Page 86 of The Kiss Principle

I rubbed his leg, which was slung over my shoulder. I kissed his ankle.

“God, Fernando,” he said in that scratchy voice. “I’ve wanted this for so long.”

“Me too.” My fingers followed the powerful muscles of his quad. His dick had softened, and I touched it, stroking lightly under the head.

Zé smiled. “That doesn’t mean I don’t like it. It’s a lot, and my body is focused on other things right now.”

“I want it to feel good.”

“It does.” He made a few microadjustments and then said, “Go slow at first.”

I did. In porn, I feel like guys always talk about how hard it is to go slow, but that’s never been true for me. Sure, there’s a time and place to pound, and that can feel fucking amazing. But in my experience (I could hear Augustus and Chuy sayinglimited experiencefrom the peanut gallery), my partners (and I) tended to get off more from slow and steady than from a nonstop bangfest. The drag and scrape of his tightness felt incredible, and Zé made soft noises that suggested he was feeling all right. I felt him relax, loosening up, accepting me more easily. I started to move a little faster. I began to find my rhythm. Like I said, it had been a long time, and I was out of practice. But my body remembered, and the way Zé watched me, with that distracted look of someone struggling to pay attention, was flattering. Hot,too. I scooted closer, changing the angle of our bodies. This time, I was doing it on purpose, looking for it.

“Caralho, fuck, damn, fuck!” He shouted the words at full volume, his hole clamping down on me, his back lifting from the mattress. I tried to keep us in position, drilling forward against that spot. His eyes were huge, but I wasn’t sure he was seeing me. He moaned—if you can call a shout a moan, “Fernando!”

His hand slid between his legs, and he began jerking himself off. He still looked like he was only three-quarters of the way to hard, but he seemed to know what he was doing. I kept going, and as I watched his face and felt his body tense around me, I went faster and faster. I could feel it, how he was chasing that edge, and the intensity of my fucking kept inching it further and further away. It was the hottest thing I’d ever experienced in my life, and I fucked him like my balls were on fire.

And then, intense or not, the fucking couldn’t hold him back any longer. Zé grunted. His body locked around me, his hole squeezing my dick. He came—a few strong spurts, and then softer ones, painting his defined abs.

I slowed. I’d read enough porn to know how sensitive a guy got after he nutted.

But Zé shook his head. “Keep going,” he mumbled, and he got a hand on my hip and drew me into him again. “Keep going.”

Jesus Christ, I thought.

He trembled as I chased that sweet spot of friction and heat and contact. He made soft little noises that were unmistakably distressed. He looked up at me, and his half-lidded eyes were dark and dreaming. Then I felt like something was lifting me up, and blood washed in my ears, and I came.

After, he was still looking up at me. I managed to give him a fumbling kiss and then, as carefully as I could, I eased out of him. I ditched the condom and lay down, and he turned, letting me take him into my arms before I even had to ask: his back tomy chest, my nose in that mane of windblown hair. He breathed slowly and softly now. I drew his hair back and kissed his ear.

“Te amo,” I whispered.

“Eu também,” he said, his voice all raw edges. “Te amo muito.”

21

“Six months isn’t that long,” Zé said as I secured Igz’s car seat in its base. Tried to do it. “Do you want me to do that?”

The lawyer’s parking lot wasn’t busy on a weekday afternoon. In the shade, the temperature was pleasant, and I could smell the carne asada from the food truck parked at the corner. Maybe Zé would say yes to tacos, I thought. Maybe, after that meeting, he’d take pity on me.

“Six months will go by so fast. You have to push down until it clicks.”

“I’m pushing,” I said. “What the fuck does it look like I’m doing?”

He stretched one long arm past me, made some tiny adjustment that I couldn’t quite track, and the car seat clicked into its base.

“Show-off.”

“Fernando,” he said, and he turned me away from the car seat to settle his hands on my hips. Those big dark eyes held me. “I know it wasn’t the answer we wanted, but it’s okay.”

“Anything can happen in six months. He might show up again. He might decide he wants to get clean.”

Zé leaned his forehead against mine. “And that would be a good thing. We’d be happy about that.”

“Speak for your fucking self.”

Six months of no contact, it turned out, was the minimum amount of time necessary to prove parental abandonment. That was the first step in terminating Chuy’s parental rights so I couldadopt Igz. So we could adopt her. Even though that felt like a bigwe.

“He’s your brother,” Zé said.

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