Chapter 14
“You’re not too worried about the walk of shame?” Will asked as Enzo returned from the bathroom a few minutes later and stretched out next to him.
“I did it this morning, didn’t I?” Enzo shot him a smoldering look from under thick dark lashes. “Besides, walk of shame implies shame, and I don’t have an ounce of shame. I’d do that again.”
“Right now? Already?” Will squawked. And okay, so he felt a pulse of arousal at Enzo’s words, surprising considering how little time had passed since he’d come his brains out.
Enzo laughed. “Oh, baby, to be twenty again.”
“How old are you?” Will wondered.
Enzo turned to him, mischief twinkling in his eyes. “How old do you think I am?”
“I . . .uh . . .” Will hesitated awkwardly.
Reaching out, Enzo stroked his arm. “It’s alright,” he said, letting him off the hook. “I’m twenty-seven.”
“Twenty-nine.”
“Oh, I do like an older man,” Enzo said. “But seriously, you’re twenty-nine, and your parents still think you’re at their beck and call?”
Will sighed. Flopped onto his back. “I know. Why do you think I came here? It wasn’t just working for them or for their business. It was kinda what you had with your mom. They think they get to call the shots in my life, and they’re annoyed when they can’t. It’s unfair.”
“Well, I wish I could give you advice, but I only have two tactics: avoidance and apparently faking orgasms loudly in front of the town.”
Will knew that Enzo had been trying to make him smile, and it had worked. “So you stay away from Indigo Bay and when you do come here . . .”
“I convince a very good-looking man to fake orgasms with me in an attempt to distract Giana enough that she’ll forget all the ways I’ve disappointed her?” Enzo’s voice was wry.
“Hey, the faking orgasms idea was mine,” Will said, nudging.
“Not your most brilliant work.” Enzo slipped closer and then he was only a breath away. Will felt the buzz building under his skin again. The wanting overwhelming everything else. “’Cause we could’ve been doing this for real.”
Enzo kissed him sweetly. But it didn’t matter how soft it was, it still fired him up. He told himself it was just that he was finally getting a taste of him, but deep down, he knew it was more than that.
It started sweet, but it didn’t stay sweet. Enzo made a little groaning noise in the back of his throat, and it flamed the rest of Will’s desire to life, and he tugged Enzo over, until he was draped across him.
“Maybe we are twenty again,” Enzo mused, panting a little as he pulled his mouth from Will’s, leaning against him, forehead to forehead.
“I feel twenty again.” It was probably too much to say, but Will added, “You make me feel twenty again.”
“I didn’t feel like this even when I was twenty. Back then I thought I was in love with Oliver. And it sure wasn’t like this.”
Will felt a pulse of jealousy, but how could it last when Enzo was the one here with him now, the one who’d run to Cherry’s, just so he could kiss him for real?
And Enzo had said it himself. It hadn’t been like this.
As for Will, he didn’t think he’d ever felt like this, not in all his twenty-nine years.
They were in new, uncharted territory. Both of them.
But it was easier to pull Enzo even closer and kiss him harder, lose himself and all his nagging worries about how was this going to work, to the passion that flared between them.
Less than five minutes later, Enzo was naked and on top of him, one beautiful hand wrapped around their hard cocks, arching as Will dug his fingertips into his ass, encouraging him.
“Fuck,” Enzo groaned as he leaned in, sucking Will’s bottom lip into his mouth, and Will was lost to little burst of pleasure-pain, to intoxicating slide of his cock through Enzo’s fist, bumping up against his toned stomach.
Entranced by the vision of his precome smeared across Enzo’s skin. Like he could mark him and keep him.
Enzo squeezed harder, flicking his wrist, and pleasure spiked.
“Oh yeah, that’s good,” Will panted. “Give me more, baby.”
Will thought he might protest, draw it out longer, make it even hotter, even as Will’s skin slicked with sweat. But he didn’t, just as lost to it as Will was. Especially when Will tucked a finger between his ass cheeks, sliding it and pressing right into his hole, still a bit loose from earlier.
Enzo moaned and exploded, stripes of come painting Will’s chest.
“Next time,” he said, still panting as he came down from his orgasm, “I’m riding you.”
And that was all it took for Will to tip over the edge, his own orgasm painting up Enzo’s chest.
Enzo didn’t seem particularly concerned about the mess though, because he collapsed onto Will, breathing heavily. “I think,” he slurred, “that we’re gonna wish we were twenty again.”
Will shook his head. He didn’t want to be any other age than the one he was right now. “I’m happy right here. Never been happier.”
“Me neither,” Enzo murmured, fingers digging into Will’s shoulder. Like he’d fight to hang on to him. To never let him go.
Maybe that was the answer to the question Will didn’t know how to ask.
They’d just have to hold on to each other.
Enzo knew he should be exhausted after last night’s sex marathon, but instead he was the opposite.
He was not only full of energy but wired, like he’d been plugged into the nearest electrical socket.
Lit up from within with a hundred ideas, a thousand.
He was painting as fast as he felt comfortable with, sloppier than he’d normally go, and his teachers back in San Francisco would have cautioned him, but Enzo thought they’d understand.
Sometimes you were gripped by inspiration and you had to indulge it, not push it away.
He’d gone to work the same way he always did, but the moment he’d turned the corner, lugging the day’s supplies, and seen his work in progress, it had started, and it hadn’t let up in hours.
He set his brush down and stretched his hand, trying to keep it from cramping. Picked up the water bottle he’d brought up the scaffolding with him and sucked half it down, realizing as the water hit his tongue that it was lukewarm and no longer cold
Turning, Enzo glanced at the sun and from its position, he knew he’d been at this hours, with no break. He really should take one. At that thought, his stomach grumbled, and so, reluctantly, he headed down the ladder next to the scaffolding he’d set up.
On the ground he found more water and a little sticky note with a heart drawn on it and a “W.”
His heartbeat accelerated, and for a minute, he seriously considered going into Cherry’s and finding Will.
But no. You’re gonna take a real break. Get cool somewhere. Get something to eat. Drink a lot of water.
If he sought out Will, he’d probably hit a few of those, but not all of them.
Besides, he’d made himself a promise that he wouldn’t bother Will when he was working, just like Will had promised that he wouldn’t bother Enzo when he was working.
Normally Enzo would’ve liked the bothering. Not today, probably, but any other day.
He craned his neck back and took in his work from the morning—well, it was clearly past morning, but his work of the last few hours. There was the cliff, perhaps bigger and with a hair more dramatic flair than real life, and Eliza’s figure on top of it, her hair swirling around her.
But it was her face that caught him and held him. Her expression.
The naked yearning and the undeniable love written across it. It was more than just hope, because Eliza hadn’t just hoped that Nathaniel would return to her. She’d believed.
He’d intended to capture as much as he could in her look as she stared out across the water.
Taking another swallow of warm water, Enzo decided he’d accomplished what he’d set out to do.
But he couldn’t deny, either, that this growing thing with Will and all his growing feelings had given him new perspective.
He’d poured those into every brushstroke, wanting it to be good not only for him and for the town, but for Will.
This was Will’s building, his own legacy that he was creating, one delicious sundae and milkshake at a time, and Enzo wanted to do it justice.
Give him something concrete, when Enzo wasn’t here. A reminder that he was more than just his parents’ lackey.
Evidence that he was Will, and someone out there cared about him very much. The kind of way Eliza had cared about Nathaniel.
Except she was in love with him.
Enzo’s fingers slipped on the bottle’s condensation and he nearly dropped it.
He told himself it was just a figure of speech. It was just a way he’d used to connect to the story he was telling.
But the thought followed him anyway, down the street, to the deli.
Rocco was leaning against the front counter, a small laptop in front of him. He glanced up when the bell on the front door rang and Enzo walked in.
Above him was the menu board Enzo had painted when he was only nineteen. An art collector had come in last year and offered Giana and Luca twenty thousand dollars for it, and his mom had just laughed at him.
He’d felt a puff of undeniable pride at that. Both at the offer, and the rejection.
“Hey,” Rocco said as he approached. “You look . . .” His gaze swept up and down Enzo’s form. “You been working all day?”
Enzo glanced down at himself. Not just his tank, but his skin was generously flecked with paint and now that he was in the air-conditioning, he could feel just how damp with sweat he was.
Well, there was something to be said for the fact this was his family’s deli.
They weren’t exactly going to refuse him service.
Maybe it was good he’d avoided Cherry’s.
Of course, it wasn’t like Will had seemed particularly averse to the way he got when he was working.
“Yeah,” he said. “And I’m starving.”
“Whatcha want?” Rocco asked.
Enzo ordered. A big Italian chopped salad and a meatball sandwich.
“I’ve got one of Luca’s Gatorades in the walk-in in the back,” Rocco said. “You want me to steal it for you?”
“You think he’d mind?”