Chapter Twenty-One
Nero's bedroom was small and clean and the late morning light was pouring through the window in a solid golden block that fell across the unmade bed.
Amani stood in the doorway and took it in.
A bed. A dresser. A chair in the corner with a laundry basket on it.
A framed photograph on the nightstand, Nero with an older woman who had the same sharp eyes and lean face, his mother, Amani guessed.
A book on the nightstand face down, the spine bent. A water glass.
The ordinariness of it steadied him. This was not a room designed for performance. This was a room where a man slept and read and lived, and the man was standing beside him holding his hand. Nothing about the room said anything other than: someone lives here, and today, so do you.
"Where do you want me?" Nero asked.
Amani considered. The question itself was part of what he needed. Every question handed control back to him, brick by brick, rebuilding the floor that the ranch had pulled up.
"Sit on the edge of the bed," he said.
Nero sat. He moved with the same economy he always moved with, no wasted motion, no performance.
He sat on the edge of the bed and rested his hands on his thighs and waited, looking at Amani with eyes that held no expectation.
Whatever happened would happen. Whatever didn't wouldn't. Either was fine.
Amani pulled the hoodie zipper down.
He did it slowly. Not because he was teasing, but because the zipper felt like an event.
He'd been wearing hoodies for five weeks.
Hoodies were armor. Opening the zipper meant the armor was coming off, and he'd forgotten what it was to not wear it, to stand in a room with his chest visible and his arms uncovered and his skin not hidden under layers of cotton and fleece.
The hoodie came off. He dropped it on the floor. Underneath, he was wearing a plain white t-shirt, soft from washing, and the cotton felt thin after weeks of heavier fabric. He crossed his arms over his chest for a second, instinct, covering, and then made himself drop them.
Nero didn't say anything. Didn't comment on the hoodie coming off, or the hesitation, or the bare arms. He just watched Amani with the steady attention he always watched with.
His hands stayed on his thighs. His posture didn't change.
Amani understood, again, that this was a man who had decided weeks ago that patience was a form of love.
Amani walked to him. Stopped between his knees.
The position put their faces closer to the same height.
Amani looked down slightly. Nero looked up, and he could see the dark of Nero's eyes.
Faint stubble ran along his jaw. His pulse was visible in his throat.
Steady. A little fast. Nero wasn't calm. He was controlled, which was different.
Amani reached up and put his hands on Nero's face.
It was his first real touch. He'd touched Nero before, the hand on the couch, fingers brushing when Nero passed him a plate, the brief incidental contact of two people sharing space.
That touch was different. His palms against Nero's cheeks, feeling the warmth of skin, the slight scrape of stubble, the bone of his jaw under Amani's thumbs.
He was the one touching. He was the one deciding.
His hands, his choice, his pace. Nero let him do it.
He tipped his head up just enough to give Amani better access. His gaze never left Amani's face.
Amani leaned down and kissed him.
It was careful at first. Testing. The press of mouths, dry, closed, the simple fact of lips on lips. Nero let him lead. Didn't open his mouth, didn't reach up, didn't try to take anything. Just kissed him back at exactly the pressure Amani offered, no more, no less.
Amani pulled back half an inch. Looked at him. Amber gaze to dark. And then he kissed him again, harder. Nero's mouth opened when Amani's tongue touched his lip. The kiss became real, hot, wet, the taste of coffee, the slight catch of Nero's breath as Amani tilted his head and deepened it.
Nero's hands were still on his own thighs. He hadn't moved them.
Amani noticed that, registered it, and it made something unspool in his chest. He pulled back and looked down at Nero's hands. Then he took them, one at a time, and lifted them, and placed them on his own waist.
"You can touch me," he said.
"Where?"
"Anywhere. Just—" He paused. "Not my wrists. And if I say stop, you stop."
"I stop."
Nero's hands found his waist through the thin cotton of the t-shirt.
Warm. Steady. They didn't pull him closer.
They just rested there, holding him in place at exactly the distance Amani had set.
Amani kissed him again. Nero kissed back.
His hands stayed at Amani's waist. Even through the cotton, Nero's palms were a little damp.
He was nervous. His controlled, patient ferret was nervous. The realization of it made Amani's chest do something he couldn't name.
"You're shaking," Amani said against his mouth.
"I'm not shaking."
"Your hands are shaking."
A pause. Then, "Shut up, Amani."
Amani laughed. Actually laughed. Out loud.
For the first time in five weeks, a real laugh came out of him, rough, surprised, and a little broken around the edges but entirely his.
Nero's face lit up with something Amani had not seen on him before, not the half-smile or the rare full smile but something softer, startled, like a man hearing music he hadn't known he was allowed to hear.
Amani kissed the smile off his face.
He pulled the t-shirt over his head. Dropped it on the floor next to the hoodie.
Nero's hands moved from his waist to his sides, sliding up against bare skin, the pads of his fingers tracing the line of Amani's ribs with a thoroughness that wasn't sexual yet, was still reading him, mapping the territory.
The touch made the collar scar prickle. His breath caught.
His body woke up in a way it hadn't since the ranch.
It was not just adrenaline, not fear-response, but something warmer, lower, a heat that started in his stomach and moved outward.
Nero's eyes had gone darker. He was looking at Amani's chest, his throat, the ring of faded scar tissue where the collar had been. His expression was unreadable except for the way his jaw tightened when his gaze caught on the scar.
"Does it bother you?" Amani asked.
"The scar?"
"Yeah."
"No." Nero's hand came up, slowly, telegraphing the movement. "Can I?"
Amani nodded.
Nero's fingers traced the line of the scar.
Light. Barely there. All the way around, front and back, the ring of darker skin where the silver had sat.
It was the most careful touch Amani had ever felt.
Nero wasn't trying to erase the scar or fix it.
He was acknowledging it. Reading it the way he read everything, with the full attention of someone for whom every detail mattered.
"It makes me angry," Nero’s voice was quiet. "That someone did this to you. I want to be honest about that."
"Okay."
"But it doesn't bother me on you. It's part of what happened. I don't need it to not exist."
Amani swallowed. His throat moved against the scar and he felt the faint catch of Nero's fingertip on the slight ridge of it and forced himself not to cry.
Somehow, he didn't. The feeling moved through him and passed, and what was left was just this: a man sitting on a bed with his hand at Amani's throat, acknowledging the worst thing that had happened to him, and not looking away.
Amani pushed him back.
Gently. Not a shove. A redirection, his palm flat on Nero's chest, and Nero let himself be lowered onto the bed, dropping back onto his elbows, his eyes on Amani the whole time.
Amani climbed onto the bed and straddled him, his knees on either side of Nero's hips.
Nero's hands went to Amani's thighs, broad and warm on the denim.
He lay there looking up at Amani with the kind of expression Amani had never been looked at with before.
It wasn't hunger. It wasn't the cataloguing predator-gaze he'd gotten from Doms his whole life. It was something steadier. The expression of a man looking at the thing he'd wanted for a long time and choosing to wait another minute because the waiting was part of the wanting.
"Take your shirt off," Amani said.
Nero sat up just enough to strip the t-shirt over his head.
Underneath he was lean, wiry, the way ferrets were built, not the wall of muscle Amani had always told himself he needed but something more interesting, long muscle packed close to bone, a body built for speed and precision.
Dark hair on his chest. A small scar over his left pec, old, pale.
Another on his shoulder. A body that had been used.
Amani put his hand over the scar on his chest. "What's this one?"
"Broken mirror with a silver back. Domestic call my second year. Don't worry about it."
"The shoulder?"
"Wolf bite. Training exercise gone wrong. Also don't worry about it."
Amani leaned down and kissed the chest scar.
Then the shoulder. Then Nero's mouth, and by the time he was back at the mouth Nero's hands had moved from his thighs to his back, palms flat, sliding up his spine, and Amani arched into the touch without meaning to, the way a cat arches into a scratch.
Nero made a low sound against his mouth that Amani felt more than heard.
"Oh fuck," Amani said, against Nero's mouth, surprised at himself.
"What?"
"I forgot what this was supposed to feel like."
Nero's hand came up, cradled the back of his head, not gripping, just there. "We can stop."
"Don't stop."
"Okay."