“Yeah. I’m really careful. Fortunately, I haven’t had a reaction in a couple of years.”

  “Kent must have meant you when he invited me. He mentioned someone was allergic.” Colton was already mentally inventorying everything he’d need to throw out at his apartment, and how to make the sign he’d hang on the door, and in the snack area in the shop, and warning Aunt Roberta and the other women who worked there part-time and taught, and—

  “Hey, where’d you go?”

  Colton blinked and stared at him. “Huh?”

  “You were a million miles away there, all of a sudden.”

  Colton’s face heated, but he wouldn’t lie. “Planning.”

  “Planning what?”

  He told him, all while Rom’s fingers traced patterns up and down his arm, over his pecs, played with his nipple. “Sorry if that’s creepy,” he finished.

  Rom smiled. “I think it’s sweet, thank you.” He sighed, sounding contented. “Anything you want to ask me?”

  “Yeah, actually. Is Rom short for something?”

  He snorted. “Yeah, it is. Hard limit, you’re not allowed to call me that, either.”

  “I’d have to know what it is to not call you that.”

  He sighed. “Romeo. Romeo Allen Quinn.”

  “No shit?”

  “Yeah. Chad said Mom had watched Romeo + Juliet with Leonardo DiCaprio about fifty times while she was pregnant. She loved Shakespeare and especially that retelling.”

  “Yikes.”

  “Yeah. But they called me Rom, or Rommy.” He kissed him. “You can call me Rommy, if you want. I used to catch hell for ‘Romeo’ when I was in school. Gawd. Freshman year, English class sucked. We read the play then.”

  “I like the Allen part, though.” He nuzzled noses with him. “Rom the Dom.”

  He snorted. “Not the first time I’ve heard that, either.”

  They talked, and kissed…and kissing turned into fucking, which turned into a nap, and then more fucking.

  All evening, Colton had been aware of noises and music and partygoers in the rest of the house, but the distractions hadn’t penetrated into this sweet, sexy, dreamy bubble he now found himself in.

  Finally, Rom sat up and glanced at the time before leaning in for a kiss. “Stay.”

  “Where are you going?” He watched him grab a towel and wrap it around his hips.

  “I’m going to go ask Kent if it’s okay if we just stay in here all night, or if we need to vacate it. I’ll be right back.” He slipped out the door, closing it behind him.

  Rom returned a few minutes later, a smile on his face. “Holy crap, that man is hung. You feel like watching for a few minutes, or you want to snuggle?”

  Colton didn’t want to get out of bed. “Snuggle, Sir.”

  Colton would kill for the sweet smile Rom gave him. He grabbed two cold bottles of water from the small fridge there, ditched the towel, and returned to bed after handing him a water.

  “Good news is, Paul said they don’t have anyone else wanting to use the playroom tonight, so we’re welcomed to stay here all night. We can also raid the kitchen, if we want.” He took a long drink from his water.

  “Who’s hung?”

  “Kent. Apparently it’s called the monster.” He held his hand out, indicating the circumference. “No shit, he’s like a beer can. He’s plowing Tim right now in front of an audience.”

  “You’re kidding.”

  “No, put on a towel and go take a look.”

  “Only if you come with me.” He didn’t want to have to dodge hands.

  “Sure.”

  They both grabbed towels and Rom held his hand to lead him out there, Colton a little embarrassed by the catcalls and comments.

  Which was…weird, because normally, that wouldn’t faze him at all. In fact, he usually played along and it’d gotten him laid, in the past.

  Rom kept an arm around his waist as they watched. On a piece of the sectional sofa, Tim was riding Kent…

  “Oh my gawd!” he whispered to Rom.

  “Right?”

  Kent spotted them, grinned, and gave them a thumbs-up. They both gave him one in reply, and then Colton tugged on Rom’s arm. “Okay, I’m good, let’s go. Please?”

  “Sure.”

  Once they were locked in the playroom again, Rom looked amused. “Want to talk about that?”

  “About what?”

  “Your reaction.”

  Colton sighed. “I guess it’d be different if I was by myself. I don’t feel right about it since we’re…”

  Rom arched an eyebrow at him. “Since we’re what?”

  “I…I guess I don’t know what we are.”

  Rom backed him toward the bed. “How about we’re in an exploratory phase where we’ll stay monogamous unless we decide it’s not working for us?”

  Colton felt relief wash through him. “Perfect, Sir.”

  It was well after three in the morning, and the house had gone quiet around them, before they finally wore each other out for good and crashed.

  As Colton fell asleep with his head nestled against Rom’s shoulder, he wondered if this was what love at first sight felt like.

  Chapter Nine

  The next Saturday night, Rom drove over to Colton’s, picking up a pizza on the way.

  This is really happening!

  The past week seemed to have passed in the blink of an eye. No matter what Rom did, he couldn’t seem to keep his mind off the man for any length of time. Colton was like a huge mix of playful puppy and love god. In fact, something Rom wanted to do eventually was try Colton in puppy gear. The thought of the man in a hood and kneepads and on all fours was enough to harden Rom’s cock in a painfully good way.

  He didn’t want to play tonight, though. He wanted to talk, and he definitely wanted sex, if Colton wanted it.

  But they needed to hash out a few things before more play happened. This wasn’t a one-off, rocks-off kind of situation between them.

  This was starting to look really serious.

  Have-a-talk kind of serious.

  Because they’d gone out on a double date on Wednesday night with Chad and Ina, who both gave Rom their seal of approval on the guy.

  That was in addition to getting together at Rom’s place or Colton’s every other night that week, and fucking and sucking each other’s brains out.

  It was starting to become a wonderful habit. The only thing they hadn’t done was sleep over yet, only because of Colton’s early morning schedule.

  But tonight was about popping that cherry. They could sleep in all day tomorrow, if they wanted.

  Fortunately, the guy who was supposed to show up last Sunday for dinner at Chad and Ina’s had cancelled at the last minute due to car trouble, which had been a relief to Rom. He hadn’t been looking forward to explaining to anyone that he was already in what he hoped would end up being a relationship of some permanence and importance.

  The past week had only reinforced that, with every text, every call, every kiss, every moan and pinch and gasp and smack.

  This was looking…serious.

  When he arrived, Rom grabbed his bag and the pizza from his car and nervously rang the bell. When Colton buzzed him in, Rom took a deep breath and headed inside.

  This isn’t any different than what we’ve already done.

  In fact, it was one of the most vanilla things the two of them had done so far, just having dinner, talking, and chilling.

  It was the talking part knotting Rom’s stomach in a bad way right now. He wanted more with Colton—a lot more.

  Except he needed to know Colton understood where he was coming from before he invested too much of his heart into this and got it broken.

  But when the door at the top of the stairs opened and Colton’s smiling face appeared, all doubts vanished from Rom’s mind. His blond boy’s beaming gaze was focused on him.

  Or maybe the pizza, he wasn’t totally sure, but Rom figured a good chunk of Colton’s smile was for him.

  He hoped.

  After dinner they sat on the couch, Rom stretched out, but he’d left his clothes on despite wanting to be naked. He’d taken off his glasses and lay with his head in Colton’s lap and their fingers laced together, the TV off and music playing instead.

  “We should have our serious talk now.”

  Colton’s brow furrowed. “Is this going to be bad? Is this where you’re going to tell me it’s been fun, but—”

  “No!” Rom squeezed his hand. “Not at all. This is where I need to tell you about me. Remember our talk Saturday night at Kent’s, where I said I had triggers?”

  Colton nodded.

  “So, I told you Chad and Ina basically raised me. Not basically—they did raise me.”

  “Yeah.”

  “I never told you how our parents died.” He took a deep breath, remembering the sick feeling in the pit of his stomach that day in high school, in the school library, when he researched the newspaper archives and started finding out more about what happened.

  How he’d had to run to the bathroom to puke.

  How it’d taken him days to finally work up the nerve to ask Chad about what really happened.

  * * * *

  Colton could tell how much reliving this was hurting Rom, but he fought the urge to tell him he didn’t have to say it if he didn’t want to. Without his glasses on, Rom looked even younger, more vulnerable despite the beard and mustache.

  They were tough memories, but it was obvious Rom was determined to put this on the table tonight, and Colton wouldn’t shut him down. So he stroked Rom’s silky brown hair with his left hand while holding on to Rom’s hand with his right.

  He never wanted to let go.

  “I guess,” Rom said, “that Dad made decent money. He was a salesman or something. Lot of road trips. Well, he went to Orlando a lot, and it wasn’t until the police investigation that they figured out why. Wasn’t just for work. He’d met a woman who worked for a company over there. Married, but bad marriage, and she’d left the guy, ahead of a divorce. Dad was having an affair with her, and the guy caught them. Confronted them at a hotel on a Thursday night. Dad left, but I guess the guy got his tag and figured out who he was from that.

  “Dad came home that night, and Chad said he said something to Mom about plans changed, to explain why he was home early. Chad didn’t really pay attention. The next day, I went to school, and Chad went to his college classes. Mom wasn’t working. She was going to enroll in college the upcoming semester, now that I was in first grade. Going back to earn her degree. I guess I was an oopsie baby. Mom thought she was in menopause and they got careless with birth control.

  “The cops said that the guy probably showed up not long after I caught the bus. Or maybe he waited until after I did, we don’t know. We’ll never know. Based on the 911 call from the mailman a little after noon, best guess is they were dead four to five hours. He apparently killed his wife the night before. They didn’t have any kids.”

  “Holy shit,” Colton muttered, squeezing Rom’s hand.

  “Yeah.” He took a deep, shuddering breath and blew it out again. “Hence why I’m pro-honesty and anti-cheating.”

  “I guess so.”

  “Guy killed Dad first, they think, then Mom. He might not have been meaning to kill Mom, but it looks like she really fought back. They think he killed Dad in the entryway, so he might have opened the door to order the guy to leave. Shot him. Mom had defensive wounds, and the guy had some, too. He’d strangled her. Then he killed himself with the last bullet in his gun. Mailman found them, and the police talked to neighbors, who told him about me and Chad.”

  Rom swallowed hard. “I’ll never forget the look on Chad’s face when he picked me up at school. There was a deputy with him. They were still trying to sort everything out and didn’t know if there was another perpetrator involved or not, so they wanted to protect us. That was before they found his wife and the note he’d left there with her.”

  Rom needed a moment. “I’ll never forget how Chad looked…haunted. I started crying right away, because I knew something bad must have happened. Chad never picked me up from school. Sometimes he took me, if I missed the bus or something, because he drove almost right past it on his way to classes. But he worked part-time after class.”

  “How old was he?”

  “Twenty. He became a dad to a five-year-old at twenty.”

  “Holy crap.”

  “I know. He could have bailed on me. He could have dumped me on an aunt or something, but he didn’t. The neighbors banded together and pitched in with fundraisers and stuff to help us out, to clean the house up because it was a mess from the attack, paid for their funerals, everything like that. We had no money, and he couldn’t access their bank accounts. It took Chad a few weeks to figure out that there was a life insurance policy and get an attorney to help sort it all out, gain access to the bank accounts, legal paperwork to get custody of me, all of that.”

  A tear slipped from his eye and trailed down his cheek. “I barely remember them, but what I do remember was only good stuff. Chad refuses to say anything bad about them around me, but I suspect there were things he knows. He never wanted to say anything negative about them around me.”

  Colton felt something shift and settle inside him. His low-key, forever-simmering anger at his parents and their abandonment of him had moved off the burner.

  Finally.

  He’d had Grammy, and his aunt and uncle.

  He’d had Grammy’s friends.

  He’d still had family. And he’d been old enough to process things, to understand what was going on.

  To take a stand for himself.

  Rom had been completely helpless.

  Colton folded himself around Rom, kissing his forehead, his cheeks, the tip of his nose.

  The tracks of his tears.

  “I swear, I’ll always be honest with you, Sir.”

  He looked up into Colton’s eyes and, for the first time, he realized this was Rom without any walls, without his safeguards or distance.

  This was a pipeline to the center of his soul.

  Colton wondered how many guys had ever gotten this far with Rom—if any.

  “There’s a reason I’m telling you all of this beyond the whole trust and no-cheating issues. It speaks to why I need things the way I need them. I’m not an asshole to be an asshole. I’m a control freak, and I get it, because I felt like life was so out of control from such a young age.”

  “I like you being in control, Sir,” Colton admitted. “I had to take control of my life at twelve. I knew Grammy had gay friends, and I didn’t realize my parents were going to have a problem with me being gay. When I came out to them, it really shocked me that they were giving me an actual ultimatum to stop being gay. As if.

  “So I called Grammy, in tears, and she was there like, in fifteen minutes. Came in screaming at my parents for making me cry. She had about ten friends all show up right behind her with trucks and stuff. I was twelve. Not like I had a lot, but they packed everything I had, down to the bare walls, and moved me into Grammy’s. I spent the next couple of days crying, but I realized after that I always had felt like I could be myself around her. My parents were always correcting me for saying or doing the wrong thing, like I wasn’t a perfect little clone or something. It nearly killed me losing her.”

  “I wish I could’ve met her,” Rom said. “She sounds like she was a great lady.”

  “I think she would’ve loved you. Aunt Roberta loves you, and they usually liked the same people.”

  Rom reached up, hooked a hand around the back of Colton’s neck, and pulled him in for another kiss. “Chad and Ina seem to be crazy about you.” He playfully smiled. “I’m sure they don’t have things right about who’s in charge, though. Which is fine. I’ll have fun confusing the heck out of them and watching them try to figure things out.”

  Colton chuckled. “You are a sadist, Sir.”

  “Yes, I am.” He stroked Colton’s cheek. “Does that kind of explain me better?”

  Colton nodded. “I was good accepting you how you were, even without the explanation, but thank you for telling me.”

  “That’s not information for others, either. If someone asks, my parents died, and I don’t like to talk about it. Period.”

  “Understood.” He tipped his head again to kiss him. His cock twitched at the possessive way Rom held the back of his neck, taking control of the kiss until all Colton wanted to do was take him to bed. “I guess it’s hard for both of us to trust,” Colton added. “Maybe that’s why we seem to get each other so well.”

  “Maybe.” Rom studied Colton for a long moment. “What I want to do right now is get naked together in your bedroom.”

  He smiled. “Then let’s go do that, Sir.”

  * * * *

  They did. Rom enjoyed following Colton to his bedroom and watching the man strip.

  Fuck, he was gorgeous.

  Colton sat on the end of the bed, leaning back and propped on his arms. Rom straddled his lap, facing him. “Someone’s happy to see me.” He reached down and stroked Colton’s cock, rubbing his thumb over the head and gathering pre-cum pearled there along the slit.

  “I missed you, Sir.”

  Rom slanted his lips over Colton’s and felt his own body vibrate from the hungry moan his sweet puppy god let loose.

  From the depths of his soul, Rom knew this would never get old. Not in five months, or five years, or maybe even five decades from now. Feeling how his man wanted him, needed him, he would never get bored with that.

  Rom forced himself to end the kiss, smiling when Colton tried to follow him. “Lie back,” he softly told him.

  Colton immediately did, his brown gaze smoldering up at him, as if smoke and flames would soon follow, combustion inevitable between them.

  The perfect combination of fuel and oxygen and ignition to spark a fire when they were in bed.

  Always, from that first night.

  He brushed the pads of his thumbs over Colton’s nipples. “I can’t help but think what you’d look like with nipple rings.”

  Beneath him, Colton shivered, his flesh sweetly rippling with goosebumps. The way the pink nubs tightened, pebbled, Colton’s cock twitching in time with every stroke of his fingers over them, as if directly tied to them.