Lenny’s eyes fluttered, though Nero’s bite was gentle. He’d noticed that this morning—that Nero seemed more careful than he had the first time they’d done this a week ago, more aware of who he was with, whose lips he was bruising, whose body he was pressing so hard into the mattress. And he kept his eyes open too, like he didn’t want to miss a moment.
Lenny fumbled with Nero’s shorts, shoving them down his hips, a gesture that, in recent days, had become Nero’s cue to flip them again. But this morning, it seemed, Nero had other ideas. He freed Lenny from his underwear, letting his dick spring back and slap his stomach. For a protracted moment, he gazed down at it, apparently fascinated, then he sat up, his leanly muscled legs straddling Lenny’s waist.
“Jesus.” Lenny threw his head back and thrust up, his cock seeking out whatever Nero was prepared to give him. “Don’t do shit like that if you don’t mean it.”
Nero chuckled darkly and met Lenny in the middle. Then he dropped his chest to Lenny’s and pressed their foreheads together. “What makes you think I don’t mean it?”
Lenny groaned again. “You don’t seem the riding type.”
“No? My thighs not strong enough?”
As if. Even half-addled by the urge to drive his dick deep inside Nero, the tight, unyielding grip of Nero’s thighs around his waist was unmistakable. He’s gonna be the death of me. “Just . . . keep going.”
Nero obliged, grinding down on him again and again, and it wasn’t long before they rang in another heady summer morning with the kind of release Lenny had often dreamed of when he’d had only his hand for company.
“Fuck.” Lenny dropped back on the bed, chest heaving, and his belly a sticky mess of his and Nero’s come. “What the hell are we doing?”
Nero lay down beside Lenny, wearing his sheen of sweat considerably better. “Literally? Or is this one of them trick questions you already got the answer to?”
Lenny loved the way Nero’s caustic cockney accent wrapped around the wrong words, making his grammatical imperfection utterly perfect. “I don’t know what I mean.”
“Fair enough. You hungry?”
Lenny groaned. “Food? Really? Already?”
“Morning, ain’t it? That’s breakfast time in these parts.”
“I’m a Londoner too, you know.”
“Yeah, but you’re posh.”
“I am not posh.”
“Posher than me.” Nero rolled onto his back and stared at the ceiling. “Though I s’pose you ain’t a toff like Tom.”
“Thanks.”
“Hey, I’m trying to be nice.”
“No, you’re not. You’re deflecting the question, but that’s fine. I’m not sure I want you to answer.”
Nero shot Lenny a frown. Lenny turned his back on him and sat up. His heart burned for Nero, and though Nero’s every touch told him the feeling was reciprocated, he wasn’t in the mood for Nero’s reticence. Not today, when he had to do something he’d never done before: work a shift in the kitchen without him. Fears of hawkish eyes and creepy hands had faded since Lenny had identified him for the police on a photograph they’d brought to Pippa’s, but that didn’t make working the grill without Nero’s watchful guidance any less daunting—like one fear had replaced another.
Great.
“You won’t be on your own today,” Nero said. “Cass is in.”
“That makes it worse,” Lenny snapped. “I don’t want to fuck up in front of him after all he’s done for me.”
“So don’t. Get in there and do it the same as you always do.”
“As you always do. I’m just the passenger.”
Nero’s arms came around Lenny from behind, drawing his back to Nero’s chest. “Yeah? And how do you think I feel every time we go to bed? I ain’t got a clue what to do with you.”
Lenny snorted. “It doesn’t show.”
“So? Don’t mean I ain’t fucking terrified when you get your dick out.”
