by Willa Okati
A fast flicker, and he knotted his fingers in the rumpled cuff of Harper’s suit jacket. “Should we walk or fly? Don’t answer that.” He sucked at the very tip of Harper’s tongue, his lips tasting of cardamom and cloves. “You’ll fly until morning light. For now, we’ll take the subway home.”
Chapter Six
Harper wished he had a stopwatch handy to time the ride home to confirm his suspicions that it was the lengthiest subway trek on record. Had to be. He’d have noticed if it always took half of forever to get from work to home.
“Still wanna wait until we get there?”
“No.” Harper shuddered. “We have to. Not in public.”
“Gonna have to work on those inhibitions.” Rory fingered the button on Harper’s fly, teasing, nowhere near enough, working him hotter. “Soon.”
“Don’t make me come in my pants on a subway, Rory.”
Rory chuckled darkly and withdrew. He licked the rising bruise on Harper’s throat. “Soon doesn’t mean now. Doesn’t mean later, either.”
Harper couldn’t make sense of that. Handily, he didn’t care, and jettisoned thinking for the instincts yammering in his head. Home, home, home, Rory, Rory, Rory, now, soon, now now now ‑‑
Kind of hard to keep anything in his head at all with Rory attached to him, limpetlike mouth hot on his, chest molded to his chest, a hand in Harper’s pocket, toning it down and revving it up, keeping him on a tightly thrumming string every slow mile of the journey.
If there were others in the cars with them ‑‑ and there had to be in midday Manhattan ‑‑ no one bothered the necking men, and for his part Harper barely noticed any of them after Rory whispered hot in his ear, “All…night…long.”
* * * * *
Harper scanned the floor in a half second, saw no errant turtles roaming underfoot, and crowded Rory to the door that still vibrated from his slam. He caught Rory’s wrists and held them away, pinning them to the wood, taking all he wanted of his muse’s smart mouth and wicked tongue.
Rory’s breath caught. He tipped his head to one side, making way for Harper’s neck. The tip of his tongue flickered underneath Harper’s jaw. “Where?”
No waiting. Good.
“Here?” Harper licked inside Rory’s mouth.
“Nah. Got a bed, or do you sleep hanging on a rafter like a ‑‑ mmph!”
Harper held the kiss until Rory’s lips stopped moving in word-shapes and clashed with his, searching for more. He slid their tongues together, stroking Rory quiet except for the “uh, uh, uh” that poured from one or the other or both. Intoxicating. Drowning. On fire.
“Not like this,” Harper said, bracing his weight on the door. “Me. I’m not.”
“Don’t have to woo me,” Rory scoffed, nosing under the open collar of Harper’s shirt. He worried the thin skin with his teeth. “Bed. Go.”
“Fast as I can.” Harper stole a taste of Rory’s mouth, a snack between meals, to keep body and soul together on another way-too-long trek from door to bed. “You first. I’m right behind you.”
“Better be.” Rory skimmed ahead, a wicked gleam in his eye when he looked over his shoulder at Harper. “Get a move on.” He slapped his own ass. “You know you want me.”
Harper toed off his Converses. “Conceited much?”
“It’s not conceit if it’s the truth.” Rory scanned the length of Harper’s body, head to toe. Harper thought he might self-ignite from the heat. “Told you once and I’ll tell you again. Hurry. Third time’s not the charm. I’ll blow you right there if you don’t ‑‑”
Motion blurred. Rory appeared on his knees, searing palms skating up the insides of Harper’s legs. “Too good an idea to waste,” he murmured, breath hot on the bend of Harper’s knee. He slapped Harper’s calf. “Let me in.”
Harper didn’t think he could move without falling. He drew in a deep gasp, not getting enough oxygen. His head spun, thumping back on the door.
In the corner of his peripheral vision, he caught a foreign movement. He had to shake his head and squeeze his eyes shut tightly to bring it into focus.
Artemas, trudging at a cold-blooded reptile pace. He stopped, as if he knew he was being watched, and faced Harper. A scrap of paper hung from his jaws, 16-point Arial font. He chomped the fragment, a slow grind, fixing Harper with his flat black stare.
What is that? Harper squinted to see. Junk mail, or ‑‑ “Script,” he said on a ragged exhale. “Piece of script.”
Rory made a frustrated noise and jabbed Harper’s ankle. “Leave him,” he said, nosing into Harper’s groin.
“Script,” Harper repeated dumbly, the effect not unlike a cold-water douse. “Rory, get off. Rory!”
“No. Uh-uh.” Rory tightened his hold. He mouthed the width of Harper’s cock, his breath warming the metal teeth of Harper’s zipper. “Stay with me.”
“We can’t…work to do… Later. I promise.”
Rory wrenched away and tipped back on his heels, claiming Harper’s focus. “Stop thinking.” He tucked his fingers in the waist of Harper’s jeans and tugged the fly open. The rush of cooler air on his engorged cock made Harper hiss. “Let me do the work,” Rory coaxed, rocking on his heels. “Make it so good for you, I swear.”
“Rory…”
“Stop. Thinking.” Rory’s tongue curled between his teeth. “Bet I know how to make you.”
“What, you ‑‑” Harper arched his throat at the brush of tongue over his cock; Rory drew him out of the slit in his boxers. “Rory. Fuck!”
“Mmm. Better. Shut up.” Rory lapped the head, mixing his saliva with leaking precum. “Tastes so damn good…” Prickling teeth dragged down the length, hot-wet-tight sealing around him. His throat vibrated on a hungry moan, taking Harper deep.
Harper rolled his head against the wood. He found his way to Rory’s head, hesitant. “Can I?”
Rory kneaded Harper’s thighs. Permission granted. He pulled off with a wet, obscene pop and licked his balls. “Hard as you want,” he swore before diving back in, the tight seal of his lips hurting so good, better than Harper could have dreamed.
He gathered a better hold on Rory’s head, twining his fingers through Rory’s hair, and pulled. His hips jerked, thrusting into Rory’s mouth. Rory moaned, shuddered, shifted. Harper couldn’t see, but knew Rory had pressed the butt of his palm to his cock, grinding down to stave off coming too soon.
“Rory, you ‑‑” Harper forgot, two words in, what he’d meant to say. He quivered with the effort to go slow and slid deeper, bumping the back of Rory’s throat. His fingers tightened, loosened, and tightened again. Slow, slick slides over Rory’s tongue and as far past as he could go. Back, and there again. Velvety-smooth heat, suction, and a faint scrape of teeth. “God. I have to…Rory ‑‑”
Rory settled like a falling leaf and let it happen, caressing Harper with his tongue, not moving. Begging for more with the tickle of his lips.
Harper looked down, struggling to focus. Rory looked up through his eyelashes. His cheeks bulged with the heft of Harper’s cock inside them. Harper’s knuckles ached when he let go of Rory’s hair and traced the thickness of his cock through the prickle of light stubble and the soft skin of Rory’s cheek. Rory’s eyes slammed shut on a desperate noise, a begging cry.
“Hold still,” Harper ordered. He didn’t recognize the voice as his own. “Can’t believe I…you…” No words came to him. For the first time in weeks, he didn’t care.
Rory pinched him, breathing hard through his nose, hot air streaming through Harper’s wiry pubic hair. He released Harper’s leg, gliding up through the thinning trail that arrowed down to his mouth and tugged.
Harper got the message. More. Now.
“Okay,” he whispered, breaking on the syllable. “You. My God, you…” He slid deeper smooth and fast, drew back, and forward again. No telling which was better, the glide in or the drag out, or the sounds Rory made, low desperate whimpers and choked, hitching, half-smothered cries, or the roll of Rory’s s
houlder and the sound of a hand on slick, turgid skin, moving slippery, moving fast.
He couldn’t breathe, his chest rising and falling, doing no good. His thighs shook, straining to keep him upright. “Rory. Close. Get off.” He prodded Rory’s shoulder.
Rory growled a negative and lashed Harper’s cock with his tongue. He stiffened, shaking violently, the seal of his lips too tight.
“Can’t. Almost there.” Harper pushed him. “Off.”
Rory withdrew, but only to look up through his lashes and rasp out, his mouth swollen obscenely and his lips reddened, “Want to taste you.”
“Oh God,” Harper groaned, cock pulsing. “Rory ‑‑”
Rory tipped his face up to catch the spurt of cum, thick strings of white decorating his cheeks. He put out his tongue, cradling the underside of Harper’s cock, and shuddered as Harper striped his face. His eyes were closed when a wave crested the bridge of his nose, rolling heavy down his lids and spiking his lashes. He never let go, riding Harper through all he had to give and licking him sore.
Harper growled, a noise he hadn’t known he could make, and hauled Rory away from his too-sensitive cock. “Get up.”
Rory moved easily, pliant. Harper groped his groin, half-expecting to find the denim soaked warm and wet. He laughed, low and triumphant, king of the ever-lovin’ world, when he encountered hard flesh that jerked when he wrapped his fingers around the length. Instant addiction. Rory keened into his mouth between presses of lips to lips.
When Harper licked a string of sticky, cooling cum off Rory’s chin, Rory jerked, swore, and flooded Harper’s hand with streaming heat. Harper delved deep into Rory’s mouth, licking out every trace of his flavor he could chase down, drinking Rory’s soft keens, rubbing the underside of Rory’s cock with his thumb to coax out more.
“Stop it. Hurts.” Rory thumped his forehead to Harper’s chest. “God.”
“Damn,” Harper finished or agreed, either one. His lungs were on fire, too much abuse in too short a time. He looked without meaning to, saw Artemas disappearing around a corner, and snorted a laugh.
“What’s funny?”
“Thinking about races. Turtles and hares,” Harper slurred, drunk on the afterglow. “Smarter to go slow but not now. Not you. You’re the sprinter.”
“Yeah, you know what? I didn’t understand a word of that, but right now I don’t care.” Rory hooked his chin over Harper’s shoulder and draped comfortably over him, his dead weight solid and unyielding.
Not that Harper wanted to move him. He could stay there the rest of the day, easy peasy. Sounded great, actually. Maybe even take a snooze, or get some writing done. What if Osborne’s fortune in the tea leaves ‑‑
“Thinking again.” Rory snorted softly. He traced Harper’s collarbone. “Always thinking.”
“Does it bother you?” Harper caught the back of Rory’s head and pulled him off, his throat forming a white arch. He studied his muse’s face, somehow managing to smirk even in the slackness of afterglow. “You win.”
“Win what?”
“Me. Anything you want. Tonight. All of it.”
Rory laughed low in his throat and slid his thigh between Harper’s. He jostled their spent, shiny cocks together. Harper’s jerked, trying to rise and fill a second time. “Still think I’m chicken asiago?”
“What?”
“You don’t remember?”
Harper butted foreheads with Rory. “Remember what? Start making sense.”
“Score. He honest to God thinks I’m a real boy now.”
He gave up on coaxing reason out of Rory. Who cared, anyway? “If this is your method of inspiration ‑‑”
“You know it is. I live to serve.” Rory brought his knee up and rolled his hips, coaxing Harper back to hardness, jostling oversensitive flesh and hurting him so wonderfully. “Let’s see what else I can make you forget.”
Harper could get on board with that plan. Only ‑‑ “Writing?”
“Later. I promise. Until our fingers fall off.” Rory traced Harper’s lips with his tongue. “Just not now. I promised you all night, and I’m gonna deliver.”
There were innumerable reasons not to do this, to step back and congratulate them both on getting it out of their system, but it would have been a lie beyond any story Harper had ever spun. Also, he didn’t want to let go. He slid his hand under Rory’s shirt and skimmed up the smoothness of his muse’s back. “Deal. Gonna stay the night?”
“Try and get rid of me.”
“Not gonna happen.”
“Good. Now shut up,” Rory purred.
And Harper did.
* * * * *
A tickling at the sole of his foot woke Harper, not with a bang, but a whimper. He wriggled his toes, kicking from the ankle. “Mmmmf.”
Tickle.
“’S not funny,” he mumbled, threshing his foot. “Rory? G’way.”
Tickle. Pause. Chomp.
“Fucking ‑‑” Harper fumbled up to one elbow, the closest he could get to upright, and peered blearily in the general direction of where he thought he remembered his feet were located.
Artemas snapped his sharp turtle beak at Harper. After a year of keeping company with Artemas, Harper still wasn’t fluent in Turtle-ese, but the general air of crankiness that Artemas emitted ‑‑ more than usual ‑‑ suggested he had nothing to eat and that Harper would be wise to remedy that.
Harper weighed the pros and cons of risking his toes versus more sleep and decided if it came down to a final choice, he could live without a toe or two. “Feed you later,” he said, breaking three times on a yawn and flopping prone.
When he reached for his pillow, he encountered nothing.
“Wha’ the…” He squinted at his bed, which wasn’t so much a bed at all. In fact, it bore a striking resemblance to his hallway floor. Not that he couldn’t be mistaken. Without his glasses, up could be down for all he knew. He patted the floor in the near vicinity of his head, hoping that a) he’d remembered to put them somewhere close when he had, for whatever reason, passed out nowhere near his bed, and b) Artemas had not stolen them for their shininess. Or was that magpies?
Lady Luck smiled on him. Halfway through a circuit, Harper’s fumbling fingers encountered the familiar, cool metal shape of frames and lenses. He shoved them on his nose, vaguely and distinctly proud of not jabbing himself in the eye, and, groaning, pushed up to a tailor-style seat, ankles tucked beneath.
“What did I do last night?” He directed the question to the back of Artemas’s shell, the turtle in question busy trudging away in high dudgeon.
A clock ticked heavily. Harper checked his wrist and found Mickey’s big glove on the eight and the small glove on the three. Yet it was dark. Harper ran the discrepancy over in his head and came to the conclusion that he’d achieved nocturnal remission. “Okay, all afternoon, not night. Why’d I sleep on the floor all afternoon?” Harper ran his tongue over the inside of his mouth and gagged. Tasted like refried ass, and was furry to boot. Maybe he’d chewed on a boot during his sleep.
Or possibly on the blanket? If he’d decided to sleep on the floor, why a blanket and not a pillow? Harper picked at the soft gray knit, running a nubbly swatch through his fingers and frowned when picked spots caught on a handful of brightly colored Band-Aids. He winced at the soreness of his knuckles.
“What the hell did I do yesterday? Retrace,” he muttered. “Work, home, sex, lots of sex, damn good sex, didn’t know I could bend that way, and ‑‑ Rory!”
Harper vaulted to his feet sooner than his equilibrium preferred, staggered, and whacked his elbow on the wall. He didn’t let a minor funny bone crack ‑‑ ow, or maybe not so minor ‑‑ slow him down. “Rory?” he called. No second blanket by his side. No warm spot on the floor where he recalled his muse falling asleep before him, his head pillowed on Harper’s chest.
He couldn’t remember dreaming. What if ‑‑ “Oh no. No no no. Don’t tell me I dreamed him?” Sourness flooded the back of Harper�
��s throat, his heart stuttering at the thought.
“Be real,” he chanted under his breath, hurrying for the kitchen. After a few fumbling steps Harper realized he was starkers, various things that shouldn’t go without protection flapping in the breeze. Though his face heated painfully with embarrassment, he took his cock in hand and checked for signs of, er, recent gainful employment.
Blast it; he couldn’t tell, and whether dream or reality nothing more than Rory’s nimble tongue had gone near his ass, so he had no proof there either. Harper moaned, swaying on his feet. Rory’s tongue.
“Please be real,” he prayed as he staggered onward. He scanned the bedroom, the bathroom, and his teeny tiny study as he passed each, hitting the kitchen last.
Empty.
“Rory?”
His voice echoed off the pristine void, spotlessly clean from floor to empty coffeepot to Artemas’s feeder, by which Artemas hunkered, glaring.
“Cut it out. You’re worse than a cat. Rory?”
No answer.
Harper’s shoulders sagged. He caught himself before kicking the wall with his bare toes. “Should’ve known it was a dream.” He covered his groin with his hand, feeling oddly exposed and definitely idiotic given the reality versus his dreams of wearing his ankles for earrings while Rory applied his tongue ‑‑
His cock twitched against his palm, more than interested in replaying the mental footage. Harper pinched a pube to snap himself out of it and turned, hangdog as a basset hound.
“Where do you think you’re going?” A radio Harper kept nestled over the kitchen sink blared to life. “No way we’re sleeping on the floor again. My neck’s never gonna forgive me.”
“Jesus Christ!” Harper whirled, caught himself a half second from falling, and gaped at the kitchen. The brightly lit kitchen, reverberating with doo-wop blasting from the radio, the emptiness eradicated by one completely naked muse getting his groove on. “Rory?”