by Willa Okati
“Want this to last,” Zach said. He kissed Josef, lingering purely for the pleasure of tasting Josef’s mouth. He opened with a soft, satisfied moan when Josef growled and took control, the kiss turning hard for a delicious, white-hot moment. He could taste a trace of blood from the pressure on his lips and tongue, though he didn’t know from whom it came, himself or Josef.
He took Josef by the wrist as he guided him into the beginning of a rocking motion and laid his palm over Josef’s heart at the same time, attuning his body to the double sensing of Josef’s rushing pulse.
“I ache,” Josef murmured, burrowing into the vulnerable join of throat and shoulder, kissing him with prickling-sharp teeth that would leave mark after mark for the world to see. “Feel me.” He tugged open his fly and guided Zach inside, wrapping Zach’s fingers around his shaft.
Zach hissed between his teeth, memory carrying him back in a whirlwind rush. Though he remembered it all, he wanted to explore again and he did, fitting his fist tight at the base and dragging it slowly up to the fat head, slippery with precum, all pounding in sync with the beat of his heart.
“Stop.” Josef bit him, not hard enough to break the skin, but producing a sharp enough pain to jerk Zach out of the trance induced by feeling that hot, hard flesh pulsing against him again. “If you don’t want this over already, you need to stop,” he said. His lips tickled where he spoke. “Your choice.”
He meant it. Zach knew that from the way Josef said the words, as honest and inarguable as “the sky is blue.”
“What do you want?” Josef prompted.
“Everything,” Zach answered. He laughed, breathless.
Josef chuckled with him and kissed him slow, lingering and sweet, not stopping until Zach was light-headed from lack of air. “Tell me what you want. Honestly want.”
“Everything. How do I choose?”
“Start with what you want most,” Josef suggested.
Zach wavered for a beat before deciding the hell with it and doing exactly what Josef said; doing exactly what he wanted. He pushed Josef back to give himself room to work. “Don’t go any farther,” he said, and then, emboldened, “Zip up. I want something.”
Though he was flushed red from arousal, Josef drew in deep breaths and steadied himself. He tucked and zipped, though for all the good his jeans did in concealing his arousal he might as well have been naked.
Not yet. Maybe soon, but Zach wanted to be the one to enjoy the freedom of nudity first. He drew his sweater over his head without a word and cast it aside. Josef startled, as if wanting to help, but then held steady.
Knowing how much Josef wanted to give him this, his independence, and how much he equally craved his body more than any drug, made Zach feel like he could jump a building in a single bound.
Or give himself to Josef. Hallie was right. He loved Josef, and Josef loved him, and he’d been a damn fool.
He wouldn’t discard this second -- no, third -- chance. He’d drink it to the last drop.
Zach pinched his nipples and rolled them, arching his neck at the thrill of enjoyment and to tease Josef, then took pity on him by unzipping his jeans and sliding them down, kicking off shoes and toeing off socks. He sank to his knees in front of Josef and clasped his hands together behind his back.
“Zach.” He couldn’t see Josef, but Josef sounded as stunned as if someone had cracked him over the skull with a bat. “Mean it. Don’t do that unless you mean it.”
“I’m scared as hell, and don’t think for a second I’m not,” Zach said steadily. “But I mean it and I have to say it and do it because I’m lost without this. I’m sick of running from myself, and I want to come home. I want to please you. Will you come to me?”
“What will you do?”
“Whatever you want me to,” Zach answered, bowing his head. The relief was immense, a weight flying off his shoulders and bearing away the accumulated, too-heavy weight he’d carried for a year. His mouth was dry with alarm, still, but his body pulsed with hunger for more.
He crushed the fear into a small ball, crinkling it tight and hard, and threw it away. “Tell me what you want.”
“I want you to do what you desire most,” Josef replied without a moment’s hesitation. “I want you to take that which you crave, even if it’s getting off your knees.”
“That’s the last thing I care to do.” Zach looked up through his eyelashes. A jolt of arousal rocked him at the sight of Josef struggling to rein himself in. He could -- already was -- become as addicted to this as anything he’d tried and fallen into before. Only this time, he went as willingly as he had the first time, letting the waters close over his head and the quiet peace envelop him in warmth.
“Then what?”
Zach unlocked his hands from behind his back and beckoned to Josef. “Stand here. In front of me. Close.” He inhaled deeply to catch the increasing richness of Josef’s scent with each step Josef took, the dryness of his tongue moistening with the hunger for what he planned to do.
When Josef was near enough, almost too near but exactly where Zach wanted him, he stopped Josef with a touch to both thighs. He urged them apart a scant few inches to give himself room and to ride the thrill of anticipation a few seconds longer, then pressed his face to Josef’s stiff erection and breathed in.
Josef cursed fluidly and fluently. Zach laughed, knowing the vibrations would make Josef crazy. And yet Josef stood still for him.
Zach licked his lips, deliberately bumping Josef’s cock with his nose. Slowly, then eagerly, he opened his mouth and sealed it over the bulge of Josef’s arousal, suckling him through the musk-infused barrier of his jeans.
Josef cried out and buckled forward, taking Zach apart with the blast of pride at doing that to him. He groaned, thrilled, and arched his back to press harder; he soaked the wet denim with his saliva in a vertical path bottom to top and sucked hard when he found Josef’s cockhead with his lips.
“Wicked boy.” Josef breathed. He caught Zach by the shoulders, then placed one hand, then the other, on each side of Zach’s face. “May I?”
Zach nursed hungrily on the tangy wetness pervading the taste of denim and his own spit and hummed his permission. Josef’s touch firmed, guiding his head. Everything changed with the subtle shift, but that was what Zach wanted. He welcomed the shift in power even as he rose higher on his knees to tickle the strip of skin above Josef’s belt with his tongue. He asked, with kneading and with licking and butts of his head against Josef’s erection, what Josef wanted him to do next. Whatever it was, Zach would give it to him. Eagerly.
“Enough.” Josef broke his suction by nudging him away. “Stop.”
Confused, Zach sat back on his heels, face wet with saliva and, he knew, gleaming wetly from nose to chin in the low lighting of the hotel room. At first he was embarrassed, thinking he looked like a slobbering mess, then registered the primal lust that slackened Josef’s lips, knew he’d almost brought Josef off with this alone, and doubled over with a grunt. At the last second he avoided touching himself, wanting Josef’s hand on him and none other. He didn’t think he could make it. He could come without a touch.
He lost his balance when the rush receded, gasping for air that wasn’t enough to fill his lungs. “Josef?”
“Stay there. No. Lie back. Shoulders to the carpet.” Still fully dressed, glasses still neatly positioned on his nose though his skin was flushed crimson with arousal, Josef went to his knees.
“What are you --”
“Lie back.” Josef pushed him, gently. Zach obeyed, still not understanding. He aligned his shoulders with the carpet and laid his head to rest. “Good,” Josef murmured, kissing his stomach. “Good. Lift your knees. Like that, yes, so good. Parted for me. Feet on the carpet, flat.”
Zach’s stomach jolted tight. Couldn’t be. They’d never done this. He’d never asked for it.
Never thought Josef might want it. He threw his arm over his eyes and bit his lip roughly. Josef had been right; Zach hadn’t understoo
d him at all, and it was his fault because he’d never asked.
He owed Josef that, giving the question voice, and he sensed that unless he did, Josef would hover in an agony of suspense, drawing the moment out until he came from anticipation alone. That would be a game for another time -- and there would be another time. He was no longer afraid of that, but eager. Good, so good.
“Will you suck me?” he asked, sounding octaves lower to his own ears. Throaty, sexy, hungry. “Get me off?”
Josef dropped his forehead to the flat of Zach’s abdomen, the heat of his breath on Zach’s throbbing hard-on so erotic it made Zach curl his toes tight. “All you ever had to do was ask,” he said and trailed rough kisses down to Zach’s groin. He took Zach in his mouth, sucking once and hard on the leaking head. “Your taste,” he said, forgoing other words to slide his lips down.
Zach jackknifed off the carpet, bearing his weight on his elbows and his bare feet. “God, Josef, God!” he shouted.
The vibrations of Josef’s laugh drew a sob from him. Intense. Powerful. He was vulnerable and small, a fraction of a being. Josef overwhelmed him and drowned him out and it was exactly what he wanted because he could be who and what he was without fear. Josef protected him from everything else; it wasn’t being weak, this letting go of the fight. It was perfect.
Though Zach could have grasped Josef’s head to guide him, he held as still as he could. Only his stomach muscles rippled and his thigh muscles clenched. He bit his fist to keep from roaring, too enthralled by the silence broken by rough gasps and growling sighs to drown them out with yells.
“Close?” Josef asked, blowing cool air over the too-sensitive head of his cock at the last second possible before Zach would have come, nudging him away from the edge.
Zach didn’t trust his voice. He thrashed his head on the carpet and whined, begging Josef to finish it.
“Close,” Josef said, kissing the inside of Zach’s thigh. “I give you a choice. You know me and you know what I want. I must know what you want. You will come, because you crave it, that and honesty. As will I. But…” He licked the crux of Zach’s thigh and groin, a rough yet delicate stroke of the tongue. “Will you come with me inside you or not?”
It wasn’t a question. It was an explosion. In answer, Zach forced his body to cooperate and grasped his knees, pulling them high toward his chest and exposing himself. The coarse hair on his legs tickled, an unbearable and erotic titillation on flesh almost too sensitive to bear more. He closed his eyes and said, wanting it more than life, “Inside me.”
Josef kissed his kneecap. “Hold yourself steady for me. I have supplies.”
“Do me without them,” Zach begged.
“I will not hurt you.” One finger, dry and rough, teased his hole. The friction burned and Zach hissed. “I’ll hurry.”
“Better,” Zach said. He savored the raw brush of friction and wanted more despite knowing it’d hurt, but there it was: Josef wanted to take care of him. He could let it happen, and that was worth waiting a few minutes more. “Please,” he added, teasing Josef with the sweetness of the request.
“You only have to ask,” Josef said, trailing his tongue over Zach’s ankle. “All you ever have to do is ask.”
“Then go,” Zach said, caught in the agony of sensation, so close to orgasm that it hurt, yet wanting it to last forever now that he’d found that perfect, painful peak. “Go, and hurry back.”
Josef was the kind of man who knew better than to rush, no matter how he might want to. His steps were deliberate and the rustling unhurried as he sorted through a crinkly bag from a discreet, high-priced store Zach remembered from way back when.
“Why use KY if you can spend twenty bucks more?” he joked to see how Josef would react, looking up at him as best as he could through the drunkenness of lust.
The glance Josef shot him, smoky dark and reproving, made Zach’s cock jerk. A thick bead of precum bubbled out to drip fat and wet on his stomach. “Only the best is fit for you,” he said. “Lie still.”
“Can’t,” Zach admitted. “Want you too much. Been so long.”
“Almost there,” Josef soothed. His belt buckle opened with a smooth click that excited Zach rather than alarming him. He drew down his zipper and pushed his jeans just far enough down to hips for his cock to spring free, fat and red. Zach stared, his mouth watering. He stopped, mouth curving. “Do you like what you see?”
“Very much,” Zach answered honestly. “More than anything. Bring that over here.”
“Patience.” Josef apparently found what he’d been looking for, and with a sleek, opaque bottle and a condom wrapped in shining, dark foil that made it look like silk, both in hand, returned gracefully to his knees between Zach’s raised legs. Zach stared at Josef, who he knew saw him clearly, and who cherished every bit of him. Who Zach knew loved him as fiercely as a tiger.
Though Zach’s muscles protested the effort and burned from the strain of holding his legs up, he didn’t let go. The pain made it all the better and more real…and he could see that his efforts pleased Josef. Josef was a thing of beauty when aroused, glossy sweat slicking his skin, his pupils dilated wide.
“Put your legs around my waist,” Josef ordered. “There. Like that, yes. Now don’t move.” A click of the bottle’s cap and a slippery sound came seconds before a slick fingertip breached him. Josef cursed under his breath.
“What?” Zach fought not to sit up, unsettled.
“Nothing.” Josef stroked deeper. “Only that I see -- feel -- now that there has been no one since me. Has there?”
“No.” Zach shook his head, a droplet of sweat flying from his hair. “Didn’t want them.”
“Perhaps you were waiting for me,” Josef suggested. He prodded Zach with a second finger, teasing him, then slipped it to him with the roughness Zach craved. Time for taking it slow later -- slower than this, anyway.
“I think maybe I was,” Zach said, before he was unable to say anything at all. He fisted his hands, short nails pressing sharp against the flesh of his palms, and sank his teeth sharply into his lip, already sore and tasting of iron. His cock thumped his belly, precum gliding in a steady, thin stream.
“Do you know how many fingers I have in you now?” Josef tormented him by asking when the stretch and burn ramped higher. “Do you know how you look stretched around me? Pink and swollen.”
To pay him back, Zach bore down, clamping those fingers ruthlessly, though he had to stop with a jerk when Josef paid it forward by probing his sweet spot and rubbing it with two knuckles.
He was breathless and wrecked when he let go, but Josef did not. His hole ached, contracting around Josef’s fingers with the building need for more. “Fuck me now,” he rasped, lifting his hips to take him deeper. “Want to come with you in me. Can’t last much longer.”
“The things you do to me. So much time wasted.” Josef nipped the condom packet open with the delicacy of a master, but with a fine quivering of his movements that betrayed him. Zach wanted to put the condom on him, wanted to glide the silky covering down with his lips, but there’d be another day. There would. He was done running.
Josef slid into him with one deep, all-consuming thrust, abrading the place within and overloading his senses. Zach caught his breath, his toes and fingers curled into knots, and came wetly on his stomach and over his chest. Josef fucked him through it, losing control in a way he never had. Zach rode him even as he was ridden, rising and falling, ankles locked at the small of Josef’s back and the churning thrusts stoking the flames. He hadn’t lost his hard-on, too worked up for that, and knew he had more to give -- and that he would.
A ruthless clasp of a fist around his cock shocked him back to the real world, the wet slapping of flesh on flesh and the harshness of Josef’s breathing, the sharp musk of sweat and sex, and the hunger that demanded a kiss to appease it. He lifted his chin, begging without a word. Josef sought his mouth and seized control of that as it was willingly given, thrusting his tongue in count
er-rhythm with his cock and even with his relentless pulls on Zach’s cock. When Zach shouted into Josef’s mouth and came a second time, shuddering into a knot of carnal triumph, Josef traded him yell for yell and stiffened, filling the condom with short, sharp jerks forward.
The strength that had kept Zach upright fled in a heartbeat, and he collapsed as boneless as any rag doll. Drowsiness rolled inexorably over him even as Josef came heavily to rest atop him, damp hair rough against his throat and shoulder, an exhausted kiss landing haphazard over his heart.
“Stay,” he thought he heard Josef ask before he went under.
“I will,” he breathed back, too worn-out for more, and let sleep wash the waking world away with Josef heavy on his chest.
He dreamed of lying in a cocoon of sound in the heart of a hearth, knowing that he smiled in his sleep, never wanting to leave the vision even to do it all over again.
But when he woke, it was to find himself alone.
Chapter Seven
“Zach.” The quietly spoken word stopped his rising panic. “I’m over here. By the window.”
Zach slumped, woofing out a great breath. “You scared a year off my life, Josef.”
“Sorry.” Josef chuckled, a small ripple of companionable humor. He sat in an overstuffed chair by the window, its heavy drapes drawn back to admit the pale red-yellow light of approaching dawn. He’d propped his feet on a matching ottoman, taking his ease while sipping from a paper-thin china cup of coffee so rich and full-bodied that the fragrance would have woken the dead. “I was watching you sleep.”
Zach’s lips twitched. “Who knew you were such a romantic?” he teased, turning on one side. He propped himself up on one elbow, cheek in his hand. As he moved, the warm body and ripe sex scents came with him, as warm as the blanket Josef had covered him with. He toyed with one edge of the covering, as soft and fleecy as anything a sheikh could boast. “Sometimes I used to wonder if you were compensating for something,” he said, lifting the corner and waving it at Josef.
Josef accepted the sally with good grace and winged it back at him. “Then you learned differently.”