Blackbird Knitting in a Bunny's Lair (17 page)

Aiden appeared over his shoulder, and Jeremy closed his eyes when those deceptively full lips dropped a gentle kiss over a surgery scar.

“Look at you,” Aiden breathed, kissing up his neck to nuzzle his ear.

“What’re we lookin’ at?” Jeremy asked, his eyes still closed.

Aiden reached around and started a long, no-bullshit stroke, beginning with a possessive hand cupping Jeremy’s throat and then gliding down his chest.

“You, getting stronger,” Aiden murmured. He kept that marking touch on Jeremy’s chest, branding him at his waist, at his hips, and his beltline. “And smiling more.”

Jeremy smiled just hearing him say it. “I thought I was an ornery pain in your ass,” he murmured.

Aiden laughed softly into his ear. “My God, you really are,” he said, kissing Jeremy’s spine and licking along the little bumps. “That’s half the reason I love you.” He made a daring foray under Jeremy’s open fly, dipping under the elastic of his boxers.

“Yeah?” Oh, Jeremy liked this conversation. “You got anything good for the other half? ’Cause otherwise, you got cheated.”

Aiden’s laugh rumbled as he kissed Jeremy’s throat. “I got a thousand reasons for the other half,” he said, turning Jeremy away from the mirror so he could nibble along Jeremy’s narrow chest.

“I can’t think of one,” Jeremy murmured. He knotted his fingers in Aiden’s curly dark-blond hair and tugged when Aiden found a nipple and paid him back for what he’d done in the kitchen. Aiden sucked hard enough to hurt before pulling off with a pop and darting a teasing kiss to Jeremy’s lips.

“A thousand,” he insisted and then moved to his other nipple.

“No man ever got laid because he could knit,” Jeremy maintained breathlessly, and Aiden’s low laugh broke his suction.

“Go lie down on our bed, naked,” he said soberly. Jeremy looked into those intent green eyes and nodded, because he wouldn’t tell Aiden no, not at this juncture, not for the world. “Spread your legs,” Aiden continued, his voice a low hum of engine noise. “Touch yourself—”

“No!” Jeremy protested, forgetting all his resolve to do exactly what his boy asked.

“Yes,” Aiden demanded. “And then I’ll touch you.”

He kissed Jeremy again and if his caress had been no-bullshit style, then the kiss was don’t-fuck-around-about-this style. Jeremy opened his mouth to it, gave himself over, and Aiden took him at his word. He pulled back and snared Jeremy by his fierce intent again.

“Do it,” Aiden insisted.

Jeremy moved over to the bed, grumbling. “Sure, Jer, we’ll have sex, Jer, but you gotta do all
your
work yourself!”

Aiden’s chuckle chased chills up his spine. “You could be the laziest lover I’ve ever had,” he baited, and Jeremy bit that hook because he didn’t mind being caught.

“I’m your only lover, much to my shame.” He shoved his pants down, keeping his back turned because looking his fine young man in the eyes might sap all his courage and drain all his sap.

“You just said you were proud of me, Jer,” Aiden teased.

Jeremy turned around indignantly. “You’re gonna hold my words against me when I was
sucking your dick
?”

Aiden crossed his arms over his chest and leaned, naked and glorious, half-erect, against the doorframe. They’d started turning the space heater on before dinner and knitting and reading in bed so they didn’t have to heat up the living room when they didn’t have guests. The room was warm enough to set a flush across Aiden’s chest, and Jeremy wanted to kiss his skin, lick it, to see if he could feel where the faint pink was.

“Yeah, Jer,” Aiden said, nodding. His eyes were bright with mischief and arousal, and Jeremy glared at him for a minute. “I am. Now touch yourself.”

“Fine.” Jeremy lay on his back and, keeping his knees bent, spread his thighs slightly. He closed his eyes because he wasn’t all that brave, not yet, and moved his hands in drifty patterns over his chest, over his stomach, stopping whenever anything felt good and stroking in lazy little circles. For once he didn’t linger on the scars from the surgeries. For once they were just a part of him, and he would wonder later why that was so. For now he focused on touch, and on doing what Aiden wanted, and on the naked part, because before Aiden, he’d never been naked with another human being.

“Mm.” Aiden’s sound of appreciation sent shivers rippling across his skin.

“You enjoying this?” He meant the words to be sarcastic, but he’d found his own nipples by then and started plucking, and what came out was vulnerable, seeking approval.

“God yes,” Aiden told him, his voice sinking throatily on the last syllable. “You gonna touch below your waist for me, Jer?”

“No,” he breathed, although his cock had woken up after the brief nap it had taken when he’d first gotten naked.

“No?”

“Silliest thing in the world, watching me beat off—”

“Look at me, Jer. How silly is this?”

“Nung!”

That fine, tall, broad young body, all those muscles, and they were clenching as Aiden wrapped his hand around his now-erect cock and stroked.

“Good?”

“God,” Jeremy begged. “Can’t we just—”

“Turn the lights off and pretend you don’t turn me on?” Aiden asked, his voice hard. “Nope. You’re still doing it for me.”

“Please?” Jeremy begged. He closed his eyes. “I just don’t ever want to stop touching you.”

Aiden hmmed, and there was movement in the room, and Aiden’s weight depressed the bed next to him. “Keep touching, Jer,” Aiden whispered, and then he caught Jeremy’s mouth again.

Jeremy reached up to hold him there, kissing, and Aiden took his Jeremy’s other hand and put it directly on his own cock.

Which was swollen, dripping,
yearning
for Aiden
again.

Aiden tasted so good in his mouth, Jeremy opened and devoured again, wanting all of him inside.

Aiden took him up on the kiss, but his hands—oh yes! Jeremy kept stroking himself because he couldn’t seem to stop, but those big, broad, capable hands Jeremy had dreamed about played with his nipples, stroked down his stomach, swept the inner, tender parts of Jeremy’s thighs.

And then, when Jeremy was close, Aiden adjusted his position on the bed and seized Jeremy’s hand again—

—and put it on his own erection this time while Aiden grasped Jeremy’s.

“Mmmf—” His groan, his surprise, his sudden intense arousal were all muffled by Aiden’s mouth on his. Aiden pulled away and lowered his head, engulfing Jeremy’s cockhead right when orgasm hit, and Jeremy shouted and exploded like a thousand stars, traveling outward from Aiden’s mouth on his most sensitive part.

“Augh!” he cried again, and Aiden kept sucking as Jeremy poured down his throat.

Jeremy’s cock softened, grew tender, and Aiden moved his head up to claim another kiss. Jeremy had let go of him when he’d changed positions for the blowjob, and when he reached down to do his part again, he found Aiden’s fingers moving in the wet mess left by his own climax.

“Oh God,” Jeremy panted, tasting his own semen on his tongue. “You came?”

“I’m not the one afraid to touch myself,” Aiden teased lazily.

Jeremy could scarcely manage a passable scowl. “Well, you know, when
my
generation was growing up, they told us doing that would grow hair on our palms.”

Aiden threw his head back and laughed and then spread his come-covered hand out for Jeremy, palm up.

Jeremy took the dare and licked a long, lazy stripe up the palm and then pulled Aiden’s long, callous-roughened middle finger into his mouth and sucked on that too.

Aiden smiled again and shivered and then cupped Jeremy’s face in his hands, one of them still damp and messy, but Jeremy didn’t care. Jeremy looked him in the eyes, his own eyes still crinkled a little with humor and lazy with afterglow.

“What?” he asked softly.

Aiden bumped noses with him, nuzzling a little, and then pulled back so they were eye to eye again. “You make me so proud,” Aiden told him, and just that fast, Jeremy felt tears burning in his eyes.

“You make me cry like a girl!” he accused.

Aiden pulled him against that hard, implacable chest. “Good,” Aiden told him, his voice rumbling above his head. “As long as I’m the only one who does it, then I’m just fine with that.”

Jeremy let out a sigh, his breath bouncing hotly off Aiden’s skin. “Of all the shit we’ve got to be worried about,” he said, “me cheating on you is the absolute last thing on the list.”

Aiden laughed and then fumbled with the covers, getting them situated. “Me too,” his boy said, sounding so absolute, Jeremy had no choice but to believe him.

“Well, damn,” Jeremy muttered, because his eyes were half closing. “How am I supposed to start doing all this planning when it’s time for me to sleep again?”

Aiden kissed his temple. “You’re supposed to start doing it in the morning,” he said, his voice slurred and sleepy too. “Right after I call my mom and tell her we’re coming on Sunday for dinner.”

“I can’t believe you want me at that nice woman’s table,” Jeremy grumbled. “Doesn’t she know I’m doing shameful things to her baby boy?”

Aiden’s laugh damned near rocked him to sleep.

J
EREMY
HADN
’
T
stopped talking from the moment Aiden’s car hit the driveway.

“Woo, boy, that’s a nice house. Kept up on the paint—did you do that last coat, boy, or is that your daddy keeping it up?”

“My dad did—”

“And look at that big yard, all those toys for the kids. How old’s your littlest sister? ’Cause those look about grown out of, you know? But kids’ll keep playing on that shit
, it’ll become forts and other things, and—”

“Lori-Anne is six,” Aiden said.

If anything, Jeremy’s voice got higher pitched. “So she was a baby when I met you, like right out of diapers, oh that’s amazing, I can’t believe I’m with a man young enough to have a sister who’s still a baby. That doesn’t speak well of me, oh no it doesn’t, I’ll have to be on my good behavior, not a word out of place, no swearwords or anything. Has it occurred to you that we say ‘fuck’ a lot, Aiden? Because you said ‘fuck’ maybe the first time you met me, and I’m thinking maybe we shouldn’t be saying that word quite so much. I don’t remember swearing this much before I went to prison, and you forget, you know, ’cause Craw never met a swearword he didn’t like, and—”

Aiden pulled the car to a halt while Jeremy was still babbling, put it in park, and turned off the ignition. Then, while Jeremy’s mouth was open and he was staring at Aiden’s family’s house with hunted, rolling eyes and chattering himself into a cold sweat, Aiden grabbed his chin and kissed him until the noise stopped.

Then he wrapped his arms around Jeremy’s shoulders and reminded himself that three years ago, the prospect of meeting Aiden’s parents, sitting at their table to eat, had his skittish lover
literally
packing and preparing to run the hell out of Granby.

To Aiden, it was dinner with his parents.

To Jeremy, it was dinner with every person he’d ever conned, scammed, and cheated. To Jeremy, it was the final reckoning of whether he deserved to sit with decent people and be counted among their number. This dinner here was everything Jeremy had ever dreamed of and feared from pretty much the first moment he’d realized the next woman his father scammed was
never
going to be his mother.

“My mom’s not gonna bite,” he told Jeremy now, and the babbling kept up even against his chest.

“Of course she is, she’s gonna wanna bite anyone who’ll hurt her babies. You’re still her baby, Aiden, don’t ever doubt that. Remember the only thing my daddy ever did that made him my daddy happened when I was full-grown. She’s gonna wanna tear me to bits, and she should, she should, because—”

Aiden kissed him again and pulled back, realizing that his own hands were shaking with Jeremy’s panic. “You’re a good person,” he said, keeping his voice strong. “You saved Stanley, remember that? You looked a homicidal asshole in the eyes and you conned him out of killing a man. I may not be thrilled with what he did to
you
,
but all those things in your past, you put paid, remember? You did two years in prison and you got the shit beat out of you and you went straight. You
put paid
. You got nothing to worry about from my folks, you hear?”

Jeremy’s eyes were red-rimmed from panic, but that basic, sweet brown, with the thick brown lashes, that was undimmed. He blinked those big brown eyes and started to breathe a little slower. “We’re gonna get a dog,” he said, and Aiden blessed his mom’s frickin’ horny, unfixed Heinz 57 bitch.

“Yeah,” he said. “We’re gonna get a dog. We’re gonna have a house and rabbits and a dog. And you’re going to be a pillar of the frickin’ community. And it’s all going to start with my parents’ dinner table. Making the pie was worth it, Jer, I swear.”

Jeremy nodded. He was still pale and sweating a little, but his breathing had evened out. “Smack me if I start talking too much,” he begged, and Aiden nodded fiercely.

“That is not going to be a problem,” he assured. His own nerves were strung tight enough that if Jeremy started babbling like he’d just stopped doing, Aiden would probably whap him upside the head on sheer instinct.

“I need to change,” Jeremy said as Aiden opened the door to get out.

“That’s your best shirt and the sweater Ariadne made you last year.” Deliberately, Aiden got up and walked around the car. He opened Jeremy’s door like any boy with a prom date and gave Jeremy a hand up.

Jeremy’s gaze darted across the snow-covered yard to the plastic play structure and then back to Aiden.

Aiden squeezed his hand and nodded, and Jeremy nodded back. Nervous? Oh hell yes. But still game.

“Here,” Jeremy said practically. “Let me get the pies.”

They made it to the door, where Aiden just turned the handle like he always did, and Jeremy’s body had a little minispasm—he almost dropped the pies.

“You’re gonna just walk in like that? I mean, don’t you knock like a human being?”