Page 88 of Sinful Crimes for the Artistically Inclined
“I just said ‘no’ to your breakup. That’s a terrible idea. I don’t want to break up with you.” He closed fingers around the top of Percy’s shirt and tugged him close, kissing the very corner of his lips. Percy closed his eyes, his own lips parting a little in response to the soft caress. “Plus, you promised to fuck me in Sicily.”
“I did,” Percy murmured into even more kisses, working their way across the lower edge of his bottom lip. “We can still do that. As exes, obviously.” Joe laughed while Percy waffled, “It will be very romantic. A final fling made particularly passionate because neither of us are quite sure we’re ready to let go.” But then his voice darkened a shade, more grave, more melancholy, and he pulled back, looking into Joe’s eyes with a worrying sincerity. “It would be for the best. I have a feeling things are about to get very bad.” He brought Joe’s hand to his lips and laid a kiss across his fingers. “She doesn’t know who you are. She won’t—shecan’t—send them after you if she doesn’t know who you are. If you leave now, I’ll find a way to fix everything, but… You saw how the last day went. It was a drive, plain and simple, but I fucked every single thing up, every single thing fell apart, every step of the way, and I have the worst feeling it’s always going to be like that with me. But you…” He ran his thumb beneath the cut on Joe’s cheek. “You’re so beautiful and I don’t ever want a thing to touch you.”
“I’m in love with you.”
“That’s not the point.”
“Look at the way you touch me,” said Joe. He turned his cheek to kiss Percy’s palm. “The way you look at me. You kidnapped a teenager for me yesterday, and I know you did that for me, because there were easier things you could have done. You’re cut up, and you’re bruised, and you smell so bad?—”
“Do you mind?”
“—And you did it all for me. And I’ve never once in my life felt so safe and so protected and so loved as I do with you. I don’t care about any of the rest of it. I just want you. But I want you to feel like that with me, too.” Something in the way Percy touched his skin, something in his unerring gaze on that cut, brought Joe’s fingers up to his, pressing them harder against his cheek, against the healing wound. “I’m not one of your delicate artworks, Percy. I’m not going to crack. If you do really mean it, if you want me gone because you think I’m not capable of taking care of myself?—”
“I don’t think that.”
“Or of you?—”
“I don’t.”
“Then tell me now. Do you really want me gone?”
It wasn’t as though even Percy could lie at a moment like that, Joe’s eyes so clear and true and trusting. “No. No, I love you. I don’twantyou to go?—”
“Then don’t say anything so stupid ever again.” Joe took both arms around Percy’s neck, kissed him, then manoeuvred him to lay down on the wooden planks, Percy’s head on Joe’s shoulder, Joe’s lips against Percy’s sandy, sweaty, bloody hair. The pair stared up at what had become a perfectly blue sky, and they drifted that way, silent, spent, until their tired eyesbegan to close, fleetingly at first, then heavily. They dozed for roughly five minutes before other passengers began to ascend, forcing them to pull apart, sit up, and get their bearings anew.
Joe stretched his arms up above his head, flexing out the cricks in his worn out back. “Is Althea all right, do you think?
Percy, eyes fast on Joe’s immaculate form, was suddenly wide awake again. “Of course. Leo’s a marvel, actually.”
“And yet you’ve never mentioned him once beyond that phone call.”
“We’ve been busy.” Percy stood and pulled Joe to his feet, leading as they wound their way to the cabin indicated on their tickets.
Some way deep down in the belly of the boat, boots clanking on metal steps under a low ceiling, Percy softened his voice to secrecy. “Listen. With Leo. If you sense any, er, lack of polish, just gloss over it.”
“Of course I would.”
“I know you would. It’s only… He’s a very sensitive boy. He’s had a hard life and we have a very delicate balance going on.”
“Is that why you fired him?” Joe joked.
Percy remained serious. “Partially, yes. Sometimes he needs to be pushed. It’s for his own good.” Then, after a few more steps, “And we were desperate.”
“All right. But you trust him with Althea?”
“I trust him with my life.”
Percy pulled open the door to reveal a very nervous-looking Leo, who stood and straightened upon their entrance, grinning widely. “Percy!”
“Leo! You beautiful thing!” Percy threw an arm around the young man, who looked to Joe to be all of nineteen, and who wrinkled his nose at the smell that accosted him with Percy’s embrace. Still, he wrapped his own arm around Percy, and nodded towards a huge black suitcase.
“Is she in there?” Percy asked.
Leo gave a proud tilt of his head. “Mmhmm.”
“You know she should have been down in the baggage compartment, don’t you?”
The suitcase mumbled and shook in response.
