by Amy Lane
“I am so confused.”
But by the time they got food and then got to the house, Jonah understood—he understood a lot. He understood that Ethan’s roommates were more than just a pretty boy and a gorilla. The pretty boy ran a business and apparently was sharp enough to get custody of a child by using a cell phone while standing by his lover’s bed. The gorilla owned a house and was sole support for his sister and her kid and had, in fact, helped the kid through her treatment for leukemia.
And both of them had needed Ethan’s help, and Ethan had come through.
“God, that’s complicated,” he muttered as they pulled up to the two-story house in one of the new developments in Natomas. “So we’re basically here to evict Kane’s sister?”
Ethan nodded, and he suddenly looked hard and adult. “Yeah. I really just need you to stay in the car with Frances—me and the guys’ll do the heavy lifting.”
“Of course,” Jonah said dryly. Chase and Tommy were already out on the lawn with a bed frame and a mattress, and a guy with a blond buzz cut and a baby-faced kid who’d been in one of Ethan’s latest videos were out on the lawn with a dresser full of clothes.
Ethan kissed his cheek distractedly and got out of the truck. “Guys!” he called. “Hey—the stuff in the kid’s room. I need some of that shit with me, okay? Leave the crib and the changing table, and everything else goes in the back of the truck.”
Jonah turned on the radio and listened to One Direction patiently while Ethan and the other guys from Johnnies moved stuff around. It only took one song (okay, and half of Rihanna’s “Shut Up and Drive”) before Jonah realized the full import of what they were doing.
The woman’s stuff—the dresser, the clothes, the bed—those weren’t getting moved anywhere. Those were getting set on the lawn.
For a terrible moment, he wanted to stop them.
They were evicting Kane’s sister. They were kicking her out of her house. The little girl’s mother—she was getting evicted out of her child’s life. Ethan was a good guy—he was a hero. How could good guys do this? What sort of assholes evicted a woman and separated her from her child?
All of his preconceptions about Johnnies flooded back in one idea, leaving him cold and repulsed by the people he was with and what he was doing, and for a moment, he could hardly breathe.
And then there was a gentle tapping at the window and a quiet, happy voice behind him.
“Unca Dex!”
Jonah rolled down the window and looked into the eyes of Ethan’s roommate.
He made Ethan look well rested and ready for his headshots.
Dex’s blond hair hung stringy and messed, and his bloodshot eyes had bags underneath. He wore an old sweatshirt and jeans with unfashionable holes in them, and he looked like he was holding himself together with maybe the last thread of who he was.
But still, he managed to summon up a smile for the little girl in the back of the cab.
“How you doin’, bunny?” he asked kindly. “You ready to come home with me to Unca Kane’s house?”
Frances nodded. “Mommy? Will Mommy be there?”
Dex’s expression wrenched, twisted, and for a moment, his eyes really did spill over. “Bunny, I don’t think so. We love you, and we don’t want you to be hurt.”
And Jonah looked behind him and saw the girl with the bruised face and the split lip and realized—really realized—that sometimes ugly wasn’t a person’s choice. Sometimes you just had to protect the innocent and hope for the best.
“Hey, Jonah,” Dex said directly to him, and Jonah jerked his attention to the friends who needed his help.
“Yeah? What do you need?”
“Here—I’m gonna get her, could you get her baby seat? We’re going to put it in the back of Ethan’s car so I can take her home.”
“Yeah, uh—weren’t you squaring things up at work?” Jonah remembered something like that.
Dex gave him a crooked smile. “Yeah, well, it turns out Kelsey isn’t a ‘fainting fricking violet’—her words, by the way—and she can hold down the fort for today. I was hoping to get Frances home so we could have a nap and then go visit Kane this afternoon.”
“How’s he doing?”
“Unca Kane’s in the hoppital,” Frances told him gravely, and Jonah nodded. “He got ouchie all over heeeeeeere.” She used her hands to indicate her head, and Jonah gulped a little bit again. Yeah. This wasn’t Dex’s fault, or Kane’s either. This was something they had to pull the little girl out of. God, he was a judgmental dumbass sometimes.
Dex got the little girl out and said, “I’m going to go talk to Ethan,” and Jonah struggled with the car seat. It looked simple, but the buckle got caught on all sorts of shit in the plastic grill on the back of the seat, and Jonah glared at it, thinking there had to be an easier way. When it finally pulled free, he saw that Ethan’s car was unlocked, so he went to wrestle the seat into the back, swearing up a storm as he fiddled.
And that’s where he was when the woman in the black SUV literally drove past him and up onto the lawn, and then hopped out of the car and started screaming.
Jonah looked up, frozen, an observer to a drama in which he had no part.
Dex took one look at the woman, and even Jonah could see he was done. She screamed at him in Spanish, and Dex’s face hardened. “Forget it, Fabiola—you had your chance. You picked Hector over your brother, and you don’t get her back.” He still had Frances in his arms, and the baby started to cry. Dex turned his back on the screaming mother and just sheltered the little girl with his muscular back. It felt like all of his resources were spent in that one sentence, and all he could do was shelter the baby and take the hits. He didn’t even know how to run away.
He didn’t have to. Ethan, Tommy, and Chase all stepped in between Fabiola and Dex’s protective back, and Ethan spoke first.
“No—no, you don’t get the baby back!” he shouted. Jonah jerked, because he’d always known that Ethan’s voice was deep, but he’d never realized how hard Ethan worked not to let his voice carry. That sound resonated up the soles of Jonah’s shoes—Jonah was surprised the entire neighborhood didn’t stick their heads out to hear the giant yelling at the tiny Hispanic woman who looked deceptively innocent.
“Who are you?” the woman shouted. “That’s my baby—I didn’t mean he should keep her forever, just until I went to the cops for my husband—”
“Too bad!” Ethan snapped. “You picked your husband over your baby, and over your brother, and you can’t do that, Fabiola. It doesn’t matter if you’re the mother—if you pick hate or fear and you don’t pick your kid, you lose your kid. Look at her! Look at her face! Did you even see her face? Man, my mother hated me, but she never let my face look like that. You can’t pick the guy who hurt her—you can’t. You’ve got power, sweetheart, but if you don’t use it to take care of your kid, you’re not using it well enough.” Ethan was tired too, just like Dex, and his voice shook. “You’re not using it right. If you pick the thing that hurts your kid over the thing that makes her feel good, you’re fucking it up. Do you hear me? You’re fucking it up! And you’ve got to go somewhere else and maybe not be this kid’s mom until you can fix that, because lady, I’ve had the mom with all the hate and all the fucking fear, and I’m telling you, better no mom at all than a mom who makes that choice.”
Jonah heard it. Did everyone else there hear it? The throbbing, the anger, the need for love that went so deep it saturated his skin—did they hear that? Jonah wiped his face on the shoulder of his jacket and buckled the car seat like it had never been a problem, then walked up beside his boyfriend to just be there for him, whether this was his problem or not.
By the time he got there, Fabiola was crying. “He’s my husband,” she sobbed. “How do you let that go?”
“You’d rather let your kid go?” Ethan asked. “You’d rather let your brother go? Lady, that’s not our shit to fix. You go fix that yourself, because we’ve got babies to take care of, and we don�
��t need that sickness around the babies.”
Jonah saw a movement and realized that Dex was leaning into Ethan’s back. Ethan turned and instinctively wrapped an arm around him, and started walking him around the mess on the lawn. Tommy, Chase, and the other two guys made a wall, and as Fabiola watched Dex move to the sidewalk toward Ethan’s car, they just slid into place between her and Dex—and the sniffling little girl in Dex’s protective arms.
“Fabiola?” Tommy said, his voice as gruff and flinty as it ever got.
“Who are you?” she asked, and Tommy bared one sharp canine in a snarl.
“It doesn’t fuckin’ matter. I’m the guy who’s moving your shit to the lawn, that’s who. A lot of this is clothes. Since you’re obviously gonna choose your husband instead of your kid because you’re apparently a lot dumber than your brother, maybe you wanna grab your clothes while you’re here. It’s foggy today, but it might rain tonight, and all this shit’s gonna be toast if you don’t get it off the fucking lawn.”
Fabiola gasped and pulled out her phone. With the phone in one hand, she started picking her clothes up off the dressers and the bed frame with the other, and spoke rapid-fire Spanish to the person on the other end of the line. While she did this, Dex drove her daughter away.
Jonah stepped carefully out of her way, and as Ethan came up behind him, Jonah shouted to his boss, “Hey, Tommy—what do we need to get? A little instruction here!”
Tommy looked at him and nodded in appreciation. “Go with Ethan and get the kid stuff—they need a lot of shit, and I think Dex only took a little bit home last night.”
“How do you know they need a lot of shit?” Chase asked, but it sounded like he was teasing.
“You think I ain’t been reading up? Jesus, I may be all excited about this daddy thing, but I’m not stupid.”
“You hooked up with me, didn’t you?” Chase asked, but as he passed Jonah, he winked, and Jonah thought about what wonderful things his smile did to his thin features. He’d seen Chase’s porn—had seen him, in fact, with Ethan—and his body had been built, and he’d had the same cocky, don’t-give-a-shit smile Ethan had worn the first time Jonah had seen him. It was almost like seeing a new person now, but this one was real and imperfect—and happy.
The house was really awesome. Ethan bumped his shoulder and led him through a front room with a big vaulted ceiling into a nice little kid’s bedroom on the ground floor. All of the doors were open, and Jonah could see a big bedroom past the kid’s room, and what looked to be a bathroom adjoined to that.
“There’s a suite in the upstairs too?” Jonah asked, impressed.
Ethan nodded. “Yeah. It sorta sucks. I remember when Kane bought this place—he was all excited because he had money from doing scenes, and we helped him move in, and he had… well, not much. It was like him and the animals on the ground floor. Anyway, he let Fabiola move in around October, and she told him he couldn’t live here because of the gay, and—”
“Wait a minute—his sister kicked him out of his own house?” Jonah shook his head. “Man… don’t you guys know any nice people?”
Ethan thought about it. “We know each other. We know you. Anyway.” Ethan looked around. “See, Kelsey and I were talking about it this morning. We figure, she’s due in June, and Chase’s ex-girlfriend is due in May, and Kane and Dex have Frances now, and they’re gonna need child care. And, you know. I mean, I know it probably gives you the heebie-jeebies—I mean, you know what I do for a living, but I swear, I’m not like that, and….” Ethan looked around the little girl’s room with the crib and the changing table wistfully. Some of this stuff Jonah thought maybe Frances had grown out of, but if there were going to be more kids, then it would be needed. “I’m real good with kids,” Ethan said, his voice weak. “Never mind. We’ll think of someone else. We’ll keep this like this so Kelsey has—”
Jonah turned to him and kissed his cheek. “You should have seen yourself,” he said quietly. “Defending Dex and that baby. You were right. If you’re going to be a parent, you have to pick the kid. Over the husband or the rest of the family if they’re abusive. Over the mom’s fears,” Jonah said, his voice dropping. “Over your prejudices. You can do that, Ethan. You can protect these kids. You know what it was like when nobody protected you. You can make sure your friends’ kids are okay. I think that’s a real good thing.”
Ethan smiled shyly at him. “You think that’s a good thing?”
Jonah stood on tiptoe and kissed his cheek. “I think it’s maybe the best thing. I think it’s the thing you were supposed to do. I know we couldn’t sign up for school this semester, but I think maybe you should apply for child development and child psych classes, and maybe that’s what you should do. I think this place? This is a real good start.”
Ethan smiled at him shyly, and Jonah’s heart was suddenly so tight in his chest he couldn’t breathe. That shy smile, in the eyes of a man who had been naked for thousands of people—God. That smile was just for Jonah. Nobody else saw that smile in Evan Costa’s eyes.
“It’ll be a while before all the babies come,” Ethan said quietly. “And I’m on the schedule for about two more months.”
Jonah nodded. “I hear you,” he said quietly, thinking that if he could see an end, he could live with about anything just to be the only one Ethan smiled at in bed, ever.
“I mean, I’ll maybe just go longer, test the waters, you know….”
Jonah could hear the throbbing in Ethan’s voice, the begging for understanding.
“I can wait for you,” he said with a gentle kiss. “I can wait for you.”
“I’ll always… always want to hang on them,” Ethan burst out. “I mean—”
And Jonah really did get this. “Always. They will always want to touch you—I get that. But it’s okay. When you’re ready for me to move in, you let me know. My parents need me for a little while longer. But as soon as you need me, Evan, I’ll be your only guy.”
Evan smiled and nodded, his eyes shiny bright. Jonah figured that this was probably as much emotion as either of them needed on this day.
“How about right now, we just move this shit into the truck.”
Ethan grinned, and the mood between them broke, which was a relief. “Now that,” he said seriously, “is something I can do.”
The Final Step to a Life in Progress
JONAH’S body was so responsive. He sat on top of Ethan, their new favorite position, his sphincter hot and tight around Ethan’s cock, his body undulating as he worked Ethan in and out and up and down and deep and shallow in a subtle, slow, maddening rhythm that had Ethan a sweat droplet away from losing his mind, grabbing Jonah’s hips, and pounding the ever-loving hell out of him.
But he couldn’t, because Jonah had tied his hands to his new brass headboard with a clean sweat sock. Even if Ethan could rip that fucker in half with the need to pummel Jonah until he screamed, Jonah was having so much fun teasing Ethan that he just didn’t have the heart.
“Ahhhh….” Jonah hissed, sliding down, down, down, spreading his newly waxed ass-cheeks and getting even closer to the base of Ethan’s dick. When he did that and then tilted his pelvis just so…. “Yes!” Jonah shouted. “God, yes! Grab me, Ev, please!”
“Uhm, tied up here!” Ethan half laughed, and then he arched his hips, flexing his stomach just as far as it could go, lifted his neck off the pillow, stuck out his tongue, and met Jonah’s eyes defiantly.
Jonah whimpered and moved, moved, moved, until Ethan’s giant crown was right there at Jonah’s entrance and Jonah’s cock was—Ethan flicked the end of his tongue at the slit and tasted the bitter salt of his dripping pleasure.
“Oh God!” Jonah whined, thrusting backward to ride Ethan hard—and losing Ethan’s tongue on his prick.
“You want me to stroke it?” Ethan taunted. “Then untie me.”
“Unh!” Jonah threw his head back. A beam of spring sunshine hit him full in the face, turning his hair gold and showing the faint fre
ckles on his fair cheeks. God, he was gorgeous.
Ethan gave the sock a tug and flexed his hips so he slid out of Jonah’s ass. “What’s that? I can’t hear you!”
“Can you lick me again?” Jonah pleaded, scooting on the bed, arching his body, and holding a hand back to keep Ethan lodged in his hole.
Ethan did the sex-crunchy again, this time bowing his back enough to be able to open his mouth and take just the tip of Jonah’s crown inside and lick the head until Jonah spurted precome some more and groaned, sliding back onto Ethan’s cock.
“I’m gonna come from that alone,” Jonah panted. “God, that’s hot!”
“You go ahead and come,” Ethan threatened, his voice low, his hips flexing. “You come. You spurt jizz all over my stomach, my chest, my face, and I’ll keep fucking you. I’ll rip this fucking sock in half and turn you around and nail you to the fucking be—”
“Augh!” Jonah groaned, throwing his body back onto Ethan’s prick and doing exactly what Ethan ordered. His spend spattered across Ethan’s abs and his chest and even hit Ethan on the chin, and Ethan growled and ripped his hands out of the damned sock.
Then he grabbed Jonah’s hips and flipped them on the bed, making good on his threat as he fucked Jonah hard. Jonah begged, pleaded, vocal and shameless and joyful and God, everything a man should be when he was in bed with someone he loved.
Ethan growled and thrust one more time and collapsed on top of Jonah, pouring himself into Jonah’s body again and again and again. Jonah’s ass clenched in one more afterspasm and Ethan’s climax rolled over, crouched tightly, and, when Jonah moaned into his ear, sprang and roared again.
His come dripped between Jonah’s ass cheeks, his cock slid in his own spend, and still, his eyes rolled back in his head and Jonah clutched him to his chest and whispered sweet, private things until he was done.
