House of Mirrors (27 page)

By the time he’d dragged himself back to the carnival, he was in sore need of a bath and several days’ sleep, but first he had to find Jonah. He spotted him chatting while he worked with Claudia.

Jonah looked around, saw him, and his expressive eyes lit with joy, but he simply waved. That had to be good enough for now. Certainly Rafe no longer felt tired. He’d keep busy until he had time to find Jonah again. Alone.

Once the work was done, he stretched out on the blanket outside Treanor’s wagon, just to rest. He dozed off at once.

A hand resting on his shoulder woke him. Jonah sat on the ground next to him.

“I didn’t think I would see you again,” Jonah whispered. He sounded delighted, not accusing. He leaned over Rafe.

“I smell worse than a stable,” Rafe murmured a protest.

Jonah laughed quietly. The last of his laughter brushed against Rafe’s lips as he closed in for a kiss. The kiss started with affection and amusement, but soon twisted and slid into something far needier. The urgency brought a groan from him and Jonah at the same moment, and he would have smiled, but his mouth was too busy.

Jonah pulled away with a gasp and scrambled to his feet.

“Come,” he ordered, holding out his hand to Rafe.

Obediently Rafe grasped his hand and allowed Jonah to pull him to his feet. Without a word they walked quickly toward Sam’s trailer, together yet separated by several yards. If anyone saw them pass, they might recall Treanor’s accusations, but Jonah was beginning to believe that nearly everyone in the carnival already knew and no one seemed to really care all that much, so long as he and Rafe kept it behind closed doors.

The trailer was relatively cool for a change, a breeze blowing through the open window and erasing the last traces of Sam’s scent. It wasn’t body odor so much as an essence of the man that clung to his possessions, which Jonah still hadn’t removed from the trailer. Jonah felt a bittersweet pang at the inexorability of life that continued to flow on after a man left this mortal coil. Sam existed only in their memories now, and new things continued to unfold as he receded slowly into the past.

As Rafe closed the door behind them, Jonah filled the washbasin with water. He offered Rafe a cloth and a sliver of soap, then stood back to watch as he stripped and washed up. A swell of lust and excitement and relief filled him at the sight of Rafe’s long, lean body naked before him. A view he’d been quite sure he’d never see again only a couple of days ago. Ah, the vagaries of fate. One never knew what would happen next.

Water trickled in rivulets down Rafe’s chest, and Jonah longed to lean in and lick the droplets. He gazed at the other man’s face, flushed from the buffing of the towel—sharp, aquiline nose; hooded obsidian eyes; and that dramatic mustache and goatee, less well-defined than usual.

Rafe lifted his chin and regarded his face in the tiny mirror over the basin. “Should I shave?”

“Leave it,” Jonah said. “I like you a little rougher and unkempt.” He didn’t wait for Rafe to finish drying his arms and torso, but seized him and dragged him close. Rafe gave a little grunt as their bodies collided, chest to chest. Jonah breathed in the warmth of his breath, catching the odor of tobacco. He realized it had been some time since he’d seen Rafe with that pipe in his mouth.

Jonah kissed the stubble on Rafe’s jaw, felt it lightly abrade his lips, then moved on to the soft, warm lips and plucked at them gently. He flicked his tongue along the seam of Rafe’s mouth, and his lips parted as if he’d introduced a key to a lock. Jonah delved inside and tasted the dark recesses, curling his tongue around the sinuous wetness of Rafe’s tongue. He slid his hands down the wet back and grasped hard buttocks. God, the feeling of flesh beneath his hands and pressed against his body was enough to nearly bring him to the edge. Having almost lost Rafe forever, every sensation was even more precious and amazing as they touched and stroked and kissed.

His heart raced and his fingers trembled as he rushed to unbutton his shirt and trousers. Rafe knocked his hands out of the way and helped, shucking off Jonah’s clothing faster than one would think possible. Soon there was nothing between them except skin. They’d rarely had the opportunity to be completely naked together, and Jonah couldn’t get enough of Rafe’s hard body—both looking at it and touching. He glided his hands over sleek muscle; crisp, dark hair; sharp hip bones jutting against satin skin, and then…thick, solid cock.

Jonah grasped the heavy length and stroked from base to tip, remembering the first time they’d brought each other off that way, two strangers in the stuffy closeness of Rafe’s wagon. Here they were now in a different wagon, many, many weeks away from that first encounter, and oh, how things had changed. The charge of lust Jonah had felt that first time was nothing compared to what he felt now—because it was more than lust. Budding emotions had grown deeper and deeper the longer he’d known Rafe. If caring for another’s well-being more than your own, wanting the best for him even if it thwarted your own desires was love, then he was in it.

“Ah God, lad, the way you do that,” Rafe muttered, eyes closed as Jonah massaged his staff. “You’ll have me spent with just the touch of your hand.”

Jonah let go. “No. Not like this, fast and desperate. We have a bed at last; I plan to take full advantage of it.” And with that he pushed his palms against Rafe’s chest and knocked him backward with rough authority.

Rafe chuckled as he staggered back, and when his legs hit the edge of the cot, he dropped down. Sitting, he was at the perfect height to encounter Jonah’s erection, which trembled and nearly bumped against his chin.

A wild wave of desire crashed through Jonah—the desire to dominate and control. “Suck!” he commanded in a voice so thick and dark, he scarcely recognized it as his own.

Rafe growled low and reached for Jonah’s penis. He brought the tip to his mouth and licked the pearly drops collecting there. With his tongue still slipping over Jonah’s knob, Rafe raised his gaze and fixed it on Jonah’s face. So sparkling and dark were his eyes, they stole Jonah’s breath away. Or maybe it was the strength of that hand wrapped around his shaft and that hot mouth sucking him in deeper. Seeing Rafe’s lips stretched around his cock, his cheeks slightly hollowed from sucking sent another stab of bone-shaking lust through Jonah. He thrust his hips forward.

Rafe angled his head so that Jonah slid to the back of his throat, then released him in agonizing inches, leaving gleaming wet cock behind. Jonah hissed between his teeth as Rafe took him in again, scraping teeth against his tender skin. He began to suck in earnest while briskly rubbing.

“Yesss,” Jonah hissed, grasping Rafe’s head and pumping into his mouth. He didn’t mind releasing. It was Rafe’s orgasm he wanted to postpone until the man was buried in him. That thought did it. Imagining the feeling of cock filling his ass put him over the edge. He grunted and thrust once more before releasing. As the waves rolled through him in steady pulses, the moment of release seemed to be about more than physical relief of sexual tension. Jonah felt as if he were giving a part of himself to Rafe, and his lover was accepting that gift.

When Jonah was spent, Rafe let him go with a last small kiss on the head of his cock, then sat back smiling.

“And now you,” Jonah told him. “I need you inside me.”

He got the tin of lubricant and gave it to Rafe, then climbed onto the bed and laid back to draw his knees up high, offering himself. The act felt deeply meaningful to him, as if he were saying “
Here I am. Take me. Take all of me, this body and the soul that goes with it
.”

Cool, contained Rafe would laugh if Jonah expressed such a sentiment aloud, and so he held these thoughts close to his heart even as Rafe pushed inside him.

Rafe lubricated Jonah, preparing his opening before placing the tip of his cock at the entrance, and then he pushed inside. He felt a solemn significance to the moment, beyond the mere act of fucking. Hell, animals joined together all the time. They mated then parted, going on about their business. Why was it that humans imbued such meaning to the act simply because they were a higher functioning mammal? Soul, indeed.

And yet he couldn’t deny the weightiness, the emotion, the sense of coming home when he filled Jonah. No other man could provide that feeling. He truly believed Jonah was the one man for him and would admit it now—if only in the privacy of his thoughts.

The slick slide of his cock into the other man’s channel seemed to be the entire world to Rafe at this moment—all he needed or wanted. Their union. Their joining. But he wasn’t so far gone into emotional sentiment that he didn’t appreciate the pure visceral satisfaction of the constricting ring of muscle around the base of his cock, rubbing and rubbing.

He grunted as he thrust deeper and a little harder, burying himself to the hilt inside Jonah. Such pleasure. Such ecstasy to pull out and push again, friction and the smooth lubricant heating his cock in a delightful way.

“Does it hurt?” he muttered to Jonah. “What does it feel like?”

Jonah’s grimace disappeared as a quick smile flashed across his face. “We’ll turn about next time and you can know for yourself, if you’d like.”

Rafe’s own anus clenched at the thought. He’d not had more than Jonah’s finger inside him yet and couldn’t quite imagine such a stretching as he was giving to Jonah now. He watched in avid lust the point of their union, the distended sphincter clasping around his thickness.

“It hurts in a good way,” Jonah answered his question. “Stretched. Burning. But oh, inside…there’s a place you’re touching that’s like magic.”

The words inflamed Rafe. He withdrew and thrust again, determined to hit that spot, and was rewarded with a deep groan from his bed partner.

“More. Oh God, more!” Jonah grasped his knees and pulled them higher, tilting his pelvis to an even better angle.

Rafe gritted his teeth and forced himself to hold back at least a little as he began to pump. But he felt like a wild thing, out of control and desperate to take and possess every part of Jonah. He rammed into him and cursed. “Aw, Christ.”

As the moment of crisis gathered deep in his groin and then began to swirl through every part of him, Rafe was shocked by the stinging in his eyes. Moved to tears? Really? He blinked away the proof of his emotional connection and thrust again.

And the dam burst.

He cried out as he came, a wordless, needy sound. Then he gulped it back, suppressing his desire to yell. They were in the midst of the encampment, and wagon walls weren’t thick.

“Look at me,” Jonah’s strangled voice commanded.

Rafe forced his eyes open and gazed down at the intense green eyes staring back at him. What he saw in Jonah’s eyes was beyond beautiful—such depth of feeling that a man like him surely didn’t deserve to receive.

“Jonah,” he murmured as the last of his release washed through him and receded. “What am I to do with you?”

Love me, I suspect
. Rafe almost thought he could hear the words trembling on the air between them, but Jonah only smiled and wrapped his arms around him. He drew Rafe’s shuddering body onto him and held him.

“I’m glad you’re back. I missed you.”

The words drifted into Rafe’s half-dreaming mind and made him smile before he fell into a deep and dreamless sleep.

* * *

The next morning he woke before dawn.

Jonah, already awake, lay next to him and rubbed the top of his head. “I bet you’ll be glad to sail back to the land of bathtubs and hot water,” he said, but smiled, showing no bitterness that Rafe would leave him behind.

Rafe wasn’t sure he entirely liked this change in Jonah. He was just as affectionate as always, but more cautious in public and less likely to demand answers in private. Did he still crave Rafe?

He thought of the night before and realized that was an easy question to answer. Yes. And this less abject manner was ideal, of course. Jonah showed desire without the edge of desperation he’d had before. That was good, Rafe reminded himself.

Rafe looked around, making certain no one would spot him before he walked off barefoot and silent to his wagon. When he looked back, Jonah wasn’t watching.

Since he’d first set eyes on Jonah, Rafe had always been aware of where he worked or to whom he talked. This instinctive awareness was hardly new, but somehow the need had grown stronger. With Mindy in charge, Rafe no longer needed to be attentive to every single detail of the show, which meant he let himself dream and think more. Freedom. He was about to walk back into his old life, but he felt freer than he had…ever.

He’d let go of his anger toward Edward sometime over the last few days. As he’d ridden over the American landscape in a ridiculous red jacket as the show’s advanceman, he didn’t have much else to do beside sing and think. He’d done plenty of both. And all the words Jonah had whispered to him that night he’d confessed had come back. Sometimes he was annoyed as he thought of them—what did Jonah know of the matter of a murdering brother? Why was he so certain Rafe’s heart contained anything other than blood? Lust made a man sentimental.

And other times, Jonah’s phrases felt like a benediction. That’s when the word “love” had lodged in Rafe’s mind—uncomfortable, exciting, and full of more promise than the first days of spring when the show set off on its circuit.

Now Rafe leaned against Chaucer—he and the horse had become good friends during their days on the road as he’d acted as advanceman—and watched Mindy and Jonah argue with Parinsky. They were discussing the need to repaint the patent medicine wagon. “It can wait until the end of the season, for chrisssake,” Mindy said. “It’s not an official part of the goddamn show, Parinsky, and we’re busier than a whorehouse in a gold rush town. But maybe you ought to do it later, Talbot. You got an artistic hand at slopping the stuff around. Bigger letters is what you need. Maybe some gold shadowing.”

“Sure.” Jonah kicked at a clump of grass. He tilted his head and looked at the wagon. When he turned his head like that, a lock of hair slid over his forehead, into his eyes.