Page 78 of State of Mind

Jayden didn’t ask for how long, but Wilder didn’t need him to. They both already knew the answer was forever.

* * *

Wilder felt like a parody, like a comic strip, the way he and Luca were jammed in a tub that wasn’t meant for one grown man, let alone two. Luca’s new apartment was bigger and a little more modern than the rooms he had at the Augustin, but they lacked in the sort of indulgent decadence he knew his lover was used to.

Luca didn’t seem to mind, though. He was holding Wilder’s arm out with one hand, washing him down with his lathered palm as the milk soap sat on the edge of the tub. They were sitting up because it was the only way they could squeeze together there, and his knees were knocking against the hard porcelain.

“I can’t live like this,” Luca muttered after he let Wilder’s arm fall into the water. He sloshed and then grabbed Wilder and pushed him until his back was against the slant, and his legs stretched toward the faucet. He laid his body over him, the water coming dangerously close to the top, and Luca’s knees dug into his sides painfully. “I want to bathe with you.”

“Then you’re going to have to figure something out,” Wilder said.

Luca dipped his head in low, nosing along his jaw. They were both hard—had been since they’d gotten to the little house and abandoned all pretense of going out for the date. Luca set up pillows and blankets on the living room floor, and Wilder ordered dinner for delivery from his phone app, and with a fifty-minute wait, Luca suggested the bath.

It didn’t help the throbbing need between his legs, but it was distracting enough because it felt like hours before they’d be able to crawl into bed and explore those other ways of loving that Luca had promised he wanted. For now, Wilder shifted so his cock brushed against Luca’s stomach, and the pressure had his head spinning a little.

“You,” Luca groaned against his ear.

“What about me?”

Luca pulled back, and he didn’t answer with words, but there was a novel of emotion behind his eyes that didn’t really have language. It was just feeling, and Wilder didn’t need him to try, because he had the same quiet simmer just behind his ribs. He turned his head and let Luca kiss him until he felt like all the air had been ripped from his lungs.

“I don’t want to wait for food,” Wilder gasped.

Luca pushed up to stand, then stepped out and grabbed his robe, throwing it on without drying off. “We don’t have to wait. Someone’s at the door, so I’m going to pay, and you get in the bedroom and wait for me.”

Wilder hated being ordered around, but he knew it was a request that was tainted with desperation of what was to come. The food could wait—everything could wait—until their other appetites were sated. He slipped a bit on the floor, but he took the time to wipe the remnants of soap from his skin before wrapping a towel around his waist and padding across the hall to where the bed waited.

It was unmade from that morning, from waking up in Luca’s arms like he was always meant to be there. He was still a little bit wrecked from the funeral, and still in a bit of shock from his own bravery at confronting his past during his father’s funeral. And he knew there was no way backward for him when it came to his family. There was only this, and going forward with the people had had chosen to spend his life with.

But it felt good, because these people had earned him. They deserved him.

Especially the man in the next room who was setting up this night to be one quiet moment in an eventual sea of everything. It made Wilder smile as he stripped the towel off, as he laid his back against the cool sheets and spread his legs, waiting with his cock in his hand.

Luca came in a moment later, stuttering to a halt in the doorway. His chest heaved with breath, though Wilder couldn’t hear it. But he saw the way it moved him, the way his lips parted and nostrils flared like he was using every single one of his senses to drink Wilder in.

He gave a stroke, felt something soft rumble in the back of his throat. Luca was across the room in seconds, his knees on the bed, his hands parting Wilder’s thighs so wide it strained his tendons—but the pain was so good. It rippled up his spine hand-in-hand with the agonizing pleasure of Luca’s mouth as he dragged open lips up his shaft and then sucked at the head as Wilder’s hand fell away.

Luca’s nails were blunt, but Wilder could feel the stinging pressure of them as they grazed the sensitive spaces on the insides of his legs. His tongue pressed into his slit, then he pulled back and swirled it around and then sucked him all the way down until Wilder’s hips thrust in a shallow rhythm, desperate for more friction—more heat—more everything.

“Please.” The word tumbled from his lips in what felt like a jumble of consonants and vowels in an entirely new language that only they spoke. He wanted more—he needed to feel Luca heavy and present against him. His hand moved to Luca’s hair and gripped tight. “Please,” he begged again.

Luca understood. He cupped Wilder’s balls in his hand, then sucked hard all the way down, a faint graze of teeth on the way back up, and then he did it again. And then again—faster this time and sloppy. He felt his cock throbbing harder, in time with the way Luca sucked him, and Luca’s other hand pressed bruising fingers into his hips, leaving wanted marks on his skin that Wilder could look at every single day for the rest of his life if he was allowed to.

“I love you.” Those words were rich with a messy newness that sounded like he felt—lost and completely confused and utterly gone for this disaster of a man who loved harder than anyone Wilder had ever known in his life. “I love you so fucking much.”

And then he came. He had been so busy paying attention to the way his heart was growing and thrashing that he missed the slow burn from his dick to his belly until the heat erupted, and his eyes rolled back in his head. Luca drank him down, his throat constricting around him, making it almost hurt with pleasure as he emptied himself.

It was freeing, he realized, just like Luca had said. There would be things that would always be too sore and too scarred to touch, but they weren’t limits. They were just new shapes of who he was now that he had tripped into this life and accidentally made himself a home.

He came down with soft, gasping breaths, and his hands pulled and tugged until Luca was on top of him, then he rolled toward the nightstand as Luca tucked in behind. His dick was hard, the head leaving a trail of precome, and he reached in his nightstand for lube before flicking off the cap and wetting his hand.

“Wilder?” Luca murmured behind his ear.

Wilder spread his legs and smeared the inside of his thighs, and behind his balls before he turned his back to look at Luca’s wide eyes. “Like this.”

“Oh god, yes,” Luca breathed out. His fingers dug into his hip again, in those same, twinging places, and Wilder grinned as he felt Luca’s cock press into his tight space. He squeezed his legs shut, and then his eyes, and he allowed himself to appreciate another first. “God. I…” Luca’s voice stammered to a halt, and then he felt a tentative thrust, like he wasn’t sure.

But that was okay, because Wilder was sure. There were stumbles, and there were roadblocks, and there were awful and sometimes the best surprises. But he knew himself, and he trusted himself, which was long-fought and hard-won, and he wasn’t going to give up ground to fear.

---