How to Love (2 page)

Jules smiled back at her. “Hey, Jaden.”

“Hey. We’re having the party to welcome our new neighbors, who are also
your
new neighbors, so you have to come.”

“My new next-door neighbors?” Jules handed money over to Neve and accepted the cup of coffee now topped with a plastic lid.

“Yeah. Have you met them?”

“I just met one of them this morning, as a matter of fact. Some of my mail got put in their mailbox by mistake and he brought it over. Mike. He said he has a roommate named Carlos.”

“Yeah. So we’re having a party to welcome them.”

“Sounds like fun.”

“Just warning you, though—Bella has her eye on Carlos.”

Jules pursed her lips, clasping her coffee in both hands. “Yeah. So?”

Jaden held up her hands. “I’m just saying.”

Jules really hated when people did that. Like they thought she went around trying to steal away people’s boyfriends or husbands or whatever. She would fully admit to being a bit of a flirt—she liked men and they liked her. But she would never steal a guy away from another girl on purpose. And what made Jaden’s comment even more annoying was that Bella and Carlos weren’t even a couple. They could barely know each other, after all. Why shouldn’t Jules be able to talk to her new neighbor and maybe flirt a little if he was nice?

But maybe it was Mike she wanted to talk to and flirt with, because, oh yeah, he was hot and there had definitely been a spark of something between them earlier.

She didn’t even know what to say to Jaden. She’d sound like a bitch if she told her she’d flirt with whatever guys she wanted to. And it was hard to let that go. But then, she wasn’t interested in this Carlos—she’d never even met him—so it probably wasn’t worth getting her thong in a twist over. She looked at Neve and rolled her eyes.

Since she wanted to go to the party, she said, “Okay. He’s all hers.” But then she couldn’t resist adding, “If he wants to be.”

Neve grinned, leaning on the counter. “I’ll come to your place tomorrow night,” she said. “We can walk to the party together from there.”

“Okay.”

The street Jules lived on ran perpendicular to the beach, and the two houses at the end both sat right on the ocean. One of those houses belonged to Jaden and Bella. Their little business obviously did very well, because those beach houses were pricy. Hell, so were the other houses on the street. Jules’s house was one of the tiniest cottages, six houses off the beach, and the rent on it set her back a tidy sum every month. But she loved it and wished she could afford to buy it.

“Thanks for the invitation,” she said to Jaden and left the little shop with her coffee. Now she had that party to look forward to, another chance to meet Mike and get to know him a little better and see if he was really as smokin’ hot as she’d thought that morning.

“What’s the neighbor like?” Carlos asked when Mike walked into the kitchen. He sat at the table, spooning Cheerios from a bowl to his mouth while he read the paper.

“Hot.” It was the first word that came to mind.

Carlos looked up at him and lifted one black eyebrow. “Yeah?”

Mike met his eyes and lifted one shoulder. “Oh yeah.”

“What was with the skin mag?”

Mike filled his coffee with what was left in the pot and turned it off. “It’s an
art
magazine,” he drawled. “She’s an
artist
. A photographer.”

Carlos grinned. “She takes nude pictures of men?”

“Uh…I don’t know. I assumed men and women. She gave me her card. She has a gallery. Maybe I’ll go check it out.”

Carlos eyed him. “Yeah?”

“Why not? She seemed nice. Really…sexy.”

Carlos sat back in his chair. “Well.”

Mike shrugged sheepishly. “Whatever. She lives next door. We’ll see her again.”

“No doubt. Okay. Let’s get going. My afternoon is booked for a bike trip into the hills. And what are you doing?”

Mike sighed. “Payroll.”

“Don’t pretend you’re pissed about that. You love that shit.”

Mike smiled. “Yeah. I do. But I like getting out of the office and doing something physical too.”

Heh. He’d like to do something physical, all right, something physical with his sexy next-door-neighbor. He shook his head and turned his thoughts back to their business.

“Someone’s gotta do it.” Carlos rose from the table. He picked up his bowl and set it on the counter above the dishwasher.

Mike groaned.

“What?” Carlos looked at him.

“For fuck’s sake,
in
the dishwasher! Not
on
the dishwasher. How many times do I have to tell you?”

Carlos put the bowl in the dishwasher. “You just love riding my ass, that’s all.” He turned back to Mike and gave him a look, a heated, sexy look with those dark eyes rimmed with long dark eyelashes.

Mike’s groin tightened. “Oh yeah,” he drawled. “You got that right.” He eyed Carlos. “Speaking of doing something physical…” He moved closer, slid his hand around the back of Carlos’s neck and pulled his face in for a kiss.

“Don’t have time, babe,” Carlos murmured against his mouth.

“Sure we do.” Mike’s other hand moved to Carlos’s hip, then around to his ass and he hauled him against him. Mike’s dick swelled and lengthened and he rubbed against Carlos, who was also getting hard. Their mouths opened against each other, tongues sliding, the kiss getting deeper and hotter. Heat rushed through Mike’s veins.

“That new neighbor got you all hot and bothered,” Carlos muttered, grabbing Mike’s face in both hands.

Mike grimaced. “Maybe a little. But I’m always hot for you. You know it.”

“Yeah. But I also know you—”

Mike cut him off with another long, heated kiss and their hardening bodies pressed tighter. “C’mon,” he said. “Come back to bed.”

“Gotta go to work.”

“We’re the bosses. We can be a few minutes late.” He slid his hands up under Carlos’s shirt, sliding his palms over smooth skin and muscle. When he found Carlos’s nipples and flicked them, Carlos groaned. Mike smiled against Carlos’s mouth. He knew all his good spots, the ones that could make him moan and drop to his knees. “Wanna suck me?”

“Always.”

Carlos’s hands were already at the button and zipper of his shorts, and when they delved inside to grip him, heat surged right to Mike’s balls. His dick leaped at Carlos’s touch, and when Carlos lowered himself to the floor, it was his turn to groan. Mike’s head fell back, his hands slid into Carlos’s hair, and when Carlos’s mouth closed over his cock, his mind went hazy and sensation rocked through his body. Carlos’s sure hands freed his balls from his boxer briefs, cupping them with one hand, holding his dick with the other as he licked it up and down.

“Fuck,” Mike moaned. “Fuck, I love your mouth.”

Carlos made a noise in his throat, then lifted Mike’s dick and set his tongue to his balls, lapping at them with long, wet strokes that sent Mike’s mind spinning into uselessness. His hands tightened on Carlos’s head and his hips thrust helplessly toward the other man’s face.

“Oh yeah. Yeah…love that. Suck ’em. Suck my balls.”

Carlos obliged and took one testicle into his mouth, tonguing it, sucking it, then releasing it with a soft pop. He did the same to the other, then traced his tongue up the puckered seam, lingering at the base of his shaft. Mike’s chest tightened and sweat broke out on his forehead as Carlos set fire to every nerve ending in his body. Then Carlos took him in his mouth again, fiery wet, his tongue swirling around the sensitive head, his mouth pulling on him in hungry draws. Christ, he was good at this.

Mike’s thighs tensed as pressure built inside his balls, and when Carlos’s teeth caught the tender rim of his cock, exquisite pain flashed through him and heated his veins. He gave a guttural cry.

Carlos’s hands disappeared. Mike lifted his weighted head to look down and saw Carlos opening his own zipper, pulling out his dick, hard and pulsing with heavy veins. Carlos fisted himself and began to pump in quick, hard strokes. Then Carlos fingered Mike’s balls again, his mouth sliding up and down his shaft in a sublime rhythm, and Mike’s skin buzzed in anticipation. Tingles built at the base of his spine, hotter, faster. Carlos continued to jack himself as he sucked Mike, and then…
fuck
! Sensation exploded through Mike’s nerves, up his spine and shooting out his dick as he came, hard, pulsing against Carlos’s lips and tongue.

“Fuck!” He gripped Carlos’s hair, his body bowed and tensed. “Oh Christ…yeah.”

When he stopped pulsing moments later, Carlos drew back, letting Mike’s semi-hard and wet cock fall with one last sweep of his tongue over the head that made him twitch. Carlos looked up at him, his mouth wet, dark eyes gleaming, still stroking his own cock. “Gonna come,” he mumbled.

“Let me,” Mike said, grabbing Carlos’s hand and yanking him up. Carlos fell against the counter and Mike let his shaky legs lower him to the floor. He shoved Carlos’s shirt up and kissed his groin, his belly, replacing Carlos’s hand on his cock with his own to resume the stroking. Carlos started to come immediately and Mike closed his mouth over him, let the taste of his come fill his mouth, sucking and swallowing, his eyes closed in delight. His body still pulsed with his own orgasm as he filled his senses with the taste and scent of the other man, the weight of him on his tongue. Heat washed over him, and then he released Carlos, sank to sit on the floor and leaned against the cupboards.

“Holy shit,” he said, wiping his mouth. Carlos slid down to sit beside him and they slumped into each other, forehead to sweaty forehead, panting.

“Yeah.”

Silence surrounded them as the thudding of his heart in his ears gradually faded.

“Love you, babe,” Mike murmured.

“I know.”

They both grinned.

Chapter Two

Mike wasn’t sure why he was there.

He opened the door and walked into the gallery on Saturday afternoon—not the type of place he usually hung out. Cool air washed over him in contrast to the hot summer day outside. Soft music played somewhere in the background, some kind of jazzy saxophone music. To his surprise, a number of customers filled the store, some looking at images hung on the wall, a man and woman talking to another woman who appeared to work there. The murmur of their voices echoed a little in the space with its high ceiling, white walls and gleaming hardwood floor.

He didn’t see Jules anywhere in the space. Had he come there for nothing?

Well, even if she wasn’t there, curiosity about her work had driven him there. And to be honest, curiosity about her. He wasn’t sure what he’d expected, but this classy, elegant space wasn’t it.

Tiny lights suspended from the ceiling artfully lit the work on the walls and he wandered over to look at some of them. There were no nude photos at all that he could see, rather, some incredible landscape photographs—stark black and white images of bare trees, sand dunes, rock formations, then colorful images of what appeared to be beaches in a tropical location. He surveyed them, slowly walking past. Another area featured portraits, but all unusual—an elderly Asian woman with sad eyes and a heavily wrinkled face, a man sitting on a bench near a beach, clearly homeless, head bowed with defeat, a little girl in a ballet tutu sitting on the floor looking up at someone or something with sad longing on her small face.

Mike paused in front of that one, his chest clenching. Then he shook his head. Obviously she was a talented photographer if one of her images could grab him like that.

He passed through a wide opening in the wall, into another smaller gallery. Ah. Here were the nudes. Not as many photos as there were in the front part of the gallery, in fact there were very few, some black and white, some color. Some were of very specific body parts only—a round breast with a tightly puckered dark nipple. A seductive curve of a hip and thigh. He blinked as he studied the close-up of a woman’s vulva, naked of any hair and gleaming with oil. He stood there for a long moment, staring at that one, unable to take his eyes off it. Damn.

His cock stirred in his shorts, which luckily were baggy.

None of the images showed a face. Even if it was a full body image, the model’s face was usually in shadow or turned away from the camera. He moved on to study some male images. The first one he looked at was a man standing against a dark background. Water poured down on him and crystal drops surrounded him. Barely the outline of his muscled body could be seen, but it was incredibly beautiful.

Another featured a black and white image of a guy stretched out on a bed, really just the curve of his ass, shot probably from the vicinity of his feet, and what an ass, perfect and smooth, with high contrast lighting. The next was the torso of a man standing, head bowed, hands clearly touching himself, but that was just out of the frame, his muscled abdomen outlined in shadow and light. Something about his pose exuded a desperate need for sexual relief.

Mike’s cock was getting harder.

The photographs certainly weren’t porn. They were erotic, but also moving. And there was obviously a lot of technical talent required.

The next one he stopped to look at was a naked woman outlined against a window, her hand pressed to the glass, clearly conveying a sense of longing and anguish. Other people in the gallery murmured as they studied the images and he heard a couple debating about which one they wanted to purchase. Then he heard a voice speak behind him to the couple. “Have you decided?” He’d know that voice anywhere, after only having spoken to her for a few minutes yesterday, a distinctive low, smoky voice.