“Mhm,” I murmured and kissed my way up his jaw and sucked his earlobe into my mouth.
I’d missed this so much. Not necessarily the sex, but the intimacy. Just being close to someone without anything between us.
He came first, his cries filling my little room and covering my hand and hips with hot ropes of cream. He clung to me,leaving little nail prints in my skin as if he couldn’t believe it could feel so good. I quickly followed and when he locked his mouth around my nipple, I couldn’t help the sound that escaped my lips.
We held each other for a long while as we returned to Earth, sticky and satiated. The journey had been a long time coming.
When I found the strength to pull myself out of bed, I cleaned us up with a washcloth then settled in next to him with a joint. As he ran his finger all over my chest, I puffed at the blunt, the marijuana loosening me and making everything beautiful.
“Let me try,” he said and took the blunt from me. “How do I do it?”
“Just inhale. But not too deeply,” I said.
He followed my directions, coughed a little bit then released his breath. After a long stretch of silence, he said, “I feel funny. Sleepy. Really nice, actually.”
A chill breeze slipped under the opened window, and he tugged a blanket over us. I extinguished the blunt on the sill and snuggled him.
“What are you thinking about?” I inquired.
“My grandmother,” he said, his breath brushing across my pecs. “Probably not the ideal time, but I really miss her.”
“Tell me about her.”
He smiled on a breath and moved so that he was over me. His eyes sparkled. “She was amazing. You’d like her. She was very classy and a little old-fashioned, but the kindest person I’d ever known. She was the type of Christian that believed Christ is love and we should care for our neighbors, even if they didn’t believe.”
“Sounds like she did her job as a grandmother,” I said lightly. “My own died before I was born and my grandpappywas senile by the time I was two so my memories of them are limited.”
“I’m not sure I’d be the person I am today without her support and love,” he said with a note of sadness.
He talked about her at length, regaling me with stories of how she’d met her husband working as a blues club pianist in the fifties. He seemed very charmed by the idea of a well-off woman defying the expectancy of the times in which she’d lived and following her passions. He went into length about her traveling the world and seeing wondrous things and how he’d dreamed of playing in some of the great concert halls she’d been to.
“She sounds like she was a very special woman,” I said.
“She was the best kind of person. I want to tell you more about her, but right now, I think we have unfinished business.”
I cocked a brow at him. “What’s that?”
He grinned, licked his lips, and I glanceddown at our bodies to find him playing with his cock. “Round two, huh? Told you that you can’t keep your hands off me.”
“Oh, shut up,” he hissed and kissed me again.
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
MATTEO
I found myself sitting on Sean’s couch, staring at nothing, and smiling. It was safe to say that I hadn’t felt this good in a long time, not since the days of spending mornings at Nana’s house and playing Liszt’s “Lento Placido” for her. It was her favorite piece because it reminded her of the day she’d met my grandfather.
It was so cold, and the sky was dark and gray. It was the kind of day that made you run for the warmth of home. I’d been so focused on getting to the bus stop that I wasn’t paying attention to where I was going and ran right into his arms as I turned the corner. In that moment, I forgot just how cold it was and saw only the amusement in his eyes.
My grandparents’ life was a love story and I wished I could have met my grandfather, but he’d died when I was only a few months old. Sometimes a wisp of a memory floated in front of my eyes, but it was gone when I tried to reach for it. All I had were her stories and pictures of him.
As I sat here caught in a state of peace, the similarities between my grandparents and Sean and I wasn’t lost on me. He’d shown me a nice afternoon around the city, I’d gotten to play–not nearly enough, of course–and had experienced the best orgasm of my life to wrap up the evening. Despite the darkness outside the window, everything appeared brighter as if the lights of heaven were surrounding me. In his drafty apartment, I was cozy wearing the flannel he’d given me for Christmas, and lazing in the comfortable couch, surrounded by the scent of extinguished incense while the arctic moved in outside. There was only one thing that could make me happier than I was at this moment.
He’d left for work several hours ago, the beat of the music under my feet reminding me where I was and who I was living with. I’d come a long way from suffering at the hands of my parents to finding the strength to leave home. I’d survived three years on my own and with January coming to a close, it was only a few more months until my twenty-first birthday. I’d be free to pursue a musical career and live as my authentic self, free from the fear of repercussions from the people that were supposed tolove me.
The only question was: Where did Sean fit into my life?
Everything had happened so suddenly. He wasn’t a hook-up for me, and I’d known that going in last night. But whether he was a friend with benefits or something more was yet to be determined.
