It's Not Shakespeare (14 page)

Rafael’s face—usually so happy doing almost everything—was intent and serious and sober. He reached into the end table drawer without a word and came back with the condoms and the lubricant, which he set down next to James’s hip, before kissing the inside of James’s knee.

“Oohhh….” It
almost
tickled, which meant it
mostly
drove him wild. Rafael kissed again, this time higher, and again, and again, pulling the soft (and lightly hairy) skin of James’s inner thigh into his mouth and suckling while James arched and groaned above him. Rafael didn’t move any faster, though—he took his time, one mouthful, one kiss, one suckle, one exquisite nibble at a time, he worked his way up to the crease between thigh and groin. Now James was knotting his hands in
Rafael’s
hair, and Rafael took his time there too.

He moved over, eventually, opened his mouth and took one whole testicle into his mouth, suckling slightly before moving to the other. His hand wrapped around James’s aching erection and squeezed, stroking slowly up and then down and back up again, while he rolled that tender, swollen ball around in his mouth. James gibbered something about being close before he spurted enough pre-come over Rafael’s fist to make that treacherous caress slick and hot.

“Rafael… I’m going to….”

Rafael pulled away for a moment and spoke, his breath tickling everything all points south. “You go ahead and do that, Jimmy. You come all you want. You come so much you’re tight and tender, and my dick in your ass feels like a skyscraper, okay?”

James had to fight against it,
hard,
because Rafael was right. He wanted to enjoy this—he hadn’t bottomed in… in…
forever,
since before Austen, really, because Austen was all about being taken care of, and if he came now, it would be a fight getting Rafael’s fine thick tab A into his tightened slot B.

Still, he almost lost it, had to pinch the head of his cock, actually, when Rafael pushed his ass cheeks roughly apart, spreading him out, and…
oh God!
Rafael’s tongue was warm and wet and aggressive, and James was seeing stars with the effort not to come.

“Please,” he begged. “Please… Rafael, please….”

And Rafael just kept rimming him, until a warmth furled in James’s stomach and spread, suffusing his entire body with a shaking fever and then washing him cold with the terrible denial. But still he held off. He’d given Rafael the reins, given him a gift they didn’t even have words for. He couldn’t come now, he just couldn’t.

“You comfy yet, Jimmy?”

But he couldn’t form real words, either, so he simply moaned, feverish, wanting, shivering with the absolute, imperative need to come.

Rafael’s tongue disappeared for a moment, and two fingers took its place. His entrance was soft now, loose, and they slid in with only a little friction. James moaned and shifted his hips, and Rafael pushed deeper. James started to shiver harder, and he opened his eyes and sought Rafael’s in the purple light.

“Please, Rafael…,” he breathed. “I want you so bad….”

Rafael fumbled for a moment then, disappearing entirely as he put the condom on and then coming back to slide up over James’s body slowly, gliding their skin together on as many points as possible, and then he was there, positioned at James’s entrance, looking at James searchingly before he thrust inside.

“’Kay,
papi?
”

James didn’t know what he was being asked—he didn’t. But he would say anything, do anything,
be
anything, to keep Rafael here, thinking he was special just for being James.

“Okay,” he breathed. “Okay.”

Rafael’s intrusion into his flesh was different, bigger, more
real
than anything in the toy box, and James had to close his eyes for a moment and force himself to relax. First there was the burn, then there was the fullness and then… he opened his eyes and locked gazes with Rafael.

Rafael’s eyes were hot and driven, and as he pulled his hips back slowly, James reached up and clenched his shoulders, trying to give him something, anything, that would ease the thing in him that seemed to hurt. It must have worked, because his hips surged forward, and James had to close his eyes, it felt so good. Thrust, retreat, thrust, retreat, and again and again and again and again and….

“
Oh, God, Rafael… God, yes, keep… oh, please….
”

Rafael began to mutter to him in a fractured blend of Spanish and English, and some of it James even recognized.
“Si, papi! Adelantado, that's it, dejelo, dejelo,
come on, dammit, let go and come!”

It was like he’d been waiting for permission the whole time. That liquid warmth that had been spreading to his skin and turning to ice suddenly exploded outward, blowing through him like a big hot/cold firework, and he actually screamed as he contracted around Rafael and climaxed. He hadn’t put a condom on, and his semen spattered hotly between them as Rafael threw his head back and howled his own orgasm, his hips convulsing as he drove himself so hard into James that James could hardly breathe.

He collapsed on top of James then, mindless of the come, and buried his face in the hollow of James’s neck. James stroked his sleek coarse hair back and whispered soothing things in his ear. “It’s okay, Rafi, it’s okay. We’re good. I’m good. I love you, it’s all good.”

Rafael, who had been relaxing bonelessly onto him suddenly stiffened and pulled back, frowning fiercely. “Don’t say that unless you mean it!” he snarled, and James recoiled.

“Say what?” he asked, confused. He’d been talking, saying kind things, saying things that would take Rafael’s hurt away, make that terrible, haunting melancholy that had come between them less painful. He wanted his laughing lover back—he was surprised to find he’d do anything to make that happen.

“Say that you love me!”

Oh God—he
had
said that, hadn’t he? “Well, I guess I must have meant it!” he said, upset. Hell, if he’d said it, he’d meant it, and this wasn’t quite the response he wanted, dammit!

“I doubt it,” Rafael snarled, rolling over quickly so he could sit up and run a hand through his hair. “You—if you’d meant it, you would have said it last week, or this morning, or any other time than when my heart hurts and I need to hear it!”

James blinked. “Rafael—we’ve… we haven’t been doing this long, right? It’s only been… what? Three weeks? I mean… I
think
it’s heading there… I
hope
it’s heading there. I certainly want you in my life—but I didn’t know we were in that place yet. Did I miss something?”

Rafael glanced at him and sighed and then lay back down and put his head on James’s chest. “No,
papi.
You’re right. You didn’t miss nothing. I’m just… I don’t know. Surprised. You spent five years with this sugar-daddy fucker—and the thing that seems to hurt you the most is the money.”

James groaned. He was still buzzing from the sex, from the intensity, from that sudden, chilling fear that Rafael was trying, in some awful, inarticulate way, to say goodbye and give up on this thin and fragile bridge where the two of them met.

“Austen was a prick,” he said after a moment, and was happy when Rafael’s shoulders shook. “He wanted to be richer and whiter than everybody else—he would have
loved
Lee Cresswell’s douche-mobile and he would have
hated
your beautiful blue Charger. Do you know, I wanted a dog for
years
but never got one because that fucker said he didn’t like dog hair, and I wanted to make him happy? For five years I kissed
phenomenal
amounts of ass to publish really boring textbooks and get invited to faculty retreats, and most of it was for him. I didn’t want that shit.” James sighed and stroked Rafael’s hair and closed his eyes and hoped/prayed that there was some way he could
make
Rafael love him for him. He knew better—God, Austen certainly hadn’t—but Jesus, it would have been nice if Rafael could.

“A month ago, Rafael, I hated everything but Marlowe and my classes. Right now, with you here, it’s like you made the world perfect. Am I going to have problems trusting people—even you? Yeah. But your Noni was right—you are right. It was my pride that took a hit, okay? I thought I was a good provider—I was the giver, the guy who took care of my lover, and I apparently failed. But….” He grimaced. Words were his stock-in-trade—but not here. Not when Rafael had found an invisible crack in their private bridge and threatened to drop out of his life and into the abyss.

“You don’t see me like that. I like the way you see me—in a way that has nothing to do with pride. I just have to get used to it, okay?”

Rafael nodded against his chest, and one hand came out to lazily rub the cooling come over James’s belly. James groaned, trying not to be put off, and reached for the towel in the end table. Rafael took it from him and wiped him off carefully and then himself, before throwing the towel in the corner where James left the laundry and then taking the condom off and throwing it away in the trash can by the bed.

“Someday,” he said after a deep silence, “someday, I’m gonna tell you I love you, Jimmy. You’re only gonna get one chance when it happens, because to have those words just hanging there, with nothing to catch them and no one to say them back—it’s about the worst silence in the world.”

James caught his breath. It wasn’t an ultimatum—not really. It was just a statement of fact. A warning—and a truth. Rafael already loved him. If James didn’t get with the program, everything Rafael did after that would be self-defense.

“I’ll be ready,” he murmured. “I promise, I’ll be ready.”

Rafael sighed and turned into his body then, and James kissed him, putting everything he thought he had into the kiss. Rafael stayed there, nestled in, just like he belonged, with that fantastically tattooed, dark-skinned arm draped across James’s pale, hairy chest. It was beautiful—a dragon, twined with barbed wire, bloody, fierce, violent…
passionate.
James traced the figures fitfully in the dark. He was a mild-mannered college professor—how much soul did he really have? Not enough for Rafael, he remembered thinking fretfully, just as he dropped off to sleep.

When he woke up, Rafael was gone. There was another note on his pillow, and no flower. It said,
A few days space, papi. Don’t panic. I want you to be sure. Rafi

James sat up in bed and looked at it fretfully, his eyes burning and a scowl that he used to be accustomed to lining his face all over again.

Marlowe was up in bed with him again, under the covers, licking his toes, and James stretched carefully so he could scratch the little dog under the blankets. He had to. Right now, Marlowe definitely loved him. Marlowe didn’t want space. And Marlowe was, once again, the only reason in the world he didn’t hate everything.

“
W
HAT
’
S
the matter?” Sophie asked him at the end of class that day. James shrugged and gave her a little smile.

“Post-spring-break hangover,” he said gamely, but she frowned back at him.

“Rafael came by my house this morning, dropped off his car, and got a ride to work from a friend. Why would he do that?” Sophie was twenty years old at the most. Her glare should not have intimidated a grown man—but then, maybe he wasn’t as grown as he thought he was.

“Because he’s avoiding me,” James confessed miserably. He bent down and picked up Marlowe, who licked his face in comfort. Marlowe had missed Rafael that morning when they’d sat down to a rather sad meal of oatmeal (for James) and kibble (for Marlowe).

“What did you do?” Sophie asked, outraged. “You were doing so well! He thought you were
awesome,
and believe me, Rafael doesn’t get excited about guys at
all.
How could you fuck this up?”

James frowned at her. “Do you really have to be privy to everything, Sophie? Don’t I ever get to be a grownup around you?”

“Not if you’re going to break my friend’s heart!” she snapped back, and he quailed.

“He’s breaking mine,” he muttered. “It’s not my fault. All I know is that Noni read my cards yesterday, and there was a Knight of Cups and a King of Swords, and Rafael got his feelings hurt because my ex was a douchebag, and I didn’t say I love you fast enough!”

James stopped and glared at her, appalled. What a horrible breach of etiquette, spilling his whole insides out like that! His family didn’t
do
that! They were dry! They were witty! They were understated! They hired shrinks in order to find balance in their lives! They did not, repeat
not,
spill out everything in their hearts to a twenty-year-old child who looked like a reject from a Clash-groupie reunion.

But it didn’t matter, because he just had, and Sophie was looking at him with a sudden, total, and utter compassion in her eyes. “Oh, Professor—he’s afraid you won’t love him back—can’t you see that?”

James felt blank, from his aching heart to his aching head. “I have no idea how you arrived at that conclusion,” he told her frankly. “It was a random collection of facts. I used to teach logic, you know—none of that made any sense at all.”

“’And yet it
ees,
’” Sophie intoned, in a fair Monty Python British-Indian accent, “In the same way that Mount Everest
ees,
and Alma Kogan
eesn’t.”

James blinked at her, now at a total loss. “You are way too young to have heard that record,” he said numbly.

“My mother’s a history teacher. You would not be
lieve
what my parents considered socially relevant,” Sophie said dryly. “I don’t actually have work today, professor. How about I take you to the dog park for Marlowe, and then you take me out to coffee. How’s that sound?”

James nodded, feeling sorry for himself. “Okay,” he said, giving in without much struggle at all. “But, uhm, can we take my car?” Getting into that fucking tawdry blue testament to Rafael’s abiding passions would hurt like a sonuvabitch.

“Yeah, Professor, whatever you want.”

They talked for hours—until it was dark and getting near nine o’clock at night, and surprisingly enough, James wasn’t the one who did all the talking. Sophie rambled on too. She talked about Noni showing her how to read the cards, and Rafael being her best friend when she was a kid, and how she didn’t know if she wanted to be a doctor or a pastry chef when she graduated from college. (James suggested doctor—he didn’t know what kinds of pastry monstrosities that sort of fierce intelligence might produce if given free rein, and he was pretty sure the world didn’t want to find out.)