Page 77 of Part & Parcel

Nick watched him from under lowered brows, but remained silent. A shiver ran across Kelly’s damp neck. The longer they went without being intimate, the more hellish it was to be alone with Nick.

Somewhere in the afterlife, Eli was laughing at them.

Kelly sniffed and tucked his towel in at his hip a little more securely. “You remember how you used to pop Sanchez’s back for him? You’d pick him up and it would crack and shit.”

Nick nodded. “Your back’s that bad? You want me to try cracking it?”

“Yeah,” Kelly said, breathing out in relief. He was thankful Nick hadn’t outright refused to do it. From what he remembered when Eli used to have Nick pop his back, it required some pretty intimate contact. And at this point in Eli’s sexbargo, any contact at all was torture. That was the main reason Kelly hadn’t asked Nick to rub his back down with emu oil yet.

He checked the towel one last time to make sure it wouldn’t pull a porno trick and flutter to the ground as soon as Nick touched him, and then moved closer to Nick as his heart hammered. He made the mistake of meeting Nick’s eyes before turning his back to him. There was just as much longing in Nick as Kelly felt in himself. Longing, frustration, lust, and a hint of sadness that Kelly didn’t quite understand. But then, a hint of sadness pretty much described Nick these days, didn’t it?

Nick stepped up behind him, moving the cool air around Kelly, pushing his familiar scent into Kelly’s space. Kelly shivered harder and squeezed his eyes closed. When he spoke, he kept it at a whisper so Nick wouldn’t hear the tremor in his voice. “How do you do it?”

“Cross your arms, hands to shoulders,” Nick murmured, just behind Kelly’s ear. It may have been the nerves coursing through Kelly’s body, but he thought Nick sounded shaky as well.

Kelly swallowed past a sudden tightness in his throat and brought both hands up, placing them on his shoulders. Nick edged closer, his fingers gentle on Kelly’s overheated skin, sliding down his forearms, wrapping around Kelly. He nudged Kelly’s neck with his chin as he settled his body against Kelly’s. He locked his fingers around Kelly’s wrists, squeezing him against his chest. Kelly felt him inhale deeply, and he knew without a doubt that Nick was taking in his scent. It was one of the little things Nick often did when they were close, when they were fooling around, when they were having sex. Kelly loved it, and he realized that he missed it when Nick failed to do it. Kelly smiled as butterflies danced in his chest.

“I’m going to bend backward and lift you off your feet,” Nick said against Kelly’s ear, and if Kelly didn’t know better he would have said the tremor in Nick’s voice was more pronounced now. “When I do, just relax and go limp, let your weight do the work.”

Kelly turned his head a little, his cheek brushing against Nick’s. Nick was still for a moment, not even breathing as he rubbed the very tip of his nose against Kelly’s cheek.

“Okay,” Kelly said shakily.

“Take a deep breath in, hold in for a few seconds, then let it out slowly. At the end of that breath, I lift you. Got it?”

“Got it.”

Kelly leaned into Nick’s body, resting his head on Nick’s shoulder and staring at the ceiling. He hadn’t realized how hard it would be to go so long without Nick’s arms around him, without these special, quiet, intimate moments they shared. He wanted this innocent encounter to last as long as he could make it, because they still had two days left to go with Eli’s rules.

He breathed in, closing his eyes as he tried to clear his mind of everything but the man holding him. The strength in his arms, the familiarity of his scent, the warmth in his voice. Good God, Kelly loved the man. How long had Nick been his beacon before Kelly had even realized it? And how long had Kelly been pushing that away, intent on some mirage in the distance?

When he blew out the last of his breath, Nick’s hold on him tightened. Kelly grunted as Nick squeezed him and bowed his back, lifting Kelly’s feet off the floor a little more forcefully than he had expected. As Kelly let his body go limp, let Nick take all of his weight both physically and mentally, he felt his spine popping all the way down to the small of his back, and the tension he’d been battling for days simply melted away.

Nick held him like that for a few seconds, then slowly straightened, setting Kelly on the floor again in the process. His grip didn’t loosen, though. “Again?”

“No, it’s good,” Kelly answered, his eyes still closed, still leaning his troubles into Nick’s embrace. He could almost imagine this was a touch intended for more than just popping his back. He turned his head when he felt Nick’s arms loosening, and he was disappointed when he couldn’t make eye contact. “Thanks.”

Nick had his head down, and at first glance it appeared his eyes were closed. They weren’t, Kelly realized. He was watching his own fingers as they drifted over Kelly’s wrist and up his forearm, his lashes nearly concealing the fact. He hummed as he let go, meeting Kelly’s eyes even though they were so close they almost had to go cross-eyed to do it.

“Anytime.”

He inched closer and carefully nuzzled against Kelly’s neck, his fingers still agonizingly gentle on Kelly’s skin and the barest of trembles giving away his nerves. He had his eyes closed when he lifted his head, and Kelly’s drifted shut as well as Nick rubbed the tip of his nose against Kelly’s cheek and then released him.

Kelly cursed under his breath as the warmth of Nick’s body against his back threatened to move away, as the breaths on his face faded. He grasped at Nick’s wrists, trapping him in the embrace. “One kiss,” he gasped, despite the fact that straining his neck for that one kiss put them both in a difficult position.

It sounded like Nick was sucking air through clenched teeth.

“Just one,” Kelly begged before stealing the kiss he’d requested. Nick’s response was subdued, at first, as if he thought they could stop at just one kiss if it was simple and bland. When their lips parted, though, Kelly could feel his heart pounding away at his chest and his blood rushing through his body so fast it made him dizzy. Nick’s shaky breath on his lips and his iron grip on Kelly’s forearm told Kelly that Nick was having the same violent, visceral reaction to their one, tiny, innocent, isolated, vanilla kiss.

Kelly wasn’t sure how long they stood like that. He had no concept of time. Time was something that would pester a man who wasn’t being held in the arms of the love of his life; it could find no foothold in Kelly’s awareness.

His eyes fluttered shut again as Nick’s breaths on his lips sent jolts through his body. “Irish. Will you kiss me?” he pleaded, his voice barely there and his breath stolen.

“Kels,” Nick practically whimpered, but before his weak protest could go one more word, he indulged Kelly in the kiss. Fervently. One hand came up to cup Kelly’s face, the other hand found a hold on Kelly’s hip just above his towel, and he kissed Kelly like he hadn’t tasted him in years.

Kelly’s body flooded with the tingling excitement that seemed to be Nick’s specialty, and he could feel Nick growing hard against his ass as his bit and sucked on Kelly’s lip and tongue. Nick’s hand delved under the towel, upsetting the precarious fold Kelly had been fussing with just minutes ago, and he dropped it to the ground with a judgmentalfwump.

Kelly moaned into the kiss and turned in Nick’s arms. They dropped all pretense of it being a simple kiss, just like Nick had dropped that towel, and Kelly wrapped his arms around Nick’s neck, hand going into Nick’s hair, fingers dragging at the collar of his shirt.

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