Page 100 of Clean Slade
His sweet taste suffocated me but filled me with bliss and hope. It was everything I could have ever imagined and so much more.
We stayed like that for moments that felt like minutes or hours, but when we finally pulled away, he pinned me down and took his turn with me.
But I wouldn’t last as long as he had, and I warned him.
“It doesn’t matter,” he said, and I knew he wanted his sustenance like I’d gotten mine, so I didn’t hold back.
I let him release me, lick me, suck me, and swallow me as if it was necessary for both of our survival.
You know what?
It is.
Just as he’d done with me, I grabbed locks of his hair and guided him, controlled him, eased him, all the while my need clawed at the pit of my stomach, begging for release.
“I’m coming,” I groaned, barely a warning as I spilled inside his mouth and watched him savor me.
When we let go, I searched for our jackets and covered us with them.
I pulled him tighter into my arms as we sat against the stanchion, watching the stars move slowly across the sky. And to my surprise, he held on to me as if he couldn’t let go now that he’d opened Pandora’s box.
“So, tell me,” I said.
“Tell you what?” He looked up at me with puppy-dog eyes, and I thumbed his cheek with a smile.
“Everything.”
“Where do I start? I guess…I guess it all started when I realized I was gay.”
He told me how his first time was with his best friend, Annie, and it’d been an experiment as they’d tried to figure themselves out. Annie had grown up with him in his neighborhood, had known the rumors about his dad, yet she’d still hung out with him.
“We loved each other. Not inthatway, but it didn’t matter. Our little experiment gave birth to Mackenzie, so if we weren’t close before, we were after we found out.
“We were both from broken homes, so we knew we wanted better for our baby. To be better. Annie wanted to go to college, and I told her I could pay for it. We were happy for a while. We didn’t need to fake the love we had. People started thinking we were a couple and, well, we didn’t correct them. I didn’t know what my father would do if he found out.
“He’s a ruthless man. The only thing he cares about is God and crime, and even God comes second. But not when it comes to his values. He blames it on traditional Italian values, but my Grams called bullshit on that eons ago.
“She…she’s amazing. She was the one person that kept me sane through all this. Her and Annie. And then Mac.
“But just because I wanted to settle down and be a family man didn’t mean my father had the same plans.
“I was to be his heir, so I continued working for him. I kept doing what was necessary for the family, but Annie didn’t like it.Ididn’t like it.
“Suddenly, every life I took, however crooked, meant taking someone away from their loved ones. Every deal made meant displacing another family. The blood on my hands was borrowed, but for how long?”
He looked up at the sky, and a trail of tears pricked his cheeks, but as much as I wanted to wipe them, I resisted.
“One night, after Mac was born, I came home smelling of death and looking like it too. Annie couldn’t stand it. She asked me if I liked our lives, and I told her I was doing it to keep us safe.
“My father…he killed my grandfather, you see. When my grandfather refused to hand him the throne or take his ideas, he got rid of him with his own hands. And if he could kill his own father, it stood to reason he would kill his own son if he turned on him.
“Family before blood and God. That’s his mantra. That’s how he was raised. The family, his family, his mob, is more important than anything. And, of course, somehow, he found out about Annie. About what she’d said. I think maybe she’d started asking questions. I don’t quite know. But one day, he invited me to his office and took her life in front of me. He didn’t want me getting any ideas.”
“That’s awful, King. I’m so sorry,” I said in his ear, trying to tame the chills on the back of his neck and mine.
“He was wrong. Doing that was the final straw. I ran to my grandmother, and she wanted to help me. But first, she had to make some calls.
“The wait was killing me. I waited and waited. That’s when we…” He turned to face me before he dropped his gaze as if he was ashamed. “When we met.”
