“I’m going to fuck you, Rasul Youssef,” Jacob declared as he parted his lover’s legs and settled between them. “I’m going to claim every inch of your body and turn you so inside out you can’t speak. We’ll have to sleep in the stacks, because neither one of us is going to be able to walk.”
Rasul’s gaze was soft, unfocused, wild with lust and love. “Get to it, then.”
Jacob did. He licked his way down Rasul’s body, across his chest, nipping at the curling hair there, sucking at the quavering skin of his belly. Whenever Rasul tugged at him, trying to urge him on, Jacob gently pushed his hands away.
“You won’t rush me.” He dragged his nose down the side of the vee leading to Rasul’s groin, his bobbing cock. “This time it’s going to be about you. About pleasuring you. No performing for your partner like you usually do. No worrying about me. My pleasure tonight is seeing to yours. Just the way you’ve always wished it would happen.”
Rasul gasped, his hands clutching weakly at Jacob’s head. “How—?”
“It was a hunch before, but when I read the sex scene, I knew.” Jacob pushed Rasul’s knees back and kissed the inside of each thigh lovingly, as if he had an eternity to shower them with attention. “The longing Adam had as he reached for Milo, the way his whole soul let go when Milo took charge. Plus it just makes sense. Everyone thinks you’re some legendary lover. Everyone’s trying to use you. I never will, Rasul. I swear to you, I never, ever will.”
Rasul put a hand over his eyes, but he couldn’t hold back the quiet sob.
Jacob lifted his head to kiss Rasul’s abdomen once more. “Let go. You’ve done so much. For yourself, for me, for so many people. Relax and enjoy this. I think we’ve both earned it.”
Rasul did relax, at least until the blowjob Jacob gave him sent him writhing. Jacob drew their lovemaking out as long as he could, stoking Rasul’s arousal only to cool him down with kisses against the back sides of his knees, to flip him onto his stomach and kiss the globes of his ass before parting them and making him howl with want. By the time he was actually ready to fuck him, Rasul was a limp noodle Jacob had to hold up and arrange into position.
“You’re my everything,” Jacob whispered to him as he drove inside, as Rasul clung weakly to his shoulders, head tipped back as he let Jacob ride him. “My whole world.”
As they crashed back to earth, with the veil of stars twinkling beneath their bodies, Jacob pressed a kiss to Rasul’s ear.
“I love you, Rasul.”
Rasul buried his face in Jacob’s neck. “I love you too.”
Chapter Thirteen
THEY CRAWLED up the stairs to Jacob’s bed around four in the morning. Or rather, Jacob hauled Rasul and his bandy-legged ass up the stairs. He was still weak in the knees at nine when his bladder insisted he waddle to the bathroom, and as he fell back into the mattress, snuggling against Jacob’s warm back, he reveled in the sensation of a well-used backside.
It had been a long, long time since he’d been fucked like that. Not just the epic edging but the demand he surrender in every way. Absolutely nobody, though, had ever ordered him to quit trying to please them and simply let himself be done.
Sweet God Almighty, but he could get used to that.
He really, really wanted to get used to that.
When he next woke, it was one in the afternoon, his stomach was eating itself, and Jacob sat in the bed beside him.
Reading the manuscript.
“Again?” Rasul pushed himself groggily onto an elbow and leaned against his lover.
“Yes, again.” Jacob laid the page he’d been reading neatly on the pile on the other side of him. “I always read your books several times in a row before I even begin to let myself think too much about them. Why you think this one would be any different is beyond me.”
Rasul kissed Jacob’s elbow, then nestled his head against his hip. “Is it weird this time, because you know me?”
“It’s different for a lot of reasons. Part of my brain is still processing that I fucked you on a visible representation of the story in the middle of the stacks. Right next to the romance section. Did you do that on purpose?”
Rasul had, but he’d never admit it. “It was closest to the door.”
Jacob ruffled Rasul’s hair idly. “You worked very hard on the story, and it shows. Have you sent it to your agent yet?”
“No.” He found Jacob’s hand and tangled their fingers together. “I wanted you to read it first, to give me feedback.”
“My feedback is that it’s excellent.”
“It has some rough spots. I think I could tie a few things together better. It doesn’t vibrate right yet in my head. I was hoping I could ask you about some of it.”
“Of course you can.”
Rasul did. He started while they lay there in bed, until his stomach gurgles grew loud enough Jacob insisted they relocate to the kitchen. Once there, he tried to make breakfast, but Jacob waved him into a chair. “I can cook you some oatmeal. Unless you’d rather have lunch, since it’s afternoon? Also, tea or coffee?”
“Oatmeal and coffee sound perfect, thank you. Can I have raisins and brown sugar? In the oatmeal.”
“Of course.”
While Jacob cooked and brewed coffee, Rasul continued to voice his concerns over the draft. Sometimes Jacob interjected questions or remarks, but mostly he listened. As Rasul had anticipated, Jacob had good judgment. He didn’t hesitate to point out if something that bothered Rasul hadn’t seemed an issue to him, and on a few notable occasions he turned around and quietly threatened Rasul if he changed a particular part. Other times he either agreed with Rasul’s assessment that something could be revisited, and twice Jacob suggested places to look at again himself.
“This is an interesting exercise,” Jacob said. “I honestly enjoyed it as it was, but I can see how editing shapes a story into exactly what you need it to be. Or perhaps the more appropriate phrase is what you want it to be.”
Rasul nodded as he took another hearty swig of coffee. “Especially with how they all got their hands on this one when I was initially creating it, I want to keep it safe until I’m sure it’s right—to me. I anticipate them balking at the sex scene.”
“Why on earth would they do that? It’s amazing. It illustrates so much about what each of them needs, and shows them giving it to one another. It’s practically essential to believing the ending will be a happy one.”
“Thank you.” He clutched at his mug. “They’d want to cut it because marketing likes to err on the side of safe. The problem is they’re underage.”
“They’re seventeen. Heavens, even in Copper Point I’d had sex by then. Is it because it’s two men?”
“Probably in part? People have random moral boundaries regarding sex in media, especially in the United States.” He scratched his head. “I thought about setting it with them in college, but it’s absolutely not the same. It’s that sense of being not quite hatched, still in your family’s cradle, but biologically and mentally a functional adult. Honestly, I don’t think it’s a young adult novel, not in the sense people usually mean. It’s a novel for adults who had a messed-up teenage experience and want to rewrite it.”