Our lips were clashing together before either of us could blink. My head tilted slightly so our mouths could slot across each other. He stumbled slightly, and only then did I realize I had reached out and gripped his hips, dragging his body against me. I was only a little bit taller than he was, but that inch seemed to be just enough to make us fit together perfectly.
I felt his arms go around me, his fingers digging into my back like it was a lifeline. We kissed for long moments, tongues tangling with deep, drugging touches. My cock, which had been good all day at the hospital, had suddenly sprung to attention and strained against the confinement of my jeans. As we ground together, I could feel an answering hardness in Nicki’s pants.Fuuuck…
Nicki was the one who pulled back, slowly, from that amazingly hot kiss, but never let go of me completely.
“Kaine,” he whispered, his voice a velvety caress on my skin. It almost felt like his voice was reaching inside me, winding around my heart like a cat would wind around its favorite human’s feet.
I found myself staring at his lips, so enchanted by his mouth that I couldn’t look away.
“Kaine,” he said again, more insistently. My eyes flew to his. I blinked slowly, more than a little lust drunk by the nearness of him.
“What?” I asked, my eyes drinking in the sight of him.
“Can we… Can we go somewhere… private,” he asked. The air whooshed out of my lungs like I’d just hit the mat.
15
Nicki
“Would that be okay?”I asked. “Can we go somewhere private to talk for a little while?”
“Um, sure. We can go to my room?” he said, his voice ending up on an up note, as if in question. I nodded, my body all too eager to agree if it meant spending more time exploring his.
“Lemme grab us some water real quick,” he offered, finally letting go of my waist and darting into the kitchen.
I almost stumbled again when he let me go. We’d kissed when we were kids, but it had never been like that.
Kaine came back to the living room and handed me one of the bottles. Before he led me up the stairs, he turned and offered me his hand. I couldn’t help but grin foolishly at him as we went up the stairway hand in hand. I felt so dorky, but so… right at the same time.
His room had changed a lot in the last six years. Gone were the majority of the comic books, though a couple were still framed or on display on the walls. The twin bed was gone, replaced by what looked to be a king size one. Which made sense. Kaine was a tall guy, the many hours he spent to keep fit reflecting in his athletic figure. I figured he would probably need a lot of room. Plus, I was sure anyone who’d slept over would have…
I shut that shit down immediately. It was none of my business who he had or had not slept with in the intervening years we were apart. I had no right to be interested in details of his sex life.
The bed was covered with what looked at first like a layer of t-shirts. I did a double take when I sat on the bed, because I recognized the shirts. Or rather, what used to be shirts.
The entire quilt was made of blocks of soft cotton fabric. The fabric had been taken from t-shirts that I clearly remembered Kaine wearing when we were kids. One block in the middle of the quilt in particular caught my attention. It was a t-shirt from the television show “Serenity”. It had the words, “I Aim To Misbehave” on it. I’d bought the shirt for Kaine for his sixteenth birthday.
I had planned on flying up to see him for his birthday using the money I’d made tutoring. Of course, I’d gotten sick, and hadn’t been able to take the flight. I’d sent him the shirt as a poor substitute.
I ran my hands over the smooth cotton and looked up at him in question.
“Mama D made it for me,” Kaine said, sitting down across from me on the bed and toeing off his shoes. “I really hit a growth spurt the year after you left. I wore that shirt until it was too tight and too short to be decent. She knew I didn’t want to get rid of it, though, so she took all my shirts with sayings on them that I liked and made them into quilt blocks. She gave it to me for Christmas the following year.”
He ran his hands over the much-used quilt, his fingers tracing the stitches lovingly. Mama D was super crafty, and always had some kind of project or another going. She made her own soaps and lotions, too. She had made each of her kids their own signature scents and named them after the character traits she saw most in her kids. She sold stuff online and at craft fairs, in addition to co-managing their chain of dojos.
“She’s pretty amazing,” I said, the breath catching in my throat. “Both your parents are.”
Kaine gazed at me, his eyes soft and kind as I tried to catch my breath.
“Nicki… What happened?” he asked. “I can’t help but feel like there is something major you haven’t told me. Something more than just your parents breaking up.”
He cocked his head and looked at me, his blond hair flopping sideways a little. He made me think of a sparrow trying to figure out how to get the food out of the bird feeder. Only he was trying to get my secrets out of me.
I shook my head, my shame choking me like it was a living creature, its slimy fingers slipping beneath my skin, strangling the words in my throat. I heard a voice in my head, the all too familiar crack of the belt and the sound of my father’s voice as he’d beaten me.
“Weak. Useless. Disgusting. Count, goddamn it! Good for nothing. Why didn’t you just die and save me from the humiliation of having a son who’s a fucking fa—”
I jerked away from Kaine and headed for the door. Why had I thought I could do this? He deserved so much better than me. He deserved someone stronger, someone who would have fought, who would have found a way to escape. Someone who wasn’t sick, who wouldn’t die and leave him, like so many other people had left him…
