Jevon broke away with a low whistle. “Wow. I wasn’t sure you’d want to do that again with me.”
“What?”
He winced a little. “I know I embarrassed myself a bit last time.”
“What?”
“Um—you know. With all the virgin talk.”
Perspective returned to Rhys with a rush. He blinked and pressed his forehead to Jevon’s, absorbing his wide gaze. Then he pulled back, releasing Jevon from his cage against the wall. “You’re nuts.”
“Excuse me?”
Rhys shook his head. “The only embarrassing thing about that night was me shooting my load in ten seconds flat and passing out on you. There’s no shame in not fucking the whole world by the time you hit thirty.”
“Is that what you’ve done?”
“Would that matter?”
“To me?” Jevon shrugged when Rhys didn’t answer. “Of course not. It’s just—I dunno. Makes me nervous I wouldn’t measure up if something happened between us.”
Rhys snorted. “Trust me, mate. You measure up.”
“I wasn’t talking about my dick.”
“I know. I’m just trying to break the heavy, man. It’s been a long day.”
Jevon blinked. “Sorry. Yes, of course it has. Are you hungry? I can cook while you grab a shower?”
Aside from diving head first into Jevon’s kiss again, a hot shower sounded like the best thing in the world. Jevon showed Rhys the bathroom, passed him clean towels, and left him to it.
Under the scalding spray, the steamy solitude was more welcome than Rhys had realised. He stood with his head bowed a while, then he gave in and sank to the floor, his favourite way to brood for as long as he could remember. Jevon was fucking wonderful, but what did they do now? Pick up where they’d left off before summer? Or have dinner as strangers and part again in the morning, leaving things to fate once more?
If someone had asked Rhys yesterday, he’d have told them his intention was to screw Jevon’s brains out. To teach him how to feel good and own it—to believe it—but kissing Jevon had blown his fantasies out of the water. Suddenly it seemed that whatever happened next, it would never, ever be enough.
The hot water ran cold. Rhys hauled himself out of the shower and dressed in the scruffy jeans and Stone Roses T-shirt he kept in the chopper for overnights like these. In Jevon’s colourful house, he felt kind of scuzzy, but it was all he had, and it suited his mood.
But when he got downstairs, Jevon’s smile turned the world upside down. The cloud that followed Rhys when he wasn’t sharp enough to evade it evaporated. Goddamn, he’s so fucking beautiful.
Jevon beckoned Rhys into the narrow kitchen and sat him on a stool at the counter. “I’ve got the rice on, but I wasn’t sure what you’d want with it. You like spicy food?”
“Love it.”
“Winner. That’s all I can cook. You want jerk chicken? Or fish? I’ve got some plantain around here somewhere . . .” Jevon wandered off and came back with the biggest bananas Rhys had ever seen. “Plantain,” he corrected when Rhys said as much. “You white boys are all the same.”
“Sorry.”
Jevon chuckled. “Don’t be. I’m taking the piss. I didn’t know what they were either until I was fifteen and my auntie Pearl came to stay.”
“Stay where? Where did you grow up?”
“A tiny village just outside Reading.” Jevon stirred the rice. “I was the only black kid in my school, but then we moved to Brixton when my parents got back together, and my world got real. I met all my dad’s family and made friends with kids who looked like me. It changed my life—it really did.”
Rhys could listen to Jevon talk all night. He folded his arms on the counter and rested his chin on them. “Do your family know about your sexuality?”
“Kind of. My grandparents in Jamaica don’t, but I’m okay with that. My parents though . . . that was weird.”
“How so?”
Jevon opened the fridge and retrieved chicken, salmon, and prawns, offering them to Rhys to choose.
“Fish all the way,” Rhys said. “I don’t eat chicken.”
“No?”
“Nah. My brother was obsessed with it when he had an eating disorder. I gave it up to show him that life went on without it. Never wanted to eat it since.”
Jevon chucked the chicken back in the fridge. “Valid. You’ll have to tell me about him when you’re done grilling me.”
“Do you feel like I’m grilling you?”
“Of course not. I’m a clown, remember? I say silly things.”
Jevon brushed a soft kiss to Rhys’s cheek and went back to cooking. The gesture was so lightly intimate that Rhys couldn’t speak. For long minutes, he stared, lost in Jevon—his flawless skin and elegant neck, the graceful way he moved around the tiny kitchen. It was a while before he remembered what they’d been talking about.
“So . . . what happened with your parents?”
“I got it wrong.” Jevon poured something spicy looking onto the salmon and prawns. “As in, misjudged them. I figured my mum would be okay with whatever and my dad would lose his shit, but it was the other way around.”
“Your mum freaked?”
“Totally. We got past it, but it took her a while to give up the hetero-normative future she’d planned for when I finally stop messing around for a living.”
Rhys cocked an eyebrow. “That’s what she thinks you do?”
“Probably. We don’t talk about it much.”
“Does that bother you?”
“What? That my mum hasn’t got a clue what to make of me? Nah, son. It used to, but families are messed up. I don’t know anyone who hasn’t got issues.”
“True that.” Rhys thought of his own and shivered. Their drama had faded as the years had rolled by, but he hadn’t forgotten. Couldn’t. “But your dad was cool?”
“So cool.” Jevon smiled fondly. “It helped that my cousin Efe had married her girlfriend a year before, but I swear down, I told my pops a while back that I probably wouldn’t be bringing anymore girls home, and he didn’t bat an eye. Just told me to find a dude who liked cricket.”
Rhys burst out laughing. “Seriously?”
“Yup. He’s obsessed. Keeps him out of trouble though.”
“That’s nice.”
“Uh-huh.” Jevon slid the fish into the oven and washed his hands. Then he came to Rhys’s side, warmth spilling from his liquid gaze as he gently brushed Rhys’s hair back. “What about your family? I remember you said that you never came out, but do they know you’re into fellas?”
Rhys nodded. “It’s not an issue with my mum and my brother. She just wants us to be happy, and Harry’s as gay as Christmas, so he can’t fucking complain.”
“Do they live in London?”
“Nah. My mum retired to Malaga, and Harry lives in Cornwall with his boyfriend. Love’s young dream, they are.”
“He’s happy then?”
“So happy.”
“What about you?” Jevon leaned down, his face millimetres from Rhys’s. “Are you happy?”
Rhys shook his head—not a no, but not a yes. How could he be happy when he was so fucking lonely? When Jevon’s hand on his arm was the deepest affection he’d ever felt from someone without sharing blood? “I don’t know.”
“Try,” Jevon whispered. “You deserve it.”
He drifted back to the stove, sparing Rhys the pressure of an intelligent response.
Rhys pushed his plate away and rubbed his stomach. “You’ve killed me. That was amazing.”
“You’ve had enough?” Jevon hovered with his rice pot. “There’s more.”
“Stop. I’ll legit explode if I eat any more.” And Rhys was only half joking. Jevon had cooked jerk fish, rice and peas, and fried plantain, and Rhys had devoured every scrap offered until his distended stomach could take no more. “Seriously. I’m good.”
Jevon relented and disappeared into the kitchen with the empty plates. He came back with civi
lised measures of rum and flopped onto the couch beside Rhys. “Wimp. I’m going to be eating leftovers for a week.”
“Lucky you. I’ll be back on the Maccy D’s breakfasts and marmite butties tomorrow.”
Jevon pulled a face that made him look about twelve. “All that shit you just said is disgusting.”
“Yup.”
“But you eat it anyway?”
“Yup. We don’t get much time some days, and there isn’t much scope for cooking on the airbase. Microwave and a toaster. At least it ain’t Pop Tarts, eh?”
“Oooh, Pop Tarts.” Jevon leaned back on the couch. “I loved them when I was a kid—the chocolate ones—but I tried one recently and they taste rank, man. I was so disappointed.”
There was nothing about Jevon’s face that didn’t make Rhys smile. He traced his jawbone with his knuckles and coiled a loose dread around his index finger. “There’s a picture of you over there with blue and white hair. Was it real?”
“Yes. I painted my head every day for two weeks straight. I lost a bet with a bunch of kids in Jordan.”
“Jordan?”
“Yeah. Two camps before the one I’m at now.”
The reality that Jevon’s real life lay far away from his cosy Bedford living room cut Rhys deep, but he pushed it aside. They’d dealt with enough for one day.
“Where did you get your tattoo?”
“Hmm?”
Jevon was slouched on the couch, his glass of rum resting lazily on his belly. Rhys plucked it from his hand and set it aside, and Jevon didn’t protest as he slung a leg over him.
“Your tattoo. I’ve never seen one like it.”
“I got it when I went island hopping around the Pacific about a million years ago. Do you like it?”
“Fuck yeah. I think I dreamed about it a few days ago.”
It was true. Rhys had thought about Jevon in every way imaginable since they’d last been together, though his imagination hadn’t done justice to the sensation of sliding into Jevon’s lap.
Jevon widened his legs, welcoming Rhys, reeling him in. Their first kiss had replayed in Rhys’s mind a thousand times, but it had nothing on the slow, sensual heat that ignited as their lips touched now. Rhys clutched Jevon’s face, his fingers sliding under the black headscarf Jevon wore around his dreads, and kissed him over and over, losing himself in the natural rhythm of Jevon grinding up into him. Oh god, I remember this. The way Jevon’s body had responded so easily to him that it was hard to believe no one had ever touched him this way before. No one before Rhys. God, I want him.
A shudder ran through Rhys. He tightened his thighs around Jevon’s body, like that—like anything—could tie him down to the world when Jevon’s lips were on his. When Jevon’s tongue was in his mouth. When Jevon moaned so sweetly that Rhys was left dizzy.
Rhys drove his body down, revelling in the answering hardness in Jevon’s lap. After the day he’d had, it would be so easy to shed their clothes and sink down on Jevon’s thick cock, screwing them both into oblivion. Until their minds were devoid of all else but what it felt like to lose yourself in another person. But Rhys knew what would happen if he did that—if he used Jevon’s body to soothe his battered soul.
Nothing.
They’d come, and Rhys would walk away, like he always did. Roll from the couch and leave behind a piece of him that he’d never get back.
Jevon deserved better.
Rhys broke their kiss, swallowing to catch hold of his heaving chest. “You know what feels good?”
Jevon licked his lips. “What?”
“Riding someone like this—fucking them real slow while your dick slides against their stomach.”
“Someone?”
“Yeah, bloke or bird, it doesn’t matter to me. Some of the best nights I’ve had have been with a woman who knows her pegging.”
A flush crept up Jevon’s neck. “I, uh, didn’t think you would bottom.”
“Why not?” Rhys punctuated the words with a wet kiss to Jevon’s neck. “You think it’s a woman’s role? That a man ain’t a man if he likes it like that?”
“No, god no. It’s just . . . uh—fuck, I don’t know. I don’t know if I could top a man. I’ve thought about it, but it terrifies me, which is weird, ’cause I’ve never thought twice about it with women.”
“Nothing about sex is weird, mate.”
Rhys kissed Jevon again while he chased his thoughts enough to ponder what to do next. He wanted Jevon to fuck him—craved it—and he wasn’t averse to things playing out the other way around. But every instinct not clouded by bone-deep desire screamed that Jevon wasn’t ready for any of it . . . even if he thought he was, which Rhys had a feeling he might be if the heat between them rose another notch.
He slid off Jevon’s lap. Jevon’s eyes widened, but Rhys grabbed his hand before he could question it. “Show me your bedroom?”
“What?”
“Your bedroom. I want to lie down and be naked with you again.”
Jevon’s throat worked as he swallowed hard, but his only answer was to rise from the couch and tug Rhys to the stairs.
His attic bedroom was the plainest room in the house so far—not much to it but a bed, a stack of crime novels, and a suitcase tucked in the corner. “I need at least one quiet space in my life when I’m in this country,” he explained. “Otherwise my brain’s too crowded when I go back to the camps.”
It made sense. Rhys wanted to know more about what Jevon’s life was really like—to devour every detail Jevon gave up—but there was something else they had to do first, or Rhys was going to explode.
He pulled Jevon close and fingered the hem of the white vest he’d been wearing under his Technicolour shirt. “I want to get naked again,” he whispered. “If that’s something you want? I can go to my hotel if you want to cool things down.”
Jevon let out a breathless laugh. “I don’t want to cool things down. I’m just so fucking hot for you, I don’t know what to do with myself. It’s like I’ve forgotten how to have sex completely, not just the stuff I never knew in the first place.”
“There’s no just anything.” Rhys drew Jevon’s vest over his head, his breath catching as he lay eyes on Jevon’s perfect chest. “But don’t freak out, okay? Nothing’s gonna happen that you’re not ready for.”
Conflict shimmered in Jevon’s warm gaze, and Rhys understood it. The horny bloke in Jevon wanted to do all the things he probably dreamed of when he was alone at night in this very bed, but a million things were stopping him. Some tangible. Some not. And some so nonsensical he’d probably never figure them out. Christ, I’ve been there. But Jevon wasn’t Rhys . . . and Rhys didn’t want him to be.
Slowly, they shed their clothes. Jevon’s sheets were smooth, clean, and smelled of him. Rhys sank onto his back, pulling Jevon on top of him. Skin touched skin, and they both gasped. Jevon sank his teeth into Rhys’s chest and kissed his way from nipple to nipple, remembering Rhys’s kryptonite spots with military accuracy as Rhys dissolved beneath him, powerless to stop the mentor role he’d assumed slipping away. What Jevon lacked in experience was eclipsed by the instinctive way he played Rhys’s body, and Rhys was a shuddering mess at his metaphorical feet.
Eventually, they found themselves in the reverse of the position they’d been in on the couch: Rhys propped up against the headboard, Jevon straddling his lap. Naked, it meant so much more. Meant nothing more. Meant everything. Jevon’s cock was trapped between them, rucking against Rhys’s abdomen. Jevon stared down at it, apparently fascinated as their bodies moved together. “I reckon I could come like this.”
Rhys could believe it. He’d been ready to blow an hour ago. He thrust up gently, taking care to slide his own dick along Jevon’s tender flesh, rather than jabbing it in. “We can do that if you like, but I had something else in mind if you’re game?”
Jevon’s eyes widened. “Like what?”
“Like paying you back for letting me fuck your mouth and pass out on you.”
“You want me to fuck your mouth?”
“I want to blow you.” Heat sluiced through Rhys at the mere thought of it. “It doesn’t matter how we do it.”
The cogs turning in Jevon’s brain were conversely blank and visible, leaving Rhys no idea of what he was thinking as he slowly straightened up. Rhys braced himself for Jevon to climb off his lap, but he didn’t. He lay back, arching his body like a graceful cat, and left their bodies entwined. His cock jutted up, sticky from rutting together. Rhys gazed at it, and his mouth watered. He scrambled to his knees and chased Jevon down, covering his body with his own and swooping down for one more kiss.
Then he crawled between Jevon’s legs, nudging them wider apart, and swallowed him whole.
Jevon reacted like he’d been plugged into the mains. As though Rhys’s tongue sliding up and down his length tapped into a brand new circuit. His back arched from the bed, and his limbs spasmed out, jerking and wild. “Fuck.”
The curse was whispered—hoarse—but the single syllable went straight to Rhys’s dick. He sucked Jevon harder, working him with his hand. His loose plan had been to do this slowly . . . sensually, to build Jevon up a dozen times before he finally let him come, but a minute in and they were already derailing.
Jevon’s hands flew to the back of Rhys’s head, resting lightly there at first, but then with more purpose as Rhys urged him on.
“Do it,” Rhys growled. “Do what you feel.”
Jevon gripped Rhys’s hair, his fingers tangling in it with just enough pressure to make Rhys’s eyes roll. A year’s old craving for pain kicked in, but he fought it and won, quickly losing himself in Jevon’s building pleasure.
Sucking cock had always been Rhys’s jam, but he regretted that now as Jevon thrashed beneath him, and Rhys’s view was obscured. I want to see him. But he wanted Jevon to feel more. Wanted Jevon to let go of every single thought in his mind and give into the desires he’d hidden for so long. Rhys’s life had disintegrated more times than he cared to admit, but hiding his sexuality from the world wasn’t a problem he’d ever carried. Fuck, no. And he had the scars to prove it.
Believe: A Skins Novel Page 5