back. I won’t go through that again. I’ve lost enough.”
“So have we,” he says, his jaw spasming as if he’s angry. His eyes flash, and for a split second, he looks like he might rage at me. I brace myself, adrenaline sparking within and obliterating the weary sadness that my confession left behind. Leo in a rage is a thing of beauty. It would be worth seeing it once more before he walks out of my life for good.
But then his nostrils flare and he takes a deep breath. He pulls his phone from his pocket. “Celeste needs to be here. She needs to know how you feel.”
“What the fuck are you talking about? Didn’t you hear a word I said?”
“I heard the ones that matter.” He puts the phone to his ear and a faint ringtone bleats out from the other end. A second later Celeste’s voice answers. He taps the screen to turn on the speaker. “Ángel, you need to come down here.”
“Already?” she asks. “That was fast. Or are you fucking with me?”
“No, Celeste. Forget about the sex crap for a minute. This is serious. The three of us need to talk. Will your father ask questions if you leave?”
“Papá’s in San Diego at an event for his shipping partner. Ben and Baz are with him getting a lesson in social etiquette, the poor boys. I’ll have Jerry drive me down.”
“Can Jerry keep a secret?” Leo asks.
“All Jerry needs to know is that I’m meeting you downtown. He won’t ask questions.”
The worried look on Leo’s face eases and he nods. “Good.”
“Wait,” I say to Leo, then to his phone before he can end the call. “The back door code is oh-three-one-five. Just come up when you get here.” I’m not sure why the hell he thinks her presence will solve anything, but I’ve never been able to resist the prospect of seeing her.
“Got it. See you in about twenty minutes.” The call ends, and I stare at Leo’s phone for a moment, wondering what the fuck is happening.
“Her birthday is your door code. Jesus, you really do love her, don’t you? Please don’t tell me she’s the only woman you’ve ever loved.”
I snort and head back to the kitchen to retrieve my beer. “Dude, don’t ask questions you don’t want the answers to.” I chug the bottle and toss the empty in the recycle bin, then grab another from the fridge. When I turn around, Leo is seated on a barstool, still looking at me like I’m a stranger. I step to the counter and nudge his half-finished beer toward him, then decide to put him out of his misery. “Yes, Celeste is the only woman I’ve ever loved. There have been men. Two men. One is dead. The other . . . is you.”
His expression tightens, and he escapes into his bottle.
I sigh. “You wanted honesty. So now why don’t you return the favor? What were you thinking would happen when you kissed me?”
He picks at the beer bottle label. “I wasn’t thinking. I was just too hell-bent on following through that I didn’t consider the consequences.”
“So, why’d you do it?”
“To see how it felt to kiss a guy.”
“And? How does it feel?”
I’m getting to the heart of it now, I realize, when he lifts his gaze to meet mine and his throat ripples as he swallows. “So much better than I imagined.”
I can’t help but smile. “You liked it.” I start to hum a few bars of the song that pops into my head.
“Don’t you
fucking dare start singing Katy Perry, asshole. I liked kissing you, all right? Because you mean something to me.”
“I thought it was just sex,” I say in a mocking tone.
He looks chagrined and shakes his head. “I thought diminishing it would help. That keeping it casual would make it easier for you to get on board.”
“I don’t do casual. Not after the shit I’ve lived through. Putting myself out there has always been a risk since the very start, so if I’m going to do it, it had better fucking mean something.”
“Now I know that. If I’d known it was Celeste that day . . . that your history with her was more than just a kiss . . . I might’ve behaved differently.”
He seems so unfazed by things that I’m starting to get a little paranoid. What he asked is not an easy thing for a straight guy to come out and ask for. And he isn’t even pissed about Celeste—in fact, she’s on her way here now to join in this crazy conversation.
“Why the hell aren’t you pissed or jealous or something? I had my tongue in your girlfriend’s pussy and lied to you about it.”
“She wasn’t my girlfriend at the time. Shit, Maddox, you took pictures of the two of us fucking. I think we’re past being weird about sex.”
“Except when it’s between you and me.”
“Maybe we’re past being weird about that too. Listen.” He pauses and gets up from his seat, rounds the counter, and leans his hip against it, facing me. “I don’t do casual either. I wouldn’t have kissed you if you didn’t mean something to me. I drove around the block five times tonight before finding the balls to come in, and the entire time I was rationalizing what this proposition of mine would mean. ‘It’s just sex’ was just the easiest excuse, but the thing that made me finally stop was realizing that there’s no one in the world I trust more than you.”
“This didn’t come out of the blue for you, did it?” He really has given this a hell of a lot of thought. At the photo session, when I came back upstairs after rubbing one out to find them making love again, he kept looking at the camera—at me—and I just thought it was him soaking in the attention. Now I’m not so sure.
