by Ana Ashley
“Lucy, it’s been a privilege to get to know you and see you grow into yourself since the day we met on the steps of my apartment building. It scared me to be someone’s big brother, and it took my husband to make me realize all I needed to do was love you. That was the easy part.”
Lucy’s eyes were wet with unshed tears, and I wasn’t faring any better, unlike Max who looked strong and determined as he asked the question.
“Lucy Lopez, Isaac and I would very much like to adopt you if you would have us. Will you?”
There was a small pause before Lucy covered her face with her hands and leaned into Max. She nodded and then put her arms around us both.
My eyes locked with Max. We finally had our own family, one that would never let us face life alone again.
He mouthed over Lucy’s head, “I love you.”
I mouthed back, “I love you more.”
42
Max
“Have you got everything you need?” I asked for the hundredth time.
“Yes, Daddy,” Lucy replied with a mocking childish voice.
“And the presents?”
“Those, too. Gotta go. See you in two days.”
She hugged Isaac and me and ran out the door to spend the weekend with Diogo. Lucy had started volunteering at the hospital, and this weekend they were handing out presents to the children that weren’t well enough to go home for Christmas. I was so proud of her.
It had been nearly a month since the wedding. Lucy was completely settled with us, and her romance with Diogo was blooming before our eyes.
Her confidence had grown so much. Lucy was funny, witty, and as fiery as you’d expect from a girl with Latin roots, and I absolutely loved her.
She was turning seventeen in January. We were traveling back to Lisbon for Sofia’s Christening, and Lucy was coming with us. What she didn’t know was that as part of her present, Diogo was coming, too.
“So, Daddy…” Isaac drawled as he came close and put his hands around my waist.
“Not you, too.” I groaned.
“The Christmas tree is decorated, dinner is in the oven, and we have the apartment to ourselves for the weekend.”
He pressed against me, and I felt the hardness of his erection against mine. It was near enough impossible to not get hard when he was this close to me.
My husband was absolute perfection, and I still pinched myself every day I woke up with him in my arms.
“We don’t quite have the apartment to ourselves, do we?” I looked at where Max, the cat, was curled up on top of his favorite pillow in front of the fireplace. He’d only arrived from Portugal last week but had already made himself at home in the apartment.
“Do you think he’s going to like it here?” Isaac asked.
“Look at him. Have you ever seen a more chilled cat? He hasn’t even jumped anyone.”
“Maybe he’s sad. Do you think he misses his boyfriend?”
I chuckled at how adorable Isaac was, pulled him closer to my chest, and kissed those soft unruly curls of his that I loved so much.
“How about in the new year we take him to the animal shelter and see if we can find him a new friend?”
Isaac pulled back, his eyes wide, and his mouth sporting a grin.
“You’re serious?”
“I’m serious, baby. I think it would be nice to have a dog to keep Max company.”
Over the last few weeks, we’d talked about how we felt about being parents, and we’d decided we wanted to have our own biological children and also to adopt.
Our lives had changed massively in such a short time, and we had Lucy in our lives now, so we’d decided we’d look into it once Lucy was away at college.
We didn’t know if she was going to stay local or not, so we wanted to keep all options open for now and start with the dog.
“Anyway, what were you saying about this weekend?” I inhaled the familiar scent of Isaac’s shower gel and ran my hands down his back, stopping only when I reached the globes of his butt.
“I vote for a naked weekend,” Isaac said.
“You’ve been speaking to Dorian again, haven’t you?”
“The man does have some good ideas.”
“Couldn’t agree more.” I moved my hands to remove his sweater when his stomach growled. I laughed. “Let me feed my husband first. Wouldn’t want him wasting away by the end of the weekend.”
“Lead the way, husband.”
We had dinner and then sat in front of the fireplace, finishing wrapping the last presents now that Lucy wasn’t around.
The apartment looked like a Christmas fairy tale thanks to the creative powers of Lucy and Isaac.
“Do you think we went a bit overboard with the Christmas decorations?” Isaac asked.
“What, you mean not everybody has two Christmas trees in their living room?”
Isaac moved to give me a playful punch, but I maneuvered him so he was flat on his back with me straddling him.
I licked a path from his neck to his lips where I sucked them into my mouth, first the bottom one, and then the top one before my tongue played with his for dominance.
He was raising his hips to meet mine. My capacity for coherent thought was rapidly evaporating.
“Baby,” I said, “when does this naked weekend start?”
“Fucking now.”
My sweater was removed, and I think I heard the buttons on my shirt pop off. It didn’t matter. All that did matter was feeling Isaac’s soft, warm skin against mine.
We didn’t last long, but boy we were noisy. Even Max left us with disdain to go to Lucy’s room.
“Fuck, that was good,” Isaac said, catching his breath.
“We’re going to need more of these naked weekends.”
“You have my vote. Shall we clean up and take this to bed?” he suggested.
“Absolutely.”
I felt Isaac’s arms come around me from the back. I don’t know how long I’d been staring through the window at the street outside.
“Are you okay?”
I turned and placed a soft kiss on his lips.
“I was thinking about… well, lots of things. I never thought I would have another Portuguese Christmas Eve celebration, and here we are, expecting lots of friends to join us tomorrow.
“I was thinking how it’s been a year since Sílvia and Gary died and how much I miss them.”
My voice caught in my throat and tears ran down my cheek. Isaac caught them with his thumbs, never taking his eyes off mine.
“And I was thinking about how we met a year ago, and for the first time in my life, even if for those two days, I felt like myself. I felt light, excited, even loved.
“Isaac, when I think about the dark moments in my life when I didn’t think I was worthy of being loved, I never thought I’d find what we have.”
“Oh, baby. You are worthy. If there is a person in this world that is more than worthy of being loved, that person is you, and I do love you with all my heart. Lucy, too.”
I hugged him tight, and his curls tickled my nose. Maybe he was right, and damned if I wasn’t going to spend the rest of my life making sure of it.
I saw the phone buzzing on the kitchen table and looked at the screen.
“Babe, your phone is ringing. It’s Tiago.”
Isaac came running from the bathroom with a towel around his hips. I turned from where I was standing facing the stove to give him a look of appreciation.
He grabbed a dishcloth and threw it at me before walking out of the kitchen as he answered the phone.
“Hey, Tiago, what’s up?”
I managed to catch up with him and pulled the towel off, leaving him stark naked in the middle of the living room.
He held up a hand, warning me to stop as his face went serious.
“Okay, send it to me. Thanks, Tiago. I’ll catch up with you later.”
“What’s up, babe?”
“Tiago thinks he found Vítor, Mário’s brother.”
<
br /> “I didn’t think he started looking yet.”
“He hasn’t. Apparently, the guy walked into the center asking for help.”
“That’s great,” I said.
“Yeah, it’s perfect.”
“You know what else is perfect?”
I put my arms around him and kissed a path from his shoulder, up his neck, and to his ear.
“Hmm, what is that?” he sighed, tilting his head to give me better access.
“Your soft skin, your big heart. You, baby. You are perfect.”
Did you think there was something in the way Micah looked at Fernando? Was Fernando as oblivious to Micah’s looks as it seemed?
Keep reading for an exclusive bonus scene before the next volume in the series.
Bonus Scene
Micah
“Kiss! Kiss! Kiss!” The crowd chanted.
"What's going on?" Fernando shouted, leaning over so I could hear him.
A shiver of awareness came over me as I felt his warm breath on my skin.
To say I'd been instantly attracted to the dark-eyed Portuguese man the day we’d met was an understatement. As he'd sat across from me at the long table in the bar, I hadn't been able to move my gaze from him while he talked to Max's lawyer all the way through lunch.
The only thing that had stopped me from interrupting their conversation to get Fernando's attention was Lucy sitting next to me.
Since then, I'd been invited to countless family meals by Max and Isaac, who were determined to give Lucy the family she'd always deserved, and since her relationship with Diogo had bloomed, I could always count on seeing him and Fernando at these gatherings.
Fernando had been a little closed off initially. He'd been polite and engaged in conversation, but he never initiated it with me. I wasn't sure why, but there was something about the man I couldn't resist, so I'd pushed my way past his shy demeanor and we ended up becoming friends.
Max and Isaac had taken Lucy and Diogo to Portugal as part of their honeymoon travels, so with Fernando on his own in New York I thought he'd appreciate having something to do at the weekend.
Hence, we were currently on the best seats I could afford, watching the Yankees play the Baltimore Orioles at the Yankee Stadium.
"It's the kiss cam," I said, pointing at the giant screen in front of us. Sure enough, the camera was scouting for couples, before it focused on a young woman sitting next to a guy. Everybody laughed when the guy on the camera, instead of kissing the girl next to it, kissed the one on the opposite side. Clearly, the kiss cam had got it wrong this time. Everyone cheered.
I turned to Fernando to see he still looked confused.
"What if people don't want to kiss?" he asked.
"They don't have to. It's all a bit of fun to keep people entertained during the break in the game."
He nodded and took a sip of the soda I'd got him earlier.
Fernando's plump lips, wrapped around the straw of the soda cup, looked as soft as cotton candy. I could almost hear his moan of appreciation for the fizzy, sugary drink. He'd confessed to me recently that he was totally addicted to soda, so he only allowed himself to have it on the odd occasion.
His smile as I handed him the drink earlier not only made my jeans feel tighter, it also lit up that space in my heart that hadn’t been used for such a long time I'd started wondering if it had died with Valeria.
Since I’d had no sign that Fernando was anything but straight, I bottled up those feelings and decided to keep being his friend instead.
I was still staring at him, following the movement of his Adam's apple as he swallowed. When his lips parted, I saw the drink going down the straw back inside the cup. God, what I wouldn’t do to be that straw.
The crowd was still chanting, "Kiss, kiss!" but I didn't care about other people. As far as I was concerned there was no one else in the stadium but me and Fernando's lips, the sharp line of his jaw and that throat I wanted to lick so bad it fucking hurt.
I had to force myself to look away because I was dangerously close to doing something silly and totally ruining our friendship.
When I did, my eyes landed on the screen where an image of Fernando and me surrounded by a big red heart was on display, waiting for us. I saw my shock displayed back at me as the crowd cheered even louder.
"Kiss, kiss, kiss!"
I turned to Fernando, ready to tell him we didn't have to, but his eyes were on my mouth, and then when they moved up to meet mine I saw it. The lust. The doubt. Did he want to… kiss me?
His pupils were dilated but I could still see the green flecks that made his brown eyes look even deeper.
I was about to open my mouth, not that I knew what I would say, when Fernando's lips landed on mine, turning my entire world inside out.
The crowd went wild with their cheers, but soon they all disappeared again and all there was was Fernando's candy floss soft lips, and I swear they tasted the same.
When he pulled back, I was almost scared of opening my eyes in case I didn’t see that Fernando's world had changed as much as mine had with that single kiss.
"Hey, sit down, man. Game's about to start again," someone shouted from behind us to a guy taking his seat, which was when I realized we'd been so lost in each other we'd missed everything else around us.
Fernando had a shy smile on his beautiful face, but he didn't look like he'd regretted the kiss, or that he'd felt pushed to do it because of the kiss cam.
I wanted to say something, but I wasn't sure how to articulate what I was feeling, and I was afraid I'd scare him off. I was also very confused. Was Fernando gay?
My racing heart nearly beat off my chest when he took my hand in his, laced our fingers together and placed our joined hands on his lap.
The rest of the game was painfully slow. Any other time I'd watch the game and pick up a conversation with a fellow Yankees fan, but today? I was so ready to get out of the stadium and take Fernando to a place we could talk.
He didn't let go of my hand even as we made our way out of the stadium alongside the thousands of fans. I couldn't even remember who won the game. That was how much Fernando's kiss, and touch affected me.
As soon as we got outside, I pulled him in the opposite direction to where most of the crowd was heading.
"Where are we going?" he asked.
"My place," I replied, without looking at him because I didn't want to see his reaction to my decision. Luckily, I lived only a few blocks from the stadium, because every step closer to my place was a step closer to finding out if what I’d only dreamed of was actually true. That Fernando was gay, or bi like me, and wanted more than the friendship we had.
“You live around here?” he asked.
“Yeah, it’s both extremely handy and a pain in the ass when the Yankees are playing.”
He smiled as we walked side by side before he said, “I bet it’s only a pain in the ass when you don’t get to see the game from inside the stadium.”
I chuckled. “Damn right.”
I sensed Fernando tensing as we arrived at my building and went up the elevator to my apartment, but he never let go of my hand until I needed it back to retrieve the key for the door.
I watched as he walked into my space and took everything in. The minimalist furniture, the plush carpet, the tall windows that made the apartment bright and cozy with light.
"Is this your family?" he asked, picking up a photo of me from when I was ten.
"Yes, we were visiting my grandparents in Croatia."
"You're Croatian?" Fernando looked at me as if I surprised him with the revelation.
"My dad is. My mom is American, and I was born here in the Bronx."
He nodded and put the photo back down.
I couldn't hold it in anymore, so I walked over to him and placed my hands on either side of his face. His expression was full of uncertainty, but his own hands reached up to mine, holding them in place.
"I kissed you," he whispered.
"I know,"
I said. "And now, so do the Yankees fans. I'd give up my Joe Torre shirt for a copy of that kiss cam footage."
He smiled, his deep eyes searching into mine. "I've never done that before."
"Done what? Kissed a man?"
"Taken what I wanted." His words sounded like a confession and a plea all at the same time.
I took a deep breath. His words confirmed what I'd hoped in my wildest dreams, but I'd resigned myself to having Fernando as a friend. Normally, his admission would have me taking what I wanted, but it wasn't as easy.
"You never mentioned if you were gay, or bi. I wasn't sure if you weren't interested, or if you were oblivious to my attempts to spend more time with you," I said.
My breath caught as Fernando placed his hands on my waist and pulled me closer. I felt the telltale sign of his erection against mine.
"Not oblivious, Micah, definitely not oblivious," he said, my name out of his lips sounding like a chant that spoke straight to my heart. "Also interested. Very interested."
That was all it took for me to claim his mouth like I'd wanted since he'd kissed me at the game. Hell, like I'd wanted since that first time I saw him engrossed in conversation with Max's lawyer the day we met.
Fernando matched my tongue stroke for stroke. We sucked on each other's lips as if we hadn't kissed another human being in our lifetime. If he'd been shy to come forward, he certainly wasn't shy now as he deepened the kiss and pushed me back until the backs of my legs hit the couch.
Without pulling back from the kiss, I took Fernando down with me so he had no choice but to straddle me. The position raised the heat level a hundred notches because now, with his weight on me, I could feel his erection pressing against mine even more.
The sounds coming from Fernando had me nearly coming on the spot.
"Micah," he gasped, and I knew he had to be close.
"Lift a little, baby," I asked, placing my hands on his hips, and he obeyed immediately. I loved the trust he put on me. "I'll take care of you, okay?"