Besides, the version of him she knew now hadn’t spent years helping with her fics and writing his own. He wouldn’t be as familiar and comfortable with the revision process as Book!AeneasWouldNever, both in general and with her. Which meant he couldn’t be as helpful to her for that reason too.
If they kept doing this for months or years to come, if she kept asking him to read and respond to her stories, maybe he could slowly transform into the writing companion he’d once been in a credible way, a way that wouldn’t set red flags flapping. But not now.
It was a bitter note on his tongue, noticeable even amid so much sweetness.
Because this moment was sweet. And so was her story.
“I think you underestimate yourself,” he told her. “There are a few words that are a bit too modern”—dammit, he needed to make this plausible—“or at least, the scriptwriters never had us say them, and we should probably look up when they came into common usage. ‘Okay,’ for instance. But otherwise, I think you managed to capture the feeling of the books.”
Her expression smoothed. “Oh, good. I wanted to figure out a way I could keep writing in this fandom without it getting, uh, weird. Especially if I included explicit content.”
Which she had. Very ably and descriptively. That particular content had necessitated some explicit readjustment of his jeans in her office, because damn.
In the past, when she’d written about an Aeneas who looked like him, he’d avoided beta-reading sex scenes, a stipulation Ulsie had accepted without demanding an explanation. By mutual agreement, she’d excised those bits before sending him her drafts, noting any major developments he’d missed in a dry author’s note of a sentence or two.
But at the beginning of this fic, she’d described a dark-haired, stocky Aeneas, thick with muscle, eyes as richly brown as fertile soil. Book!Aeneas, not Show!Aeneas. Not Marcus, in any recognizable way.
So, yes, he could and would read those bits now, and do so without discomfort.
Well, without the old, familiar type of discomfort, anyway. Which reminded him: “Also, during one of Aeneas’s love scenes with Dido, Carah and I were told that the word you used for, uh . . .”
Eyes bright behind her glasses, she raised her brows in amused inquiry as he squirmed.
“You shouldn’t use the word ‘pussy,’” he finally forced out. “It’s anachronistic.”
In all her modern AU fics, that term was more than acceptable. But not in canon-compliant stories, given the time period involved. Wade had used a different word instead. One Marcus was even more reluctant to utter, in case April found it offensive.
She pushed her frames up onto the bridge of her nose. “So I may need to cross the C-word Rubicon, is what you’re telling me.”
“If you want a canon-compliant term that’s less euphemistic than, um, ‘wetness.’ Or ‘heat.’ Or . . . things like that.”
Shit. He was getting hard again, his gaze involuntarily drifting down to the flirty hem of her soft, swinging nightgown, which only reached midthigh when she stood and rucked up even higher when she sat. When she shifted her legs like that—
Oh, that was deliberate. Her saucy wink only confirmed it.
The rest of his feedback could wait.
He tackled her on the sofa, maneuvering them both as she giggled—finally, a giggle he’d elicited, so Alex could just fuck right off—until she was flat on her back and his hips had fallen between her open, round thighs and his hand was sliding between those thighs, beneath her nightgown.
“Use that word again,” she whispered in his ear minutes later, as he pressed his open mouth against her neck and moved above her, inside her. “The first one. Say it.”
She was tight around him, trembling, so wet now he could hear every thrust. When he raised himself a bit higher above her and ground against her sex, she gasped and closed her eyes.
He told her the absolute truth, then, hot into her ear, his teeth on her earlobe. “I love your pussy. Love it. When you’re at work”—he managed to slip a hand between them, down low, because he wasn’t lasting much longer, and shit, the sound she made when he rubbed her clit—“When you’re at work, I fist my dick and think about filling your pussy with my fingers, my cock, my tongue . . .”
She arched beneath him and rocked, pushing against his fingers, fucking herself on his cock. Then she broke with a sob, shuddering, her sex convulsing around him as he bucked into her and gripped her hip and groaned.
Afterward, they lay panting on the couch, and she ran a hand down his damp spine. “That was an inspired performance, worthy of the academy’s recognition. The award for best initial foray into dirty talk goes to . . . Marcus Caster-Rupp! Hooray!”
With a huff of amusement, he angled his head so he could press a row of soft kisses down her sweaty neck. “If I was inspired, you deserve all the credit.”
Yes, he was definitely fine reading her sex scenes now.
In fact, he was going to encourage her to write more of them. The sooner, the better.
LATER THAT NIGHT, over a belated dinner, they talked more about her story.
“My only other concern, at least upon first reading, is whether Aeneas is a bit too . . .” Marcus waved his forkful of spaghetti squash, searching for the right phrase. “He may be a bit too emotionally aware for a man of his background and time period.”
She nodded thoughtfully, twirling strands of pasta around her own fork. “I can see that.”
There was no offended snap in her voice, no hurried defense of her writing choices and characterization of Aeneas. As she chewed, though, she was blinking down at the table, no longer smiling.
“I’m sorry.” Reaching across the table, he covered her free hand with his. “April, I’m sorry. I should have said that more gently. Besides, what do I know? Nothing.”
At his touch, she looked up. “You did say it gently, and you’re completely right. I just . . .” Her mouth trembled, but she pressed her lips tight. “What you said, it reminded me of things my former Lavineas server friend used to say. The guy I told you about.”
“The one who has dyslexia too,” he said slowly.
Her obvious grief twisted his heart. Her unwitting insight into his lie twisted his gut.
“Yeah.” Her shoulders, now slumped, hitched upward a millimeter. “He kind of acted like a dick at the end. But we were friends for a couple of years before that, so it’s hard to just . . . get past it. I miss him.”
“I’m sorry.” The words emerged ragged, and God willing, she would never know how much he meant them. “I’m so sorry, April.”
She stared down at her plate for another few moments before raising her head, eyes glossy, and offering him a faltering smile. “Thank you, but it’s okay. I’m okay. And none of what happened with him is your fault.”
As small as he’d once felt in front of the disappointed, disapproving gaze of his parents, as guilty and wrong, this was somehow worse. Even as a child, he’d been able to cling to a thin thread of conviction: I’m trying my best. There is nothing more I can do.
That fact—that he was offering everything he had, everything he was, to them, and it still wasn’t enough, would never be enough—had rended something inside him. It had shadowed him for so many years. Too many years.