The Rebuilding Year (16 page)

John’s hands fisted in Ryan’s hair. His hips took up the rhythm, jerking upward. “Oh, Ryan, oh, Ryan, oh, man.” Ryan’s mouth filled with cream and he pulled back, gagging a little, letting it dribble out onto John’s belly as he kept up the pressure and rhythm with his hands. John shot across his chest and abdomen, slick and white with the smell of sex. Ryan stroked until the last shudders were done, and then reached for a tissue and wiped his lips. Clearly some practice was in order at the end there. But he had the general idea.

John’s hands in his hair guided him up the bed, and down against his shoulder. Ryan laughed with satisfaction, and took a kiss, sharing the flavor. John moaned and shuddered again.

“Good plan,” he breathed eventually into Ryan’s hair. “Well thought-out, well executed.”

“Thank you.”

John’s arms tightened around Ryan’s shoulders. “Give me a minute to get feeling back in my legs and it’s your turn.”

“I’m fine.”

John’s hand slid down and over his hard dick, drawing an involuntary sound from Ryan. “You’re excellent. And gonna be better.”

Okay. Planned for this too.
Ryan rolled onto his back beside John on the bed. He lay flat, letting his weight press him into the mattress, as John wiped himself off. John rolled up on one elbow and slowly opened Ryan’s shirt, and unzipped him. John’s mouth tickled across his skin.

“You need to lift up a bit,” John said, fingers busy in his briefs. “So I can get these off.”

“I like it like this,” Ryan returned. “You naked, me half-dressed. Sort of a master-slave thing.” When John paused, he added. “What? Too hard to work around a little clothing?”

John kissed him slowly. Mouth, neck, chest, nipple, navel, hip. And there he paused and looked Ryan in the eyes. “What do you think I’m going to say when I see your leg?” he asked gently.

Ryan could feel the heat of his blush.
Busted.
“I don’t know.” He worked for a light tone. “The last person I was naked in bed with said,
ew, gross!
”

“Dating fifteen-year-olds, were we?” John asked calmly, kissing his belly.

“She was twenty-four.”

“Damned immature for twenty-four.” John licked over his hip and looked up again. “Ryan, I’m thirty-seven. I’ve seen dead bodies. I saw all three of my children born. I’m not likely to be bothered by a few scars.”

A few scars.
Ryan sat up, staring John in the eyes, pinning him in place. He yanked off his shirt, dragged down his jeans, his shorts. Everything went on the floor. Then he rolled over, naked, and buried his face in the pillow.

John said nothing, not an intake of breath, not a sound. After a moment, Ryan felt warm fingers on his back. They traced slowly downward. Ryan knew what they were touching, although half the time he couldn’t feel the touch.

That beam that fell on him had been flaming hot, and heavy, and he’d been pinned for a while with his suit ripped. His shoulders weren’t bad. Just a few patches of paler skin where the grafts hadn’t matched. But from his left hip, downward and inward, the real mess began. Deep ropes of scars, gaps in his thigh and calf where dead, cooked flesh had been removed. The skin was fish-belly white, where it wasn’t red or silver-grey. On his ass, on his right thigh, the sites where grafts had been harvested showed their own scars, neat and surgical.

John said nothing, just trailed his fingers over the mess. Ryan couldn’t take the silence. “Pretty, huh?”

“Must have hurt like hell.”

“Wasn’t fun.”

John slid a fingertip around Ryan’s left knee. “Looks like you had a bunch of surgeries.”

“One more than the insurance would pay for.”

“Well, they got you walking. That had to be a minor miracle.”

“More like a major one.” The tightness in Ryan’s chest was easing. “They didn’t think I would keep the leg.”

John just bent and kissed Ryan’s left ankle. The one he would have lost. “Roll over, Ry.”

Ryan turned. The damage was much less visible from this side. Although if you knew where to look, the scars from the surgeries and grafting sites were scattered across him, and the deep burns wrapped around below his knee.

John began at his ankles, kissing his way up Ryan’s legs. “If anything hurts, tell me.”

“Will you kiss it better?”

“I might.”

Ryan pointed at his hip. “There.” A soft brush of a kiss on skin.

His stomach. “There.” Warm lips, a rasp of teeth.

“There.” And oh, yes, John’s mouth where he wanted it, John’s hands, John’s tongue. Ryan closed his eyes, lay back, and abandoned himself to sensation.

John gathered Ryan in against his side and pulled the covers up over them. Ryan made a soft sleepy sound and curled tighter. The man had to be exhausted. John was wide awake.

It had taken everything he had to not react to Ryan’s scars. When Ry rolled over…God! He hadn’t imagined anything that bad. He thought he’d done okay. That tight, false tone in Ry’s voice had faded. And there was no doubt about how hard Ryan had come in his mouth. He had swallowed it down, taken everything, wishing he could take the pain with it.

He didn’t need the details to imagine Ryan, pinned to the ground in some burning hell, as the fire ate into his leg. He brushed a kiss over the sleeping man’s hair, silky dark strands against his lips. He wondered how close he had come to never meeting this man. It seemed inconceivable. But Ryan could have died. He’d lost his career, but not his life. Was it selfish to be glad that his lover would never again have to walk into a burning building?

Ryan murmured against his chest.

“Hm?” John queried.

“I said, you’re awfully good at that. For a novice.”

“Native talent.” John repeated the kiss. “You’re not too bad yourself.”

“It’s not that different from doing a woman. More fun though, and a lot more to play with.”

“Cynthia didn’t really like me doing that. I’ll take your word for it.”

“What about your other girlfriends?” Ryan asked, his voice clearer.

“Are you being nosy?”

“Maybe.”

John laughed contentedly. “Doesn’t matter. There were no others.”

Ryan rolled up on one elbow. “None? Ever?”

“In high school I was obsessed with Cynthia for years before she consented to go out with me. And after the divorce…I don’t know. I dated some but…it just never went that far.” He just hadn’t wanted it enough to be worth the effort. The last years of his marriage, there hadn’t been much sex. He’d gotten used to going without. Or he thought he had. Current evidence might contradict that. He slid his hip against Ryan, lightly.

“Again?” Ryan laughed softly. “What? Are you taking Viagra?”

“With you around? Who needs it?” John rolled on his side, pulling Ryan in close, already rocking, thrusting.

“Oh God.” Ryan’s mouth came down on his again, and they were lost in the heat of friction, and the press of body on body.

John woke to the sun shining in his eyes. He squinted. There was a gap in the curtains that he had never noticed. Probably because he had never slept in until…holy crap, eleven thirty! Against his side, Ryan still lay like a dead man.

John nudged him. “Wake up.”

“Huh?” Ryan burrowed his head into the pillow.

“Wake up. We’ve already wasted half the day.”

Ryan opened one eye and gave him a wicked grin. “Wasn’t wasted.”

John laughed. They had slept in snatches, waking to turn to each other, thinking it would be for a kiss, a touch. And then the flaring heat had taken over again. Shit, he was actually sore from too much friction. Happy, but sore.

He shoved Ryan harder. “Get up. Eat breakfast. Or maybe lunch. Buy groceries.”

“But then we’d have to get out of bed.”

“Ry, I’ve done all the bed my elderly body can handle. I need a shower and some food.”

“Share the shower?”

“God.” The image of Ryan in the shower, his skin wet, made John’s cock twitch, even after last night. But only twitch. “It would be wasted on me this morning. But hold that thought.”

He slid out of bed and stretched, raising his arms toward the ceiling and twisting.

“Now that’s a nice view,” Ryan murmured, curled on his side in the bed.

“Up.” John reached down and ruthlessly pulled off the covers. “I’ll let you have the first shower.”

“You’d better. There’d be no hot water if you go first.” Ryan rolled out of the bed and stood, one hand on the mattress for balance. He glanced at John cryptically, and then bent to pick up his clothes. His back was to John. The bright light of morning played across those scars clearly. John figured that might be the point.

He took his shirt and snapped Ryan’s butt with the soft side of the hem. “Leave the dirty clothes. I’ll throw them in the laundry. Get your cute ass under the water. I want my turn.”

Ryan was smiling as he turned. “Ten minutes.”

“I’ll start the coffee.”

It was nice, but a little strange, sitting at the table with Ryan, having brunch, just like it was last month and they were barely roommates.

“What,” Ryan said, his mouth full of bagel. “You’re looking at me weird.”

“Sorry.” John drank a slug of black gold. “I guess I don’t know what comes next.”

“Next comes dishes. And then we do need to buy groceries.”

“So do we, what, go grocery shopping together? I’ve never lived with anyone but Cynthia. I’m not sure I know how to do this.”

“Puts you one up on me,” Ryan said. “I’ve never lived with anyone.” He shrugged. “I don’t see why we have to change things too fast. We never shopped together before. Put up a list and one of us can make the run. We don’t have to do couple-type things.”

“What if I want to?”

Ryan stared at him.

“Ry, this isn’t just about sex. Yes, I like the sex. Okay, I’m crazy about the sex. But because it’s you I’m having it with. I’m not just horny. I don’t think I’m even that gay. I’m just crazy about you.”

“I…” Ryan swallowed and tried again. “Yeah, me too. I mean, I’m not checking out other guys on the street. But with you, God, that was hot.”

John was caught by a wash of disappointment.
Fool. Why would you be disappointed that Ryan finds you hot?
But somehow he wished Ryan had phrased it differently. “We’ll go slow,” he offered.

“Last night was slow?” Ryan wiggled his eyebrows.

“We can do the sex as fast as you like. We’ll do the rest, the becoming-a-couple thing slow. If you want to.”

“I don’t know. I hadn’t thought beyond getting you into bed.”

I got as far as planning the next twenty years.
John bit his tongue. He knew he was out ahead of Ryan on this whole thing. He just needed patience. He didn’t think Ryan would have been in a man’s bed if it was just sex. But he knew it would take time.
 

Chapter Ten

A week later, Ryan still didn’t quite have the rhythm of their new relationship. On the outside, things hadn’t changed much. They shared a ride to school in the morning, went their separate ways, usually met over the dinner table. Evenings were for work and study, or occasionally an hour of TV. But then at the end of the day, they went to bed together.

That
they were getting good at. Ryan found he loved the taste of John, the feel of hard flesh in his mouth. He was even learning to swallow without gagging. Ryan loved watching John come undone under his hands, under the press of his body and his mouth. And at night, Ryan slept better than he had in a year, with John’s warm body next to his own.

But it felt unfinished. As if there were steps they were still waiting to take. Which of course there were, in bed and out of it. Ryan just wasn’t sure when he’d be ready for anything more.
If
he’d ever be ready for anything more. He wished school would hold off, and give him time to figure out his life. But the new semester had opened with a load of new coursework and new classes. Ryan had to dig in and find his bearings again.

He looked up from his books, scattered across the dining room table, when the doorbell rang. From the workshop, John called, “Hey, Ry. Could you get that?”

“You expecting someone?” he called back as he hauled himself up and hobbled to the front door. He’d been sitting wrong and his leg had stiffened up. Or maybe he’d pulled a muscle chasing John around the bed last night. They’d found they enjoyed a little roughhousing in with the foreplay sometimes, and John was hard to pin down.

“Not me,” John called. “Maybe it’s that
Gay Kama Sutra
book you ordered.”

“In your dreams. I don’t need no stinking textbook.”

He reached the door and pulled it open. A tall woman in a blue parka stood on the porch. “Can I help you?”

“Does John Barrett live here?”

“Yes,” Ryan said cautiously. “Can I tell him who you are?”

She pulled out a wallet and flipped it open. “Detective Carstairs. York PD.”