Stef went home and shook his head at Jav. “Pretend I’m not back yet.”
He peeled off his clothes as if they were contaminated and went straight into the shower. He washed his hair twice and wore the soap down to a wafer. Emerged boiled red and still feeling dirty.
His head was full of twitching pain while his body only wanted to fuck hard and forget. Yet the words to say so jammed up in a gooey, guilty blob in his throat. He didn’t like knowing how rough sex could break a tough case’s hold on him. Especially with the image of Geno asleep in his bed, relaxed beneath a weighted blanket of trust, secure that Stef wouldn’t forget him. Peel him off like a jacket and drop him in a heap outside a closed door.
“You back now?” Jav said, coming into the bedroom.
Stef grunted and shrugged one shoulder.
“Hungry?”
“I don’t know. Maybe later.” Stef dug in one side of the drawer, then the other, looking for his favorite sweats.
Let go, he pleaded with himself. Geno is there. You are here. You’re home with your lover and partner and you can ask for what you want.
He swallowed hard. He needed it so goddamn bad but the context seemed so appallingly inappropriate. Disrespectful and tasteless and…wrong.
Jav leaned a shoulder against the door jamb, watching. Dark and worried. Solid and strong, unshaven and smelling like whatever the fuck it was that made him smell so good. Stef had snooped the medicine cabinet and Jav’s shaving kit and still couldn’t figure it out. Maybe it was something permanently in his skin.
“We could order out,” Jav said. “New Thai place opened around the corner.”
“That’s fine.”
“Or I can throw something together if you want.”
“I want you to stop talking.” Stef slammed the drawer shut. “I don’t know what else I want.”
“Because you’re at that far end of the spectrum where men make war on each other.” Jav hit the light switch. “You need to come back to my side.”
He took a step and put his hands around Stef’s head. He gave a pull and his mouth crushed down hard. A stumbling turn and Stef’s back hit the wall. Jav yanked the bath towel off and threw it aside. His palm ran up Stef’s stomach and chest. He took tight hold of Stef’s jaw, a thumb holding his mouth open. “I’m bringing you back.”
His tongue slid deep and his teeth sunk just to the edge of pain. Stef pulled the kiss closer, sucking and biting. Leaning all his weight into it. Flinging the day onto Jav, pushing him to be harder and rougher until Jav seized his wrists, squeezing tight and halting the violent mandhandling.
“Take your rings off.”
Out of his mind, Stef stripped his hands bare and let the pieces of silver fall to the floor. Jav took him off the wall and down to the bed. Stef turned on his stomach but Jav turned him back over.
“Stay there. Hold still.” He pulled off his clothes and came crawling along Stef’s body. Fierce and commanding, ignoring Stef’s pleas to just fuck him already.
“Hurting you won’t help,” Jav said, reaching for the bedside table drawer. “Hold still now.”
He took the time to get Stef open, then rolled on a condom and pulled Stef’s hips up into his lap. “No, lay back,” he said, batting away a guiding hand.
“Hurry up,” Stef said through his teeth.
Jav didn’t hurry. His slippery fist took hold of Stef’s hardness and squeezed tight as he moved slowly inside.
“God, man,” Stef cried, as the pain put a hand on either side of him and pressed in, breaking up the day.
“There you are,” Jav whispered, as he pushed in more.
Stef lay still, breathing into the burn, feeling himself adjust and accept. When the ache was satisfied it had his full attention, when it had everything he could give, it smiled. It rolled over, rose up and melted through his bones like warm gold.
A palm pressed into the mattress on either side of Stef’s head. Jav’s triceps pulled long and taut. A dragonfly fluttered. A ship’s wheel spun lazily. Muscles winked in and out of definition as Jav’s hips rocked back and then pushed forward. With every push came a pull. With every glide, he reeled Stef in.
“Come back to yourself,” he said.
Flashes of light dotted Stef’s peripheral. The soles of his feet prickled. He set his teeth against the rising heat, writhing in a fever. Full of hard blood and hot ache and lit-up want. Full of Jav.
“Don’t stop,” Stef said, his voice so small against the immensity of Jav’s body over him.
“Come back home now.” A fine mist of sweat rose to the surface of Jav’s skin. The scent of a man’s desire filled Stef’s nose and eyes and throat. Dark and earthy, like a forest floor. Smoky and syrupy.
“Do what I tell you,” Jav said. His teeth closed around the ring in Stef’s nipple and pulled a little. “Come back now, Finch.”
Stef felt a rippling jolt down the axis of his body. A golden zipper gliding open, allowing his skin to peel apart, fold around and turn him right side out. As he spilled over, white crackled in his peripheral like a lightning strike. Then he went dark. The master switch shut down for a pinprick of blackened silence.
I’ve been fucked senseless.
The circuit panel flicked back on and Stef let out a yell as the world poured in. Above him, Jav was coming apart. Head thrown back, the long tender line of his throat tensing and relaxing. With a last shudder, he collapsed down, wrapping Stef up in a tangle of sweaty limbs.
“Shh,” Jav said, breathing hard against Stef’s head. “I got you.”
Stef went limp and blank, reset to zero. The day was gone. The night opened like a palm and caressed him.
“You here now?” Jav said.
“I’m here.”
Jav didn’t ask another single question as he picked up the rings and slid them back onto Stef’s fingers. He turned on the shower and nudged Stef under the spray.
“Hold still,” he said, his voice now filled with care.
Stef closed his eyes and turned his body in Jav’s soaped-up hands, finally feeling clean. He let himself be rinsed, wrung out, dried off and dressed in Jav’s clothes. Let himself be led to the kitchen, where he ate what Jav put in front of him.
“And I am not feeding you this time,” Jav said.
Stef ate in silence, knowing Jav would damn well feed him if asked.
Back in bed, they lay on their sides. Kneecaps touching and right hands clasped palm-to-palm.
“Te amo, Pinzón,” Jav said.
Stef smiled. Perfectly relaxed, perfectly content. Drifting away. Tucking his head beneath a wing and giving a last flutter of feathers.
“You’re the best thing that ever happened to me,” he said.
Jav’s fingertip drew across Stef’s eyebrows. “Loving you is the best thing I do.”
Their eyes blinked in unison, their shoulders and chests rising and falling together.
“You make me a better man,” Stef said.
Jav’s eyes closed, then opened. “I couldn’t find a better man.” His fingers raked through Stef’s hair.
“You’re the best lover I ever had,” Stef said.
Jav’s eyes shone in the dark. He pressed his lips tight a moment before his voice wobbled out like a baby taking first steps.
“You’re the only lover I ever had.”
Stef was exhausted. His hands trembled as he pulled off the ring shaped like a pair of wings. He slid it onto Jav’s index finger. “Gelang.”
“What’s that?”
“Means at hand. Or together with.”
Jav’s palm slid warm on his face, the ring cool and sleek along the scar on his cheekbone.
Then Stef was asleep.