At Attention
Page 24
“Come here.” His voice was husky, giving away too much, but he didn’t care as he straddled Apollo’s lap. “I want you for you too. I know you think this is just a silly crush—”
Apollo cut him off with a kiss. “I don’t think that. Not anymore. You get me.” He rolled his forearm so Dylan could see the gauze covering the new tattoo. “Puzzle piece, remember? You make everything else make sense.”
Dylan lightly traced the edge of the bandage. The tattoo itself was small, fairly unobtrusive as far as ink went, a little blue three-dimensional edge puzzle piece. And he couldn’t wait to see it again once the bandage came off. “You make everything make sense too. I’ve missed you,” he admitted. “So much.”
“I missed you too.” Apollo pulled him closer for a kiss. The kiss started slow, a gentle acknowledgment of what they’d been doing without, a way to communicate all the longing they’d built up, but it quickly morphed into something hotter, needier.
“Need your skin.” Dylan started in on Apollo’s shirt buttons then paused remembering that he was still in the shorts and shirt he’d scrimmaged in. “Fuck. I should really shower before—”
“Fuck sweat. I could be trapped in the desert with you for a week, and I’d still want you. Shower after. I painted the bathroom too, and there’s a huge shower in there that you’ll love, but right now I need this.” Apollo yanked Dylan’s shirt off. “Need you.”
They scrambled out of their remaining clothes, barely breaking apart, until they were both naked and Dylan was back on Apollo’s lap, letting him know with lips and tongue how even that brief separation had been too long. Their cocks rubbed together, and Dylan pressed closer, seeking more of the delicious friction. The hair on Apollo’s stomach rasped against his sensitive skin and Apollo’s grip on his ass urged him closer still.
Apollo nibbled on his neck, making Dylan shiver and squirm. “I...probably...need a shave,” he gasped.
“This is me not giving a fuck.” Apollo nipped at the skin under his Adam’s apple. He wormed a hand between the two of them, getting both their cocks in his big hand.
“Yeah, that.” Dylan arched into the contact. “Not going to last long. Been too long.”
“Way too long,” Apollo agreed. A sly smile crept over his face. “So you haven’t...”
“My hand and I are besties,” Dylan confirmed. “Nothing else. I was too hung up on you.”
“Is it wrong that I’m glad?” Apollo claimed his mouth again, a possessive gesture that made Dylan’s toes clench and his hands tighten on Apollo’s shoulders. His dick throbbed as Apollo stroked their cocks, slowly at first, way too lightly, but picking up speed as the kiss grew hungrier, more demanding.
It wasn’t enough though and Dylan pushed his hand between them as well, covering Apollo’s. Instead of batting him away, Apollo groaned, moving his hand so that they were both stroking, linked hands forming a tight channel for their dicks. “Yeah, that’s it. Together.”
“Together,” Dylan echoed.
“Gonna come for me?” Apollo rocked his hips, moving Dylan against him with his free hand, starting an urgent rhythm.
“Yeah,” Dylan gasped.
“Good. Want that. Want to come together.” Apollo growled, dropping his head to bite at Dylan’s shoulder, raising goosebumps all down Dylan’s spine.
“Fuck. Apollo. Need...”
“Yeah, beautiful. Whatever you need.” Apollo’s hand sped up first, but Dylan caught the new rhythm quickly, tightening his own grip, loving how that made Apollo groan.
“Missed you,” Dylan chanted. “Missed you so much. God. Need this.”
“Me too. Me too.” Apollo’s lips soothed where he’d abraded Dylan’s shoulder. “Come on. Come for me. Love watching you come.”
“Need this.” Dylan’s hips started to buck, ass clenching, as he rocked harder into their combined grip. “Oh God. Apollo. Want you.”
“You’ve got me.” Apollo shuddered, eyes intent. Sweat dripped down his chest, whole body tense with holding back. Waiting for me. Power surged through Dylan. They’d both done more than enough waiting. He sped up, seeking the stroke that would throw them both over.
“Unngh. Right...oh fuck.” Warmth hit Dylan’s fist, as Apollo’s body shook under his. That was all Dylan needed, all he’d been waiting for, and he came hard, whispering Apollo’s name over and over. The orgasm felt like the culmination of a triathlon, stripping him bare, the finish line a catharsis for weeks of work, but leaving him triumphant. Exuberant even. They’d made it. They were here, and that was all that mattered.
* * *
Apollo woke early, when the world was still dark, a thin sliver of light from the master bathroom casting shadows around the not-quite-dawn room. This would probably be a good time to nudge Dylan toward the guest room or figure out how in the heck he was going to explain his presence when the girls woke up, but Apollo was too happy to care about any of that. Genuinely, improbably, happy.
He rubbed the still-tender skin of his new tattoo. He’d taken the bandage off after the shower last night, but it was still new and healing.
Kind of like us. Things with Dylan were still fragile with a lot yet to be worked out, but he was confident at last that they could do it. He only needed to look around the room to know that he was on the right path. Dylan fit here, as surely as a puzzle piece, snapping into place. He fit in the place Apollo had opened up for them. For himself really. He given himself the space for this, and although a sleeping Dylan in his arms was a pretty nice reward, this wasn’t for Dylan. It was for him, because he deserved this—something that it had taken him weeks to work out, to accept, but he did.
“Thank you,” he whispered to the dark. Neal was always going to be a part of him, and he wasn’t deluding himself that he was ever going to stop missing him. But the ache was less acute now, leaving behind a bittersweet peace where there had been rage before. Life—and death—happened, and what mattered was what they did in between, and right now, Dylan was what he wanted to do, and that was okay. Good even.
“Mmmmph.” Dylan stirred, stretching against Apollo. “Is it morning?”
“Not yet.” Apollo kissed his head. “Go back to sleep.”
“I should probably go. You don’t want me here when the girls get up. And besides, I’ve got Sunday brunch at Ben and Maddox’s—”
“Wait a second. I have Sunday brunch. Maddox invited me earlier in the week. Didn’t mention anything about you.” Apollo laughed.
“I think our friends are setting us up.” Dylan nudged his shoulder. “Probably best if one of us cancels—”
“What? No way.” Apollo gave him a resounding kiss. “I say let’s arrive together and save them the trouble of a setup.”
“Seriously?” The wonder in Dylan’s words wounded Apollo. Man, he really had been a dick to Dylan all summer. “You don’t mind if they know?”
“No. I want them to know. I want us to wake up together and go hang out, and I want to meet this roommate of yours and your soccer team. I don’t only want to fuck around. I want to date you.”
“Date? Me? Like really date?”
“Like really date,” Apollo confirmed. He’d done a lot of thinking on this. “It would be too easy to beg you to move back in, but that’s not what either of us needs right now. You need to know that I want you for more than what you bring to the family, and we both need to go slow.”
“You do have a thing about slow,” Dylan grumbled.
“I want to take you to my favorite places around here. I want...” He took a breath, not sure he could voice this part of his plan aloud, but not able to keep it in either. “I want us to fall in love. Like actually fall in love. Like be a real couple—”
“Too late.” Dylan kissed him. “I’m already there. And we don’t need flowers and dancing to be a real couple. Give me fish t
“Really?” Apollo rolled him underneath him, looming over him.
“Really.” Dylan stretched up to meet his mouth. “And take all the time you need, all the dates you need, hell, I’ll follow you to the zoo if that’s what it takes, but...” Dylan’s voice dropped to a whisper. “Yes, let’s fall in love. Fall in love with me.”
“I will.” Moisture stung Apollo’s eyes as he kissed Dylan hard. Dylan met him strength for strength as their bodies moved together like they’d been doing this for years. Like they would be doing this for years.
Chapter Twenty-Five
Nine months later
“Is he here yet?” Chloe bounced in her new booster seat. They’d grown so much in the past few months that Apollo had been forced to upgrade their car seats, just one more in a series of signs that they were growing up, their almost-six-year-old legs dangling down to kick against the seat. “I want to make my pizza.”
“I’m going to read the menu,” Sophia said archly, eager to show off her new talent. “But where’s Dylan? It’s his party!”
“Shh,” Apollo reminded them. “He doesn’t know it’s a party, only that we’re going to Cucina for dinner. A nice dinner, where you will remember your manners, right?”
“Yes, Baba,” they both answered in singsong voices.
“So we can’t tell that Ya-Ya or Dustin or—”
“Here he comes,” Apollo cut Chloe off before she could list all the people meeting them at the restaurant for Dylan’s combined birthday and school/job news celebration. They were picking him up from work at the Boys and Girls club where Dylan had been named the summer day camp director and also received a raise to continue on next fall, when he’d also be doing graduate school part-time.
Which Apollo was not at all freaked out about. No, not him. Look at them making plans for the next year and him not—
“Why do you look like you’re going to be fed nails not steak?” Dylan slid into the passenger seat, leaning in for a quick kiss. “Nervous?”
“Me?” Apollo was not nervous. Not at all. He didn’t do nervous. And besides how would he know... “What did the girls tell you?”
“The girls?” Dylan’s face wrinkled up. “They didn’t have to tell me that you’re on edge about next week. But I took the day off to go with you. It will be fine, I promise.”
Apollo grunted. He’d finally given in to Dylan’s urgings about seeing the specialist about his back, and after a series of diagnostics, he had a surgical consult scheduled for next week. Like so much else in his life, he had to stop letting his fear of the unknown stop him from doing what he knew might help. He rubbed his puzzle tattoo absently before starting the car.
“Happy birthday,” he said, eager to change the subject from his back. “Did the kids all sing to you?”
“Yeah.” Dylan smiled fondly. “I brought cupcakes, so they were thrilled. They all laughed at how old I am now.”
“Ancient,” Apollo said dryly. He was still older, still trying to not let that bug him as much as it once had. But it still prickled at him, especially on nights like this when thoughts of the future kept plaguing him, with good reason.
They arrived at the restaurant, and Dylan helped him unload the girls, holding their hands as they walked into the place.
“Floros,” he told the server, who led them not to a table but to the group event space known as the wine shop.
Dylan’s eyes went wide. “What did you do?”
“Me?” Apollo played innocent as they rounded the corner and everyone called out, “Surprise!”
Dustin greeted his brother with a hug and Apollo with a sage look. They’d talked yesterday, in one of the more awkward conversations of their friendship, but he gave Apollo a discreet thumbs-up now. Ben and Maddox were there as well as Dylan’s roommates and Allie and a few of his other work friends. Zack, newly returned from overseas and looking even more buff than usual, was there with an arm around Pike.
Apollo’s mother had big hugs for Dylan and the girls. It was nice to see his mother sparkle again—something about having Dylan around seemed to have revitalized the whole family.
Apollo had invited Pat and Marilyn, who genuinely did seem to like Dylan and accept his place in Apollo’s life, not that there hadn’t been a few rocky moments over the early months, but they’d demurred, Pat because of the large crowd and Marilyn because she said she didn’t want to intrude on a night that should be about him and Dylan. Which made sense, even though Apollo did kind of want them here. They would always be a huge part of his family and nothing was going to change that.
“You did this?” Dylan looked up at Apollo with the sort of awe he usually reserved for bedroom activities. “Thank you.”
“Baba, look at the presents!” Sophia pointed to the table. “Do our present now too!”
“It’s already on the table.” Apollo dropped his voice, trying to encourage her to do the same.
“I want Dylan to have our present first.” Chloe stuck her lower lip out, not at all lowering her voice. “Baba, you promised!”
“There’s a present on top of the party?” Dylan’s eyes were wide and his voice wavered. The way he worried his lip with his teeth said that he had an idea what was coming. Apollo couldn’t tell if that was a good thing or a bad thing.
“Yeah, Baba, do the present,” Dustin teased. “Or do you need the wine first?”
“Okay, okay.” Like any mission, there was nothing gained from procrastination, and now that Apollo had his target in his sights, he wasn’t backing off just because of a few nerves.
The girls grabbed the large piece of rolled-up paper off the table and tussled over who got to take the bow off.
“Hey, shouldn’t I unwrap it?” Dylan asked, voice still shaky.
“No,” Chloe said, every bit as authoritative as Apollo with his men. She grabbed one edge of the roll and Sophia grabbed the other, revealing the sign they had painstakingly lettered and colored:
Dylan, will you marry our Baba?
Apollo fished in his pocket for the small box. He’d bought it back in December, thinking about Christmas, but things had still felt too new then, dating too much fun, and Dylan hadn’t wanted to talk about moving back in yet. Apollo had known though, even then, that this was where they were headed, something that excited him every bit as much as it terrified him.
Then Valentine’s Day had felt a bit cliché and not really them and he still wasn’t entirely sure what Dylan’s answer would be. This though, this felt right. They’d been talking for weeks about whether Dylan would move in, both to help with Apollo after the surgery and to save money while he did the master’s degree program, but Apollo didn’t want practicality to be the only reasons Dylan came to live with them this time.
Dylan knelt down to the level of the girls. “Yes,” he said, voice breaking. “Yes, I will.”
Then he rose, leaning to kiss Apollo quickly, then putting his lips near Apollo’s ear, “You know I’ll move in regardless, right? I don’t need this.”
“Yeah, well maybe I do,” Apollo whispered back. “Maybe I need you to know that I love you and that I want you in my life—in our lives—permanently. So say yes and mean it.”
“Is that an order?” Dylan laughed against his mouth.
“Absolutely.” Apollo kissed him soundly as everyone clapped for them. The big public proposal thing wasn’t necessarily his style, but he’d known Dylan would love this, would love having their closest people to celebrate with, even if Apollo would rather have done this closer to a bed. And forget steak, he was going to spend the next three hours counting down to when he could feast on Dylan.
“Then yes, yes, I’ll marry you,” Dylan said louder this time so everyone could hear. When the next round of cheers and congratulations died down, Dylan opened the wooden box. “It’s...a picture?”
“It’s a promise,” Apollo corrected him. “We’re going to go pick out something together. I found this gay-friendly studio out in Liberty Station that fuses different recycled golds together for a custom look, but I want you to help choose what we get.”
“You’re getting one too?” Dylan’s voice was hesitant.
“Yes.” Apollo had thought long and hard about this. Getting a new ring—marrying Dylan—was a huge step, one he’d wrestled with more than a little, but he couldn’t shake the feeling of rightness about this.
“I love you,” Dylan whispered, pulling him in for one more kiss. He wanted to be Dylan’s in all the ways that counted, wanted to publicly commit to him in front of the girls and their families because he deserved that. They both did. Just like the rings he envisioned, they deserved this shiny future with its own unique patina and etchings. He might have a history, one he dearly loved and wouldn’t change, but he also had a present, and now a future, and he met Dylan’s lips joyously, without reservations.
* * * * *
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Read on for a sneak preview of ON POINT, the next book in Annabeth Albert’s OUT OF UNIFORM series.
Coming soon from Carina Press and Annabeth Albert
ON POINT
When two SEALS are stranded in the jungle, long-standing friendship and simmering attraction are both put to the test.
Ben was out again. Which wasn’t a surprise, really, and Maddox refused to dwell on it as he rinsed out the bowl. He had a shiny new professional-grade stand mixer and an oven full of muffins. He didn’t need to be worried about his roommate and friend and what he might or might not be getting up to. Chances were high that Ben wouldn’t show up until morning, looking like something their old barn cat back home would have left in Maddox’s shoe. He’d be ravenous to boot and Maddox would have muffins and maybe things wouldn’t be so weird anymore.
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