Despite their detour to the bedroom, they still ended up on their walk. They both wore jeans and Adrian wore a T-shirt. He would have gladly lent one to Dominic as well, but he’d asked for a button-down with sleeves.
“I don’t always like showing off my tattoos.”
“They were for you.” Adrian traced the colors and lines of his favorite, the Dara knot Dominic sported on his shoulder.
After a sensuous little shudder, Dominic nodded. “Yeah. They all mean something to me.”
“This one?” He knew the meaning and wondered if Dominic did.
“Strength. Security. It’s an oak knot. Supposed to represent roots.”
“Inner strength,” Adrian murmured. “Power and wisdom. It’s perfect for you.”
Dominic’s eyes were wide.
“I’m Irish-American, remember?” Adrian gestured at himself. “It’s somewhat obvious.”
While Dominic stood slack-jawed, Adrian pulled out one of his tighter button-downs. It was loose on Dominic’s frame. The fabric was pale yellow, and Adrian couldn’t help kiss that inked skin again before Dominic covered it up. “Thank you for sharing your tattoos with me.”
“Kinda hard to have sex with clothing on.”
“Not really.”
Dominic got a look, then laughed. “Okay, you’re right there. For hookups I usually didn’t take my top off.”
But Dom had for Adrian. He savored that knowledge. He’d seen all of Dominic, every line, every inch of flesh. Tasted just about all of it, as well.
They headed out into the summer sun and tried to stay in the shade of buildings and trees as they rambled around the area.
“You said you wanted to know about California.”
Dominic nodded. “If you’re fine with that.”
More or less. “I was born here. I grew up in that house.” He gestured in the direction of his home. “And back in the ’80s, this wasn’t the neighborhood it is now.”
“Yeah, I’ve heard. And I guess the gentrification pushed a lot of people out.”
It had, and that grated on Adrian, even though he was, in part, also part of that process. “My granda bought the place in the ’50s, and my folks held on to it, but it needed so much upkeep and so many repairs. It wasn’t in the greatest of shape when me and my siblings lived there.”
Dom stopped. “You have siblings?”
Adrian turned toward Dom. “Two brothers and a sister. I’m actually the youngest. And the one who stayed—well, came back.” He held out his hand, and Dominic took it.
“I’m an only child.” His voice was soft. “Do you get along?”
“We did. Things are strained now. I’m hoping they’ll ease up in the future.”
“This is a longer story than just why you went to California and came back, isn’t it?”
Adrian laughed. “Oh yes.” Years and years in the making. “Money. Religion. Wealth. A prodigal son. It’s practically biblical.”
“Jesus.”
“Him, too.”
Dominic swallowed a laugh.
Adrian gave his hand a squeeze and contemplated where to begin, because like the knot-work on Dominic’s arm, the story looped and tangled in on itself. “As you might imagine, my parents were Catholic and devout, and we were raised as such.”
“Oh shit. And you’re queer.”
Oh shit, indeed. “Yes, that’s part of it. Didn’t help that my second oldest brother, Patrick, went off to become a priest.” The light of his parents’ lives, or so he’d thought. “I idolized him when I was young. Thought about going into seminary myself.”
“You didn’t!”
“Well, no. I didn’t. Especially when I realized what the Church said about people like me.” He waved a hand. “Yes, they dress it up pretty, and yes, there’s a faction that doesn’t believe queers are sinners, but doctrine is doctrine, and you can read that we’re disordered right on the Vatican website, so...”
“I probably shouldn’t interrupt, or you’ll never get it out.”
Now that was true. “It’s a mess, Dominic. I’m not sure I can explain it all, but I’ll try to take the most direct route.”
He launched into it. His eldest brother, Sean, had gone into the military, Patrick had become a priest, and Moira married a rather well-off investment banker, all before Adrian had gone to college.
“I was essentially an ‘oops’ baby.”
“So you kind of grew up alone, too.”
“I suppose in a way. They were around for my early years, but were gone for the later ones. Mainly, I was my mother’s baby boy. My father’s, too, for a while. He worked in construction, on the white-collar end. Management. Finances. Still, with four kids, he also worked a job at a diner as a cook—one of those twenty-four-hour types.”
“City that never sleeps.”
Adrian gave Dominic’s hand a little squeeze. “It meant that I didn’t see Dad as much as Mom, and thing were always a little strained between us.” Awkward and tense, as if his father hadn’t known what to do with the quiet child he’d sired. The one who devoured books, was good with computers, and tied up every single one of his GI Joes.
“Patrick and Sean had both been into sports. I was a nerd. Dad didn’t know what to do with me on weekends, since his go-to activities were things I only tolerated.”
They passed one of the many coffee shops that had sprung up in Brooklyn, though this one wasn’t as pretentious as some of the others. Dominic slowed. “Can we stop in? I think I need some more caffeine. And strangely, I’m a little sore this morning.”
Adrian pulled Dominic close and kissed him, right outside the door. “I can’t imagine why that would be. And yes, let’s fuel you up.”
There was an industrial and secondhand feel to the place. Exposed beams and pipes. Wood and brick. Mismatched tables and chairs. The customers were a mix. Ages and ethnicities. Sexualities and genders, too. Adrian made a mental note to come back. This was a place he could frequent. Support.
Dominic ordered a large raspberry latte, then bumped Adrian’s hip when he snorted. “I can’t make this at home, so shut up.”
“I didn’t say a word.” Adrian caressed the back of his neck, then ordered a regular coffee with a mound of whipped cream.
Dominic hip-checked him again, and Adrian laughed. Someone wanted to be even more sore before the day was out.
“So,” Dominic said as they sat down together on an old love seat. “High school.”
Adrian took a sip and considered both the coffee and how to tell his story. The coffee was damn good—another reason to return. He set the mug down. “I knew I was interested in more than just women by the time I was a freshman. And I realized very quickly that I was a little more interested in masculine than anything else, regardless of gender. But I didn’t come out to my parents until I was a junior—when my senior boyfriend asked me to the prom, and I said yes.”
“Did they—Were they—” Dominic stopped. “Mine were fine with me. But I know not everyone—” Such concern. Such honest worry. Adrian patted his thigh.
“It took them by complete surprise, and that played into their first reactions. But they did love me, so they came around, especially Mom. She was more worried about how I might struggle through life. They’d been very aware of the AIDS crisis, even though by the mid-to late-’90s, things were much better.”
There’d been tears and worries and long conversations about safety and love and not jumping into anything too fast. Some of the conversations he knew they’d had with his other siblings when they’d started dating.
“Thankfully, they did get the whole thing about teens having sex, so I didn’t get a sanctimonious lecture about fucking—or not fucking. At least not from them.”
“Oh shit. Your brother.”
His brother, the priest. “Father Patrick Doran. Sanctimonious out the ass.” He sighed and the spike of pain made him reach for his mug of coffee. “He was livid. Absolutely livid. I didn’t know why, really. Still don’t. We stopped talking. But I know it wasn’t just about Church doctrine.”
Dominic took Adrian’s free hand. “Oh hell, I’m sorry.”
The warmth in Dominic’s voice and in his hand tightened Adrian’s chest and tumbled his heart. “Sean was fine with it, but not what came later.” He took another swallow of coffee. “Moira still talks to me. She and her husband figured out what I’d done, so while they were horrible shits after Mom died, they both apologized later.”
Dominic held on to his hand more tightly. “Yeah, you’re right, this is complex. I’ll be quiet. You talk.”
Adrian’s bark of laughter had no mirth. He leaned back on the love seat, fortified by coffee and Dominic’s hand, and launched into the tangled and woven tale.
He’d come out, gone to his boyfriend’s prom, and dealt with the fallout from that—including Patrick’s spiritual “counseling” that had done more to drive him out of Catholicism than anything else. For his own prom, he’d gone with a very cute trans guy his own age—one who’d allowed Adrian to tie him up with scarves and shit. The latter, of course, he’d never confessed to his parents.
Some things he never shared.
For college, he’d ended up at SUNY in Buffalo and gotten his BA in computer science in three years. Then, like every other tech person at the time, he’d headed out to California and hopped from start-up to start-up.
“I made a decent pile of cash despite the dot-com burst. Focused on equipment companies and financial ones. Stuff that was still making money. Which was good, because my father died and I learned my mom was about to lose the house.”
The funeral had been hellish. Patrick had presided over the Mass, of course, which meant Adrian had been locked out of just about every part of that. His mother, in her grief, hadn’t noticed that he’d been the only one of her children not to have a part. Not a reading. Not a psalm. Not even bringing up the gifts before Communion. Shut out completely.
So he’d stood next to his mother and been her support, her pillar. The arms that had held her up even as he wanted to dive deep into his own complex grief for his father—a man he loved and didn’t understand and wished he could have.
In the days that followed, he remained close to his mother, helping her with everything his father had taken care of—or hadn’t, as it turned out. Their finances were a mess. Yes, his father had his pension, and yes, there was some life insurance, but the cost of raising four kids and sending them to college—even with Sean’s ROTC scholarship—then sending Patrick to seminary had led his dad to mortgage the brownstone twice. And there wasn’t enough to cover everything and provide for his mother to live on.
So Adrian had quietly cashed out as much of his stock options as he could, and taken over paying the mortgage. He would not see his mother lose the family home. Not the house his grandfather—her father—had worked so hard to obtain. Both he and his mother had decided it would be best if his siblings didn’t know. Sean was on active duty. Moira was struggling to start a family of her own, and both she and her husband had their own burdens. And Patrick—well. He couldn’t help. Not on a priest’s salary. All the finery that surrounded him was none of his own.
Adrian had headed back to California to work, found a smaller place, and worked as many hours as he could to keep earning what he’d needed to for both himself and his mom. Did freelance work on the side to earn a little extra.
And because he’d managed to pull a decent amount out of the market, he’d done okay in the end. Yes, he’d lost his job a couple times, and scrambled and scraped to grab a new one, but he’d come out on top. In the end, he’d paid off one of his parents’ mortgages and the other had a sizable dent in it. His mom was safe and learning to live again, surrounding herself with friends and knitting and books and volunteer work.
In California, Adrian had dated all over the spectrum and learned quite a lot about himself, his love of bondage and domination, but also his apathy toward much of pain play. “I can flog someone,” he murmured, dropping his voice. “It just doesn’t do anything for me.”
“I like what we’ve done so far,” Dominic replied.
Both their cups were empty, so Adrian took the opportunity to sling an arm around Dominic and pull him close. “Good. If there’s any aspect you don’t like—”
“Believe me, I’ll tell you. I’ve got a mouth.”
“Yes, yes you do.” Adrian tipped Dominic’s chin up and took those lips into a sweet kiss. Not a long one, though, because they were in public—and he needed to finish his story.
Dominic settled against him, and he fell back into it. “For all that I made money, had decent jobs, and found myself in California, I wasn’t happy there. I missed New York with every bone in my body. The scant time I’d been back had only increased that ache. I’d already lost large portions of my family and I felt like I was losing touch with all my roots, too.”
The disdain some of his West Coast acquaintances—even the few people he’d dated—had shown to the city of his birth rankled every time. Especially since most of those people were transplants like him. The traffic, the car culture, and the lack of actual seasons also got on all his nerves. He’d glimpse the skyline of New York on TV and the reaction, the deep longing, had been so visceral every time.
“I would occasionally float my résumé out in New York, but the economy wasn’t great at the time, so I either got no nibbles or ones that wouldn’t bring in the income I needed to help mom.”
“But you did come back, eventually.”
Adrian nodded. “Six years ago, my mom died.”
Dominic took a breath. “Oh.”
Adrian closed his eyes for a bit. He’d mourned her the way he never could for his dad. Patrick had still said the Mass and he’d still been locked out, but he’d been there for her when his other siblings hadn’t.
“She was sick leading up to it. Didn’t tell anyone right away. Finally told me. I had vacation stored up, so I pretty much dropped everything and ran home.” He grunted. “She was—well. A week later, she died. I was there, holding her hand in the hospital.”
“I’m so sorry.” Whispered words.
Adrian stroked Dominic’s hair. “Thank you.” He coughed to clear out the sudden tightness in his throat.
“What changed everything was Mom’s will. She left me the house. Me. No one else. Everything else had been divided equally between the four of us, but the house was mine.”
Dominic sat up. “Makes sense. You were paying it off.”
He nodded. “I’d actually completely paid it off by then. But my siblings didn’t know that. Patrick—good, loving priest that he is, so open to forgiveness and all that shit—was convinced that I’d somehow taken advantage of Mom and had her change the will. Even though it had been that way for a pile of years.”
“I think I hate your brother.”
Adrian’s chuckle was dark. “Every last one of my friends does.” He sobered. “I can’t even blame the Church entirely, because not everyone’s like that. He just...clings to the most conservative parts that he can without actually being in schism.”
His own feelings were so much more complex. Patrick had been kind to him when he’d been a boy and he couldn’t quite forget that, even if Patrick had shut the door completely as an adult.
“The other problem was that the gentrification of Brooklyn had begun and the housing prices shot up. That house is worth quite a bundle now.”
“Yeah, I know.” Dominic laughed. “All too well.”
Because he’d bought in Brooklyn. On a musician’s salary. Adrian turned that over in his head again, then set it aside.
“My siblings contested the will. All of them. Took forever for it to get resolved, but it was, and the judge ruled in my favor. Sean was disgusted that I was so—money-grubbing, he said. Moira didn’t talk to me until about a year later. Her husband dug into the house and figured out Mom couldn’t have been paying the mortgage, and realized I had. They called and apologized. Said she’d speak to the others, but...no word from Sean.” Adrian shrugged. “So six years ago, I quit my job on the West Coast and moved home. Lived on savings until I got a job here, renovated the house, and moved in.”
He stroked a hand down Dominic’s thigh. “That’s my story.”
“That’s a lot of story.” Dominic sat on the edge of the sofa and put his head in his hands. “Wow.”
Adrian looked around the coffee shop again. Yes, he’d come back here. But right now? “I think I’d like to walk some more.”
“Yeah. Me, too.”
They gathered up the dishes and placed them in the bin near the front, then headed back out into the warm summer day.
It was, Adrian realized, slightly unfair of him to drop all of that into Dominic’s lap. But another part of him was utterly curious to see what he might share in return.
Because there was so much behind those brown eyes and that sometimes shy, sometimes wicked smile, and Adrian longed for it the same way he’d longed for the very streets they now walked.
He could wait, though. He was very good at waiting.
* * *
The walk with Adrian had been enlightening and humbling, and had set Dom’s head spinning. They spent some time watching a pickup basketball game, found a spot neither of them had eaten at before for lunch, and on the way home had even bought a pie from a place Adrian claimed was the best pie shop in all of New York.
All the while, Dom marveled at the man next to him, the one with the huge heart and stunning eyes. The one with old pain in his past, and a touch that could be tender or commanding.
He still wanted to kneel beside him, wrap his arms around him, and give him as much of himself as he could.
But he didn’t know how much that was. He talked a little about his childhood in New Jersey, how supportive his parents had been when he’d come out in high school and realized that his infatuation with boys wasn’t at all a phase. He talked about his friendship with Ray, though he didn’t name him. Trips to the shore. His love of music and history, graduating with a bachelor’s in the latter and a minor in the former. How he’d waited tables while at Montclair State University. His trips into New York with his classmates. Clubbing. Listening to the buskers whenever he saw one.
“Did you ever busk?”
Dom shifted on the stool by Adrian’s breakfast counter. They were in his kitchen again, with Adrian at the stove working on dinner. Lamb chops and stir-fried vegetables. Seasoned rice. The place smelled fantastic.
“No. I...get stage fright a lot, especially performing solo. It’s not so bad in groups.” Thrilling even, now that he had Domino to put on. Much better than the wreck he used to be in public. He looked down at his nails. Most of the time on tour he painted them random colors that would chip as soon as he played, even when he used a pick. He hadn’t worn polish in months.
“Hence being in a band.”
Dom heard the question in Adrian’s voice...and ignored it. “Exactly.”
Adrian shook the skillet of vegetables on the stove and mixed them again. “You have a passion for more than history I think, given your interests in literature.”
“I haven’t met a book I didn’t like.”
At that, Adrian turned around completely and raised an eyebrow in utter disbelief.
Dom couldn’t help laughing. “Okay, yes I have. There’s a lot of books I can’t stand. But I’ll start pretty much anything you put in my hands, and read until I can’t.”
“I do hope you have a good level of can’t because there’s so many books in this world...”
And so many two floors above his head in that lovely attic of Adrian’s. “When I was young, I used to read everything to completion, but now? Yeah, can’t comes a lot faster than it used it. A lot.”
Adrian’s lips twitched a bit. Subtle, but Dom still caught the smirk he was trying to hold back. It was rather like the ones both Ray and Zavier got sometimes. “What?”
Adrian glanced over his shoulder, eyes a mockery of innocence. “Oh, nothing.”
Dom slipped off the stool and joined Adrian at the stove. He placed his hand at the small of Adrian’s back. “Nothing?” He nuzzled at that tempting neck. “I don’t think so.”
Adrian hissed. “Don’t you know it’s dangerous to distract the cook?”
“It’s nothing,” Dom said.
Adrian turned off the gas on the burner, set down the wooden spatula. The next thing Dom knew, his arms were pinned behind his back and Adrian had him up against the fridge, scattering magnets and papers to the floor, thigh between Dom’s legs and mouth inches from his own. “Not nothing at all.”
“You first.” Dom licked at Adrian’s mouth, and that earned him a groan. Adrian’s thigh pressed against Dom’s swelling cock.
“You’re not at all old.” Adrian kissed the side of his mouth. “And you’re delectable. After we eat, I think I want to savor more of your ink.”
That didn’t help the state of Dom’s dick. Or did. Depended on which way he wanted this to go.
“Your turn.” Adrian sucked on Dom’s neck.
“Fuck.”
That only earned him a chuckle and a nip to his earlobe, which made him unable to think at all. He squirmed against the refrigerator and Adrian’s hard body, his limbs on fire. Felt so good, so real, so right.
“Want me to make you come, babe?” Adrian’s hot breath tickled his face and his teeth scraped against Dom’s stubble. “An appetizer before dinner?”
God, Adrian could make him hard and hot in an instant. “What...whatever you want.” Because he couldn’t decide. Waiting was its own pain and pleasure. But this—oh god, he would die from this, too.
Adrian let out a breath that was pure bliss. “Ah, thank you for that.”
In the next moment, Adrian had trapped both Dom’s wrists in his hand, taken his mouth, and had his other hand in Dom’s jeans.
Holy shit. Dom moaned and fought as Adrian jacked him off and feasted on his mouth. The only thing that existed was Adrian’s hard body, the hum of the fridge vibrating into his back, and the feel of that hand fisting his cock hard and fast. There was no way he’d last, but he fought anyway until he came, light blinding his vision and Adrian drinking down his screams.
When Dom came down from his high, he was sagging in Adrian’s arms. “How—how do you do that?”
“How can I not?” Adrian nuzzled his temple. “You look so amazing when you come.”
He hitched a breath. “I’m a mess.” He was falling in love. He shouldn’t be falling in love. Mind-blowing sex wasn’t enough to hang a relationship on.
Except it wasn’t just that. It was everything in between.
Adrian pressed another kiss, this one to Dom’s cheek. “Go clean yourself up, and I’ll finish dinner.”
Dom raised his gaze and found himself looking into those flecked brown eyes. “If this is the appetizer, what’s for dessert?”
Laughter washed over Dom like light and joy, and Adrian’s smile was a spotlight shining on Dom. “Pie. And anything you’d like.”
Oh. Oh god. Dom swallowed, his mind whirling at what that meant. “Anything?”
“Yes.”
“I should go clean up, then.” Dom found his footing and straightened.
Adrian tapped him on the ass. “I’ll be waiting.”
Dom went, cleaned himself up as best he could, then came back downstairs. Dinner was amazing, and yes, between this and the French toast in the morning, Adrian had proved he could cook just as good as he’d implied he could.
They shared a slice of pie—after Adrian had retrieved his cuffs and a blindfold from his bedroom. Hands restrained, eyes covered, Dom ate from Adrian’s fork, and his mind and body exploded with each bite. The pie, bourbon chocolate pecan, was the best he’d ever had of that flavor, but the experience of eating it turned his head inside out and melted his bones.
He was so damn hard again by the end, it wasn’t at all fair. “You’re gonna kill me.”
Adrian kissed him before removing the blindfold and unlatching the cuffs from each other. “Strangely, that doesn’t sound like a complaint.”
“It’s not,” Dom said. He rotated one of the cuffs. “I’m gonna guess you don’t get off on being tied up.”
“No, I don’t.” Adrian’s lips quirked. “Opposite, in fact.”
Yeah, he figured. “How about being fucked by someone wearing your cuffs?”
That hit—and hard. Adrian’s breath caught and he shivered. “Yes.” His answer was full of rumble and gravel. “That would get me off nicely.”
Dom smiled, stole a kiss from that shocked face, dragged Adrian upstairs and did just that, making it last as long as he possibly could.
Sunday, they cleaned the kitchen, went out for bagels and coffee, and spent the rest of the time in Adrian’s library, reading one another interesting snippets of texts until they succumbed to each other.
“I’ve never made love to anyone up here,” Adrian murmured, his mouth skimming over Dom’s now naked back.
“There’s always a first time.”
That earned him a laugh. Adrian also laid Dom out on the daybed in the reading nook and took his sweet time making them both come.
Sex and books. Dom could get used to that. So fast. So much.
But when evening ticked around, they both knew what was coming—the end of the weekend and a return to their own lives. This time, they ordered pizza, drank it with wine, and watched episodes of White Collar on Netflix until the sunlight slipped away into the night. Dom’s heart dropped. “I should go home,” he whispered.
Adrian chuckled and kissed his brow, then his mouth. “Probably. I have work in the morning, and I am not twenty-seven.”
“Thirty-six.”
That earned him a longer kiss. “And I can keep up with you, babe. Don’t you forget it.”
God, he loved hearing Adrian call him babe. Almost as much as the silky caress of Dominic. “I won’t.”
“But it does mean I need to sleep tonight if I want to have any hope of being coherent for my nine o’clock meeting.”
“Oh, fuck that. Some days I’m glad I’m a musician.”
“Some days?” It was a quiet question, but one with a lot of weight. Adrian hadn’t probed, hadn’t pushed for more about that part of his life. But Dom had left the door open.
He cupped Adrian’s face and traced his cheeks with his fingers, memorizing the texture, the bone structure. “Honestly? Every day. I’m grateful every day.”
Adrian closed his eyes and smiled. “Good. You deserve all the happiness, Dominic.”
Fuck, that hurt, but in a deeply good way. His chest tightened and he blinked a couple times, clearing his vision. “Adrian—so do you.”
Those eyes flicked open, and Adrian’s smile turned sad at the edges. “Maybe.”
“You do,” Dom repeated. “And maybe I can be a part of that.”
A huff of laughter. “So we are dating, then?”
“Well, I found myself thinking that next weekend, I probably ought to bring a change of clothes...so...yeah. I think we are.”
“Next weekend sounds lovely.” Adrian’s voice was so quiet, so perfect, Dom kissed him again.
It was many more kisses before Dom made it to the front door with the books Adrian had pulled from his library earlier in the day, and then at least another dozen more before he found himself walking down Adrian’s steps, out his gate and into the summer night alone.
He turned and looked back up at Adrian, framed in the doorway. “Good night, Adrian.”
“Night, babe. I hope you have a good week.”
As Dom walked home, he realized it didn’t matter what kind of week he had—it wouldn’t be better than the two astounding days he’d just lived through.
He was in deep, deep trouble when it came to Adrian Doran.