and he was feeling protective over this small flame of something between him and Archer that he was starting to believe meant something.
There was still a contract between them, but Archer had made it plain he wanted Julian—beyond what their initial agreement was. It was terrifying to trust. Julian had done it too much and too often only to get burned, but there was something inherently good and safe in the way Archer looked at him, and he decided that he wanted to take the leap.
He felt the door slam as Archer backed him through the doorway, and Julian heard a loud beep in his ear that startled him away from the kiss. “My hearing aids are dying,” he murmured.
Archer shook his head, then nipped at his earlobe. “Take them off. I’ll make sure you know what I want.”
Julian’s entire body shivered. Bryce had never allowed it—he never spoke to Julian without them on, and whenever Julian needed him to repeat things, it would set the man off. It was a small, lingering hurt he wanted to erase, and he felt like he was doing that right then as he slipped into a restless silence as he set his aids on the nightstand.
Archer waited only a moment before he was back on him. The sheets were mussed from the night before, cool from the blowing fan all morning, and ready to be defiled again. Julian didn’t envy the person who would have to clean up what they left behind, but he was feeling far too selfish to give that more than a passing thought.
Spreading Archer out below him, Julian pressed one knee between the other man’s open thighs, straddling his hip, and he surged forward to let him feel the hardness growing heavy between his legs. The hand resting on Archer’s chest felt the way his moan ripped from him, trembling up through the tips of his fingers, all the way to the pulse in his neck. His mouth watered, and he wanted to taste every inch of his skin.
“Can I take this off?”
Archer pushed up onto his elbows and looked Julian right in the eyes. “How do you say yes in sign?”
Julian’s heart thrashed against his ribs as he lifted his fist and nodded.
“What about no?”
He pinched his first and middle finger to his thumb.
“Please?”
A circle with a flat hand against the center of his chest.
“More.”
Fingers pinched to thumb on both hands, tapping in the middle.
“I need you.”
Julian’s hands shook with that one as he worked through the signs, then his breath hitched as Archer copied them with a sort of surprising, flawless accuracy because he had more than paid attention. His signs moved with his whole body, and though he was untaught, his face seemed to naturally express his meaning and Julian could read it. He could read every, careful, subtle sign in his body.
He didn’t waste time after that. He tugged at Archer’s shirt, fumbled with the button on his jeans, ripping them down and throwing them across the room. His own clothes were an afterthought, and he was barely aware of stripping down until his overheated, needy body was pressed back against Archer’s pliant one that lay splayed out on the bed, waiting.
Archer’s hands lifted to the center of his chest. ‘I need you.’
‘I’m right here,’ Julian signed back, then kissed just above his navel, traveling upward with biting, sucking pecks, stopping at his nipples where Archer pushed into him, and groaned loud enough to be heard. Julian’s hand snaked upward until it was tangled in Archer’s soft locks, tugging just a bit, until his head was tipped up, and his lips were parted, and he kissed him again.
He swallowed down stuttered, anxious moans, rubbing his cock dribbling with precome in a line across the cut of Archer’s hip. He felt him pushing back, his fingers digging hard into the soft skin of his back.
“Please,” Archer begged against his mouth. His hand tried to wriggle between them to sign it, but Julian didn’t need words in any language to know that his lover was begging. He didn’t mind—he needed it. He needed every second Archer was willing to give him that pulled him away from the chaotic events of that week.
Bryce and Ashton were bad enough, but his father’s news had shaken him deeper than he’d expected that morning. He was in awe of the man’s bravery, but secretly he had believed his mother’s cruelty had managed to sink deep down into his father’s free will,