Finding You: The Complete Box Set (a contemporary MM romance series)

by Ana Ashley

  We sat down to eat, and I served David a tall stack of pancakes with a drizzle of honey on top. I was quite proud of how they looked, fluffy, with streaks of pink from the strawberry chunks I added to the batter.

  “Mmm, wow, these are amazing.” David was visibly enjoying his breakfast, and I had to admit they did taste good. While I was more used to the taste of the maple syrup, I couldn’t deny the richness of the honey proved to be an excellent choice.

  We made light conversation about the lack of pancake options available in Portuguese cafés while we finished our breakfast and drank our coffee.

  I was chewing my last bite of pancake when my eyes met David’s. He was looking at me, his eyes half-lidded with lust as though he wanted to be that final piece of pancake. He ran a finger on his plate, picking up a smudge of honey and a bit of strawberry. His hand came toward my mouth, his thumb on my chin, coaxing me to open up so he could put his honey-coated finger in.

  I sucked, my tongue swirling around the tip of his finger, reminding him of what I could do with that same tongue and a different part of his anatomy. His eyes went dark, and in a swift movement with his other hand, he pulled me onto his lap and replaced his finger with his mouth. My cock was already showing interest before. Now, it was all the way hard and pressing against him. I was starting to begrudge clothing.

  I rolled my hips against David’s, trying to get more pressure to relieve my need. Our mouths were making love to each other as though they couldn’t bear to be apart.

  “David?” I heard the voice and a jingle of keys coming from the door, and I felt David freeze under me.

  “Merda,” he said, pushing me away so forcefully I nearly fell on the floor. Fortunately, my chair was close enough that I was able to land on it and avoid an embarrassing fall.

  “David?” I heard Teresa sing as she came into the kitchen looking down at the two heavy carrier bags in her arms. “Oh, there you are. Didn’t you hear me ringing the bell?” she asked distractedly.

  “Oh, um…the doorbell is broken. I haven’t had the time to fix it.”

  Teresa unpacked a few items onto the counter and finally looked at both of us.

  “Good morning, Joel. I’m so sorry to interrupt your breakfast,” she said, looking at our empty plates and coffee cups. “I wanted to catch you before you left. I brought you some sandwiches for the trip and some pastries and drinks.”

  Teresa gave me a quick hug and kissed David before she left us. “Have fun, boys. I’ll want to know all about it when you get back. Be careful on the road.”

  And in the same whirlwind she arrived, Teresa left the apartment.

  15

  David

  Two things happened when I heard the sound of keys and the voice of my aunt already inside the apartment. I froze and then shoved Joel off me like he was cursed. One moment I was sucking his sweet lips, feeling more content than I ever remember, and the next it was like a bucket of freezing water was emptied on my head, drenching me head to toe.

  I don’t think I moved an inch in the three minutes my aunt was in the apartment. Not that she noticed. She’d come in full of happiness and love, intent on giving us a packed lunch for the trip, unknowingly leaving behind tension and uncertainty.

  I’d only given Aunt Teresa the emergency key with strict instructions to never use them except for emergencies. In the last nine years after changing the locks, she’d only ever let herself in when I was sick. I didn’t even realize she carried the key with her.

  My reaction had been involuntary, the result of a lifetime of hiding who I am. So much had happened in the last twenty-four hours, and I hadn’t even begun to make sense of what it would mean to me, let alone how it would affect the chain of actions that could potentially result in me coming out to my family.

  Fuck, I hadn’t even had the chance to ask myself why the thought of coming out to my family was starting to wiggle its way into my mind. Nothing had changed. My uncle still hated me because he suspected I was gay, and my aunt didn’t have a clue. And Joel?

  Joel was going to be here for five minutes, and then he would return to America, leaving me behind once again.

  Joel’s movement as he got up and grabbed the dishes from the table woke me from my whirring thoughts.

  “Joel, I... I’m sorry.” I reached for him, but he moved out of the way toward the sink.

  “Don’t worry,” he said flatly. His actions were a contradiction to his voice because he was scrubbing the plates like they had a week’s worth of dried-up food on them.

  “Joel.” I grabbed his elbow to turn him to me, dried his hands with a dishcloth, and held them to my chest, not letting him go.

  “Joel,” I said softly, “I’m sorry about how I reacted. I was startled because my aunt has never come into the flat unannounced in the nine years I’ve lived on my own.” I let out a breath. “I just told you my biggest secret, and... and we had sex, and you know I’m not out, so all of it just made my brain kind of short-circuit and—”

  Joel’s lips cut me off in the nicest of ways.

  God, how I loved his lips.

  He dropped his hands to my waist and held me close before letting out a breath and then speaking.

  “I understand. I can’t say it didn’t sting when you pushed me away from you, but I get it. You should come out to your aunt when and if you’re ever ready. And definitely not while I’m spider monkeying you.” He laughed.

  To say I was relieved was an understatement. I had this overwhelming feeling I was on the brink of something in my life. Like I was on the edge of a precipice, and while I was deciding whether to jump or not, something was bound to come along and push me anyway.

  I had no doubt the next few days were going to be amazing but also challenging; however, for now, I decided I didn’t want to think about it. I just wanted to kiss the amazing man my best friend had become and then go on holiday.

  “Hmm, baby,” Joel said breathlessly, withdrawing his lips from mine, “we kinda need to get on the road.”

  “I know, but here I get to do this”—I pulled him even closer so he could feel how my body reacted to his pressing against me—“and this.” I let my hands slide southward to grope his perfect ass.

  Joel let out a groan and reluctantly put some space between us. “If we leave now, I promise we can do more of this later.”

  “Why wait for later when we can do it right now?” My question remained unanswered as I peppered Joel’s neck with light kisses while my hands went on an expedition around his body.

  Despite his previous statement, Joel declared that there was absolutely no rush to leave, making me laugh against his warm skin.

  We’d ended up going back to the bedroom where he decided he would show me exactly what he’d wanted to do to me the day we filmed the chocolate salami recipe.

  “Don’t move,” he commanded as he pushed me against my bedroom door. I couldn’t not obey since I was in a desperate state of arousal and would do anything if it meant he’d get his hands on me again.

  “When you looked at me that day, I felt it everywhere,” he said, spelling out each syllable.

  “Your eyes looked like they could taste me from afar.” His hands held mine against the door as he nuzzled my neck and bit the lobe of my ear, causing me to let out a frustrated groan.

  “Huh, you were so fucking sexy, Joel.” My words were strained, and I was desperate to move, to grind against him and find some relief. “I wanted to be that chocolate. I wanted to make you moan in the same way.”

  “Oh, you do, baby.”

  “I like it when you call me that.” The moment I said it, I felt heat rushing to my face. “No one has ever called me anything that implies that we’re intimate.” I wasn’t sure why I felt I had to share that, but I was rapidly coming to the conclusion that my mouth and brain worked separately whenever I was around Joel.

  The time for words was over when Joel got down on his knees, undid the button on my jeans, and pulled them down in one go with
my boxer shorts. Before I could even react, I felt his mouth on me, warm and wet, and determined to make this a very short-lived activity.

  I looked down and saw the sole focus of his attention was my rock-hard, ready-to-combust cock. He stroked, kissed, licked, and sucked with a determination I was quickly learning was a big part of who he was. I’d thrown so much at him, and he was still here, giving rather than taking.

  Joel looked up at me, and there was no judgment in his eyes, just pure, unabridged pleasure and something else I couldn’t tell but could feel, and it was good.

  I’m not sure what he saw in my eyes when our gazes locked because he quickly withdrew his cock from his shorts and brought himself to climax, moaning my name.

  The shock of seeing him so tightly wound that he couldn’t wait to bring himself to orgasm was quickly replaced with my own need. The moment Joel’s mouth was back on me, all it took was a slight amount of pressure from his hand and him moaning around me, and I was gone. The familiar rush of pleasure traveled from my lower back down to my balls, and I cried Joel’s name as I released into his welcoming, warm mouth.

  In my post-orgasmic bliss, my knees struggled to hold my body, so I let myself slide down to sit on the floor, my back still against the door. Joel straddled me and kissed me fiercely.

  “That was the hottest thing ever,” he said. I could not find a bone in my body that would disagree with that statement.

  We didn’t get on the road until lunchtime after another shower. Fortunately, the pancakes we had at breakfast were enough to fill us up, so once we were ready, we locked up and left.

  We threw a coin to see who would do the driving for this leg of the journey, and I was ecstatic to come out the winner. I loved driving, but since I didn’t have a car, it was an activity I was rarely able to enjoy.

  There wasn’t a cloud in the sky and barely a breeze, so we decided to keep the top of the car down. The roads were surprisingly clear. Our original plan had been to avoid the highway and take the country roads. It would have taken us an additional hour, but it would have also been a much nicer drive through all the towns.

  Since our morning activities delayed us, we decided to take the highway instead so we could arrive in Évora in time to go to the two places our moms had talked about in their journal, the Chapel of Bones and the Roman Temple of Diana.

  Thirty minutes into our trip, we’d left the urbanized areas of the west coast and were now in beautiful countryside. The highway cut through the green landscape of agricultural fields, and I could see the occasional farm animal grazing in the distance.

  I glanced at Joel and saw him admiring the views. He looked relaxed and happy, and in his shorts, T-shirt, and baseball cap combination, he looked every bit the tourist.

  “What?” he asked when he realized I looked at him. I couldn’t see his eyes behind the sunglasses, but I was sure they would be that shiny light blue they always were in the sunshine. I shook my head, smiling, but gave him no answer since I wasn’t sure we could have a conversation over the sound of the wind around us.

  The green pastures of the West gave way to the yellow undulating plains the Alentejo region was known for as we got closer to our destination. From the highway, all we could see was the occasional small village surrounded by fields of wheat, cork oak, and olive trees. It was truly stunning, and I couldn’t wait to get off the highway.

  As soon as we found a parking space under the shade of a tree in Évora and the car stopped moving, the coolness of the wind gave way to overwhelming heat.

  “Jesus, it’s hot!” Joel said, getting out to help me get the roof of the car back in place.

  “Yeah, this part of the country is quite dry and a lot warmer than the rest. Did you see the fields of wheat on the way?”

  “Yeah, it was beautiful. It looked so peaceful. I loved all those little hills with a single tree on them.”

  “Maybe we’ll see some more on the way to the hotel later.”

  We each took a bottle of water from the cooler box we brought with us and went to find the Temple of Diana.

  “It looks like one of those Greek temples,” Joel said as we approached the small square where the temple was situated. He was right. It did look like a Greek temple. I couldn’t remember much from what I learned at school, so we tried to look for an information board but didn’t see one.

  “I’ll look it up on my phone,” I said.

  “Look!”

  Joel was pointing toward the landscaped garden in front of the temple, but I couldn’t see what he was so excited about.

  “Stay here,” he said. “I’ll be right back.”

  I took my phone out to get information about the temple and found that it was actually called the Roman Temple of Évora and that the association with Diana, the Roman Goddess of the Hunt, stemmed from a legend made up by a priest in the seventeenth century.

  Before I could read any more, I had an ice-cream cone thrust in my face.

  “What—” I took it and looked at Joel. He was the picture of happiness as he licked his ice cream. His wide smile and bright eyes reminded me of the Joel I knew as a child, and I was glad to see that side of him hadn’t changed as he grew up.

  The ice cream was everything I didn’t know I needed at that point, a refreshing hit of sweetness that also brought back childhood memories of going out for ice cream with my mom.

  Joel read the information I found as we walked toward the garden. There were some people around, probably a mix of visitors and locals. We found a free bench and sat down to read the journal entry of when our moms had come to Évora.

  I laughed when I looked at Joel and saw he had a bit of ice cream on his face.

  “What’s funny?” he asked.

  “You have ice cream on your face.”

  “Where?”

  “Um, everywhere?” I said, pointing to his whole face in a circular movement. He didn’t really, but it was fun to tease him.

  “Haha. Funny. Where is it?” He licked around his mouth, and suddenly the joke was on me because I knew what he was capable of with that tongue.

  It wasn’t until Joel coughed to get my attention that I realized my eyes had zeroed in on his mouth and hadn't moved. I reluctantly looked up and saw he wasn’t entirely unaffected by the sudden shift in mood. His pupils were dilated, and I didn’t need to look down to know he was probably finding his shorts as uncomfortable as I was finding mine.

  “Fuck, David, not here,” he said, his voice low.

  “Not my fault. Next time you decide to eat ice cream with your whole face think about how you go about cleaning it up. Here,” I said, giving him the journal. “I bookmarked the entry we want to read again.”

  12 May 1981 - School trip to Évora

  Dear Journal,

  We went to Évora today.

  We visited the Temple of Diana. Diana kept saying it was named after her, but our teacher said it was actually called the Roman Temple of Évora. It looked really old like it was there before all the houses around it. We wondered what it would have looked like before it was destroyed.

  After the temple, we had lunch in the garden. It was really hot, so we had ice cream after we ate our sandwiches.

  We also visited the Chapel of Bones. It was quite eerie seeing all the skeletons. They were real people, not fake bones. Pedro tried scaring us with a spooky story about the skeletons coming out of the walls at night, but we’re not kids anymore. We don’t believe in that stuff.

  We almost forgot to say; we have two new neighbors. Mário and Vítor. Mário is in Teresa’s class, and Vítor is in our class. They seem nice, but we haven’t played with them yet. Vítor was on our visit to Évora, but he didn’t speak to anyone. We did ask if he wanted to get ice cream with us, but he didn’t want to.

  Walking the cobbled streets of Évora with Joel was like seeing everything with a new pair of eyes. I was used to houses with whitewashed walls and burnt-yellow frames around the doors and windows or those houses covered in blue and whi
te tiles.

  For Joel, this was all new. Having left Portugal as a child, he’d never really noticed it before, but now as an adult, I could see his appreciation for the unique and utterly charming architecture.

  “Look at those arches,” he said, pointing at the structure in front of the row of shops we passed on the way to the chapel. “It looks, well, I don’t know what it looks like. Everything has an old feel to it like it’s been here since forever, but at the same time, it still stands with the same strength and grace.”

  I couldn’t help staring at him in awe. He was describing an architectural feature that could also explain much of the Portuguese culture. When I applied the same thinking to my trade, I could relate to the passing of recipes from generation to generation without change.

  “Come on, Mr. Teacher, let’s get to the chapel before it closes,” I said, putting a hand on his back and pulling him in the direction of the Church of St. Francis.

  The small chapel was next to the entrance of the church, and above the door, there was a warning sign that read, “We bones here are, awaiting yours.”

  “Creepy, right?” Joel said while I bought our entrance tickets.

  I grabbed a small information leaflet, and we walked in. The chapel was small. In fact, from the entrance, we could see all of it. Skulls lined the walls on all sides, including the columns that supported the roof.

  “Look,” I said, pointing at the skeleton of what looked like a small child.

  “Wow, how old do you think the kid was?”

  “Don’t know. According to the leaflet, the bones come from other church cemeteries, and they’re all from the monks. Around five thousand of them.”

  “Jesus.”

  I laughed at that point, and we decided to leave the church when an older couple gave us looks that indicated they weren’t amused by our conversation.

  “Come on, let’s go find somewhere to have a cold drink and some food.”

  We ended up at Giraldo Square, again. It seemed as though all streets led here since we’d already passed it a few times in our walk around the center.