by Lane Swift
“Get on the bed, on your back, and put your arms over your head.”
Dante lay down and gripped the lowest crossbar at the head of the iron-framed bed, adjusting his shoulders and legs until comfortable. Lucas climbed onto the bed and knelt at his left side, raking his eyes over the length of Dante’s body. His face was as relaxed as when he was asleep, yet alive and alert. His cock was thick and solid, his eyelids heavy with lust.
When Lucas pressed for a kiss, Dante opened for him. Small noises of pleasure erupted from Lucas’s throat as he tentatively plundered Dante’s mouth, taking his tongue and breath as his own. But Lucas vibrated with a more desperate need. His jaw must have been too sore to kiss more vigorously.
When Lucas pulled back for air, Dante chased his mouth. Lucas chuckled, teasing, and grazed Dante’s nipple with his lips. Dante almost bucked off the bed. With complete abandon, he hissed and gasped as Lucas increased the caress, with a soft suck, a lick, and then a nip.
To Dante’s side, Lucas’s cock stood hard and proud. He paused when he noticed Dante looking, tilted his hips forward, and gave his erection a lazy stroke. “See what you do to me?”
Dante’s stomach was already wet with precome, and another bead of fluid dribbled from his cock and spread into the ebony trail of hair leading from his navel to his groin.
Lucas knelt between Dante’s thighs. He surveyed Dante’s naked body as Dante surveyed his: the way his hip bones jutted in line with his ribs and in between, how his stomach heaved. Dante could almost taste the heavy scent of Lucas’s arousal in the air.
“I’m going to touch you now, with my hand. I want you to come as quickly as you can. Okay?”
For this time at least, Lucas had no care for self-control. He wanted Dante to let go. To lose it.
“I’ll do my best.” Dante tried to laugh, but all that came out was a tight huff of air and a vibration in his shoulders.
Lucas placed his hand on Dante’s cock and closed his fingers around its girth. He stroked languidly, murmuring his approval as Dante rolled into the motion, countering in perfect time.
The pressure began to build in his balls immediately. Too damned soon, like a damned teenager.
“I’m close.”
Already.
“Good. It’s good to know I turn you on.”
Lucas slipped down the bed. He knelt, dropped to his elbow, and took a long lick over Dante’s balls. With the tip of his tongue, Lucas tracked length of Dante’s cock. Dante groaned, Lucas hummed, and that noise alone further spiked his own arousal.
With his hand on Dante’s thigh, Lucas took the tip of Dante’s cock in his mouth. He sucked it slowly until Dante begged, “Faster, harder,” stupidly forgetting that it would hurt Lucas too much. “Sorry. Sorry.”
Lucas stopped. He crawled up Dante’s body and lay over him, his skin burning like white fire. “Don’t be. Look at you.”
“I prefer to look at you.” Dante canted his hips, brushing his cock against Lucas’s erection.
“Then look at me.”
Dante looked, until he couldn’t. He closed his hand over Lucas’s shoulder, at once remembering he was meant to be holding the bed frame. He was no good at this. He wanted to love Lucas, to hold him and bury himself inside him. He knew he shouldn’t ask. Lucas deserved this. Dante owed him this much respect at the very least.
“What is it?” Lucas asked. “What do you want?”
“Whatever you want.”
“We could go around in circles. I want you to tell me.” Lucas’s eyes narrowed, then lit. “Tell me what you want. In detail.”
“I want to be inside you. I want you on your back so that I can see your face when you come.”
Lucas almost looked relieved.
Dante took his time opening Lucas with his fingers. The earlier panic that had laced his arousal diminished, though his erection did not. While Dante pushed his knuckles past the tension and worked tight muscles loose, Lucas lifted one of his legs, hooking his ankle over Dante’s shoulder, murmuring his approval on every sultry exhale.
The breach was sweet and perfect. Dante took care not to put any weight on Lucas’s chest. He clasped his hips tight and drove into his heat, savoring the flush that mottled Lucas’s chest and the slow dribble of precome from Lucas’s cock.
In Dante’s attic room at the top of his house, synchronously, their bodies moved. Lucas’s lips parted, and he panted, “Make me come.” Dante steadied himself on his haunches and stroked Lucas’s cock.
A long groan accompanied the warm spill of Lucas’s orgasm. The clench of his muscles around Dante’s cock had him crashing through his own climax soon after. As Dante had taken care of Lucas, Lucas had taken care of Dante.
Their post-coital kisses were more shared breath than skin, more affection than passion.
Lucas’s semen had dried on his stomach by the time Dante found the strength and will to heave his weary body off the bed from beside Lucas. He went to the bathroom and brought back a flannel, moistened with warm water, cleaning Lucas first, then himself.
Under the covers, Dante drew Lucas to his chest and buried his nose against the nape of his neck, where his skin was warm and his hair silky-soft. Lucas ran his fingers over Dante’s forearm, stroking him gently, lovingly.
When their breathing slowed and Dante’s eyes began to feel heavy, Lucas said, “I stink.”
“I like the way you smell, but we can shower if you like.”
Lucas turned in Dante’s arms and placed his hand on Dante’s chest. “Maybe later. I’m pretty tired.”
“Then sleep. I might go downstairs. You can buzz me on the intercom if you need me, or you can come down. Make yourself at home.”
“I should go home. To my home. I’ve got things that need to be sorted out. Post. Laundry. Sour milk in the fridge.”
“I can take you tomorrow. But I’d like it if you’d come back with me. Stay here for a few days? Until you’re stronger.”
“All right.”
Lucas closed his eyes and rolled onto his back. Dante wasn’t sure whether he didn’t like to be touched when he slept or if his injury made it uncomfortable to be nuzzled close to another person. In truth, he didn’t know Lucas nearly as well as he’d thought he did.
He’d watched him for weeks, but time in each other’s company? There was only their first meeting, Avery’s funeral, a date, and a week of hospital visits.
Did he and Lucas share that indefinable, inexplicable connection that sometimes grew into what people called love? Dante wouldn’t allow himself to think too far ahead, but he couldn’t help hoping, as he listened to Lucas’s breathing even out and his face slacken. At the very least, he wanted to share more of his time in the world with him.
He kissed his temple. “Sweet dreams.”
Lucas’s eyes didn’t open, but his mouth curled up briefly. His foot found Dante’s calf under the covers. He rested it there and replied sluggishly, “You too.”
Dante didn’t often dream. At least, he didn’t remember his dreams once he awoke. He was content to know that he would sleep soundly, with Lucas at his side.
Chapter 27
DANTE LAY awake into the small hours. He hadn’t shared his bed for some time. He hadn’t shared his heart for longer. He tuned into the rhythm of Lucas’s breathing and let it soothe him. Lucas was here. Lucas was his. Lucas was safe.
For the sake of thoroughness, Dante had checked the cameras and the Internet. Shaw seemed to have disappeared from the face of the earth. Denny Ross’s social-media profiles were radio silent. Bill Massey’s too. Richard Shaw’s friends weren’t posting anything linked to him nor were they posting anything about themselves. Unless the police found some evidence connecting them, Shaw and Lucas had nothing to fear. So why was Shaw in hiding? The man had a business to run.
Dante tamped down the feeling this was a prelude. The storm had been and gone. This was the calm. It had to be. But you could never be too careful. First thing Friday morning, Dante arranged to me
et Thierry for lunch.
Later the same morning, Dante drove Lucas home. Lucas took Avery’s poster boards upstairs, to the empty second bedroom. What must have been Grace’s bedroom. He turned the boards so that the picture sides were facing the wall.
Dante at first thought he’d done that because it was too painful for Lucas to see the photographs, but a shaft of sunlight coming in through the window suggested he simply wanted to protect them from sun damage. It served as a poignant reminder that not everything that Lucas or Dante did hinged around their losses.
“I meant to ask you about Avery’s will,” Lucas said. “Did everything go okay?”
The reading had been the morning before, but with everything else that had happened, Dante had forgotten to mention it. “You mean did she leave me anything?”
“It’s none of my business. I….”
“You don’t need to feel guilty or that somehow you’ve cheated anyone out of their due.”
“I know. But she loved you too. She told me it was harder for her to leave you than it was to leave your father.”
Dante hadn’t expected that. He hadn’t known. It had never occurred to him.
“She left me money too,” Dante said. “More than I expected. And some jewelry that I can pass on to Lois, and Kit if she wants it.” Dante smiled. “Then there is that Le Creuset dish.”
“Didn’t she have a set?”
“I don’t know. It doesn’t matter, Lucas. Seriously. I have everything I need.” That was another thing that hadn’t occurred to Dante until he’d said it. At this very moment in time, he had not just everything he needed, but everything he wanted.
Dante helped Lucas empty the fridge and the bin. They bagged his dirty laundry and packed clean clothes. Lucas also added his laptop, his espresso pot, and the remainder of a bag of coffee beans to the holdall.
While they worked, Dante kept an intermittent eye on the street. Stood to the side of the living room window, he peered between the slats of the blinds, trying to see inside the few parked cars and over the garden walls belonging to Lucas’s neighbors. Nothing was awry.
They were readying to leave—Dante was on the front doorstep, about to put the rubbish in the outside bin—when a lady about Lucas’s age came up the front path.
“Hello. Is Lucas home?”
“Yes.” Dante leaned into the hallway, where Lucas was sifting through his post. “Lucas, you have a visitor.”
Lucas poked his head out of the door and brightened immediately. “Geetha!”
“Oh, you poor thing.” She sidled past Dante and straight into the house. “You were on the local news. Otherwise, I never would have known. Isn’t that terrible? My own neighbor.” She handed Lucas a card and a box of chocolates. “I was going to visit you in the hospital today, but when I called last night, they said you’d already come home. Is there anything I can do?”
Lucas looked at Geetha fondly. “Actually, I’m going to stay with my friend for a few days, until I get more strength back in my arm. But thank you for offering.”
“I can keep an eye on the place for you, if you like. Put your bin inside after the collection.”
“Thank you. That’s very kind.”
Geetha eyed the holdall and Dante stuffing the rubbish into the outside bin. “You were about to leave?”
“Yes.”
“Please come and visit us once you’re home. The children finish school in a week, and Dev has time off work. I’ll make you pani puri.”
“Then it’s a date.”
After she’d gone, Dante opened the envelope she’d given to Lucas. The card inside was homemade—a fiesta of brightly colored felt-tip and glitter, and Get Well Soon printed in pink. Inside, someone else, an older sibling maybe, had neatly written in labored cursive best wishes for Lucas’s speedy recovery. Lucas stared at it for a long time.
“Her daughter Shaili made it. She’s six.”
Dante remembered receiving similar cards, for his birthday, for Father’s Day, and at Christmas. Lois and Kit had been older, and their creations less flamboyant but no less heartfelt. A sudden rush of emotion brought a startling tear to Dante’s eye.
“It’s very cute. Do you buy the family gifts? We can do some Christmas shopping this weekend, if you like.”
“I don’t usually. They don’t celebrate Christmas. But this year, I think I’d like to get the children something anyway.” Lucas slipped the card into his messenger bag, beside his laptop. “They’re nice people.”
“She seemed so.”
Lucas took his blue peacoat from the coat peg in the hall. He was still thinner than Dante would have liked to see him. He had to be feeling the deepening December cold. If they were going to be strolling the shops…. It pained Dante to mention it, but sometimes practicality had to bear out over fashion. “You have a warmer coat? A sheepskin?”
Lucas looked at him askance. “That monstrosity? I got rid of it.”
“Oh. Shame.”
“Liar. You hated it.”
He was about to protest, but Lucas laughed, and he couldn’t help but follow.
Dante scanned the house one last time, secured all the windows and doors, and loaded the car. By the time they left, he only had an hour before he was due to meet Thierry.
Lucas was happy to be left to his own devices. Kit would pick them up lunch from Jim’s, and if Lucas felt like it, he’d have a look around the shop. He also had to make calls to his employer and update his friends on his well-being.
“Do you think your friend will tell you anything?” Lucas looked at home with his feet up on the office sofa, but there was no disguising his worry.
“If he knows anything, he will.”
Lucas wriggled his arm out of the sling with a slight wince. The effort it took him to flex his wrist and fingers showed in his grimace as he said, “Do you think he’ll suspect you of being involved?”
“He shouldn’t. He’s known me for ten years. Ten clean years.”
Despite the residual pain and the continuing lack of strength and mobility in his arm, Lucas looked several shades healthier than he had when he’d arrived at Dante’s house last night. He couldn’t feel temperature or pain in his left arm yet but could feel pressure. The scar on his shoulder was pink and dry, and if last night was anything to go by, he was sleeping soundly. Dante didn’t want to leave him, but he knew Lucas was safe.
Lucas was in Dante’s home, safe and sound.
It was strange and wonderful and more so when Lucas said, to Dante of all people, “Be careful.”
“It’s only lunch.”
“I know, but still….” Lucas stood, strode across the room, and pulled Dante into a one-armed hug. “I’ll see you later.”
Dante walked to Roseport Quay and arrived twenty minutes early. Thierry was already seated on a bench outside the Mariner’s Café, a scarf wrapped around his neck and a gray trilby on his head. He stood when he saw Dante skirting the marina.
“Do you mind if we walk first? Cecile says I’m getting fat.”
“I thought she liked your paunch.”
Thierry made a disgruntled noise. “I don’t know why you only use your charm on her. I wouldn’t mind it, too, you know?”
“I’m sorry. You look well. I thought you’d lost weight.”
Thierry rolled his eyes and muttered something in French that definitely included a line about Dante talking merde. Dante was pleased to catch him in good humor. They set off at a leisurely pace, in the direction of the dockyard, away from the lunchtime crowd and Christmas shoppers.
As soon as the path ahead was clear and quiet, Thierry said, “What do you need, Dante?”
“Information, if you have it. If you can give it to me.”
“What information?”
They’d never been down this road before. Dante was overstepping the bounds of their friendship simply by asking.
“I’ve been seeing someone. A man called Lucas Green.”
Thierry didn’t break his stride. �
��Lucas Green, who was shot in Milton?”
“Yes. You know about him?”
“I know you visited him in the hospital and that he was with you the night he was shot.”
Dante’s heart exploded into a gallop. What else did Thierry know? Would he tell him, if Dante asked? Dante braced himself against a gust of wind and the possibility that since the weekend he had unwittingly been under surveillance—until he remembered the police statement that Lucas made on his first day in the hospital. Still, thank goodness he hadn’t been near Shaw.
“You never said anything.”
“It wasn’t my place. But since you’ve brought it up….” Thierry took out his handset, and Dante nodded his consent to record their conversation. Thierry motioned to one of the abandoned lookout shelters on the dock, and they took a seat out of the wind, overlooking the water.
“There are, on average, three shootings a year on this island,” Thierry said. “It might be down to the plain clothes to investigate, but nevertheless, if someone gets shot, I make it my business to know everything about it. Is there something you want to tell me?”
Dante looked out to the horizon and a mammoth cruise ship sailing out into the Channel. “Nothing that will help. I was hoping you’d be able to tell me something.”
“You first.”
“We were introduced to each other by a mutual friend. A lady called Avery Lister. I wasn’t sure about him at first. You know me. I’ve got used to being on my own, and Lucas seemed too young. But then Avery died, and I decided to ask him if he would like to come to her memorial with me.”
“He agreed?”
“Yes. We talked a lot that day. After, I asked him out for dinner. Saturday night was our first date.”
“How did it go? If you don’t mind me asking.”
“I don’t mind. It went well. I thought, when I dropped him home, that he might ask me to come in.”
One side of Thierry’s mouth quirked up. “But he didn’t?”
“No. Not even for coffee.”
Thierry nodded, as if in commiseration, and Dante was quick to add, “I didn’t pressure him. You know I wouldn’t. It was our first date, and he wasn’t ready, but maybe I didn’t react with my usual charm.”