Lonely Hearts (4 page)

Though initially Baz was cool as hell, the whines made him feral. Elijah called up every whorish cell in his body, turned loose and let guttural pleasure burn in his throat.

Just when he thought he was about to be rewarded with a flood of spunk, Baz whipped him off and around, so they were back to front. Shaking,
aching
, Elijah tried to sit on Baz's dick, only to be pushed forward again.

“Gotta suit up.”

Oh. Right.
Jesus.
Before he could dwell on the thought, though, Baz hauled him onto his now-condom-coated cock.

Elijah arched and moaned as that curved dick speared him, rubbing him all the right ways.

Baz sucked on his neck as he thrust into Elijah, pinching his nipple, teasing open the front of his half-unbuttoned shirt. “That's right, baby. Give it to me. Open up and take it.”

Elijah did. The blow job had been incredible, but his life goal became getting this dick inside him as much as possible. He kept trying to grab himself to jack off, but he was so overstimulated he couldn't make his hands work well enough to get there. When Baz took hold of Elijah's cock for him, he tipped his head back and whimpered.

Baz nuzzled Elijah's chin until he turned. He sealed their mouths together, jerking Elijah until the combined sensation of dick pounding his ass and hand on his cock sent him sailing over the edge into his own personal fireworks. As he twinkled to earth, the last thrust told him Baz had found his own light show.

They kept kissing after the climax—slow, lingering, neither of them wanting the moment to end. Elijah knew he didn't. Maybe it had simply been too long, but that sure as hell felt like the best fuck he'd ever had. Good banter before too. Dance was pretty decent, even with the hip. The car and expensive booze and cigs were merely frosting, but Elijah did enjoy sugar.

He's going to hurt you. He's a train wreck. You're not a whole lot better. Put this shit down and walk away.

He tangled his fingers in Baz's hair. “You fuck good, Nancy.”

Baz nipped and tugged Elijah's ear with his teeth.

Elijah shut his eyes against the tenderness. The walls he usually kept himself safe behind broke free of the Xanax barriers and scraped into place, moving him from unable to leave him to unable to linger.

“I should go. My roommates Moopsie and Cutesy are likely looking for me. You have good odds on a lecture coming from Damien and Marius too.”

For a moment he thought Baz would try to get him to stay, and he held his breath, half dreading, half hoping for it. But Baz only kissed his neck and ran a hand across his arm before letting it fall away. “You're probably right.”

He was
absolutely
right. But as Elijah sorted out his pants and climbed out of the Tesla, he wished with every fiber of his being he wasn't.

For Baz, the reception went by in a fuzzy, Elijah-filled blur.

Before they rejoined the others, they dabbed out come stains on their clothes in the car, laughed at the futility, then lit up cigarettes and sauntered to the marina. Once there they went their separate ways, but Baz kept his gaze on Elijah.

He should be relieved. This was the part that made him crazy, the moment when a guy wanted
more
and Baz knew he couldn't do it. It was refreshing to have somebody on board with him for a change. Elijah was right, they were Sid and Nancy all the way. Terrible idea. Sure, they could fuck occasionally. They'd had a fun night together, bled off some raw from a rough day. End scene.

Except Baz couldn't stop thinking about him. It wasn't simply the sex, either. And of course he wanted to explore finding out if Elijah was as enthusiastic a top as he was a bottom. But it was more that he wanted…well, more. More banter. More side eye. More of Elijah regarding him warily, like he didn't trust Baz at all. Getting all intense and up in Baz's face.

Looking hungry. Aching. Wearing the expression on his face matching the feelings Baz concealed inside.

Baz tried to push Elijah out of his head, or at least into the quiet obsession he'd been previously, but he wouldn't go. That made sense when they were still at the reception. It made no sense when he was at the hotel with Marius.

Okay, a lot of it was Baz couldn't stop wondering if Elijah had gotten out of the reception in one piece—Baz hadn't seen him leave. Giles and Aaron were watching him, right?

He could check. Aaron was rooming with Elijah.

Marius watched Baz pull out his phone as they entered the elevator. “Everything okay?”

“Just checking on something.” He tapped open Aaron's contact information.

“If the something is Elijah, he left with Aaron and Giles twenty minutes ago.”

Baz paused, registering the censure in Marius's tone, but he still tapped out the text.
Hey, Aaron. Elijah make it to your room okay?

He let out a breath when the reply appeared on his screen.
Yes. He's already asleep.

K thx.
Baz clicked his phone into sleep mode and tucked it into his pocket. He ignored Marius giving him
a look
and continued toward their room with all the confidence in the world that Marius, the world's biggest mother hen, would launch into Baz in his own time.

Actually, he acknowledged as he opened the door with his keycard, Damien was more hen, the one to get in Baz's face about stupid decisions. Marius did more silent judging. He did his shepherding around the edges. What was weird, though, was neither one of them had lit into him once he'd come to the reception after fucking Elijah. Damien had raised an eyebrow, and Marius was decidedly full of glances with heavy meaning, but nobody had sat him in a chair and said, “Hey, what the hell were you doing with Elijah Prince?”

He wasn't sure what it meant that they hadn't.

Frowning, he stripped out of his clothes and into a pair of boxers. He was tugging the waistband into place as he caught a glance of Marius sprawled on his bed, hands behind his head, an enigmatic expression on his face.

Baz sighed and ran a hand through his hair. “Okay. Fine. Say what you've got to say, and stop making me crazy.”

“Get yourself ready for bed first. I got your light out already.”

Baz glanced around the room, and sure enough, his portable lamp sat on the desk beside Marius's overnight bag. It was tricked out with a special red bulb which, while not exactly a standard treatment for photophobic vision, helped Baz. The red light made his life look like hell's boudoir or old-time-photography darkroom, but it meant he could take off his goddamned glasses and remove his contacts without the wrong flash of light giving him a five-hour migraine.

“Thanks.” He saluted Marius and went to the bathroom.

Getting ready for bed was more than brushing his teeth and maybe scrubbing stray jizz from his face. To start, he had to plug in his light. Once that was done, he removed his glasses and got to work.

There were the pills first—antidepressants, antiseizure meds, a gazillion vitamins and an assortment of painkillers that had joined his crusade post-bullet. After he sloshed those into his bloodstream, he washed his hands, set up his tray and took out his contacts. In most photophobia cases, they would have been enough to stop the light sensitivity, but not for Baz. Sometimes he could go with just contacts, but not for long and only in certain circumstances. He had a habit of tipping his glasses down to wink, but that almost always meant it felt like someone put an ice pick into his head.

He didn't have simple sensitivity. He had seriously fucked-over retinas, especially his left eye, and by rights he shouldn't have been able to see anymore at all. Vision for Baz had come after a zillion surgeries and a couple experimental treatments his uncle had flown him to Switzerland to receive.

The contacts, in addition to being his first, most important shield from too much light, were also his corrective lenses. Once they were out, he was raw in every way. His actual sight wasn't too bad, just a little blurry with a hint of astigmatism. The light was everything—or rather, a tiny bit of it was way, way too much, because he had no filter. It varied from day to day, his sensitivity, but at his best moments he was still a vampire. The glare from a computer screen could burn like acid. The glow of a bedside lamp could cut into his skull. The flash from a smartphone could make him pass out from pain.

Sometimes, tonight being an example, even the red light stung. He cleaned his contacts—eight hundred dollars a pair—and set them aside to marinate. He washed his face and brushed his teeth, did a few stretches to see if he could unkink his hip. When it didn't work, he dug his TENS unit out of his shaving kit and hooked it up.

He regarded himself in the mirror, taking in the blurry sight of himself without his sunglasses, with electrodes glued to his hip and shoulder. He wished he could make the contacts work alone, because he looked better with his actual eyes, he thought. He remembered Elijah bitching about not being able to see them. A lot of people thought he was a poser to wear shades all the time, and that was fine because they didn't know. Though it meant the only people who ever saw him this way were Marius, and occasionally his mom, if she came into his room at night when he was home. Since he rarely went home, it was mostly Marius.

For another month, anyway. Then it would be nobody.

He wondered if Elijah had liked what he'd seen, in the moment Baz had taken the sunglasses off.

Putting his darkest shades on, he grabbed the battery unit in one hand and unplugged the lamp. “Incoming,” he called through the bathroom door.

“Ready to receive,” Marius replied.

They'd developed the call-and-answer technique over the years whenever they were on the road together, this ritual of Baz undressing his eyes and Marius preparing the outer chamber with red light. Once Baz had been faster than Marius. They'd both missed a choir performance—the whole reason they'd been out of town in the first place—because Baz lay in bed sobbing from pain, Marius hovering beside him with ice packs and whispered apologies. Ever since, Baz didn't open the bathroom door without his sunglasses on and a shout to make sure he didn't step out into a world of hurt.

The hotel room glowed red from two Marius-replaced bulbs, one on the desk and another by the bedside. Any other lights in the room were unplugged, and light switches were duct taped firmly into the off position. As Baz cracked a bottle of water from the mini bar and collapsed onto the bed, Marius scuttled into the bathroom and applied the same procedure to the switches in there. If one of them needed the john in the middle of the night, they'd do it in the dark or use Baz's portable light. All the tape and red lights would stay in place until Baz had his contacts in again.

Marius returned to the main room and flopped on the bed with Baz. “Okay. De-cloak, then tell me what the hell is going on with you and Elijah Prince.”

Now
Baz wanted the damn glasses as cover, which was probably why Marius had waited to grill him. With a sigh, Baz folded the shades up and set them on the bedside table and rested the TENS unit on his chest, the regular pulse of the electrodes a soothing backdrop. “Nothing's going on. We hung out. We fucked. End of story.”

Marius's response was to raise an eyebrow.

Baz stared up at the ceiling. “Seriously. Move along, nothing to see here.”

“I noticed he was extra colorful.”

“Yes. We had a little weed, and he had a Xanax. He seemed stressed. Don't worry, he's had both before. Well, I'm assuming about the marijuana because he handled it like a pro. It's not as if I was corrupting him or anything.”

“Did I say you corrupted him?”

“You've got your
I'm disappointed in you, Baz
voice on.”

Marius grabbed one of Baz's spare pillows and crammed it under his neck as he lay on his side and regarded Baz thoughtfully. “To be honest, I'm more worried about you than disappointed.”

Baz blinked. “What? Why?”

“Because you've been obsessed with Elijah for a while, but this is the first time you've engaged with him. And you don't seem to have him out of your system.”

“What the hell is that supposed to mean?”

Marius shrugged. The red light erased all the shadows and made his skin seem to glow like a god's. “I don't know. This is new territory. Usually I'm worried about the other guy.”

Baz sighed. Turning off the TENS unit, he yanked the electrodes off one at a time, wincing as the adhesive occasionally resisted giving way. “
I
worry about Elijah. Which, when I told him so, pissed him off. Told me he wasn't a princess and could take care of himself.”

“
Why
do you worry about him?”

The shadowy memory filtered into Baz's brain. “I met him before Saint Timothy. On one of my benders in Saint Paul—before you started going along as my nanny. I took a cab to this house party, but it was pretty skeevy, so I did a circuit and left. Except on the way to my cab I heard somebody cry out in the alley beside the house.”

Marius tensed, half sitting up. “Oh
fuck
. You didn't.”

“What was I supposed to do, whistle so I couldn't hear? Of course I went in. Turned out to be a group of losers from the party and the
entertainment
one of them had brought, who wisely refused to go inside when he realized what kind of assholes had hired him.”

“Elijah.”

“Yes. I threw a hunk of concrete at one of them, called 911. That sent them scattering, since they didn't want to be picked up for solicitation. Of course, the cops tried to hang it on me, but I'd already called my uncle while I waited, and the arresting officers received a pretty high-ranking phone call before they could so much as produce a pair of cuffs. I got Elijah off too. Put him on a bus, gave him all the money I had on me and told him to go the hell home.” His nostrils flared, and he shut his eyes. “Which was fucking stupid, obviously, given who I sent him to. I should have…done something else.” He didn't know what, but his stomach still turned when he thought about Elijah's parents.