Chapter 54
Gavin snickers and writhes beneath him. “Stop!” he cries, breathless. “If we’re doing that, then we need a safe word. You know I’m super sensitive.”
“I like watching you wiggle,” Brody says with a grin. He lunges for Gavin’s left nipple again, making his lover flinch. At the last moment, he switches direction and his lips close over the right one, instead.
With a laugh, Gavin twists away. Catching Brody’s hands in his, he wrestles Brody to the bed, and then it’s him on top, not the other way around. His shirt falls down like protective armor in front of his chest as he holds Brody’s arms up over his lover’s head. Leaning down over Brody, Gavin kisses the tip of his nose. “Now who needs a safe word?” he murmurs.
“Not me,” Brody says softly. “I’m as safe as I’ll ever be right here with you.”
That earns him a kiss on the lips this time, lingering, drawn out. Gavin’s tongue slips between his lips to taste him as their bodies press together like the pages of a love letter folded in half. The kisses turn sensual, demanding, Gavin pinning Brody to the bed with his mouth and hands and hips. Hands thrust beneath clothing, fabric is pushed up out of the way, snaps pop open beneath exploring fingers that delve down, seeking stiffening flesh. Blood surges as libidos rise, and Gavin kisses a trail along Brody’s chest, over his navel, down into the gaping fly of his boxers. There he takes Brody’s erection in his mouth, and works his lover hard with lips and tongue. He licks lower, lapping at the tender skin beneath Brody’s balls, then pushes at the very center of Brody’s being. The world shimmers around Brody as Gavin’s tongue tickles his anus. “Yes,” he sighs, gripping the bed sheets in both hands. “God, yes, yes!”
Before long Gavin’s easing into him, his lover’s thick cock huge between his buttocks. Brody takes him in, all of him, and their bodies twine together as they find a slow, steady rhythm in that narrow, full-sized bed. In Gavin’s arms, Brody feels safe; with Gavin in him, he feels whole. This time, when he finds release, his heart swells with emotion as Gavin whispers, “I love you, Brody Phelps.”
Cradling Gavin’s face with both hands, Brody touches his forehead to his lover’s and stares deep into those golden leonine eyes. “And I love you, Professor D. I do, I really do.” 42
Gavin waits until they’re snuggled together under the covers in post-coital bliss to tell Brody that Marian wants to meet him.
Brody half-turns in Gavin’s embrace, but in the darkened bedroom, he can’t see his lover’s features. “Me? Why?”
He feels Gavin shrug against him. “She says she wants to meet the guy who stole my heart.”
As warm and fuzzy as that makes Brody feel, the thought of meeting a woman Gavin slept with in the past—a woman who bore his child, no less—is a little off-putting, to say the least. “She’s not going to try to claw my eyes out or something, is she?” he asks.
Gavin kisses his shoulder. “No, no, nothing like that. She just wants to put a face to the name, is all.”
“If that’s all, then you can just show her my picture,” Brody says.
“It won’t be anything bad,” Gavin assures him. “She wants us to come over for dinner one night, that’s it. And look at it this way—you get a free meal.”
“At what price?” Though he’s never seen a photo of Marian, Brody pictures a grown-up Evie slinging spaghetti onto dishes, hair in those same twin ponytails Gavin’s daughter favors. In his mind, Marian glares at him, giving him the stink-eye, on the verge of a temper tantrum because she isn’t getting her way. She wants Gavin back—didn’t she make that clear tonight? But she can’t have him, so she’ll settle for terrorizing Brody instead. He’s heard tales of psychopathic ex-girlfriends who make life hell for the new love in their men’s lives in the hopes of winning in the end.
Doesn’t that sound like what Marian’s trying to do?
But Gavin says, “It isn’t like that, I promise. We had a long talk about…well, everything, really. She knows you’re in my life now, and in Evie’s life, and she just wants to meet you.”
Brody wonders what she’ll have to say about his hair and tattoos. They don’t always go well with people his own age. “I don’t know…”
Gavin kisses his neck. “Well, think about it. I know if the tables were turned and she was the one seeing someone who’d also be spending time with Evie, then I’d want to know who the guy was first-hand. I mean, I don’t trust just anyone around my daughter.”
“She’s going to be surprised you trust me,” Brody points out.