Blackbird Knitting in a Bunny's Lair (25 page)

“Those are good things,” Aiden said, his deep voice rumbling next to Jeremy’s ear. His arms tightened convulsively around Jeremy’s shoulders, and Jeremy let himself be hugged without breath for a moment.

“Am I worth it?” Jeremy asked when he could breathe again. It was a terrifying question. “The worry? The… the training, I guess.”

Aiden’s shoulders were shaking now, trembling under Jeremy’s hands, and for a moment, Jeremy thought he was laughing.

He wasn’t. He took a step back and turned off the water, then reached outside the shower for a towel. Solicitously, almost sexlessly, he wrapped Jeremy up, and it wasn’t until Jeremy had wiped the water from his eyes that he realized Aiden was keeping his face averted, and that his eyes were red, and that maybe his face wasn’t just wet from the shower.

For a moment Jeremy felt cold, betrayed. He’d asked in hope.

“I’m sorry,” he muttered. “I… I’ll work harder, be more—”

“Shut up,” Aiden whispered. “Just shut up.” He framed Jeremy’s face then and kissed him hard, trancing him, enveloping him, simply sweeping him up in that force of will, that hard-bright shining person who had always been Aiden, from the first moment Jeremy had seen him and thought,
This is a nice boy, and I am not worthy.

Aiden pulled back and blinked hard. “You’re worth it,” he rasped. “You’re worth it. I wish you’d asked me that months ago. I wish you’d asked me that in November. I wish you’d called me up and asked me that before Mikey Carelli showed up in our front yard. I would have given you the same answer, Jer. You’re worth it. All of it. If you’da died, you woulda gutted me like a sheep, and you still woulda been worth it.”

Jeremy nodded, and his eyes burned just hearing it. He kissed Aiden back quickly, a peck on the lips really, but Aiden pounced on it, needy as a kitten. He pushed forward, opening Jeremy’s mouth, touching tongue to tongue, sweeping inside and claiming all territory for his own.

Jeremy relaxed, pushed against that young body, strained, rubbed the muscular chest, grabbed his narrow hips through the towel and ground tight, wanting to crawl inside this man and wanting to be filled.

“So, Jer,” Aiden muttered, nibbling on his ear, “you ready? ’Cause I got gentle in me, but I’m not sure that’s what you want.”

Jeremy’s insides melted and his outsides got hard. “I want you,” he rasped, crazy with the need just that quickly. “I want….” Oh, he didn’t have words. Aiden’s first smile, his first scowl, his green eyes and the way they narrowed when Jeremy was being difficult. His full mouth and his big, rough, tender hands. Jeremy wanted them, wanted the boy he’d met, the man he’d become, all the experiences they’d shared between.

“
Yes
,”
he moaned, mouthing his way across Aiden’s chest, paying special attention to the spot on his neck by his jaw that seemed to shiver his spine.

Aiden took that for what it was. He was strong, Jeremy’s boy, and all he had to do was squat a little and thrust his hands under Jeremy’s thighs. Jeremy wrapped his legs around Aiden’s taut waist and let Aiden carry him to the bed, kissing all the way.

At the last minute, Aiden whirled and used one hand to shuck the covers back so when he lay down, he was on clean sheets.

Jeremy sprawled on top of him, grinning down from a perch on that magnificent chest. “Pretty damned proud of yourself, aren’t ya?”

“Yup,” Aiden said, positively
beaming
at him. He undulated his hips and Jeremy shuddered.

“Ah, God, Aiden, you’re—”

Aiden kneaded his backside with strong fingers, and Jeremy
needed
to open to him, to
feel
him inside.

“I fuckin’ want ya, Jer,” Aiden said, his smile fading and his eyes deadly earnest. “I’m dying inside, needing you.”

“Nungh….” Jeremy reached for the drawer and the lubricant, and he dumped some on his fingers with shaking hands.

Aiden kept kneading his ass and pressing their bodies together, his movements rhythmic and frantic. “Somethin’ wrong?” he taunted, and Jeremy dropped the bottle and glared at him. At the same time, he moved his hand behind his back and fingered himself. The cool slick on the sensitive nerves, the way his cock was squeezed while his delicate tissues were stretched, stimulated—the rolling crash of it in his nearly healed body almost undid him.

“Boy,” he begged, propping up on his knees. He moved his fingers to Aiden’s erection, greasing it up with leftover slick, and Aiden grunted when he’d aligned them both ever so perfectly.

“There?” Aiden whispered.

Jeremy nodded, closing his eyes, the cold fire of blazing arousal sweeping his darkened center. “There,” he moaned and started to slide down. Oh, he remembered this, remembered how to relax, how to push, how to breathe… just breathe.

It was hard—he wanted that thing so bad, wanted to be filled so bad, and Aiden’s fingers were clenching on his thighs.

“You’re being… ah… damned patient,” he muttered as he felt Aiden check a little convulsion of need.

“Yeah… yeah…. God, Jeremy, are we almost….”

“
Ah
….”

“
Damn
….”

They groaned in tandem, and Jeremy shook all over as Aiden initiated a trembling series of little minithrusts that buried scant inches of his shaft.

“More, boy,” Jeremy begged.
Ah, God!
Aiden was inside him, and moving, and it was beautiful, glorious, aching and
awesome
.

“Hold tight, I’m rolling over,” Aiden panted, and Jeremy wrapped his limbs around that strong, solid body.

Aiden rolled over, staying inside, and now it was Jeremy’s turn to look up.

“Kiss,” he whispered, which was not something he usually begged for, but he didn’t want to close his eyes yet, and the pressure/pain/pleasure was mounting. He needed that taste, the full lips, the tongue, and when Aiden took his mouth, it was like everything, from his heart to his ass, got fuller, tighter, to the point of bursting through his skin.

Aiden broke the kiss off, obviously at the end of his tether, and started to thrust hard and deep, pounding Jeremy unmercifully, and damn—

“Faster!” Jeremy begged. Faster and harder meant he wasn’t fragile, meant Aiden was taking him like a grown-up, like an equal, and everything in his body glowed brighter and brighter with every thrust.

“Can’t hold it,” Aiden panted. “Come for me, Jer—come!”

Jeremy grabbed himself mindlessly, doing what his boy asked, and it was too much, too golden, too full, too shining—

“
Augh
!”

They screamed, the both of them, together, and Jeremy probably came first because he was so tight around Aiden. Aiden spasmed into his body, was just trapped inside the clench of Jeremy’s ass as Jeremy sprayed his own chest with come.

Jeremy’s entire body went limp. He sank into the sheets, the
mattress, feeling Aiden ease out of him, the silence of the two-story farmhouse punctuated by the harshness of their breathing. He could hear the echo of the big maple tree scratching their window and the clink of the water heater downstairs, seeking to fill up again after their shower.

Aiden’s lips feathering his cheek brought him from his fugue of the now comfortable symphony played by his home.

“Mm,” he breathed.

“Yeah,” Aiden replied. “Look, Jer—look at the moon.”

Jeremy turned his head toward the window with Ben’s old lace valances, remembering the first landscape he’d seen through it: the stark white of the snow and the blackness of the tree branches and the knife-edge reflection of the moon off of all that white.

This was the same area, he thought, but now he could see only patches of snow behind the rocks and in the shadow of the trees. Crocuses and pinks pushed up in front of the rocks, and the maple tree had leaf buds jutting daringly from the smooth brown of the spring bark.

“Pretty,” he said, lacing his fingers with Aiden’s as their hands lay on his stomach.

“Yeah,” Aiden murmured. “You want dinner now?”

“Not yet,” Jeremy said, because truth was, he was tired. He was close to healed, he thought, but not all the way there yet. Sleep was still his friend. “Let’s doze a little,” he murmured. “You want to sing me the song?”

“The song?” Aiden’s puzzlement could be heard as he fixed the covers around them, keeping them warm in the pre-spring chill.

“You know, the baby’s song.”

Aiden grunted. “You’ve got the better voice,” he lied, repositioning them so Jeremy lay drowsing on his chest and their fingers were laced together again.

“Boy….” Jeremy hated to whine. And he was too sleepy to finish that sentence.

But Aiden didn’t make him beg often, and it was never for very long.

His voice rumbled softly, but Jeremy heard it. That prayer for wellness as Aiden sang to the blackbird with the broken wings and galled eyes.

Take these broken wings and learn to fly….

Yes. This moment right here. And the next. These moments with Aiden, and he was as free as that bird.

I
T
WAS
warmer out, and Aiden and Craw usually took their lunch outside in the sunshine, standing up. Today, though, Aiden decided to take his lunch in the shop, because Jeremy and Rich were putting on a show, and Aiden wanted a front-row seat.

“Now, Rich, don’t hang that blue one there—”

“Why not? It’s a plastic Easter egg, who gives a—”

“It doesn’t look right there!” Jeremy insisted. “Now come on, man, this ain—erm—isn’t brain surgery.” He cast a polite look at Maeve Fullmer, one of their unapologetic crocheters, who was in the store looking for her next project. A midsize, middle-aged woman with vibrantly dyed dark hair, she’d been teaching fifth grade long enough for Aiden to remember her. “It’s hanging plastic eggs! You just need to have a sense of balance, you know? Don’t clump all the blue ones together unless you’re making a pattern on purpose, right?”

“I have a goddamned master’s degree in criminology, for fuck’s sake!” Rich snapped bitterly. He shook his fingers, which were tangled with the fishing line, the tape, and thumbtacks, and scattered lots of pointy little plastic things over the store. “I graduated valedictorian from my college class with a degree in criminology and at the top of my class at Quantico.”

Aiden couldn’t pass that bit up. “Yeah, well, if you’re so smart about criminology, Rich, how come you don’t know that little bit of decorating over in that corner is a crime?” He grinned, then took a bite of sandwich, knowing Rich hadn’t had his lunch break yet.

“
Fuck
!” Rich exclaimed, glaring at the three eggs in various contrasting shades of orange, hanging exactly even with no flair whatsoever.

“Watch your language!” Mrs. Fullmer exclaimed, and Rich cast an anguished look in her direction.

“Sorry, ma’am,” he apologized and then continued to bitch under his breath. “Of all the da—rned stupid things, I’m getting reamed ’cause I can’t hang up plastic eggs! What in the fu—un was I thinking!”

“Oh he—ck!” Jeremy mumbled, ambling around and picking the thumbtacks out of the yarn displays. “You know, Rich, you’re right—you’re a he—ckova lot smarter than this place. I don’t know what you did to fu—uhm, mess up, but it must have been
bad
,
buddy, to end up here.”

“I didn’t f—mess up,” Rich mumbled, accepting the handful of thumbtacks gingerly. “I picked this posting.”

Jeremy pulled back, as startled, probably, as Aiden. “Really? Boy, why in the hel—erm, heck would you volunteer to be posted in Bumfuck, Colorado?”

Aiden and Rich both stared at Jeremy.

“Jebus, Jer,” Aiden said after a shocked moment, “you don’t think that’s really the name of the town, do you?”

“Oh hell!” Jeremy swore and then looked up at Mrs. Fullmer. “Sorry, ma’am!” he said miserably.

Mrs. Fullmer had her face in her arms and was giggling helplessly. She waved a weak hand in forgiveness and went back to her quiet runaway laughter.

Aiden finished off his sandwich and went over to the trash can to brush off the crumbs. “He does have a good point,” Aiden told Rich. “Why would you elect to come here?”

Rich had found an apartment in town, one of the little cracker-box places Aiden had refused to let Jeremy contemplate because they looked too much like prison. Beyond that, he didn’t seem happy here—either working the mill or in the tiny backwater tourist town Aiden and Jeremy both loved.

“It was this or a desk job,” Rich said. “I didn’t mess up.” He scowled and swallowed and jammed a thumbtack into the sound tile in the ceiling. The egg hanging down didn’t match any sort of arrangement, but Jeremy and Aiden let him be.

“What happened?” Aiden pressed. Ariadne was coming home in two days. When she was ready, she was going to bring her baby into the shop and help Jeremy—or mostly, probably, just talk with the regulars and show off the baby—for as long as she could each day. This guy here—he didn’t fit. Aiden thought they needed to find a way for him to fit.

“I discharged my weapon several times,” Rich muttered. “I hit what I was aiming at.”

Aiden took a deep breath and handed Rich another egg, this one not quite so disastrously colored. “I did that once,” he said seriously.

Rich looked at him and nodded. “Desk duty does not fix that,” he said.

Aiden thought about all the time he’d spent with the machinery and the animals and the mountain in the morning. Jeremy was not the only one who fed the rabbits in their home for peace.

“This place fixed me,” he said honestly, and that constantly taut line between Rich’s eyes and around his bare forehead relaxed for maybe the first time since he’d come up to Craw’s place in January, cold as hell, bitchy as a cat in heat, telling Craw he was supposed to be their new helper guy. “Fixed Jeremy too,” Aiden said sincerely.

Jeremy looked up from where he was digging through some of the yarn flats for thumbtacks. He smiled then, sweetly, the sort of unguarded smile Aiden used to offer him chocolate-chip cookies for just to have it show up.

“Well, Aiden here helped,” he said loyally, and Aiden smiled back.