Page 94 of Saint
“You said that finding God was like having your spirit awakened,” Elijah says. “And I’ve seen you these past weeks, Aiden. The prayers, the work, the early mornings. Youlovethis.”
“I loveyou,” I say, nuzzling his cheek and then pulling back to smile at him. “Don’t you see? We can be together now...”
I feel my smile fade as a small gremlin of doubt crawls around my stomach. “Unless you don’t want to be? Unless you don’t love me like that?”
Elijah touches my face, his own impossibly tender, his eyebrows lifted high and drawn together at the same time. “I do love you like that. And I love you like this. Aiden, I—” He lets out a long breath, and then a laugh that sounds more pained than happy. “Aiden, I love you like everything.”
My heart quickens; my stomach jumps. Every kind of happiness hormone is coursing through me, and I want to have his words tattooed across my chest.
I love you like everything.
“I love you like everything too,” I breathe. “Spending these last few weeks with you in the places I thought I wanted above anything else has shown me what I really want. I’m so blessed you came with me, because if you hadn’t—” It’s my turn to give a short laugh now, although it’s not pained like his was. Why would it be? I’m within sight of my New Jerusalem, within reaching distance of my beloved. “If you hadn’t—if I’d visited here alone and all I’d had was the sea and the graveyard and the beer to guide my decisions, then I might have decided to come here to live after all.”
I can feel the long breath he pulls in after I say that. I assume it’s because he’s so relieved right now, because he’s overwhelmed by how romantic I am. But I want to make sure, because as excited as I am, ascertainas I am, I’ve learned in the last five years that listening is the most important job a person can do.
“Are you—is this okay with you?” I ask, lifting his hand to my mouth and kissing his knuckles.
“I love you like everything,” he repeats, and then suddenly it’smyface in his hands, it’smeturned and pressed against the wall. He’s kissing me so deeply, so thoroughly, that I feel it in my belly and in my groin. He might as well be licking his way down from my navel; he might as well be flicking his tongue along my cock; he might as well have two fingers inside me, stroking places that have never seen the light.
My hips roll mindlessly against his, and he doesn’t seem to be in the mood to deny us anything, not today, because instead of rucking up my habit like we normally do, he pulls back and carefully—reverently—pulls my scapular over my head. He folds it and sets it on the grass, and then comes my leather belt, slowly unfastened and tugged free. He coils it in a loop around his wide palm before he sets it in a neat circle on top of the scapular.
Finally comes my habit, which he unzips from the throat down to my sternum, his eyes following his progress as he does. The sliver of hairy chest that’s exposed has him breathing harder, faster, but he doesn’t rush this. He doesn’t rush pulling my habit over my head or folding it; he doesn’t rush kneeling down to untie my boots and peel off my socks; he doesn’t rush inching my boxer briefs down my hips to my thighs, and then off altogether.
Soon, I’m entirely naked, entirely exposed. Though the day is mostly cloudy, it’s warm enough that it’s not unpleasant, and the walls of the abandoned cottage keep the wind off. Not that it matters, maybe. I’m already covered with goose bumps, my nipples are already pulled taut under his stare.
He runs a trembling hand from my hip and up the solid drum of my belly to my chest, and there he presses his palm right over the hidden muscle behind my ribs. The muscle which beats so wildly for him.
“See?” I whisper. “I’m still wearing that second scapular. I’m still wearing you wherever I go.”
He sucks in a shuddering breath and then pushes me to my knees in front of him, unzipping his pants as he does. He cups the back of my head with one hand and frees his cock with the other, guiding his swollen organ into my mouth. “It’s so good,” he mutters as I seal my lips around him. “How is it still so good? As good as the first time you sucked me?”
I make anmmnoise as I remember. Our first night—the gala. Glances stolen across the foyer of the venue, through the forest of tippling millionaires and schmoozing donors. I’d been floored by how sexy he looked in his tuxedo, a flute of champagne dangling from his fingers as he ranged around the space, making sure everything was going according to plan. And suddenly years of lust and worship from afar crystallized into a blade.
And that blade cut through everything.
You look incredible tonight. What are you doing after this?
Aiden, are you flirting with me?
He’d had a few minutes; a place in the venue we could “catch up,” and I still don’t know how we both knew that we weren’t going into the empty opera auditorium to catch up, but we did, we did know. The minute the door had closed behind us, we were kissing, kissing, and then he’d brought his fingers to my mouth and pushed them inside. His eyes had darkened as he watched me suck on them.
I shouldn’t be doing this with my best friend’s little brother...
It’s just fucking around,I’d assured him.
Like a game?
I’d reached for the button of his tuxedo jacket then, popping it open.Well, I like games. Don’t you?
I do. I have an idea for one now, in fact, he’d said, his hand sliding down the tuxedo shirt covering my chest.What if I’m your older brother’s best friend, and one night we run into each other at a gala, and then you and I decide to make each other feel good?
I’d felt howgoodhe was already feeling. And even though I’d never done it before, I was horny enough to be brave because fortune favors the bold and all that, and I’d dropped to my knees in front of him.
I like the sound of that what if,I’d whispered, right before I’d reached for the button of his tuxedo trousers.
And he’s right—even now, years later, with so many games played between us—it’s still so good. Tasting him, feeling the rigid contours of him with my tongue as I suck, it still feels brand new—but better than brand new, because it feels like coming home too.
Elijah pulls off his T-shirt, exposing acres and acres of leanly etched muscle, and then he holds me on his cock as he tugs his jeans and boxer briefs all the way down. It’s only when he kicks off his shoes that he lets me go, and then once his shoes are off, he’s bending down to lick inside my mouth, to shove his hands through my hair and scrape his fingers through my short beard.
