“Sorry,” he mumbled as he fell into bed. Cully had looked good—bright-eyed and freshly showered—while he felt grimy and exhausted some more. “How come Cully’s got more go than I do?”
Jordan and Macklin exchanged glances like any long-term couple who could read each other’s minds.
“You were more… more with us,” Jordan said, crouching by the side of the bed. “You were our contact person. Cully was usually more isolated when we entered.” He blew out a breath. “See, when we pulled you out, we had to pull you through a portal, which is new. We didn’t know about the portals until we teleported the dog.”
Dante snorted. Unlike Cully, he’d been more amused than horrified. Poor Glinda. But Simon seemed like a stand-up guy, so he figured the little pooch had good taste in people to draw into the circle.
“Yeah, it’s funny to you because you didn’t wander around in the dark for hours thinking she had to be in the neighborhood because dogs don’t know how to teleport.” But Jordan was smiling as he said it, so Dante figured they could laugh about this for a long time. “Anyway, Macklin knows about portals, and I’ve been pulled through a couple now, and the thing is, they knock you out. Exhausted. Beat. And the further you travel, the worse it is. So you and Cully weren’t just pulled through space—you were pulled through time and put in sync, and that’s a lot. And whenever you made contact with us, or realized we were there, you were using a lot of energy making that contact. So Cully made the big portal move, but you? You’ve been making a bunch of little ones in the interim, and you’ve got some sleeping to do.”
“Blargh,” Dante muttered. “There’s always a price.”
“There is,” Jordan said softly. “But we weren’t ready to lose you two to pay it.”
Dante looked at him sharply. “What did you pay?”
“We had to be honest,” Jordan said. “And we had to confront the things that we didn’t want to talk about.” He glanced at Macklin again. “Have you and Cully… have you done that?” he asked delicately.
“Yes,” Dante said unequivocally. “I mean, I think so. You know, it’s hard to know someone’s heart like that.” He thought sadly about two guys who’d loved each other for years but who had just enough doubt and mistrust to not take that last step to become lovers.
Jordan gave an enigmatic smile, his intense blue eyes and that natural charisma that had captured Dante in school only more mesmerizing now. “You know, I think we may have a way to make sure. Don’t worry about it.” He gave Dante a solid dude handshake, which was no mean feat given Dante was propped up on pillows barely enough to sit. “Man, I am so glad to have you back. Buzz us tomorrow—any one of us. We’ve all got time off our jobs to move in, and we don’t want to intrude, but I’m telling you, you could measure Barty’s disappointment with a mixing bowl because he didn’t get to talk. We are all dying to be in your lives. So buzz us, talk to us, ask questions, or just sleep. And then we’ll have dinner at Barty and Lachlan’s. I’ll come get you at six. Don’t worry about cooking. I think if you want a way to know how you feel, naked heart to naked heart, we’ll find the solution there.”
Dante smiled at him, his chest full. “Don’t take this the wrong way, but I love you, man.”
Jordan nodded, not smiling, not making light of it. “Love you too, brother. Get some sleep.”
Like he had any choice in the matter.
HE woke up the next morning at dark-thirty a.m., absolutely positively in need of a shower. By the time he’d gotten out and toweled off his hair, he was ready to go back to bed, the warm water having worked its own magics.
As he slid between the sheets in a clean pair of boxers, blessing whomever had unpacked his clothes and put them in the drawers, Cully rolled into him. His chest caught as the full reality of where they were and who they had become crashed down on him.
“What?” Cully asked drowsily, rubbing his lips over the bare skin of Dante’s chest.
“Just… us,” Dante said. He didn’t have better words. He was going to hold Cully close and let him go back to sleep, but he felt the unmistakable pleasure, pull, and wet suction of Cully’s mouth on his nipple. “Ah….”
“You mean us like that?” Cully whispered, letting go enough to scoot up and kiss Dante’s jawline.
“I mean us like this,” Dante murmured, all his erogenous zones tingling. “I mean you and me, together—ah!”
Cully had moved to his ribs, which was even better, and Dante got it. This wasn’t time to talk.
Cully pushed up and took his mouth, the kiss long and slow and languorous but not sleepy. Everything was waking up between them, and Dante reached under Cully’s T-shirt to rub his flat stomach, his chest, and thumb his pointy little nipples.
Cully half sat so he could rip off his shirt and scoot out of his sweats. He was in the middle of kicking the clothes to the bottom of the bed when he stared at Dante in confusion.
“What are you waiting for?”
Dante grimaced. “I… uhm, don’t know where the lubricant is,” he said. “I—”
Cully grunted and turned, his lithe body pale in the moonglow coming in through the skylight. With a minimum of scrabbling, he came back with a bottle of lubricant and a sex toy that Dante hadn’t used in a while.
“Hm?” Cully waggled his eyebrows suggestively.
Dante shook his head. “Not that I don’t like bottoming,” he said, “but it’s been a while, and I’ll be honest, I don’t want to wait a while.”
Cully’s throaty laughter made him tingle all over again, and he kicked off his boxers, prepared to cover the palely glowing body with his own.
He was not ready for the gentle hand on his chest, pushing him backward.
“You don’t want the sex?” he asked, puzzled.
But Cully silenced him with a kiss. “I need the sex,” he whispered, straddling Dante’s hips with a swing of his knees. “And I need it with you. But I heard what Jordan said, and he’s right.”
“About what?”
Cully nibbled on Dante’s ear for a moment, and his thoughts muddled almost completely before Cully came up to answer. “You’ve been doing the heavy lifting for the two of us.”
Dante opened his mouth to demur. That hadn’t been intentional. But Cully scooted backward, and after a squirt from the bottle of lube, he reached behind him and began a slick stroke of Dante’s cock.
Dante made a sound, but it had nothing to do with conversation.
“Oh, Princess,” he gasped, arching his hips in pleasure. “You are scrambling my brains.”
“Good,” Cully whispered, positioning Dante’s cock right at his entrance. “Because we have better things to do than talk right now.”
And with that, he slid down, slowly enough to be careful, and began to rock forward and back, pulsing and receding, stroking Dante’s cock with his asshole, fucking while being fucked.
Dante was not still or idle, though. He clasped Cully’s narrow hips, giving him stability, and arched his back or pulled his hips in time to Cully’s strokes. For a brief, glorious moment, they were moving in pure synchrony, and Dante’s mind soared through time and space as he realized they were joined, truly joined, not just physically, but for the first time in intention, in need, in desire.