Chapter Thirty
Xavi
“Iwas so worried.” Lulu shivered against him, his arms wrapped tightly around Xavi from behind, as Xavi ran the key card through the reader to their hotel room.
It had felt like hours before they’d finally been able to leave the theater, with everyone eager to congratulate each other on a successful opening night, and Xavi still high from Lulu singing to him in front of a full auditorium.
“I’m sorry.” Xavi reached around to where Lulu was clinging to his back like a baby koala. “I didn’t mean to worry you.” Opening the door, Xavi placed the card in the holder on the wall, and the lights went on. Turning, Xavi’s face almost touched Lulu’s when he spoke. “I lost track of time and—”
“Doesn’t matter. You’re here now.”
“I’ll never be late again, cisne. I’ll never keep you waiting again. Te prometo.” He leaned in and brushed his mouth against Lulu’s, that familiar flame igniting inside as soon as they touched their lips together. “Come,” he spoke against Lulu’s lips. “I want to show you something.”
Lulu’s hand slid down Xavi’s chest, all the way down, down to the front of his jeans, where he then cupped Xavi’s semi through the fabric.
“Not that,” Xavi laughed. “At least not yet.”
“Bummer.” Lulu pouted adorably. “I’ve missed him, your big, beautiful bear dick.”
“Bear dick?” Xavi snorted. “I have a bear dick now?”
“Well, you’re a bear, ain’t ya? My bear.” Lulu squeezed harder, and Xavi’s balls sang with desire, with the need to come already.
“I am. Yours,” Xavi gritted, then turned Lulu in his grasp and guided him backward toward the bed. “But I have something else to show you first.”
“Okay,” Lulu giggled as he stumbled backward until the back of his legs hit the bed and he plopped down on the edge. “Show me.”
Leaning back on his elbows, Lulu licked his lips slowly, his eyes on Xavi’s body like laser beams burning into him hungrily while he pulled off his leather jacket, discarding it on the floor next to him.
Lulu spread his legs, his thighs falling to the sides, and Xavi stepped in between them, Lulu’s closeness doing things to his body he hardly had any words for.
The need to just tear Lulu’s pants down his legs and sink into him and fuck him senseless took hold of him, but he managed to pull himself back from the edge, back to some resemblance of sanity.
Xavi’s skin itched where the needle had penetrated his skin, reminding him why he’d been late.
Lifting his arm, Xavi held his scarred hand out between them.
He realized it wasn’t broken. It was just different from his other hand.
But still a hand, a part of him. Turning his hand, he bared his wrist to Lulu, where the skin was covered by a layer of see-through cellophane.
Lulu rose on his elbows, intrigue in his eyes as his gaze shifted between Xavi’s face and wrist.
“What is this?” Lulu’s voice shook.
“Look closer, cisne.”
“You got a new tattoo?” Lulu reached for Xavi’s wrist and carefully traced his index finger along the edge of the cellophane, fascination in his eyes.
“Yes.”
“What is it?” Lulu swallowed, his eyes locking onto Xavi’s, all wide and wondrous.
“Look closer.”
Lulu’s gaze dipped again. He tilted his head, black locks falling into his face, obscuring it from Xavi’s vision. Then, an almost pained sound left Lulu’s mouth, and shortly after, a few tears landed on Xavi’s hand like sparse spring rain.
“It’s a bear. It’s…” Lulu sniffled as his voice broke, a few more tears meeting Xavi’s skin.
“It’s me, cisne. Right next to you. Where I belong.
Where I’ve always belonged.” Lulu nodded, his curls bouncing around his face, then he tilted his chin, looking up at Xavi, tears staining his pinkened cheeks.
“Read the words, baby.” Baby. The endearment spilled so easily from Xavi’s lips.
So many names he still wanted to call Lulu aside from cisne, amor, mano.
Baby was just the beginning. My love, my world, my everything.
As long as there was air left in Xavi’s lungs and blood in his veins, he would find new names to call Lulu, and he had no doubt the English vocabulary—and the Spanish for that matter—would eventually run out of words.
But then Xavi was just going to have to learn a third language or a fourth or invent a new one altogether, a language created especially just for the two of them.
Lulu’s lips moved, his eyelashes fluttering while he read the words again and again. You and I, always. Te prometo.
“What do you promise?” Lulu smiled warily.
“Everything. I promise you everything, always. That I’ll do anything in my power to be what you need.” It was true. For Lulu, he would. He would change, shed his old skin, rid himself of the past, be anything Lulu needed him to be.
“You already are.”
“And I won’t look back anymore. I won’t be afraid of looking forward. Not when I have you by my side.”
“I promise that, too. I love you, Xavi. Every part of you. Your lips when they steal my breath away, and your eyes when they see right into my very soul. Your heart, when it beats so steadily against mine, reminding me we are two now instead of just me. I love your hands and your arms because they hold me so close.” Lulu twined their fingers together, ghosting his thumb along Xavi’s knuckles where there had once been two fingers, but were now just scars.
As if Lulu could read his mind, he bent down and traced his lips along the marred skin, coating Xavi’s hand in featherlight kisses.
“Every scar and every fiber of your being. I love you, too, oso.” Lulu looked up, his eyes piercingly bright.
“I love how you make me feel about myself, how you make me see myself.”
“How?” Xavi reached out, tucking a stray lock of hair behind Lulu’s ear, his thumb and index finger lingering on Lulu’s earlobe.
“Possibilities instead of limitations. Hopeful and worthy.”
“You are that, cisne. Worthy.”
“I feel that. I want to believe that. When I’m with you, I believe it. Tu y you, mano. You and me, always together, oso. Never apart.”
“Yes,” Xavi nodded, then dropped to his knees between Lulu’s thighs.
Reaching for Lulu’s face, he cupped Lulu’s chin in his hands, brushing his thumbs along Lulu’s lips, lips he’d never thought he’d get to kiss, but were now as familiar to him as any other part of Lulu had become.
“You belong with me, Lulu, just like I belong with you. Para siempre.”
Lulu was crying in earnest now, tears tracing patterns down his golden skin, making him even more desirable.
“It’s beautiful. I love it.” Lulu’s gaze dipped to the tattoo once again, then he whispered, “I always knew it was me, the black swan, but still… I didn’t dare hope that…” Lulu’s voice broke again.
“What? What, baby?”
“That you could want me as much as I want you.”
“Why not?”
“Because… because you are so… you are everything and I am… I’m just… I’m a mess. I’m a train wreck,” Lulu chuckled dejectedly. “I think I’ll always be. I’m—”
“Mine. You’re mine, Lulu. I knew it then, like I know it now. You are mine.”
“I am.” Lulu’s smile was shy, suddenly wary, as more pink bled through his caramel skin. “I want to try something. Something I’ve never done before. Will you let me?”
“Anything.” The words flew from Xavi’s lips. He didn’t know what Lulu meant, but there wasn’t anything he wouldn’t let Lulu do to him. Even if it meant Lulu fucking him. It didn’t matter. He would never be able to deny him anything.
“I wanna ride you,” Lulu breathed. “I want you hard and naked beneath me, and I wanna ride you.” Fuck. Heat spread through Xavi’s core like a wildfire, his cock going from a semi to full mast in one blinding moment, like he’d been electrocuted.
“Yes, please,” Xavi blurted, then before he could curse himself, Lulu threw his head back, baring his lovely lean neck, laughing out loud, his chest shaking with the sound.
“Shit, oso, you’re cute when you get all dumbfounded.
” Then Lulu’s smile turned crooked, wicked.
“Get naked, amor.” Lulu laughed again, the words dancing in front of Xavi.
“Right the fuck now. Then lie down.” Xavi nodded, then quickly started stripping, with no reluctance or trace of fear running through him.
It no longer scared him to be naked in front of Lulu.
If he were being honest, he loved it. He loved Lulu’s eyes on him, drinking him in, tracing every scar and muscle, dip and curve of his body.
He loved Lulu’s heated gaze on him, tracing his tattoos like they were a map to Xavi’s heart, to his very soul.
Perhaps they were. When he’d had them done, one by one over the years, they’d been for himself.
Most of them were in places he’d never expected to share with another person, and now he wanted Lulu’s eyes on him all the fucking time.
It was like an addiction at this point, the sensation of his skin burning deliciously under Lulu’s worshipping gaze.
Tearing his T-shirt over his head, Xavi’s eyes never left Lulu as he started stripping, too, discarding his clothes on top of Xavi’s on the floor.
Once Xavi was naked, he crawled on top of the bed, then placed a pillow against the headboard.
Lying down on his back, he tucked his hands behind his head, a calm spreading through his body, while he watched Lulu remove his briefs, then padded across the darkened motel room to his bag, his perky ass cheeks bouncing seductively with every step, the two dimples above the meatier parts like two beacons, pulling Xavi in.
Xavi’s cock stirred, smearing precum against his stomach, as his balls zinged with anticipation.