the boy who loved Wicked, page 13
I discreetly folded my hands in front of my fly. He didn’t miss the significance of that.
“When will I be seeing you again?” He stalked toward me, and for a brief moment the lamp’s light brushed against his eyes. They were so dark they were navy, like that first day of class. My hands pressed down harder and under my arms began to prickle with the first signs of sweat.
“Maybe tomorrow—”
“—Tomorrow would be perfect.” He raised my chin and kissed me.
I pushed to the tips of my toes to chase his mouth, but he left me bereft. “Okay. Yeah. Tomorrow.”
“Have fun. And wear this jacket tomorrow.” He headed back to his study without waiting for an answer. I sagged against the wall. “And Phoenix. Be sure that Mr. Jones keeps his hands to himself.” The door closed behind him.
I got home that night, kicked out of my clothes and debated taking a shower, if only to wash all the product out of my hair, but ultimately sided against it and slinked under the covers. My text alert chirped, and I swore, throwing the covers back to dig my phone out of my inner jacket pocket.
I don’t deserve you. See you tomorrow.
Sebastian must have found the monogrammed journal I’d left wrapped on his night stand.
Speaking of journals... I wrenched the curtain aside and brought my binoculars up to see into Emily’s lit bedroom. With her back to the headboard, and the journal propped against her bent, bare knees, she read the final page and closed the book, hugging it to her chest and gazing ahead in deep thought.
It was over. She’d reached the end. Maybe now she’d have some closure. Maybe now she wouldn’t cry herself to sleep anymore. She gently settled the journal onto her nightstand and reached over to turn off her lamp.
I fell asleep that night with a question weighing heavily on my mind.
Was it over, or had it only just begun?
We held hands across the center console of Sebastian’s Range Rover as we drove farther upstate to the lake house that held the best and worst of my memories. When he’d asked me where I wanted to go it was the first place I’d thought of. We were short on time, with only the weekend, so this was perfect. My hand tightened on his as we got closer. We were taking the same route we took when I was a kid, and passing by all the landmarks again after so many years was both exciting and heartbreaking.
“How was Thanksgiving with your mom?” he asked, and I appreciated his attempt at distraction.
“Odd,” I said.
“How so?”
“Well, for starters, she cooked with real meat and cheese.”
“Sounds like she’s trying?” he said encouragingly.
“But why? Why now?” I shook my head and stared out the window at the desolate dairy farm we passed. The clouds were gray. The weather man had reported a chance of snow.
“Maybe she realizes that you’re still here, and she still has an opportunity to make things right. Being a parent isn’t easy, Phoenix.”
I nearly asked what he could possibly know about that, but then I remembered that he’d lost a child. He didn’t have the same chance at mending things as she did. “A few years after my dad died, she started dating. I was such a shit to her.” I’d accused her of not loving my father, of trying to replace him. I never gave her dates a fair shake. “I think she was trying to give me back something I’d lost. Looking back, I don’t think it was ever about her.”
“And then she gave up?”
“Yeah. After I unloaded on her and made her cry. Right after, she gave me a letter that my dad had left behind for me. She didn’t think I was ready for it before then, because I was such an unstable monster.”
“Hey. Don’t do that.” His hold on my hand strengthened.
“It was sealed. She had no clue what it said. His words could have freed her from so much guilt, but I never told her what was inside.”
“It’s not too late,” he said. He’d lost Alex, his parents, and a child. If anyone was versed in missed opportunities, it’d be him.
“Yeah.” We rode the rest of the way in silence.
Chapter 13
Sebastian
“Love is appreciating to such a degree that you feel overwhelmed with joy.”
~Plato
I retrieved the bags from the back of the SUV while Phoenix approached the front of the house on slow feet. By the time I’d closed the trunk there was no sign of him. I followed the thin, disturbed patch of snow on the grass to the back of the large, rustic Adirondack-style home. Phoenix sat in a chair on the wrap-around porch.
Setting our bags down on the wooden deck, I took the seat next to him, and we stared out into the woods as the sun retreated.
“This is where he told me,” he said.
“I should have predicted this would be too hard for you.”
“No.” He pulled the flaps of his wool coat together. “I feel close to him here. Closer than I have in years.” He blew into his hands. “Thank you.”
“Anything for you.” Truer words had never been spoken. “Let’s go inside. The temperature’s dropping with the sun.” I extended my hand, palm up, asking with that gesture for him to place himself in my hands, for him to allow my strength to bolster his, and to trust that I would keep him safe. He smiled and took what I offered.
I’d ensured that everything was set up for our arrival. Groceries delivered, and enough cut wood to run the fireplace for the duration of our stay.
After getting the tour from Phoenix, he’d admitted to feeling “weirded out” by sleeping in the master bedroom that his mom and dad had shared. So while he showered, I dragged the king-sized mattress from the bedroom to the living room, setting it down in front of the fireplace.
I removed the candles and bottle of lube from my luggage, and worked on setting the mood. There would be no condoms. We’d gotten tested at my insistence soon after I filed for divorce and we’d decided to embark on this relationship. For me it was necessary, for Phoenix a formality and a way to be a part of the process.
“You’re such a romantic,” said Phoenix.
Naked except for his underwear, he remained several feet away as I smoothed the silk sheets over the mattress. The wood-beam ceilings were a mile high in the open plan home. It should’ve taken an eternity to warm the place, but seeing Phoenix stand there, his hair curling and dripping onto his shoulders, took care of any temperature issues for me.
Lit candles peppered the otherwise dark room, and a fruit platter perched on the edge of the stone fire place. “Am I? Don’t think I’ve heard that before.”
“Well, you are,” he said. “I have a feeling I’ll never forget this night.”
“No, you won’t,” I promised. He chewed the inside of his bottom lip, and it made me want to grab him and kiss him hard. “Get comfortable. I’ll be back.” With my bag in hand I headed for the bathroom, stopping to stare as he sat gracefully onto the mattress, his back muscles flexing as he reached for the fruit dish. He was the most beautiful thing I’d ever seen.
Returning and running a towel over my wet hair, I asked, “Leave any for me?”
He gave a sheepish look and held out the last strawberry. “I was hungry.”
I chuckled, waving him off. “I’m kidding. It was all for you. Although, I did plan to eat a couple off of you and to feed you the rest.”
His shoulders fell. “Why didn’t you tell me?”
I tossed the towel somewhere and crawled over him, snickering as my lips pressed against his pout. “You’ll have plenty of opportunity to feed me tonight.” I kissed him in earnest then. No tongue. Just a sucking of his lips between mine. First the top, then the bottom. Over and over. I rolled us so he hovered above me, and then sat up to catch his neck with my teeth, placing my mark above his collarbone while wrapping my arms around him in a vice grip.
“Don’t tease me tonight. I’m ready.” His breath came out in shaky stutters.
Coyotes howled from somewhere in the hills, but we kept our eyes glued to each other. I held him in place by his nape, and his hands skimmed over my shoulders and arms in an agitated manner as his breath punched into my mouth. I did plan for our first time to happen this weekend, but had hoped to ease into it over the course of a couple days. But one look at him confirmed there would be no relaxing until my claim on him was cemented in that way. “We go at your pace, we stop when you say stop.”
“Okay.”
I poured lube into his palm and got to all fours over his prone body. “Touch me, Phoenix.” Giving him something to concentrate on, I lowered my mouth to his, applying the barest amount of pressure at first. I twisted my head, sending my tongue inside, exploring as if the warm heat of him was something I’d only just discovered and didn’t know my way around yet. He tasted of ripe peaches and fresh berries, and I had to sample more of him. Our noses crushed together, trapping our air, and I dove as far into his mouth as possible, knowing it would only be a matter of time before we’d need to breathe. I licked along the edges of his searching tongue, my teeth meeting resistance from his.
Phoenix whimpered, and I tore my lips away, my hips retreating and sliding forward through his fist. “Are you okay?” I kept fucking his hand as I waited for his answer.
“Yeah,” he panted, swallowing, nodding. “Yes.”
“Bring your knees to your chest and hold the backs of your thighs, sweetheart.” My cock bounced off my abs as he released me, and I adjusted my position so he could do as asked.
Now open to me, I slid down, spreading flat, and licked his pink hole. He moaned, one of his legs slipping from his grasp to land on my shoulder. I pushed it back for him, grinding my cock into the mattress, eyes rolling back from the taste of clean skin and a scent that was his alone. “You’re doing so well,” I said, before sucking at his hole. My balls were aching and heavy. He rocked his hips up, chasing my tongue when I paused, hypnotized by the sight of his tight bud retracting and then blooming for me. Teasing and then begging for me.
“Don’t...stop, please,” he pleaded, spreading himself wider, his dick curving deliciously.
I came at him hard and fast then, pulling a scream from him. My face buried between his cleft, sniffing and licking and sucking and growling. He grabbed my head, shoving me into him further. I raised my hips to resituate my cock so I could gain better friction from grinding against the cool silk sheets.
Phoenix could no longer support his legs, and with them down, my tongue lost some of its access. I slipped my hands beneath him and sucked a hickey right onto the meaty part of his ass where taint met slit. “Please, please, please…” he chanted.
“Just...a little more, please,” I answered, and he fed his scream into the crook of his elbow when I nearly flipped him over in my effort to inhale the bottom of his tailbone.
I got to my knees, lowering his body and dragging my forearm across the wetness on my lower face. “Are you okay?” I said through a husky voice.
“Yes, but please do something,” he gritted out. Our gazes dropped to his cock, the skin at the crown so tight it glistened. With one slicked finger I probed at his entrance as I took hold of his leaking dick. Precum immediately shot through the tip. “I won’t last,” he warned, sweat peppering his upper lip.
“You will, sweetheart.” I didn’t grip him tight enough to spur an orgasm, but enough to heighten his arousal. To loosen him further. Two fingers disappeared inside of him, and when he bore down instinctively, wetting his top teeth with his tongue without a thought for the seductive sight he made, my body jerked, and I squeezed my root as I nearly came all over the both of us. “Mmmm.” I gave my head a hard shake, regaining some control.
My fingers brushed incessantly along his gland, and he whined through clenched teeth, his crown turning the same shade of purple as mine. Like someone had grabbed it by the throat and cut off all circulation.
“God!” he shouted. I stalled with three fingers inside him now, waiting for him to get acclimated, waiting for him to come down a notch. “Bash,” he panted, his abdominal muscles flexing as he raised his head off the mattress. “Please. I’m ready.”
“Do you see this?” I asked, letting go of his dick to hold my own. “If you’re not ready, I’ll end up hurting you. That’s not the goal, so we take our time.”
Phoenix’s head fell back to the pillow, and he let out a frustrated growl, tugging on his own hair. His precum ran down his cock like an erupted volcano, and I used a finger to sop it up before bringing it to my mouth.
After four fingers went in and out of him smoothly, I stretched out over him and brought my wet cock to his hole. “Easy,” I said out loud to myself, taking one breath in and pushing two out. Phoenix did the same. The head of my cock breached him easily, but the neck was met with opposition. “Relax, sweetheart. Let me in.” I wrapped a hand around his throat, applying faint pressure. His mouth opened, his eyes grew glassy, and I urged in another inch without issue. “My hands are busy, so I need you to take hold of yourself, but stop stroking when you feel your balls draw tight.” I gained another inch. “That’s it.”
“More,” he said, color spreading over his body.
“God you’re beautiful like this.” I had gotten half my cock in when he began to tremble. “I think that’s enough for now.” My thrusts were slow, sensual. I made love to him without bottoming out. Anymore and I’d tear him in two. I kept my hand at his windpipe and kissed him with all my heart. “Are you ready?” I asked, when his breathing became sporadic.
“Yes.”
“Move your hand faster. Squeeze yourself harder. Let go, Phoenix.”
He did as instructed, and while half my length slid in and out of him leisurely, my hand pistoned near the base of my cock to compensate for having to hold back. “Bash!”
We came together, my hot cum coating the inside of his hole. The room filled with the wet sounds of my cock pushing through my spent seed, and his splashing over our chests.
After, I carried him to the bathroom and cleaned him, kissing his slacked lips. I listened to him breathe, our bodies cooling, gooseflesh rising along his arms as they clung to me.
“I…” He choked on whatever he’d been about to say, tripping over his emotions. “Sorry. It’s just a lot.” He pressed his head to my chest.
“I know.” I brought his face up with a finger to his chin. He’d come back to the place he once shared with his father. A place that hadn’t changed although his life had drastically. A place he associated with his innocence, and now a place where he’d lost the last of it. His eyes filled with tears. “How many people can say that they took the time to be loved first, Phoenix?”
“You…?” He cried freely now.
“Yes, Phoenix. I do.” I picked him up and cradled him to me, walking into the living room and gingerly laying him down on our makeshift bed near the fire. I pulled him into my side, and we drifted off peacefully to the sounds of the storm outside.
Settling onto the top step of the porch and setting down my hot cup of cocoa—which Phoenix insisted needed marshmallows—I picked up my new journal and skimmed a finger over the inscription: From the boy who loved Wicked.
I retrieved the pen from its slot along the spine, and my heart warmed at the same engraving along the steel encasing. I sought out Phoenix who busied himself making snow angels in the yard, something I declined to participate in. A memory resurfaced from my childhood of me staring out of the arched windows of our second floor library, watching the neighbors’ children do the same in the distance. Of resting a palm against the glass hoping to feel their jubilation before being called downstairs by Mother to go over my studies with my tutor.
Opening to the first page of my journal, I catalogued everything about Phoenix in the snow. The way the sun highlighted his hair, painting a clear picture of the golden-haired boy he had been as a child. The way it transformed his eyes from a blue at the bottom of a gas flame, to a heavenly shade found only in the sky. And his smile that touched his ears whenever he caught me marveling at him. Phoenix was like a flower fully bloomed in the summertime. Petals stretched and welcoming.
Just then, something cold hit the side of my head, leaving me sputtering and shaking off the pages of my journal and setting it aside. Laughter came from the right of me. “Did you throw snow at me?” I asked incredulously, standing and brushing the wet, cold whiteness off me.
“It’s called a snowball, Bash,” he said, out of breath. He curled into his angel, hands clutching his stomach.
I gawked with my arms held out at my sides, unsure of whether to be horrified, shocked, angry, or plain cold. The budding annoyance drained from me when his laughter dried up and a true look of worry spread across his handsome face. I made my way down the stairs, gathered snow into my hands and launched it at him.
We spent what felt like hours ducking behind trees and sneaking stealthily around the house and the neighboring woods in search of one another, and then launching attacks. By the time we stumbled through the door and huddled in front of the fireplace, I was no longer the boy in the window.
“‘The Allegory of the Cave.’”
My hand stilled in his hair. “Book seven of Plato’s Republic—the most heralded of all his dialogues—is your favorite?” My hand continued raking through his curls. “I’d never take you for a man that went with popular opinion,” I teased. I sat on the floor with my back propped against the plush sofa with Phoenix’s chin to my chest, the logs crackling in the fire and Bessie Smith crooning overhead.
“There’s a reason it’s highly dissected to this day. It’s forever relevant.” He moved and the thin blanket slipped to the top of the mounds below his back.
“You are aware that this began with Socrates?”
