Chapter 12 #3
Skipping a few steps ahead, he teased Joshua about not keeping up, which ended with both of them beaming at each other.
Shortly after that, Mo sent Leo a crinkly-eyed smile, which finally allowed Leo to relax.
If Mo’s approval was in part due to Nate’s hand entwined with his…
Well, Leo wasn’t going to look a gift horse in the mouth.
He also wasn’t going to think about how he and Joshua would need to cross about half a million bridges before they could do the same in public. Nope.
As it turned out, Rio de Janeiro was board shorts and flip flops, was a mosaic of colourful tiles that lined the Escadaria Selarón.
It was rhythmic music pouring from open windows and youths kicking a football over a net.
It was the smell of freshly grilled meat, of traffic exhaust and piss, of concrete.
Late into the evening they were snuck in through the backdoor of a club that played live music, something called Chorinho that sounded like a Brazilian kind of New Orleans jazz.
Their table was set above the main section of the club, granting them the kind of privacy that allowed Leo to lean into Joshua, alcohol bubbling in his blood and his hand high up on Joshua’s thigh, playing with the inseam of Joshua’s trousers until he was watching him with dark, hooded eyes.
By the time they returned to the hotel, the sky was already starting to brighten. All they managed were quick, sleepy hand jobs in the shower before falling into bed, naked and loose, curled into each other.
Leo woke to Joshua’s fingers pressing into him, slick with lube, and it took his foggy mind a second to make sense of the sensation.
He remembered his own words with a start—I want to wake up with your fingers inside of me—and gasped, still partially tangled in dreams. His hips twitched up when Joshua’s mouth wrapped around the tip of his cock.
Joshua lifted off a moment later, slithering up Leo’s body to smile at him with wild hair and bright eyes, a pillow crease imprinted on one cheek. He was so incredibly lovely, and his happiness was all for Leo. Joshua was all for Leo.
“Can I?” Joshua asked in a hushed whisper, smile widening at whatever it was he must have seen on Leo’s face. “Are you ready?”
“Yeah,” Leo mumbled, barely coherent.
Joshua brushed a kiss against his mouth, and Leo was slow to move into it, mind still hazy with sleep and the radiance of a new day that streamed in through the open windows.
He parted his thighs for Joshua, shifted to let Joshua slide a pillow under his back and then melted into the mattress, accommodating the weight of Joshua’s body.
After that it was all languid, drowsy movements of Joshua’s hips, nudging deep and staying like that, shifting back by only an inch before driving back in.
At some point, the heat collecting under Leo’s skin became too much.
Wrapping his legs around Joshua’s waist, he sought to control the pace, and Joshua let him.
Later, cooling down, Joshua raised his head off the pillow and smoothed his palm from Leo’s stomach over his ribs, up to the letters inked across his collarbones.
Gently, Joshua traced the contours with the tip of his index finger.
“You told me it was a sad story,” he whispered. “Are you willing to talk about it?”
Leo rolled onto his side to face him. “It’s somewhat sad, yes,” he started, briefly distracted by the heavy flush to Joshua’s cheeks.
Holy shit, how had Leo spent twenty-seven years on this earth without knowing just how fucking brilliant sex could be?
Since Joshua was watching him with calm patience, Leo made himself continue.
“But it’s sad mostly because I was just emerging from a sad place, and this signifies…
trying to make my peace with it, I guess.
I got it a day after James offered me the job. ”
Joshua nodded slightly, gaze flicking back down to take in the cursive “Sometimes things just happen. Other times you make them happen” as though seeing it in a new light. Then he looked back up to meet Leo’s eyes. “How did that come about? James, I mean?”
“Stroke of luck.” Leo shifted a little, felt a pleasant twinge in his muscles.
Sleepiness had dissolved into a lazy, content kind of looseness.
“He was supposed to meet a client in the bar I happened to browse that night. James’ client never showed, but something about me caught his eye.
And, see, I noticed this guy staring at me while I was making the rounds and trying to charm the right person into buying me a beer, and then buying me, period. ”
To Joshua’s credit he didn’t flinch—simply pressed his lips together, a downwards tilt to his mouth. He didn’t interrupt.
“So anyway.” Leo’s shrug turned out awkward with the way he was lying down.
“This guy comes up to me, all easy smile, and tells me he’s been watching me and likes what he sees.
Bit creepy, mind, and I knew better than to go with the creepy ones.
Which is exactly what I told him.” He shook his head, very slightly, and when he closed his eyes he could still picture it perfectly behind his lids: the smoky interior of the bar, James’ face caught in shadows, his gaze heavy and knowing.
“Can’t say I felt particularly reassured when he laughed and was all, ‘Glad to see you’ve got a sense of self-preservation, kid.
That’ll serve you well. But I’m not a punter.
’ And then he, like, told me he was interested in my other skill set.
As in, uh… ‘The one that had that bloke over there go from frowning to buying you a drink even though he’s got a wife and no interest in your services. ’”
Flexibility and charm, that was how James had described it later.
The skill to adapt to different situations and people, and then play them with ease.
If it weren’t for that lucky coincidence of Leo being in the right place at the right time…
If James’ client had shown up that night, if Leo had settled on a different bar or decided to take the night off…
He wouldn’t be here today.
The notion had Leo reach out and twine a hand into the corkscrew curls at Joshua’s temple. Joshua leaned into the touch. “Good judge of character, that James,” he said.
“The very best. And we made it a rule not to talk about his saviour complex.” Leo paused to organise his scrambled thoughts.
“So, he asked me how I’d feel about a steady job, one where I could keep my clothes on, and I told him I wouldn’t sell his drugs.
To which he said…” With a little grin, he shrugged again. “‘I don’t sell drugs. I sell stories.’”
Joshua pondered this for a moment before he smiled, sudden and glowing. “Would it be outrageous if I gifted him with a title?”
Leo was startled into laughter, warmth seeping from the sunlit room into his bones. “Only you would say something that ridiculous, Princey.”
“That’s not a no,” Joshua decided. “Also, when did we go from Princeling and little prince to Princey?”
“Not sure, but I like it. There’s something very Disney about it, you know? Cinderella, I think. It suits you, what with your big green Bambi eyes and long gangly limbs and all.”
“So you’d be, what? Aladdin?” Joshua asked. “Because if so, I’d be Jasmine, and I want a pet tiger. I would rock a tiger.”
Since it was a moral obligation to stop him from spouting bullshit, Leo covered Joshua’s mouth with his own.
It was a sacrifice, of course, but Leo had always believed in doing right by the people—and now that he’d begun to reclaim his birth name, he had better live up to the noble responsibility that came with it.
Due to road conditions and everyone advising against travelling the distance by car, the group took Joshua’s private jet from Rio to Belo Horizonte.
Leo spent the drive to the airport in the backseat of a steel-plated Mercedes, its tinted windows veiling the morning in grey.
With his head in Leo’s lap, Joshua had fallen back asleep almost as soon as they’d climbed in, and Leo was carding his fingers through the tangled mess of Joshua’s curls while casually feeling out the bodyguard who’d come to replace Johnson.
True to Nate’s background check from a few weeks ago, this Zach bloke seemed perfectly all right.
When he talked about Joshua there was true affection in his tone, and at the mention of Johnson his eyes narrowed in disapproval—he hadn’t been told the full story behind his sudden replacement, but it was obvious he’d formed a suspicion.
Yes, Leo decided. Zach could stay.
The flight to Belo Horizonte took them about an hour, and then they were whisked to their hotel with smooth efficiency.
Joshua refused Leo’s offer of contributing to the flight and the cost of their shared suite on the grounds that Joshua would have had to pay for it regardless, and Leo decided to let it rest. He needed to pick his battles, and this wasn’t an important one.
On the other hand, he did forbid Joshua from pulling some strings to get Leo and Nate some last-minute tickets to England’s match tomorrow.
They could have tried buying some for themselves, but since the black market was more likely to supply them with forgeries than the real thing, they would be watching it on the telly, and that was that.
After considering Leo for several moments, Nate agreed with an easy shrug.
Neither Mo nor Joshua fought them over it.