Not for the first time, Aaron damned their parents and Greek culture. A man wasn’t a man if he dared to cry, especially in front of another creature in possession of a cock. As much as they all loved one another, there were certain barriers they all found immensely difficult to cross.
Loukas needed to cry, and only with Alexa could he do that.
He left them like that, praying that Loukas could find succor in their woman and that she could find the same in Loukas.
There was no jealousy, no fear or hurt at being cut out. He just wanted them to find a semblance of peace over the loved one they’d lost, because then, the healing process would start. With it, their future.
Aaron had always known that this path would never be easy. He wasn’t an idiot, after all. And in a way, it would be so easy because of their love for one another, but he was very aware that their families, the traditions of their people, would be what could break them apart.
The other night, not being able to publicly coddle Alexa, leaving it to Loukas, he hadn’t been jealous, just anxious. When they’d learned about Stavros’s passing, he’d wanted to hold her to him, to kiss away her tears, but that wasn’t the role he could play in public.
It hurt, and Aaron knew he was going to have to deal with this himself or throw a wrench in the works of a relationship they’d all been longing for over a decade.
Chapter Twelve
“I have a hard-on.”
Leon snorted and half turned from his canvas to look at Aaron, standing in the doorway, sporting a disgruntled expression and, yes, an erection. “I’m busy,” he told him, amusement lacing his tone.
“Charming.”
“Bullshit. If you were working, and I told you I was horny, you’d tell me the same.”
“I’m hurt, Leon. Hurt and offended.”
Leon rolled his eyes. “I’m sure. It takes a lot more than that to offend you.”
“Does it? Does it really?” he pouted.
“You’re not going to manipulate me. I have to finish this canvas.”
“Twenty minutes. Twenty-five, at the most.”
“I could have finished this by then.”
“Yeah, but you’ll have that wonderful dopey afterglow. You know an orgasm always makes you feel better.”
He grinned. “You’re such a bullshitter. What’s going on up at the house? Are Loukas and Alexa okay?”
That had Aaron’s playfulness disappearing. “Loukas was crying, Leo.”
“Shit.”
At Leon’s breathy curse, the other man nodded grimly and headed over to the picture window overlooking the sea. The studio was around forty feet by forty feet. A perfect square, clad in white, with a terra-cotta roof, and huge windows taking up more space than bricks. Light poured in at all angles, giving his work the perfect medium whatever the time of day.
In the distance, the Mediterranean roared. White peaks formed and disappeared with the weight of the wind dragging against the water. The blue was so bright it hurt the eyes. But then, looking at Aaron sometimes hurt too.
Of them all, Aaron was the one considered classically handsome. He was almost too perfect, but that was saved by his character. His face was too mobile to be beautiful. Whatever his mood, Aaron’s features betrayed it to the world. When he was happy, a huge grin would split his jaw in two, taking away that breathtaking beauty and replacing it with a real-life man. Anger would have his eyes storming, creating tension brackets between his brows. Life etched lines onto his face, both adding to and detracting from his attraction.
In the studio, with his easels and canvases, some drying, some wet, and some finished, Aaron looked right at home. On the days when he was designing, he often came in here and shared the space with Leon. It was a comfort thing.
Of them all, Aaron liked being alone the least. Loukas liked his solitude and could become a real bastard if the two of them pestered him. So, Leon was stuck with Aaron, and while he enjoyed his privacy too, after so many years with Aaron, he’d grown used to his presence. To the point where the studio sometimes felt empty without him in it.
He’d never admit it to his partner, but when Aaron moved onto the production phase of his designs, Leon hated it. It meant Aaron had to be in his own studio. And he couldn’t be in here, pestering him.
“Is Loukas okay now?” In all their years, he’d only ever seen Loukas cry once. And that was when all three of them had realized Antonis wasn’t playing games.
Every hope, dream, and ambition had died a swift death.
They’d all retreated to the States, trying to move on with their lives, and had discovered Colombian marching powder. Not one of their greatest moments, and another curse to be laid at Antonis Corsakis’s door.
“Alexa just made him happy.”
“She’s out of the bedroom?”
“Yeah. And Loukas is inside her. So, they’re content for the moment.”
Leon snorted. “What made her come out?”
“Fuck knows. I talked to her through the door, and I didn’t think she was going to ever leave. But she promised to go to the funeral. The next thing I know, Loukas and I are talking, and she comes into his salon…” He shrugged, and Leon understood it perfectly.
As well as they’d known Alexa, they were going to have to learn everything about her again. Once upon a time, they’d have understood exactly what was going through her brain. Now, they were clutching at straws, trying to figure her out once more.
Putting down his brush and setting his palette on the counter at his side, he walked over to Aaron and leaned on the wall opposite him. Of the three of them, Aaron didn’t like to leave things lying. He liked to resolve tense situations. In a way, he was a healer. Not that he’d ever admit that.
“What’s going on with you?”
Aaron frowned. “Nothing.”
“I know you too well for that.”
He sighed, turning his face away to peer at the ocean once more. When he rested his forehead against the glass and closed his eyes, Leon knew the answer wasn’t far away. It took a few minutes of silence for him to whisper, “This wasn’t how it was supposed to be. This was the start of something good, and I hate myself for it because Stavros was a good man, and he didn’t deserve to die like that, but I resent him. We’ve all been waiting so long for this, and now, things are up in the air again.”
Leon shook his head. “No, they’re not. This is life. Things like this, unfortunately, happen. What we have is strong. We roll with the punches and move on. But, we’re luckier than most. We have a stronger support system. Those two over there aren’t alone. They have us at their backs. That’s special. Nothing can weaken that now we’re all together.”
Aaron sighed. “I begged her not to leave us, and she said she wouldn’t. But…what if she does? What if she realizes what we realized the other night? That we can’t go public with this? Tomorrow, at the funeral, I can’t show her I love her. Neither can you. What if she realizes this can never work?”
“What if, what if, what if…? Aaron, you need to stop thinking like this.” He frowned at his lover, concerned at this unusual hesitancy he was experiencing when Aaron was ordinarily cocksure and strident. But then, Alexa had them all tied around her little finger. They knew what it was like to live without her, and none of them wanted to know what it felt like again. “What if the love she’d once felt for us truly had turned to hate? You wouldn’t be standing here, wondering what the future will hold, because you’d already know. It would be a future without Alexa. As it is, we’ve been forgiven. She’s taken us back, accepted our sorries. That is something to celebrate. Tomorrow, of course, you can hug her, hold her, even kiss her gently. She’s a friend, and the island knows that after the party.”
“They’ll all be watching. Wondering what it was that made us fall out and wondering what happened to make us friends again.”
“So? People will always wonder. Just ignore them.” He sighed. “There are rules to this game, and we always knew that. If we all w
ant to have her, then we have to play it nice.”
Aaron nodded. “I know. I just…wish it were different.”
“It can never be, not here.”
“Then maybe we should go somewhere else. Somewhere we can live a bit more freely.”
“We talked about this last night, Aaron.” That alone added to his concern. They couldn’t afford for Aaron to be feeling like this. Doubt was poisonous, and Leon needed to counteract its debilitating effects before it hooked its cloven hooves in his lover. “There’s nowhere really like that. You know that as well as I do. Everyone’s in each other’s pockets here because it’s an island, but in America or the UK too, news would spread quickly about three men living with a woman. To have her be a part of our lives, we just have to deal with the fact we can’t have it all our own way.”
While Aaron nodded his understanding, Leon could still sense his lover’s disquiet. Sighing, he pushed away from the wall and walked over to him. Standing a few inches away, he stopped, then tugged him into his arms, bringing Aaron’s head down to rest against his shoulder, and wrapping his hands around his back.
At Aaron’s shuddery sigh, Leon realized this was why he was here. They weren’t affectionate together. Not really. Loukas was stingy with his hugs and kisses anywhere outside of the bedroom. He’d learned from his family not to expect affection—his mother made a cold fish look warm. So, if Aaron or Leon did need a hug, they tended to come to each other for it.
Alexa’s return to their lives would herald a new start. Leon looked forward to the simple things. Like kissing her, holding her hand, and all because he could.
He rubbed his lips against Aaron’s silky hair. “You’re only scared because it means so much to you. Because she means so much to you. Fear of loss, that’s all this is, but you don’t need to fear anything. She loves us, she chose us, and she’ll stay with us because she knows what it’s like to live without us too.”
Another shuddery sigh racked Aaron’s frame. His head leaned back until his eyes tangled with Leon’s. When their lips met too, it was a natural extension of their love for one another.
The kiss was slow, at first. Then, it started to speed up, as was usually the way with Aaron. He liked to be kissed, and then, when his need began to burn, his tongue would go on a whirl. It always made Leon smile against his mouth, enjoying his lover’s impatience.
He reached down, letting his hand slide over the hard pecs with the taut nubbins, the ridged belly, and then farther on to the throbbing shaft covered by denim that longed to be freed. Eager to assist, and knowing Aaron needed more than just an orgasm but the release, Leon unfastened Aaron’s fly and grabbed his cock, reveling in the other man’s grunt of pleasure.
After all their years together, he knew what Aaron liked best. A hard grip, almost punishing, especially at the head. When he passed over the glans with his tight fist, Aaron came up onto his tiptoes, and a harsh pant burst free. His groan was like music, and he backed away from Aaron’s lips, preferring to nibble at the stubbled jaw, tease the tender lobe of his ear.
When Aaron shuddered at the delicate touch, Leon hid a smile. He continued to jerk him off, enjoying how Aaron’s hips pushed forward, almost like he was trying to meet Leon’s fist. He reached for the hard balls that clung closely to Aaron’s body and knew he was close. Close enough to stop.
Releasing his grip, he ordered, “Drop your jeans.” As Aaron eagerly complied, Leon stalked over to his desk, where a bottle of lube was stored. He grabbed it from the top drawer, poured it on his shaft, and ensured he was thoroughly coated. The cold made him hiss, but his dick would be hot enough soon, and that was enough to make it bob in thanks.
“Lean against the window,” he directed, watching as he returned to Aaron’s side and seeing him raise his arms against the glass, lean into it, and stick out his ass.
His hands were covered in sticky lube, but he still traced them over the pert muscles of Aaron’s butt. Damn, it was fine. So fucking hard, it was nigh on impossible to bite. And Leon had tried, several times.
He bent down, kneeling on the floor and spreading Aaron’s ass cheeks. Darting out his tongue, he flickered it over the taut pucker, enjoying Aaron’s faint howl and the sound of his forehead knocking into the glass. The repeated sound made Leon grin—he was always over-the-top.
“I don’t think I can stand any more, Leon,” he grunted, his voice inches away from being a whine.
Leon gave his asshole one last lick, rimming the sensitive flesh carefully, teasing him with that final caress, before he stood up again and immediately held his cock to the rosette.
A long hiss escaped the pair of them as he popped the glans through the taut pucker, and when Aaron’s butt parted to take him all, and he slid home, Leon had to prop his forehead on Aaron’s shoulder.
It felt glorious. Like the homecoming it was.
Sometimes, this was as close as they all would let the other be, and it was wonderful. He slipped his hands around Aaron’s torso, scrabbling them underneath his shirt, enjoying the touch of skin to skin. Slowly, he rocked his hips back, retreating, then plunging his cock in deep. One hand remained close to Aaron’s heart. The other slipped down to his cock.
With a similar motion of moments before, a hard, tight fist, he stroked Aaron on every alternate thrust. As he impaled him on his cock, he would clench down on the meaty shaft in his hand. More gorgeous sounds escaped Aaron, and they had his orgasm burning at the backs of his eyes, trying to hold it back.
He reveled in each thrust, reclaiming his lover, making him his own.
When he felt the shudder in the cock in his fist, the low groan came as no surprise. He felt the spurt of cum as it splashed onto the window and the floor. He reveled in the tension that invaded Aaron’s limbs, only for it to be replaced with the most beautiful laxity. And he took advantage of that lack of tension, fucking him slowly, pacing out his own climax, enjoying the sweet bursts of pleasure as his own seed, boiling away in his balls, sluggishly pelted Aaron’s ass, the orgasm a slow delight, one that soothed rather than ravaged.
It didn’t magic up a solution to make Aaron feel better about the situation, but
after the last few days, it was exactly what he needed, and Aaron, too.
Chapter Thirteen
The funeral was worse than she imagined, but in some ways, better.
Max, Stavros’s son, hadn’t had the easiest of relationships with his father thanks to the huge age gap between them—Max was only in his early thirties, generations ahead of his old-fashioned papa—but the send-off was miraculous. All celebrations of life, be they births, weddings, or deaths, were huge affairs. Occasions where grief could be publicly shared. Emotions ran high, too high some might say, and the mass mourning could be overwhelming.
It was why she’d been dreading it. But Max, with his usual aplomb, had somehow contained it. When the wailing of the old women rose, an orchestra started to play. Around the grave, when the deep, dark tones of the priest spoke of everlasting life and the sins of those that have passed, he released a flock of doves. White doves. For the eternal peacemaker, because what was Stavros if not that: always making peace, settling the squabbles between his friends and family.
She cried when the doves burst into the sky, and she clung to Loukas, turning her face into his throat at the woeful cries of the crowd. It was a remarkable send-off for a deserving man, but it didn’t take the pain away.
At the wake, she sat there, somber, surrounded by her three men. It was a loose circle, when she would have preferred a tight one. She wanted to cling, to hold on to what she’d lost for so many years and what had only just been reunited to her. But she understood their reticence.
Cyprus, for all its modernities, was still steeped in tradition. Especially among the rich. Mergers were still made rather than marriages. And the church was still a part of everyday life.
To be a part of a quartet, and a foursome where the three men touched each other no less, would be to court ostracism. I
t would bring shame to their family names, be bad for business, and generally cause unnecessary upset.
But, and it was a huge but, she didn’t want to hide.
She wanted Aaron to cling to her left side—because he’d always been the most emotional of the three—and she wanted Loukas at her right. At her back, she’d have Leon, his hand on her shoulder, giving her support.
This wasn’t paradise, however. This was the wake, the celebration of a good man’s life. No place to start anything she wasn’t ready to finish.
The party, much as it was, milled on around them. Seated in Stavros’s house, now Max’s, she watched as the eldest Speros nodded his head here and there, shook hands, and accepted people’s condolences. The house, as befit a Greek shipping tycoon, was astonishingly luxurious. She’d been here countless times before but only now realized how wealthy Stavros had been and how that wealth hadn’t affected him.
Yes, he’d worn the tailored suits and the bespoke shirts, the Italian leather, handmade shoes, and the jewels of a wealthy man—cuff links and tiepins—but at heart, he’d been the poor dockworker. Always content to have a full belly, a decent cigar, and a glass of ouzo or two.
She’d miss him. And she regretted her reclusive ways, ways that had had her staying at her quarters in the Corsakis, rather than being with people who meant the world to her.
If Stavros’s death taught her anything, it was to embrace those she loved before they were lost to her.
Aaron had feared for her. Had been concerned that she’d want out of something that had only just left the starting gate. There were no words to describe to him how that would never happen. Ever.
She could only prove it to him with her enduring love. And it would endure. It had lasted the desolate years without them all, and it would prevail over the trials of the future.
There would be trials, of that she knew. It was a certainty. Life threw these things in everyone’s path, but the whole world was not fortunate enough to have the support system she now had.
Old Enough to Know Better [The Corsakis Hotel 2] (Siren Publishing Menage Amour) Page 13