Just Josh reaching behind Liam to knead his backside under Liam’s slacks… just Liam’s fractured “Ahhh….”into Josh’s neck as his body flushed Defcon 1 in one quick grope.
“Naked?”Josh practically begged.
“Do you mind your strudel cold?”Liam gasped, but Josh’s hands were already at his belt, and Liam was lifting Josh’s shirt over his head.The bandage on Josh’s arm didn’t faze him, not this time.Liam had seen the needle in his arm, knew there would be bruising.
Josh could take the bruising, but he couldn’t seem to live without Liam’s hands on his skin.
Liam needed reassurance that his lover would be there, warm and vital, when they were joined, and wouldn’t fade away a little at a time, like a picture, pixel by pixel.
But he wasn’t going for the whole nine yards either.
“Lube?”Josh whispered as they shed their clothes on the way to the bed.
“Blowjobs,” Liam managed, possibly his last coherent thought as he kicked off his slacks and Josh’s hands found the bare skin of his thighs.
No arguments.Thank God, no arguments.Just their hushed breath, the taste of Josh’s skin, the glide of shaking hands across his own.They ended up bare, sliding over each other, touchingeverything, Josh’s hand across his chest a revelation, the stroke of his own hand on Josh’s cock all the power the universe had ever known.
They kissed until they came, spending in each other’s fists, Liam’s body shaking so hard with need, with desire and emotion, that his cry into the dim room was involuntary and tortured, swallowed by Josh’s kiss until their shaking stopped and they could breathe again.
Josh wiped them off with tissues by the bed and then tugged a throw over them to ward against the September chill.Liam turned and pulled him close as Josh lay on his back and leaned into Liam’s kisses on his temple and cheek, and for a moment all was still.
“Okay?”Josh asked, his voice surprisingly hesitant.
“I needed it,” Liam said rawly.
“I could tell.”Liam didn’t have to see his face to know the uncertainty that would pass across his features.“Why?”
And Liam hadn’t been going to say it, had been going to take the fear of this in his chest, hauling along that moment like luggage, but he couldn’t.
Apparently that’s not how love worked.
“You almost passed out on me,” he murmured.“I was inside you, and your eyes went glassy, and you started bleeding, and… and I was so scared.I just needed—”
“To see me okay.”Josh breathed out.“I get it.I’m sorry.”
And Liam was going to say it was fine, but taking a lesson from Josh’s meltdown with Danny, he realized he shouldn’t.“You should be,” he said, with enough petulance to make Josh smile, but enough realness to let him know this was truth.“I… I trusted you to tell me if you were doing okay, Josh.I was so scared.”It was the second time he’d said it.“I don’t know how we happened.We shouldn’t have.We were a moment.Then we were companions on the yacht.And then… one kiss and you were myeverything.And you were right.We’ve beenhoneymooning, and we may have been working in between, but it’s been the best part of my life here with you.Don’t… don’t take that away.”He sounded like a child, so he knew how Josh felt.“I know there are things you can’t help.But… but please, value your life as more than a mastermind or the glue that holds us together.God, if nothing else, value your life because I need you.”
Josh turned to him, his eyes shiny in the darkness.“I think,” he said softly, “that’s all I’ve needed in my whole life.To be needed.All these wonderful people, trying to be the thing I needed.I needed to know I was important enough to need.”
Liam smiled, but something small broke in him.“You need me too, right?”Oh God—how pathetic.In that one moment, he felt himself become younger and smaller than he’d been since his father had died, leaving him head of the house at fourteen.
“So much,” Josh said, and then his beautiful boy—his stunning man—was kissing him, and Liam felt it, the force of him, deep in his soul.
He’s going to be okay.We’re going to be okay.We’re going to make it through this okay.
We’ve got to.I can’t see any other way.
A WEEK LATER,Liam was still holding on to that thought as they each scoped out the different sites for the job they were doing in three days.
Liam had spent the day before out at the dock as well, driving in a rented speedboat with Hunter by his side, his normally brown hair dyed blond and still short.When Liam’s eyebrows went up, he grunted, “I’ve been growing it all summer for this gig.I swear I’m gonna keep cutting it short after this until the blond grows out.”
“Has it been working?”Liam asked.“This switching of the hair?”
“I don’t know.You’ll have to ask Carl.He’s getting his hair dyed red today so he can be Chuck at the museum.I gotta admit, this is probably a good idea since odds are better Kadjic’s going to be there and he’ll be less recognizable that way.”
Today Liam was used to the blond hair—and Carl’s red hair, and Chuck’s blond hair, and Liam and Hunter were strolling up and down the docks, both of them dressed in pricey cashmere turtlenecks and jackets in response to the weather.Liam had seen Chicago’s cold in the winter, but this crispness so early in the fall was still a surprise.
They both had watch caps on, in deference to the wind, but Liam found he was enjoying the trip.Decin was a place for the rich.The women were all dressedverywell, most of the boats were chic testaments to wealth, and the men who owned them were in a constant state of preening.Thesailors, on the other hand, were intense, flush with their love of their crafts, of their vocations—there really was something about life on the water.
