Signs (9 page)

In the past hour Caleb had explored every part of Luc’s skin he could reach without risking prosecution for indecent exposure. Luc’s black T-shirt had been pushed up, and Caleb had discovered that although his partner’s face was devoid of hairs, there were a few soft ones gathered in a line under his belly button, dipping down beneath the waistband of his jeans.

Caleb didn’t dare to follow that line farther, although he was tempted to. Luc had pushed his hands under Caleb’s shirt too, all the way up to his chest to brush his flat palms back and forth over Caleb’s nipples. It was painfully arousing, and Caleb was almost afraid of embarrassing himself in public if they didn’t slow the fuck down.

He grabbed both of Luc’s wrists and held on to them gently, bringing the inquisitive hands to his lips to brush kisses over the knuckles. It was too dark to be able to sign anything, so Caleb carefully returned Luc’s hands to his thighs, pressing them down there and hoping Luc understood. Hands to himself. For now.

When the screen lit up with a burst of fire or something, Caleb could see Luc’s cat-that-got-the-cream grin and wanted to kiss it off his face. But he resisted, keeping his hands in his own lap, forcing his heartbeat and his erection back to a more appropriate place.

They held hands chastely for the rest of the movie, although hands did not seem to want to stay still, and their intertwined fingers were in constant motion against each other.

Caleb’s lips felt swollen and his tongue thick, and his mind couldn’t focus on the story being played out before him. Instead a movie of his own played out in his mind, one where he could lay Luc down on soft sheets, divest them both of clothes, and kiss all over the warm skin that his fingers had been exploring only moments before.

He wanted to know what would happen when there were no barriers between them, physical or otherwise. Caleb wanted to know what he would be capable of if his own fears or embarrassment didn’t stand in the way.

The movie ended far before Caleb was ready, and the lights, when they came back on, were too bright for his eyes. In the final half hour of the movie they’d managed to polish off the candy, and Caleb gathered up the trash to dump on their way out.

“
Good
,” Caleb signed.

“Yes
,” Luc agreed, and his expression told Caleb he wasn’t talking about the movie at all.

Their walk back to the car was almost as slow as the walk to the movie theater, although this time they didn’t stop to look in shop windows. Knowing their time together was coming to a close made Caleb’s heart heavy. This was still so new, and yet… and yet.

They drove back to the lot where Caleb had left his car and stood, leaning against the old car as Caleb cupped Luc’s face in his hands and gently, carefully laid kisses on his lips.

“I can’t see you next weekend,” Luc said, and Caleb nodded. They’d been lucky, two weekends in a row like this, but it couldn’t always be this easy.

“
Soon
,” he signed.

Luc screwed his eyes shut and rose up on his toes to press their foreheads together, kissed Caleb once more, then turned and got into his own car.

Caleb watched it pull out of the lot and away, around a corner. Then he got into his car and sighed heavily. There was a gnawing feeling in his chest already—one that spoke of loss and pain.

It was too soon for this. He never meant to fall in love.

A
FTER
HOLDING
back unwelcome tears for most of the journey back to the city, Luc locked the car in the garage Ilse rented for an obscene amount just so she could keep a car for client visits. It was only a short walk from the garage back to the house, which he found blissfully quiet. He guessed Ilse was locked away in her room—she was as prone to solitude as Luc was. That was good. He didn’t want to talk to anyone who wasn’t Caleb.

Luc carefully locked his bedroom door, bolting it from the inside so no one could walk in on him. That was one of the great things about living with Ilse. She didn’t care what he wanted to do with the room he was living in. She sometimes came down the hall to tell him when dinner was ready and appraised the posters on the wall with a cocked head and a bemused expression.

Ilse didn’t care about putting parental controls on the Internet either, meaning he had full control over what websites he could access. He needed a distraction, something to take his mind off the too-brief encounter earlier in the day. Luc mourned the fact they were unable to find some alone time—truly alone—to make good on the promises their hands had been making.

Tonight, after watching Caleb blush and giggle and come alive in person, he was painfully turned on.

It didn’t take long for Luc to load up one of his favorite free porn sites, and he browsed for a few minutes until he found what he was looking for—a blond, pretty, slightly tanned guy and a slim, pale, dark-haired goth.

Even though his room was at the front of the house, with his bathroom as a buffer between his bedroom and Ilse’s, he still turned the volume down as far as he could before settling back and watching the scene unfold.

The clip was over twenty minutes long, and Luc wasn’t sure he was going to last that long, so after watching the first section of the film, where the two guys made out and slowly started to strip each other of their clothes, he fast-forwarded through the standard blow job scenes to where the smaller, goth guy got fucked.

It was fairly hard-core and better than a lot of gay porn he’d seen before. The two guys seemed to be really into each other. They kissed a lot in between the intense thrusting.

Luc let his eyes drift half closed as he started to pull on his own cock, his other hand roaming over his smooth chest, occasionally pinching at his pierced nipple. Discovering that he liked that was still fairly new.

The two men in the porn film were similar enough to himself and Caleb for his imagination to do most of the work, their actions only the loose basis for his fantasy. He’d only explored touching his hole a few times, mostly after he’d drunk a few beers with Jay and was feeling particularly naughty or just bold. The thought of Caleb’s cock actually being
inside
him, stretching his body and filling him up—well, there hadn’t been anyone else that he’d actually considered letting do that to him.

The concept of his own virginity hadn’t been one Luc had dwelled on until he’d found someone he’d actually consider giving it to. He let his mind wander to what Caleb would be like in bed. Gentle, he was willing to bet. Gentle and careful and… inquisitive. Caleb would want to know what his skin tasted like, what he needed to do to get a reaction. And because he couldn’t hear all of Luc’s groans of pleasure, Luc would have to show him how much he enjoyed it in other ways.

He spread his legs wider apart, exploring down farther behind his balls and pressing on the spot there that was supposed to connect to his prostate. Unsupervised Internet access had allowed Luc to do some fairly in-depth research on gay male sexuality, and even though some of the things he’d seen scared him half to death, he was curious. Curious enough to try some of those things out on his own body.

He watched from under heavy lidded eyes, the boys on the screen fucking shamelessly, too gone in their own pleasure to take note of their surroundings. Luc had two fingers massaging the sweet spot under his balls, his other hand tugging furiously at his cock. With this overload of sensations it didn’t take long for his dick to erupt, spurting hot come over his wrist as Luc arched back, twisting his spine and digging his heels into the bed. He bit down hard on his lip to keep quiet as his body shuddered once, again, then collapsed back.

Jesus
, he thought. If being with Caleb was anywhere near as good as that, then he was looking forward to what happened next.

I
N
B
OSTON
,
Caleb had his own hand shoved deep into his pajama pants, gently caressing his erection as he quietly browsed the Internet.

There were a few different websites that had been recommended to him by different blogs, ones that would hopefully give him the information he desperately wanted. There was enough gay porn on the Internet—enough to give him a headache—and plenty of articles and sites about gay interest type things. Clubs and bars and hookups.

That wasn’t what he wanted, though. He wanted to know what to do when he and Luc finally got into bed together with the intention of… doing it. Sex. He wanted to know how to have sex.

Due to all that headache-inducing porn he knew
what
he needed to do. It was more the specifics he was concerned about. People always said it hurt, and hurting Luc was the very last thing he wanted to do. It was sex, for fuck’s sake. It was supposed to be good. Otherwise why do it?

Caleb squeezed the base of his erection and clicked on a useful-looking link. There were plenty of people on the Internet willing to hand out advice. The trick was knowing whose advice to take. “Take it slow” and “plenty of lube” seemed to be universal comments. Caleb thought he could probably handle that.

There was something strangely erotic about this learning experience. Some of the advice he found was purposefully sensual, the writer describing in explicit detail the best way to suck a cock. How to use fingers to loosen the anal sphincter muscles to prepare the bottom for penetration. The delicate places on a man’s body where the skin was thin, meaning nerve endings were close to the surface: the inside of his wrists, neck, throat, the back of his knees. Caleb stored all of this information away, ready for later use.

The next link he clicked on had diagrams. Some of them were drawings, painstakingly beautiful, detailed drawings of attractive men in various stages of undress, doing increasingly hot things to each other. There were some live-action models too, and Caleb wondered if this counted as porn. Probably.

His cock spat out a thick strand of precome, and Caleb clenched his back teeth and, with three hard strokes, brought himself to an unexpected orgasm. He thrust his hips forward, driving his cock into his clenched fist, and drew out the pleasure for as long as he could.

After, he felt a vague sense of shame. It hadn’t been his intention for this to be a self-pleasing activity. He was supposed to be learning how to give pleasure to Luc, when the time came for them to be together.

Caleb glanced at the clock on the screen and saw it was getting late. He used a Kleenex to wipe his wrist and changed his underpants, then crawled into bed. As he drifted toward sleep, Caleb consciously mapped Luc’s body in his mind. He was going to do everything possible to entice his dreams in Luc’s direction.

8. OUT

I
T
WAS
easy to find Ilse. She had her own office in the house, tucked away on the ground floor in what used to be a closet, a fairly large closet, and even though Ilse had turned her considerable interior design skills on it, the room still retained that boxy feel.

Luc knocked lightly on the doorframe and waited for her call before letting himself in. Ilse had her hair pinned up in a knot, secured with several pencils and what looked like an oversized paper clip. There was a smudge of ink on her nose. He’d clearly interrupted.

“I brought you coffee,” he said, lifting up the mug as a peace offering.

Ilse’s eyes softened into relief, and she ushered him inside.

“Thanks,” she said gratefully, cradling the mug in her hands. “I don’t suppose you brought the cookie jar too?”

“No, sorry. Do you want me to go get it?”

“No,” Ilse said with a sigh. “They’ll only go straight to my hips.” She looked him over again and frowned. “What’s up?”

Luc sat down in the tiny guest chair. It was a folding chair that had once lived in his room when he had a desk. Now Ilse kept it because it could be packed away, out of the way, meaning she could actually get to her own chair.

While Ilse sipped at her coffee, Luc picked at the cracked black polish on his fingernails, wondering how to start the conversation. When his sister cleared her throat lightly, he looked up and gave her a desperate look.

“Go on,” she said gently, in a voice that suggested she knew what he wanted to say.

“I don’t know how to say it,” he said.

“Quickly,” Ilse offered. “Like pulling off a Band-Aid.”

Luc nodded. “Okay. I’m gay, and I have a boyfriend.”

Ilse smiled. “I know,” she said. “Well, I knew you were gay. I didn’t know you were dating anyone. What’s he like?”

Slumping back in the painfully uncomfortable chair, Luc blinked several times to fight back the tears he didn’t want to fall. This wasn’t something he needed to cry about.

“His name is Caleb, and he’s amazing,” Luc said.

“Do you have a picture of him?”

Luc nodded, dug his phone out of his pocket, and thumbed through until he found the picture Caleb had posted on his blog. The self-portrait.

“He’s cute,” Ilse said, appraising the picture, then handing the phone back. “How did you two meet?”

“Online,” Luc admitted. “He’s from Boston. He has a blog like mine, and I saw a picture he’d taken—he’s an amazing photographer—and sent him a message. Then he replied, and things went from there.”

“I’m pleased for you,” she said. “Boston’s pretty far away, though.”

“Not really,” Luc said. “Only a few hours’ drive. It’s not like he’s in Arizona.”

“I suppose,” Ilse said, leaning back in her chair to sip at her coffee again. Her nail polish was chipped too, and Luc thought about offering to fix it for her. Maybe when they were done with their conversation.

“There’s something else….”

“Okay.”

He was slightly unnerved by how cool Ilse was being, but then again… that was Ilse. She rarely let anything affect her.

“Caleb’s deaf,” Luc said, trying to read his sister’s expression, to see if this new piece of information changed anything.

She raised an eyebrow and said, “Oh?”