Page 73

Antonio stopped in front of him, closer than their dance in the hallway. He was closer now than he had ever been in the kitchen, the porch, or any of the careful distances they had been maintaining like a negotiated ceasefire. He was close enough now for Hakeem to see the whiskey still on his lower lip, the faint scar near his left eyebrow he'd never noticed before, the way Antonio's chest moved with a breath that was not as steady as the rest of him was pretending to be.

"You followed me," Hakeem said.

"You haven’t shut your door."

The logic of that sentence dismantled what Hakeem had been building for weeks. Antonio was right. Hakeem had walked away. He had taken the stairs. He had gone to his room. But he had not shut the door. He had left it open the way you leave a line open in a scene; not because you're done, but because you want the other actor to follow you into it.

"That doesn't mean—“ Hakeem started.

"I know what it doesn't mean."

"Then what are we doing?"

Antonio's eyes moved over his face with the deliberate attention of someone reading a page he'd already drafted and was now seeing in a new light. His gaze touched Hakeem's forehead, his jaw, the place where a pulse beat at the side of his throat. Then it dropped to his mouth and stayed there.

"I'm standing here," Antonio said. "You're the one who hasn't moved."

Hakeem's back was against the doorframe now. He didn't remember making contact with it, but the hard wooden edge pressed between his shoulder blades, holding him in place, giving him exactly one direction to go. That direction was forward, into Antonio, into whatever this was about to become.

"If you're going to do something," Hakeem said, and his voice sounded like a stranger's, "do it before I convince myself this is a terrible idea."

"It is a terrible idea."

"I know."

"You're shaking."

"I know that too."

Antonio put his hand on the doorframe above Hakeem's shoulder. He was close enough that Hakeem could feel the warmth of his forearm near his cheek. He could smell whiskey and the warm scent of Antonio’s skin at the base of his throat.

"Tell me to stop," Antonio said.

It was the most generous and most devastating thing anyone had ever said to him. Antonio was giving him an exit, and Hakeem knew he wasn't going to take it.

"Don’t," Hakeem said.

Antonio kissed him, and it was not gentle.

Whatever version of this Hakeem had been half-imagining in the privacy of his own bad judgment—something tentative, exploratory, two men testing whether the tension between them could survive contact—evaporated in the first second of contact. Antonio kissed him like an argument he'd been having with himself for weeks, and Hakeem kissed him back like the answer was yes to every question he hadn't been asked.

Antonio's hand came off the doorframe and found the side of Hakeem's neck. His palm was hot, and his fingers spread wide, thumb pressing beneath Hakeem's jaw, tilting his head back with a firmness that made Hakeem's whole body go liquid. Hakeem grabbed the front of Antonio's shirt because he needed something to hold onto and because pulling him closer felt less like a choice and more like gravity asserting itself after a long suspension.

Their mouths opened against each other, and Hakeem made a sound that bypassed embarrassment entirely. It was low and involuntary and came from somewhere behind his ribs. Antonio swallowed it. His other hand found Hakeem's hip at the same place he'd touched in the hallway weeks ago, the sharp edge of bone through fabric—but this time his fingers gripped instead of guided. His thumb pressed into the hollow beside Hakeem's hip bone, and Hakeem's spine arched off the doorframe like his body was trying to close every remaining gap between them.

The kiss deepened until it was no longer a kiss, but a consumption. Antonio’s restraint was finally breaking, and Hakeem could feel the moment Antonio stopped being careful. There was a shift in pressure, a sound that came from the back of his throat, possessive in a way that made Hakeem's skin feel like it was either trying to leave his body or hang on for dear life. Antonio's hand slid from his neck into his hair and pulled, not hard but not soft, and Hakeem gasped against his mouth.

"Fuck," Hakeem said. The word got lost somewhere between Antonio's mouth and the doorframe and came out as half a syllable and a bitten breath.

Antonio pressed him harder into the frame. The full lengths of their bodies were flush now—chest to chest, hip to hip—and Hakeem could feel everything. The heat of Antonio through two layers of cotton. The tension in his thighs. The hard, unmistakable press of Antonio's erection against his own, removing every possible ambiguity about what was happening.

Hakeem rolled his hips forward before he could stop himself. The friction was obscene and necessary and exactly wrong enough to make his vision blur. Antonio made a guttural, barely controlled sound against his mouth, and it was the most undone Hakeem had ever heard him. His hand tightened in Hakeem's hair.

Then Antonio's teeth caught Hakeem's lower lip.

He pulled at the soft skin with his teeth, harder than intended, and Hakeem tasted copper.

He jerked back. His lip stung. His fingers went to his mouth instinctively and came away with a tiny smear of red, barely visible in the hallway light but unmistakable on his fingertip.