And Call Me in the Morning (13 page)

Zane tossed his head, his hair making
swish-swish-swish
noises on the pillow. “Eli,” he said, a note of unmistakable warning in the word. “
Eli
—”

Now or never. He couldn't swallow, he'd choke, but he wanted to see. Eli lifted up and off and breathed over Zane's cockhead. “Come on,” he urged, figuring out fast how jerking off worked in reverse, giddy with the power of it. “Come on, come on, let me see—”

“God, Eli—oh, fuck—ah,
ah
—” Zane ground his hands over his eyes, his mouth opened wide, and he buckled from the middle. Cum spurted, landing thick and creamy on his flexing stomach muscles, dripping down to the V-cut of his oblique muscles, lost in the crease between groin and thigh.

Eli followed it, wanting to taste as much as he'd wanted to see. He touched his tongue to a drop in fascination and startled when a fresh splash landed on his cheek. That he licked automatically, fascinated by the taste.

He had nothing else to give. Dropped his head on Zane's hip and let go, every muscle and seemingly every bone giving way at once until there was nothing left of Eli but a puddle of a man with lungs that wouldn't stop, breathing as if he'd just finished running a race.

Eli supposed, in a way, he had. And he'd won.

Zane tugged sloppily at him. Eli, dazed and thrilled by the success of what he'd managed without any coaching, shambled and wriggled his way up. He thumped his head on Zane's chest and groaned. “Was that us?”

“Think so.” The rise and fall of Zane's chest with his ragged breathing reminded Eli of being at sea. “Why haven't we been doing this all along?”

“Wasted time,” Eli said, his eyelids falling shut despite wanting to keep them open, to turn and look at Zane and maybe kiss him again, long and slow. He thumbed Zane's navel instead, feeling himself falling toward sleep. TKO. “So you really thought, sometimes…?”

“Yeah. But not that it'd be like this,” Zane said, faraway and stoned.

Eli knew exactly what he meant. “Never too old to try something new, huh?” he cracked around a tremendous yawn.

“Hey.” Zane tweaked Eli's ear. “This was better than Paris.”

That was almost—almost—better than watching Zane come. Eli hummed, satisfied, proud of himself and figuring he deserved to be. Strange days, these. The sky was green and the grass was blue and down was up, but be damned if he didn't think he liked it better this way.

“Worked it out together,” he said, nuzzling Zane's stomach with the last of his strength.

“That we did.” Zane shifted, curling toward Eli. “Best stress relief I've ever had.”

Eli laughed. “Good. My work is done here.”

Zane switched to finger combing Eli's hair, a move so soothing that Eli could no longer cling to wakefulness. “Better not be.”

It became a habit of sorts, this thing between them. On and off, as “on” as possible. One full week from the first night, Eli woke alone in bed five minutes before his alarm clock was set to go off.

He blinked his eyes open in semidarkness, the first of the dawn's light beginning to shade away the dark of the night, and turned from side to stomach, one arm coming out to stretch across the sheets beside him.

Wait. Eli grunted and patted the empty space. Why had he slept on the far side and not the middle, and what was missing from this picture?

Ah. Zane
. Still, it took him a moment to adjust to this new reality. Eli flipped from stomach to back and gazed at the ceiling, vision slowly coming into focus.

“That was us,” he said in an echo of Zane's words the night before, and every night since the first. “Not bad, my friend. Not bad at all.”

But where the hell had he gone? Eli glanced at the pillow scrunched up beside his and, as well as the dent where Zane had tossed and turned—the man was a restless sleeper—he saw a semi-crumpled scrap of paper torn from the back of a journal.

Classic Zane. Eli chuckled as he retrieved the note and strained to read it in the slowly growing light. Not hard. Zane wrote in large, blocky print, and he'd chosen a fat marker.

ELI,

RAINCHECK ON POSTPRANDIAL DELIGHTS. FINALLY TOUCHED BASE WITH SOMEONE WHO COULD BE SWEET-TALKED INTO PLAYING GENEROUS DONOR.

The free clinic. Eli's hopes rose. Zane knew some strange people, but they did tend to have money and egos, and if there was anyone on the planet Zane couldn't coax around to his way of thinking, Eli hadn't met them yet.

He patted the pillow. Case in point.

SORRY I HAD TO TAKE MY CAR.

Damn. Eli had left his at Immaculate Grace the night before, both of them too impatient to get somewhere private to be bothered taking separate vehicles and getting separated by traffic. He guessed it was public transit for him. For that, Zane owed him one.

Eli had a fair idea of how he'd like to collect.

MEET YOU AT THE HOSPITAL. BRING BREAKFAST?

LOVE,

ZANE

“Postprandial delights?” Eli shook his head, amused. “Zane, Zane, Zane, you are one strange bird. Your loss. I was going to make pancakes.”

His loss too. Call him old-fashioned, but in his admittedly not-recent history of sleepovers, Eli preferred the classic send-off with a good, hot breakfast and some half-awake kisses by the coffeepot. He looked forward to that with Zane. Maybe next time, and wasn't that something else? Knowing there would be another chance.

Eli climbed out of bed, barely feeling the chill of the floor beneath his bare feet. He did take note of it on outlying areas, more accustomed to sleeping in sweats during the Chicago winter. Sweats and possibly a parka, depending on how low the mercury dropped.

The random thought occurred to him: that'd be one bonus to taking a job down south. Huh. He'd all but forgotten the Duke Medical School question by now. Still, Chicago at heart or not, there were definite advantages to warm weather, such as not waking up with a nasty case of dicksicle.

Eli stretched, yawned, and hit his alarm clock as it began to shrill. “Shut up.” He stumbled forward in search of clothing. Stumble became hop became scramble. Jesus Christ, it was cold.

His undignified shuffle led him to the small desk where he kept a laptop, mostly used for reading online journals in bed when he couldn't sleep. Zane had apparently helped himself and left it turned on, Google window in the browser. Tsk. Wasn't like him to be so careless. Eli bent over the desk chair, taking note of his shirt draped there.

Perhaps Zane had had other things on his mind. Eli wouldn't mind thinking so. He reached to shut the laptop down—and stopped. The toolbar's search pane showed the last key words Zane had searched for.

Paris culinary arts.

Now why…
oh
. Eli spun the chair around and sat, dropping his chin on the back. Christ.

He knew the flare of sparks in his gut was jealousy. Possibly a little hurt too. Didn't mean anything, though, did it?

Or maybe Zane had had more on his mind than a sloppy, hot blowjob. Maybe he'd spent the night thinking about how Eli compared to lush curves and bohemian black braids.

“Fuck.” Eli kick-slid out of the chair. Enough. He'd be late for work.

* * * * *

“I heard you were looking for me the other day?”

Eli looked up with a startled jerk. “Taye. Didn't I tell you once about sneaking up on a guy?”

Taye hung on to the pole as the elevated train started forward. He swayed a little with the choppy motion but still grinned. And quite a grin it was, white amidst a face decorated with some alarmingly colorful bruises.

“I don't think I'm being out of place here when I ask what the hell happened to you.”

“It's pretty obvious, don't you think?” Taye nodded at the empty seat next to Eli, a minor miracle at this hour on the train. “May I?”

“You'd better. Let me get a look at that eye.” Eli was already reaching for the penlight he kept in his pocket. “Can you even see?”

“It's not that bad.” Taye pushed him gently but firmly away as he sat.

“Not that bad, my ass.” Eli frowned. No wonder Taye had taken the day off. He'd have scared the patients. “Okay, I won't push it.”

“Thank you.” Taye sighed. Looked like his mind worked along the same tracks as Eli's—was Holly right with her whole “you're so alike” spiel?—because once the pressure was off, that was when he caved. “Some bistro employees took exception to Richie's lifestyle. I happened to be there at the time.”

“Be damned.” Signed, sealed, and certified. Eli liked this kid. He had spunk. “Do they look worse than you?”

Taye's pride was almost visible. “Damn right.”

“And Richie?”

“Got away almost without a scratch.” Taye's pride in his lover was equally strong. “He's little, but he's fierce, and the way he puts it, being closer to the ground than those other dicks is an advantage in a tussle where you fight dirty and hit low.”

Eli winced, but in approval.

“Then again, he's out of a job now.”

“A fine excuse not to go back to that bistro.”

Taye laughed. “True. But he's a damn good waiter, and he's a good cook too. He's out looking for jobs. Speaking of looking, what did you need me for?” He tapped the cell phone-shaped bulge in his coat pocket. “I had a raft of messages.”

“Forget about me,” Eli deflected quickly. He and Zane, heck, they seemed to be working things out fine enough on their own. No need to burden Taye with fast-fading insecurity on how to please a guy in the sack. “Holly was the one fretting and wringing her hands. I just backed her up.”

“Uh-huh.” Taye's eyebrow tried to quirk. Didn't quite make it, what with the shiner distorting his face, but he got his point across. “Not buying it, and I've already talked to Holly. You, I wasn't able to touch base with last night.”

Ah. Eli coughed. He'd set his phone to vibrate so it wouldn't jostle him and Zane out of their cocoon of silence, and after that he'd forgotten. Sloppy, very sloppy. Also a dead giveaway.

“Uh-huh,” Taye said, his one good eye dancing. “What did you need?”

Damn it. Persistence. “It's not a big deal,” Eli hedged. A sharp nudge to his shoulder from another passenger's giant, blocky purse reminded him of where they were: very much in public. Christ, he'd almost forgotten. “We can talk later.”

Taye shrugged and glanced around at the crowded car. “That's the thing about the train,” he remarked, seemingly at random, though Eli knew better than to believe a drop of innocence out of this one. “Look around. Not only do people not pay attention and not care, they're
actively
blocking out everyone else. There's a guy a few rows up who's talking to the itsy bitsy spider crawling up and down his 'waterspout,' and no one's batted an eye.”

“Certainly not you, Mike Tyson,” Eli shot back. He rubbed his nose. Taye did have a point, and he
could
let rip. If he wanted.

“No one cares,” Taye returned.

“Your patchwork face says differently.”

“I'd black the other eye if I needed to. Some things are worth it. Eli, you're a man who fights his own battles too. Forgive me for pushing, but you were a cop. Then a med student in your thirties, an intern, and a new doctor in your forties. You're not the kind of guy who backs down from a challenge.”

Eli growled low in his throat. He might want to pop Taye another one right now for being an aggressive little bastard, but the kicker was that he wanted more to spill the weight on his mind. Surprised the hell out of himself with that desire, but there you had it. If there was one person he could trust to spill this to besides Zane, it'd be Taye.

Wanted, but couldn't manage to force a word past the blockage that rose in his throat when he tried.

“Maybe later,” he muttered at last.

Taye nodded as if he'd expected just this. As if he was prepared to wait. “Suit yourself.”

“I will,” Eli said, and promptly felt five years old. He rolled his eyes.

“I know I'm being pushy,” Taye said quietly. He nudged Eli's foot. “I figure that's what a guy like you needs.”