rabbi, but he wasn’t doing his congregation any good like this.
“You know,” the man said as he hunted around for his jeans, “you could just ask me to leave.”
At that, Jude flopped onto his back and put one arm behind his head, chuckling softly. “I believe I did that last night after sucking you off.”
The guy turned his head, and in the morning light, Jude found him beautiful. His face still held roundness of youth, his eyes unburdened by the harsher realities of growing up. Someone would love this man someday—with the fierce desperation he deserved. But that person would never be Jude.
“It’s not personal,” he finally said when the hurt from the guy’s eyes didn’t fade. “I’m massively behind, and I have to prepare my sermon, which I neglected last night thanks to you.”
The man froze, and then his eyes widened. “Sermon, like…oh fuck, are you a priest?”
Jude laughed again, ignoring the way the man’s gaze darted down to his now-flaccid cock that was a little sticky with lube. He desperately needed a shower, but he wanted to wait until this man had finally vacated his flat. “No, I’m a rabbi—and before you have some sort of moral hell-bound crisis, I’m not in the closet. I’m an openly queer, single man who would not deny what we did to anyone if they asked.”
The man swallowed thickly, and Jude was starting to regret the fact that he didn’t remember his name. The poor sod didn’t deserve to be cast into oblivion just because Jude was a careless arsehole. “Uh. If you say so.”
“I do,” Jude said as he slipped into a pair of sweats. He scratched at the hair on his belly, then took a few steps closer to him. “You should probably also know that I’m not going to call you later.”
He knew he should have been insulted by the look of relief on the poor man’s face, but he shared that feeling instead. There would be no expectations, no broken hearts. There would just be the echo of their kisses and the late-night dancing in a noisy club and the remnants of their love-making that he planned to wash away the moment he got the chance.
He saw the man to the door, then grabbed him by the back of the neck and kissed him. It was an indulgence, a quick, selfish thing he knew he could live with only because the poor man looked like the last thing in the world he wanted was to be invited to stay—even if he also looked like he wanted Jude to slam him up against the door and take him one more time.
“You were fantastic,” Jude murmured as he pulled away.
At that, he got a smile—something soft and genuine. “Forgettable?”
“Never,” he lied, because he was pretty sure that sometimes, the truth was more cruel. “Get home safe.”
He didn’t offer a ride or to call for one. He just turned the deadbolt as he heard his footsteps fading, then he dragged the heel of his palm down his half-hard dick. He wasn’t up enough to rub one out. He was old enough now that his libido would be sated for a while after a night like that. But the hollow feeling followed him as he moved into his kitchen to start the kettle, and he wondered if maybe that wasn’t part of the reason he wanted to run.
His life had been both dull and interesting growing up—and he couldn’t escape that cycle. He became a sort of commodity at school when Eliah had finally managed to come back—leaning heavy on a cane with shuffling footsteps and obvious pain. At the start, people stared because they were mirror images of each other, and at the end, they stared because that had been ripped away from them.
His anger defined him for too many years, his hands curling into fists the moment someone looked at Eliah wrong. His ears would ring with rage, and somewhere in that fog he’d hear his brother begging him to leave it, to stop. But the only thing that took the edge off was making someone bleed—making them hurt on the outside as much as Eliah hurt on the inside.
As much as he hurt in deep dark places he could never touch.
He wasn’t foolish enough to think that his anger wasn’t also a large part of the reason he’d clung to faith like it was the only thing keeping him breathing. He looked at it the same way that psychologists