The Foster Family (31 page)

It took forever. The whole world crashed and rumbled round them, and Charlie held him as though none of it mattered. Nothing existed outside of Malcolm’s nervous breakdown. Charlie was never going to see him the same way after this. How would they ever go back to the dynamic Charlie claimed to crave once he’d seen Malcolm fall to pieces?

But all Charlie seemed inclined to do was hold on to him, stroke his hair, and murmur things that sounded like praise.

“What are you saying?” Malcolm growled, pulling himself away and wiping a hand across his face.

Charlie cupped the back of his neck, preventing him from getting far. “What are you hearing?”

Malcolm looked at him and was trapped in the clear blue of his gaze. “I—I don’t know. Charlie, I don’t know.”

Was it possible he’d never noticed how big Charlie’s hands were? Or had he forgotten? They cupped his face, now, one under his chin, the other still around the back of his head, and they were so strong. So gentle. So compelling. There was nothing he could do to stop the kiss Charlie planted on him, nothing to do but kiss back, to follow his lead and drink in the acceptance while it lasted.

The gentle touch of Charlie’s tongue to his lips caught him off guard, and the gasp he let out could have been an invitation. Charlie licked delicately along his teeth, swiped at his tongue, and dipped past into his mouth. There was control in the gesture Malcolm couldn’t remember his lover ever executing before. It made him dizzy, and he clutched at Charlie’s arms to steady the world around him.

“Bed,” Charlie said softly as he pulled out of the kiss. “Lie down before you fall down.”

Malcolm should have protested the order, but his knees wobbled and the floor rocked, and it was Charlie’s grip around his waist that held him up.

“Bed,” he agreed hoarsely.

“Lie down. I’ll get you some water.”

Malcolm protested, holding on to Charlie’s hand. “I’m fine. Stay.”

“Lie down.” Charlie pushed him over. “Get comfortable. I’ll be right back, promise.”

A promise. Now that, he could depend on. Charlie never made them lightly. So he nodded and lay back and stared at the ceiling and tried to get the stray wisps of thought in order in his head.

Charlie was in charge. Jobless Charlie. Homeless Kerry. Malcolm fingered the scars down his side, one round bump after the other, faint, but dependably there. Charlie had sworn like a trucker at that woman. Told her there was something he loved. Something he wouldn’t give up. Something in a silver frame, shattered in the bottom of a battered cardboard box sitting in the trunk of Malcolm’s car. And the living room shelves would come, but Kerry wasn’t there to fix them. Malcolm didn’t know how to fix them—

“Hey.”

The bed dipped and the room warmed because Charlie crawled over him and stretched out beside him, curled slightly on his side and holding his head up with one hand. “Where are you?”

“Broken shelves and broken pictures and….” Malcolm was well aware he was making no sense, that he sounded high or drunk.

Charlie caressed his cheek and bent over him to kiss his slightly parted lips. His tongue sought entrance again, and Malcolm parted his lips further to allow it. Because it felt nice. He wanted the slippery wetness, the connection, the certainty that Charlie was still his rock.

“There’s the Internet for the shelf,” Charlie said. “And a picture-frame shop for the broken glass.” He let his thumb linger on Malcolm’s cheekbone. “Nothing irreparable.”

Malcolm blinked and met his gaze. “Say that again.” He made it a command, but the whisper in his voice gave away the plea.

“Nothing irreparable,” Charlie said again. “I said to get comfortable. Why are you still in wet jeans?”

Malcolm continued to stare at him. “What do you plan to do?”

Charlie grinned, a softly wicked expression. “If I’m your rock, then I fully intend to pin you between the rock and the hard place, Malcolm Holmes.”

“What? Are you a switch now?”

In answer, Charlie bent and took his mouth in a kiss that literally curled Malcolm’s toes. “When you need me to be, yes.”

“I didn’t say I needed—”

Another toe-curling kiss accompanied by one big hand slipping over his chest, down his stomach, and under his jeans. The touch not only didn’t linger on the scars but ignored them completely. Malcolm was used to Charlie lingering, acknowledging the marks of his past. He trembled as Charlie’s fingers bypassed the sensitive area, whimpered when his tongue thrust deeper and his fingertips brushed the head of Malcolm’s flaccid cock. It was a tiny trickle of sensation, there and gone, and Charlie’s hand was traveling back up along the length of his torso to cup his chin.

“Here’s what I know,” Charlie said, holding Malcolm’s face still and looking into his eyes. “If you need me to hide the knives and the blades, if you need me to hold the pieces together while you disintegrate in the rain, then you need this.”

Disintegrate.
There was no being put back together from that. There was no recovery. Shattered bits could be pieced back into a cracked and imperfect whole. Powdered self was nothing. It blew away on the wind. It trickled down the sewers in the rain. Malcolm swallowed hard against the encroaching tightness in his throat and blinked away the sting behind his lids.

Charlie pushed an arm under his shoulders and draped a leg over his. “Here’s what else I know to be true. When I fuck you tonight, Mal, you’re going to dissolve into nothing.”

Was that supposed to be reassuring?

“You’re going to melt and I’ll absorb you, and you’ll be part of me and you’ll never doubt that I love you. That I am never leaving you. That nothing,
nothing
will ever be able to come between us again.”

“Kerry.” Malcolm formed the name. His heart bled it. His voice failed him.

“Not even Kerry. We were never meant to have a boy between us.”

“You want him.” A whisper of sounds this time that formed the thought, albeit lamely, and Charlie smiled.

“We both do, and if he comes back, we’ll figure it out. But he won’t be between us. He’ll be beside us. With us. We’ll figure it out.”

Malcolm finally found a modicum of motor control and lifted a hand to touch Charlie’s face. “Where did you come from?”

“Forged in the fires of Leslie Brixton’s personal hell.” He smiled, and this was a broad, playful smile that warmed Malcolm in a way nothing else on earth ever did. “However much I hated that job, and eventually her, it gave me something we both needed.” To prove his point, he bent for another kiss, and Malcolm lost track of everything but that heat and desire and total annihilation Charlie could wreak that Malcolm had never been subject to before.

It left him breathless and numb, floating in a sea of uncertainty. It wasn’t how their dynamic worked. It was too close to the fall before he hit bottom where blades and blood were the only things he could actually feel anymore.

When he stared up at Charlie after that kiss, all of this must have shown on his face because Charlie smiled and lazily traced nothing in particular over his skin. “Do you trust me?”

He had to. He absolutely had to or there was nothing left. It terrified him to be this guy, the one on the bottom. The one not in control. Yet Charlie waited patiently for his answer, and what other answer was there to give but “yes”?

This time when Charlie bent, it was to kiss then lick at the small hollow at the center of Malcolm’s collarbone. “You’ll like this, Mal. You’ll like what I can do for you when I’m allowed to use my own judgment. I’ve learned a lot under you in fifteen years, you know.” He licked lightly over a nipple and Malcolm sighed. Then he nipped, and Malcolm’s body burst off the bed and some animal noise came out of him as the tingle of
that
knifed through his body.

“What was that?”

Charlie chuckled. “You should pierce them. That would make it even better.” He nipped at the other one, and Malcolm twitched and groaned, savoring the sharp zing of sensation that went right to his balls.

“God, Charlie!”

“Yeah,” Charlie promised.

Malcolm had the fleeting thought that he could get numb to that touch, but Charlie had already moved on to search out other sensitive spots like just below his ribs, where a bite had to be strong enough to leave a mark, he was sure, but the resulting throb of pleasure that pulsed through his entire body made it worth it. Or the inside of his thigh, revealed as Charlie stripped his jeans away, so close to his balls and dick it was terrifying. And exhilarating. Or the back of his knee, and for that, he either had a leg in the air, exposing his ass, which was nerve-racking, or was sprawled on his stomach, completely at Charlie’s mercy. Which was… soothing in a way he hadn’t anticipated.

“God, Charlie,” he breathed.

“Yeah.” Charlie’s weight descended on him, full across his back, legs straddling Malcolm’s. “I know, right?”

Malcolm breathed out a huge sigh. “Right,” he agreed, setting his head on his pillow and sinking into the bed under Charlie’s weight. “So right.”

“I know, Mal.”

“You really think you’re going to fuck me?” Malcolm asked, bemused by the idea now, rather than terrified. At least for the moment, because in that moment, Charlie was the best blanket ever.

“Roll over.”

Charlie didn’t get up so much as lift himself to hands and feet, like a tent over Malcolm and wait there for Malcolm to roll onto his back.

“Now what?” Malcolm asked, settling in and sighing as Charlie came back down and lay on top of him again.

“More of the same.” Charlie kissed him then, devouring every sound and nipping at his lips until Malcolm gripped the back of his head and held him still long enough to get his tongue deep into Charlie’s mouth.

The result was spectacular. Charlie sagged, his cock hardened and dug into Malcolm’s hip, and he was the one making the sounds and melting.

“That’s what I’m talking about,” Malcolm said when they both had to make room for breath.

“Keep talking, smart-ass.” Charlie grinned at him, then slipped his grip and slithered down his body, kissing and licking as he went.

Malcolm tensed, waiting for the teeth and the shards of pain, but there was only heat and wetness until Charlie’s face was buried in the thick thatch at Malcolm’s groin.

“Jesus, you smell good, Mal,” Charlie said.

“Just be careful what you bite down there.”

Charlie laughed, and the vibration hummed along Malcolm’s skin. He shivered and groaned, spread his legs as Charlie maneuvered, and the next thing he knew, Charlie’s mouth was sinking over his cock. No warning. No preamble. Just hot, tight suction that made Malcolm’s eyes roll back and his throat close around a shout.

He was still struggling for breath and coherency when something else caught his attention, and it wasn’t Charlie’s mouth. “What are you doing?”

“Hand me lube and you’ll see.”

“Charlie….”

Charlie looked up from between his legs, and it was so familiar a sight. And so foreign, because he wasn’t waiting for a command or looking for approval. He was just looking, pausing, patiently waiting for Malcolm to catch the fuck up.

“Hand me the lube,” he said again.

Malcolm stared down at him.

“Trust me?” Charlie asked.

Malcolm lifted a hand to rub a palm over one nipple, remembering that bright spot of pain and focus and release of tension and nodded. “Yeah.”

“Then hand over the lube, baby.”

Malcolm reached into the bedside drawer and fished it out.

He let Charlie take it. He wanted to follow this wherever it was going, because the tightness had closed up inside him, then exploded and ripped him open, and instead of backing away from the mess, Charlie had crawled inside him and begun to clean it all up. To put things back where they belonged. Some dusty bits of Malcolm’s psyche were being rubbed clean and put back, and he hadn’t even known those bits had fallen loose.

He dropped his head to the pillow when the familiar sound of the lube snapping open reached him. The cool touch of it at his entrance wasn’t a surprise, but he flinched anyway.

“I know it’s been a long time,” Charlie soothed, rubbing his finger over the delicate skin and gently prodding. “Don’t worry. This isn’t going to be a bad thing.”

“A long time.” Malcolm sighed. “Forever. And never you.”

Charlie kissed him, on the ball sac, maybe because it was closest to his lips, and shushed him. “It’ll be good.”

“It’s backward,” Malcolm said. It wasn’t really a protest, exactly, because Charlie was popping his slick finger inside, just a fraction. Barely at all, and it wasn’t a bad thing. It was just….

“It’s me, serving you.”

Malcolm lifted his head and stared down at him. “Have we ever talked this much during sex? Ever?”

Charlie grinned up at him. “Are you complaining?” He lifted an eyebrow, and in that instant, the sensation of being breached for real sent Malcolm into a mini mental tailspin. He couldn’t have responded if he’d wanted to.

Charlie kept his attention, his clear blue eyes steady and reassuring as he worked his finger inside Malcolm and slid his tongue gently over Malcolm’s cock and balls.

“Okay?” he asked.

Malcolm groaned as that finger dug deep inside him, and he dropped flat onto his back again.

“Charlie,” he breathed.

“Yeah.” Another promise, this one accompanied by a long, slow swallow of his cock and a steady, gentle thrusting finger. It wasn’t enough to hurt, even when Charlie added another. It was the constant barrage of sensation, the sucking and the stretch and the feeling as though he was being possessed but not used. Not used like the way he used Charlie when he did this. Not used the way they had used all those other men between them because Malcolm couldn’t bring himself to get this close.

When Charlie added a third finger, the stretch became real, and Malcolm moaned, tried to wrap his head around the idea that Charlie planned on actually fucking him. How was that supposed to work when they woke up the next day and—

“Stop thinking so damn loud,” Charlie admonished, and Malcolm sighed at the loss of Charlie’s mouth on his cock.