In any case, he didn’t think it was submissive when Carlos did it to him. Hell, he could barely think straight when Carlos was on his knees. If anyone was 100 percent in control of that situation, it was Carlos. Deion’s brain checked out approximately three seconds after looking down his torso to see that wide mouth sucking him down, the scrape of Carlos’s stubble against his thighs making him shudder with pleasure.
But they were doing whatever felt right, whatever felt natural, because nobody was in a competition here, and he’d been hesitating over this one thing because it hadn’t felt right. The whole idea of just . . . not doing whatever didn’t feel completely natural was a pretty foreign concept—which didn’t say anything flattering about his sex life so far, he knew—but he was glad Carlos had insisted on it, because Deion hadn’t been ready for this until right now.
And yes, maybe at Carlos’s very large family home, with his parents by the pool out back and his abuela in the kitchen with a pack of kids running around following her every instruction, wasn’t the best time to decide he really wanted to get on his knees and suck Carlos’s dick, but Deion had never been one to hesitate when the moment was right.
And the moment was right now.
He didn’t know what it was, but something about being here with Carlos—about Carlos wanting him here with all the people who were important to him, about the way he introduced Deion to his family with pride and a smile on his face that hadn’t quit since they’d walked in the door—turned Deion on so hard he half expected to see steam rising from his skin.
“I wanna see your old room,” he said, cranking his look up to smolder.
Which would have worked better if Carlos hadn’t had his back to him.
“It’s a guest room now,” Carlos said, walking down the upstairs hall in front of him and waving toward a doorway at the end. “Not much to see.”
“Show me anyway.” His voice rumbled so deep, Deion could feel the want in his own bones.
This time Carlos heard it too.
The moment he opened the door to the elegantly appointed guest room, Deion pulled him inside and slammed Carlos’s body against the wall, devouring his mouth. Carlos hooked a leg around his and yanked their hips together, groaning. And suddenly the idea of getting on his knees wasn’t scary. Was need and want and now.
“Tell Tía Patty I’m getting more towels for the kids,” a woman shouted from the hall just outside the bedroom’s door. “I’ll be right back down!”
They froze, breathing hard, and then leapt away from each other. Deion tried to smother his harsh breathing until the woman’s footsteps clattered down the stairs.
“Shit. This is like being in high school all over again.”
“You made out with a lotta dudes in your bedroom back in high school?” Deion asked, cocking his head.
“No way. This was strictly a girls-only zone back then.”
Enough fooling around.
“Gimme that pillow,” he said, pointing. When Carlos gave him a quizzical look as he handed over the thick cushion from the bed, Deion explained. “This hardwood floor is pretty, but my knees are rough and I don’t want to be distracted.”
Carlos groaned and grabbed himself through his flat-front khaki shorts. “Jesus. Don’t say shit like that in my parents’ house.”
“I’m about to put your dick in my mouth. Saying the floor is hard on my knees is about the least inappropriate thing I’m going to do in your parents’ house.”
He waited, giving Carlos a chance to protest. Only fair in the man’s childhood home, after all.
Carlos lifted his hands from his crotch and pressed them to his own face, covering his eyes while his hips shifted forward slightly. “You are a bad influence.”
Deion grinned. “I know.”
“Wait.”
With a brush of fingertips against his cheek, Carlos stepped away to lock the door and then returned to plant himself in front of Deion, heat flaring in his gaze. “I trust my family to knock first, but not that much.”
Smiling, Deion hooked a finger through one of Carlos’s belt loops and tugged him forward until he could rub his cheek against the hard line of Carlos’s dick pressing against his shorts. “Good thinking. Now be quiet.” He looked up. Licked his lips. “If you can.”
Carlos leaned back against the wall and shut up.
Stripping to skin wasn’t happening, but doing it with both of them almost entirely dressed was extra dirty in its own way. He tugged and unbuttoned and pulled. The scritch of the zipper rasped through the air, a sound that now made Deion shiver in a way it never had before. His mouth watered.
He’d missed his favorite part of sucking Carlos off: that slow—or fast—swell of his cock from soft to hard, like feeling a magic trick take place in his mouth, his brain still marveling every time. “It worked!” The thrill of pushing Carlos’s body to respond to him faster and harder with every lick and hum and bite.
But starting a bj on an already hard dick meant he got one helluva visual as he dragged Carlos’s shorts and underwear down just far enough to tuck them under his balls. The proud curve of Carlos’s dick, the tip kissing his stomach, a smear of precome glistening there where the retraction his generous foreskin had uncovered silky smoothness.
Deion rubbed his cheek against the hot, hard length of him, 90 percent of his nervousness vanished already. It was crazy how much he wanted to be skin-to-skin with this man at all times. As if he absorbed some kind of lust magnifier from prolonged contact with Carlos’s body, a thing he’d abso-fucking-lutely indulged in this past week. His need overwhelmed the weird edginess that had hit him every time he’d pictured himself on his knees like this. He slipped his mouth over the head of Carlos’s dick, and it felt like coming home.
Self-consciousness melted into heat as a low groan ripped out of Carlos’s throat. The sounds of the party faded as his focus deepened and sank like a stone into the still waters of Carlos’s body. Fingertips brushed Deion’s hair, then trailed down his neck and dug into his traps as he sucked Carlos deep and strong, pulling up slowly after each stroke with his mouth. The taste of musk and sweat flooded his mouth as his thumbs dug deep into the grooves of Carlos’s hips. He meant to make this an epic blowjob, to pull out all the tricks he’d learned that drove Carlos wild: the scrape of fingernails along the crease of his thigh, the swirl of tongue under his foreskin against the silky glans, a gentle suck on his balls. But all that vanished in the need that drove him. He wanted to pleasure, to tease, to torment. Instead, he devoured. Everything hot and wet and messy was born in this blowjob which felt more like worship than service. His brain shut off and his body took over.
At some point—too soon, before he was ready—the lean thighs under his hands turned to rock. Carlos’s voice rasped from far above him. “Deion.”
He knew what that meant and pushed his mouth as close to the root of Carlos’s cock as he could get, swallowing frantically to drown out his gag reflex, damn near pulling the orgasm out of Carlos’s body.
Because you want me. Because you need me. Because you’ll remember my mouth on you like this every time you close your eyes when I’m gone.
The thought punched him in the stomach as Carlos clutched his shoulders and came, Deion’s mouth full of his cock and his come, his nose full of Carlos’s sharp, woodsy smell, his heart full of too many things that weren’t supposed to be there but were, because he had lost all control when it came to how much he simply wanted around this man.
What sounded like Carlos’s skull thunked against the wall as he slumped, boneless now, and Deion pressed into his body with a broad shoulder to hold him up. He slid his hands up Carlos’s thighs, fingers ruffling through the dark hair, pausing to rest his face against the warm skin of Carlos’s hip and close his eyes. His heart was racing, thumping in his ears, the distant noises of people shouting and laughing together filtering back into his consciousness as his focus faded and the rest of the world returned.
This. He would miss this
. Not hiding out in a second-story bedroom for party bjs. But the closeness. The quiet after the eye-watering sex and the somebody-coming-his-brains-out. The part where Carlos stroked his shoulders and neck and arms with long fingers and gentle hands, touching every part of Deion he could reach with hands that said thank you and you’re next and stay.
Maybe he was reading into things with that last bit, but when Carlos dragged a thumb across Deion’s bottom lip, pressing into his mouth for a moment, it didn’t feel like it. It didn’t feel like he was reading into things at all.
He felt it when Carlos straightened up, standing by himself. Deion lumbered to his feet and Carlos tugged him against his chest, his soft dick probably leaving spit marks all over Deion’s pants.
Deion didn’t even care, because he was King of on Your Knees BJs. Even if his knees were informing him that the king was going to need to save this move for special occasions only if he wanted to keep walking without limping.
“Jesus. How are you not fucking hard?” Carlos demanded with a laugh as they leaned against each other. “Didn’t that turn you on at all?”
“Well, you blew my brains out, like, forty-five minutes ago, after fucking me into the mattress in the middle of the night,” Deion explained, patting him on the back comfortingly. “My dick is exhausted. But give me a bit and we can both experience being at your parents’ with hard-ons.”
“No, no. Fair point. Let me get my shit together and we can go back downstairs and say our goodbyes before people notice how long we’ve been up here.”
“We’re not staying?” Deion asked, surprised. He’d prepared himself for the long haul.
“You’ve met everyone important,” Carlos said, giving him a kiss on the cheek and a shy smile. “I just wanted them to see you. So when I tell them, at some point, about this amazing guy I met, they’ll remember.”
Deion’s heart thumped extra hard at the idea.
“Now go grab me a towel from the bathroom across the hall,” Carlos ordered.
“You don’t even really have to clean up,” Deion said a minute later, handing over the requested towel and 100 percent proud of himself. “Because I totally swallowed.”
Carlos snorted. “Easy there, big boy. It’s not a competition.”
“Yeah, I know you keep saying that, but sometimes I think you’re using that to get ahead,” Deion said pointedly as Carlos zipped up and shot him a grin.
Downstairs in the kitchen, Carlos introduced Deion, again, to his abuela, right before a shout from outside called his name.
“Stay here for a minute, okay?” Carlos said, with a nod at his grandma. “I’ll be right back. You can help abuela if she needs anything.”
“No problem,” Deion said cheerfully, even though the idea made him nervous. Carlos’s grandma looked at him like she knew things. Not merely cooking things, at which she was clearly a master, but also see-inside-your-soul things, which was terrifying. He steeled his spine. “Put me to work, Abuela.”
The woman with silver streaks in her dark hair, the length of it twisted into a tight knot at her neck, gave him a spatula and parked him in front of a pan of chicken browning with the skin on in a delicious-smelling mix of finely chopped vegetables, herbs, and spices. He had no idea what it was, but it smelled like heaven.
A pack of chattering children streamed into the kitchen, claiming they’d been sent by their parents to start bringing food out to the table. Carlos’s abuela loaded them up like an assembly line, filling skinny arms with platters and trays galore. She waited until the last of the kids had been headed poolside before turning to him.
“You’re his novio?” she asked quietly, with a pointed glance out the sliding glass doors to where Carlos was helping to move a wooden table that looked as big as a bus.
Deion took a step back. “I’m sorry?”
“His boyfriend? Carlos?”
Deion’s breath hitched in his chest. He’d expected to fly under the radar, a friend Carlos had brought along to a family get-together, because that’s what you did when friends came to visit. Brought them around with you. And nobody here would know that technically Deion wasn’t Carlos’s friend. And technically he was sleeping with a man who’d only ever been with women before this point. And technically . . . well, the whole thing was supposed to be frigging drama-free, man.
And now here he was in this kitchen, every counter covered with dishes, every burner on the stove holding a pot full of something that smelled amazing, the world’s most intimidating Puerto Rican abeula pointing at him with a wooden spoon and skewering him with a sharp look while she asked him questions no one was supposed to think to ask. And Carlos hadn’t prepped him for any of this.
What the fuck was he supposed to say?
He opened his mouth to deny it.
“I’m only here for a little while.”
Shit. Where had that come from? That wasn’t a denial. That sounded almost . . . wistful. As if he were saying, Yes, I would be, if I could, if I were going to be here with him, then I would be with him . . .
Yeah. Shit.
Carlos’s abuela turned her back on him.
He hadn’t known how badly he wanted her approval—not just for himself, but for what it would mean for Carlos—until she turned away from him and his heart fell into his stomach. She crossed to the massive refrigerator across the flagstone floor and opened it without speaking or looking at him.
Before he could figure out what to say, how to rescue this disaster of a family crisis, Carlos’s grandma was back, standing in front of him again, and he was afraid to look her in the eye.
“Here.”
He glanced down at the stack of Tupperware containers she’d shoved in his hands. “What’s this?”
“To take home. So you boys don’t go hungry later.”
If any of his friends had done the some thing, he’d have laughed at the clear implication that maybe he and Carlos didn’t know how to feed themselves properly, but Carlos’s abuela’s brusque insistence that they eat and eat some more reminded him of his own grandmas. It didn’t feel like a criticism. It felt like love. Or at least grudging affection.
“Time to hit the road.” Carlos breezed into the room, kissing his grandma and beckoning to Deion. “We stick around here any longer and they’ll put us both to work. And Benji and Josh are expecting us. Te amo, Abuela. Hablaremos pronto.”
“Sé bueno, mi hijo.”
The part about being expected was a fib, but Deion wasn’t going to argue. The ninety minutes they’d spent on the Kelly property had been one hell of an emotional roller coaster. He could use some recovery time.
But he hugged Carlos’s tiny grandma for an extra long time after she pressed the bag full of food into his hands.
When he turned around, Carlos gave him with a long, meditative look before saying, “Let’s go.”
Not until they’d reached the end of the long, meandering driveway where they’d left Carlos’s car did he say anything else.
“I heard that.”
“Heard what?”
Carlos leaned against the hood of his car, swinging his keys restlessly around one finger nonstop. “When abuela asked if you were my boyfriend, you didn’t say no.”
“Yes, I did.” Denial was an instinct that was hard to break.
“No. You didn’t,” Carlos said, standing up straight and shoving the keys in his pocket to face Deion empty-handed. “All you said was I’m only here for a little while.”
Deion looked back at the house spreading across the landscaped acre. The curve of the drive meant he could see the palm trees in the backyard, the lights strung between them that glittered off the water in the swimming pool where the teenagers lost their sullenness to playful splashing, the family crowded around tables shoved together in a long row alongside the pool. “Because that’s the truth.”
“It’s the truth right now.” Carlos took a deep breath, as if he needed to steady himself. “It wouldn’t have to be the truth forever.”
> “What are you saying? That we should try to do some kind of long-distance thing?” Deion asked him, his pulse accelerating at the idea.
He couldn’t tell if it was in excitement or panic.
“It’s an option. Or you could decide to move on to the next phase of your life. Here. With me.”
“I’m not ready,” Deion snapped, and Carlos took a sharp step back. “I don’t know. I just . . . I don’t know. Jesus. I’m so confused.” His laugh radiated desperation. “This was supposed to be the vacation where I didn’t have to think about what might happen next, and now I’m more fucked up than ever.”
Carlos looked mildly sympathetic, but not a lot so. “Well, okay then.”
“Okay then? What does that mean? And why does that sound like you’re done with something?” The creeping thread of fear in his belly sharpened his voice to a snap.
“Because I am, basically,” Carlos said, shrugging and avoiding his gaze. “I said I was up for more than just saying goodbye tomorrow. And you can’t—don’t want to—say yes.”
“I’m not saying no either. I don’t know what I’m saying. That we need to talk about this more. We can do that after I go home, right?” He couldn’t do this in the fucking driveway. He hated being put on the spot like this. What was wrong with taking some time to sit down and figure out a plan? To map out choices and alternatives and options, instead of winging it under the blazing sun while the tarmac softened under his sandals?
“Yeah, I don’t think I can do that.” Carlos looked away, shading his eyes with one hand.
Deion could feel him shutting down, pulling back just like the last time they’d argued, and it pissed him off. “Listen, you’re the one who vanished after one argument. I was ready to hash it out and you disappeared. I told you that the one thing I couldn’t handle was you pulling this withdrawing act on me. And now you’re doing it again.”
“I know. And it’s not fair. But I just can’t. Being here with you today, seeing you with my family, made everything really clear to me. I’m ready to do this. With you. And you’re not.” Finally, Carlos looked directly at him again. Everything on his face was downturned. His eyes, his mouth, his eyebrows. Carlos lifted his hands at his sides and then dropped them weakly. “The idea of being the one who’s just . . . waiting. For you to decide if you want me more than you want football. Or to be a straight guy who plays football. The one who sits there with everything on offer while the other one figures out if they want it, listening to you go over your options and the pros and cons of both options, being with me or not? I can’t do that.”
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