Dreamspinner Press Years One & Two Greatest Hits

by J. M. Colail

  A shy smile broke on Lucas’s face. “You are no different from when you were still married, Jack. Gay is not who you are or what you are. It doesn’t define you.”

  Jack looked around and then put his arm around Lucas to pull him close and kiss his temple. “I know. It’s just a little strange to be so open about it after denying it for most of my life.”

  Lucas chuckled. “You’re nuts, but I love you for it. Now tell me, do we need to buy condoms too?”

  Jack became a little shy again. “Well, if I recall, the last person I had sex with was you, and I have been tested since then, so….”

  Lucas grabbed him and kissed him full on the mouth. “Same here, believe it or not. So no condoms.” He winked at Jack, who was looking at him a bit baffled.

  “What? I’m a single father with a two year old. But you surprise me. I thought you would have cruised around a bit, you know, tested this newfound interest a little?”

  Jack shook his head, his face soft. “I have to admit I thought about it. I just never…. It wouldn’t have been the same.”

  Lucas felt himself go all warm as Jack made that confession. “I think we need to get to a private room somewhere quickly, don’t you think?”

  Jack chuckled. “Yeah. Why don’t I show you my apartment?”

  They got a nice smile from the checkout girl as she scanned the lube.

  JACK’S APARTMENT was the complete opposite of Lucas’s, located in the nice part of Manhattan, practically in walking distance from the UN Buildings. It had a doorman and nicely maintained elevators and hallways.

  Lucas let his eyes drink in the elegant, slightly overbearing opulence.

  “I inherited this apartment from my parents. When they died, my brothers got a horse farm in Argentina, and I settled for this,” he stated apologetically.

  “I’m sorry about your parents,” Lucas was quick to answer.

  “Yeah, you could say it was a shitty couple of years.” They set the groceries on the counter of the open kitchen and Jack took Lucas’s hand. “Come on, I’ll give you the grand tour.”

  The apartment was mostly empty, with white walls and very little furniture, just a comfortable leather couch in the living room and a huge painting on the wall. It was a colorful abstract, with barely legible words scribbled all over and pieces of printed paper glued into it and then painted over. Lucas moved a little closer to it, still not letting go of his lover’s hand and then realized the signature on the painting was Jack’s.

  He gave the American an astonished look. “Jack, did you paint that?”

  Jack raised his eyebrows, admitting it wordlessly.

  “Oh my God, it’s impressive!”

  “But do you like it?” Jack asked, clearly more than a little unsure.

  “Yeah, well, you have hidden talents, man. Like is not the word. I think it’s amazing.”

  Jack chuckled at the dumbstruck look on Lucas’s face. “I have about twenty canvasses in the studio, but this is my favorite. I always wanted to paint, just never had the time to before.”

  Lucas turned into Jack’s arms and kissed him passionately. “As much as I want to stand here playing galleries, I have to pick up AnnElise in about two hours, so….”

  Jack nodded. “I’ll show you the bedroom.”

  Lucas dipped into one of the paper shopping bags before following him and triumphantly dug out the lube.

  Jack chuckled. “God, you’re such a romantic, aren’t you?” he said as he pulled Lucas closer to him.

  “No, I just don’t want to hurt you, that’s all.” Lucas answered cheekily.

  Lucas never got the chance to look around the bedroom before he felt Jack’s hands all over him, stripping him of his clothes. “On second thought, I want you inside me, Jack, I missed this so much.”

  They continued, hungrily exploring each other’s mouths, rubbing up against each other’s naked skin.

  Jack couldn’t believe he was making love to Lucas, after he’d resigned himself to the thought that it would never happen again. He wanted to take it slow, afraid that his pent up lust wouldn’t let him last long enough to actually make it inside of Lucas, but it felt so good to let his hands slide over the smooth, almost hairless skin. “Slow down,” he pleaded breathlessly, dropping onto his back.

  Lucas smiled and pulled Jack back on top of himself. “I don’t want to take it slow. I want you now and we can do this slowly a hundred more times… later.”

  Jack smiled into the kiss, realizing Lucas felt the same urgency as he did. He felt his lover reach out for the lube and giggled as he got to it first.

  “Quickly,” Lucas panted. “Don’t need much time, just a big… dollop.” They both laughed at the situation and their own impatience, but were soon panting as Jack entered Lucas with first one, and then two fingers. It all felt very familiar and Lucas realized it was reassuring, knowing exactly what to expect. He knew he trusted Jack completely and that only made it better.

  Lucas’s dark, lustful eyes were slightly unfocused as he looked at Jack. He moaned as Jack took hold of his already hard erection. “Come inside me, Jack, I’m ready.”

  Lucas returned the gesture, lubing Jack up carefully. It felt strange to think there wasn’t going to be any barrier between them now, no condom separating them.

  As Lucas spread his legs wide, Jack positioned himself and slid slowly inside his young lover. “Are you okay?” he asked. It took all his self-restraint to hold still as Lucas’s heat enveloped him and a low moan rose from Lucas’s throat.

  “Feels so good, Jack, please… start moving… a little,” Lucas pleaded before he wrapped his arms around Jack, pulling him into a hungry kiss. His hands travelled down to cup Jack’s ass, urging him on with every thrust.

  Lucas was tight and when he inserted a finger in Jack’s passage, the American didn’t manage more than a few thrusts before he came, shuddering, inside his lover.

  It took Jack a few moments to realize Lucas hadn’t come yet. Still gasping breath, he moved down his lover’s body until he could take Lucas’s rock hard cock in his mouth.

  “Fuck!” Lucas cried out, tangling his hands into Jack’s hair, guiding him. Jack knew Lucas was close, and he sucked hard, letting his tongue graze the entire length.

  “Oh my God, Jack!” Lucas gasped as he tensed and then came into Jack’s mouth with a long sigh.

  Jack moved up, still kissing and licking, making Lucas twitch more than once, ending by languidly claiming Lucas’s mouth. When they came up for air, Lucas laughed. “It’s been ages since I’ve tasted myself in your mouth.”

  Jack pulled him closer and after some fiddling managed to get both of them under the covers of the bed they hadn’t bothered to turn down. “You can’t believe how much I missed this, Luke.”

  “Yes, I can,” Lucas admitted, smiling into Jack’s light blue eyes.

  Jack buried his face in Lucas’s nape. “I’m sorry I never came after you.”

  Lucas took Jack’s head in his hands and forced him to look into his eyes. He realized his lover wasn’t joking.

  “I’m so sorry, Lucas.” Jack had tears in his eyes.

  “Jack, don’t. I’m the one who ran away. When you were at your most vulnerable, I just left.” He held Jack tighter in his arms. “It felt like the right thing to do at the time. I didn’t want you to give up everything you ever worked for and then resent me afterwards.”

  “I wouldn’t have,” Jack answered, calmer now. “I would have gladly given everything up for you. I just wasn’t very good at telling you that then, I suppose.” He slowly kissed Lucas again. They were cozy now, both on their sides and facing each other, snuggled up together under the blankets, simply enjoying the closeness of their relaxed and naked bodies.

  “We have to stay awake, so we’re not too late to pick AnnElise up from Liz’s,” Lucas lazily told Jack in between kisses, but it was no use.

  It was already dark when they arrived at Liz’s house. Luckily she thought it was all very funny, makin
g both of them feel incredibly self-conscious and she didn’t skip a single opportunity to tease them about it mercilessly.

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  EARLY ON in their renewed relationship, the decisions they had to make were easy. Lucas and AnnElise moved into Jack’s apartment, because it was bigger, located in a better part of the city and closer to where they both now worked. More importantly, it didn’t require paying any rent, though at some point Lucas remarked that what they had to pay in monthly expenses to maintain the elevators, their percentage of the building and the doorman, felt like rent to him!

  Jack enrolled in the graduate program at Cornell just as he had said he would when he came back to New York, and even though he promised Lucas he wouldn’t rush things, he did drive the four hours over to Ithaca a few times every month and spent countless hours behind his desk at home doing research and writing papers.

  AnnElise was growing up happy, and Jack realized he really enjoyed being a dad. He blushed profusely, but was infinitely proud when AnnElise dragged him back into the UN day care center so she could introduce him as “her other dad” to one of the new girls working there.

  Most of their colleagues knew about their living arrangements and, to Jack’s surprise in particular, it was usually met with everything from total indifference to the occasional “Well, good for you.” It was still strange to Jack to be matter-of-fact about Lucas, never sure if he should call him his boyfriend, lover, significant other or just partner, but whatever he called him, he was not hiding him anymore. In that respect, Liz was a great help, doing her very best to treat them no differently from the straight couples in her circle of friends.

  Jack and Lucas’s friends were an eclectic bunch of expatriates from a variety of countries, so by the time she was four, AnnElise was speaking French, Spanish and Italian with their children as if she had never heard anything else, and that was just the way her two dads liked it.

  “REMEMBER WHEN you asked me to marry you?”

  Lucas had just put aside the press release he had been drafting all evening and was snuggled up to Jack who was reading Libération, one of the many foreign newspapers they subscribed to.

  “I remember,” Jack answered, narrowing his eyes as he fondly thought back to that night.

  “Well, I accepted, right?” Lucas continued.

  “Yes, you did,” Jack said hesitantly and a little unsure of where exactly Lucas was taking this.

  “Do you still feel the same?” Lucas asked, more seriously.

  “Are you asking me if I still want to marry you?”

  Lucas nodded.

  “Honey, my feelings haven’t changed; you know I still love you, probably even more now than when I asked you.” Jack put his hand on Lucas’s neck.

  “But?” Lucas cut in.

  “But what?” Jack could see the disappointment in his lover’s face. “Luke, we don’t need a piece of paper. Besides, here in the States it’s not even valid.”

  “I know that,” Lucas answered quietly, pulling away and creating some distance between him and Jack.

  “Lucas, what’s wrong? Why do I have to prove my love for you all of a sudden?” Jack put his newspaper down and turned in Lucas’s direction.

  “It’s not about that. What if something happened to me? What if I had some kind of accident? I would want you to make decisions for me, and I would want you to take care of AnnElise.”

  “That’s why I’m her legal guardian, and you had it written into your living will that I can make those decisions for you if you are no longer able to make them for yourself.”

  “I’m just scared that if something should happen to me, they will contact Lucy first.”

  Jack knew how much Lucas loved his daughter, but he also knew something must have happened to make him this worried.

  “Just talk to me, Luke.”

  “She called, on the phone,” Lucas cut in.

  “Lucy?”

  He nodded, and then the words came tumbling out. “She told me to leave her alone, that she didn’t want to have anything to do with me or with ‘the kid.’ She doesn’t even want to know her name!”

  Lucas sat on the side of the bed, with his back to Jack, his head in his hands.

  Jack waited for a moment and then moved behind his lover, scooting over so that he had one leg on either side of him and he could wrap his arms around the younger man’s frame. At first Lucas pulled away, but Jack held him tighter and felt him surrender to the touch.

  “Apparently they called her,” Lucas eventually said, his voice thick with emotion.

  “Who called her?” Jack softly asked, trying to calm Lucas down.

  “The kindergarten school we filled out an application for. I handed them a copy of ’Lise’s birth certificate and her adoption papers and I guess someone at the office got nosy and tracked down Lucy.” Lucas sighed. “I mean, I don’t have her phone number; I don’t even know where she lives, but someone in that school had the nerve to track her down and call her to ask why I’m applying for a placement for AnnElise without her mother’s consent.”

  “That settles it, Lucas. We enroll AnnElise in the UN International School. They don’t need her mother’s consent. Lucy signed away all her parental rights.” Jack squeezed his lover tight.

  Lucas leaned back into the touch. “That’s what Lucy told me, too, and she said she told the man who called her as well.”

  “Must have been strange to hear her voice again.”

  Lucas nodded as Jack kissed his hair and rested his cheek against his head. “We could sue them for breach of privacy.”

  “No,” Lucas whispered. “I don’t want to sue anyone. I just want people to accept us for who we are. We are AnnElise’s parents, Jack, you and I.”

  “So is that why you want to get married? To prove that?” Jack was trying to get to the root of it. He knew it would take more than a piece of paper for people to understand this.

  “It’s other things, too. If something happens to me, I want you to take care of ’Lise, Jack.” Lucas was leaning against his lover, slowly caressing the strong arms that held him.

  “You know I will.”

  “But it works the other way around, too. What if something happens to you, Jack? We’ll be out on the street.” Lucas turned a bit and lifted his legs over Jack’s so he could face the older man. “Even if you put it in your will that we should get this apartment, I can’t afford to inherit this. We’re not legally a family so the inheritance tax will be enormous.”

  “You’ve really thought this through, haven’t you?” Jack asked as he ran his hand through Lucas’s soft hair.

  “I can sort things out financially, Lucas. It had already crossed my mind that I should set up some sort of trust fund for AnnElise. That would help to resolve the tax problems and take care of you both. You and AnnElise are my family now.”

  “You would do that for me, for us, but you still don’t want to get married?” Lucas looked at Jack questioningly.

  Jack sighed. “I’m scared, Lucas.”

  Lucas straightened his back and turned toward Jack with an astonished look on his face. “Why on earth?”

  “I can see the headlines now. ‘Former US Ambassador marries gay lover,’” Jack pointed out. “I wouldn’t want you, or AnnElise for that matter, to get any kind of backlash from this. We know they’re okay about us living together, but it’s only because we’re fairly discreet about it. It’s a delicate subject for a lot of countries, and I’m sure the UN is okay about one of their rising PR men living with another guy, but if we were to marry, while it’s not yet legal in the state of New York, they might consider it ‘drawing unfavorable attention.’ I don’t know if you’ve read the fine print of your contract, Lucas, but….”

  Lucas rolled his eyes. “I know they can fire me if I do that.”

  “Listen.” Jack squeezed Lucas tight in his arms and rocked him a little. “You know I love you and you know my brothers won’t throw you out of this place if a Yellow Ca
b ran over me tomorrow.”

  Lucas shuddered, “Don’t say that!”

  “You know they won’t, Luke.”

  Lucas turned some more to look his lover in the eye. “You better be careful not to get hurt. I want to dance with you at our daughter’s wedding and I want you to bounce our grandchildren on your knee.”

  Jack looked at the serious expression on Lucas’s face and couldn’t help but laugh. “Who says she’ll want to get married?”

  Lucas smiled and grabbed Jack’s hands while he moved to straddle him. “I don’t care.” He started as he placed a hard kiss on Jack’s mouth. “I want to grow old with you, whether that means dancing at a wedding or not!”

  Jack dropped to his back, allowing Lucas to continue the assault on his body. He knew that when Lucas didn’t entirely get his way, he tended to take the lead in bed. It was one of the reasons why Jack liked to put up a good argument.

  He liked to feel Lucas’s bulge grinding against his, through their clothes, while his hands were pinned to the bed next to his ears. He liked how Lucas invaded his mouth with his tongue and then moaned, sending ripples through his entire body. He liked to watch the young man’s eyes go dark as he said “just lie back and let me do all the work” while he struggled to get both of them out of their clothes. Jack would put up a silent argument, struggle a bit, but only because he knew it made Lucas’s lust for him even stronger. Lucas would spoil him, let him suck on those long slender fingers of his while he had his mouth around Jack’s swollen cock and the fingers of his other hand buried deep inside him.

  Jack knew he would need all his resolve not to come right there and then. He knew that he would have to wait until Lucas was thrusting deep inside of him, nicking at his sweet spot every single time. Until they no longer knew where one ended and the other began, until he heard Lucas’s low moan in his ear and his plea to “come with me, Jack.” Only then could he let go, feeling all the sensations of lust and love course through his body and see them come out in Lucas’s eyes.