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Now, finally, it was my turn to make Julian’s eyes roll back. It was my turn to make his knees wobble and his breathing stutter. It was my turn to hear him gasp out my name in a broken curse as he finally let go.
Julian’s hands were large and strong against my back. His legs moved against mine, rough with body hair and muscle. The late-night scruff on his face rubbed at my own and pulled at the tender skin of my lips. He smelled like a combination of faded cologne, good wine, and traces of Julian sweat.
It was familiar, but it was newly intoxicating too.
I moved my face down to inhale the skin of his neck, and then I moved further down to bury my nose in his armpit.
“What are you doing?” he asked with a smile in his voice. “I probably smell.”
“You do,” I said, inhaling again and again. “And it’s fucking fantastic.” I moved over to swipe my tongue over his nipple before taking it gently between my teeth. Julian’s hiss made my cock pulse, so I added the pressure of my tongue and began to suck.
He arched up into me, moving his hands down to clutch my ass. “You’re acting like a guy right now.”
“I am a guy.”
“No, but oh god…”
I latched onto his other nipple and sucked hard before pulling off and sucking a hickey into the ink on the side of his neck. He let out a yelp that turned into a lurid groan of pleasure.
“Fantasies,” he gasped. “M-my fantasies are coming to life right now.”
I moved my tongue along the colorful splotches of ink, remembering the impromptu design that had started as Julian’s doodle of our school’s grizzly bear mascot on my math notebook our junior year but had become so much more. “You know how obsessed I am with this.”
“It’s yours.” He groaned again as my fingers reached down to push under the elastic band of his boxer briefs. “You… you… don’t stop.”
I moved my palm over his shaft as I continued to rain kisses across his neck and shoulder, claiming the drawing that represented three years of our friendship.
We’d passed the paper back and forth, adding odd touches here and there—a swirling constellation reminiscent of summer nights spent stargazing, the tent Julian had added after a camping trip so muddy and miserable we’d had to laugh our asses off, the flame from the bonfires we lit in the Thicks’ backyard firepit every winter night senior year while we discussed our plans for the future. At the bottom, I’d added a pair of cupped hands that cradled the whole scene. Finally, Julian had declared it perfect and locked the page away in his dresser, and I’d forgotten all about it.
Julian hadn’t.
He’d shocked the heck out of our friends and me when he’d whipped off his shirt at the lake one summer day and displayed his new ink. I remembered Erin asking Julian what it symbolized and Julian simply saying, “Home.” And everyone had thought he’d meant Denver, or Colorado, or the mountains where we’d skied, but looking at it now, I knew exactly what he’d meant.
He’d meant us.
Because home was the two of us together.
I lifted my head to meet his eyes as my fingers came up to trace the designs I’d just worshiped. “You inked me into your skin, Julian. This is us right here. It’s always been us.”
He nodded, eyes filling with tears that I didn’t want him to cry. “I know,” he said in a broken voice. “But I’m so fucking scared you’re going to change your mind.”
“Jules—”
Julian tugged gently on my hair, forcing me to look at him. “No, listen. I heard everything you said earlier, and I…” He licked his lips. “I believe that you mean what you’re saying. And the last thing I want to do is be needy or piss you off or, god, hurt your feelings because I love you. But Parker, you have no idea what it’s been like all these years, falling for you a little more every day and then watching you get back together with Erin. I get why you did,” he hurried to assure me. “I know you were right earlier, too, when you said that if we’d gotten together at sixteen, we might not be the men we are, so I can’t regret the way things have worked out. But as much as I want to just accept this—Christ, as much as I want to revel in it—” He ran trembling fingers over my jaw, and his blue eyes blazed hotter. “I’m still scared. I don’t know how to make it go away.”
Warmth and relief spread through my chest that he’d spoken his fear out loud. As long as we could talk to each other, we could work through this.
