by Cari Z
“You got me, then.”
Aaron was the one who initiated the kiss, tilting his face up and leaning in as he wrapped his free arm around Tyler’s waist. Their lips met, and it was simultaneously wonderfully familiar and thrillingly new. Aaron had never kissed Tyler before, but he knew what to do, how to move so they fit together the way they were meant to. Tyler still shook at the beginning of their embrace, but Aaron didn’t stop kissing him until the tremors faded away.
Tyler finally broke the silence. “Holy shit. Am I drunk?”
Aaron laughed. “Oh my God, really?”
“You can’t blame me for being nervous, man! I’ve thought about this so many times it’s practically tattooed behind my eyelids, and now I’m livin’ it and it’s so much better than I thought it would be.” He shook his head. “Makes me wonder a little, that’s all. Like I might have slipped into an alternate reality while I wasn’t looking.”
“If you did, then I slipped right along with you.”
“I hope so.” Tyler’s arm tightened around him for a moment, then released. “Much as I’d love to keep going, Jeanette’s headed this way.”
Aaron sighed. “Really?”
“Yeah. She has that look on her face like the church ladies get when they’ve got a job for you to do and won’t take no for an answer.”
“God fucking—”
“Aaron! Tyler!” They both turned to face the incoming woman, Aaron resolutely holding on to Tyler’s hand. Jeanette very deliberately didn’t notice it. “Zach tells me you’ve got a truck with a topper. Would you mind terribly being on flower duty?”
“What’s that entail?” Aaron asked.
“Oh, not much! Just—we had to have the flowers delivered to our house instead of the church, because they were having another wedding there today, only they’ve cleared out now. I’d like the get the arrangements over there tonight, if at all possible. One less thing to do tomorrow, and every other car is transporting people.”
Aaron held his sigh in with a struggle. “Sure. We can do that.”
“Lovely! We’ll be ready to go soon. You can follow us and then I’ll make Carl show you to the church.” She walked away, and Aaron looked over at Tyler.
“We’re not done with this.”
Tyler grinned. “I don’t think we’ll ever be done with this, but yeah. We can pick it up again later.”
Damn straight they would.
Chapter Twelve
AARON woke up wrapped around Tyler again, and he freaked out for a second before remembering that this was allowed. He could cuddle up to Tyler without worrying about making things awkward or pushing himself where he wasn’t welcome, because he was welcome. Tyler had made that as clear as possible the night before.
That was all that had happened the previous night, unfortunately, because it turned out that Becky’s parents had ordered more flowers than could fit in the 4Runner. One trip to the church became two, became three, which eventually became helping Jeanette figure out where they all went, labeling them, and then making sure they were in water. Becky had come along to help out and act as a buffer, and every five minutes she’d mouthed another sorry in their direction.
By the time they were done, it was after eleven, and Jeanette had hurried Becky out of there while muttering about fatigue and makeup and how her eyes weren’t going to look right for the pictures. They’d headed back to Chrissy’s with the expectation of finally getting some privacy, and found Zach and all of his groomsmen in the living room watching Die Hard.
Zach looked over hopefully. “Hey! You guys wanna join us?”
“I don’t think there’s room,” Aaron said. Zach was in the middle of the couch, Owen to the right, Simon to the left, and Matthew was spread out on the floor.
“You could pull over chairs from the kitchen.”
“Or you could just share one,” Owen drawled. “Sit on each other’s laps.”
Tyler rolled his eyes. “We ain’t here to be your personal peep show, O-ring.”
“How many fucking times do I have to—ow, fuck!” He rubbed his shoulder where Zach had punched him. “Fine, I’ll shut up. You happy now?”
“Thrilled,” Simon muttered.
Aaron wanted to say no, but after the evening they’d had—Lia had left quietly, and he was grateful for that even though he knew he couldn’t avoid her forever—he thought it would be a good idea to reassure Zach that everything was fine between them. So they stayed up until almost one watching John McClane limp to victory, then spent another fifteen minutes taking turns in the bathroom before they finally got to bed. Aaron was so tired he literally fallen onto the mattress, crawled under the comforter, and blacked out. And when he woke up….
He was spooning Tyler again. And he was allowed to. He pressed his face into the back of Tyler’s shoulder and absorbed the sensation of skin against skin, gazed at the freckles there as though it was the first time he’d ever seen them, and stole heat like it was something he could lock away in a vault.
“Gonna make me blush.” Tyler sounded sleepy but amused.
“Nothing makes you blush.”
“You could, I bet.”
“Oh yeah?” Aaron pressed a kiss to the back of Tyler’s shoulder before pulling away enough to let him roll over. “How?”
Tyler looked at him like he wasn’t entirely sure Aaron was real. “That was a good start,” he murmured. “I’m still not sure we’re really doin’ this.”
“No?”
“Nah. My brain hasn’t come to grips with it yet. Too much like Christmas and my birthday all at once.”
“Huh.” Aaron leaned against Tyler’s chest and grinned when the blush he’d denied could exist blossomed. “I bet I could help you figure it out. Solidify things, you know. Firm them up.” Tyler’s blush spread faster, and it occurred to Aaron, for all of Tyler’s easy acceptance and openness of his own sexuality, he’d never had a boyfriend for very long. Aaron probably had more experience with relationships than Tyler did, and that likely included sex. “Maybe if I gave you a hand….” He waited for Tyler to say something.
When he did, it wasn’t quite what Aaron had expected. “I’m gonna be so fucked up if this doesn’t work.”
“It’s working,” Aaron assured him. “I swear I’m not going to leave you broken.”
“You don’t know that. Things happen, all sorts of things happen. You might—get tired of this. You might—”
Aaron shook his head. “Don’t do that. Don’t put pressure like that on yourself. Nobody’s perfect. I know that. Nobody does everything right all the time, me included. Fuckups are inevitable, and nobody knows the future.”
Tyler sighed. “It just feels like there’s a lot riding on getting this right.”
“Will it make you feel better if I promise you that I’m going to screw up worse than you?” Aaron asked. It actually felt kind of important to get this out there. Aaron knew himself too well to just rely on hope. “Because I will. I’m terrible at relationships. You know that—you’ve seen me through all of them.
“I want this to work.” He did, so badly. “But even if it doesn’t, if we can’t be together like this, we’re still best friends. We’re still family. I won’t leave you without a word. Just… try to trust me, okay?”
“Okay.”
“Good. Now that that’s out of the way, can I kiss you?”
Tyler grinned. “You don’t have to ask.”
Aaron kind of thought he did, but Tyler was already tilting his chin up, his lips parted, and Aaron had to kiss him.
It was soft and warm and thrilling, even more so because they were in bed—in bed together, and it was so easy for Aaron to shift over a little bit, position his groin right next to Tyler’s thigh, and press against it as they kissed.
Tyler gasped, but before Aaron could pull back and ask if it was all right, he pushed his leg up between Aaron’s and said, “Fuck yes, do more of that.”
Aaron smirked against his lips. “More of what? This?�
� He ground against Tyler’s thigh until he got the moan he was waiting for. “Or is it that you like being held down?” Tyler was bigger, that was undeniable, but being on top made Aaron feel… powerful, in a way he had never felt with another person before. It helped that Tyler’s pupils were blown so wide Aaron could practically hear them expand. He slid a hand around the back of Tyler’s neck and took his mouth in another kiss, moving straight past soft and sweet into hard and demanding. Tyler practically melted underneath him, his muffled, needy sounds doing their part to speed all of Aaron’s blood away from his brain.
“Mmmboth,” Tyler said with a gasp when Aaron finally pulled back. “Can I have both? I want—like this, just—” He slid his leg over until Aaron was snug between his thighs, their torsos pressed together from the chest down. Tyler actually shuddered when their cocks made contact through their boxers, and Aaron had to kiss him again to keep him from shouting the rest of the house awake.
“Like this?” He rocked his hips forward and in, and the sensation of rubbing against Tyler’s erection was almost enough to make his eyes roll back in his head. “You want to come just like this, still dressed, so fucking eager you can’t even wait to get naked before you blow?”
“Don’t think I’m gonna last that long,” Tyler said around gritted teeth as he pressed up, matching Aaron’s rhythm, and–oh, fuck, he had a point. As much as Aaron wanted to feel their bare skin pressed together, it was so good like this, fast and desperate, and he wanted to reach down, slide his hand into Tyler’s shorts, and touch the silky skin of his cock for the first time, but he couldn’t stop moving. He could barely stop kidding him long enough to breathe—
“Ah, fuck, fuck—” Aaron swallowed the rest of Tyler’s sounds, and they vibrated all the way down his chest as Tyler came with a whimper, wet heat slicking the front of his boxers, and just the secondhand feel of it was more than Aaron could bear. He thrust against Tyler’s groin two more times before his own orgasm hit like a shot to the sternum, knocking the wind out of him and sending stars shooting across the backs of his eyelids. His hips jerked a few more times, chasing the residual pleasure. Aaron buried his face in the side of Tyler’s neck and breathed as he slowly came down from the high.
“That.” Tyler’s voice was as slow and dark as molasses. “That was perfect. I love having you like this.” He squeezed his legs around Aaron, just enough to make him feel surrounded. “Like you can’t escape and you don’t even wanna.”
“I don’t.”
“Good, ’cause I’m not letting you go.”
A sudden knock disturbed their tentative reverie. “Boys! You better use the shower while you can, before all the hot water is gone! And the food,” Chrissy added.
Naturally. “Got it!” Aaron called out. “Shit.” The mess he’d made in his shorts was starting to get cold and sticky, though, and the appeal of a hot—or at least lukewarm—shower was pretty strong. He looked up at Tyler, leaned in until their lips were barely a millimeter apart, and said, “I call dibs.”
Tyler went from taut to shaking with laughter in a second. “What are you, man, five?”
“No, just determined.” Aaron pushed back from the warmth of Tyler’s body with a sigh. “I’m not facing this day without a shower.”
“We could share,” Tyler suggested. “So we can both be hot together.”
“That’s not very subtle.”
“Fuck subtle. They all think we’ve been fucking since we got here. Let ’em assume it’s true.” He grinned. “I haven’t given a blowjob in four years, but I bet it’ll come right back with a little practice.”
“Don’t tempt me.” And it was tempting, so tempting to just go from bed to shower and back to bed, but… “We’ve got a wedding to get ready for. We’re due at the church at noon to help decorate, remember?”
“Damn.” Tyler shook his head. “I didn’t do this much work for weddings where I was a member of the wedding party.”
“Keep calm and think of Tennessee,” Aaron advised. “It’ll all be over soon.”
IT wasn’t going to be over soon enough for either of them, but they managed to move all the flowers—again—and stage everything that might possibly be needed for the ceremony, including a rollout pink carpet for the bride to walk down that would be towed into place by the ushers after everyone else had walked down the aisle.
The best thing about having to spend time with Becky’s half of the family at the church was getting to know her grandmother, who took one look at the paper carpet and declared it “the tackiest damn thing I’ve ever seen at a wedding, and I once watched a live dove get released and shit on the groom as it flew away.”
“Oh my God.” Aaron half thought Tyler was going to go down on one knee as he said it. “Can you be my grandma too?”
Becky’s grandma patted him on the cheek. “Sure I can, dear. There’s plenty of this old lady to go around.”
Becky’s mother looked like her face was going to catch on fire. “Matilda, please. Can we focus on your actual family for now?”
“The bride’s not even here yet. She’s still primping! Relax, Jeanette. Go throw some birdseed. See if you can attract doves.”
It was good having something to do, honestly. The previous night, working to get ready for the wedding, had felt like a chore: at the moment it felt like a reprieve from dwelling on the upcoming ceremony and an excellent opportunity to admire Tyler in a suit that fit like a glove. If Aaron focused on him hard enough, if he stayed busy enough, he could forget that he was going to see his mother again today. It was probably the worst kind of avoidance and something his psychologist would have given him hell for, but he genuinely had no desire to talk to her. Looking at her and seeing someone he didn’t recognize—maybe it should have been comforting, a sign of positive change. It didn’t feel that way, though.
Luckily Tyler made it easy to focus on him. “Think we could slip away to the nearest storage closet for a quickie?” he murmured as they broke down empty boxes in the church annex, which was where the reception would be directly after the wedding. “’Cause as good as you look in your suit, I think you’d look even better out of it.”
Shit. It was an appealing thought—too appealing, considering that they really weren’t alone and wouldn’t be for the foreseeable future. Quiet caterers floated around them, setting up tables and laying out the favors that they’d constructed at the head of each place setting. The wedding cake—also decorated in Royals colors—took up an entire table at the far end of the hall, right next to where the bride and groom would be sitting for the late lunch.
Aaron reluctantly shook his head. “Too many people around.”
“None of these guys are gonna give a shit if we go get busy on the side.”
“We’re in a church, Ty.”
“Since when d’you care about that?”
Aaron was an atheist and not about to change his ways. “Since if we got discovered and Jeanette found out about it, we’d be kicked to the curb so fast our feet left skid marks, no matter how much Zach wanted us around.”
“But I can be superfast!”
“I want you slow,” Aaron countered, and now it was his turn to smirk as Tyler’s face was overtaken by a blush.
“Do we have to stay for the reception?”
Aaron shrugged. “At least through my speech.”
“I hope you go early, then.”
For all the fussing and fretting and running around to get the church ready, the actual wedding itself was pretty brief. People came in and were seated—there were no bride and groom’s sides, and Aaron was grateful for a chance to mingle, since Becky’s family was a lot more numerous than Zach’s. Chrissy reached out and took his mother under her wing as soon as she stepped through the church doors, and Aaron felt a moment of profound gratitude, even though she probably wasn’t doing it for him. Being on the other side of the church, outside of speaking distance—he could handle that.
The organist looked to be about ninety, but she’d
clearly done this a lot—she didn’t even have to glance at the keys as she started playing. Zach, his groomsmen, and the bridesmaids walked down the aisle, and then the ring bearer and the flower girls, one of whom was eating her rose petals instead of throwing them. Then the pink carpet was unrolled, and a moment later the music changed to the wedding march, and everyone stood up as Becky walked down the aisle.
Well, Aaron didn’t. He kept his eyes on Zach as his expression changed from nervous to awed and excited. He looked happy, so happy he could barely hold still, and it was almost like a release to see it. Aaron hadn’t had a role in making Zach happy for years, but he could remember when it had been his greatest goal. Keep the family together, keep Zach happy, keep things under control.
The family had fallen apart, and Aaron had had plenty of out-of-control moments, but Zach was happy and Aaron would be there for him in every way he could. Not alone, though. He wouldn’t have to do things alone anymore.
The ceremony was brief, the vows sweet and earnest, and the kiss was as raunchy as they could probably get away with in a church, with Becky’s grandma calling out, “More! Encore!” And then it was done, the wedding party whisked away for pictures and Jeanette very firmly directing people into the annex to mingle before the meal. The DJ already had music playing, there was an open bar, and the tables of finger foods distracted Tyler enough that Aaron just told him to “Go eat, for God’s sake. Your stomach sounds like an angry dog.”
That, naturally, was the moment when Lia found him—no Tyler or Chrissy to redirect their paths or lessen the uncomfortable awkwardness that came from having to make conversation with someone you had never wanted to talk to again. Still, Aaron was a goddamn adult, and he’d worked with worse parents. He could handle his own.
“Hi.”
“Hi.” His mother smiled tentatively. “We didn’t get much of a chance to chat yesterday.”