by Willa Okati
They weren’t the only thing swelling, either. Rick tried to adjust himself discreetly. Probably the last thing Adriano wanted or needed right now was a horny ex-patriot pawing at him or jumping his bones or possibly swallowing his cock…
Rick coughed. “Am I pretty enough to suit?”
“I wish I could remember you better,” Adriano mourned, resting his palms atop Rick’s shoulders. “I know in my heart I love you more than the wide world and everything in it. I do.”
Rick’s pulse kicked up another notch, fluttering wildly in his throat. His lips and tongue were dry.
“You…you look as if this surprises you.” Adriano’s unhappiness deepened. “Am I a bad man, Rick? Have I hurt you?” His agitation took a sharp rise. “I must have been. My God, that is why you are out here and I had to come and find you. We were separated. You are a good man; you would not have left me if I had not made you. What did I do, Rick? Why was I so stupid?” He backed away, shivering now, no, shuddering, lips going pale with fury and self-loathing. “I love you. But I think I see it, now, that you must hate me ‑‑”
Something snapped within Rick. He levered himself off the ground with the ease of adrenaline and surged parallel, pushing Adriano back down and hovering over him. Without giving Adriano a chance to catch his breath, he seized the man’s chin and angled his face up, crashing their mouths together. After the first stunned moment of immobility, Adriano moaned and threw his arms around Rick, scrabbling to pull him closer still.
Rick pulled away with no small effort and forced Adriano to meet his eyes. “I might have thought I hated you once,” he rasped honestly, “but that was only ever a lie. There’s a fine line, love, and yes, I’m calling you that truthfully. Love. You’ve had my heart always, and now I’m taking yours for my own. Understood?”
Adriano’s features were wreathed in joy. “My heart,” he whispered, lightly scratching Rick’s back. “I want you to fuck me. Is that understood?”
Chapter Nine
Well! There was honesty for you, if you liked. Rick could no more have denied Adriano his request than he’d have been able to stop breathing.
“God, but I love you,” he breathed into Adriano’s mouth before crushing Adriano’s lips with his own. Bracing one forearm on the earth beside Adriano’s head, he worked the other hand beneath to thrust his fingers through Adriano’s soft hair, fresh and clean, and to support him.
Not that Adriano needed much in the way of coddling, oh no. On the contrary, Adriano writhed beneath Rick like a man possessed, uttering happy whimpers and urgent whines. He humped fiercely up, grinding the rigid line of his cock against Rick’s belly.
Rick tore away from Adriano’s wicked mouth and battling tongue, laughing under his breath when Adriano swore and tried to drag him back. He forced his way between them and palmed Adriano’s cock, massaging it roughly. Adriano threw his head back, lips parted wide on a gasp of mixed shock, pain, and bliss.
“Rick,” he groaned. “Don’t stop.”
“Not planning on it,” Rick promised between short licks over Adriano’s throat, making his way down to the divot between his collarbones. He grunted in displeasure when he could get no further without contorting himself or letting go of Adriano’s cock and came up for air, drinking in the sight of the debauched man spread out for his pleasure and his alone.
The Dominicis didn’t want Adriano? Fine. Rick would claim him for his own, claim him right and proper, now.
“If it’s a fucking you want, it’s a fucking you’re going to get,” he vowed, squeezing the shaft of Adriano’s cock good and hard for the fun of seeing him spasm. “You’re hard for me, aren’t you? It’s me you’re wanting.”
He let go reluctantly, but only to begin to pull down the loose sleep pants. Ah, but he’d never grow tired of the sight of Adriano’s cock, heavy and dark and glossy with slickness for want of him. “D’you want me to suck you? Drink you dry before I push my cock in you? Maybe you’d want my fingers, too.” He thrust two to Adriano’s lips, prodding insistently when he looked confused. “You know what to do. Open.”
The light of comprehension dawned in Adriano’s eyes. He nodded eagerly and drew Rick’s fingers in to the second knuckle, lashing them with his tongue, getting them good and wet. All the while, he rocked against Rick with increasing urgency, trying to wrap a leg around Rick’s to haul him tighter and closer still.
Rick pulled his fingers free of Adriano’s mouth with a wet pop and painted his lips with a bit of their moisture. “Tell me where you want these to go,” he taunted. “You’ll have to say it before you get any.”
“You bastard,” Adriano hissed, albeit with a broken laugh. “In my arse. Please.”
“Such a good boy,” Rick crooned. He used his dry hand to awkwardly tug and jerk Adriano’s sleep pants far enough for Adriano to kick them off completely, then knocked Adriano’s knees sharply with his elbow.
Adriano got that particular idea right away and spread his legs wide, even lifting his knees and planting his bare feet firmly on the dry grass. His cock slapped wetly against his belly, leaving wet trails on his skin; his skin itself had flushed with need and want. He laughed again, breathlessly, and fumblingly fisted the length, jerking himself off. “Better hurry, love, or you’ll be too late.”
“The hell I will.” Rick growled, batting Adriano’s hand aside. He lowered himself, all ready to have a good suck, then found himself hesitating after his first lick at the purpled head.
“I will kill you,” Adriano threatened, not laughing now.
“You might have a go, but I think you might like this better.” Rick thrilled with reckless abandon as he sat up on his heels between Adriano’s sprawled legs. “Open wider for me, love. Wide as you can. Good.”
Adriano twitched with impatience. “Will you put your fingers to good use before they dry?”
“All good things,” Rick murmured. “Do you need to be taken care of first?”
“Fuck you. Yes!”
“All you had to do was ask,” he replied, renewing his grasp on Adriano’s needy cock. Adriano bucked up, shouting mixed nonsense and imprecations against his parental legitimacy, among other things; Rick couldn’t have cared less. He had the loveliest of pictures to savor: a desperate Adriano.
In that moment, to the devil with the rest, Rick’s life was good.
Judging that his fingers were still slick enough, Rick nudged them beneath Adriano’s heavy sac, lingering only long enough to tickle and tease him into a fresh onslaught of incoherent cursing, and then driving fast until he reached the tightly-drawn entrance to Adriano’s arse.
He had to stop, ever so briefly, to breathe through a wave of dizziness. He’d not done this before. Adriano would never have dreamed of allowing someone to top him. But now, he wanted it. Wanted Rick to fuck him.
Adriano snarled and jerked forward, driving Rick’s fingers hard against his pucker. “Now,” he demanded. “Now, Rick ‑‑ ah!”
Rick bared his teeth in a savage grin as he thrust more deeply inside. “Tight,” he gritted. “You’d break me if I fucked you now.”
“I can relax,” Adriano panted, reaching for him. “Please.”
“Never happen.” Rick shook his head, attempting to clear some of the sweat-sticky hair out of his eyes. “Soon, I swear. For now, here’s this.” It’d been a long time since he’d gone looking in anyone else, but perhaps those lucky stars were shining extra bright for him, for almost immediately he found what he’d been looking for and prodded it firmly.
Adriano’s wail split the night air. “Good,” Rick encouraged, though he found it hard to draw breath enough to speak; his own cock throbbed ponderously between his legs and chafed against the constriction of his jeans. He tugged Adriano’s cock harder, timing his pulls with his presses against Adriano’s prostate, climbing higher and higher with each of Adriano’s howls.
“Give it to me,” Rick insisted, dragging his nail over Adriano’s cockhead. He pressed his thumb to the nerves beneat
h, working him without mercy. “Cum all over yourself, get yourself good and filthy for me; you know you want to ‑‑”
Adriano shook his head frantically, but not in denial. He thrust forward into Rick’s hand and back on his finger. “I need ‑‑ I need ‑‑”
“This?” Though they were getting dry now, Rick managed to push in a second finger. Adriano’s arse stretched tight and obscene around his digits, causing Rick to swear and look briefly away before he creamed his trousers. “This is what you want? Or more?”
“More,” Adriano gasped. “I don’t ‑‑ I don’t know ‑‑ I can’t get there ‑‑ help me, Rick ‑‑” His cock jerked sharply, but released only a few drops of precum and nothing more.
Rick rode Adriano’s wave of abortive orgasm, stroking him more gently as he thrashed with the frustration. When he opened his eyes again, they glittered with frantic tears.
“I think I know what you want,” he crooned. “Shh, shh, I’ve got you.” He slid his fingers free, wiped them on his thigh, and let go of Adriano’s cock. “I’m not leaving you. Bide a moment, that’s all.” He dragged his arm across his forehead, lest sweat sting his eyes, and all but tore open his jeans in the effort to get them off as fast as possible. He only dragged them so far as his knees before he couldn’t wait any longer and draped his full weight against Adriano, naked skin to naked skin.
“Rick,” Adriano gasped, digging his nails into Rick’s back. “Yes.”
“I’ve got you,” Rick repeated, slurring it over and over again into a litany of a chant. He thrust against Adriano’s belly on each repetition, gliding easily on the slick of the sweat between their bodies and soon, his own precum, joined then by Adriano’s.
Adriano sobbed with something like relief and dragged Rick to him for a punishing kiss.
Rick couldn’t hold it back. “I love you,” he vowed, sharing Adriano’s breath. He cursed and hung on tight, his hips rocking with sharp pumps, balls emptying over Adriano’s torso. Adriano stiffened, shuddered violently, and then joined him, doubling the mess between them. Rick managed to work his hand between them, grasping both cocks and pressing them together, glorying in the sticky flow of cum over and through his fingers.
“You love me,” Adriano whispered, body going slack. He licked his lips and opened his eyes, revealing pupils gone wide, only a thin rim of iris left. “Yes. That is what I needed, Rick.”
“Then you’ll have it, always,” Rick promised, nuzzling Adriano’s ‑‑ his Adriano’s ‑‑ mouth. “Forever and always. You will.”
Chapter Ten
“Here.” Careful not to drop anything from his double armload of paraphernalia, Rick folded his limbs beneath him and sat cross-legged under the cypress tree near to his back door.
He waited until Adriano had joined him, admiring his still-disheveled state. Smears of purple were brushed over his throat and collarbones, marks Rick had put there himself with his lips and tongue and teeth. Stamps of ownership. They looked fine indeed on Adriano, and swelled his heart with equal parts fierce pride and joy.
As well as did Adriano’s slight carefulness as he sat a little gingerly.
“Too sore?” Rick frowned. It’d been twelve years since he’d lost his arse cherry, but he did remember well how sitting had been a misery for a few days afterward.
Then again, Paul hadn’t been precisely what you might call gentle. He made a face, determining to treat Adriano with much greater care.
“No, not too sore.” Adriano smiled at him, reaching for his hand. “I like it. It reminds me of how much you love me, and how you have showed it.”
“Yes, well, just you wait until I’ve stocked up on some proper supplies. You’ll know for sure how much I care about you then.”
“Love me,” Adriano insisted, eyes twinkling knowingly.
“Right, right, right,” Rick grumbled. He carefully deposited on the ground between them the collection of miscellany he’d hauled out of the villa with him. Hefting one item immediately back up, needing both hands to manage the weight, he passed it over. “Have a look through there, love, and take your time.”
Adriano puzzled as he opened the heavy leather covers. “A photo album?” Comprehension dawned, as did delight. “These are pictures of us?”
“Some. A lot are of me. Now, I’m not being vain, stop laughing. You wanted to remember me. Here’s a better way to know me than my blathering on. It’s all in there, award and interviews and photos, the whole lot. And yes, there are pictures of us.” Rick shifted, ears warming. “Some of them a tad risqué.”
Adriano’s lips parted in a silent “o” as he found one such picture right away. Rick glanced at the photo of the two of them in a tackily touristy gondola they’d “temporarily liberated” for an unforgettable night. Adriano had insisted on taking some…interesting…angles, and that particular picture featured a close-up of Rick’s mouth wrapped around his cock from above.
“You’re the pervert who wanted that shot,” he informed Adriano.
Adriano chuckled. “I think I do not mind learning that about myself.”
“Go back to the beginning of the album, love.”
“It is too dark to see properly.”
“You managed to enjoy the X-rated picture without any extra light, but no matter.” Rick extricated a candle from his pocket, poked a hole in the dry dirt and stood the taper on its end. Another foray produced a cheap plastic lighter, which he touched to the wick. “There. Let there be light.”
“And it was good.” Adriano looked at Rick over the candle flame, its weirdly flickering glow illuminating and shadowing his face. He seemed so handsome, in that moment, that he stole Rick’s breath away.
Rick knew he was on the verge of saying something quite embarrassing, and exhaled in deep relief when he heard the smooth purr of a car approaching. His relief lessened considerably when the headlights turned in their direction, then rose to middling point when he recognized both car and driver.
Adriano’s grip tightened on the photo album. He swallowed hard. “Rick?”
Ah, crap. Cars might give him a fright of their own particular reason; Rick hadn’t thought about that. “Shh, shh, it’s all right.” He stood, kissing Adriano quickly in passing. “She’s a…friend of mine. Her name’s Antonetta, and she’s a good lady. You stay here, eh? Hamish!” he called, wanting the dog’s presence for the sake of comforting Adriano.
Hamish pelted out of the villa, yipping happily.
“It’s not playtime, you goof,” Rick scolded. “Stay with Adriano. Stay. I’ll be back soon, love.”
Adriano nodded, biting his lip. And of course the daft dog ran right behind Rick’s heels, ignoring Rick’s orders as blithely as ever. Rick rolled his eyes, deciding not to press the point.
He came to a stop a decent distance away from Antonetta’s car and waited for her to disembark, gearing himself up for anything from an argument to a message from Juliano.
What he didn’t expect was for Antonetta to stride directly up to him, throw her arms around him and hug him with surprising strength for a woman of her size.
“Oof!” he protested, surprised and pleased. “What’s that for?”
“For giving Juliano a black eye,” she replied. “Let me get a look at you! Oh, and who’s this?” Hamish whined, wanting her attention. “Such a handsome fellow. What a good boy,” she praised, stroking his darkly brindled coat. He ate it up, the silly bugger, almost dancing for her and whipping his tail about like a mad thing. “Whose dog is he?”
“Anyone’s but mine, it seems,” Rick muttered, scowling at “man’s best friend.”
Antonetta quirked her eyebrow at him in the manner of women everywhere who knew better than accept the load of claptrap a man was trying to hand them. She patted Hamish one last time on the top of his head and stood. “He belongs to you, I presume. It’s interesting, Rick. I wouldn’t have thought you were the type of man who’d want to keep a dog.”
“I’m not,” he grumbled. “Hamish ‑‑ that
’s his name, yeah ‑‑ he was a gift from some of the locals. Quirky bunch, the lot of them. Said every man needed a good dog.”
“Every good man, you mean?”
“I’m not a good man.” He rubbed the back of his neck, unable to look at her. By all rights, a fine woman like Antonetta ought not to consider the question for a moment. He was a grouchy, cantankerous, tempersome hermit. Right? “People only just keep assuming I’m better than I am.”
“I don’t think it’s a matter of assumption.” Thank all ye small gods, Antonetta didn’t push that particular tack any farther. She folded her hands before her and examined him intently, though, which was no less discomfiting. Directly before he thought he might start squirming, she resumed speaking. “I cannot change Juliano’s mind. You might as well understand that from the first.”
Despite the sad finality in her tone, Rick relaxed. “I didn’t figure he’d up and decide to welcome the prodigal home with open arms, no. People think he’s a cold, callous bastard, but they don’t see that underneath it all he has a heart of solid granite.”
Antonetta laughed, sweet and silver sounding. Ah, but she was a beauty. “He does,” she agreed. “And there is no point in breaking your heart over a stone, is there?” Antonetta demonstrated with her hands, a colorful bit of sign language that conveyed her point. “He is not what I have come about.”
“Why have you, then?” Rick asked, truly curious. Insofar as he knew her, Antonetta wasn’t at all the type to pay useless charity calls or stand about wringing her hands in mock sympathy. “Does he even know you’re here?”
She snorted disdainfully. “He does. I think the hotel may still be echoing from his shouts, but let him rage until he loses his voice.”
“Julie rages?”