by Solace Ames
Paul groaned and came hard, pumping so deep down Jay’s throat he’d probably never taste it, a shame maybe, but the ecstasy overtook him, racked him, left him shaking and mindless and utterly satisfied.
When he opened his eyes again, he was sitting on the edge of the bed and Jay was leaning against his knee, breathing deeply. He let the camera slip from his hand and caressed Jay’s head, enjoying how thick and pin-straight and smooth Jay’s hair felt as it ran through his appreciative fingers—even now, he couldn’t get enough.
“You’re amazing,” he told Jay. “Can I get you some water? I’ve got some iced tea, as well.”
“Please.” Jay’s voice was understandably hoarse. “Yeah, iced tea would be great.”
By the time he got back with Jay’s bottle in hand, Jay was sprawled naked on the covers. Paul loved how he’d already made himself at home, piling up the pillows behind him so he could lean back in luxurious ease. He accepted the bottle with an indulgent smile and took a swallow.
Paul settled beside him and draped an arm across his waist. “Need me to take care of you?” he asked as he touched Jay’s hipbone, circled it lazily, then trailed down to the base of his cock where a few sparse, silky hairs nestled.
“Yes.” Jay quickly capped the bottle of iced tea. “Mmm, I don’t think you’ve ever sucked me off...”
“If I did, you’d remember. Here, take the camera. That’s the play button, right there.”
“Wow,” Jay sighed when the clip started. “It’s kind of embarrassing but super hot. My mouth is like...oh God, fuck—”
Maybe that was from watching the footage—or from Paul pulling firmly, slowly, on his stiffening cock. “It’s a good look. That’s what Adriana sees. What other men would see, if we go out so I can show you off.” He shifted down and darted his tongue in a quick circle around the edge of Jay’s foreskin, picking up the alluring tang of salt and faint musk.
Jay threw his head back against the pillows and made a sound Paul had never heard before.
Paul devoted all his attention to making Jay do it again.
The camera fell aside. Jay dug his fingers into the sheets. And Paul focused intently on working Jay’s shaft with his mouth, a diffuse and intellectual pleasure glowing inside him. Paul didn’t often do this, but not because he lacked the ability.
I want you to know how fast I can make you come.
Because we don’t have to make it last.
He still fiercely memorized everything about Jay, his smell and taste and the taut, sliding smoothness of his heated skin.
We don’t have to make it last. Because we’ll do it again. And again.
His heart pounded for lack of breath. He pulled Jay’s leg against his chest, skin against skin, wanting to share the rhythm.
All for you.
There was no shame and quite a bit of pride in bringing Jay to the edge and tipping him over.
“Paul...”
Yes. He swallowed down every pulse of come and sucked at Jay’s sweet, fleshy slit for the very last of it. The rhythmic tensing of Jay’s thighs felt amazing too, how his lithe muscles thrummed under Paul’s hands.
I did this to you. For you.
They held each other for a while, Paul lying on his side next to Jay and just looking into his eyes, touching him lightly now and then. What they’d done for each other was good, but this feeling was even better. Beyond money, beyond pleasure. Off the books and off the clock and this was his man and yes they’d do it again.
They had to put their clothes on because of the mild chill in the air, but went right back to lying together by silent agreement. Paul knew they had to leave eventually, break this perfect natural intimacy, but there was no sense of loss coloring their time together—not that he could feel, at least.
“Are you going back to work soon?” Jay asked.
Paul caught his breath but kept his mind clean and blank. He chose to take the question entirely at face value. “Yes. I’ve got some regulars booked this week. I’ll be working until a couple days before Christmas.”
“Adriana’s going to Washington,” Jay said, all in one rushing breath. “And I’m going to be helping my mom and dad and running around all over and...”
“Is there anything you want to talk about, in terms of my work?”
“Actually, I—I thought about it a lot. It’s not an easy thing to sort of incorporate into my life. Even though it’s not my life, it’s your life—”
“I know what you mean. It’s okay.” Please keep talking, Paul silently begged. Nothing Jay could say would hurt Paul, as long as he kept talking.
“Do a lot of your clients want to do oral without condoms?”
“Almost all of them. It’s a calculated risk. Gonorrhea’s the main issue—I get a test panel every few months, but I’ve never gotten it.” He paused to study Jay, whose expression seemed carefully neutral. “I know it’s a risk I’m asking you to take, as well. We could always change to protected oral.”
“Ugh.” Jay made the typical taste-of-latex face, lips curling. “I think I’d rather go without and get the tests, but they’re expensive. That’s Adriana’s thinking, as well, even though her insurance would kind of cover it.”
“Whatever you decide,” Paul said, but he couldn’t help hoping for a long, happy continuation of the blow-job status quo. “On a less clinical subject, I’m not seeing anyone else. I mean, non-paying. And I’m not interested in seeing anyone else.”
“Aha. Commitment!” Jay rolled his eyes and looked at the ceiling. “I’m sorry, was that a weird reaction?”
“Not for you,” Paul said, and smiled. “But yeah, commitment. If anything comes up involving sex, I’ll talk to you or Adriana about it first. But really, I don’t see myself having the time, or the emotional energy. I’ve got a place to put that now.” He squeezed Jay’s hand, felt the cold silver ring press against his palm, and remembered the wedding band below.
“Same here. I mean—time. Yeah.” Jay wriggled his shoulders and shifted up, but he didn’t slide his hand away. “Hey, where does that picture come from?”
Paul followed Jay’s gaze to the left wall. “It’s a diagram of a spiral staircase I did in my first year at Carnegie Mellon. A friend painted over it with watercolors.”
“Collaborative art. Neat. I didn’t know you went to Carnegie Mellon.”
“I had a scholarship to the architecture school, but I screwed it up. I went to Las Vegas in the beginning of my second year and never came back. Trouble with cocaine and gambling.” He watched Jay’s face carefully, noticing a brief sympathetic grimace, but no shock. “Which reminds me, I’d love to do a weekend or road trip with you two sometime—”
“But skip the casinos and Vegas. Got it. I’m so not into that, anyway.”
“I got my life back on track and came back to L.A. The architecture program at Saylor opened the door and let me slip in. And I don’t touch drugs.” Paul didn’t add that the cocaine had been the least of his problems. It was a hell of a drug, like the saying went, but as long as no one actually stuck a line under his nose, he could turn it down easily.
Paul would have to tell them the rest of the story eventually. He wasn’t lying, he was just...stopping short a layer. A question of timing. He could only hope they’d see it that way, too.
“I used to smoke mad weed, myself, but I cut it down by the last year of college. And now I’m paranoid about drug tests.” Jay seemed to be filling in the large gap in Paul’s history with assumptions about addiction and partying, which was fine for now. “Did you ever play any sports in high school? I’m just trying to picture you, you know...”
“Lacrosse.”
“Shit, I don’t even know what that is. You get a trident and a net, right? Never mind, maybe that was Spartacus.”
Paul laughed. “No, just a st
ick with a net. I wasn’t really a full-fledged jock, anyway—more of a loner.”
“I generally ran from jocks in high school. But I did boxing for a while.” Jay put up his fists and tried on an adorable menacing glare.
“How’d you get into it?”
Jay put down his fists, drank some of the iced tea and passed it to Paul, who finished the bottle. “My brother Ramón tried to beat the gay out of me. Wait, it wasn’t as bad as it sounds. He was really into boxing and he thought if I could just do boxing classes with him, bang, gay solution. I played along until I was sixteen, and then I got bored with boxing. Desperately bored. I wasn’t hopeless, but I was always like, ‘Not the face, not the face!’ I started telling him to give me twenty dollars to get to class. Then I’d spend it all smoking weed with my friends, and the next day I’d tell Ramón, ‘Sorry I never made it to class, I spent all your money on body glitter and gay porn, I can’t pay you back.’ And then I’d do it again next week. He finally got the message. Poor guy.”
“So your family didn’t know what to do with you, I guess,” Paul said. The story was a little sad, a little funny, entirely endearing.
“By college I’d figured out I was just a bi guy on the femme side, but back then, I used to come out to my mom as something different every month. She was so confused—” Jay raised his eyebrows in comic shock, and raised his voice too. “‘Ay, Dios mío, pansexual, ¿qué es esto?’ I didn’t have it too bad at home, maybe because they’re so old, and they spoiled me as much as they could. My father didn’t give a fuck that I was playing with dolls up until...well, I never stopped. It was all a phase, anyway, because I ended up marrying Adriana.” He grinned sarcastically.
“Just a phase,” Paul agreed. “Strange how that’s supposed to mean temporary, when phases come again and again.”
“Like the moon. Deep, dude.” Jay kissed him on the cheek, quick and fleeting. “Let’s go get something to eat.”
“One more kiss,” Paul said. “Then we’ll go.”
Again and again. Always returning.
Chapter Sixteen
Adriana shut her emotions down when she walked through the door to work every morning. They kept flaring up again, little flames charged with terrifying potential, so turning herself off was more of a process than a singular step.
Endlessly readjusting the dials. So tired. All the time, so goddamn fucking tired.
She made a run-through of all the stations before the dinner rush. The fry station had an oil spill that should have been cleaned an hour ago. She had the fry cook take care of it while she called over a prep cook to restock the calamari breading. Terry waved at her from the edge of the kitchen, probably frantic for the menu insert. She darted to the office, grabbed the stack from the printer and carried them over to him.
“Thanks, darling,” he said. Then “Follow me,” in a hushed voice.
Oh shit. Adriana didn’t have time for intrigue. She couldn’t afford to ignore it, either. “How’d the waitstaff meeting go?” she asked as he led her around the corner to a nook.
The owner had stepped in during Wallace’s absence. So far he’d been hindering operations a lot more than helping.
“Vito glared at us for ten minutes straight in grisly silence. Then he slammed his fist on the table and screamed ‘Working with you people, I tell you, ees a nightmare!’” Terry performed the dramatic hand gestures along with the voice. “And it only went downhill from there. He made the newest waitress cry. I’m not sure if she’s coming back tomorrow. But that’s not what I need to talk to you about.” He sucked in a breath and bared his teeth in an embarrassed half-smile. “You know that saying, bros before hos?”
“What is it?” she asked impatiently, her hands already itching to get busy on the line and keep it moving.
“I’m not exaaactly sure who the bro is and who the ho is. But it still seemed relevant. I was fox-trotting with a friend the other night, and I saw your husband kissing another man in the dance studio parking lot.” Terry jerked forward slightly, as if he expected her to slump or faint, and his smile had turned into more of a grimace.
“I appreciate you telling me. But really, it’s all right. We’ve got a sort of open relationship and I’m seeing him—I mean I’m seeing the other man, too.” That night was still fresh in her memory. Paul had given her a massage when she got home, slept on their couch, done a fitness video with her in the morning then pounded her so thoroughly in the shower that she left for work stepping on clouds.
“Oh my God. You really are. You lucky slut—go you!”
“Thanks, bro,” she said, and patted his shoulder. “Don’t go telling anyone else, okay?”
Terry made a zipping motion across his mouth.
The dinner rush went well. Vito stayed in front, shambling from table to table, telling guests he was the owner and promising them special service and items not on the menu—making Terry’s life hell, essentially.
In the back, Adriana ran a smooth line. Everyone did their jobs with a minimum of fuss, aside from the saucier’s predictable nightly freak-out over stock mislabeling. She pushed here and there, stepped in and now and then, remembered to give compliments. Graciela was kicking ass on the salad station, turning out elegant bowls in perfect time.
At ten, Vito left off glad-handing and came to the kitchen. He was a broad-shouldered man with graying greasy hair, who spent his money on custom-tailored suits and 1960s microcars but didn’t believe haircuts were worth paying for.
“Everything’s fine,” she said. “We’re going to start wrapping up now. Did you want to go over tomorrow’s special?” She flashed him a smile with no teeth, properly deferential—maybe back in his home country, he was used to being sir-ed, so she felt the need for some other marker.
“You people,” he growled, the words dripping with thick, obscure hate. “You people!” He gestured, snarled, turned on his heel and stalked out.
“Well, that was a ray of fucking sunshine,” the pizza cook remarked.
By the end of the night, the reason was clear. Lorenzo had quit. No notice. He wouldn’t be coming in tomorrow, which meant that Adriana would be working another double. And her counterbalance against Steve and his sabotage would be gone.
Maybe it’s time for me to quit, too. Turn around. Walk right out the door.
She was suddenly so cold inside that she thought of turning herself on again, letting in the anger and fear. But that would be too dangerous.
She waited until she was in her car, and then she called Paul.
He was working tonight, so she expected to leave a message, but he picked up immediately. “Hi, Adriana.” His low, soothing voice was the perfect antidote to the masculine hysteria that dominated her day.
“Hi, Paul. Can you talk now? It’s not an emergency or anything.”
“Sure. I’m on an overnight, but I’m driving out to pick up a takeout order. How was work?”
“Busy. The headwaiter saw you and Jay at the dance studio.”
“Does that make things more complicated for you? I’m sorry.”
“Honestly, I’m not really processing it right now, but I think it’s going to be fine. He’s an okay guy. I’m happy at myself that I’m not upset. I guess that’s why I called you—to give myself a back pat.” She laughed nervously. “It’s kind of embarrassing. Sorry.”
“Embarrassing, but very cute. That you called, I mean.” Paul went quiet, and all she heard on the other line was the rumble of a car engine. Somehow, the silence didn’t feel uncomfortable. “How does Monday night look?”
Scheduling, again. She was good at scheduling. “Jay’s babysitting for some of his nieces and nephews. I thought I’d have it off, but someone just quit, and I’ll probably have to work. But I can let you know tomorrow if I’ll be off by nine.”
“Great. I miss you.”
> She closed her eyes and smiled to herself. “Miss you too. Have fun. In a work-related way.”
“I’ll do my best. Give Jay a kiss for me, and sleep well tonight.”
“I will. Good night.”
There were a few more seconds of quiet then, as if neither of them wanted to end it first. Adriana finally stabbed the red button.
Jay would be waiting at home with a bottle of lime soda kept cold for her. He was doing well on every level, enough to hope that he’d stop being so stubborn about going back to school. Maybe she could even bring up the subject of a car. He always implied the problem was only the extra expense of taking out a car loan, but he hadn’t gotten behind anyone’s wheel since the accident.
Give Jay a kiss for me.
She pulled out of the Sapore parking lot and headed for home, holding the instruction close to her heart.
* * *
“I’ll wait in the van,” Jay’s mother said, and waved her copy of Impacto newspaper to prove that she wouldn’t be bored. “I know you can do it. You can do anything!” She beamed at him.
Since he’d managed to get their dolls back from ICE, she’d been telling all her friends he was a miracle worker, leading to a deluge of calls with appeals to fix assorted bureaucratic problems. It was hard to beg off, considering he didn’t have jack shit to do all day except for aqua dance fitness and awesome sex with his secret boyfriend.
Maybe today would change all that. For better or for worse, he needed a job.
“Thanks, Mom. Keep the doors locked, okay?” This wasn’t one of the nicer parts of East L.A.
He walked up to the nondescript stucco building and rang the buzzer at the metal door. Daniela let him in. “You look great,” she said. “Just wonderful.” He had to wonder if she’d expected horrible scars.
