Gah! The guy always knew exactly what to say. How could Cully ever take that for granted?
“Your kindness is surprising,” he said.
Dante wiped his eyes again and shifted sideways, letting Cully move under the spray. Their chests, stomachs, groins, were all inches away, but not touching, and Cully fought the urge to press Dante against the shower wall and take shameless advantage of him. For years he’d been living with that—the wide, sculpted chest, the bulging biceps, the rangy grace—and he’d always managed to turn the “I wanna hit that” switch off in his head.
But he’d always wanted to hit that.
Dante’s physical beauty had never been in question, and Cully had always wanted to touch him.
But loving Dante first—loving his friendship, his protection and kindness—had meant overlooking his body.
Cully didn’t have to do that anymore, and edging his way past that body was like a shot of pure desire to his adrenal glands.
He let out a little whimper as they cleared each other, and Dante put his hands out to capture Cully’s shoulders.
“You’re not gonna fall, are you?”
“No!” Cully snapped. “I’m going to jump you in the shower if you don’t hurry up and sit down. Goddammit, how have we not been sleeping together?”
“A question I have asked myself every day since I first met you,” Dante said stoically, sitting on the shower chair and eyeing Cully up and down with blatant appreciation.
Cully frowned, but he also squirted soap on the washcloth and started scrubbing his parts. Besides the obvious—that they wanted to dry off so they could talk—they were also both acutely aware that their supply of hot water was anything but unlimited.
“But your guys are nothing like me!” he complained. “You’re always going out with jocks and weightlifters and… I don’t know. If I was looking for the anti-Cully, you were usually going to a game with him on a Saturday night.”
He became aware that Dante was regarding him grimly, as though waiting for him to make a cognitive leap or something.
“What?” he asked, turning his back so he could soap his groin and between his legs.
Dante didn’t reply, so he rinsed off and turned around—this time so he could soap the crease in his backside, because dammit, this was a tricky, embarrassing business—and realized Dante had crossed his arms and was still waiting for Cully to make that leap.
“What?” he demanded again.
“Let’s just say you’re an original, Princess,” Dante said, grim look never softening. “Pale imitations need not apply.”
“Oh.” Cully sucked in a breath and then remembered something. “They were all pretty demanding, though. Remember that one guy who would only go to the ball game if you were in the shade, behind home plate, and you promised to get beer and sausage for him while he waited?”
“Yeah.” That grim, patient tone was back, and Cully once again wasn’t getting it.
“What?” he begged, throwing his head back so he could get his hair wet.
“Noth—”
Cully straightened immediately. “Don’t say it!” he snarled, and Dante sucked in a breath. But at least he was still there and not fading into the netherworld. Cully began to wonder if the house maybe liked Dante a little more than it liked him.
“You’re right. Fine. You’re that guy, Cully. I couldn’t make them look like you—that would hurt too much. But that other thing? The high-maintenance thing? That’s got you written all over it. That part I could manage to find.”
Cully gave half a laugh. “You were afraid that was going to hurt my feelings?” he asked, shaking his head. “Please, honey—I know enough about myself to have figured that out.” He sniffed. “I didn’t like it when the other guys did it, though. I guess you’re only allowed one diva in your life.”
Dante’s laugh was reassuring. “Well, most of them got on my nerves before we slept together, so I’m pretty sure you’re right, there.”
Cully felt relaxed enough to soap his hair and finish up his shower, which was a good thing, because the water was running cold.
They toweled off in the bathroom, and then, towels wrapped around their waists, they walked back into Dante’s room. But Cully didn’t get dressed right away.
Instead he sat down on Dante’s comforter—something in black and yellow and blue, almost like a sports team’s colors—and stretched out on the bed.
Dante paused in the act of pulling underwear out of his drawer and looked at him. Then he straightened up, leaned against the sturdy oak dresser, and truly looked at him.
“You are so pretty,” he said on a sigh. “I never knew you were my type until I saw you in that dorm room, and suddenly all I wanted was blue eyes and fluffy blond bangs. Hasn’t changed.”
Cully heard the melancholy in the words and knew he was thinking about seven years they could have spent in each other’s beds, in each other’s hearts, and mourning the loss.
“Well, I’ve loved young John Travolta since I saw Grease on TV when I was a kid. You were exactly my type. And then you rescued me, and I thought, ‘This is it. We’re driving away on his motorcycle, and I’m gonna live happy ever after!’ and, well, you went and got Jordan and introduced me to my new peer group and things got lost and confused.”
Dante frowned, which was bad, but he forgot about the clothes and the underwear, which was good. He came and stretched out next to Cully so they were both mostly naked and both on Dante’s queen-sized bed.
A ticklish little thrill raced down Cully’s spine.
They could be naked and in bed. They could be naked and inside each other.
They could make love.
In his entire life, he couldn’t remember looking forward to sex with quite this much excitement—or quite this much fear.
“You….” At Dante’s hesitation, Cully reached out and rested a hand on his hip. He understood that they were searching for words to deal with emotions neither of them had talked about for a very long time, but the house was not particularly sensitive to the need to take things slowly.
At his touch, Dante smiled slightly and reached out to rest his own hand against Cully’s bare chest. Cully showed his appreciation by giving a little shimmy and smiling.
And then he regarded Dante seriously to urge him to go on.
“You had a hard time trusting Jordan and everybody else, didn’t you?” Dante finally said. “You still… I don’t know. Overcompensate, I guess, for them being nice to us.”
Cully was going to ask him what he was talking about, but dammit, there could be no lies. Not here. Not now. Not with both of them naked and in bed and not wanting to lose each other again.
“I only had one friend in school,” he said softly. “I told you about her—Denise. You met her, in fact.”
Dante nodded. Denise, who had stayed in Cully’s tiny hometown in Northern California and was on her third child and second husband at the age of twenty-five. Denise, who snuck cigarettes outside her job as a receptionist for a local insurance company and told her husband she’d quit back in high school. And who got drunk with Cully every time he visited his father and talked about how high school was the only time she’d ever been happy, because she’d had a dream then.