by Onley James
Shep had anticipated finishing their conversation, but Elijah had other ideas. As soon as Shep had settled against the pillows, Elijah crawled onto his lap, capturing his wrists and putting them over his head, kissing him deeply.
“I thought we were going to talk,” Shep managed, his cock half-hard just from Elijah’s wiggling.
“Your mother says your obsession with me could be dangerous for those around me,” Elijah told him between open mouth kisses. “I don’t care. She wants to talk to us together tomorrow. I don’t care. She might say us being together is a horrible idea. I… don’t... care,” he promised, teasing his tongue along Shep’s bottom lip. “All I care about is you and me and whatever this is between us. I just want to blow my boyfriend and then make him get me off too. Is that okay?”
Shep’s brain had snagged on the word boyfriend. It was such a foreign word, almost incongruous, but he’d take it. He’d take anything Elijah had to give. “Yes,” he managed.
That seemed to be all Elijah needed to hear. His lips trailed along Shep’s jaw and neck, across his collarbones. He hissed as Elijah captured one of his nipples between his teeth biting down hard enough to send a bolt of lightning straight to his balls.
“Do you not like that?” Elijah asked, voice breathy.
“I don’t know. Do it again,” Shep commanded. Elijah repeated the process on the other nipple. Shep’s cock throbbed. “No, yeah. I like it.”
Elijah smirked as though filing the information away for later. He placed biting kisses along Shep’s abs, dragging his boxer briefs down, running his lips along the skin as he went. He gazed at Shep’s arousal with interest. “Fuck, you’re so big,” he muttered, before using his tongue to lick up the underside of Shep’s cock, his tongue darting out to flick over the slit, catching the fluid there on his tongue.
Shep snarled. The sight of his pre-cum on Elijah’s tongue stoked something deep within him. Elijah was his. Just his. He wanted to see more of his cum on Elijah’s face. He wanted to mark him. Elijah caught Shep’s gaze giving him a look hot enough to melt steel as his mouth closed over the tip, sucking deep. Shep squeezed his lids shut. Watching his cock disappear into the moist heat of Elijah’s mouth would have him coming in three seconds.
Shep’s hands caught in Elijah’s hair. He didn’t force himself deeper, just needed to touch him, hold him. It grounded him somehow. “Fuck,” he muttered. “Your mouth feels amazing.”
Elijah pulled off with a pop and Shep mourned the loss, but then the boy was sucking on his balls, his finger rubbing the sensitive skin just behind. Shep fisted the sheets, writhing beneath Elijah’s attention. “Oh, fuck. Fuck, rabbit. You’re so perfect.”
Elijah made a small whimpering sound and when Shep opened his eyes Elijah took him as deep as he could, the muscles convulsing around his cock in a way that made his eyes roll. He would not last much longer. He needed to come. He wanted to come on Elijah, to see his release painted across the boy’s skin, his face, his lips. “I’m so close. I need—” he cut himself off.
Elijah pulled off, eyes cutting to Shep. “Say it. What do you need? Tell me.”
“I want to come on you… your skin, your lips,” Shep growled.
Elijah grinned, nodding. “Who knew you were so dirty? Fuck, I love it. That’s hot. Okay.”
He rolled onto his back as Shep rose onto his knees beside Elijah. The boy took him back into his mouth, using his fist to jerk him as he sucked. He was coming in seconds, his cum landing on Elijah’s lips and cheeks. Shep used his cock to smear it across his skin before collapsing beside him and catching his mouth in a kiss, tasting his seed on the boy’s lips. He gathered the cum on his fingers, plunging his hand into Elijah’s underwear, and wrapping his hand around the leaking erection.
Shep kissed Elijah’s gasping mouth, catching each of his cries as he worked him mercilessly. “I want to hear you,” Shep urged. “Come for me.”
Elijah seemed to dissolve on the spot, babbling nonsense. “Oh, fuck. Oh, fuck. Oh, God. Don’t stop.”
His body bowed and Shep’s fist grew slick but he continued to jerk Elijah until the boy winced, flinching away from Shep’s touch. “Sensitive,” he whispered.
Shep fell onto his back, staring up at the ceiling fan overhead, noting the wicker blades were shaped like giant leaves.
“Glad we took a shower,” Elijah said with a laugh. “You need to go get the washcloth.”
Shep smiled, rolling back towards him. “I like you like this. All covered in my cum.”
“Yeah, I’ve noticed. I think you glued my eyelids shut; you savage. But we’re meeting your mom for lunch in like eight hours. I’m not meeting her with your jizz flaking on my skin.”
Shep sighed. “Fine. Stay there.”
“Where am I going to go?”
Shep returned with the washcloth and cleaned Elijah’s face. Elijah made a huge production out of opening his eyes. “Oh, there you are,” he said around a laugh.
“Next time I’ll get you some goggles.”
Elijah wiggled his brows. “Next time? Oh, yes. What other secret kinks are rattling around in that mysterious brain of yours?”
Shep stopped short. “I don’t know.”
Elijah’s smile faded, and he pushed Shep’s hair out of his eyes. “Tell me the truth; are you a virgin?”
“I got a handjob in high school.”
Elijah blinked at him. “You haven’t ever… How? How can you be a virgin, looking like you do?”
“Why involve somebody else when I could just get myself off? It never seemed worth the trouble.”
Elijah seemed to search his face for a long minute. “But now it does?” Elijah asked, gaze pleading.
Shep nodded. “Yeah, now it does.”
Elijah picked at his omelet, his stomach rumbling in both hunger and distress. Shep’s mother seemed as breezy and unencumbered as a woman in a vitamin commercial. She smiled at them as she ate a bowl of something that resembled sticks and twigs on a cloud of something white. Yogurt, maybe. Below the table, Elijah’s leg trembled like an over-caffeinated chihuahua.
Shep, like his mother, seemed unbothered by their impending conversation, a stark difference from last night. One blowjob and Shep was easy like Sunday morning. He was on his second helping of bacon after having scarfed down his own three-egg omelet. If he was still worried about what his mother had to say, it wasn’t affecting his appetite. He sat there with his hair pulled back in that half pony that had Elijah thinking about Sam Elliott in Roadhouse which would have given him an inappropriate hard-on if he wasn’t already one bite of cold egg away from puking on Molly Shepherd’s farm table.
Shep frowned at him, looking from Elijah’s plate to his face as if encouraging him to eat, but Elijah just wanted to get on with this already. If she was about to ax their relationship, he wished she’d just land the first blow and be done with it. He wasn’t used to having to wait for a mother to crush his hopes and dreams; Lucifer always came out the gate swinging. There was something to be said for that, he supposed.
After what felt like a hundred years, Molly pushed her dish away and said, “Well, we should probably have this talk before Elijah’s heart explodes.”
Shep cut his gaze toward Elijah before flicking his eyes back at his mother. “What do you want to know?”
“Well, how long have you two been seeing each other? It can’t have been for too long.”
Elijah’s heart jack-rabbited in his chest. Were they ‘seeing each other’? He had called Shep his boyfriend, and he hadn’t objected. But when he stopped and thought about how little time had passed since this all started it made him doubt himself. Why did it feel like Shep had been a part of his life forever? How can he feel so attached so quickly? Could it only have been a few weeks?
“What do you mean by seeing each other? It’s not like we can go on dates or anything. The entire world thinks I have a boyfriend,” Elijah said, taking a sip of his juice.
“You’re seeing that boy? Wha
t’s his name?”
Elijah shook his head. “Robby. He’s sweet, but it’s all for show. Our publicists arranged it for optics after TMZ outed me.”
“How did you feel about being outed?” she asked.
His gaze slid away, and he started to chew on his lower lip. Fuck, he’d walked right into that one. “I mean, it sucked. It wasn’t exactly how I planned on things going down.”
Shep made a strange noise that turned into a cough, catching Elijah’s attention. “What?”
Shep shook his head. “Nothing.”
“It’s not nothing, Jaynie.” To Elijah, she said, “My son knows you just lied to us, but he didn’t want to say so in front of me, in case I hadn’t caught it. Which I did.” Elijah’s cheeks flushed, but he didn’t deny it. Molly leaned in giving a half-smile. “So which part of your statement was the lie?”
He wanted to tell her the truth. He wanted to tell the world the truth, but that wasn’t possible. Could he trust Dr. Molly Shepherd? He licked his lower lip. “Are you asking as Shep’s mother or as his doctor?”
She had no problem grasping his meaning. “Nothing you say to me will ever leave this room.”
He believed her. He did. But he still had to force the words past his lips. It felt shameful. “I outed myself.”
Shep’s gaze snapped towards him. “You did?”
He gave a half-nod. “I don’t know why I did it. I staged the whole thing. I paid off my co-star, sent the tape to TMZ and just waited for the day to arrive. I wasn’t expecting to be on the red carpet when it went live and I didn’t expect the homophobe with the concrete slushie,” he winced, remembering the sharp sting of ice and rock. “Some part of me hoped it would end my career, I guess. Another part was just tired of hiding who I was all the time.”
“And instead of ending your career, your team just created a steady boyfriend for you. Did they think that would make your being gay more palatable to the masses?”
“My mother lives for crisis situations, loves putting a spin on things. She hates that the world knows I’m gay, but she loves that the world thinks I bagged the most family-friendly gay in Hollywood,” Elijah managed, his voice bitter to his own ears. “Is this really important? Do we have to talk about this?”
She interlocked her fingers, giving Elijah a long, hard look before turning on her son. “Is it important? Does it bother you that the world thinks he’s dating another man?”
Elijah sagged in relief, grateful to be off the hot seat, at least momentarily. Shep looked to Elijah and then shook his head. “No. Elijah knows he’s mine. That’s all that matters.”
Elijah flushed but smiled despite himself. Shep’s mother didn’t seem to find the bold statement as sweet as Elijah did. Her face grew tense as she turned her attention back Elijah’s way. “Does it alarm you at all that my son seems to have claimed you as his own?”
He didn’t have to think about it. “No. He’s mine too. It’s not one-sided.”
“I doubt you’d go to the same lengths as my son to protect what you consider yours.”
That ruffled Elijah’s feathers. His jaw tightening before he said, “Maybe you just can’t read me as well as you think you can.”
She shook her head. “I don’t think the two of you understand the potential ramifications if this thing goes badly.” She clasped Shep’s hand. “Jaynie, you’ve come so far. You’ve had a life I didn’t dare hope was possible for you when we first realized that you were… different. One slip because of this boy and it could all be for nothing. All our hard work… for nothing.”
Elijah’s heart seemed to shrivel in its chest but he remained silent.
Shep shook his head. “If I slip, it won’t have been for nothing. Elijah’s not nothing.”
“Will you still feel that way if Elijah’s the one hurt in the fallout?”
Shep’s nostrils flared, his fists white-knuckled on the table. “I would never hurt him. Ever.”
“Not intentionally, but when people are impulsive, others are often caught in the crossfire.”
Shep’s voice sounded wooden as he said, “If there’s anything I learned from you, mom, it's how to control my impulses.”
“Are you saying you wouldn’t inflict harm to defend Elijah?”
“No. I’m saying if I did, it wouldn’t be impulsive.”
Elijah’s eyes went wide, and he fought to keep the smile off of his face. It probably wasn’t wise to smile and gaze dreamily at the man who said he’d hurt somebody in your name, especially not in front of his shrink mom. But even so, inside his heart was doing somersaults.
Molly was silent for a long while, before Elijah watched her come to some kind of epiphany, her face so expressive a cartoon light bulb might as well have turned on over her head. She studied her son. “Are you two sexually active?” she asked.
Elijah was certain somebody had just sucked all the air from the room. “What?” he wheezed.
“Sex. Are you having it?” she asked, all traces of maternal concern gone, leaving only the shrewd narrowed gaze of a scientist.
“Depends on your definition of sex, I suppose,” Elijah muttered, his face bright red.
She raised both brows, her lips flattening into a straight line. “I define it as an intimate act that usually ends in one or both people orgasming.” She looked at Shep. “Well?”
“Yes,” he admitted.
“I see,” she said as if it explained everything. She looked to Elijah. “I imagine being a celebrity has allowed for you to have many relationships. At least in the physical sense, no?”
Cold sweat trickled along his spine. Was it possible for a person to vomit up their own internal organs? He swallowed hard. This line of questioning was a downward spiral. His mind raced. If he told her the truth about his sexual history, she would ask more questions and more questions would lead to him having to lie about his past, about what had happened to him and the woman who had spent her life teaching her son to lie. She’d already caught him in a lie. So had Shep. She would know he lied about this and she might keep picking and picking until he started to bleed. “Celebrity would allow me many relationships, but being closeted was a barrier,” he managed, skirting around the question.
She gave him a wan smile. “Well, certainly, but many closeted stars have had active love lives. How many relationships have you had?”
Fuck. Fuck. Fuck. Fuck. Fuck. “Including your son?” he hedged.
“Sure,” she said, watching him until his skin crawled.
He closed his eyes. “One.”
When he opened them again, they both studied him like he was a specimen under a microscope.
“You’re serious,” she said.
It was not a question, but Elijah answered anyway. “Yes.”
He had no plans to elaborate. Once more his leg began to bounce beneath the table and a thousand insects seemed to come to life beneath his skin. Not now. Not now. He tried to slow his breathing, but he couldn’t take a full breath. Holy fuck, he hadn’t had a full-blown anxiety attack in years. Not since… He shook the thought away. If he thought of his name, he would see his face and if he saw his face, he would feel his touch and if he started to remember what that felt like he might start screaming and never stop.
“Interesting,” she said in a way that made his heart drop into his stomach.
“Is it?” he mumbled, his insides shaking hard enough to make him ill.
“It makes sense why the two of you might be so… attached so quickly. If neither of you has ever been in a relationship before then this could mimic the attachment seen between many young people when they have their first serious relationship.”
A fractured laugh bubbled past Elijah’s lips before he cut it off, feeling like his lungs were in a vise grip. “Sorry. Are you implying this isn’t real? That this is some kind of high school puppy-love freshman romance?”
Dr. Molly’s brows knitted together. “Elijah? You’re very pale. Are you okay?”
No. He wasn’t okay
. Definitely not. He swiped his hand across his upper lip, ignoring the dampness there. “I’m fine. I just don’t think you can act like our feelings aren’t valid because we’ve never experienced them before.” He hated the upward inflection of his words, hated that he felt like his eyeballs were sweating.
“I didn’t mean to imply that your feelings aren’t valid. But when two people have a sexual connection for the first time, it can create a bond, can make feelings seem deeper, more intense. It may be why my son—whose life experiences are rarely exaggerated enough to reach him emotionally—is so protective of you.”
Memories from his past rushed to the surface like a zombie’s hand thrusting from the earth of a long-forgotten grave. That hand was around his throat, cutting off his air. He swallowed hard, trying to force the hysteria back down. “I didn’t say he was my first sexual connection. I said he was my first relationship and I promise you that first ‘connection’ didn’t create any kind of bond.” It was a lie, he supposed. Could a giant gaping wound serve as a bond? Could wanting to hurl yourself off a roof when you thought about a person be seen as a bond? He supposed, but he refused to concede the point. He couldn’t. He couldn’t speak, couldn’t take a deep breath.
His past was dragging him down, dragging him back into a nightmare where a very human monster whispered in his ear. You will want grown-up roles eventually, Eli. This is just practice. Trust me. This is how all the biggest stars prepare. It’s why your mother hired me. You want to be a big star, don’t you?
His stomach lurched but was empty. He wanted to stand up, to run, but his vision swam, distant voices reaching him from the bottom of the hole this conversation had dropped him into.
Shep and his mother spoke, Shep’s voice both angry and afraid, Molly’s sharp and stilted, but he couldn’t make out the words. He had to focus on breathing. He tried to take deep breaths but his lungs wouldn’t cooperate. Someone thrust something brown in front of his face. A bag. A paper bag. It startled him enough to halt his descent into unconsciousness. Molly and Shep knelt before him. “Elijah put this over your mouth and breathe,” Molly ordered.