Page 2 of Darien
“Stay,” Noah whispered, “Please. I mean, if you really want to go, I don’t want to get in your way, but … I want you to stay.”
Darien found that his lungs felt heavy. Like he couldn’t quite make them work properly, like the air was sticky and thick, and he had problems pumping his breath in and out.
He had never seen Noah look so desperate, and it was that which made him lean forward, desperately, his lips finding Noah’s in a hot, feverish kiss. Darien hadn’t kissed very many people, and there was a bit of an awkward clash at first, but then Noah moaned softly, and his lips parted, and somehow, they seemed to fit utterly perfect against Darien’s, and the awkwardness was gone.
It felt right. Noah sat up, and Darien pulled his much smaller body into his arms, onto his lap, and the other man nestled against him like he belonged there. He kissed him until he was breathless until they both were, lips tight and tongues tangling with each other, making the blood pump heat and erotic energy through Darien’s body.
It wasn’t a fair thing to do. Not to either of them. But Darien couldn’t have resisted it if he’d tried. The truth was, he’d fantasized about this, Noah’s tight, beautiful little body against his as they kissed, for so long. Now that it was happening, he couldn’t pull back. He hadn’t allowed even himself to know how badly he wanted this.
Noah shifted in his lap, and then they were facing each other, their bodies pressed together all along their torsos, from groin to shoulder. When Noah moved against him, Darien could feel an intriguing hardness pressing against him, one that he couldn’t help but rock against as one hand slid down to cup one small, round little ass cheek, the other slipping up into Noah’s soft, dark brown hair.
How long the kiss lasted, Darien didn’t know. It was the first time anything like that had happened between them, the first time that he’d had any inkling at all that Noah even wanted it to. But the way Noah had responded, there had been no doubt. So much time wasted.
For a moment, they just sat there, even after the kiss ended, gazing into each other’s eyes. Then it was like a spell broke, and Noah shifted out of Darien’s lap, tugging him by his arm so that he was lying behind Noah, cradling the smaller man’s body protectively with his own.
“Please don’t go,” Noah repeated, and Darien winced. Part of him, an increasingly large part, would have loved to promise Noah that he wouldn’t. To stay, and kiss him, and touch him, and see how far those things could go.
Who was he kidding, though? He would never say those things unless they were true, and he knew very well that they couldn’t be. No matter how much he was starting to wish that he’d done this differently, that he’d talked to Noah and found out how he felt before he’d accepted the job, the facts were the same.
“I can’t. I signed a contract. I’m in for a year, at least,” Darien admitted, still breathless from their kiss. So was Noah, Darien could feel the rapid rising and falling of his slender chest as he lay against him, his hand on the other man’s stomach, fighting off the urge to slip lower.
“Can’t we still be together?” Darien suddenly asked because that was what he wanted, and what Noah seemed to want, too. “Even if we can’t be roommates, can’t we do something long distance?”
Noah shook his head, and Darien wasn’t surprised at all to see that. He knew this man, better than Noah let most people know him, Darien honestly thought. He had known before even asking what the answer would be.
“No. I won’t wait for you,” Noah told him, his voice very firm even as he let Darien hold him for the very first time. “If you go, I’ll still be your friend, maybe, but I’m not going to explore this new thing while you’re gone all the time.”
Which was, really, fair enough. Darien already knew that he had to move across the country to California, leave Boston, which had been his home for so long. It would be a long distance thing, no doubt about it, and if Noah didn’t feel like he had it in him to do it, he couldn’t blame him.
It was a lot to ask, especially since they would basically be trying to start a relationship right when Darien left. Maybe if they had realized what was going on sooner, it would have been a different story, but they couldn’t do anything about that now.
So he closed his eyes, and he wished that somehow he could go make things different. He had this one night to hold Noah, and then he might never see him again, and that thought, now that he came to the moment, was far harder to take than he would have ever dreamed possible.
I won’t wait for you.
Well, at least that was clear, even if it broke Darien’s heart.
