Signs of Life (26 page)

Jeremy clutched him tight, caressing Kai’s face with his lips as he murmured nonsense to him, sweeping his hands soothingly up and down Kai’s back as Kai’s broken moans slowly died away.

Kai finally pulled out and collapsed at Jeremy’s side, and Jeremy immediately rolled into his arms, burrowing in, kissing Kai gently. Kai clutched him close, delving his fingers into the cleft of Jeremy’s ass, growling as he felt the slickness there, another ragged exclamation bursting from him. “Mine.”

This time he heard an answering whisper: “Yours.”

JEREMY SAT
back and sipped his glass of wine, watching as Kai cleared the table and loaded the dishwasher. He had insisted, saying the one who cooks shouldn’t have to clean too. Seeing Kai doing these mundane domestic tasks reminded him of watching Brent do the same thing, and it was a pleasant memory, bringing a wave of nostalgia, not pain. Jeremy was finding more and more thoughts of Brent were like visiting a beloved old friend, although every now and then a song or a smell brought the feeling more sharply and painfully into focus. It usually didn’t last long, though.

Jeremy drank in the sight of Kai in loose sweatpants and a tight T-shirt, his feet bare. He looked completely and utterly at home, the bare feet almost more intimate than if he had been completely naked. Thinking of Kai being naked made Jeremy think of what they’d done just a short while earlier, and he shifted in his chair, feeling the soreness in his ass, knowing deep inside him some of Kai still remained; it was a strange, heady feeling. Kai had claimed him inside and out, and even though Jeremy was still reeling from Kai’s declaration of love, he felt sated and mellow with happiness.

Kai finished cleaning up and topped off his own wineglass, and Jeremy stood and held out his hand, leading Kai to the patio and pulling him down to sit with him on the overstuffed loveseat. A fire crackled merrily and Kai curled into him, his head on Jeremy’s shoulder as they watched the snow falling outside, the wind whipping it up into little eddies and swirls. Jeremy wrapped his arm around Kai and relaxed back into the couch, sipping his wine. Their feet were propped on the small coffee table, and Jeremy smiled as Kai’s bare toes flirted with his own sock-covered ones.

“How was your week?” Jeremy asked, kissing the top of Kai’s head. “Did that girl you were worried about come back to class? What’s her name? Sheila?”

“Shauna,” Kai answered, “and yes, she was back. I’m still worried about her, though.”

Jeremy listened as Kai articulated his fears about Shauna’s home life and what she must be going through trying to protect her son from a violent bully.

“I get why she can’t make school a priority when she has Dante to take care of,” Kai said, frustration in his voice, “but that’s what’s going to give her the best chance of escaping this life, the cycle of poverty and violence. Nursing is a well-respected, well-paying job, and I know she’d be good at it. If only she hadn’t gotten pregnant.” He sighed heavily. “But she did, and I know she’s doing the best she can. All I can do is be there for her.”

Jeremy was silent, and then he asked quietly, “What about your own parents, siblings, if any? You never talk about your family.”

Kai rubbed Jeremy’s feet with his own. “My father was killed in a drive-by shooting when I was a toddler, and my mom had to work three jobs to support me and my older brother. I think it got to be too much for her because one day she just never came home, and it was easy for us to be recruited into the same gang that my father had been in.”

“That’s right, you did say you had an older brother. Where is he now, still in prison?”

“God, Jeremy, I don’t know if he’s even alive, and it’s been more than ten years since I last saw him. He was arrested in the same sting that I was: drug sting. A whole bunch of us went down, my brother especially hard since he was the supplier’s main pipeline to the street. I was just a mule.”

“You carried drugs?” Jeremy stroked Kai’s arm and kissed the top of his head again.

“Yeah. I was skinny and quick, knew the neighborhoods like the back of my hand, never got pinched by the POPO. That’s why my gang name was L’il Slick.” Kai snorted softly.

“How did you get caught?”

“Typical Vice scenario: round up a bunch of low-level players, lean on them a little, see who or what they give up in exchange for promises of a reduced sentence. They said they just wanted names in exchange, and a lot of the crew gave
me
up, seeing as how I was a juvenile and they thought I’d get a lighter sentence than any of the rest of them.”

Kai took a sip of his wine, then continued, “They set me up, and I was caught with a large amount of cocaine, enough that it took the charges beyond mere ‘possession’ to ‘possession with intent to distribute,’ several counts. I actually got six years, supposed to be put away until my twenty-first birthday, but I got out in two due to overcrowding and good behavior. But when I was first caught, my brother went into hiding.”

“You said he was caught, though, too. Did you give him up?”

Kai laughed mirthlessly. “No, it was actually his baby mama. She was one of the ones rounded up in the first wave, and I heard that an asshole Vice cop leaned on her hard, threatened to kill my brother in front of her and their daughter, then take the daughter away and give her to another family. The girl was only eighteen years old, scared, didn’t know any better. She told the cops where to find Antonio. He went down hard, sentenced to fifteen years, had lots of priors.”

“Jesus, Kai. Do you know what happened to your niece?”

“No,” Kai said softly. “I didn’t even know the girlfriend’s real name. Antonio always called her Babyface. Or bitch or ho behind her back,” he finished bitterly. “Gang groupies were a dime a dozen, and all the girls were shared between them. I can’t be sure that Isabela was really his daughter.”

Kai suddenly sat up straight, setting his wine glass down on the coffee table before facing Jeremy squarely.

“Why don’t you ever mention your own child, Jeremy? I don’t even know if it was a boy or a girl.”

Jeremy swallowed with difficulty, setting his own glass down next to Kai’s and scrubbing his hands over his face roughly. Kai looked at him steadily, not retracting his question, but he put his hand on Jeremy’s knee, giving Jeremy that touch, that connection.

“He was a boy,” Jeremy finally said hoarsely. “Zachary Evan.”

Kai rubbed his hand gently over Jeremy’s knee, and Jeremy threaded their fingers together, staring down at their joined hands.

“He was a lovely dream, Kai,” Jeremy whispered. “A dream that wasn’t—that wasn’t real to me, not yet. Do you understand? I hadn’t seen him. I didn’t know what color hair he had, or whose nose he had, whose mouth. He was an abstract, a beautiful idea, but not real.”

Kai squeezed Jeremy’s fingers, his eyes full of compassion. Jeremy searched his face for traces of judgment and saw none. It gave him the courage to describe how he walked away from Leticia and Keith at the doctor’s office, how he paid them off without a backward glance and never spoke to them again.

“My husband, the man I loved, had died in my arms only a month before. I couldn’t—I couldn’t face going through the same thing with the baby, couldn’t face making him
real
,
someone else I had to say good-bye to, and then let go of. I was barely hanging on as it was; I’m not sure I would have survived that.”

Kai reached up with his free hand and stroked Jeremy’s face, and Jeremy was relieved he didn’t say anything. What was there to say, really? He appreciated Kai’s ability to just listen without feeling like he had to offer platitudes or empty advice, or think he had to babble to fill an uncomfortable silence. He turned his face into Kai’s palm and kissed it.

“Kai, I—what you said earlier about—”

“About loving you?” Kai whispered. “Jeremy, I don’t need or expect you to—”

“I know, Gorgeous,” Jeremy interrupted gently. “You just need to know that, no matter what happens between us or where we go from here, I don’t want to have children. You and I have never talked about it, and if we want our relationship to keep moving forward, I just feel like that’s something I need to put out there. I don’t have the strength to light any more candles.”

Jeremy watched as Kai registered that, sussing out the meaning, and he swallowed hard before he said, “Well, I guess up to now I hadn’t thought about it much. I’m so busy with my career, and at the moment, I’ve got all the children I could possibly ever want Monday through Friday, seven forty-five to two thirty. But someday—I don’t know.”

It was Jeremy’s turn to squeeze Kai’s fingers in comfort, his gaze steady, unwavering. Kai firmed his lips and said with resolution, “What I said in bed, Jeremy, I didn’t say it just
because
we were in bed. I meant it, and your happiness is everything to me. If it ever comes up, we’ll deal with it together.”

Jeremy felt relief and emotion flood him with warmth, and he pulled Kai close, the thought running through his mind,
One more candle and it glows just as brightly.

THE NEXT
morning Jeremy woke up out of sorts, and he lay there in bed analyzing the reason why. Part of it was Kai’s side of the bed was cold, Kai nowhere in sight. Jeremy went from shying away from the intimacy of sleeping with someone again to wanting to savor every moment he had with Kai during their weekends. Most nights Jeremy wrapped around him and spooned him all night, and his favorite mornings were when he woke to Kai’s hot mouth on various parts of his body.

Jeremy’s cock throbbed, and he rubbed himself, knowing the other part of his crankiness was the emotional overload of the night before. He never regretted sharing things with Kai, but it had been difficult to articulate his feelings about Zachary, to make them make sense to anybody not in his own head. It felt good to talk about it, but now Jeremy felt raw and vulnerable, and not having Kai in bed with him when he woke up didn’t help.

Jeremy got up and pulled on a pair of sleep pants over his nakedness, and he padded off to the kitchen, where he saw Kai standing in front of the island, bare chested and wearing a pair of sleep pants of his own, stirring a cup of coffee. A feeling of possessiveness and lust roared through Jeremy, and he stalked him, coming up behind him and caging him in against the island with his arms and body.

“I don’t like it when I wake up hard and aching, ready to fuck, and my man isn’t in bed with me,” he growled.

He smirked with pure male satisfaction when he heard Kai’s husky moan, and he trailed his lips along Kai’s bare shoulder, bringing one hand down to fondle him through his pants, bringing him to full hardness with a few long strokes.

Jeremy hooked his fingers in Kai’s waistband and yanked the pants down to his thighs, biting down hard in the junction between neck and shoulder before hissing, “Put your hands flat on the counter and bend over.”

Kai obeyed immediately, starting to move his hips in slow circles, rubbing Jeremy’s cock with his luscious ass. Jeremy stepped on the crotch of Kai’s pants and pushed them the rest of the way down, kicking them away before shoving Kai’s feet farther apart with his own. Kai undulated against him again, and Jeremy smacked one muscular cheek sharply with the flat of his hand.

“Don’t move,” he warned, “or I’ll stop and make you stand there while I jerk off all over you and then walk away.”

“Stop what?” Kai whispered goadingly. “You’re not doing anything yet. Do it!”

Jeremy smacked his ass again, then spit into his palm and reached around, taking Kai’s cock in his slick hand and starting to stroke him slowly, base to tip, rotating his palm over the head. Kai moaned, and Jeremy hissed again, “Don’t move, or I’ll stop.”

Jeremy jacked him leisurely, lazily, varying the speed and pressure, cradling Kai’s heavy balls with one palm. When they tightened and drew up dangerously, Jeremy backed off, bringing Kai to the brink again and again but not letting him go over until Kai’s back was sheened with sweat and little whimpers were breaking from his lips as he fought to not to move, his fingers flexing and scrabbling at the unforgiving granite of the countertop.

“Beg me. Beg me to let you come,” Jeremy growled into Kai’s ear, thrusting his tongue hotly inside the sensitive shell as he pumped Kai hard and fast. Kai arched his neck back, his mouth open in a silent cry. Jeremy slowed his strokes again, trailing his lips over Kai’s stubbly cheek as he whispered, “Beg me.”

“Please, baby, let me come,” Kai rasped brokenly. “Please, I need to come.”

Jeremy pushed his own pants down to his thighs, snugging his enormous erection firmly in the crack of Kai’s ass before reaching around again and giving Kai what he needed, jacking him relentlessly.

“Give it up for me now. Shoot your load for me,” Jeremy encouraged, starting a firm massage with the hand cradling Kai’s balls, milking him. Kai’s knees were shaking, and he threw his head back and screamed. Jeremy cupped his hand over the head of Kai’s cock, feeling the hot jets filling his palm and stringing over his fingers, long pulses that seemed to go on and on.

Kai collapsed down to his elbows against the countertop, and Jeremy slicked himself with Kai’s come, then shoved two wet fingers deep inside his ass, stretching him, coating him on the inside with his fluid. Kai could barely stand, and Jeremy wrapped his arm like an iron bar around his waist, holding him as he lined up and thrust, his own knees threatening to collapse at the feel of Kai’s stubborn muscles fighting the broad head of Jeremy’s dick before surrendering and letting him in.

“Oh my
God
,” Jeremy groaned. “Jesus!” He froze as he fought not to come in the first ten seconds, and now the tables were turned as Kai bore down, rotating his hips in slow circles as he massaged Jeremy’s bare cock with his tight passage.

“Feels good, don’t it?” Kai said coarsely. “Hot ass takin’ that cock. Fuck me now, fuck me like you mean it!”

Jeremy gritted his teeth, digging his fingers into Kai’s hips, fighting to hold him still, but he couldn’t stop Kai from fluttering those muscles against him, and with a roar Jeremy shoved balls deep, starting a hard, fast rhythm that filled the kitchen with the sound of slapping skin, of male grunts and hoarse groans.