“Can I move, Sir?” Landon asked, the sudden need to see Gregory was an urgent thing in his mind.
“You may,” Gregory confirmed, lifting his weight slightly from Landon’s back.
Landon turned in place and wrapped his arms around Gregory, pulling their bodies back together. He searched Gregory’s face and found his expression sincere and earnest.
“I don’t want to ruin this,” Landon admitted.
“Then don’t?”
Landon huffed out a laugh and tipped his head up, taking Gregory’s mouth with his. He held Gregory’s face in his hands and kissed him until all he could taste was Gregory. Their cocks were hard and they bumped together between their grinding bodies.
“You work next weekend?” Gregory asked, separating their mouths to take a breath.
“Yeah.”
“Then Thursday.”
“Thursday,” Landon repeated.
15
Gregory
“I never picturedyou as the second chance type.” Aaron aimlessly scrolled through his phone while Gregory worked.
“I’m not.” Gregory dipped the wax core of the candle he was working on into a vat of clear wax, then red.
“Then what’s going on with the sub from Rapture?” Aaron looked up with a smirk.
“We have history,” Gregory said, running the candle through a cold water bath then dunking it into purple wax.
Gregory hadn’t told many people about Landon because it hadn’t ever seemed like something worth telling—the trite story of the broken-hearted high school sweethearts separated by college and never together again. Even though a part of Gregory had never stopped pining for what could have been, he’d made an honest effort to not let what could have been overshadow any real life maybes.
Unfortunately, there hadn’t been a lot of people who had sparked his interest the way Landon had. He’d spent college hoping that his cock would outgrow its childhood fascination with Landon, but that never happened. Gregory had moved back to Los Angeles shortly after graduation and being back in his hometown hadn’t done anything to ease that itch either. He’d long ago given up on resenting the way a small sliver of his heart often remembered Landon and instead, embraced his attachment to his past as best he could. Besides, it wasn’t like he was ever going to see Landon again.
Until he did.
Now, here they were.
“What kind of history? Like with Will?”
Gregory dipped the candle back into blue wax then gave it a quick dunk in the cold water bath before hanging it up and slicing off the dripped wax below the core. He molded the scraps into a pyramid shape and poked a hole in the top, slid a wick in then tossed it in the cold water.
“Not like Will.” Gregory picked up his blade and sliced into the edges of the original candle he’d been working on and fanned out the strips, twisting and molding them back into the body of the candle to reveal the swirling colored patterns from the various dips.
“Now that I think about it, he was the only person I’ve ever seen you with.” Aaron tapped something out on his phone and looked up. “Shit, that’s pretty.”
“Will was easy,” Gregory admitted, shaping more elements of the candle.
Willhadbeen easy, like Gregory had told Landon a few days before. Will had been a friend who liked the things Gregory liked and who’d been around. Will fell in and out of relationships, but always found his way back to whatever the thing with Gregory was. Will had tried to turn it intomore,but while Gregory enjoyed Will and they meshed sexually, it wasn’t what he wanted long-term.
The end of their friendship had been a cold one with Will blowing up one day and demanding things that hadn’t ever been on the table for them. Gregory had of course had partners since then, he’d played, he’d fucked, but nothing serious and that had been fine. His job was demanding, and last year he’d taken up candle making on the side. Justin had chided him for it at first, until Gregory had given him three candles to try on Micah at which point he promptly changed his tune and started telling everyone he knew about it. Gregory’s little hobby had turned into a surprisingly lucrative side business almost overnight.
Gregory finished shaping the candle, dunked it into the cold water bath, and looked up to find Aaron staring at him expectantly.
“What?” Gregory asked.
“If it wasn’t like Will, what was it like?”
