Page 55 of Breakout Year
Eitan’s cheeks warmed. This wasn’t embarrassment, not really. But something about this was personal, more personal than when Williams came into the clubhouse wearing a patina of glitter like a badge. “Well, he sounds like a…” Eitan searched for the right word. “Scoundrel.”
Akiva laughed. “That’s a good one. No, he wasn’t like that. If you asked any of his ex-fiancées, they would say he was the perfect gentleman.”
“Yeah, well.” Eitan’s mouth twisted. “I guess that’s true.”
“Until he found himself on a cross-Atlantic voyage and there was a mix up with the booking. He was assigned to the same cabin as another man. There was only one bed between them the whole way.”
“What a coincidence,” Eitan said laughingly.
“Turns out, given the chance”—Akiva traced his fingers down Eitan’s side with the blunt edges of his fingernails, leaving sparks in their wake—“he wasn’t so much of a gentleman.”
“No?” Eitan asked. “What was he?”
Akiva’s mouth did that thing again and Eitan kissed him there, at the edge of his lips, on his jaw, along the column of his neck. Kissed him, used his teeth, drawing Akiva’s gasp. Left a bite ringing his collarbone. He took a detour down his chest, pinched a nipple that was in fact the same flushed color as Akiva’s lips, then lapped at it with his tongue.
His nose found its way to Akiva’s underarm and Eitan was about to apologize—that was weird, he was being a little weird—when Akiva reached up and circled his fingers around one of the slats in the headboard and Eitan’s world didn’t shift so much as spin slightly sideways. “If you hold onto that while I do this,” Eitan said, then licked Akiva’s neck again, “does it feel different?”
Akiva smiled and relinquished his grip on the headboard and Eitan was about to chalk that all up to him just being nosy, when Akiva said, “You tell me.”
Eitan stayed still for a long moment. Decisiveness was never really his problem. If he wanted to do something, he’d put his head down and commit. “I tried that before. With my ex. She had these cuffs. She thought it might help with…” His face was warm again, less with delight. “Get me out of my own head or something.” An entirely confusing set of circumstances that Eitan went along with because he’d wanted to make Kiley happy and couldn’t ever seem to.
“Did it help?” Akiva asked lightly.
“No.” Eitan lay back. Akiva’s bed was a standard-sized queen. Eitan wondered how he slept without his ankles sticking over the edge. His ceiling was an uninteresting white. That didn’t stop little dots from appearing in Eitan’s vision, blots that burst and faded. “You probably think I’m stupid, huh? For not figuring everything out sooner. Or for knowing but not knowing. Or for knowing and not doing anything about it.”
“I know what it’s like to be queer in a place that isn’t,” Akiva said. “You’re allowed to go at your own pace. You’re allowed to be scared.”
“The beautiful thing about this country is people can be who they are.” Eitan said it in Russian, then translated. “My accent’s bad.” He lay there for a breath cycle. Akiva was warm by his side. His pinky finger just brushed Eitan’s. Eitan had asked how much it was to sleep on Akiva’s couch. How much would it have cost him to do this in Arizona? Everything, probably. A calculation he made and made again and again for all those years in Cleveland, banking that things would work out as they should. The pad of Akiva’s finger found Eitan’s knuckle, stroked once.
Maybe things had worked out after all.
Slowly, Eitan raised one arm, careful not to knock an elbow into Akiva. The headboard slats were vertical rails, evenly spaced, just far apart enough that Eitan could wrap his fingers around them. The wood was smooth with age. It didn’t feel all that different from before with Kiley. Except his heart started going in his chest. Despite the air conditioning—which was audibly coughing out cold air from the other room—the bedroom was warm. Still, Eitan could feel a breeze on the underside of his arm. At this angle, Akiva could do anything: bite him, tickle him. He brought his other arm up, a position that put space between his ribs, just enough to breathe.
For that, he got Akiva’s fingers tracing over his skin, feather light. Up his sternum, across his collarbone, a stroke on the side of his throat where his pulse was beating a little frantically. Eitan arched up, kissed Akiva’s hand. That playful look was back in Akiva’s eyes. He dipped the tip of his index finger into Eitan’s mouth, and it wasn’t anything—just skin, the weight of his finger on Eitan’s lower lip, nothing, nothing. Eitan’s body shuddered, once, involuntary, like he’d lost control of this entire situation.
“Bad?” Akiva asked.
Eitan shook his head almost violently. “Good.” His voice was hoarse.
“Stay still.” Akiva climbed over Eitan until he was straddling him, feet on either side of Eitan’s hips, then undid the constricting button of his pants. Eitan made a noise, something whining and half-pathetic, and Akiva arched an eyebrow at him and shifted more weight onto Eitan’s legs.
Eitan’s consciousness was hovering somewhere up near the ceiling and possibly entirely in his cock, because when Akiva touched him—a tug of Eitan’s pants and boxers, a casual glob of saliva spit into his hand—he felt like he might have levitated. Akiva’s hand was big and smooth and no longer callused, but the idea of calluses was somehow there, as Akiva stroked him a few times, hand twisting at the head where Eitan was leaking like he might come any second, which he just might.
“That feels—” Eitan floundered for words, settled for a moan, one that emerged from his toes and rolled upward. He couldn’t move his arms if he’d wanted to. He couldn’t move his legs if he tried.
He watched Akiva, the little satisfied pull of his mouth, the way he was studying Eitan as if determined to take him apart. He was halfway there already, beyond that. Akiva’s arm flexed with muscle as he moved his hand. Eitan watched the jump of his pectorals, the contraction and release of the tendons in his forearm.
Akiva caught him looking. He’d taken off his glasses, but he retained a certain owlishness, even shirtless, hair disheveled from Eitan’s hands. He squeezed Eitan’s cock, right at the tip, then loosened his hand as he eased it back down and the combined sensations were almost enough. Almost.
Eitan made a noise—a gasp half-caught in his throat. His fingers gripped the headboard, slats cutting slightly into his palms. He might have red marks there for a little while after, something he might carry with him beyond this moment that said I was here. We were here.
Sweat was gathering at his hairline, at the base of his spine. It wouldn’t take much. A twist of Akiva’s fingers. A single breath across his skin. Eitan wanted this to last and to come immediately and to wrap Akiva up next to him and do this all again. “Hey,” he managed, “I’m gonna—” He rolled his hips meaningfully.
Akiva paused, released his fingers. “Do you not want to?”
Eitan did, with the urgency of a subway train, one of the ones that shot uptown whose routes he didn’t understand. Akiva was still sitting on his thighs. At this angle, it was impossible to tell if he was hard or if his pants just had the world’s most enticing wrinkle. “I want to,” Eitan said. “Together.”
That got Akiva’s smile. He stripped his pants off without ceremony—belt, button, zipper, off—but kept his boxer briefs on. They were plain, green, shorter than Eitan would have predicted or perhaps that was simply the length of his legs.
