The First Hello

by Willa Okati

  Shawn curled his fingers tighter in the niches. “You need to hear me say it?”

  Raleigh jerked his head in a rough nod. “Just one more time. I do.”

  He didn’t mind. He wanted to. Shawn turned his head to watch the colors change from pale to pink and to deep rose in Raleigh’s skin, parted his lips, and said, “I remember you. I know who you are, and I know who you were. Now and always. So come here and show me that you do too. All right?”

  A laugh escaped Raleigh. “Yes. God, yes.”

  And he was as good as his word. Shawn’s eyes drifted shut as the bed depressed beneath Raleigh’s weight, wanting to see with his body. To be as aware as he could of Raleigh’s body coming to rest atop his, of Raleigh kissing him, openmouthed and hot, messy, his tongue sleek as velvet. He raised his knees to make more room and laughed, breathless, when Raleigh lifted one leg to hook it over his shoulder. He remembered that as well and dug his heel lightly into Raleigh’s back. “Always taking a mile when I give you an inch,” he said.

  Raleigh pressed a kiss to Shawn’s palm, a bloom of heat that made him moan. “Yes,” he said.

  Shawn could feel him moving, sliding into place, and then in, deep and slow, unceasing, giving all he had to offer. He drew in a lusty breath as his back arched, crushing his cock against Raleigh’s stomach, and tilted his head back farther still when Raleigh whispered in hot breath over his skin. “Move,” he begged, eyes still closed, the world gone frenetically dizzy around him. “Fuck me, Raleigh. Now.”

  “Inches and miles,” Raleigh said, but he did as he’d been told, and—Oh. Like that, just like that—

  All Shawn could do was hold on. He dug his fingers hard against the smoothly straining muscles that flexed in Raleigh’s back, as far as he could down the elegant curve of his spine, the broadness of his shoulders, and the narrowness of his waist. Caught between them, his cock slipped through the sweat on their skin and the slipperiness of lube when Raleigh swore and took him in hand.

  He didn’t ask if Shawn was close, but he didn’t need to. He knew Shawn’s body, new or not, and when the climax hit Shawn, he stopped moving even though Shawn could feel the strain of effort it took to hold still. He crushed his head to Shawn’s chest and worked Shawn’s cock until Shawn had to groan and push his hand away. Though the aftershocks made his stomach muscles contract into tight ridges, he shoved at Raleigh’s hips, his sides, his arms. “You,” he said. “You now. Want to feel you come inside me. Please.”

  “Jesus,” Raleigh said, slipping free of his control.

  Good. Shawn wound his arms around Raleigh’s neck and tilted his hips. He nipped at Raleigh’s shoulder and drove his heel down. “Now,” he said. “Now. God, now.”

  What Raleigh gave him then made his toes curl. He hung on, all he could do, smoothing over Raleigh’s skin, whispering things both dirty and dark, and of delights. It all came so easily now, he marveled. As if it’d all been trapped behind a cork, and now that it’d been jarred loose he could—

  He could be—

  Me, he thought, the understanding flooding his mind. And I’m free.

  Raleigh caught his breath, as if he’d somehow heard that—maybe he had—and wrenched himself still save for the quaking of his muscles as he came buried inside Shawn. Shawn opened his eyes then, hungry for the sight of Raleigh’s face in orgasm, pressing his lips to every inch that he could reach. It was everything he’d imagined, that gorgeous twist and open mouth with his name tumbling off Raleigh’s lips between his hungry gulps of air and the shudders that racked him then. He folded down in a blanket more warm than any coat and took Shawn’s face in his shaking hands to kiss him deeper.

  Mine, my beloved, mine. Shawn drew Raleigh hard to him, crushing their mouths messily together, and didn’t let go.

  Would never let go again.

  Chapter Twelve

  Six months later—

  Gabrielle’s memories didn’t come back the way Shawn’s had.

  “Explain it to me again?” Shawn asked, leaning back into Raleigh and resting his head on Raleigh’s chest. They stood together on the spiral staircase in the front hall, watching his inquisitive sister poke her nose into this curio cabinet and that room, its door left temptingly ajar for her to investigate.

  She looked better, Shawn thought, and knew he wasn’t the only one to see it. The hollows in her cheeks had filled out, and where she’d once carried plum-purple shadows under her eyes, her lashes grew in a healthy sweep. He couldn’t count her bones anymore when he hugged her, and Raleigh had said she looked—almost—like she had when they were all in this house together, once upon a time.

  She’d even met someone, in rehab. Someone who had been waiting for her to find him. He’d come around one of these days, Raleigh promised, and Shawn believed him.

  “Is this a dumbwaiter?” she called, voice echoing as she stuck her head inside clear to the shoulders. “Oh my God, it is a dumbwaiter. The ropes look new. Would it hold me?”

  “Don’t try it,” Raleigh cautioned, laughing when she withdrew long enough to make a face at him. “God. We’re going to end up fishing her out of there one night, aren’t we?”

  “Probably,” Shawn said. “Unless we lock it, and I don’t want to do that.”

  Raleigh hummed noncommittally as he sifted through Shawn’s hair, cut more neatly now and no longer than the point of his jaw. “She’s had enough locks in her life. Let her run free, now that she’s strong enough.”

  Shawn sighed his agreement, content. Gabrielle had better sense. She only liked to play. Besides, Della watched her, indulgent and amused at her antics. Della didn’t often come to the old house but would when the mood took her to wander through older days, and memories that were older still. More frequently as the construction and refurbishments neared their end, bringing those memories out to be polished like jewels and left on every step she could take.

  She had agreed to swap her cane out for the one that’d belonged to her way back when, a shining length of polished ebony with a silver band. After Shawn had promised he’d carve her another if this one no longer suited. He’d been willing to risk his fingers too, but in the end he hadn’t needed to.

  And she’d nearly rapped his knuckles with it when he’d mentioned he hoped she’d be there when Gabrielle came home. As if she’d miss it! The cheek of young men these days.

  The memory made Shawn chuckle even as he added it to the store building up inside his head, to be turned over with pleasure when the wheel moved again in its revolutions. A reminder not to go back, but only ever forward, with the ones he loved.

  “Go on,” he prompted Raleigh. “Tell me one more time.”

  Raleigh propped his chin on Shawn’s shoulder, content to watch along with him. “They follow us.” He stroked Shawn’s side idly as he spoke, a habit he’d picked up centuries ago. Shawn was pleased to let him carry on with it in this life. “They weren’t there at the very beginning, but they chose to be afterward. Della—Cordelia, Delia, Delilah, a rose by any other name—came along for the sake of curiosity, to see what we’d make of ourselves, before she learned to love the freedom of all the second chances. Gabrielle, out of love. Too much courage for one body to hold, and yet she’s easily wounded, I think.” He touched his lips to the soft spot behind Shawn’s ear. “So she follows the strength you have inside you. Her guiding star.”

  Disconcerted by that, Shawn turned his head.

  But Raleigh was already there, chiding with one breath and coaxing him back with the next. “She doesn’t blame you. Neither do I. That means you don’t get to blame yourself. You didn’t know what would happen.”

  “Bad enough what I thought I was doing,” Shawn protested. He took one of Raleigh’s hands in his, fitting their palms together. They looked nothing alike, Raleigh’s hand broad and firm, Shawn’s narrower, with longer fingers. Yet they matched in a way that, once seen, couldn’t be forgotten.

  “Shh.” Raleigh touched his lips to Shawn’s temple. “Do you want me
to finish the story or not?”

  Shawn hummed and let himself—made himself—relax again. It was still a work in progress, this letting go of the things he would have held against himself, but Raleigh helped him learn more quickly than he would have on his own. “Yes. Go on.”

  “I can’t,” Raleigh said—as Shawn had known he would, and as he wanted. “Because the story never ends.”

  “Good,” Shawn said. He brushed his knuckles against Raleigh’s. “Where did you put the book? I want you to write that inside, as a reminder, if we ever need it again.”

  “We won’t,” Raleigh replied, confident of that. “Besides. There are so many stories left to tell, I think I may go hunting for another, one with some blank pages left. Fill it in myself. Unless you’d rather do the honors?”

  Shawn didn’t answer him in words but turned in the circle of Raleigh’s arms, reaching up to link his wrists loosely around Raleigh’s neck. Gabrielle wasn’t the only one looking better these days. He’d put on weight enough that his jeans no longer threatened to slide down his hips at every other step, and now that he could sleep for longer than an hour at a stretch, he’d watched his skin go from ivory to cream and then toast golden in the coastal summer sun. He had freckles sprinkled across his cheeks. Raleigh liked to count them the same way some men would the stars.

  He didn’t kiss Raleigh—yet—but hung from the loose circle of his wrist, looking up at the man. Drinking him in.

  “That’s a serious face,” Raleigh remarked. He linked his arms around Shawn’s waist and studied him with equal focus. “What’s going on in that head of yours, I wonder?”

  “Nothing,” Shawn said simply. He knew he was smiling, every breath of sweet salty air as fragrant and free as the years that stretched on before them. “Just promise me.”

  “All right,” Raleigh replied. He rested his thumb on Shawn’s chin. “Promise you what?”

  Shawn closed his eyes and opened them to Raleigh’s face. “Promise me that you’ll choose forever,” he said. “Always.”

  “That, I can do.” Raleigh kissed him then, a light whisper of breath and skin—once for luck, twice for intent, and three times, deeper, for the promise of another first hello.

  Willa Okati

  A multi-published author of GLBT fiction since 2004, my work is the love of my life. I can’t imagine anything better than writing sensual love stories with a dash of quirky humor. Stories about tough men, sweet men, Yaoi lovers, cowboys, boys next door, friends who become lovers, polyamory—and so much, much more.

  I exist primarily on caffeine and pixels, take “camera shy” to a whole new level, and persist in trying to learn the pennywhistle despite being woefully tone-deaf. During the summer, I’m a wild woman with henna.

  I am, in a word, quixotic—but passionate in everything I do.

  Find out more at http://willaokati.com.