Chapter 21
CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE
When he arrived across the street, the door to the bookshop, as always, swung open to greet him.
“Hey.” Steven smiled at him as he entered, and Myles’s heart took yet another twisted turn. He was going to have a coronary at this rate. If his heart kept jumping between Jet and Steven like this, it would have more miles on it than could possibly be healthy.
Steven was seeing a customer out, handing over a heavy bag that looked to be full of big books, so he didn’t seem to notice Myles’s reaction.
Or maybe, despite how it felt, it was purely internal and not even visible to the naked eye.
“See you again,” Steven told the customer, who nodded enthusiastically and grinned at Myles who stepped out of the way for them.
“I’ll definitely be back. I had no idea you carried so many vintage cookbooks. This is going to be great for my channel!”
Steven laughed. “Good luck. Though I’m still skeptical. Some of those recipes are…” He made a face.
“That is the whole point. This is going to be great. You’ll see.” They left then, and Steven shut the door behind them.
“You okay?” Steven asked.
“Not sure.” Myles studied him.
“Okay.” Steven glanced at his watch. “Lunchtime.” He flipped the sign to CLOSED. “Or close enough.” The door locked itself as Steven took Myles’s hand. “Come upstairs.”
Myles let Steven lead him up the stairs past the piles to the attic. For once, Myles managed to ignore the stacks around the edges of the room as he followed Steven past the couch they usually occupied to a door at the far end of the space.
“You’ll have to forgive the mess. I peeled the bed so I could change the sheets this morning, and only managed to get as far putting the new sheets on. Ooof.”
“It’s fine,” Myles muttered as he gripped Steven around the waist and yanked him close.
“What’s this?” Steven’s lopsided grin made an appearance.
Myles kissed it away. He had a hand on the back of Steven’s head, had him in a vise grip around his waist, and still, somehow, Steven managed to pull him out of his demand and push him down onto the freshly made bed.
He landed with a plop and looked up.
“While I’m not complaining about this, I do have to remind you who’s on top.” He straddled Myles, easing him from sitting onto his back, and leaned over him.
“Always?” Myles asked, though the question felt airy and indistinct.
“Up here, yeah. Well.” Steven leaned down for a kiss, which Myles gave him, then he pushed up again to peer at him. “Mostly. As long as you’re fine with it.”
“Maybe that’s why I came,” Myles admitted, surprised that it might be true. He did feel better. At least his pounding heart was moving steadily, if enthusiastically now, and not jumping all over the place.
“You came to not be in control?”
“Maybe.” He gulped and shied away from examining that any more closely. “Is that wrong?”
“Only if we aren’t on the same page.”
“Are we?”
“First, I’m going to fuck you. Then we’re going to talk.” Steven studied him, as if expecting a particular response to that.
Myles licked his lips. “Can’t remember the last time that happened.”
“The fucking or the talking?”
“I’m not shy about telling you I haven’t bottomed in a hundred years.”
Steven snorted. “You aren’t that much older than me.”
“And I’m not afraid of doing it now. Especially since you know I haven’t in a while.” Myles cupped Steven’s face. “I know you’ll be careful.”
“Of course I will.”
They spent some time kissing and peeling off layers until Myles was lying on his back, head on the pillows this time, with Steven once more straddling him, their boxers the only barrier between them.
Steven stroked Myles’s chest, playing in the thick hair over his pecs. “So.”
“So?” Myles gazed up at him, slightly dazed, but okay with that.
“So it’s the talking bit that makes you nervous?”
Myles closed his eyes. “Sex first,” he whispered.
Steven’s weight shifted, and Myles felt his breath over his neck. “Why do I get the feeling I’m not going to like this talk?”
“Please?” Myles shifted too, spreading his legs a bit wider, roving his palms over Steven’s ass.
Steven nuzzled close, ground his hips down, and sighed. “You’re going to do exactly what I tell you to?”
“Promise.”
It was an easy promise to make. As long as Steven was calling the shots, all Myles had to do was comply. He didn’t have to think. He didn’t have to make any hard decisions. He didn’t have to resist.
Before long, Steven had them both naked. He was still on top, but he paused, his expression thoughtful. “You’re sure about this?”
“I’m sure.”
“How do you want to do it?”
“Just like this.”
“It might be easier with you up—”
“Like this.”
Steven’s smile, still crooked, had an added twist to it this time. “Not going to make this easy on either of us, are you?”
“I’m not an easy person, Steven. If you haven’t figured that out by now—”
Steven shut him up with a kiss. “I know that,” he whispered finally. “Part of what I like about you.”
“That I make your life difficult?”
“That you make loving you easy.”
“Well, that…” Myles supposed he deserved that. He had come here desperate for Steven to turn his brain off, after all.
“Too soon?” Steven asked with a wink, though he was clearly not joking. “Too much?”
“You wouldn’t be you if you pulled a punch.” Myles stroked his face, drinking in the sight of him, his flop of too-long hair falling around his face, and the lopsided way his expression showed exactly what he was feeling.
“You still want this?”
“More than ever.” Because now he wasn’t doing it for the white noise. He was doing it because he was in love. He needed this little piece of them to have with him always.
He was right about Steven being careful with him.
And so very wrong. Because he spent a lot of time driving Myles to the brink with his hands and his mouth, then backing off and grinning at him like this was the best game in world.
It was almost a cruel game, but one Myles would have played with him forever if he could have.
“You’re making me nuts,” he complained eventually, because he was aching to get off, aching to have Steven inside him already. Finally. Today, sometime, please God, could that happen.
“You want me to get on with it?” Steven had Myles’s balls in his palm, and his fingers tickling behind them, glancing over his hole, teasing so that Myles didn’t know if he should push back for more or shy away from not enough.
“Yes.” He chased Steven’s fingers, only to have him remove his hand altogether. “What are you doing?”
“Patience.”
“Not my strong suit.”
“I am aware.” Lazily, Steven stroked his cock with one hand and pinched a nipple with the other.
“You’re going backwards.”
“Who’s in charge here?”
Myles bucked into Steven’s fist around his cock.
“Nice try.” Steven released him and sat back, pinning him flat.
“Am I not allowed to say what I want?”
“I know what you want.” Steven leaned down for a too-short, too-tantalizing kiss. “That isn’t why you came to me, is it?”
“White noise,” Myles agreed, before he’d thought better of admitting it.
“Not this time, though. At least, not anymore.”
“No.”
“So trust me.”
“I do.”
Steven kissed him again, slow and lazily, hands splayed over Myles’s chest. Their cocks, crushed between them, slid together pleasantly. The stimulation was, frustratingly, not enough.
As if reading his thoughts, or maybe correctly interpreting his desperate groans, Steven shifted just enough to fit a hand between them and grip them both. The strength in those long, fine fingers always caught Myles off guard.
His moan came from deeper in his chest this time and ended on a sigh and a whimper. Tension he hadn’t realized he was still carrying bled out of him, and he sagged into the mattress.
“There it is,” Steven whispered into his ear.
Myles couldn’t find any words to respond, so he groaned again as Steven’s weight shifted and he released them. He didn’t have time to mourn the loss, though, because this time, Steven didn’t tease or tickle when he ran fingers over Myles’s opening.
Clearly, Myles had zoned out on some level, because the slickness of lube surprised him. The breach of his body, less so, mostly because Steven’s fingers were so slender, so the stretch to accommodate him wasn’t great.
After that, other than Steven checking in with him endlessly, there wasn’t a lot of conversation. Not until Steven’s cock was poised at his entrance, and Myles was breathing so hard he didn’t think he’d be capable of speech anyway.
“You can still back out,” Steven told him.
Myles shook his head.
“You’re wrinkling my sheets.” Steven ran fingers over Myles’s fists, clenched around the bedding.
Myles lifted his hips to feel the pressure of Steven’s cock more acutely.
Steven brushed his fingers over Myles’s cheeks. “Yeah,” he agreed. “I’m ready too.”
Even still, he pushed inside with a patience and care that had Myles squirming and panting by the time he was fully seated.
The fire of the stretch quickly gave way to a burning warmth Myles thought might actually melt him from the inside out.
Then Steven started to move.
Every pulse of his hips sent a new shockwave through Myles’s body. Steven drove into him with a devoted concentration, as if he was afraid this might be his only chance to get it right, and he was not going to screw it up.
He shouldn’t have come here. He shouldn’t have come here for this, now. It wasn’t fair. A sound came out of Myles he hadn’t heard since Natalie.
Steven’s movement slowed, and he focused on Myles’s face. “Don’t do that, love,” he whispered.
“Do what?” Of course he found his voice now, but it wasn’t his voice, exactly. It was too rough. Too quiet. Too desperate.
“Don’t pull back.”
“I shouldn’t have—”
Steven kissed him gently, with focused intent, hips still moving, but slowly now, easing in and out with as much care as he kissed with.
“I would have been sad about not doing this,” Steven told him. “You don’t have to regret coming to me. I’m glad you did.”
“It’s gonna hurt,” Myles said.
Steven smiled. “Yeah. It is.”
“I hate I’m doing this to you.”
Closing his eyes briefly, Steven shook his head. His gaze was glassy when he opened his eyes again, but he was smiling. “I hope you don’t hate that you love me.”
Myles gulped hard. He almost did back away, then. But the look on Steven’s face, the demand, unspoken and gentle, but still a demand, for honesty nearly broke him.
But he said it. “I hate that I’m leaving you.”
Rather than still, or pull away like Myles expected, Steven smiled through what Myles could no longer deny were tears. “I know. But I don’t hate that we’re doing this before you do.”
“What if we don’t survive, so far apart?”
Steven leaned down to kiss him before he answered. When he did, it was with his mouth close to Myles’s ear. “Trust us,” was all he said, and then his focus went back to their bodies, as though determined to make this the best experience he could.
If they only had one chance to do it right, Steven deserved all of Myles’s attention too, so he put what-ifs out of his head and lost himself in their rhythm.
Their release was intensely silent and shuddering.
When it was over, Steven collapsed on the bed next to Myles, head on his shoulder, hand playing in Myles’s chest hair. Gone was the man who’d taken charge of their lovemaking.
Myles hugged him close, kissed his hair. “I’m so sorry.”
“I’m not.” The fake cheeriness cut deep, but then Steven rose to one elbow so he could look at Myles. “Sorry. That sounded glib.”
“A bit.”
Steven caressed his cheek. “I’m really not. I told you in the beginning I knew what I was getting into.”
“I let myself—I let us both—believe I might stay.”
“You didn’t let me believe anything. Whatever I thought, it’s on me. I fell in love with you, and I’m not sorry I did.”
For the first time, Myles rolled them so he was on top. So he could gaze down into trusting blue eyes, still glimmering with a wetness that was Myles’s fault, no matter what Steven told him. “I didn’t want to be the guy who steamrollered through your life. I don’t want to be the reason—”
“You gotta stop that.” Steven grinned at him, more crooked than ever, because he was grinning, but he was also serious.
“You aren’t the reason I do anything. I have my own mind.
I’m perfectly capable of making it up how I see fit.
My own heart, and I’ll give it to you if I damn well please. Got it?”
Myles nodded.
“And I’m not going to crawl back into my shell and hide the minute you leave town. You reminded me that’s on me, too. If you’re the reason for anything, you can be happy you’re the reason I stopped being a recluse.”
“Well.” Myles flopped back next to him. “I didn’t have anything to do with that. You came to me on your own.”
“You see?” Steven turned his head so they were gazing at one another again. “I’m fine. I will be fine.” He cupped Myles’s face. “So will you be.”
“I’m going to be on my own back there.”
“We all still love you. We’re all still here for you.”
Myles nodded.
“You can do this. Those kids believe in you, and trust me when I say kids know. If you weren’t worthy of them, they would be the first to tell you.”
“You want to know the most ironic part of it? Jet hated me hauling them out here. Now he’s the one who wants to stay. And I’m going to make him go back.”
“For what it’s worth, I think you’re making the right call. Whatever ends up happening.”
“I know. I was so sure keeping his father’s wishes to myself was the right thing there for a hot minute. I was afraid he wouldn’t choose me over his father. But what kind of choice is it if he doesn’t even know there’s one to be made?”
“And so what if he does? Will you love him any less?”
“Of course not.”
“And will you still be there for him no matter what happens with his dad?”
“Of course.”
“Then it doesn’t make any difference what he decides.
You’re the parent he needs.” He poked Myles’s chest lightly.
“The one he deserves. The one who loves him and will always have his back. The one who makes it safe for him to make up his own mind when the outcome isn’t quite so clear.
You’re the parent taking him back to find out how he wants to move forward, and for what it’s worth, as much as I wish we didn’t have to separate, I think you’re doing the right thing. ”
Myles rolled on top of him again. “Don’t be shocked when I facetime you for more parenting advice.”
“Don’t be shocked when I insist you never needed my advice. You’ve got this. But also, facetime me any time. All the time. Often.”
Myles dropped his forehead to Steven’s chest.
For a while, Steven ran fingers through his hair, and neither of them spoke.
“I do love you,” Myles said finally, into the soft, dark space between his lips and Steven’s chest. He pressed the words into his skin with kisses.
They spent the rest of the afternoon not worrying about the shop staying closed or Myles’s imminent departure.