Ty knocked, then stepped back, almost expecting to be hit by the same stench as the last time he’d stood there. But this time, when the door to Cam’s apartment swung wide, there was only the faint scent of takeout.
“Hey.” Cam was dressed in sweats and a hoodie, hair still damp from the shower he must have taken, and feet bare on the wooden floor. Desire curled so hard and fast in the pit of Ty’s stomach that he braced his hand against the doorframe for a moment.
“Good timing. The delivery guy just left.” Cam held the door open, and as Ty moved past, he got a whiff of a soapy-clean scent. Forget takeout, Cam seemed more appetizing than food.
He followed Cam into the living room, where the takeout bag was still wrapped up and sitting on the coffee table.
“Thanks for ordering food.” Ty draped his coat over a chair before settling down next to Cam. He sat a little closer than was needed for eating dinner, his body drawn to Cam in a way that echoed the hollowness Ty had felt over the past days.
“Yeah, no problem.” Cam pulled boxes from the bag, followed by chopsticks in their paper wrappers and fortune cookies.
Ty took the box that was handed to him and opened it. White rice with beef and broccoli. Chinese food, and it was as foreign to him as some of the things he’d eaten in Kenya. When Cam handed him a pair of chopsticks, Ty grinned apologetically and reached for the plastic fork instead.
Cam’s eyes shifted to the chopsticks in his hands and back to Ty. “Oh, sorry. Was Chinese food a bad idea? You said to order anything in your text, but I didn’t really think . . .”
Ty forced himself to broaden his grin because it was so stupid. “It’s fine.”
“Are you sure?” Cam frowned at him. “We can order pizza instead or something.”
“No, no, it’s fine.” Ty pushed the food around with his fork. “I don’t mind Chinese food. Not my favorite, but every once in a while, it’s fine.”
Cam broke apart a pair of chopsticks and rubbed the ends together like he’d been doing it all his life. Then he positioned the two wooden sticks between his thumb and forefinger and dug in to his box of chicken of some sort. “You don’t like chopsticks, though?”
Ty shrugged as Cam picked up a piece of chicken and popped it into his mouth with no hesitation. “No, not really. I mean, I know how to use them. I prefer forks.”
They ate a few bites in silence, Ty with his eyes trained on the contents of his box. All week, he’d tried to convince himself that his life was his own and he didn’t owe Cam anything. But the more he’d doubled down on the idea, the emptier he had been. He hadn’t felt quite that alone since the days right after his mother’s death.
“Listen.” He stuck his fork vertically into his rice. “About that drive back from your parents’ place.” Cam’s eyes were on him, but Ty kept focused on the oil glistening on his food. “I’m sorry about how I reacted. I should have told you about the job thing earlier.”
“It’s okay.” Cam stopped eating too and laid his chopsticks flat across the top of his box. “I overreacted too. And you were right. I’ve been caught up in all my own shit. Sorry.”
Ty opened his mouth to object because he had asked to come over so he could apologize, not so he could get an apology. But the words he’d rehearsed stuck in his throat.
Cam lifted an uncertain gaze to him, a line of tension tracing the press of his lips and the tilt of his shoulders. Cam had always been so honest and vulnerable, even when it got ugly, yet Ty couldn’t even get a prepared speech out without the couple pieces of beef and broccoli he’d managed to eat turning into rocks in his stomach.
He put his box of food down. “You know I grew up in the foster system.” Ty stared at his hands hanging between his knees as he spoke. “I learned from an early age that I had to fight for myself because no one else was going to fight for me.”
The cushion dipped as Cam scooted back on the couch.
“I switched homes fairly often and switched schools a lot too. No one thought I’d make anything of myself. I was always the poor foster kid with no parents, no support system, no stability. They wrote me off. So, I got used to doing everything for myself.”
Ty peered over his shoulder at Cam, settled against the cushions. His hair had dried all mussed, and it didn’t help that his fingers were currently buried in it as he braced his elbow along the back of the couch. He looked at ease in a way Ty had not seen recently, eyes bright and alert, jaw soft, lips plump.
He scooted back until he mimicked Cam’s position, facing him. “That’s all a really long way of saying I’m not good at having other people around to do life and stuff with.” Ty dropped his gaze, picking nonexistent lint from his pants.
“I get that.”
Their eyes met and locked, reading between each other’s lines. Ty’s fingers itched to pull Cam toward him, to hold him and feel their combined weight sink into the couch. He longed to sync up their inhales and exhales and breathe the same air. His need for Cam was so great that he shifted an inch backward in an attempt to clear his mind.
“So, um.” He cleared his throat. “I, uh, got a couple of job offers.”
The stiffening of Cam’s shoulders was subtle. “Right, Abu Dhabi.” Cam’s voice sounded tight too.
He nodded. “It’s with ANN; it’s very prestigious. The position is foreign correspondent, which is what I’ve wanted to do since journalism school.” It was Ty’s dream job, which was why he couldn’t understand why he wasn’t more excited about it.
“You said you got a couple of offers?”
“Yeah.” He pushed off the back of the couch and sat up straighter. “The other one is with this investigative journalism outfit called Behind the Veil. You should see these guys.” Ty chuckled at the memory. “The shop is staffed by millennials—there are beanbags in their office. But they really know what they’re talking about, and I think they’re moving in a good direction, not only the journalism side of it, but also the business side.”
“So, what’s the catch?” The stiffness eased from Cam’s shoulders, and he wore a tiny smile. Ty returned it with one of his own.
“No catch.” He lifted his hands in a shrug and dropped them back into his lap. “I’ve never worked in investigative journalism. They cover primarily domestic news. And, honestly, it doesn’t pay as well.”
Cam was silent for a moment, seeming to ponder the question on both their minds. “Which one are you going to go for?”
Ty took his time answering. “I don’t know. The choice should be obvious, but . . .” He tilted his head, and the angle brought him closer to Cam, close enough to see the rings of different shades of green in his eyes. He stared until Cam closed his eyes and didn’t open them again. “What’s wrong?”
Cam shook his head, then turned so that he sat with his back flat against the couch. “I might be leaving too.”
“What?” Ty shot forward, fingers curling into the couch cushions as all thoughts of his job prospects vanished. “When? To where?”
“Maybe in a few weeks? Maybe next month? They haven’t decided on a deployment date yet.” Cam’s eyes were still closed, and his jaw ground together. “It’s our mission in South Sudan. The situation is bad there; they need someone with more experience.”
“And they want to send you?” Ty moved closer until his knee bumped against Cam’s thigh, and he put a hand on Cam’s leg.
Cam peeked out from under long auburn lashes. “Yeah.”
“But why you? Don’t they have other people they can send?”
“I guess not.” His mouth twisted. “Besides, I’m the best.”
From what he’d witnessed in Kenya, he had no doubt Cam was one of the best. But this was wrong; Ty knew it in the marrow of his bones. “You’re only starting to get better. Is it such a good idea to put yourself back in that type of situation?”
Cam nodded, his jaw ticking. “Yeah, it could be dangerous. ‘Triggering’ is what Dr. Brown called it. But she also thought it might help me face my demons.”
“What? Fuck what Dr. Brown thinks. What does your gut tell you?” Ty leaned in a little bit closer and waited while Cam gathered his words.
“My gut is confused.”
“Don’t go.” Ty surprised himself with the vehemence of those words. Cam blinked at him curiously. “I mean . . .”
When Ty didn’t finish the sentence, Cam cocked his head, eyes narrowed. “What did you mean?”
“I mean . . .” What kind of hypocrite was he to tell Cam not to go when he had been talking about moving to Abu Dhabi himself? Who was he to ask Cam to stay and wait for him? “I don’t think facing your fears is as helpful as finishing out your sessions with Dr. Brown.”
Cam held Ty’s gaze for a second before dropping them to his hands clasped in his lap. “Yeah, you’re probably right.”
Despite the truth in his words, they weren’t what Ty really felt in his heart. Maybe he was selfish and a hypocrite, but he couldn’t help the sense that it was all slipping through his fingers. He had spent a lifetime hashing things out alone, with a single-minded focus on his career. It was about to graduate to the next level, and he suddenly learned what it was like to have someone. The irony made the loss of what they could have been all that more potent.
He leaned sideways on the couch and propped his arm so he could comb his fingers through the freshly dried auburn hair, downy soft. Cam tilted his head, turning into Ty’s hand, and his heart lurched at the small movement.
Cam had worn away at the walls of his heart and found a way inside, but it was too late. He was likely moving to Abu Dhabi, and Cam would likely go to South Sudan. And all this was a brief taste of something Ty could never have.
Ty curled his fingers more tightly into Cam’s hair, and Cam’s lips parted in response, soft, plump things that felt so good between Ty’s teeth. If this was all the time they had left, he wanted to make the most of it, to fill up his reservoir to last him a lifetime.
“Cam.” He put all his longing into that one syllable and hoped Cam would understand all the unspoken emotions behind it.
When Cam reached for him, fingers trailing along his collar, then fisting his shirt, Ty followed him. The touch of their lips was like a first kiss, and perhaps it was—their first kiss with all their multilayered masks thrown aside, exposing their true selves underneath.
They lay back on the couch cushions, lips unhurried but desperate. Their lumps and bumps and the sharp angles of hips and knees and elbows poked into each other in the most comfortable way. This was a real person and a real connection that was as flawed and fucked up as he was.
Ty delved his tongue into Cam’s mouth, tasting the slight spice of the chicken, and further underneath a faint hint of the last cigarette Cam had smoked. It reminded Ty of that first night, on the plains of Kenya, with the two of them in the inky-black darkness.
He hadn’t known it then, but sharing a smoke had been the beginning of Cam’s slow, steady assault on the barriers around Ty’s life. Now Cam was inside the most vulnerable part, and Ty clung to him, unwilling to let him go.
Ty rubbed his cheek against Cam’s, loving the contrast between his skin and Cam’s beard, the way they scraped against each other to create flames unlike any Ty had ever experienced. He pushed at the soft fabric of Cam’s clothes to find bare skin underneath—nakedness along Cam’s chest, his waist, his hip. The fact that Cam wore nothing—not even boxers—under his sweats did a number on Ty’s insides. If he had known this when Cam answered the door, they might not have made it past the front hallway.
He moaned into Cam’s mouth, fed by a need to manifest physically what had happened between them emotionally. He needed to feel Cam inside of his body, pushing into him, becoming one. Ty tried to pull away, but Cam’s hands on his ass kept him right where he was. It sent a thrill through Ty, knowing that Cam was as reluctant to part as he was.
“Bedroom,” Ty whispered against the column of Cam’s neck, nipping and licking as Cam tightened his hold. Finally, Cam released him, but only long enough for them to stand upright, and Ty found himself in Cam’s arms again.
It felt like too much sacrifice to be apart for anything more than a few seconds. They had navigated through a maze of wrong turns and false starts to find the real versions of each other, and they couldn’t afford to lose even one moment.
Their teeth clashed together and their feet stumbled over each other, but they steadied themselves with hands that grasped and clung to whatever body part they managed to hold on to, until Ty found himself pushed against the bed. He sat down with an oomph.
Ty pulled Cam between his legs and then ran his hands along Cam’s sides, pushing his sweatshirt up until Cam tossed it over his head. Ty took in Cam’s body, skin marked by the effects of his oscillating weight, a couple of ribs that stood out a little too much for Ty’s liking, the trail of auburn hair down his stomach. He ran his fingers over all of it, feeling all of it, leaving nothing untouched.
When his wandering hands were caught by Cam’s, Ty glanced up and the expression on Cam’s face stopped his heart. Underneath the raw vulnerability was a touch of wonder, and it took Ty a second to understand that it was directed at him—no one had ever looked at him like this before, like he was someone worthwhile, like he had something valuable to give.
He pressed his cheek against the heat of Cam’s skin, his arms wrapping around Cam’s back to hold him close. Right under his ear, Cam’s heartbeat was steady and solid. Funny how he always thought of himself as the one who had his shit together. But, right then, it was Cam’s strength that Ty leaned into.
He would have been happy to sit on the bed all evening with Cam standing between his knees, his face pressed against Cam’s skin and Cam’s fingers twirling in his hair. But Cam’s chubby poked against his collarbone and the scent of musk drove him onward. With his tongue, he followed the deep-red trail of hair, planting kisses lower and lower, pushing Cam’s sweatpants out of the way. He kissed the base of Cam’s cock, feeling the organ fill and rise against his lips, and losing himself in the essence of the man.
Ty stopped thinking then, letting his desire guide him in his quest to commit every inch of Cam to his memory: the taste of Cam’s pre-come, salty and sharp; the weight of Cam’s length on his tongue; the tightening of Cam’s fingers in his hair when he gagged on the head of Cam’s dick.
“Fuck, Ty.”
He relaxed his throat and let Cam have free rein as spit ran down his chin. He loved Cam like this—in charge but slightly out of control of his desire. He loved surrendering himself to Cam’s passion and releasing the death grip he usually had on life. It was a freedom he hadn’t known existed before Cam.
“Shit, I’m going to come like this,” Cam warned.
Cam tensed under his hands, and Ty slowly eased his mouth off even as Cam’s hips tried to bury his cock back inside. A string of spit hung from the head of Cam’s dick, connecting to his mouth, and Ty took great pleasure in the shudder that shook Cam’s body as he licked up the spittle with one last flick of his tongue.
Cam bent over and shoved his tongue inside Ty’s mouth, pushing him back onto the bed. Ty sighed into the attack, welcoming Cam’s weight and sinking into the mattress. Cam needed to take; Ty needed to give.
Cam fumbled at his belt, and together they rid Ty of his clothes, kissing interrupted only by necessity. The roughness of Cam’s hands on his body awoke nerves that normally lay dormant; he felt alive under Cam’s touch. Then those hands were on his ass, squeezing the muscles together and pulling them apart. A single finger slipped down Ty’s ass crack and circled his hole.
“I want this,” Cam growled at him, the finger rubbing the sensitive skin around his hole. “I want to be in here.”
“Yes.” Ty more than wanted it; he needed it like he needed air and water and food.
When Cam tried to pull away, Ty kept him there for one more swipe of tongue, one more nip on the lips. Cam wasn’t away for long—only long enough to grab a condom and lube—but Ty welcomed him back into his arms like he’d been away for ages.
Ty shifted, spreading his legs wide to give Cam access to his body, but Cam set a hand on his hip and squeezed.
“There’s a little something I’ve been wanting to do first.”
Ty’s breath hitched at the mischievous glint shining in Cam’s eye.
“Turn around,” Cam ordered, tapping Ty’s thigh and moving out of the way.
He hesitated for a split second, wanting to ask what Cam had in mind. But Ty buried that part of himself that constantly searched for answers, and surrendered to Cam’s lead. Flipping himself around, he lay back down, one leg on either side of Cam’s knees, pillow hugged to his face.
Cam’s hands landed softly on the backs of his thighs, kneading the muscles, then up to his ass cheeks. A stream of hot air blew across his opening, and Ty froze—Cam wouldn’t, would he?
The first lick sent sparks shooting through his body.
“Jesus Christ,” Ty muttered into the pillow, his hips tilting up to give Cam better access.
The second lick had Ty fighting against a flood of sensations; the third had him trembling and lost. Ty loved rimjobs, but this was no ordinary rimjob. This was Cam, turning him inside out with a flick of tongue, forcing feelings on him that Ty had never wanted to feel: exposed, transparent, wanton.
The scratch of Cam’s beard went much deeper than the sensitized skin against which it rubbed; he felt it in his soul, sanding him down until Ty couldn’t take any more of the exquisite torture. With weak fingers, he grasped Cam, tugging him up so Ty could feel covered by his body. Cam didn’t disappoint, planting kisses along Ty’s spine as he moved. By the time Cam’s teeth bit lightly into Ty’s shoulder, Ty could no longer form the words to ask for what he wanted.
Cam’s kisses along his shoulder, up his neck, down his jaw, were a salve to his soul, giving him strength where he had none left.
“Cam,” he managed to whisper, and he was rewarded with the delicious sting of Cam’s teeth marking his skin.
Cam shifted on top of him, but Ty was too strung up to register much more than the cool smear of lube against his ass and the quiet crinkle of a condom being opened. Then Cam was back and a blunt pressure sought entrance into his body.
He moaned again, his body relaxing to welcome the sweet stretch of Cam’s dick sliding into his ass. Once Cam bottomed out, they held themselves still, their heavy breathing syncing as their bodies melted into each other. Cam’s hands found Ty’s, and their fingers entwined—cheek against cheek, back against chest, legs as entangled as their fingers. Something shifted inside of Ty, not only the adjustment of having a dick in his ass, but the reality that they were different now.
He gasped at the first movement of Cam’s hips pulling back, his heart lurching at the realization that their time was limited. The down thrust of Cam’s hips slamming home reinforced the thought: the little miracle that had hatched in their mismatched relationship was going to be short-lived. Emotions so strong that Ty had no name for them coursed through his veins, heightening every sensation Cam lit up in him.
He cried into the pillow, glad to bury his face rather than reveal it to Cam. Every run of Cam’s cock over his prostate, slam of Cam’s hips against his ass, and hot exhale of Cam’s breath against his ear fueled the sense of loss growing in Ty’s soul.
“Fuck, Ty,” Cam muttered, the simple words heavy with desperation that rang true to Ty. They reverberated through him, setting his spine tingling and triggering his orgasm from someplace so deep his body turned itself inside out.
“Fuck,” Cam muttered again and, after a few more thrusts, he groaned through his own orgasm.
Ty couldn’t move, and not only because his limbs were languid and his brain was fried. He had never been so thoroughly fucked, physically and in that secret part of his heart that he never opened to another person. When Cam pulled out and collapsed to his side, Ty felt the loss like a hole had opened in his chest.