“About what? Liking dick or getting fucked?”
“Both?”
Nero snorted. “I’ve had plenty of time to get used to liking dick, mate. And as for getting fucked, I dunno. I guess it just feels right.”
Lenny frowned, apparently still nonplussed.
Nero touched his face. “What is it? You don’t top?”
“Fuck, no. I top, trust me—Jesus, I top. It’s more, I don’t know . . . I had it in my head that you’d be kind of uptight about fucking. I mean, I’m not being rude, mate, but you’re uptight about everything else.” A faint hint of Lenny’s impish grin lightened the mood.
Nero rolled his eyes. “Am not.”
“Yeah, you are, so I figured you’d be some kind of power top, fucking my brains out to ease your frustration.”
The idea had legs. Nero pictured it and bit his lip, but he couldn’t escape the craving deep in his gut to have a man—to have Lenny—buried inside him, fucking him, owning him, making him come, and then—
“Oh man. I’m in so much trouble.”
Lenny’s heady whisper broke through Nero’s dirty daydreams. He refocused and pulled Lenny onto his lap, flexing instinctively as Lenny’s thighs squeezed tight around him. “I coulda told you that way before we ever did this.”
“Hmm.” Lenny’s hum was drowsy. “I can believe that. What we gotta do now is work out what to do about it.”
“Do?”
“Yeah, because I want to fuck you, Nero, more than anything, but you aren’t ready for that, and neither am I. I’ve spent the last god-knows how many years hooking up with blokes who were hardly more than strangers. I don’t want to do that anymore, and I don’t want it to be like that with you.”
“It won’t be,” Nero said, though he couldn’t deny he’d spent as long as he could remember falling into bed—and other places—with near enough anyone willing. “We know each other just fine.”
“We’re getting there.” Lenny kissed Nero’s cheek. “But we’re not there yet.”
Nero’s dick protested, but his heart knew Lenny was right. Something was brewing between them, something neither one of them could control, and fucking like rabbits would likely implode them before they’d even got started.
“Besides,” Lenny said when Nero failed to respond. “First things first. In the morning, I’m gonna need you to take me out.”
“Out? Out where?”
Lenny shrugged. “Anywhere. I don’t care. Just get me out of this place, please? Then we can come home and do this shit all over again.”
Lenny gripped Nero’s hands like they were the only anchor tying him down to the world. If he’d been clutching anyone else, the wobble in his legs would’ve been humiliating, but not with Nero. With his dark eyes blazing a path to his soul, Lenny felt nothing but heat . . .
And blind panic. Who knew the streets of Shepherd’s Bush could be so terrifying?
Nero leaned down, his lips brushing Lenny’s ear, his aniseed-laced breath warming the line of silver hoops Lenny had worn for the occasion. “You know we could just get a cab, right? There ain’t no need for you to walk nowhere.”
“Yeah, but what about tomorrow? Longer I leave it, the harder it’ll be.”
Nero’s only response was a grunt, and Lenny couldn’t tell if he agreed or not. Standard. Lenny had assumed that time would make his inscrutable companion easier to read. It hadn’t, and it seemed Nero Fierro was destined to remain a beautiful enigma.
And fuck, he was beautiful. Lenny took the last step out of Pippa’s back door and lost himself in all that was Nero—his molten eyes and broad shoulders. His strong neck and cropped dark hair. If he closed his eyes, he’d see the intricate tattoo on Nero’s chest—the tiger lurking behind the butterfly, or was it the other way around? Lenny saw Nero shirtless every day, and he still wasn’t sure, and thinking about that kept him preoccupied as they ventured farther and farther along the bustling streets of Shepherd’s Bush.
“There ya go. Weren’t so hard, was it?”
Nero’s rough cockney brogue brought Lenny back to the present. He blinked, surprised. Somehow, while he’d been lost in his Nero-themed daydreams, they’d made it all the way to the underground. “I can’t remember the last time I went on the Tube.”
“Why? That cunt follow you on that too?”
“No, actually.” Lenny squeezed Nero’s hand like he could stem the dark anger that simmered in Nero’s life-hardened gaze every time he was mentioned. “I just didn’t need to because I lived and worked in Camden.”
