Empty Nests (24 page)

“Giving out child-rearing advice and being listened to is one of the perks of getting your own child anywhere near adulthood.” James mumbled the last few words as Gabe’s ministrations started to melt his body from the top down. “So if Tamyra’s “Dancing Queen” and Nate’s got “Yellow Submarine,” what is your ringtone for Frank?”

“‘Can’t Touch This.’”

“I’m going to assume there’s some long complicated story behind that rather than believing one of you has terrible taste in music.”

“Let’s just say for Frank’s own good, we don’t let him near karaoke machines anymore.” James chuckled, even as the will to move even a single muscle slowly drained from his body. “You look like you’re about to fall asleep.”

“I’m sure I could stay awake for certain activities.”

Gabe gave him a kiss. “It’s been a long week. How about morning sex?”

“I like morning sex. At least I think I do. I like the idea of it.”

Gabe pulled away the towels and let them drop to the floor. “In that case, let’s crawl into bed so we can be well rested for your first foray into morning sex.”

T
HE
FIRST
thing James was aware of as he floated awake was the feel of fine fabric against his skin. It was soft and light and covered him except along his left side, where he could feel skin, warm and smooth against his own. It was the smell that came to him next. It was warm like the skin, masculine. It was a nice smell, relaxing. It made him want to slip back to sleep. Instead, he opened his eyes.

Gabe was sitting up next to him, working on his tablet. A tiny sliver of sun broke through heavy curtains and fell across the bed. The sun seemed to be coming from very high up, though, and it felt later than it should.

“What time is it?” he mumbled.

Gabe smiled down at him and smiled. “Hey, you’re awake. It’s almost nine.”

“Nine?” James sat up. It meant he’d slept for over eight hours. That never happened. “Why didn’t you wake me?”

“I tried, but you mumbled at me. I figured you needed the sleep.”

“I haven’t slept until nine in years.”

“Then you really must have needed it.” Gabe put his tablet aside. “I know I never notice how tired I truly am until I have a day when I can actually stop and breathe.” James stretched his back, then Gabe pulled him close. He had the sudden urge to fall back asleep. “Got an e-mail from Nate. Harry is grounded, but he says thank you for the advice.”

“Advice is easy,” James said through a yawn. “It’s a way to sucker other people into doing what you’ve already done, knowing full well that it’s nightmarishly hard.”

“I get the impression teenagers are never easy.”

“Not really, but the first six months really were the worst. Lots of crying in the middle of the night. From both of us. I think it was a toss-up as to who was more exhausted.”

Gabe put a kiss on his head, and James did his best to shake the old memories from his mind. Those days were long gone. Now he was lying in a soft bed, relaxed and happy from more than eight hours of sleep. If there was any time to seize the moment and take some initiative, this was it.

He rolled over and pressed his lips to Gabe’s chest. “I think you said something about morning sex?”

“Did I?”

“I do believe you did.”

“In that case….” Gabe tipped his head down and kissed him. James kissed back, feeling more confident than ever. Each touch between them was soft but sure. Kisses were gentle and lingering. Gabe slid down James’s body, his light beard a contrast to the smoothness of the rest of his skin. He kicked away the sheets as he nuzzled the little stripe of hair below James’s navel before taking a couple long licks of cock.

James closed his eyes, letting the sensation wash over him but also tried to disconnect, not wanting to leap off that edge too soon.

Gabe took a couple more licks, then stopped. “James?” James hummed, feeling too good to bother with words. “Would you be up for trying something new this morning?”

“Sure.” James was up for trying just about anything right then.

“Good.” Gabe kissed the inside of James’s thigh. “I want to feel you in me this morning.”

That managed to get through the lustful fog of James’s mind. He sat up. “You do?”

Gabe had rested his cheek on James’s thigh and was looking up at him. “Is that a problem? If you don’t want to, that’s fine….”

“No, no. Just wanted to double-check.” James’s cock was behind the idea. James was trying to work out the details. “Um…. How…?”

Gabe smiled and kissed the tip of his cock. “Lay back and let me take care of it.”

Gabe crawled back up the bed and rummaged around in his nightstand. James glanced over and was glad to see that Gabe had as much random stuff in his nightstand as James did. He finally pulled out a tube of what James guessed was lube and a condom.

“I know you’re clean but no point getting into bad habits.”

“Oh, I’m a big supporter of condoms.”

Gabe gave him a kiss, then quickly kissed his way down James’s body.

James watched in fascination as Gabe opened the tube and slicked up his fingers. He wrapped one hand around James’s cock, and with the other hand, reached behind himself. James couldn’t see what was happening, but he could guess, and that guess sent a shock of lust through him. He bucked his hips into Gabe’s hand.

“Easy there.” Gabe stopped whatever he was doing and tore into the condom. “This is less prep than I usually like, but I’m feeling very impatient this morning.”

James nodded as the condom was rolled on and Gabe straddled his hips. James closed his eyes and tried taking long, deep breaths. He felt a pressure against the tip of his cock, then a tightness, then suddenly an all-enveloping heat. He snapped his eyes open as Gabe shut his, his head tossed back and a smile on his face.

“Oh God,” Gabe breathed. “Oh.”

James watched in fascination as Gabe slowly rose, then pressed himself back down. The squeeze around his cock was on the edge of painful, but every nerve in his body seemed to be connected to that one point. Every tiny shift of Gabe’s body telegraphed itself into James.

Gabe slid up and down a few more times. “You can move if you like.” His head was still thrown back.

James had been fighting to keep as still as possible, but with that one comment, he thrust his hips up hard.

Gabe gave a small cry.

James froze. “Are you okay?”

“Fucking perfect.”

James grabbed Gabe’s hips and thrust again. He tried for some semblance of control, but it was the first time he’d been inside someone in over eighteen years. His body screamed in pleasure as what he’d been missing was finally delivered.

“Wait.”

James froze but whimpered, struggling to keep himself still.

Gabe leaned forward, kissed him, then rolled them both over. James scrambled up onto his knees, trying to stay inside Gabe. Gabe raised his hips and wrapped his legs high around James’s body. James pushed back in slowly, looking down to watch his cock vanish.

“Nice and hard, James.” Gabe’s voice was thick and rough, with an edge of command.

James pulled back and thrust hard. Gabe cried out, his voice filling the room. He grabbed his cock and started stroking it fast. The sight broke something loose in James’s chest. He grabbed Gabe’s hips and let all control go. His thrusts were as deep and hard and fast as he could make them. The slapping of his body against Gabe’s gave rhythm to their cries.

James felt it coming to an end too fast. He wanted to slow down but couldn’t; he felt locked into a race with no slowing down or turning back. Then with a deep bellow, he came, driving himself into Gabe with five strokes, each as hard and deep as he could go.

He held on to Gabe’s hips, afraid of tipping over, then Gabe arched his back, squeezed down on James’s cock, and spilled across his body.

He lay there gasping for breath, his legs still wrapped around James.

“Are you okay?” James asked. He felt himself starting to get soft but still didn’t quite trust himself to let go or move.

A huge grin spread across Gabe’s face. “I am fucking fantastic. You’ve got a bit of fire buried down deep, don’t you?”

James didn’t answer. His body was suddenly sending in general status reports, most of which were pointing out that he’d never done that before, had some rather underused muscles, and he didn’t get nearly as much exercise as he should.

Gabe dropped his legs, and James slid out. He must have realized James was still processing and slipped the condom from James’s cock for him, chucking it into the basket under the nightstand. Only then did James fall face-first onto the bed under him.

Gabe rubbed the small of his back. “How was that for morning sex?”

He managed to give a thumbs-up.

“Good.”

Gabe’s phone rang.

“Are you going to get that?” James already had a pretty good idea as to how lucky he was getting so much uninterrupted time with Gabe.

“Nope.”

“Might be important.”

“Don’t care. It’s Sunday morning, and I’m naked in bed with my boyfriend.”

James pushed himself up. He’d guessed they were at boyfriend stage, but he’d yet to hear anyone use the word. “Boyfriend?”

Gabe frowned. “Is that okay?”

“Yeah, yes…. Still not quite sure how this all works.”

Gabe kissed him. The phone was still ringing. “This works however we want it to work, as fast or slow as we want.”

The phone stopped. James looked over at where it was sitting on the bedside table. The screen said seven missed calls and five messages. “I shouldn’t be distracting you from work.”

“I’m the boss. Sometimes I get to decide how I spend my Sunday mornings, and right now I want to spend it taking a long shower with my
boyfriend,
then having a nice breakfast. How does that sound?”

James felt warm under Gabe’s gaze. “It sounds great.”

I
T
WAS
after noon when James slowly unlocked his front door. He wasn’t sure why he was trying to be quiet. It wasn’t like he was sneaking home at two in the morning or had anything to be ashamed about.

He slid inside and shut the door silently. Dylan came out of the kitchen with a sandwich in each hand. He grinned. “Looky who finally made it home.”

“There was traffic,” James mumbled, still not sure why he felt the need to make excuses.

“At noon on a Sunday. Sure.” Dylan crashed on the couch, tearing into one of his sandwiches as he did.

“Thank you for taking care of things last night, by the way.”

“Oh, no problem. Harry and I had a long and
interesting
conversation about your boyfriend, covering many topics, while we waited for his mom.”

“Really.” James tried to sound like he didn’t care.

“Oh yes. Has he mentioned a guy called Gregory?”

“A few times. Old business manager, I think he said.” James tried to downplay it, but Gabe hadn’t really talked much about any past boyfriends.

“An old boyfriend.”

“Yeah, he sort of mentioned that.”

“Well, according to Harry it was a
very
bad relationship, and the adults only talk about it when they think no one is listening. Best he and his sister can put together is the guy was trying to steal TechPrim, seriously screwing with your boyfriend’s head in the process. It might have even gotten a bit violent toward the end.” That thought pulled James up short. “No one will talk about it, but he does know that Gabe lived with his parents for a few months after the breakup. Bet you didn’t know about any of that.”

“No, that was never mentioned.” James tried to picture Gabe in any situation where he’d let someone take control like that. But then he couldn’t picture Gabe in any situation where he wasn’t in control, where even if he didn’t have the upper hand, he at least knew what was going on around him. But he couldn’t blame him if the relationship had been that bad. And James knew he wasn’t one to talk about control. His whole life was about trying to bring order to situations that were out of his control or where people were trying to take control from him. He was learning that one of the things he found appealing about Gabe was that he felt he could trust Gabe to take control for a bit, allowing for things like eight hours of sleep.

“He also mentioned you got the seal of approval from his parents, so you’re in. Though TechPrim owes me an internship.”

“I’ll be sure to pass that along.”

N
ORMAL
,
RATIONAL
people did not spend their Sunday afternoons trying to go over badly translated Russian business law, half of which seemed like dusted-off leftovers from Czarist days, and Gabe knew that.

He read Tamyra’s proposal for the hundredth time. So far he’d moved a comma and fixed one misspelled word.

He knew he should be letting the lawyers handle the entire thing. He knew he should stand in front of a team, hand them a memo, and say, “I want to buy
Budu
ŝie tehnologii.
Make it happen.”

But the fact was the whole project had been his idea. A randomly accessed late-night article on rare earth elements had settled into his brain. It turned into an idle search through mineral deposit maps, more as a time waster than anything else. Three days of no sleep later, he’d had the list and the idea. If Hershey could own the cocoa farms and almond orchards for their chocolate bars, why couldn’t TechPrim dig up their own indium and neodymium from newly discovered deposits? Okay, the deposits were literally at the ass-end of nowhere, and half the mineral rights were already owned by random companies lacking the resources to get to them, but after three sleepless nights, these sounded like minor problems, and he’d pitched the whole thing to Frank and Nate.

He leaned back and felt an ache from the morning’s sex. He really hadn’t prepped himself enough, but it had been a long time since he’d had a good fuck. It had been a long time since he’d felt comfortable letting anyone do that, and the sudden desire had startled him more than a little. James had seemed to take to it well. He’d seen the moment when something in James’s head flipped over. When the mild-mannered single parent had given way to something raw and primal.