Page 159 of Levi

He’s grinning and washing me playfully. Shoulders. Back. Down each arm to the hand, one finger at a time. The smells of the bar slide off me and go down the drain.

“Feel better?” he asks.

Then the washing turns into touching, and the touching turns into his mouth at my neck, my chest, the water running between us. And then he goes down onto his knees in the spray, a big man folded into that little tub like he’s practiced, and looks up at me with those green eyes.

“Levi—”

“Hush, I’m paying the man of his word what he’s owed.”

Then his mouth is on my cock, and whatever smart remark I had lined up goes straight down the drain with the soap. He takes me deep on the first pass, no teasing, just wet heat and pressure, the flat of his tongue working the underside while one hand wraps the base and strokes in time.

Water runs over his shoulders, down the curve of his back. I brace a hand on the tile and the other in his wet hair, watching him suck me like he’s been waiting all night for it. He hollows his cheeks, pulls back slow, then sinks again, deeper, the tight squeeze of his throat making my knees threaten to fold.

When I try to warn him off, he digs his fingers into my hip and takes me deeper. I come with my hand fisted in his wet hair, pulsing hard down his throat.

The moment I have my breath back I haul him up off his knees, turn him under the spray, and soap my hands. I run them down his back, over the curve of his ass, then between his cheeks, rinsing every trace of the night away. My fingers slide slick, cleaning him while the water pounds our shoulders. Then I drop back to my knees right there in the cramped tub, spread him open with both hands, and put my mouth between his cheeks.

“What are you doing?” he yelps. “Fuck…”

My tongue is hot and focused, rimming him while the water streams down his spine. One soapy hand wraps around his cock and starts stroking with every long, wet drag of my tongue.

No grace to it — just the wet slap of skin, the harsh sound of my breathing against him, his own broken noises bouncing off the tile.

I open him up with my mouth and work him with my fist until he’s shaking, half-bent over the shower wall, coming in messy pulses across the porcelain while I keep licking him through it.

“Goddamn, Dante. You’re killing me!”

We stay under the spray until it starts going cool. Afterwards, I dry us both off. Then we end up in bed, his head on my chest.

This is when I ask him what’s been on my mind. The dark is the only place he tells the truth.

“Can I ask you a question?”

“Yeah.”

“What do you want, Levi?” His breathing changes. He doesn’t follow yet. “Out of all of it. The rest of your life. If it could run any way you wanted it to, what does it look like? What makes you happy?”

His fingers move on my chest, tracing nothing.

“Nobody’s ever asked me that,” he says finally. “Freddie asks what I want and means do I want the chicken or the fish so he can send somebody for it.” He lets out a long breath. “A normal life. That’s all I want. I hear how that sounds when I have money and fame. I sound ungrateful and spoiled.”

“Tell me anyway.”

“I’d hand it all back tomorrow. The money. The name. The whole damn circus. It never once made me happy. I kept waiting for it to, like it was coming in the next shipment, and it just never shows up.” His thumb stills. “I want to run my own life. For starters. I want to decide where I can go, who I’m with, what I do on a Tuesday, instead of opening a calendar a stranger filled in with my name already on it.”

I don’t say anything. I want all of it for him too.

“I want to be able to be with who I want and have it not be this dirty little secret I’ve got to bury in the dark. Hold somebody’s hand in a restaurant with the lights on and not feel my chest seize up.” He blows out a breath. “I want a house I’m actually comfortable in. You know what else I figured out I want? A kitchen with nobody in it. I’ve got staff at my house. People I never hired, all through my house, doing everything, watching me eat. And I can’t relax in one single room of it, because every room’s got a person in it being paid to be there. To spy on me.”

“What else?”

“I want to walk into a casual place like Tex’s, order a plate of ribs, a cold beer, have it be no kind of event. Nobody filming it. Nobody wanting a piece off me. No autographs. Just a guy. Eating ribs.” It comes quieter. “Peace, I guess, if you boil it down. I just want some peace. This life is all I’ve known since I was a kid. I’m tired.”

I lie there in the dark. Every word he says makes me want to find a way to offer it. A kitchen with nobody in it but him. I’ve got one of those down the hall. I could hand it to him tonight. I don’t say that. I can’t care for him by handing over a life with my name on the deed.

“Can I ask you one more?”

“Yeah. You can ask me anything.”