Lonely Hearts

by Heidi Cullinan

  “I thought we were Howl and Sophie now.”

  Elijah broke. “Baz,” he whispered, curling his fingers against Baz’s chest.

  The hand in his hair slid to his neck, massaging lightly. “I won’t hurt you.”

  “Yes, you will.”

  “But I won’t mean to.” Baz brushed a kiss on Elijah’s hair. “I don’t care what you want to call it. I want to keep being with you. Sex. Talking. You yelling at me. Touching me.”

  Elijah wanted to tell him no. Because it would end badly. Sid and Nancy were real life. Howl and Sophie were fictional. But really, what would change? He already ached for Baz, had since forever. Now he could ache with memories of having had him.

  He kissed Baz’s chest. Opened his mouth over his skin, sucking gently. He shivered as he realized it was scar tissue under his lip, and he subtly shifted closer to Baz’s neck.

  Elijah tipped his head back and stroked Baz’s face. “What color are your eyes? Everything is red in this light.”

  Baz’s lips quirked. “Brown. I’ll show you in the morning.”

  Elijah kissed him. A kiss on his chin, licking lightly at his stubble. Sucking in his bottom lip, opening for his tongue. Humming quietly and spreading his knees apart when Baz’s fingers found his crack.

  Gasping and tensing when, after Baz leaned over to fumble at the nightstand, those fingers became slick with lube.

  Baz bit Elijah’s bottom lip as he teased his hole, but when Elijah mewed and pushed against his finger, helping him inside, Baz opened his mouth over Elijah’s and kissed him deeper. He pushed into Elijah’s mouth as he worked into his ass. Gripping the bedspread, Elijah bore down, sliding into the rush of sex.

  “You’re so hot.” Baz fucked his mouth and ass languidly, deliberately not enough in either place. “I could fuck you all damn day and still want you. And you haven’t shown me the flip side.”

  Elijah shifted on the bed, straddling Baz so he could sit on those fingers. “Tomorrow. I’ll show you tomorrow.”

  Baz bit out a groan as Elijah clenched his ass. “Fuck, baby.”

  Elijah arched his back, shivering as Baz nipped at his throat.

  Baz pulled his fingers out of Elijah and tried to roll toward the nightstand, but Elijah stopped him. Trapping Baz with his knees, he sat up, aimed himself over his groin, grabbed his cock from behind and held it still as he came down on it.

  The tip went inside. Baz’s hand clamped on Elijah’s arm, staying him.

  Elijah tensed, keeping tight hold of Baz’s cock. Baz’s hand skittered to Elijah’s wrist. He didn’t let go, and he stared at Elijah.

  Naked, naked, naked.

  Elijah caught Baz’s hand. “I always used condoms with tricks.”

  “I didn’t.”

  “You have something you need to tell me? Something you know? Something you don’t?”

  Baz’s eyes closed for a second, then opened, vulnerable and soft. “You telling me I’m not a trick?”

  “You said you didn’t want to be.”

  “And I want to know what I am.”

  Heart, breaking open. “Not a trick.”

  Baz let go. His gaze didn’t leave Elijah’s.

  He pushed up.

  Elijah had gone bare before. Kids at camp. The one guy after conversion therapy. But someone he knew online had contracted AIDS, with his boyfriend, because they rushed the window period. On the streets, the guy he used to crash with behind the trash bins ended up in the clinic for syphilis. Condoms started to sound like a good plan, though every trick balked. Which he’d always thought was dumb. He was the fucking hole trading around. But maybe they figured he was the bottom, so he didn’t matter.

  Tonight, he mattered. It still felt dangerous to trust this idea, but going bare helped for some reason. He knew there was a risk, that this was stupid, but fuck that anyway. This felt like power. Giving fate the finger. No halfway. Both of them naked in every sense. Together or not at all.

  When Baz flipped him onto his back, tucked his knees up and fucked in hard, Elijah let go. Put his arms above his head, shut his eyes and let Baz ride him. Baz inside him. Baz fucking him slow and deep, hitting the spot that made his teeth buzz over and over.

  He came before Baz—short, abrupt, spurting over his belly. Baz paused midstroke, but Elijah dug his fingernails into his arms, hissing slightly as he worked Baz’s cock with his own ass. Elijah wrapped his arms around Baz’s chest. “Come inside me.”

  He did. He began slowly, still fussing about the way Elijah hissed and winced, until Elijah slapped his ass and met his thrusts with the intensity he wanted. Needed. Tears ran out of Elijah’s eyes as he thrashed his head from side to side, electrified by the twinges of pleasure-pain, riding a mini sparkler as Baz tensed, bucked and buried deep as he came.

  They lay joined for a long time, Baz on top, draped on Elijah. At some point he pulled out, rolled over, and they half-dozed on top of the comforter until Baz got up and went into the bathroom for what seemed like a long time. When he came out, he had his glasses on once more, until he got into the bed, dragging Elijah under the covers with him. Once there, he put his glasses on the bedside table.

  “No lights on but the red.” He kissed Elijah’s shoulder on his way to his pillow. “Contacts out. My eyes are bare now. Even a little regular light will hurt them.”

  Elijah snuggled against his chest. “No light.”

  They tangled as they slept, sometimes kissing sleepily, sometimes cuddling, sometimes simply touching. When Elijah woke, he felt heavy but sated, not weary.

  Baz kneaded his hip, reaching around for his cock.

  Elijah fucked gently into his hand, but his ass sent out warning signals. “I can’t party in the back right now. Somebody loved my ass too much last night.”

  “Good.” Baz stroked Elijah with intent. “Because my ass is all kinds of lonely.”

  Elijah shivered. For a moment, he closed his eyes and rode the sensation of Baz touching him. Then, tossing aside the covers, Elijah straddled Baz and pinned him to the bed.

  A huff of air left Baz’s lungs, a sizzle of thrill running through him as Elijah trapped him between his knees and gazed at him. The dark intensity usually cutting him a withering glance now pierced Baz with lustful intent instead.

  Let go, let Elijah take you on a ride.

  He fully intended to. But first, unfortunately, there were ground rules.

  Baz ran his hands up Elijah’s arms. “Left hip is a bitch. If you want to push my knees up, which I would recommend, there’s a fine line between feels great and narcotics needed. It’s not the height of sexy, but a well-placed pillow is my friend.”

  The lustful gaze didn’t vanish, but it sharpened with focus, Elijah taking notes. His fingers tickled Baz’s forearms. “Noted. Any other hot tips?”

  “Shoulder is okay, unless you try to do pushups on it or something.” He slow blinked, hating this next part. “Don’t get focused on getting me off. It’s possible we might get a free pass because this is super hot, but my cocktail of drugs hasn’t worn off yet. If my joystick doesn’t work, leave it. It’s not you. It’s drugs.”

  He watched Elijah’s face, feeling hollow and queasy. He’d never told anybody he’d slept with about that before. Well, Marius, but telling him didn’t count. That night had been them drunk and goofy, Marius giving in to curiosity, Baz excising an old crush. Baz still didn’t know what this was with Elijah, but it wasn’t either of those things.

  Elijah let go of Baz’s arm and teased the whorls of hair around his belly button. “Please tell me the guys who beat you up had their toenails pulled out. And shoved under their eyelids. With acid on them.”

  Vengeful Elijah, it turned out, was highly arousing. “Nobody got the death penalty, but anybody who had our DNA under their fingernails got multiple life sentences. Uncle Paul hired some lawyer friend who a
te them for breakfast, lunch and dinner. Possibly there’s more I don’t know about, honestly. A lot of shit happens in prison, and my uncle had an axe to grind. He was and still is wrecked over it.”

  Elijah frowned. “Why is he wrecked?”

  “Because it wasn’t a random attack. They were religious crazies, ginned up by their fuckjob church, out to take out the gay-loving senator’s fag nephew. They were pissed because he was LGBT positive at a time when you didn’t get away with it. The wingnuts wanted to make an example of him, through me. Except the church swore on the witness stand they never told anybody to attack. Uncle Paul couldn’t nail them for assault, but he found other, subtler ways of getting them. Couldn’t bring back Jordan, though.” Swallowing bile, he finished it. “I hadn’t learned how to jump in front of bullets yet, and they didn’t have any anyway. A bat swinging at you is fucking scary. You don’t realize you’ve ducked until you’ve done it.”

  Elijah’s face lost all its edges, tipping into horror and…ache. “Oh shit, Baz.”

  Baz shut his eyes and swallowed several times. “Sorry. Talk about a mood killer.”

  Elijah rolled forward, flattening himself to Baz’s chest. Trembling fingers tightened weakly in his hair and gripped his shoulder as Elijah buried his face in Baz’s neck. He breathed out several times, shaky, his abdomen going concave against Baz’s now-flaccid cock. He rested his forehead on Baz’s collarbone, his lips brushing across Baz’s skin, breath tickling the hair at his solar plexus as he spoke. “That’s why. With my dad. Taking the bullet.”

  Baz didn’t have it in him to work up a lie. “Yeah.” He put his hand on the slope of Elijah’s ass. “Sorry.”

  “Not sorry.” Elijah lifted his head enough to kiss Baz’s collarbone. “In the moment I felt the most scared and alone, helpless because there was no escape—there you were. Literally saving my life. Not because you wanted something from me or because we were friends. After years of being told I wasn’t worthy to be saved by the people who were supposed to love everyone unconditionally, the coolest guy on campus rescued me because it was the right thing to do.”

  Baz scrambled for a rebuttal, because holy fucking shit, he was no goddamned Christ figure—and then Elijah loomed over him, intensity fully online, inviting, almost demanding Baz go under. The fingers in Baz’s hair tightened, pinning him to the pillow. “We’re going to Saint Timothy today.”

  Baz tried to nod, but he couldn’t. Hello, erection. “Okay.”

  “I’m moving into the White House.”

  Big erection. “Sounds great.” He stared up into the lovely sight of Elijah with the reins firmly in his hand.

  Elijah kissed him, slow and easy, sliding his hips so their cocks ground together. It didn’t escape Baz’s attention how Elijah kept his weight to the right. He eased in, fucking into Baz’s mouth until Baz’s jaw went slack, like he was waiting for a cock. Elijah’s hands stroked, kneaded, wringing things out of him he didn’t know he held back. When Elijah broke their kiss and trailed down Baz’s chin and neck, Baz arched to give him better access.

  He gasped, quavering when Elijah played with his nipples, one with fingers, one with his mouth, then switched. A current of electricity ran through him, endorphins flooding through his bloodstream, doing what no prescription or bag of party drugs could ever do. He realized he hadn’t ever let go this far. He wanted to slide all the way under, to shut utterly off—and the realization he’d gone there without so much as a thought made him abruptly tense.

  Elijah massaged his shoulders, murmuring and kissing him into compliance. “Shh. I’ve got you, baby. Let go.”

  Baz shuddered, shutting his eyes. For a moment there was darkness, fear at how vulnerable he’d become with Elijah, sludges of sorrow from the story he tried not to think about. Elijah kept whispering, promising, leading him by a velvet rope into the pink-edged place where letting go wasn’t an act, it was a state of mind.

  When Elijah’s mouth closed over him, his eyes rolled into his head and his shoulders unhooked their metaphorical bungee cord and sank into the mattress. He got lost on the sensation of hot mouth on his cock, tongue laving his balls, teeth grazing his thigh. When hands pushed his knees up, he shut those muscles down. His heart caught when his left thigh met the resistance of a pillow, and he shattered when he realized his right one had one too.

  He didn’t have to hold his legs open—Elijah took care of that while he licked Baz’s taint, easing the long-untried muscles of his ass open. Baz wasn’t sure how Elijah managed to brace his legs and get a fingertip inside him—with lube—but he didn’t question. If Elijah had somehow developed a third arm, Baz welcomed his alien lover with legs spread.

  When Elijah breached him, Baz forced his eyes open because he wanted to see. There was Elijah, towering over him, glowing red like a beautiful demon. He might be slight, but at that moment he filled more than Baz’s ass. He was his world.

  Elijah bent forward, still fucking, urging Baz up, doubling his pillow so he could fuck his tongue into Baz’s mouth as he rolled stroke by stroke into his ass. Baz opened for him everywhere, and when the pillows became a liability, he tugged them out and wrapped his legs around Elijah’s back.

  “I’m okay,” he murmured when Elijah paused mid-thrust to check on him. So much more than okay.

  Elijah kissed the corner of his mouth, a deliciously wild and possessive look on his face. “I’m close. You coming with me to my party?”

  Baz shook his head and sucked on Elijah’s bottom lip. “I’m good. You go on. I’ll watch the show.”

  He did watch. As Elijah fucked harder, faster, riding the wave, Baz didn’t come, but he surfed something great. A rush of warmth, possibility and the glittering foam of contentment. As Elijah collapsed, shaking, against him, Baz wrapped his arms around his lover, shut his eyes and let the velvet rope Elijah had used to lead him here settle comfortably around his heart.

  Chapter Eleven

  While Baz showered and put his contacts back in, Elijah smoked on the suite’s balcony, doing his best to convince himself he was Baz Acker’s boyfriend.

  The conversation from the night before felt surreal. Elijah wanted to convince himself it had been a show or an act, except there was no reason for that kind of a performance. Unless Baz simply wanted to be a manipulative asshole.

  Probably, Elijah decided as they poked at their waffles from the complimentary breakfast, this was Baz’s oppositional-defiant thing again. If Elijah suddenly embraced their relationship, Baz would back out of it. The easiest way to protect himself, following this logic, was to pretend to be excited about dating. To maybe suggest something slightly insane and watch Baz flip his shit. So as they resumed their travels homeward, he said, “Since we’re dating now, maybe we should go all in and room together.”

  “Works for me.”

  Elijah shot him a glare across the Tesla. “For crying out loud. I was kidding. That was supposed to freak you out.”

  “Doesn’t freak me out at all. It’s more practical. You don’t have much in the way of stuff, and I’ll coerce you into my bed every night anyway. I was going to suggest it, but I figured you’d get mad.”

  “Nobody moves in together when they’re first dating.”

  “Nobody starts dating for real after fake dating. Yet here we are.”

  “We’re not actually going to date. You’re going to change your mind. This is just some lark, and you’ll get bored of me next week.”

  “We’ll have to see next week, won’t we?”

  Elijah grumbled under his breath, which made Baz laugh, so Elijah smoked angrily until it was time to stop at the Supercharger. He was ready with his defiant retort for when Baz would suggest another sex break, but Baz didn’t, which pissed Elijah off all over again.

  “You make me insane,” Elijah told him when they got in the car.

  Baz blew him a kiss, which went straight to his dick.


  When they got to Pastor and Liz’s house, Elijah considered reneging and putting off moving into the White House mostly as a chess move, but he couldn’t bring himself to do it. It was good to see Liz and Pastor, but…damn it, he’d feel weird leaving Baz after so many days in his constant company. Plus as soon as Baz announced the move was happening, Pastor and Liz got excited and helped him pack. Since Baz was right and all his belongings fit in the Tesla’s hatchback, by the time Elijah had himself organized to maybe try objecting, he was already moved out.

  He wanted to move out. To be able to shuffle in socks up to Mina’s room. To roll his eyes at Aaron and Giles in person. To have a mob of people around all the time.

  And yes, he wanted to be with Baz. He wasn’t moving into Baz’s room, though. That he was firm on.

  Reception at the White House was warm, especially when they saw Elijah was finally moving in. “You should have texted us,” Giles scolded him. “We have to clear out the room you and Brian will be in because all Sid’s things are in there from the remodel. We would have had it all ready.”

  “It won’t take us long to move the stuff if we work together.” Aaron leaned around Giles to address Baz. “Can we put it in the ballroom, or should we crowd it in the practice room with Fred?”

  Baz, leaning against the counter, shrugged. “There’s no rush to move it. Elijah’s moving into my room.”

  Everyone in the kitchen turned to Elijah.

  Elijah blushed at the ceiling. Never try to bluff Baz. “No, I’m not.”

  Baz grabbed Elijah’s hand and tugged him toward the living room stairs.

  Elijah would have fought him, but if he escaped, he’d have to deal with the oh no you didn’t on his friends’ faces. So he let Baz drag him past Aaron and Giles’s room and the one he’d been meant to share with Brian, down the long hall to the big bedroom with its own bathroom. Baz’s room.

  He gave it a quick scan, noting how very Baz the place was, overflowing with odd knickknacks and unique design—brick-red walls, goldenrod trim. Here were all the things he’d expected to find in Baz’s nonexistent bedroom in Chicago. Pictures, photos, mirrors—everything on the walls and surfaces glittered, odd tchotchkes only a trust-fund baby could collect.