Caleb wasn’t that drunk, but Aidan insisted they take a cab home instead of jumping. Standing on the street corner, Caleb almost argued, but Aidan pulled him close. They glided into the kiss like stepping into the Nowhere, free and weightless. There was nothing except the sweetness of Aidan’s mouth.
When Aidan broke away, Caleb was startled to discover they were still standing on the same busy corner. Pedestrians flowed around them. Late night traffic whirred by. Good. That was good. Another public display.
Aidan hailed a cab, the streetlight slanting across the sharp angles of his face, catching on the lenses of his glasses. When one pulled over, Aidan opened the door for him. Caleb shuffled himself into the back seat, ungainly, and Aidan keyed in directions to Quint’s mansion and then sat back, paying no attention as the driverless vehicle pulled away from the curb. His eyes were on Caleb.
“There’s no one watching us now.”
“Right. No need to pretend.” It was impossible to keep the disappointment out of his voice. He’d left the bar elated, but Aidan’s reminder had punctured his mood. There would be no more kissing, absent their audience.
“Mm,” Aidan said, closing the space between them. “I told you it didn’t all have to be for public consumption.” He pushed Caleb’s jacket off his shoulders. Surprised and intrigued, Caleb let it slip from his arms and fall to the floor.
Whatever Aidan was doing, Caleb was going to let him.
Aidan touched his face again, brushing his hair back, then slid his hands down Caleb’s bare arms. That shouldn’t have made him shiver, but it did. Aidan’s fingers rested lightly against the insides of Caleb’s wrists. Could he feel Caleb’s pulse racing?
They had almost all their clothes on, they’d barely touched, and Aidan hadn’t said a single dirty word, and yet somehow it was already one of the most sensual experiences of his life.
Aidan stroked a finger down his cheek, then from the hinge of his jaw to the tip of his chin.
Caleb’s throat worked. He didn’t say anything.
Aidan leaned up and pressed his lips to Caleb’s. It wasn’t rough or aggressive, the way Caleb’s double had kissed, and it wasn’t showy, the way their public kisses had been. It was powerful in its own way. Gentle, slow, and ruinously thorough, it was a kiss that said I know what you want.
Caleb couldn’t argue with that. He couldn’t even remember his hands, hanging idle at his sides, until the kiss left them both breathless. Caleb came up for air and dove back in, bringing his hands up to clutch at Aidan’s back. Aidan pushed him down into the seat and got him drunk on whiskey-flavored kisses. It felt impossible. How could Aidan exude such power? How did they still have all their clothes on?
The lights of the city smeared in streaks outside the darkened windows until they dimmed into the sparser stars of suburban porches and windows, and Aidan didn’t stop. He reached for the hem of Caleb’s t-shirt, his fingers skimming the skin of his belly. Caleb raised his arms and let Aidan strip him.
His t-shirt floated down into the footwell. Distantly, it occurred to Caleb that he’d done that for women before, but he’d never asked any of them to do it to him. He wouldn’t have. It wouldn’t have fit.
Aidan slid his palm down Caleb’s chest, steady and inexorable, like he could tame the pulse within. But that wasn’t his goal. He dipped his fingers under the waistband of Caleb’s jeans and Caleb twitched helplessly beneath him. Then he drew his fingers over the hard ridge of Caleb's cock under his clothes. Fuck.
Like a passing flash of headlights through the window, Caleb suddenly saw all his previous experience in terms of the role he’d played. Over and over, he’d cast himself as a caricature of how men were supposed to behave around women.
Now it was only him and Aidan, and there was no script. He didn’t know how this would go. The freedom thrilled and terrified him, and he kissed Aidan for it, his fingers in Aidan’s hair, their noses bumping together. Aidan kept his hand between their bodies, the pressure a promise. Aidan undid his fly and Caleb obligingly lifted his hips so Aidan could tug his jeans and underwear down his thighs.
Aidan gave him a look that seared right into him, so hot it was almost painful. The instant between the look and the touch stretched taut until Caleb wanted to say do it, please do it, but the words caught. Waiting was good. It hit him while he was staring at Aidan, still dressed and making a leisurely study of Caleb’s nakedness. The restlessness he felt, the way he squirmed and shivered at every flick of Aidan’s eyelashes, that meant the best was yet to come. Caleb wanted this to last, and if that meant he had to lie here dripping and aching while Aidan watched, he’d do it.
When Aidan finally touched him, one hand wrapping around the base of his cock, the jolt of it nearly liquefied Caleb. He gasped. Then Aidan bent down.
“Holy fuck.” Caleb didn’t mean to speak in a reverent whisper; he didn’t mean to speak at all.
The wickedness of Aidan’s smile registered for only an instant before he dipped his head and slid the length of Caleb’s cock into his mouth.
Caleb had a lot more to say after that, but none of it was words. His breath stopped and started in a dozen little hitches and whines. He choked out praises and swallowed back pleas. It was a delicious kind of torment, being worked over by someone with such incomprehensible patience. Slick and slow, his lips locked around Caleb, Aidan gave him just enough to fuel his need for more, never enough to let him find release. Caleb’s hips jerked. He could thrust into Aidan's mouth. It would calm the urgency tightening in his body, but it would also speed them toward the end. So he held still.
Caleb rested a hand on Aidan’s head, not to hurry him along or exert control—Caleb was under no illusion as to who held all the power in this situation—but to feel the softness of his unruly black hair. It was a touch for touch’s sake. Aidan was giving him a gift. Caleb responded with as much active gratitude as he could, given that his thoughts were reduced to the diameter of Aidan’s mouth.
Aidan curved his free hand around Caleb’s hip. His grip was just firm enough that his fingers indented the soft flesh there, and that touch—warm, encouraging, authoritative—tipped Caleb over the edge. He came with a sigh, spilling down Aidan’s throat, fingers clenching in his hair.
Aidan swallowed and kissed the inside of his thigh. When he tilted his head back, his lips glinted with wetness. An unspoken challenge burned in his expression, so Caleb seized him by the shoulders and dragged him up into a faintly salty kiss. He didn’t care. Aidan’s tongue was in his mouth. What else was there to care about?
The car rolled to a stop. They’d arrived. A huff of laughter interrupted their kiss, and Caleb was glad he wasn’t the only one who’d forgotten where they were. He pulled his clothes back on and paid for the cab, leaving another stack of hundred-dollar notes on the back seat. Something about the money made the whole experience feel sordid, but Caleb did his best to focus on the rest of it: the warm after-sex languor, the glee of having gotten away with something filthy and thrilling.
The cab drove off as soon as they’d exited. Thank God none of the house’s other occupants would be awake to greet them at the door; the house itself was another question. As they stood at the edge of the long, looping driveway, far from the pool of yellow porch light illuminating the house’s absurdly grand entrance, Caleb nudged Aidan. “Maybe if we make out the whole time, the house won’t see your face.”
“Not that I don’t see the appeal of that plan, but I’m gonna have to breathe at some point, and I’d rather not go to prison for it.”
“Well,” Caleb said. “I guess we’d better use protection, then.”
Aidan laughed and pulled off his glasses to exchange them for the algorithm-disrupting pair he was carrying in his jacket pocket. Before he could put them on, Caleb put a hand on his arm.
“Hey, just… give me a second.”
“So we can stand here in the dark? I can think of better uses of our time.”
“Shh.” Caleb cupped his face with both hands, the skin velvet and warm to the touch, and mapped the arcing ridges of his cheekbones, softening and dipping under his eyes, then rising toward the peak of his nose. The disruptor could only change what he saw, not what he felt. “I want to know it’s you.”
He leaned in until their noses knocked together and their foreheads touched, until he could feel Aidan’s breath on his lips when he said, “You will.”
And then they were kissing again, deeply and at such length that when they came apart in the chilly night air, Aidan laughed and said, “Seriously, though, I do actually want to go inside.”
He slipped the disruptor on, and they made their way to the door. If not for the gigantic mansion looming over them, it would have felt just like sneaking back to one of the many apartments Caleb had shared, trying to bring his date home without waking his roommates. They tiptoed through the hallway, hand in hand like they were navigating the dark. They weren’t, since the house had lit their path, dimming the lights appropriately. Like so much technology, it was creepy and convenient at the same time.
Caleb forgot it as soon as the door clicked shut behind them. In the clean, climate-controlled air of the bedroom, the scent of sex clung to both of them, rich and heady, rousing some animal part of his brain. He pushed Aidan up against the door and kissed him again, reaching between them and gripping Aidan’s cock through his clothes.
“Can I,” Caleb started to ask, then interrupted himself to let his teeth graze the side of Aidan’s neck.
“Yeah,” Aidan said, pushing him to his knees with none of the careful deliberation he’d possessed in the car. He shrugged out of his jacket and tossed his shirt on the floor.
“I don’t know what I’m doing,” Caleb said. Aidan already knew that. There was no need to blurt it out. He blushed and glanced up.
Aidan carded his fingers through Caleb’s hair. “I have faith you’ll figure it out.”
Aidan’s glasses were crooked, but the illusion filter was still in place. It must be set to mask changes in the wearer’s expression, since his cheeks were untouched by color, but a flush curled down his naked chest. High up his throat, a pulse beat rapidly under his skin, undisguised.
As Caleb undid Aidan’s fly and shoved his pants down, his pupils grew huge and dark, leaving only a slender ring of green iris visible, and then reset to normal. Uncanny.
Aidan’s body, at least, wasn’t hiding anything. His cock was uncircumcised, hard and thick, its based surrounded by a nest of wiry black hair. Caleb had seen it before, but not like this.
It had never occurred to him that he wanted to look. That struck him as absurd now. He licked his lips. “I’ve wasted a lot of time in my life.”
Aidan choked on a laugh, and then said, “Well, this isn’t going to take long.”
Caleb wet his palm, dragging his tongue along it to make sure, and then took hold of Aidan’s cock.
“You liked it?” Arguably the answer was right in front of him. But he wanted to hear Aidan say it. Had that been different or special for Aidan? Maybe other people were having wildly transcendent sex all the time and Caleb had just never known it could be that way. “What we did in the car, I mean. You liked it?”
Aidan exhaled roughly as Caleb stroked him. “Yes.”
“I liked it too,” Caleb said. That didn’t come anywhere close to how he really felt. He couldn’t have come up with other words, not while he was gliding his hand back and forth, reveling in every tiny response he elicited: a shiver here, a hitch in breath there. His pale, slender body concealed nothing, and Caleb couldn’t look away. Everything in Aidan that he usually thought of as sharp was rendered delicate, fragile, vulnerable. He was so beautiful. Caleb should have noticed before.
With great care, he leaned forward and took Aidan’s cock into his mouth. It was heavy against his tongue. His first tentative, exploratory lick made Aidan groan and drop his head back against the door. Heat raced over Caleb’s skin. He’d wanted this and hadn’t understood how much.
Caleb moved, using his hand and his mouth at once, taking his cues from the rhythm of Aidan’s hips. Aidan’s hand fisted in his hair and Caleb took him as deep as he could.
Aidan’s orgasm spurted against his tongue, sudden and hot. He trembled, breathing hard, but made almost no sound.
Caleb swallowed, wiped his hand over his mouth, and leaned his head against Aidan’s thigh. Then Aidan pulled him up and kissed him, and the two of them stumbled into bed, shedding their remaining shoes and clothes along the way.
Aidan lay behind him, stroking his back, his fingertips leaving four trails of sensation in their wake. Something about the act—sensual, freely given—was almost more intimate than the sex. Caleb closed his eyes and melted into the mattress. He’d expected the sex to be fun, and it had been. He hadn’t expected to feel cherished. This tenderness didn’t fit into what Aidan had offered him, a few days of low-key fooling around in private, but maybe Aidan was like this with everyone. It must be great to be in a real relationship with him.
Caleb could feel his breathing and his thoughts slow down with sleep, drawn into the languid rhythm of Aidan’s hand.
The strangest part wasn’t that he’d given another man an orgasm, but that the man in question was Aidan. And there’d been so much that Caleb hadn’t known about him. It was like discovering a new room in the house he’d always lived in.