Dirty Laundry

by Rhys Ford

“Saranghae, agi,” I whispered into his ear, nipping at the lobe. “I love you so much I never want to let you go.”

  He came. Violently. One second Jae was a writhing mess of passion on my lap, and the next he was filling my palm with his release. The hot spill on my hand sent me deeper into the firestorm, and I finally succumbed, letting my control become ash and my body swirl up into the fiery winds.

  The world spun into a black whirlwind, and for a moment, I couldn’t breathe. Choking on my own breath, I continued to plunge into him, drawing out every last gasp and mewling cry I could. Our torsos were slick with sweat, and other than the sounds of our limbs striking wet skin to wet skin, my ears were filled with my pounding heart and Jae’s grunting release.

  I unraveled, spilling out into my lover. The rush started up between my legs, catching my nerves unaware and twisting them about until I could no longer feel the difference between inside my body and without. Jae pressed back, his spine curved into the hollow of my belly and chest, and I sank into his curled form, bringing my arms up to hold him tight against me.

  My cock continued to jerk, pumping its desire into Jae’s slackening channel. No longer primed and painfully tight, he held me gently between his cheeks, undulating softly to pull me to the end. Kissing the tiny scores I’d left on his shoulders, I fell sideways into the cushions, taking him with me.

  We lay there, still joined and doing nothing more than trying to catch our breaths. I made trails on Jae’s belly with my fingers, using his sticky spill as it dried under my fingernails. He shifted, only enough to get comfortable, but my latex-wrapped cock slid free from him and I sighed, resigned to losing the feel of him around me.

  “You know,” I said when I finally could find my tongue in my mouth. “I don’t think I spent enough time on your nipples.” I tweaked one, and he hissed. “Huh, guess I spent enough time on them to make them tender. Give me a minute and I’ll lick them better.”

  “I can’t stay,” Jae whispered. “I… didn’t mean for this… to happen.”

  “What? This? This always happens, baby.” A rush of cold air chewed up my body when Jae slid off of me. “I love this. I love you. This is what happens when people love each other.”

  “No, Cole-ah.” Jae reached for his jeans, refusing to meet my eyes while he tugged them up over his slender hips. “I didn’t come here to make love to you. I came here to tell you good-bye.”

  Chapter 11

  I WASN’T going to have this conversation naked and with my cock wrapped in a semen-filled balloon. The condom came off with a tug. It ended up in the small trash can with all the stupid ad-cards magazines shoved in between their stapled pages. Still sticky from our joining, I peeled myself off the couch and tugged on my boxers, nearly bashing my head against the apothecary chest in my rush to get them on.

  I didn’t need to hurry. Jae wasn’t going anywhere. In fact, he’d pulled on his jeans, then fallen back onto the couch, overlooking the fact that we’d spread most of our sex over its cushions.

  Fallen back was too strong of a word. Looking down at him from the end of the sofa, his long body curled up tight in on itself, replete was a much better choice. Devastated was also a good choice, but I liked shattered best.

  “I’m not going to let you say good-bye,” I murmured, climbing onto the couch next to him. Lightly touching his arm with my fingertips, I ran them up over his elbow and down to his wrist. Working my fingers into his, I was shocked to find out how cold they were against the heat of my palm. “Jae, talk to me. What did you mean… good-bye?”

  “I can’t do this, agi.” He looked up at me, his eyes shiny with tears. They clung to his lashes, growing heavier as I watched. Then one fell, coursing down the cheek I’d kissed moments ago. Another followed, trailing down after its brother, and their combined weight formed a single drop, its heavy curve poised to fall from Jae’s jaw.

  “What did you mean?” I pressed, kissing away that tear before it fell onto his shoulder. I felt like I needed to keep his sorrow from falling onto his chest, away from where he kept his heart… away from where he kept his love for me. If I could do that, then I could keep him safe from whatever chased him… from whatever hurt him.

  It was silly nonsense, and to spite the silent nightmares galloping through my mind, he smiled at the gentle brush of my lips across his face. He hated to be touched when emotional. He hated feeling weak and needing someone. I usually had to wait until he turned to me for comfort. In this instance, I wasn’t going to wait.

  Not while a blood-numbing frost spread through my chest and into my fears.

  My own pussy-ass fears could wait. It was time to chase off Jae’s boo-wigglies. Mine could stand by pulling on their own puds and wait their turn.

  I pulled him into my arms, cradling him in my lap like I did his cat when she wanted attention. He sat there, legs pulled up under him, and let me rock him, even sighing when I stroked his hair. We stank and stuck together where our skin met, but that didn’t matter. All that mattered was that our skin met, and his rigid, tense spine began to relax.

  The sun set on us, lengthening the shadows in the living room. The pendant light I’d left on in the front hall gave me enough to see him, but it wouldn’t have mattered if we’d been drenched in darkness. Half an hour into Jae’s crumple, his threadbare control gave way, and his shoulders shook with the force of his sadness.

  It hurt as much to hold him as to hear him say he’d meant to tell me good-bye. He’d held me when I’d fallen apart in the car after the worst dinner of my life. I could stand holding him through this. Even as every tear he shed burned down through me as if they were drops of molten metal on my plastic soul, he was worth the pain… worth the anguish. I told him as much, murmuring and rocking him while he cried. Jae cried ugly, shattering cascades of broken sounds and shuddering shakes in his bones.

  “No matter what you’re going through, Jae,” I whispered into the shell of his ear. “I’m going to be here. Whatever you need, I’ll make happen. It’ll be okay. I promise you, baby, I’ll make it okay.”

  The quakes subsided after an hour, but he remained in my arms, sagged over and hidden behind a veil of his black hair. I ached in places. My shoulder throbbed from my boxing bout with Bobby, and there were crawling shivers along my abused knees and thighs from the sex I’d had with Jae. A crick formed in my neck from holding Jae tightly, but I stayed still, letting him soak up whatever he needed from me.

  If I died there—holding him while he cried—that would have been okay too.

  “I came here to tell you good-bye… to tell you I couldn’t… do this… be this anymore, but I can’t. I can’t do that. Not to you. Not to me.”

  “What happened? Was it your sister? Jae, we can work through this. You just have to trust me. Have some faith in me… in us.”

  “My mother called me.” I barely heard him through the curtain of his hair and the occasional hiccup, but the dread his words caused in me was immediate.

  A left turn in the conversation, but I followed behind him. “What did she say?”

  “Uncle wants Jae-Su.” He bent back, and I shifted to cradle him comfortably. Turning him slightly, I could see his face, a drawn beauty overburdened with other people’s pressures. “She’s lost her mind over it.”

  “Okay, much like playing Pictionary with you, I’m lost.”

  “Uncle Kim… Hyun-Shik’s father… he wants to formally adopt Jae-Su. Make Su his real son. His legal son.” Jae let loose another one of his shuddering exhales. “My mother isn’t taking it well. She’s… frantic. It’s why Tiffany ran away. My mother went after her with scissors during an argument. Things up there aren’t… good. It’s too much, Cole-ah. My mother. My brother. Then Tiff finding out about us… it just became too much.”

  Okay, so his mother was crazy, but his however-many-times-removed cousin he called Uncle adopting Jae’s older brother didn’t make any sense. Said uncle didn’t have too great of a track record. His daughter killed Hyun-Shik, his closet
ed gay son, and then murdered practically everyone else connected to Hyun-Shik. I’d sooner want my nuts cut off with a pair of dull, rusted toenail clippers than be part of that family.

  “Back up a bit and explain that to me.” I kissed the edge of his mouth when he gave me a slight frown. I was going to need a whiteboard to diagram the family’s shit out. “The Jae-Su part. We’ll work on the other shit later.”

  “Jae-Su is Uncle’s son.” Jae shrugged. “My mother… she was Uncle’s lover. Now that Hyun-Shik is dead, he needs someone to step in as his heir, and since Grace is—”

  “Wait a second.” My stomach dropped, and I was almost sick from the thought. “Hyun-Shik was your… brother?”

  “Not me.” Jae rolled his eyes at me. “That’s sick, even for you. Just Jae-Su. Tiff and I had the same father. I don’t know who Ree’s father is. I don’t know if my mother knows who Ree’s father is. Didn’t I tell you this? I thought I told you this.”

  I’d not liked what I’d found out about his cousin while investigating Hyun-Shik’s murder. He was a manipulative asshole who fucked an underage Jae, then pimped him out to a gentlemen’s club to be a dancer when Jae’s aunt kicked Jae out of the house for being gay. I almost would have kissed his sister Grace when I found out she’d killed him if she hadn’t been trying to kill me at the time.

  “No, I can honestly say this is the first time you’ve ever told me this.” Jae’s mother was kind of a whore, but that I kept to myself. Instead I focused back on the conversation. “So your aunt… Grace’s mom… knows that your mom… um—”

  “Had Uncle’s son?” Jae sniffed. “Yeah, it’s why she hates our family. Uncle is my mother’s cousin, remember? They were… close when they were in Seoul, and she came to work for his family. My mother got pregnant, and when Uncle moved here, he moved her too.”

  Now it made sense why Jae was American-born and his brother Korean. “Is Jae-Su older than Hyun-Shik?”

  “No.” He bit his lip, thinking. Jae rubbed at his face. If anything, his hands seemed to spread the tired from his eyes down to his mouth and cheeks. “Younger. A year, I think. Maybe less.”

  “So your mom was—” It was a delicate conversation, one I didn’t think I could maneuver through without damaging Jae’s sensibilities. “Okay, your mom had an affair with a married guy and got knocked up. Now your uncle… third cousin… whatever… wants his grown son to step into the family business ’cause the original model is dead?”

  “Yes.” Jae nodded. “Uncle’s sent my mother money to support Jae-Su. Now, she feels like he’s being taken away from her… and she’s going to lose whatever hold she has left over Uncle… and probably any money he’d been sending her. I don’t know… it’s complicated. How do I tell her I love men? Now? When it looks like I’m the only son she has left?”

  Fucking hell. Jae’s mother already had a tenuous hold on reality. Losing a meal ticket would send her over the edge. Losing Jae, however, would kill me.

  “So you came here to break it off with me.” Made sense in Jae’s mind. My guts weren’t too fond of the plan, but I had to admit to his logic. “Going to be honest with you, I’m kinda glad you couldn’t go through with it. What changed your mind?”

  “I want to be happy, Cole-ah.” Resting his cheek on my arm, he stared up into my face. The old-fashioned lights along the walk were on, pouring a soft yellow glow through the living room windows. It softened the agony lines on his face, although not as much as the smile he gave me when he touched my face with his fingertips. “I want to be happy with you. I want… you’ve made me want things I can’t have, and now, when I feel like I’m losing everything… that I have to lose everything, you’re still here. Holding me. Loving me. And that hurts me, Cole-ah. As much as I love having you, it breaks me inside.”

  It was time to be brave. Even if it broke me. I had to be… a man.

  “Do you want me to let you go?”

  Jae’s guileless brown gaze raked over my face, searching for something I didn’t know if he’d find. If he wanted me to let him go, I would. I was tired too. But if he needed me to be, I’d be strong enough to walk away. Or at least walk until he couldn’t see me. Then, I’d be able to stumble into the broken glass he’d left behind for me to fall on.

  “No, agi.” Jae twisted in my lap, straddling my thighs. Placing his palms on my cheek, he kissed me.

  After months of having him in my life, his kisses could still take my breath away.

  When he was done, I decided breathing was really highly overrated.

  “So, no, then?” I cocked my head, staring up at the pretty-faced, feral man who could only tell me he loved me in Korean. “Because I’m telling you, once you say No, Cole, don’t let me go, that’s a done deal. You’re never going to be able to get rid of me.”

  He brought his lips close to mine so I could feel his mouth moving against mine and said, “No, Cole-ah, don’t ever let me go.”

  This time, it was my kiss that stole the air from our lungs, and Jae somehow ended up underneath me and pinned to the couch. His hands were in my hair, twisting about and pulling me closer, refusing to let me up. Our tongues fought their own battle, ignorant of the explosive sex we’d already shared. My cock stirred, telling me it was ready for round two. I ignored it.

  Sometimes, it was all about the kissing and cuddles. Especially when a certain feral Korean needed to be held.

  “I need to be this man with you, Cole-ah. A man who loves men, and it scares me. It scares me so deep inside, I am cold from the fear of it, but,” he whispered in the deepening darkness, “I want to come home to you. When we’re here, I feel… safe. I feel wanted. You make me doubt when I’m happy because I feel like I can’t hold it inside of me. Being with you is like… my soul coming with happiness. Does that make any sense?”

  “It makes total sense.” I bit his chin, getting him to laugh. “If it makes you feel any better, you make my soul come too.”

  “Good to know I am not the only one, then.” He laughed again, a sharp sound but freer than I’d heard in a long time. “What am I going to do? My mother… this would kill her. I know it. Even if I’m not… Jae-Su, she depends on me.”

  Mostly, I thought she used him for money, but that was my take on their relationship. “Is Tiffany going to stay with you?”

  “No.” Jae shook his head. “She has to go back. She has school. But my mother, she’s not well.”

  “If she wanted to stay… she can stay here with me… with us,” I offered, and even in the shadows, Jae’s glance drizzled hot sarcasm over my sincerity. “I’m serious. Hell, there’s enough room for both of your sisters. If you think your mom can’t be trusted with them anymore, we’ll move them in. Whatever you need.”

  “And if I need to move someplace large enough for my sisters but not here, you’d be okay with that too?”

  “No.” Making a face, I gave myself points for honesty. I wasn’t going to let myself feel elation. It burbled up from some fragment of hope I couldn’t seem to kill over the past week. Damned hope didn’t spring eternal. It grew like fucking kudzu in places I couldn’t reach. “But if that’s what you need, then yeah, okay. I’ll do that with you too.”

  Jae would need time. He was always cautious, warily easing into something new after viewing it from all angles. The only time he lost himself was behind a camera… and when we were making love. As passions went, they were limited, but he threw everything he had into those moments. Seeing him lose control… and knowing I’d brought him there… fed my ego like nothing else did.

  “You make me feel like being nothing to my family is worth it. I have to get used to that. I have to… learn how that feels.” He sniffed at himself and made a face. “Can… you make me some tea? Or should I shower first? I smell.”

  “How about if you hop into the shower and I’ll bring you up your tea?” Leering at him, I waggled my eyebrows. “Or maybe we can just go have hot piggy-bunny sex in the shower, and then I can make you tea?”

&n
bsp; “Piggy-bunnies do not have hot sex,” Jae grumbled, sliding off of me. I missed his warmth, but he was right. We were odiferous.

  “If anything should have hot sex, it should be piggy-bunnies.” I stood, hugging him from behind and biting the velvety skin of his nape. “Bacon and rabbits. Both very conducive to the smexy. Come on. I’ll even show you where they got the word porking from.”

  JAE left me with kisses and a promise to call me. He took my heart with him too, but that I didn’t mind. The Dr Pepper shirt I was beginning to miss, but he’d claimed it as his. He also left me the cat. The morning dawned, and other than my muscles aching from being stretched over Jae’s body, I was feeling pretty good.

  “Don’t give me that look,” I told Neko when she came down to investigate my boots. “Your daddy came by. Fed you again, like you needed it. You’re going to sleep off that fat belly. You’re not even going to know I’m gone.”

  She miaowed a complaint at me. It could have been about anything from the price of salmon to the state of my socks. With Neko, one never knew.

  Bobby opened the door without knocking. He had a key and wasn’t too shy to use it. Leaning over to scritch the cat, he looked up the length of my legs, raking his gaze up my body until he got to my face, then smirked. “You had a booty call.”

  “You have booty calls,” I grumbled, sitting down on the hallway bench to pull on my boots. “I make love. Especially where Jae’s concerned.”

  “Did you call him?” The foyer light caught on the few silver strands in Bobby’s close-shorn hair. “Or did he call you?”

  “Neither,” I admitted. “He was waiting for me on the front porch.”

  “So, he pretty much knew it was a sure thing, then?” Bobby buffed his nails on his chest, posturing against the banister. His bulk blocked out most of the light I needed to see my shoelaces. I pinched him in the ass. I couldn’t get much meat through his jeans, but it was enough of a squeeze to get him to move. He shifted, but only to block more of my light.