“A week.”

Neither of us spoke for a minute, but finally I said, as gently as I could, “You don’t want them to know, do you?”

“I’m sorry.” It came out a whisper.

“After all that shit you gave me about being willing to face people?” But I said it teasingly. I knew what his father was like. I knew how hard it would be for him. I couldn’t be mad at him for wanting to avoid it.

“I know,” he said quietly.

“Your Dad’s gonna totally ruin Christmas.” I was still teasing, trying to cheer him up.

“I know.” I was happy to hear that it seemed to be working.

“And Lizzy is going to blow a fucking gasket.”

“I KNOW!” There was at least a hint of laughter in his voice now.

But he still hadn’t looked at me. I got down on my knees in front of him and put my hands on his shoulders. I waited for him to look up at me and smiled at him.

“It’s okay,” I told him.

He shook his head. “It’s not okay. I’m being a hypocrite. Why aren’t you pissed at me?”

“Because your Dad’s an angry, belligerent, antagonistic asshole.”

He laughed just a little. “First time I’ve ever had reason to be happy about that.”

I rubbed the top of his head playfully. “Cheer up. It’s not so bad. It sucks that we can’t spend Christmas together. And I’ll hate not seeing you for a week. But we’ll get through this. It’ll be fine.”

Finally, he relaxed and even smiled a little. “You’re really okay with this?”

“I promise.”

He pulled me against him tight enough to take my breath away.

“Thank you.”

I turned and kissed his cheek and then pulled back so I could look at him.

“I assume you’re going to stay at the apartment while they’re here?” His lease wasn’t up yet, and although it sucked that he still had to pay the rent, it was definitely going to make things easier.

“I’ll have to. The motel they use is right across the street. I don’t know what to do about the phone, though. I gave them this number. But if they try to call me from the motel….”

“I’ll forward the phone to your old number.” It wasn’t like anybody ever called for me anyway.

I was thinking about the fact that we only had two nights together before we would be sleeping alone again for a week. “You wait here,” I told him. I went back to the bedroom and got the lube and then came back and knelt again in front of him, between his knees. He was looking at me with one eyebrow up and half a grin on his face.

“What are you up to?”

I pushed him back on the couch and started to undo his pants. “I thought I’d give you a reason to hurry home.”

“You think I don’t already have a reason?” he asked with some amusement. But he lifted his hips and let me slide his pants off.

I just smiled at him. “Now you’ll have two.” I pulled him toward me, so that his ass was almost starting to hang off of the couch. Always, I had to start at the amazing, alluring trail of hair leading down from his navel, kissing it and tasting it. His hands were immediately tangled in my curls. “Have you always had a hair fetish?” I asked him without looking up.

“No.” He pulled on it a little, playfully. “Only with you.”

That made me smile, and I ran my tongue again up that trail and then started to work my way back down.

“I should ask you the same question,” he said teasingly.

Only half of my brain was thinking about his words. I was thinking about the close-cropped hair on his head. “What are you talking about? You don’t have any hair.”

He laughed, sort of a low rumble that caused his stomach to tremble beneath me. Then one hand tugged on my hair, pulling my face away from him, and his other hand moved to cover his stomach from his navel to his crotch. Covering that beautiful trail of hair.

“Hey!”

I looked up to see him grinning wolfishly down at me. “Now do you know what I’m talking about?”

That made me laugh, and I pushed his hand away and kissed him there again. “Ever since our first camping trip. Do you remember me talking in my sleep?”

“About mountain biking.”

“Right,” I said sarcastically.

“You said something about ‘follow the trail’.”

“Right,” I said again and traced my finger down it.

He laughed again. “I thought you were acting funny that morning.”

“I woke up with such a hard on for you, I had to jack off in the tent before I could face you.”

He moaned when I said that, and his erection, which had been lying against my cheek as I kissed him, jumped against me. When I looked up, he was giving me a wicked, sexy grin. “That is hot,” he said huskily. “I have a sudden urge to pitch a tent in the back yard tonight.”

I laughed and then put my tongue on the base of his cock and ran it all the way up his shaft. His eyes drifted closed, and I felt a shudder go through him. I did it again, and his hips lifted toward me as I pulled away. His eyes opened again, and he watched me as I teased my tongue over his slit and then took him in my mouth. He groaned. His fingers clenched in my hair, but he didn’t push. He never pushed—until he came. Then he would lose his iron control a little bit, and I loved that I could do that to him.

I grabbed the base of his cock and started rubbing my thumb down his perineum. I had been slowly working my way toward his hole over the last few weeks, and he had finally stopped tensing up every time and had even started to enjoy it the last couple of times. This time, he did tense up again, but only for a second, before he relaxed again. I increased the pressure, heard him groan, and felt him pushing against me.

I quickly uncapped the lube and spread a little on my fingers.

“You can tell me to stop at any time,” I told him, and I started to suck him again before he could respond. Then, very gently, I started to rub one finger up and down the crack of his ass. Light pressure, no penetration, just slowly rubbing from his balls down past his hole and then back again. At first, he started to tense up again. I kept moving up and down, up and down, still sucking at the same time, just letting repetition soften him up. After a few passes, he relaxed again. A couple more passes, and I heard his breathing start to change, and soon after that, the rhythm of my finger rubbing him had him moaning and moving his hips a little to prolong the contact to the best spots. “Doing okay?” I asked quietly.

“Yeeeesssss.” It came out a long moan.

I started circling my finger around his rim and then applied the slightest bit of pressure against his hole. He responded beautifully, moaning and pushing down against my hand. I slipped one finger inside of him and heard his breath hiss out between his teeth. Very slowly, I moved in and out, in and out. He was making soft whimpering sounds now, pushing toward me, his fingers tight in my hair. I reached just a bit and brushed my finger on the bunch of nerves I had been carefully avoiding so far.

His reaction was almost enough to make me come. He bucked underneath me, his hands pulling hard on my hair, and gasped out, “Holy fuck!”

I pulled back away from it again. “You didn’t know about that?”

“No.” And that, too, was a moan. I reached and touched it again, just barely, just to see him writhing at the unexpected pleasure of it, just to hear the low whimper in his voice. Then I continued with the gentle in and out, in and out.

“Do you want more?” I asked. I didn’t look up at him, just went back to sucking him as soon as the question was out of my mouth.

“No.” It was sort of a whimper. I kept sucking, kept my finger moving slowly in and out, and then a second later, in barely a whisper, he said, “Yes.”

I slid a second finger in, and he moaned again, pushing against me so that my fingers went in faster than before. Two or three strokes, in and out, and then I reached up for his prostate. I felt him jump, heard him gasp out, “Jesus Christ, that’s amazing.” And then suddenly he was pushing me away, pushing me hard onto my back on the floor, pulling my sweats and boxers off of me frantically. He lay down on top of me, and I felt his hand between my legs, his fingers pushing against me.

“Tell me how. I want to do it to you.”

“Lube!” I managed to squeak out, just as he started to push in.

He laughed shakily, sat up and put some on his fingers, and then was back on top of me, his eyes intense on mine. “Tell me.”

“It kind of feels like a lump on the front wall. You’ll know.” And then his fingers were sliding into me, and I couldn’t talk any more. My hips rose to meet him. My back arched, my eyes closed. His fingers were moving torturously slow, in and out. After all of that time sucking him and teasing him, I was ready to explode.

I started to stroke my own erection with one hand and his with the other, but he pulled away. “Too close,” he whispered, and then his fingers found what they had been searching for. That incredible shock of pleasure hit me. I groaned and arched against him and heard him groan in response. I opened my eyes and looked up at him. His eyes looked greener than usual, heavy-lidded, sensual and unbelievably sexy, and he was smiling at me a little.

“God, I love to watch you,” he said, and then he touched it again.

“Is this what you feel,” he whispered as he touched it a third time. “Is this what you feel when I’m inside of you?”

I couldn’t possibly formulate a rational response at that moment. All I managed was some kind of whimper. He didn’t seem to mind.

“Jared.” His cheeks were bright red, but he still said, “I really want to fuck you right now.”

Just hearing him say those words was almost enough to make me come. I managed to say, “I thought you’d never ask.” He smiled, sat up, and started digging through the drawer in the coffee table, looking for a condom. Funny how we seemed to have them stashed all over the house now. I started to turn over, but he stopped me.