“I don’t know if I want to go on tour,” Darien said. It was only when the cars behind him started honking that he turned back to the road and saw that the lights had changed. “I don’t know if I want to stay with the band.”
It was true, all of it, but it was scary for him to say. Scary for him to admit to having doubts because hadn’t he picked this life for himself? He felt like he was whining about being rich and famous, and to Noah, that had to seem ridiculous.
“What do you mean?” Noah asked, and his voice was, much to Darien’s surprise, without judgment. Darien steered the car toward his home, towardtheirhome, and hoped against hope that Noah would want to stay there with him even though he was soon going to have enough money to leave.
“I mean, I only signed up for a year. That year is up very soon,” Darien admitted, staring at the road with more attention than was probably strictly necessary. “I mean, I’m not sure that I want to sign again. I know everyone is assuming that I’m going to, and I know that Lance, Aaron, and Ken all plan to stay, but I don’t know if I want to.”
There was a long silence while Noah apparently thought that over, and in it, Darien got them to the parking garage of his building and stopped the car. Even then, he just stared at the steering wheel, wondering just what he had done.
He’d shown weakness, that was what he had done, and Noah could use that against him. Try to advance his own agenda. This was the reason that he didn’t do relationships because everyone was just out for themselves. Noah was surely no different.
“That’s gotta be hard,” Noah finally spoke, and he reached over, and his small hand squeezed Darien’s, their fingers slipping together in a handclasp that felt as natural as drawing breath. “I’ll be here no matter what you decide. As long as you want me.”
Darien had been braced, like Noah was going to punch him, his muscles tight and taut with the tension. Instead, he got a sweet hand on his own, he got an intimate clasp of fingers, and all of the tension melted away.
“Noah,” Darien whispered. “Noah, I …”
It was too much to take. Too much emotion, bubbling up in him, making those three words rise to his lips. He only held them back through sheer force of will, but when he looked into those gorgeous eyes, and he saw the slight smile on Noah’s lips, he thought he saw those words echoed there.
Maybe he didn’t need to say them at all.
Instead, he gathered Noah’s slender body to himself, his hands groping, desperate, urgently slipping under his t-shirt. He hauled him close, and then he kissed him because there was literally nothing else in the world that he wanted to do more. Nothing which would feel so right to him.
Noah was so warm, so pliant and sweet in his arms, and yet he returned the kiss with a ferocity which delighted Darien. Their tongues tangled and their bodies strained together, seatbelts holding them back so that Darien, with an impatient noise, reached over and undid Noah’s so he could pull him outright onto his lap.
The kiss never broke. They seemed to breathe through each other, getting everything that they needed from the joining of their lips. It might have gone on forever, if not for the insistent pressure of his growing erection against his jeans, and the knowledge that they couldn’t do everything that he wanted to do in this car.
So Darien finally pulled away and then found himself transfixed by the sight of Noah’s face, his eyes huge and dark, his lips swollen with their sweet kisses and still slightly damp from Darien’s mouth.
It was the hottest thing that he’d ever seen in his life.
“I need you,” Darien said, instead of the three other words which still rose, utterly unbidden, to his tongue every time he stopped thinking about it. “I need you, Noah.”
Did Noah hear what Darien was really saying? From the smile on his cherubic face, maybe. Maybe he did.
“I need you, too,” Noah admitted, and Darien heard a different word instead ofneed.“Let’s go upstairs.”
In the elevator, Darien turned to his friend, to this young man who meant so much to him, intending to kiss him, to push him against the elevator wall and ravish his mouth. He found that Noah was beating him to it, though, and Darien was the one that felt the cool glass of the mirrors which lined the elevator, slowly warm to his body.
Once more, they kissed, and Darien let his arms slip around Noah, let himself be pinned as he gripped the other man’s ass and pulled him closer. Their bodies were so close that it would have been a challenge to slip even a dime between the two of them, and yet it wasn’t close enough.
Darien had always liked sex. He’d always found it to be a lot of fun. But he’d never before had this urgent desire to be really with someone, to sink into them and to do his best to become one single person. He’d always felt like it was close enough, but with Noah, he wanted it all.
As they made out, the door slid open, and Darien wrapped an arm around Noah’s waist and pushed past the people who had been waiting for the elevator. He shot them a cheerful grin and a coy little wave, and then they were past them, draped all over each other, laughing breathlessly, high on arousal and the newness of this emotion being allowed.
As soon as the door to their apartment—it wastheirapartment, wasn’t it—was firmly shut behind them, the clothing came off. Darien found himself in something of a frenzy, dropping clothes, his own and Noah’s, wherever they happened to land, and by some miracle, Noah was doing the same thing.
Darien had put himself out there, in talking about the tour as he had. He had extended some trust toward Noah, and Noah had paid him back in full. The sheer force of that was overwhelming, and when they were naked, he grasped Noah and pulled him tightly against himself, feeling the smaller man’s arousal, the warmth of his smooth skin and the way his cock was leaking all over itself.
Oddly, once the clothes came off, once they were naked, that’s when things changed. That’s when it slowed down, and they drew apart from each other just enough to really look at each other, in the warm sunlight which poured in through the large glass windows.
They hadn’t reallylookedat each other. The times they had been sexual with each other, it had all been hurried, a race toward orgasm and that was about it. But this, well, it was something different. Something that Darien was sure he had never felt anything quite like, something which roused not just his body, but also his heart.
Looking at Noah, not touching him, not quite, but just letting his eyes slip over him from head to toe, he had to admit that this was something different. He was going into all new territory here, and from the vulnerable look in Noah’s eyes and the way his slender chest rose and fell with his rapid breathing, he knew it, too.
Slowly, Darien let his hand raise, fighting gravity the whole way. He offered it to Noah, who took it, fingers shaking as they linked, clasped, and then Darien used that grip to lead his man to bed.
Gently, Darien pressed Noah down onto the bed, and he took a moment to just look at him once more, as though he could etch the memory in his brain. He smiled as he traced over the smooth curve of his waist, his hip, with just the very tips of his fingers.
