Cooper stepped out on the back porch, scanning the yard for any trace of movement, for any shadow that was a little too dark, a little too still. Knocked to the bottom of the porch steps was Park’s second attempt at holiday decorations—a jack-o’-lantern he’d carved last week without any tools he didn’t already have sprouting from his fingertips. He’d done it purely for his own amusement, as their house was too far set back from the road to actually display them. Now it had split open and its irritated expression—Park’s attempt at Cooper’s face; he swore he was going for thoughtful, but he couldn’t even get the lie out without laughing—had morphed into a gaping sort of scream.
Cooper took another cautious step forward. It almost looked like something had been digging at it. Another animal?
A loud, violent buzzing broke the silence, and Cooper jumped and bit his lip hard. “Shit.”
He hastily went back inside and locked the kitchen door behind him before heading back to the living room. Boogie was nowhere to be seen. His phone vibrated again, obnoxiously loud against the low wooden coffee table.
Cooper answered it, snapping, “What.”
There was a second of silence. “And here I was thinking my fiancé might be happy to hear from me.” Park’s droll voice was an instant balm, as little sense as that made.
Cooper let out the breath he’d been holding. “Sorry, who is this?”
“Just a hot single in your neighborhood, looking to chat. You busy?”
Cooper snorted and put the poker down, leaning against the table. “Busy pining for the lover who abandoned me.”
“Mmmm. He sounds like a fool. You can do better.”
“Are you better?”
“For you? I better be,” Park murmured.
Cooper laughed, poured himself another glass of wine and relaxed back on the couch. Even with just the sound of Park’s voice in his ear, the house felt fuller, more familiar. “Speaking of finding better men in your life...”
Cooper filled Park in on the events at the zoo and Eli. Part of him was hoping Park would just laugh it off and say Oh, that’s quintessential Eli. Wait ’til I tell you about the dogsled story, but instead Park sounded deeply disturbed. Far more than Cooper had even anticipated.
“And he really didn’t say anything at all about why he was there?” Park questioned yet again.
“I told you everything, word for word.” He had. What he hadn’t said was just how exhausted Eli had looked, the real note of urgency in his voice when he asked them to buy him time. “Look, don’t mention this to your family, okay? He was really adamant about no one knowing he was there.”
“They’re his pack. They probably know more than we do.”
“Maybe they’re not anymore,” Cooper suggested. “Maybe he took a page out of your book and left too.”
“Eli wouldn’t do well without a pack,” Park said firmly.
“Yeah, he seemed to be doing super well when I last saw him wandering around naked and panicked in the zoo,” Cooper said sarcastically. “Maybe I’m wrong. But you said yourself it was weird he was out of town when you visited and Helena wouldn’t say where.”
“I thought that was because—”
Park cut off. Cooper waited.
“I thought maybe he heard about us getting married from the others and didn’t want to see me,” Park mumbled eventually.
He sounded embarrassed, and Cooper wondered why. He waited a beat, hoping Park would elaborate, but he changed the subject instead. “Everyone says congratulations, by the way. Or something like that. They don’t get why we’re doing it, really, but they think it’s hilarious.”
“I live to make others laugh,” Cooper said wryly. “How’s it going up there?”
He listened to Park catch him up on various family gossip, relieved to hear it wasn’t going nearly as badly as he’d feared. When his eyes started to drift closed, the pleasant rumble of Park’s voice in his ear, Cooper grabbed the last of the wine, his glass and the poker, and went upstairs to their bedroom.
“Are you going to bed now?” Park asked.
“Yeah, I’m beat.”
“I’m in bed, too,” Park said in an odd tone, almost like Cooper was forgetting something.
“All right, so we’re both bringing shame to our age group.” Cooper set the poker up, leaning against the nightstand.
“I’ve been thinking about you a lot today,” Park was saying. “I wish you were here with me right now.”
Cooper snorted. “In your family manor? While you tell your traditional relatives all about how I’m Lady Macbeth-ing you into claiming key pack territory? With my arsenic allergy? Hard pass. I’m good here where only Boogie can judge me.”
“All right. Then I wish I were there, too. With you. Not the cat. The cat’s downstairs.”
“Is she?” Cooper asked, nonplussed. He realized he hadn’t seen Boogie since coming back inside when Park had called. A trickle of anxiety started down his throat. Had she followed him on to the porch somehow? She’d never shown an interest in nature before. But this was a new house, a new outside.
He abandoned his wine on the nightstand and went back downstairs, turning on all the lights. He searched her favorite lounging spots—only half listening to Park now and getting increasingly tense when he didn’t find her.
“Is something wrong?” Park was asking. “You sound off.”
Cooper flicked on the laundry room light. Finally. Boogie sat in a basket, nesting in a pile of Park’s clothes, looking supremely annoyed to be disturbed. Seemed like he wasn’t the only one missing their third musketeer.
Cooper scratched her head, relieved. “Just jumpy, I guess. Overtired.”
“I can think of one way to relax you.”
“Been there, drank that. What do you think I am, an amateur?”
Park sighed very gently, sounding almost disappointed.
“What? What’s the matter?” Cooper asked.
“Nothing,” Park said. “I’m just—I’m looking forward to seeing you tomorrow.”
“Me too,” Cooper said, and the raw honesty in his own voice made his cheeks heat.
Soon after, they said their goodbyes and hung up. Cooper put the house to rest once more, went upstairs and got ready for bed. It was near embarrassing how much more settled he felt after talking to Park. His body was warm, relaxed and lingering on the edge of a tingling sort of awareness that could tip into simple excitement for Park’s return the next evening or into full-blown arousal, depending on which way he pushed it.
He stripped down, watching himself absently in the bedroom’s full-length mirror—a big brass-trimmed, freestanding antique that Park had brought with him from his old place so Cooper couldn’t even veto it on sight. That hadn’t stopped him from proclaiming the mirror was a cursed heirloom that would kill them in their sleep, of course, though secretly he’d grown a bit fond of it. At least it was ostentatious and useful.
Cooper scratched at his belly and let the touch shift into a lazy, ticklish brush of fingertips over skin, hair. Such a simple, silly pleasure to know the one you missed missed you. Was thinking about you. Wanted to be in your bed, like you wanted them in your bed. Had said so, voice gravelly with desire...
Cooper froze and blinked at himself in the mirror. “You fucking idiot,” he said.
He lunged for his phone and called back.
“What’s wrong?” Park asked immediately, voice tense.
“Nothing’s wrong. I just—” Cooper searched for the right words, feeling suddenly, inexplicably nervous. “Were you trying to start something? Something on the phone before? With the I’m in bed and the wish you were here and one way to relax you stuff?”
Cooper winced. Hearing it all together...yeah, okay, so he’d been distracted, all right?
He could practically hear Park smiling fondly. “Don’t worry abou
t it.”
“I’m not worried about it,” Cooper retorted. “I just... Do you still want to? Do something? Christ, I sound like a tenth grader.” He blew out a noisy breath and sat on the upholstered bench at the end of the bed. “Do you want to get each other off over the phone?”
“Well, don’t ease me into it too subtly,” Park said wryly. Then added, “Yeah, I want to. But only if you actually want to and not just because you think I want to. ’Cause I’m fine.”
“I’m fine too. You’re fine. We’re all fine. Now that’s settled—can we do the sex now?”
Park laughed. “Okay.”
There was a long silence. Cooper fetched some lube and left it beside him on the bench for later. The silence continued. He checked the phone to make sure he hadn’t accidentally disconnected the call with all the soundless opening and closing of his mouth he was doing.
They hadn’t done this before. He felt clumsy and awkward and slightly out of sync with Park in a way they hardly ever did anymore in person. The newness of it, the unfamiliarity, had Cooper vacillating between excitement and self-consciousness.
“Are you hard?” Cooper asked finally.
At the same time Park asked, “Are you lying down?” Then, startled, added, “Whoa, okay.”
Cooper felt his cheeks heat in a way that had nothing to do with arousal. “I’m sitting,” he said quickly. “But I could move if you want. Nothing fancy. I think I pulled something lugging that artisanal vessel for your ego inside.”
“My vase came?” Park asked, sounding delighted and frustratingly adorable. “How does it look? Please tell me you didn’t fill it with umbrellas.”
“I didn’t even take it out. I haven’t taken anything out yet,” Cooper added pointedly.
“What honeyed words you whisper, Mr. Dayton.”
“I can only work with what you give me here.”
“And what is it exactly that you want me to give you?” Park teased.
“Your...mouth?” Cooper guessed doubtfully, and wondered if the word mouth had always sounded unerotic or if that was a recent development. “And your...fingers? Am I hot or cold?”
Park sighed, unfortunately not in an Oh Cooper, the skeptical tone you use when talking about my body really does it for me way. “You’ve been hotter.”
“We suck at this.”
“We?” Park repeated innocently.
“No individual grades on the group project,” Cooper protested.
They drifted into silence again and he shifted uncomfortably, staring at himself in the mirror. He suddenly felt ridiculous. He looked ridiculous. Alone in a too-big, too-bright bedroom, his boxers rapidly deflating, a phone pressed to his ear.
It was strange to feel so utterly, shamefully shit at this. Cooper was a grown man hurtling toward the end of his thirties. He had a varied and solid amount of sexual experience under his belt, plus a knowledge of both his and Park’s sexualities and how they worked together that went deeper than any other relationship in his life thus far. And yet somehow there still existed unforeseen pockets of sexual bewilderment and awkwardness, waiting in the shadows to trip him up and send him sprawling flat on his face. Who knew.
“What are you doing right now? Be honest,” Park added swiftly. “Don’t act like you’ve rigged yourself up to the headboard with a couple of dildos and a blindfold or whatever.”
Cooper snorted. “So that’s what does it for you, huh? Honestly, right now I’m sitting on your bed bench thing, looking at myself in that big haunted mirror of yours, trying to remember if I’ve ever actually had sex before, and if so, did I like it.”
“You have. You did. I did, too.” Park’s tone was very conversational, like they could be talking about anything. “In fact, you’re very good at it. So much so that sometimes it’s all I can think about. The way your scent changes when you want to fuck. The way you look at me across a room like I belong to you, like you know all you have to do is crook your finger and I’ll come running over, begging for it. The satisfied little grunts that turn to whimpers when you just start to lose control. The way you taste right before you come down my throat.”
Cooper exhaled a little shakily. In the mirror, his reflection was wide eyed and clutching the phone now with both hands.
Park still sounded completely unbothered. “Sometimes I can’t stop thinking about it. Like in the mornings, when I wake up, before I go on my run, and you’re still asleep next to me. And you smell like sex. And you’re making these needy little noises and rubbing against me. All I want to do is roll you over and rut into you. I think about it so much I have to get up and jerk off in the bathroom instead. I have to bite into my own hand so I don’t wake you.”
“You could do that,” Cooper said. His voice cracked and he had to clear his throat. “I mean, I give you my permission to fuck me awake. Sometime. Depending.”
He clamped his mouth shut from adding any more qualifiers or technical concerns. This was a fantasy. If they actually wanted to experiment with any of that, they’d have a much more in-depth, clearheaded conversation about it later.
Right now, Cooper’s skin felt too tight. He was hyper aware of the heat of the phone against his cheek, the prickling of sweat in the crook of his elbows, the damp brush of fabric where his cockhead pushed against his boxers, but he didn’t touch himself yet. Just enjoyed the slow build of pleasure as his hips started to make unconscious, abortive little twitches into space.
“Yeah? Would you like that?” Park was sounding a bit more affected, too. “It seems like you would, the way you grind up against me all night, humping my leg like a dog in heat. You’re very demanding, even when you’re asleep, did you know that?”
“How horrible for you.”
“It’s hell,” Park agreed. “Someday I’m going to snap and give you what you’re so clearly desperate for. Is that what you want?”
“Yes,” Cooper whispered. “I want it. Tell me.”
“It would be some early morning after we already fucked the night before, so you’re still a little sweet and soft and open for me. I could put you on your side and work my fingers into you easily enough that you’d think you were still dreaming. I would let you use me how you like. Let you rock on my fingers while my other hand would stroke your body, tease you, touch you everywhere except where you need it. And when you try to reach for yourself, I’d trap your hands behind your back.”
Cooper made a soft, involuntary sound. “Why?”
“Because it’s my turn to do whatever I want. And what I want is for you to wake up hard and wild and desperate for it when I finally work my dick all the way into your tight little hole. So far gone already that the only thing you can do is lie there and take it as I wrap my arms around your body, trap you against my chest, and grind deep and slow. Yes?”
“Yeah,” Cooper choked. “Fuck, Oliver. I need—”
“Touch yourself now.”
Cooper fumbled with the phone and managed to free himself, underwear pulled awkwardly down to his thighs. He cried out softly with relief when he gripped the shaft and heard Park’s answering groan and murmured encouragements to get the lube out and slick himself up. To watch himself in the mirror while he stroked. That was an unnecessary suggestion. Cooper was already watching, couldn’t look away. His reflection was absolutely wanton, sprawled half on the bench, half on the bed, wild-eyed and thrusting into his fist noisily, dripping over his fingers.
“I can hear you,” Park growled in his ear. “God, you sound good. I want to stay inside you all night. Let you keep my cock warm until I feel like fucking you again, and again, until you’re so full you—”
Cooper’s orgasm felt ripped out of him. He came on himself so suddenly and intensely that his leg kicked out and then got caught hovering in the air for the millisecond his nonessential muscles all froze and tightened as one before recoiling with a ferocity that knocked him o
n his back and forced his hips off the bench, as if trying to fuck the very sky itself.
Somewhere by his shoulder, where he’d dropped his phone, Park made a series of guttural sounds Cooper recognized well, and he knew Park was coming, too. He listened intently, still riding the aftershocks, and imagined the mess Park was probably making. Imagined how if he was there, Cooper might lick it up just to watch Park’s eyes flutter back again, maybe coax a little extra out.
Eventually, Cooper’s heartbeat slowed and the last sexual edge to his thoughts dulled to nothing. He drifted into a content blankness. Enjoyed the silence and stillness of his own mind while Park caught his breath and went through his own recovery process of murmuring Cooper’s name and some soft, silly affections.
Fortunately, Park was familiar with Cooper’s customary distancing postorgasm and didn’t push him to express tender truths or speak in full sentences at all. Just checked that he was okay, talked him through a basic cleanup, told him he’d see him tomorrow and said goodnight.
After hanging up, Cooper crawled into the bed and, thanks to Park, dropped off into a relaxed, easy sleep, completely wiped out.
So, it was of course Park’s fault too that he didn’t hear the intruder’s approach until the pillow landed on his legs.
Chapter Three
Cooper sat up, grabbing the poker as he went, wielding it over his head like he’d brought a goddamn broadsword to a pillow fight. The bedroom lights were back on, and all the way across the room, lingering in the open doorway, stood Eli.
“What the hell are you doing here?” Cooper gasped. He felt disoriented with sleep; caught between emergency mode and a dream state. His grip on the poker loosened slightly, but he didn’t put it down.
Eli—dressed this time, thank god—leaned against the wall casually, not even seeming to notice the makeshift weapon, much less care. “I did say I’d be seeing you.”
“And yet I didn’t take that to mean you would be breaking into my bedroom in the middle of the night,” Cooper hissed.
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