Bad Boyfriend (21 page)

“Really. You want to know what my favorite movie is?”

“You can watch whatever you want, but according to Kellan, whose number I took off your phone, your favorite movie is some confusing chick flick called
Sliding Doors
. You are a closet romantic.”

“That’s about all I keep in the closet. You stole Kellan’s number to find out what my favorite movie was?” Eli couldn’t decide if that was over-the-line controlling or sweet.

“No, I called him to find out what you liked to do. I had a feeling if I asked you, your answer would be fuck.”

Eli pretended to consider for a second. “True.”

“As much as I enjoy sharing that favorite activity with you, I have to get these grades done. And a man of my advanced years can only get it up so many times in one day.”

“You make up for it in endurance.”

“I’m pleased you noticed.”

“Does it bother you?” Eli pushed the corn around on his plate.

“Not being able to fuck you as often as I want?”

“No. Being—me being so much younger?”

“Nope. I’m thinking in ten years, people will be even more jealous of my hot younger boyfriend.”

Ten years? Like Quinn had had with Peter? Eli couldn’t imagine much farther ahead than ten days. He liked this. Liked the idea of a boyfriend, especially one that came in a Quinn package, but ten years. He took his plate over to scrape the uneaten corn into the garbage. “I can cook. If you tell me what you like.”

“I remember. Tarragon in the eggs. That was good.”

Eli started to wash his plate, but Quinn took it out of his hands.

“I have a dishwasher. Let me get the movie downloading for you, and I’ll work out here.”

Sliding Doors
felt a little too personal this time, with the lying, cheating bastard of a boyfriend and John Hannah being so adorably sweet to a brokenhearted Gwyneth Paltrow. When John Hannah’s character said the line about people coming into your life right when you need them, Eli switched it off. Then he decided Quinn had done enough work for a Friday night and dragged him to bed.

On Saturday, Quinn drove Eli down to the apartment for what was ostensibly a change of clothes. Eli packed as much as he could stuff in a backpack. If the movie was right about fate, Quinn was here for him at a perfect time, since as of the moment, Eli had no place to live.

Late Sunday morning, Eli stretched his really happily tired muscles all alone in Quinn’s big bed. Quinn might be older, but he was definitely making up for lost time. Eli wasn’t sure he could keep up with him.

He sat up suddenly. For the first time in forever, Thursday, Friday and Saturday nights had come and gone without Eli putting in an appearance at any of the bars. Maybe there’d be a missing-in-action notice in the personals in the
Charming Rag
. He’d spent the whole weekend in suburbia with his boyfriend, and nothing about that felt boring or tame. Maybe Quinn had earned an extra chapter of information. Eli could keep it from turning into a pity party by leaving out the part where his homeless situation was ongoing.

Quinn was still plowing through a giant stack of papers on the kitchen table. Eli found some cereal and was about to eat it dry when it occurred to him that Quinn probably had milk that hadn’t expired in his fridge.

Eli was slurping away at the counter when Quinn glanced up at him.

“Does this count as the longest date ever for your Facebook page now?”

“The Arena probably filed a missing-persons report.”

“If you wanted to go out—”

“I’d have had to get dressed.” Eli ran his hand over the super soft T-shirt of Quinn’s he’d appropriated to wear over the one pair of flannel pajama pants he owned. He rinsed off his bowl and sat down at the table, not quite sure how he wanted to say it. For awhile, he’d considered it a badge of honor and flung it in the face of everyone he met. He was pretty sure the whole poor, abused, queer-kid thing was the only reason Nate had hired him at the paper in the first place.

Eli glanced over at the pile of papers. “You know how I said I barely graduated from high school.”

“Yeah.” Quinn put down his red pen.

“My parents kicked me out of the house when I was seventeen.”

Quinn’s face was still, like whatever he was thinking was too deep inside to show. “Because you were gay?”

Eli nodded.

“Shit.” Quinn glanced down at his papers and then back at Eli. The calm expression remained, but Eli knew Quinn well enough now to read the tension in the back of his jaw, though it never carried through to his lips. “What did you do?”

Eli shrugged. “Spent a lot of time on couches at friends’ houses. My best friend, she and her mom let me stay for the first two months, and it wasn’t too bad. But when it was obvious my parents weren’t going to suddenly give a shit, her mom got worried about legal responsibilities, and I had to move somewhere else. I didn’t always make it to school after that. I was too old to have truant officers chasing me down, anyway.”

“Did your parents ever try to find you?”

“You know how you said your grandparents sent you a card when you were in the hospital?”

Quinn’s mouth curved in a wry twist. “Still get one around my birthday. With a twenty-dollar check. Very polite and appropriate. I send a thank-you card.”

“Yeah, well I don’t get that. I haven’t seen or spoken to them in five years. I called my sister a few years ago. She’d already gotten married before they tossed me out.”

“And?”

“She told me to never call her again because she didn’t want people like me around her kids. My gene pool. It has no deep end. Good thing I won’t be breeding.”

Quinn waited. Didn’t offer an opinion like Nate, or
gee, sorry, man,
like Kellan might have.

“There were a couple of times between friends when I walked all night, slept in the library during the day. And…” Eli hadn’t said this part out loud before, not even to Nate, though as smart as Nate was, he’d probably guessed it. “Sometimes I tricked, mostly for a place to sleep.”

Eli never looked away, but somehow he missed Quinn getting up because the next thing he knew, Quinn’s arms were around him, strong and hard, Eli’s name a soft whisper in his ear. “Thank God you stayed safe. Thank God you made it this far.” It sounded like a real prayer.

Eli remembered his irrational fear of Quinn being sick, of never meeting him because he died of bacterial meningitis. It was good to know Eli wasn’t the only one who wasted time on pointless
what ifs
.

Quinn hugged him for awhile, then held on tight while he lowered his head and tingled Eli’s mouth with a kiss.

This was supposed to be one of those nice moments of having a boyfriend, someone who gave a shit that you might have gotten killed a few years ago. Knowing that didn’t stop Eli’s dick from responding to Quinn’s kiss or the hands wide and warm on Eli’s back. In his defense, he was a guy, a not quite twenty-three-year-old guy, and his body knew what the other man could make it feel.

Quinn didn’t mind, or if he did, his hands were acting on their own when they slid down to cup Eli’s ass and pull him up tight. Quinn leaned back against the counter, and their dicks lined up for a nice dry hump.

“Yeah. I got you.” Quinn groaned and kissed Eli’s throat, though Eli hadn’t asked for anything.

He knew what he wanted though. Wanted to pull Quinn’s strength and power inside so it would be there as a shield any time Eli needed the boost to his own. Wanted to protect Quinn, too, against the stupid families of the world who took his loyalty and decency for granted.

But Eli didn’t know how to ask for that.

Instead he held on to Quinn’s neck and kissed him, inviting Quinn into his mouth and his body, and when Quinn reached for Eli’s fly, pulled back enough to whisper, “Fuck me.”

Eli tossed off the T-shirt and pajama pants in the hall upstairs and hit the sheets naked. Quinn followed, landing on top, tongue and lips stroking and whispering across Eli’s neck and jaw and chest, while Eli tried to touch back as much as he could. Quinn held Eli’s hands against the mattress and continued with a gentle scrape of stubble everywhere, teasing Eli’s nipples until he finally wet them, sucked them, rubbed them. Eli arched and stretched, especially when Quinn repeated the whole teasing thing right above Eli’s cock. No reward this time, just Quinn gripping Eli’s hips and flipping him over onto his belly and starting at the back of his neck.

No need to pin Eli’s hands now. Not when he was pretty sure where this was going. For all it happened a lot in porn, Eli hadn’t found that many guys who liked to rim, but the way Quinn was sliding his tongue along Eli’s spine made him think he’d hit the jackpot now.

Then Quinn moved back up to Eli’s neck again, then down more slowly. The crisp curls on Quinn’s chest sensitized Eli’s skin everywhere, imprinting a memory of Quinn on every cell. It reminded Eli of the way science films about glaciers had always scared him. He knew the ice wasn’t like lava, too fast to outrun, but the illustrations showed them going fast. The idea of that inexorable strength carving deep into the earth had always made Eli uncomfortable, like wondering who authorized these changes that were going to affect all those species.

Quinn was relentlessly gentle, tongue dipping into the crack of Eli’s ass, a flick at the top before he shoved Eli’s legs apart with his shoulders. When he started, Eli wanted to categorize all the feelings, the scrape of his stubble, tongue sharp or flat and the wet insistent softness of it. Mostly he knew he was whimpering and whining, struggling to climb down onto Quinn’s face for more sensation—
more, more, God, please, more
—but Quinn’s shoulders kept Eli in place.

Eli started working for a little friction on his dick from the sheets, not in that
you can’t control me
rebellion of his first night here, but because Quinn was rubbing his thumb along the smooth, thin skin between Eli’s hole and his balls. It was like Quinn had found a way to rub the gland from the outside, and the flick and jab of wet and hot on Eli’s hole was almost enough but not quite. There were all these feelings inside, in his body and his heart and his head, and they kept building, and as urgent as Quinn’s touch felt he was still too tender, and Eli was going to explode.

He started shaking with it, and Quinn lifted his head to whisper, “Relax. Let me make you feel good.”

Eli stopped trying to tear his hands through the sheets, stopped trying to move and let it fill him. He wasn’t scared this time. This was a flip side of the Daddy-dynamic they’d played with, and it was safe and good to let Quinn push these feelings in him. Eli wanted it to go on forever, but the need to come built again, sharp and inescapable, and he rolled his head on the sheets whispering, “Fuck me, please, Quinn, fuck me.”

The lubed finger was cool, so different from the sensation of spit and tongue, but Eli had been waiting so long he relaxed into it, though Quinn kept the strokes short and angled up, away from the kind of pressure that would send Eli over the edge. He lay there waiting, listening to the tear of the condom packet, and he wanted to show Quinn that Eli knew this was different, that this wasn’t any fuck, that he trusted Quinn.

He’d caught his breath while Quinn wasn’t touching him. “If you want to skip that, I mean if you know you’re negative—”

“Don’t.” Quinn’s weight pinned him flat against the mattress. “Don’t you ever take those kinds of risks, and don’t ask me to make those decisions when my cock’s an inch from your ass.”

His dick slid between Eli’s thighs, and Eli knew the condom was on. He might not be able to tell the difference once they got going, but his skin told him that was latex.

“Okay,” Eli grunted. Quinn was probably right, but—Quinn pushed inside while Eli’s legs were pressed together, when Eli couldn’t push up on his knees and control the angle and speed, and it hurt for a second, not the screaming pinch of muscles not relaxed enough, but too big, too much, too tight like this.

He buried his groan in a mouthful of sheet and then bit down as Quinn fucked him like that, inescapable friction and fullness, Quinn dictating the angle, every feeling. It made Eli feel crazy, like he’d really given up control of his body, and that was okay again, because it was Quinn.

He didn’t know how long Quinn pounded into him like that, only that Eli couldn’t tell where the sensations started, his ass, his balls, his gland, his dick. Everything was so primed to go that when Quinn scooped him up around the waist whispering, “Ready?” Eli could have cried with the idea of release.

Quinn pulled them onto their sides, his lubed hand working Eli’s cock a little too slowly, like Quinn needed to catch back up after the shift in position. Quinn’s body held him tightly, a hard sure promise to lean on while his hand sped up on Eli’s dick. Quinn was whispering in his ear, as much a kiss and a breath as actual words. “Yeah, honey. Want to watch you come. Do it for me.”

When it hit, the contractions went on and on, a burst that never seemed to want to slow down, like he could never empty his balls until he turned inside out. Perfect, kill-me-right-now ecstasy in every nerve of his body.