An American Homo in Paris (4 page)

For the first time in eight years, Benji was presented with the dilemma of wanting to take a man home, and not having the first clue how. Close to midnight, Ziri pulled out his phone and winced. “I have to catch the RER back to Saint Denis. We don’t have time to get your backpack, but Hélène opens her café at seven o’clock.”

The sour taste of disappointment and missed opportunity flooded Benji’s mouth. “I’ll get it from her in the morning. Come on, I’ll walk you to the train.”

They walked in silence, suddenly shy after their day together.

“Well, I guess this is it. I would say
au revoir,
but… I think tonight is more of an
adieu, n’est-ce pas
?”
Ziri’s eyes crinkled up in a smile as he held out his hand for a shake, and Benji’s heart lurched.

He didn’t know whether he wanted to stay or go. He didn’t know what the hell was happening with his YouTube channel. All he knew was he didn’t want to say good-bye. He didn’t want Ziri to walk away.

“Aaron.”

Ziri flinched, his brows drawing together in hurt.

“Aaron. Aaron. Aaron. I said it, you have to give me a dare.” Benji pushed. “Give me a dare. Give me something humiliating, or impossible— just give me a dare.”

“The game is over, Benji. Time for you to go home and pack so you can go back to the States tomorrow.”

“Give. Me. A. Goddamn. Dare.”

Ziri’s nostrils flared— Benji was pissing him off. Good. He was pissing Benji off, sticking his hand out for a handshake as if this day hadn’t meant anything.

“I dare you to go home and pack.” Ziri turned on his heel and started toward the turnstile.

“I forfeit,” Benji called after him. “I forfeit. I won’t accept that dare.”

Ziri spun around and was back in front of Benji in two long steps.

Benji’s back hit the wall, but his head was cradled in Ziri’s hand. Their foreheads pressed together, and Ziri’s other fist clenched his shirt. Warm, brown eyes searched Benji’s face for a long moment while both of their chests heaved. Then Ziri’s lips closed over Benji’s and everything else dropped away.

It was the dare
and
the forfeit, the fantasy and the possibility.

The kiss started rough, like they each had something to prove, but as Ziri crowded Benji back against the wall, it drew long and sweet. Hands clutched helplessly at clothing while their tongues teased and tempted, led and chased. Ziri’s cock pressed hard against Benji’s own, and he widened his legs to cradle Ziri closer.

Ziri broke away to bite and nip along Benji’s jaw, and Benji groaned. God, he wanted this. Wanted the kissing, wanted sex, not to forget Aaron, but to remember Ziri and this day. Benji dropped his head to the side and Ziri took the hint, pressing his lips to the sensitive length of Benji’s throat. His hand came up and brushed Benji’s cheekbones, soft as whisper. Dimly, Benji felt a vibration through the wall behind him, and his brain scrambled to tell him it was important.

“The train…” he whispered. “Shit, Ziz, your
train
.”

Ziri pulled away from Benji’s neck and looked behind him. “I’ll take the bus.” And then they were kissing again, and Benji laughed into the kiss, running his hands up and down Ziri’s back, loving the feel of his strong body, the scent of his skin, the brush of stubble against his own.

“Come home with me,” he pleaded as they pulled apart to catch their breath. “You made my last day in Paris unforgettable. Make my last night even better.”

Ziri shook his head, then met Benji’s eyes, then kissed him again, his hands tightening on Benji’s arms.

“You said
I
was crazy,” he whispered against Benji’s lips.

“We’re both crazy.” Benji laughed. “Come on.”

Another frantic kiss against the wall, another shaky laugh, and they were running, hand in hand, toward home.

****

Le Marais, Encore

Ziri didn’t stop to look around when Benji opened the door to his apartment. As soon as they were through the door, he had his hands under Benji’s shirt and his lips on Benji’s throat, and Benji was making those noises, those sweet, needy noises that turned Ziri on so much. He couldn’t remember the last time he wanted someone like this. The teasing, the dares, the entire day had been like foreplay, all leading up to a moment he hadn’t dared to hope for.

He stroked up along Benji’s abs to rest his hands over nipples, peaked and straining. He brushed his palms back and forth, listening for more of those strangled gasps and whimpers that told him what Benji liked. When he closed his fingers over one taut nipple, Benji’s head dropped back and he groaned, low and loud.

“Feels so good.”

“
Ouais
.” Ziri pulled Benji’s shirt over his head and tossed it aside. “
T’es tellement beau
.”

A flush spread across Benji’s chest, and Ziri spanned it with his hands, rubbing.

“Ziz. Take me to bed. Please.” Benji reached for the hem of Ziri’s shirt, and then lifted it up and away.

Pulling Benji close, Ziri enfolded him in a big, full body hug, skin to skin. Benji’s hands fluttered against him in surprise, then he relaxed into the embrace, a contented sigh stealing over him. They kissed again, slow and sweet, a tango more than a tangle, and Benji smiled at Ziri with wide blue eyes and led him to the bedroom.

Clothes fell on the floor, forgotten as soon as they were stripped away, and Benji gave Ziri a gentle shove down on the bed. Ziri sprawled on his back and looked up at Benji, who stood over him, cock jutting proudly away from his body, and something Ziri didn’t have a name for, not in any of his four languages, in his eyes. Something more than lust and stronger than friendship, that moment when a lover’s body becomes known and dear for the first time. Oh, it was something like love, but even that word didn’t seem big enough, or frightening enough, or powerful enough for the rush of warmth that flooded Ziri’s belly when Benji lay down next to him and took his hand.

“What do you want?” Benji asked, lifting Ziri’s hand to kiss and nibble at the knuckles.

Ziri just smiled and reached for Benji’s cock, giving it a long, slow stroke.

“We can just…” he whispered as Benji arched and shuddered.

“God, yeah.” Benji’s hand found Ziri’s cock, he mimicked that slow stroke, and they found a steady rhythm together, a give and take that went beyond just getting off. A caress, a comfort, all bittersweet because Benji was leaving. Yesterday, Ziri would have thought that a good thing. Why had he ever thought seduction on a deadline was the preferred way to love someone?

Benji kissed him hard and deep and that familiar rush flooded Ziri— he was so close— too close.

“Benji…” He pushed Benji’s hand away from his cock. “Will you, um, will you fuck me?” He blushed as he asked, but he didn’t stop stroking Benji’s cock, or rubbing his nipples. He loved the way Benji’s body responded to him. “I want to feel you in me.”

Benji groaned and pressed his face into the crook of Ziri’s neck.

“Yeah,” he whispered. “Are you sure?”

Ziri nodded. “
Oui
.”
The word came out breathless and raw, and Benji kissed him again.

“I’ll be right back.” He moved away from Ziri, rummaged next to the bed. Ziri took a deep lungful of air, letting anticipation stir. He rolled to his belly, his dick rubbing against the sheets and sending all kinds of pleasant sparks through him.

Then Benji was back, lips pressing into the back of his neck, hands skimming down his body. Condom-covered cock pressing against his ass.

“I want to make you feel so good,” Benji murmured, kneading Ziri’s ass cheeks. His hands moved in slow, seductive patterns on Ziri’s skin, relaxing him, making him moan and rut into the mattress. Then a finger brushed his hole and excitement ran through his veins like electricity through a circuit. The finger came back, slick and rubbing. Ziri gave up on English and babbled in a mixture of French and Kabyle.

“I have no idea what you’re saying, but having you incoherent with lust is so fucking hot.”

Benji’s finger dipped inside and Ziri gripped the sheets in both hands. Sweet friction, made sweeter by Benji’s whispers of praise. Ziri close his eyes and concentrated on the sensations, on the way Benji teased him into thrusting back to take the finger deeper.

“I like watching you like this,” Benji whispered. “I like the way you move, like you’re desperate for me— the way you’re biting the sheets, like when you finally come it’s going to kill you. I bet you’re fucking hot as hell when you come.”

Ziri’s eyes rolled back and he let out a low whine of desire, then the finger disappeared and Benji’s cock was a new, bigger pressure. He pushed back against it, welcoming the stretch and the sting of penetration, that sharp, slick slide as he relaxed around Benji and took him deep.

Benji’s whole body covered his as he rocked into him. It was like being fucked and hugged at the same time, overwhelming in its intimacy. Ziri pushed up and back, rocking into Benji.

“God. I’m close.” Benji groaned and reached under Ziri to jack him off, stopping only when his groans became the roar of a man in the throes of an orgasm.

When Benji let go, Ziri grabbed his own dick and jerked it until his own orgasm hit him hard and fast. He clutched at the sheets with his free hand, and Benji clutched at him, holding him through the shudders and that exquisite moment of the best kind of loss— the loss of words, the loss of self, the loss of sense.

Benji pulled out and disappeared while Ziri collected himself. When he came back, he pulled a blanket over both of them and kissed Ziri’s forehead. “Please. Stay.”

Ziri pillowed his head on Benji’s shoulder, and he stayed.

****

Benji woke up wrapped in warm arms, a hard dick poking his thigh.

Ziri.

He ran his hand down Ziri’s leg, thinking about waking him for another round.

And then he realized his phone was buzzing. He eased himself out of Ziri’s sleepy embrace and went digging through the clothes they’d dropped on the floor the night before until he found it.

“Hello?”

“Benji, what the fuck is going on?”

“Allison?” His editor from the queer paper in Idaho. He looked at the clock. Ten a.m.
Fuck, ten a.m.!
“What time is it there?”

“Does it fucking matter when the biggest social media story right now is a video of my writer-on-sabbatical dancing and singing in a fountain in Paris? You’ve gone viral. You’re huge. People all over Twitter and Facebook are debating whether the name of your blog is offensive. Hundreds of thousands of hits on that YouTube video. And you in your underwear on the Metro is not far behind. I never would have pegged you as a briefs guy.”

“Me? Viral?”

“Oh yeah. And teenage girls all over Tumblr have hashtagged ‘ziji.’ They’re shipping you and that French guy. They’re writing RPF.”

“What the fuck is RPF?”

“Real Person Fic. Like fan fiction, but about real people. There are like, eighteen— no shit, twenty-two now— stories about you already on Tumblr. Oh god, you do know what Tumblr is, right?”

“Porn and grumpy cat. Yeah, I know Tumblr.”

“Baby, you can’t get on that plane. Stay in Paris. Milk this thing.”

“I’m going to be homeless on Tuesday when Aaron gets back.”

“You owe me a kiss for that…” rumbled from the bed.

“Is that…?” Allison’s voice grew shrill. “Benji! Is he there with you? The French guy?”

“Um…” Benji rubbed his eyes. “I plead the fifth.”

“I’m not a court and you aren’t even on U.S. soil. Are you having some whirlwind single-day fling? Holy shit, you’re living a Linklater movie. You lucky bitch. Okay, here’s the deal. You stay put. You’re going to make enough money off this YouTube thing to keep you in Paris for a while longer. I’m going to see if I can get you a regular column gig with the paper, get you some kind of salary. Minimal, of course.”

Benji snorted.
Linklater movie?
“Of course. But Al…”

“You want this, right? I mean, I can maybe set you up as some kind of French news stringer too. Might sweeten the deal with the paper. You were a journalism major, you took newswriting, right?”

Just then, the door to the apartment swung open
and Aaron walked in.

Fucking hell.

“Benj? Babe, I’m so sor—” He stopped dead in the doorway to the bedroom, looking back and forth between Benji and the bed.

“Allison, I gotta call you back.”

****

Well, the asshole was handsome, Ziri had to give him that. Red hair, freckles, crinkly eyes that looked like he was used to smiling a lot. Charming.

Ziri wanted to punch him in the junk.

“Um…” Aaron glared daggers at him, then looked back at Benji, who was holding his phone pressed to his forehead and appeared to actually be praying, lips moving soundlessly.

“Ziz…” Benji turned to him with pleading eyes. “I need to talk to…” His cheeks flushed, and Ziri felt a wave of possessiveness.
That’s right, say his name and owe me the kiss.
“To Aaron.”

“That’s two,” Ziri said, only half-teasing. When Benji smiled in response, it made his heart sing and hurt together.

“That’s two,” he agreed. “Can you get my bag from your cousin’s coffee shop for me, and meet me by the tower at noon?”

“Of course. I—” He gestured to the blankets covering his body. “I’d like some privacy to dress.”

“Of course.”

Benji turned and gave Aaron a little shove back through the doorway, then pulled the door shut behind him.

Ziri got up, picked up his underwear, and then sat down heavily on the bed. What the hell was he going to do now?

****

Benji stared at Aaron, and all he could think was “asshole.” How could eight years be undone that easily? Yesterday, before Ziri’s madcap tour and the dares and the kissing, Benji would have given anything for just this— for Aaron to come back. Even if he’d fucked Henri. But now… he had to admit it was different.

“Benj, who—?” Aaron gestured to the door, where Ziri had just let himself out with a promise to see Benji at noon.

“His name is Ziri, and I met him in a coffee shop. He cheered me up.”