His body bowed and Shep’s fist grew slick but he continued to jerk Elijah until the boy winced, flinching away from Shep’s touch. “Sensitive,” he whispered.
Shep fell onto his back, staring up at the ceiling fan overhead, noting the wicker blades were shaped like giant leaves.
“Glad we took a shower,” Elijah said with a laugh. “You need to go get the washcloth.”
Shep smiled, rolling back towards him. “I like you like this. All covered in my cum.”
“Yeah, I’ve noticed. I think you gluedmy eyelids shut; you savage. But we’re meeting your mom for lunch in like eight hours. I’m not meeting her with your jizz flaking on my skin.”
Shep sighed. “Fine. Stay there.”
“Where am I going to go?”
Shep returned with the washcloth and cleaned Elijah’s face. Elijah made a huge production out of opening his eyes. “Oh, there you are,” he said around a laugh.
“Next time I’ll get you some goggles.”
Elijah wiggled his brows. “Next time? Oh, yes. What other secret kinks are rattling around in that mysterious brain of yours?”
Shep stopped short. “I don’t know.”
Elijah’s smile faded, and he pushed Shep’s hair out of his eyes. “Tell me the truth; are you a virgin?”
“I got a handjob in high school.”
Elijah blinked at him. “You haven’t ever… How? How can you be a virgin, looking like you do?”
“Why involve somebody else when I could just get myself off? It never seemed worth the trouble.”
Elijah seemed to search his face for a long minute. “But now it does?” Elijah asked, gaze pleading.
Shep nodded. “Yeah, now it does.”
Elijah picked at his omelet, his stomach rumbling in both hunger and distress. Shep’s mother seemed as breezy and unencumbered as a woman in a vitamin commercial. She smiled at them as she ate a bowl of something that resembled sticks and twigs on a cloud of something white. Yogurt, maybe. Below the table, Elijah’s leg trembled like an over-caffeinated chihuahua.
Shep, like his mother, seemed unbothered by their impending conversation, a stark difference from last night. One blowjob and Shep was easy like Sunday morning. He was on his second helping of bacon after having scarfed down his own three-egg omelet. If he was still worried about what his mother had to say, it wasn’t affecting his appetite. He sat there with his hair pulled back in that half pony that had Elijah thinking about Sam Elliott inRoadhousewhich would have given him an inappropriate hard-on if he wasn’t already one bite of cold egg away from puking on Molly Shepherd’s farm table.
Shep frowned at him,looking from Elijah’s plate to his face as if encouraging him to eat, but Elijah just wanted to get on with this already. If she was about to ax their relationship, he wished she’d just land the first blow and be done with it. He wasn’t used to having to wait for a mother to crush his hopes and dreams; Lucifer always came out the gate swinging. There was something to be said for that, he supposed.
After what felt like a hundred years, Molly pushed her dish away and said, “Well, we should probably have this talk before Elijah’s heart explodes.”
Shep cut his gaze toward Elijah before flicking his eyes back at his mother. “What do you want to know?”
“Well, how long have you two been seeing each other? It can’t have been for too long.”
Elijah’s heart jack-rabbited in his chest. Were they ‘seeing each other’? He had called Shep his boyfriend, and he hadn’t objected. But when he stopped and thought about how little time had passed since this all started it made him doubt himself. Why did it feel like Shep had been a part of his life forever? How can he feel so attached so quickly? Could it only have been a few weeks?
“What do you mean by seeing each other? It’s not like we can go on dates or anything. The entire world thinks I have a boyfriend,” Elijah said, taking a sip of his juice.
“You’re seeing that boy? What’s his name?”
Elijah shook his head. “Robby. He’s sweet, but it’s all for show. Our publicists arranged it for optics after TMZ outed me.”
“How did you feel about being outed?” she asked.
His gaze slid away, and he started to chew on his lower lip. Fuck, he’d walked right into that one. “I mean, it sucked. It wasn’t exactly how I planned on things going down.”
Shep made a strange noise that turned into a cough, catching Elijah’s attention. “What?”
