Never: A MM, Opposites Attract, Fairy Tale Retelling Romance (The Pennymaker Tales Book 4)

by Tara Lain

  Peter felt warmth near his back, then lips on his neck. He giggled. Around his hip came a very hard dick. He gasped. “What are you doing?”

  “If you don’t know, I—”

  “Yeah, yeah.”

  Wen murmured, “We could sleep, but we’d likely be attacked by the python in the night, and neither of us would make it to morning.”

  Peter laughed. Wen really had so much humor when he lightened up a bit. “I think I better greet the wild animal like Tarzan would.” He dropped to his knees and nuzzled against Wen’s cock with his cheek, then took a swipe with his tongue.

  “Hang on. I don’t remember Tarzan licking those lions.”

  “You have to treat pythons differently. With more respect.” He gazed up at Wen as he licked the head of his cock.

  Wen reached down and grabbed Peter under his arms. “Oh no. I am the licker, and you’re the lickee.”

  “Can’t we both be lickees?”

  Wen smiled. “I imagine two pythons could develop a mutual admiration society, and you seem to have brought one with you.” He tweaked the head of Peter’s penis that peeked over the top of the elastic on his briefs. Wen pulled Peter to the couch and pressed fingers against his chest to push him down. Peter scrambled to get on his side and press his back against the couch, making enough room beside him for another snake charmer.

  Wen pulled his shirt over his head—his bottom half already stood proudly bare—and grabbed one of the blankets, pulling it over both of them as he lay down. His head popped up. “Uh, we should probably use latex, right?”

  Peter shook his head. “Not on my account. I haven’t had much, uh, python attention for a while, and I’ve been tested for everything except maybe scurvy, so I’m clean.”

  Wen nodded. “Me too. Do you trust me?”

  “Hell, man, in the dictionary where it says ‘you can trust him with your puppy’s life,’ they have a picture of you. I’m the one you should be questioning.”

  Wen half frowned. “So, can I trust you?”

  That question had a lot of layers. “I’d never lie about that.”

  He gazed at Peter like he caught all the subtleties and was processing them. Wen nodded once, pulled the blanket over his head, and—

  Where did my cock go? “Oh my God!” Like his penis had been stuck into a hot, wet furnace—if a furnace could suck. A sucking furnace. The idea made him giggle again.

  Okay, get in on the action. Peter burrowed under the covers and found Wen’s hips driving forward like some metronome keeping time to his suction. Peter grabbed Wen’s cock in one hand and stilled his hips with the other, inserted Wen’s penis into his own mouth, then let go so the thrusting could commence. All he had to do was suck, since Wen did all the rest of the work.

  Wow. He hadn’t done a lot of sixty-nine in his life. In school he’d usually been the suckee since he’d been popular and guys liked to do it for him. Hell, military school mostly taught boys how to give head as far as he could ever tell. This was really nice, like the best of both worlds. Wen might be a serious business dude, but he made oral sex an art form. His hot tongue slid up and down Peter’s shaft, circled the head, and concentrated on that really sensitive part right under the flare. Then he’d forget all the finesse and go crazy. Peter popped his hips in time to Wen’s until it felt like some automated square pegs thrusting into two round holes in the universe.

  Wen’s breathing got faster and harsher, and the smell of musk and sex filled Peter’s lungs under his blanket tent way more than the paint odor had.

  Wen pulled his mouth away for a second and whispered, “How can you taste this good? Oh man, I’m going to come soon. What about you?”

  “Me too. Just don’t stop, please. Me too.”

  Wen shoved Peter back into his mouth, and if the suction had been intense before, now it leaped off the chart as he pressed his tongue on the bottom of Peter’s cock and forced it against the roof of his mouth, then did some magic thing that kind of milked the head in his throat.

  Peter opened his mouth to scream, remembered where he was, and shoved the end of the blanket in his throat to muffle the sound. “Nnnnnggggguuuu.”

  A flash lit up his brain as some fountain burst out of him and disappeared into Wen’s mouth.

  Forgot! He slid Wen’s penis back into his semislack mouth, letting his tongue play over the silky skin. It was the best he could do under the circumstances.

  It must have been enough because Wen kind of gargled and spunk shot into Peter’s mouth and coated his hand.

  Wow. If he’d painted the picture just so he could get Wen to suck his cock—totally worth it.

  Chapter Ten

  The sound of breathing under the covers slowed. Wen’s body vibrated and his head spun like he’d been in a centrifuge. Air. He crawled toward the end of the couch and stuck his head out of the covers, then flipped over and propped his head on the arm of the sofa. Looking back toward his feet, he almost laughed. The long sinuous shape wrapped in a greenish blanket could totally be the python they’d joked about.

  As Wen watched, Peter wriggled his way to the opposite end of the couch, popped his face out, then half sat up in a mirror of Wen—turning them into some fantasy creature with a head at both ends.

  They stared at each other, half smiling.

  The words forced themselves out of Wen’s mouth—the mouth that still tasted like Peter’s cum. “If you don’t usually sell your paintings, how do you live? How do you pay for your apartment and food and everything?”

  Peter instantly frowned. He obviously didn’t like to be questioned about his life—or real life in general.

  Wen held up a hand. “Sorry. None of my business.”

  Peter exhaled slowly like he was letting go of anger. “I do different things. Sometimes I sing with the Lost Boys, sometimes I bartend or dance at a strip club.”

  Wen burst out a laugh. “Seriously? You strip?”

  “Yeah, it’s fun.” He smiled tightly, and his tone held some challenge.

  “I gather you’re old enough to bartend.”

  “My ID says I am.” He really grinned that time.

  Wen grimaced. “Come on, how old are you?”

  “Why do you care?”

  “I’d hate to think I was committing some kind of illegal act.”

  “Don’t worry about it. You’re not.” He grinned and glanced down at his long-fingered hands. “Unless being too good at BJs is a crime.”

  “Glad you enjoyed it.”

  “How’d a conservative family man like you get so talented at smoking the gherkin?”

  Wen tried not to frown. “When you don’t get to do something you like very often, you want to make the occasions memorable.”

  “I’ll certainly remember it.” Peter glanced up, then back down.

  Funny how his belly kind of rolled in a tight ball. “I guess we don’t have much in common, do we?”

  “Understatement.”

  “Like two worlds colliding or something.”

  “Yeah. I usually avoid people like you.”

  “Like me?” Do I want to hear this?

  Peter shrugged and exhaled long and loud. “Money, uh, earners whose whole life is about where the next paycheck is coming from.” He looked up. “I totally get why you have to do it. I mean, you have lots of responsibilities. But do you get that some people would just walk away? They’d let some distant uncle or friend or the state take care of John and Michaela. It’d never cross their minds that it was their burden to take care of them.”

  “But—“

  Peter nodded. “It never occurred to you that it was anyone else’s job, right?”

  Wen nodded, his heart hammering.

  “So that’s what I mean when I say ‘people like you.’”

  “And you don’t like those people. The people like me.”

  “Didn’t say that. I said I avoid them.” He pulled the cover up to his face and over his mouth like he was doing the dance of the seven veils, then s
et it down.

  “Why?”

  “Too—” He raised his shoulders. “—too. It’s hard for me to take life that seriously.”

  Wen stared at him. All he could see was his mother’s pretty face laughing as she hurried out the door to a party wearing some new dress while his father worked his night job and Wen took care of the children. “Have you ever wondered how people like you seem to people like me?”

  “Not especially, but tell me.” He cocked his head with an offhand smile.

  “We avoid you too.”

  His red eyebrows flew up. “Really? Why?”

  “That surprises you, right? You think people like me should be delighted to be around your kind, like maybe we’d finally have some fun or something?” He smiled, but his chest contracted.

  “Isn’t that true?” Peter grinned.

  “Not if we have any experience.” A metal taste filled Wen’s mouth and almost overpowered the lingering saltiness of Peter. Wen shuddered at the gray fog that crept into his brain. “If we know people like you, we run because we understand that nothing in the world is true for you. Nothing really matters, so you don’t do what you say because you can’t imagine it’s important.” He felt his voice rise, but somehow all he could see was his mother bouncing down the stairs as he ran up to get to the kids before they hurt themselves. “You live in some fairy tale and can’t be trusted to honor your promises.”

  Peter’s voice cut through. “That’s not true!”

  Wen’s eyes focused, and he looked at Peter, who stared at him with shining eyes and an expression of true horror. Wen wiped a hand across his face. “Oh no, sorry.” He shook his head to clear it. “I—I didn’t mean you. I just knew someone. Sorry.”

  Peter stared at him like Wen had slapped him.

  Wen released a breath. “Really, I apologize. I don’t know you well enough to say something like that. After all you’re doing for me, I truly am sorry.”

  Peter seemed to swallow, and he nodded his head, but his eyes looked wary, like Wen might attack him again. “I think I’ll get some sleep.” He slid his feet off the couch.

  “No, no, please stay here. You really don’t need to be in the paint fumes. I can sleep in there.”

  “No.”

  He stared at that impossibly pretty face. “I could just stay here.”

  Peter narrowed his eyes, nodded once, turned on his side, and pulled the covers up to his nose.

  Wen slid down enough to be in a sleep position, but he stared at the ceiling. What the hell did I just do? His brain screamed back Which time? When you sucked his cock or when you called him a lying, unreliable bastard who doesn’t care about anything but his irresponsible life?

  Obvious answer—both.

  Wen wrinkled his nose.

  The breeze that smelled like bacon blew over it again. He heard a giggle.

  Shit, he’d gone to sleep five minutes ago. No chance it could be morning. But the light creeping around the edges of the blanket suggested otherwise.

  Only his nose stuck out of the covers. He kind of remembered deciding to stick it out so he didn’t smother completely in the scent of sex—even though he would have died happy. Peter might be a royal pain in his ass, but he was a pure pleasure to Wen’s cock.

  “Wen, wake up. Michaela made bacon.” John’s voice came from the edges of the blanket. “Smells funny under here.” He made a snorting sound. “Get up so we can eat bacon.”

  Okay, hell. “How come I have to get up at the crack of dawn?”

  “Because it’s the crack of eight forty-five, that’s why?”

  Shit! He started to throw the covers off, realized he was nude, and grabbed them in midair to pull them back. “Sorry.” He sat up with the covers wrapped around his lap. John kneeled in front of him beside the couch, and Michaela seemed to be flipping bacon in the kitchen. “I mean, how did I sleep so long?”

  “Michaela said we had to be quiet, and Peter said to let you sleep since you were tired.”

  Fuck. Peter. “Uh, how about I take a quick shower, and then we’ll eat bacon?”

  “Shower really quick, okay? I mean, we’ve been waiting forever.”

  “Okay.” He wrapped the covers around him tighter, rose, and hobbled into the bathroom. The powerful smell of turpentine drifted out of the back bedroom. Peter must be painting. Better clean up first.

  The hot water felt good. What the hell do I say to Peter? Wonder if he’s still mad? Wen’s brain landed somewhere between it’s the truth and he deserves to be pissed.

  He stepped out of the shower feeling more like a human—a tired human with a happy cock and a worried mind. Why the hell did I have to insult Peter now? Jesus, why did I insult him at all? He hasn’t done anything except save my ass—maybe.

  He wrapped a towel around himself, slid out of the bathroom, and slipped into John’s room to grab his jeans and a clean T-shirt. Meeting Peter in a towel seemed too—like Peter said, too.

  Finally he took a deep breath and marched straight to Michaela’s bedroom, following the smell of paint and oil and other mysterious stuff. He rounded the corner and—stopped.

  No way. No fucking way.

  He took a step into the room and sank to his butt on the still plastic-covered floor.

  Finished. Amazing. The huge painting glowed and shifted under Wen’s gaze, morphing from a whimsical study in fun and fantasy to a deep comment on the pain of the universe. Colors leaped from a dark center, then played out in a calliope of whimsy. So much too great for peanut butter—but it could just maybe save his ass.

  If Henderson has eyes to see.

  He pursed his lips and let out a long stream of air. Grabbing Peter and kissing him in front of John and Michaela—maybe not such a great idea. He didn’t give a shit.

  He leaped to his feet. “Peter!” He ran from the room toward the living room and the smell of bacon. “Peter!”

  He rounded the corner and stopped. Both John and Michaela stared at him like maybe he’d lost it.

  Wen splayed his hands. “What?”

  John shook his head. “Peter’s not here. Didn’t you notice that? I mean, this place is as big as a gerbil run.” He snorted.

  “Where is he?”

  Michaela placed a large plate of bacon on the coffee table. “He got up before we did, finished the painting, and said he had to go.”

  “Go where?” His brain couldn’t catch up.

  “Home, I guess. No idea.”

  “And all this happened while I was still sleeping?” The words poured out in a wail. Stupid. Calm down.

  Michaela sat at her place at the coffee table, scooting Wen’s blankets aside. “Yes. We were very quiet. He said not to wake you.”

  Wen just stared at them. “Do you, uh, know where home is for Peter?”

  John positively scowled. “No. But I thought you did.”

  “No. I don’t even have his phone number. My only connection is Neverland.”

  Michaela pointed at the couch. “Come on, eat.”

  Still frowning, John plopped on his spot on the floor, and Wen slowly dropped onto his cushion. Michaela served them each a fried egg and a pile of bacon. “They had a special on bacon at the store.”

  Wen nodded and chewed absently. So he’d done it. He’d offended Peter so thoroughly he’d walked out—but not without defying Wen’s accusation that he never kept his word. Man, talk about a fuckup.

  Michaela said, “So, uh, did you two have a fight?”

  John stuck out his chin. “Yeah, did you?”

  “Not exactly.”

  “What does that mean?” Man, John was just like him—stubborn.

  Wen stared at his bacon. Really greasy. That stuff can’t be good for you. “We just got to talking about how different we are, and I guess I got a little carried away.”

  “About Mom?” Michaela’s voice was soft.

  “How did you know that?”

  “Everything about Peter reminds me of Mom.”

  “No!” John cros
sed his arms over his skinny chest. “He’s pretty like Mom, and he’s fun, but he helped us. He did that painting for you, Wen. How can you be mean to him?”

  Good damned question. “I’m really sorry. You’re right. He’s never done anything bad to us.” A corner of his brain screamed Yet!

  “So go find him and tell him.”

  “I want to, John, but I don’t think he’ll go to Neverland—especially if he’s mad at me. I don’t know where else to find him. Besides, I need to take the painting to the office and get started on the campaign. I only have until Thursday. It’s not much time.”

  “But, Wen!”

  Michaela said, “John. Cool it. Wen’s doing the best he can, and he’s doing it for us.”

  “I know.” John shoved at the bacon still on his plate.

  “Eat and shut up.”

  Wen took her command as well and bit a piece of bacon. Every cell in his body strained to go find Peter. He picked up his phone and dialed.

  “Hey, Wen.”

  “Hey, Lai. I’ve got it. Find someone with an SUV or a van so we can get the art to the office. It’s still wet so we have to be really careful.”

  “So?”

  He smiled. “So what?”

  “Come on, don’t make me beg.”

  “It’s great. Phenomenal, even.”

  “Seriously?”

  “You’ll see.”

  “Oh my God!” she shrieked. “Guys, we need a car! We’re gonna keep our jobs!”

  Wen laughed as he hung up, but somehow he couldn’t muster the same enthusiasm.

  “So who are we going to use as the animation figures?”

  Wen stared at Peter’s painting that now stood in the middle of the art department with people snapping photos of it from every angle. “I don’t know. We want the rainbow. Every ethnicity, race, gender, and I do mean every one. I want this to look like the generation—half of them androgynous, gender nonbinary, some ordinary, others totally bizarre.”

  “Okay, we’ll start interviewing tomorrow.”

  He blew the hair from his eyes. “Remember, this is all spec, so we can’t spend too much.”

  “But we need a boatload of people if we’re going to accomplish what you want.”