“You’re fine.” Aiden opened the car door for Cade and made a grand gesture with his arm. “And your chariot awaits.” As Cade eased past, Aiden leaned in and whispered, “And I owe you. Big-time. I’m your slave tonight. I promise.”
For the first time, Cade’s response was pure. He didn’t think about men who’d used him that way, didn’t worry whether his responses would be what Aiden expected and wanted. He just sank into the leather seat and looked up at the golden man standing above him. “You’re damn right you are,” he growled. “Now get in the car.”
Chapter Twenty
They cameback to the house almost furtively, at least an hour after the senior St. Johns should have left for the airport, and found the house empty. Even Percival was gone.
“Belinda takes him home with her when my parents are out of town,” Aiden explained. “He probably loves her kids more than he loves me.”
“I’m pretty sure that dog loves everybody at an equally extreme level.” Cade let go of Aiden’s hand and stepped farther into the darkened house. Now that it was just the two of them, he was actually kind of glad to be there. It felt almost illicit, like his childhood fantasies of falling asleep in the library or museum and waking up to a night of solo exploration. “Keep the lights off,” he ordered when he sensed Aiden reaching for the switch. There was a bright moon and lots of windows. Cade could see well enough, and he felt safer in the darkness. He was back in his natural habitat, away from the brightness of the golden St. Johns. “Where’s your room?”
“I thought you’d never ask,” Aiden said, and he laced his fingers through Cade’s and tugged him toward the broad wooden staircase. There was a sitting area at the top of the stairs, a multipaned skylight above, and Cade stopped walking in the middle of the space and pulled Aiden to him for a kiss.
A hard one. They’d been taking turns being the aggressors in sex, taking turns topping and bottoming, figuring out what felt best. But Cade was pretty sure they were never going to settle into fixed roles. Aiden was horny enough to cheerfully do whatever would get him laid, and Cade? Well, Cade was a man of varied moods. And right then he was in the mood to be in charge.
Cade gripped the back of Aiden’s neck and controlled the kiss. Tantalizing nips and quick pecks mixed with deep kisses that left them both gasping for air. And when Aiden leaned forward, chasing Cade’s lips after he’d pulled away, Cade raised his eyebrows and pulled on Aiden’s hair, bringing him back under control. “Your bedroom,” Cade ordered.
“Down here,” Aiden said. He sounded almost meek. Cade was surprised by how much he liked it.
It was the darkness, he realized. He was done thinking about other men. He’d never leave them behind entirely, he supposed, but they were safely in the background now. In the past, where they belonged. So that meant it was him and Aiden. And in the light, Aiden was the native, and he was in charge. But in the darkness….
“Keep the lights off,” Cade said as they passed through a doorway into a bedroom that was more like an apartment. One a lot bigger and nicer than Cade’s. The closest area seemed to be for sitting—a large television, a sofa, a few armchairs. Then a step up to the sleeping area, with a bed and the usual storage units. The wall behind the bed had a long bank of windows that probably looked out over the lake, and moonlight was streaming in through the glass, washing the room in cool, pale light. A sleeping chamber fit for the crown prince, obviously. It was nowhere Cade belonged, but Aiden didn’t seem to realize that.
“You want to try out the shower?” Aiden suggested.
“You are… what’s the word? You are ‘obsessive’ about that shower.”
“I like it when you’re wet.” Aiden edged closer, easing his warm fingers under the bottom of Cade’s sweatshirt and running them between his skin and the waistband of his underwear. “Slippery and warm and relaxed.”
Cade caught his hands and held them together in between their bodies. “It’s a waste of water to shower when you’re not dirty,” he scolded. Then he grinned. “So we’d better get dirty.”
He was moving forward when he froze. Had that been the sound of someone walking outside the bedroom door?
“The house creaks sometimes,” Aiden said. “There are no ghosts. No burglars.”
“Jesus, you think I’d care about either of those? I want to make sure there’s noparents!”
“They’re gone.”
“That’s what you said this morning!”
“Yeah,” Aiden admitted. He let go of Cade’s hands, walked briskly to the bedroom door, and twisted the lock on the knob securely. “Locked. Okay? And nobody’s come into my room without knockingsince I was about ten. They’re not going to start now, not when they know I have someone over.”
“You’ve done this before?” Cade asked nervously. Apparently the creak outside the door had somehow chased away all his confidence. “Like, had guys in here?”
Aiden shrugged. “Well, yeah. This is where Ilive, you know?”
Cade tried to imagine taking a guy into his bedroom at his parents’ house, but he couldn’t do it. “But not when your parents were around.”
Aiden shrugged again. “Yeah. Not at the start. But when I got older? Like, when Will came up and stayed with us? It would have been stupid to have him sleep in a guest room here when I was practically living with him at school.”
Cade stared at the huge bed over by the windows and walked toward it in a near trance. Aiden and Will, in this bed. Something that had been an abstraction was suddenly much more concrete. How had they done it? How many times, how many different ways? Aiden had pressed his sweet kisses into someone else’s skin. Someone else had seen and touched his naked body, had slid inside him, had made his face tighten and relax in time with his thrusts….
“The shower too,” Cade said. He turned away from the bed and looked out the window. He’d been right about the lake view, but he was having trouble enjoying the vista. “That’s how you know how much space there is. Because you’ve already showered in it with someone else.”
Aiden’s voice came from closer than Cade had expected. “Well, I know how much space there is because I haveeyes. It’s big. I don’t need to have tested it out to know that. But, yeah. I’ve showered in there with someone else.”
“More than just Will,” Cade prompted.
