by Neve Wilder
“You’re terrible, do you know that?” I could hear the smile in her voice.
“Be destroying that ass in about thirty minutes,” Eric murmured against my other ear in passing, his husky voice a dirty omen as he whisked by me and through the door with the box.
“What’s that? Eric?” My mom’s tone brightened as I adjusted myself. “Tell Eric I say hi.”
I choked on a laugh and cleared my throat, calling out after him. “My mom says you’re not allowed to destroy anything.” Eric’s laughter rang down the hall as I followed him inside. “He says hi, Ma. Can I call you back later? We’re right in the middle of carrying a load in.”
“No need. Call me when you get settled. I just wanted to ask you to take a picture of the two of you in front of the door.”
I groaned. “Really?”
She put her sharp voice on, the one that was like a tack meant to sail cleanly through any resistance. And damn was she good at it. “Really, son. Take the damn picture and send it to your poor mother. It’s a rite of passage.”
“You can put it next to the one of me in my mankini,” I said, and when Eric came back out, I grabbed his arm and pulled him in front of the door.
“For posterity. At my mom’s request.”
It took five tries before we snapped one G-rated enough to send to her.
By four in the afternoon, we had everything loaded in and we walked through the small townhome surveying the rooms. No washing machine or dryer, but there was a communal laundry room on the premises and a laundromat a block away. A tiny kitchen opened to the living room with an equally tiny fireplace we would probably never use tucked in the corner. Upstairs were two bedrooms with a shared bath. We’d put our desks in the second bedroom and left my full-size bed for the next roommate at the old house, bringing Eric’s queen for the master.
After we finished our walk-through, I hopped up on the kitchen counter, taking the beer Eric passed me and cracking the seal as he leaned up against the counter next to me, draping one arm over my thigh. We silently considered the living room, the small couch from my old room, and the coffee table. There was an empty patch of stained carpet that was reserved for a dining table. At some point.
I sucked down a long draft of brew and licked my lips. “It looks like shit.” Not even the braided rug my mom had sent home with me after a visit earlier in the spring could help the aesthetic. In fact, as I squinted at the multicolored ropes, I thought it might actually be making things worse.
“Grade A dog shit, yep,” Eric agreed, and we both cracked up, laughing until I had a stitch in my side and tears leaking from the corners of my eyes.
“I guess only gay guys get the mad interior design skills?” I said, when I could. “Bi’s get, like, fifty-fifty odds and we both must’ve landed on the wrong side of them.”
“No way,” Eric said vehemently. “I’ve known way too many gay dudes who were absolute shit at dressing. Themselves or their digs.”
“Maybe we can get a new couch after a few paychecks.” We’d both gotten summer jobs. Nothing spectacular. Eric had taken an engineering internship one of his professors had hooked him up with, while I’d gotten a serving position at an upscale restaurant downtown.
“I think we need a dining table first. That bare patch of carpet is scary.”
“Point. Okay, table first.”
I knocked my beer can against his and took a long swallow. “Done. What’s next?”
He gave me some side eye along with a wicked grin that sent the tempo of my pulse into a gallop. “What do you think, frat boy? We’re going to christen at least one room. It’s basically a rite of passage.”
I had to laugh at how it echoed what my mom had said earlier. Definitely not what she’d meant when she said it. I liked Eric’s version better, though.
“But groceries first,” he tacked on, and I groaned. The fucker never missed a chance to build me up and then keep me waiting. Ever.
“Eric.”
He glanced up from the fruit display where he stood stuffing some apples in a produce bag, and I tipped my head toward the eggplant I held in my hand. “Look familiar?”
His brows shot up, an expression of mock concern taking over his features. “Fuck, I hope not. Unless it’s symbolic or something.”
Wrapping my fists around the neck of the eggplant, I gave it a testing squeeze. “I dunno, the girth is feeling like a pretty solid match to me.” I tossed the thing in Eric’s direction, snickering as he was forced to leap sideways to catch it. He shook his head at me and brought the eggplant back over to the bin, dropping it in before retrieving his sack of apples, knotting the bag up, and sticking it in the cart. Then he picked up a cucumber and looked it over speculatively before cutting his eyes my way. He didn’t even waggle his brows, and I still cracked up at the innuendo in his expression.
It was one of the things I loved about him, how he didn’t even have to open his mouth and he could make me laugh. And shit, there were a lot of other things he could make me do without opening his mouth—but the laughing part, that was something I’d come to increasingly appreciate in the months that had passed since we’d officially gotten together.
We moved on from the produce section and wandered down the aisles. Eric seemed to have more of a strategy than I did. If I had cereal, bread, and some lunch meat, I was set.
“I guess we should get some frozen dinners and stuff? Pizza?” he said. “My internship is sure as shit not paying enough to eat out all the time. Or maybe things to cook?”
We both gave each other a gauging glance and then laughed again.
“My mom would be horrified right now. But I’m good on a grill,” I offered. “Except we don’t have a grill. Bump it up before table purchase?”
“Definitely. I’m all right at cooking,” Eric said, pursing his lips before he added another box to the pile in our cart.
“I guess whoever’s home can figure out dinner.” I tossed in a few frozen meals, and Eric grabbed a couple for himself. “I haven’t thought much about who would do what,” I admitted. “Like, are we both gonna do our own laundry individually or just whoever’s around? Do people actually discuss this before living together? Domestic roles are weird.”
“I’m not sure,” Eric murmured thoughtfully and then rapped his knuckles lightly atop the handle of the cart. “Okay, we can do this. Let’s break it down on a scale of hatred. Laundry?”
“Don’t hate it, really.” Actually folding laundry kind of sucked, but I got an idea neither of us much cared if our laundry was folded or not.
“Me either, so not helpful. Cooking?”
“Hate it, but like I said, I’m cool with grilling.”
“Okay, I don’t mind cooking when I’m around.” Eric navigated the cart around a chip display. “So you take laundry.”
“Done.” I nodded, swiping a bag of tortilla chips and tossing it in the cart as we moved down the next aisle. Eric grabbed a jar of salsa, holding it up for my inspection until I gave the okay with a nod.
“Grocery store?”
“Not a fan.” And especially not when it was used as a delayed gratification tactic by my boyfriend. Yeah, boyfriend; I’d gotten over that sliver of reservation, too.
“Also not a fan. So we alternate.”
“All right, we’re kicking ass at this so far.” We reached the end of the aisle and moved to the dairy section, where I automatically reached for the skim as Eric reached for the 2 percent.
“Oh man, no way,” I said, staring disparagingly at the carton as he lofted it up. “Them’s fightin’ words right there.”
Eric looked down at the carton and then over to the one in my hand, an equally disapproving expression on his face. “Skim milk tastes like water.”
“Exactly. It’s perfect for cereal,” I countered.
“So why not just use water?”
“Because that’s nasty.” I noticed he hadn’t put the carton of 2 percent back, though. “Two percent is nasty, too, and whole milk is nausea inducing.
Too thick.”
Eric pressed his lips together, but failed to suppress a smirk. “Funny. I don’t remember you having any problems with things that are thick. Liquid or solid.”
I rolled my eyes at him. “You’re hilarious.”
“I’m right. Fine, we’ll get both.” He put his milk in the cart next to mine. “Cleaning?”
“Fuck that. Let’s just not do it.”
Eric laughed. “I don’t know, thinking about you hunched over scrubbing a toilet gets me kinda hot.”
“Ohh, are you into domestic servitude?”
“I might be.”
“That’s too bad for you, then, because I did my time scrubbing toilets and baseboards and floors freshman year.”
“Bet I could persuade you.”
I stared at him until he relented with a chuckle, which was good because he totally could have persuaded me to do all the cleaning on my own. As long as he was watching and there was a serious reward system in place. “We both clean.”
Eric nodded. “Sounds good to me.”
I put the groceries away in the kitchen while Eric broke down the few boxes we’d used to haul stuff over from the old house. Glancing into the living room, I studied him as he curled over, dragging an X-Acto knife up a line of tape, the muscles of his biceps and forearms lean and defined. I liked looking at him when he wasn’t aware my attention was on him, and fuck, maybe there was something to the whole domestic business—kink, whatever. Not that breaking down boxes was particularly domestic, but still, watching the methodical precision with which he slit the tape, pulled the flaps apart, then flattened the box before moving on to the next one, quietly focused as ever, yeah, it was giving me a semi.
Also, it was hot as hell in the apartment, and staring at Eric wasn’t helping. I swiped the back of my hand across my forehead, then did it again. I’d set the thermostat to 70 as soon as we’d arrived, but it still felt about 90 degrees.
I frowned, anticipating a call to the landlord in our future. Turning away from Eric and back to the groceries, I stuck a loaf of bread in one of the cabinets, then started shoving boxes of crackers and chips in beside the bread, trying to ignore the heat in favor of queuing up a nice little fantasy of Eric as a mover hopping off a truck, walking toward me with one of those captivating private smiles he seemed so capable of brandishing at will, his mouth opening to tell me to bend over so he could stuff me full of his—
“Jesus!” I jumped as he wrapped his arms around me from behind and snickered. “Can’t believe you got me,” I said, huffing out a light chuckle. “Usually I can tell you’re coming from a mile away.” And I didn’t mean audibly. It was his presence I could feel, that I was always aware of, impossible to explain and one of those things I’d have never believed in until I felt it. Like a quiet link between us. It was both cheesy and true.
He hummed lightly against the sweat damp skin of my neck, and I let go of the box I was holding, reaching up and behind me to sift my fingers through the long ends of his hair. “Shit, you could probably make me come from a mile away,” I muttered, and his chuckle washed over me as the brush of his lips over my skin became one kiss, then two, then a soft suction anchored by a light flick of his tongue. I groaned, forgetting the groceries, the fantasy of him as a mover nothing more than smoke. This was infinitely better: him behind me, the weight of him and his firmness.
Well, while it lasted. Because a second later, it was gone.
“Thirsty?” he asked, and I turned around and nodded, watching as he pulled a couple of glasses from the cabinet and strode to the fridge, scooping ice into them before returning to the sink and filling them. “We forgot bottled water.”
I lifted a brow. “I had no idea you were so fancy.”
“This water tastes…green or something. Like it’s straight out of a river.” Eric gave me the bird as he handed me my glass and tipped his up.
“You can get some next time when you go.” I grinned and took a sip, which tasted just fine to me, then set it back on the counter and picked up the box of rice I’d been holding, eyeing it now because I couldn’t remember why we’d gotten it aside from the fact that rice was a pantry staple. I mean, were either of us actually going to make it? The likelihood seemed slim, and it wasn’t even the quick-cooking kind. “Did you put this in the cart, or did I?” I asked, shaking it at him.
“I did.”
“Gonna cook me something fancy? Wine me and dine me?” Eric and I had gone out on some legit dates before to nice restaurants, but it really wasn’t our style, and the best part had honestly been seeing how hard we could get each other and how much we could get away with right in the middle of the dining room. It turned out to be trickier than anticipated unless the tablecloths were long, which most weren’t. Our most memorable venture had been the fraternity’s formal a couple of months ago at a country club where Eric had managed to give me the biggest stealth orgasm I’d ever experienced via a combination of filthy talk and conscientious jacking so erratic that a healthy 50 percent of that release was purely due to the thrill factor of having people mere feet from us. I’d felt a little guilty over whoever was on cleanup duty that night because I’d shot straight up on the underside of the table and no doubt it’d dripped all over the club’s fancy parquet floor.
“Maybe.” Eric’s lips tilted in a crooked smile. “I’m not afraid of weaponizing cooking. Gotta keep you satisfied in every way. And I can make a very mean pot roast.”
“Where were these skills at the old house?” I asked, completely glossing over the whole bit about keeping me satisfied because Jesus did he ever, and if he wanted to add in cooking on top of it, I was all for it.
“You think I’d trot something like that out just so everyone else could badger me the way they did Jesse?”
He had a point. Jesse was an awesome cook, and I couldn’t count the number of times we’d tacked on a request that he make enough for the rest of us if we spied him in the kitchen. And he’d always do it, too, grumbling all the way even though I had an idea he’d actually liked doing it.
“You’re the only one I want to cook for,” Eric explained, and it was clear from his expression that the answer made perfect sense to him.
“You’re not gonna hear me complain.”
“Really? I’ve never known you to pass up an opportunity.”
I tossed the box back onto the counter and lifted my chin. “C’mere,” I demanded, knowing full well he’d come when he was good and goddamn ready and not a second before. But it was the flash of heat I caught passing through his eyes at the command that I was after in the first place.
Eric tipped his head back and kept his eyes fastened to mine as he drained his water glass in long gulps that by some black magic immediately became innuendo and drew my attention to the steady bobbing of his Adam’s apple. Then he set the empty glass in the sink and took a couple of prowling steps toward me until I could reach out for his wrists and reel him the rest of the way in.
“About to complain right now?” He lifted his hands to either side of my face, one palm warm with body heat, the other cool from holding the water glass. The tantalizing disparity in temperature made me bite my lip.
“Maybe,” I said, but I wouldn’t. I had no real complaints, hadn’t in months and months. What protests I did make were little more than desperate pleas when he worked me into a frenzy. And they, in turn, worked him up, too. I understood him as well as he understood me, and what had once felt like a careful dance between us was now more intentional, more confident, our wants and needs slotting together in a balanced give-and-take that was so damn incendiary and satisfying I still couldn’t believe this was my life sometimes.
There was an additional factor, too, one that I’d underestimated at first, hadn’t been able to grasp onto the nature of what it was, exactly: the way we told each other everything, the quiet moments that came between the inferno of our chemistry, when we were just doing mundane things like grabbing a bite after class or hanging out at a bar
with friends. An errant touch, a look between us that was somehow like understanding and promise at once.
Intimacy. Trust. Reciprocity.
His lips hit mine like the spread of sunlight through an empty room, warming and brightening everything in its path, and I exhaled a sigh because goddamn I loved kissing him. How every time our mouths met it was both familiar and different. This time unhurried and sultry, like a string slowly pulling taut between us. Eric never needed to tell me he loved me, though he did, because I could feel it in moments like this as sure as the damn sky was blue.
I tipped my head back as Eric’s lips moved down my throat with just enough pressure that I felt the sting of blood rushing to the surface before he released the skin and moved on. Movement from the corner of my eye caught my attention, and I tilted my head to peer out the kitchen window with half-lidded eyes, already lust drunk and drowsy. “There’s a guy standing out there.”
Beyond the tiny cement pad billed as a patio, a man stood on the swatch of grass that stretched behind the building about ten feet away, talking on his phone as a small dog on a leash he was holding sniffed the ground. When he turned his head and looked directly toward our window, my groin stirred, a brief kindling of arousal that increased in strength the more I thought about it and the longer he kept looking, until it became like a hive of bees zooming around my stomach. Nerves and intrigue all at once.
Eric shifted so he could see, sliding his hands behind my shorts and stroking my cock as he said, “You like that.”
I nodded. It wasn’t a question, and fuck yeah, I liked that, liked that this rando might see me on my knees or my back or bent over—however I ended up—with Eric working me over in his ruthless, mind-bending way that was guaranteed to liquify my bones. I took in a slow breath and let it out, my pulse tearing through my veins so hard I could feel the thundering tempo in my cock as a wet spot formed on my boxers. My dick twitched hopefully in Eric’s grip, and he released my shaft, diving deeper to cup my balls as he licked up the side of my throat. And then the guy snapped the dog’s leash and moved on. Damn.