“I hadn’t planned on it,” Alex said honestly. “But after I asked, there was no way in hell I was taking it back.”
“Why?”
“Don’t you know?”
“No, I really don’t.”
Alex walked over to the bed and sat down. Could Ricky really be so dense that he didn’t know how Alex felt about him? He lowered her eyes to stare at the floor. He couldn’t look at Ricky and say what he needed to say. As it was, he barely mustered the nerve.
“You are nothing I expected, Ricky McNeil, but you’re everything I want.”
He heard the barest of breath escape from Ricky, but Alex still couldn’t bring himself to look him in the eyes. Ricky sat down next to him. He curled his finger under Alex’s chin. “Look at me.”
Alex shifted his glance sideways. Ricky’s pupils were so dilated the green of his irises reminded Alex of an eclipsed sun.
“Why do you want me?” Ricky asked.
God, the man made his pulse race, his palms sweat, and his dick hard. His breath caught in his throat, rendering him speechless for a moment.
Ricky rubbed his thumb across Alex’s chin. “I know what you think, but I’m more than a poor bad boy from the wrong side of the track. Sometimes I think you only see me as the cook. The help, as your friend Ty seemed to think. You think I’m beneath you, so why do you want me?”
The temperature in the room rose, or at least it felt that way. Ricky’s scrutinizing gaze made it impossible for Alex hide. He pressed his cool fingers to his fevered cheeks, while he gathered his thoughts. He’d spent so much time trying to keep his feelings from Ricky, trying hard not to scare the dark brute off, so much so, he’d made him feel like he wasn’t valued. The realization made his stomach hurt.
He swiveled to face Ricky. The griffin tattoo below his lover’s collarbone was completely filled in now and mostly healed. The eagle’s head was traced in yellow, the wings tipped in red.
Alex stared at the scrollwork that made the beast so fascinating. “You told me that the griffin is a protector. That it takes care of the people who belong to it. To him.”
Ricky nodded. His green eyes tipped up to Alex.
Alex caught his reflection in them. God, how he wanted to wrap his arms around Ricky. To touch him and kiss him without censure. Instead, he continued, afraid he would lose his nerve if he didn’t finish what he had to say. He swallowed hard. “I may not be one of the people you’ve promised to protect and care for, but when I’m with you, Ricky…When we’re alone together…I feel it just the same. I trust you to take care of me the way no one else ever has. With you, I don’t have to pretend. You make me feel—” Alex paused, unsure of the right word. “Happy.”
“You don’t even know me.”
“I know what I see.” Alex carefully placed his palm against Ricky’s cheek. “I know you have scars that you hide with facial hair and tattoos, but they are superficial compared to what’s inside you. You work hard, and you take your responsibilities seriously. You have no close friends, unless you count your tattoo artist. And, if I’m not mistaken, I’m the closest thing you’ve ever had to a boyfriend.”
Ricky stiffened.
“Maybe I’m wrong,” Alex said quickly. “But I’m not trying to tell you how you feel about me. Just telling you the way I feel about you. Since we’ve been seeing each other, I have changed my diet, and I am meticulous with my hygiene. Even when we’re not together, even when I don’t expect that I’ll see you, I am always ready for you. Always.” He shook his head slightly when Ricky started to protest. “Not because you demand it or make me, but because I want to please you.”
“Why?”
Alex brushed his fingers over Ricky’s beard. His chest eased when Ricky didn’t pull away from him. “I want to be clean so that when you touch me, when you stroke yourself inside me, that there is no doubt you are as turned on by me as I am by you. You make me happy, Ricky McNeil, and while I don’t know much, I think I make you happy too.”
Alex held his breath when Ricky looked away from him. Had he taken too much liberty? Made all the wrong assumptions? “I’m sorry,” he said, apologizing without knowing whether he needed to or not.
“You’re not what I expected either,” Ricky finally said. He turned to Alex. His brown hair hung in a careless frame around his narrow face, as usual, and his bangs fell over his bright gaze.
The dark promise in Ricky’s expression sent a shiver down his stomach and straight to his dick. No one made him feel so instantly vulnerable and excited. Alex licked his suddenly dry lips, knowing as he stared down at Ricky, a man he once considered a hood, that he would experience a loss like no other he’d felt if Ricky were to disappear from his life.
“I work two jobs, Alex. I don’t have time for a boyfriend.”
“I go to school, study a minimum of five hours a day, and work a job.” The words stuck in his throat for a moment. “I don’t have time for a boyfriend either.”
“Then what do you want from me?”
Good question. What did he want for Ricky? What was the end game for the two of them? Maybe, it was as simple as he didn’t want their game to end. “I want you in my life. However, you want to be in it.”
Ricky raised a brow. “So you want to be my boyfriend?”
Exasperation rose in Alex. “No,” he denied. “I just want to be with you.”
“As my not-boyfriend?”
“We don’t have to put any labels on what we have unless you want to.” Alex turned away from Ricky. “Simply put, I’m yours.”
Ricky slid a hand down Alex’s back to the top of his buttock. “Is this mine?”
Alex’s stomach clenched as an aching surge of pleasure shot to his groin. “Yes,” he said.
Ricky slid his right arm around Alex’s waist, pulling him closer. With his left hand, he gripped Alex’s hardening cock through his shorts. “And this? Is this mine?”
Alex bit back a groan. “Yes.”
Ricky stood, pulling Alex up with him. He pushed his hips against Alex’s. Alex could feel the thick, fat cock pressing against his thigh.
A delicious tension rose in him when Ricky stroked his face and curled a hand behind his neck. Suddenly, he felt dizzy and lightheaded, the tightening in his chest threatening to burst him wide open. His pulse hammered with anticipation. When Ricky pulled him down and their lips brushed, his legs turned to jelly.
“What about these,” Ricky said, his voice low and seductive. “Are these pretty lips mine?”
“Yes,” Alex whispered. “Yes.”
Ricky’s hand trailed down Alex’s neck to his chest, his hand resting over Alex’s heart. “And this? Can I have this too?”
“Fu-uck,” he stuttered, clinging to Ricky to keep himself upright.
“Is that a no?”
“No,” Alex said. His skin dampened as his whole body trembled. “I mean, not a no. Jesus, I’m sweating.” His breath quickened, and he felt the edge of a panic attack. God, Ricky was going to be the death of him.
“Slow down, Alex,” Ricky said, his voice calm. “Just breathe.”
Alex took a deep breath, held it for a second, and then blew it out slowly.
Ricky wrapped his arms around Alex’s waist and kissed his neck. “Again.”
He took another deep breath and after a slow exhalation, Ricky’s lips drifted across his again. Alex leaned down, slanting his mouth into the kiss, melting against Ricky’s body as he opened for the delicious invasion. The heated stroke of his lover’s tongue inside his mouth felt electric. They didn’t usually kiss. Not like this. They didn’t do this kind of intimacy. They didn’t…
Ricky’s hungry swipes inside Alex’s mouth, his hands roving Alex’s body, and his lustful groans as Alex gave as good as he got sent any doubts out of his pleasure-addled brain.
When Ricky finally broke from the kiss, he growled. “I’m going to fuck you, Alex Michaels. I’m going to fuck you so good.”
<
br /> “Here?” Alex asked, a nervous knot forming in his throat. He wanted to shed his clothes and drop to his knees for Ricky, but he’d never had sex with anyone in his parent’s home. The idea terrified him as much as it excited him.
“Do you want me, Alex?” Ricky rubbed his beard against Alex’s cheek then nibbled along his jaw to his ear. “Do you?”
“I do,” he said with more certainty. He pulled his wallet from his pocket and said a silent apology to his mom. Fumbling, he pulled out a condom and a small packet of lubricant and put it on the bed.
Ricky’s quizzical expression made him smile. “I told you that I’m always ready for you. Always.”
Chapter 9
Fireworks
Ricky moved behind Alex, reached around and rubbed his dick through the tan shorts. Alex had been right. Ricky had never had a boyfriend, and Alex was the closest thing he’d ever had to a relationship. “Simply put, I’m yours,” Alex had said. Though, in Ricky’s mind, there’d been nothing simple about the declaration. Even more complicated was Ricky’s feelings in return. He cared for Alex, more than cared, and the realization scared the hell out of him.
The kiss had been spontaneous and delicious, and Ricky wanted more. With Alex, he always wanted more. Reverently, he unbuttoned Alex’s shorts and slid them over his hips. Under the shorts, Alex wore a pair of navy blue briefs that hugged his shapely ass. Ricky bit his lower lip and made an appreciative noise. He lightly bit Alex’s shoulder, grinning when his lover arched his back and pressed his buttocks against Ricky’s groin.
He pulled Alex’s head down and to the side. He tugged his lower ear lobe then whispered, “Eager.”
“You make me.”
Ricky smiled and pushed Alex’s shorts to the floor. Without prompting, Alex took his shirt off. Ricky slid his hands up the sides of Alex’s legs past his hips to his waist. He stared at the condom and the lubricant, and thought about how Alex had said he changed his diet and kept himself clean and ready all the time for him. What he displayed was serious devotion.
A rising surge of guilt rose unbidden in him. Alex deserved an explanation. “When I was twelve,” he said. “There was a man in our building who had been diagnosed with AIDS. We lived in a poor neighborhood, and his illness became more obvious as Mr. Thomas got sicker and sicker. Toward the end, the hospice care nurses and aides were his only visitors. I can still see his dead, gray and gaunt face as they took him from his apartment after he died. My ma wrapped her arms around me…” Goose flesh broke out over his skin at the memory. “She stroked my hair, as if to console me, and then told me Mr. Thomas was an abomination in the eyes of God, but his disease had been the cost of his sin. Then she told me to show my compassion by praying for his soul.” His stomach lurched with every word.
Alex stiffened. “Jesus. You don’t believe…”
“Of course not,” Ricky said, suddenly defensive. “But…her words have stayed with me, Alex. My ma’s a good Catholic. She couldn’t have known I was gay when she said that to me. Even so, it let me know at a very young age where she stood on my sexuality. It has made me…cautious.”
“I think I understand,” Alex said. He turned in Ricky’s arms and gazed down at him.
“Do you?” How could he? Ricky barely understood himself. He half-heartedly chuckled. “Maybe you can explain it to me.”
“You’re afraid if you get sick, it means she’s right.”
Ricky ran his shaking fingers through his hair and scratched his beard. He smirked. “When you put it like that…”
Seconds ticked by in silence, but Alex’s penetrating stare never wavered. “She doesn’t know, does she?”
“No. I’ve never told her.” He shook his head as if to deny it. “I don’t hide myself from the world, but my ma, she’s not the world, is she? Just a tiny corner.”
“You’re scared you’ll lose her.”
The answer sat quiet on his lips as heat rushed to his face. “Yes.”
“And you’ve already lost so much.”
Alex’s compassion was almost more than he could bear. “Yes,” he said again.
He swallowed the lump in his throat when Alex kissed him softly, gently. “Oh, Ricky,” he sighed against his mouth.
“I’m not a charity case. I didn’t tell you so you’d feel sorry for me.”
“I know.”
Inexplicably, he felt embarrassed, and as a result, it made him grumpy. “It was simply an explanation.”
“I get it.” Alex moved out Ricky’s embrace and walked over to a globe light on his dresser and flipped it on. After he turned off the main light in the room. The globe cast tiny twinkling stars over the entire room. “If it makes you feel better, I get tested regularly, and other than you, I’ve only had three partners. It’s not like I’m living the rock star life.”
Only three partners? The asshole Ty was definitely in that line-up. Thinking of the blond made Ricky tense. Could it be true? Alex was in his mid-twenties and hadn’t slept with more than three guys before him. They’d never talked about their pasts. Hell, they rarely talked at all. But Ricky definitely had more hook-ups and dates that ended with a bang, but Alex had been his only steady lover. They really were exact opposites. This bedroom was just another example of how far apart they were.
Ricky twirled his finger in the air. “You have your own thing going on in here, don’t ya,” he quipped a little sharper than he’d intended. He’d opened up to Alex in a way he’d never opened to anyone, and his unburdening had made him surly.
The lights sparkled over everything, including Alex’s body. “My castle in the clouds,” he said.
Ricky rolled his eyes and shook his head. Only a boy who had everything would need more. While Ricky had been trying to help his mother take care of him and his younger sister in a one-bedroom apartment—working after school, sometimes two jobs—Alex had created himself a fancy sanctuary within a fancy sanctuary. “When it comes to suffering, you’re right up there with Elizabeth Taylor.”
Alex tucked his chin in surprise. “Did you just make a Steel Magnolia’s reference?”
Ricky groaned. “I think I did.” He actually loved that Alex knew the movie well enough to remember the line, which irritated him even more.
Alex grinned and rubbed his twinkling groin. “You’re sexy meter was already high, but that blew the lid off the gauge for me. What happened to your promise to fuck me good?”
He couldn’t stop watching the lights dance over Alex’s groin. “Your dick is like a bulging billboard right now.” Ricky didn’t stop the laughter that bubbled from his throat. “The sparkles dancing over your dick are hypnotizing. Take down your underwear. I want to see the lights dance against your skin.”
Without hesitation, Alex pushed down his briefs. His cock sprung out from his abdomen and gave a slight bounce. When the blue briefs hit the floor, Alex stepped out of them and kicked them to the side. “Now what?” He posed the question as a challenge.
Ricky crooked his finger at Alex. “Get over here.”
Alex put an extra wiggle in his step as he crossed the room and presented himself. Ricky suppressed a grin. There was something about the tall, lanky man that made him feel light—joyful even. Even in the dim light, Ricky could see the glistening of pre-come at the mushroomed head of Alex’s cock. He licked his lips. His stomach fluttered nervously.
Alex leaned sideways and picked up a condom from the bed. “I’ll put this on if you want.”
“No,” he said.
He knew logically, especially with Alex, that he was mostly likely safe. He couldn’t believe how many times he’d gotten sucked, but he’d never done it himself. His mother’s words played in his head like a sad eulogy. He pushed her fears, her ignorance, from his thoughts. What the hell was he waiting for? Standing before him was a gorgeous, brown-eyed boy who only wanted to please him. And he did please him. So well.
“No,” he said again. He cupped Alex’s sac with his pal
m, dipped his head and ran his cheek against the rigid shaft.
“Oh God,” Alex whimpered. “I love your beard.”
Ricky ran his tongue from the base of Alex’s cock, tracing the bulging veins along the silky skin until he stopped just under the ridge of the straining head.
“Yes,” he said, his voice hoarse and thick.
Ricky smiled. Alex smelled like Irish Spring. Crispy and faintly citrusy. Ricky’s cock, which had gone semi-soft since he’d “shared” about his mom, perked to attention, pressing uncomfortably against the inside of his slacks. He hadn’t known how much he’d denied himself the past two months, how much he wanted Alex in his mouth, or how much he wanted to taste him.
He gave Alex’s balls a slight tug as he dipped his tongue across the wet slit. Alex made a noise Ricky hadn’t heard before. A primitive hum that expressed pleasure and longing and need. The pre-come barely tasted of anything, maybe a hint of salty chlorine, but it wasn’t unpleasant. Regardless of the taste, the delicious sex sounds Alex made completely turned him on, and he wanted more. He opened his mouth and slipped his lips over the head, twirling his tongue before sucking in more of the hard, silky cock.
He gripped Alex’s hips, holding tight as he worked his mouth up and down, sucking with rhythmic pulls that made his balls ache with desire. He dug in when Alex fisted his hair.
“I can’t hold still,” he panted. “I need to thrust.”
Ricky hadn’t realized Alex had been holding back. It was the last thing he wanted. He let the cock slip from his mouth. “Then thrust. Fuck my mouth, Alex. Fuck me.”
He wrapped one hand on the shaft then slid it between his lips again, greedily sucking the firm flesh deep to the back of his throat. Alex wasn’t his size, but he was a solid seven inches, and when his cock hit the back of Ricky’s throat, he gagged.
Alex pulled back in surprise, but Ricky grasped his buttocks and urged him on. Alex’s hips moved quickly as the sounds of his moans drowned out the rough exhalations forced through Ricky’s nose with each joust forward.
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