“I’m kind of a sucker for the cases involving missing items. I like the treasure hunt, I guess.”
Riley laughed. “Do you have an eye patch to go with your love for ships and treasure? Maybe you should be the one everyone calls Captain instead of me.”
I tickled his ribs, holding him in place as he tried to squirm away. “Smart ass. Why do they call you that anyway?”
He resumed his mindless explorations of my arm. “Amelia used to tease me about my obsession with hooks. She called me Captain Hook for a while, which got shortened to Captain over time. Kind of ironic, really, since I don’t know the first thing about sailing.”
“I do,” I said quietly. “A little anyway. I can teach you someday.”
Riley’s eyes softened as they met mine and he smiled. “I’d like that.”
“Speaking of Amelia, have you talked to her lately?”
He seemed pleased I’d asked about his friend. “Yeah. I call her after you leave almost every night. She’s doing better, I guess. Still shook up by everything, but she sounds okay. I was thinking of having her over for dinner soon.”
“You should.”
He blushed slightly at my ready response. “I meant with you, Beck. I want you to get to know each other.”
“I’d really like that.”
As we talked, his fingers grazed over the raised skin of the scar on my wrist, following it’s every curve without having to look. It surprised me that, even after ten years, Riley still knew exactly where it turned and where the three jagged lines that extended out from the center line of the scar were. His fingers still traced the same path it had all those years ago, soothing me now just as it did then.
He lifted my hand and turned it, studying my tattoo. The soft, cool touch of his fingers along the outline of the two birds was remarkable.
“Your tattoo is beautiful,” he said.
“It should be. You drew it.”
He paused in tracing the lines, glancing up at me. “When?”
“When we still shared a room at the Henrys’. I found it in the corner of one of my books. It was the only sketch of yours I had. That’s why I had it inked. Well, that and they were birds. You know, like our tanagers.”
I heard him swallow hard before he lifted my wrist to softly kiss the scar. “Why didn’t you ever get it filled in?” he asked in a soft voice.
I was surprised he even needed to ask. “Because I couldn’t stand anyone else drawing on me besides you. It didn’t feel right.”
I knew the moment those beautiful gray eyes met mine again, he was thinking the same thing I was. How long had it been since he last drew on me?
Too fucking long, that’s for sure.
I produced a pen from my pocket, but when I offered it to him, he jumped off the couch. A smile the size of the Grand Canyon split over his face as he ran to his studio, returning with a handful of fine-tip permanent markers. He bit his lower lip in a nervous gesture as he sat next to me, but when I placed my hand on his bent knee he didn’t hesitate. There was a soft click as he opened the marker, and then I felt the all too familiar pressure of the fine tip against my skin as he began filling in the wings of one of the birds with thin, black lines.
We talked while he worked, but I had no idea how I managed to hold a conversation. My heart was beating wildly in my chest. Feeling Riley draw on me again was… well, it was doing things to me that caused every cell in my body to scream his name. Every teenage fantasy of us in that tree house was replaying in my mind, rekindling those old desires in full force. They surged through my veins like fire, a thousand times more potent now than they were then. Each gentle stroke of the pen against my skin were far more intense than any version of foreplay I’d ever experienced. Christ, I wanted him… Ineededhim. I was just about to yank him to me for a kiss when he spoke.
“I was fourteen, by the way.” He glanced at me with a shy smile, before returning to his work. “I just remembered you asked me that, the night of our accidental first date, but I never got around to telling you. I was fourteen when I realized I had a pretty big crush on you. I think Tracy knew, too, because she, um, caught me tracing your lips on one of my sketches once,” he admitted with a blush. “She didn’t say anything, but she had that look in her eyes, you know?”
“That look that adults get when they know something? Yeah, I know that look.” We laughed. “I was seventeen. We must have both realized we were gay around the same time, then.”
“I was prepared to tell you, Beck, before I left,” he said in a quiet voice. “I want you to know that. I had it all planned out, what I was going to say once you were back from New York. I always hated that I never got the chance.”
His words did something to me, something I couldn’t explain. Like a hook being reeled in, I reached over to seal our lips together. His were soft and warm against mine and I didn’t hesitate to slide my tongue inside. Riley chased me when I tried to break the kiss, crawling on top of me and straddling my legs. I heard the clatter of markers as they fell to the floor and a soft moan as he took my face in his hands.
I hadn’t expected his eagerness, but it only stoked the fire even more. I didn’t know if his courage was because we werehere,in his home, or if there really was a chance Riley might feel the same thing I did. That for as new as this relationship was, and for as many years that had slipped away from us,wedid not feel so new, especially now that we had broken through that final wall of awkwardness. Our connection was as strong as it had been the day he was ripped from my life, maybe even stronger.
His hands wove into my hair as he continued to pummel my mouth, pressing himself against me and grinding our hips together. Our cocks were eager to come out and play and I couldn’t resist squeezing his firm ass cheeks, pulling him into me even more.
“Beckett,” he breathed, just as his phone rang from the couch next to us. We jumped apart, startled by the interruption. His face bloomed pink as he let out a small laugh, then reached for his phone without ever removing himself from my lap.
