What No One Else Can Hear (24 page)

I grinned. “Have plans, do we?”

He looked a little embarrassed. “I was kind of hoping, but if you don’t want….”

“Oh, Drew.” I stepped into his personal space and stroked down the side of his face. “I want. I very much want. I have wanted for quite some time.”

He pulled me toward him and kissed me, but he didn’t seem to mind when I took control. I pushed him back against the door, then stroked his chest with both hands while I nipped and sucked at his lips. Then at his jawline and his neck.

“Can we….” He was already breathless. “Maybe… take this into the bedroom?”

“Why?” I teased. “Don’t like door sex?”

He gulped. “Not for the first time. I want to make it last.”

“Drew,” I said seriously, “I’ve wanted this for so long, I’m not sure I’ll even make it to the bedroom, let alone make it last.”

He looked a little disappointed but finally agreed. “Yeah, I guess you’re right. Me too. But….”

“We’ll try, okay?” I compromised. “And if we don’t make it very long this time, we’ll give it a couple of hours and try again.”

He lit up at that and we went into the bedroom.

As it turned out, that’s just what we needed to do. Neither of us lasted long after we got to the bed. In fact we barely got our shirts off. I slipped off my shirt and pulled Drew down on top of me on the mattress. Drew became impatient with me trying to unbutton his shirt, and he ended up ripping the buttons off.

We undid our belts, but that was about it. We didn’t even get a chance to get zippers down. Drew’s weight on top of me felt so good, and the reverse must have been true for him. He squirmed on top of me, and I writhed beneath him, and the whole thing was over before it could get a good start.

After we caught our breath, Drew started laughing. “So, how long did you say we’d have to wait before trying that again?”

“As short an amount of time as humanly possible.”

Until then we lay in each other’s arms, holding and petting, whispering words of comfort and love, and even some teasing about what we were going to do to each other as soon as our bodies got with the program again. We slowly took off each other’s jeans and boxers, unwrapping the other’s body, worshipping every inch.

It didn’t take long at all until we were worked up again, but this time, we savored the moment. We licked and nipped and caressed until we brought each other to completion. We were still only using hands and mouths, but we’d work up to other things. We saw no reason to rush.

We pulled the covers over ourselves but refused to go too far away from each other. Drew tugged me into his arms, and I was his little spoon. He whispered in my ear and caressed my arms and chest, and I rubbed his hands until we both fell asleep. We didn’t wake until morning.

T
HE
ALARM
went off the next morning and I pounded a fist on the snooze button. Drew groaned as I rolled to face him. He had to work, so we couldn’t really resume last night’s activities. I planned on going into the center to spend Saturday with Stevie, but I didn’t have to get up this early.

“Go back to sleep, Jess.” He kissed my nose and got out of bed. “I know you’re still exhausted. It’ll take you a while to catch up on rest.”

I rolled over and thought about doing just that, but I really wanted to get up and spend some time with Drew before he had to leave. Besides, I didn’t want it to get too late before going to pick up Stevie.

So I rolled out of bed, flinging the sheet behind me, and didn’t bother putting on any clothes before joining Drew in the bathroom. I had only planned to use the john and get ready alongside him, but when I walked into the bathroom, I was presented with those glorious, firm globes he called an ass. He was perfect.

I let my gaze climb over him from those beautiful glutes to the flawlessly muscled back to his long slender neck. I had to kiss that neck. I couldn’t help myself.

As I walked closer to him, I noticed he had lathered up to shave and had the razor in his hand. But when he caught sight of me in the mirror, he laid it back down.

I slipped my arms around his waist, hugging him from behind, and gave in to my urge to kiss his neck. He let his head fall back for a moment and sighed, then he nuzzled my hair and forehead… with his shaving-cream-covered face.

“Oh, that’s how it is?” I picked up the can of shaving cream sitting on the counter and squirted it on his chest.

He laughed and picked me up and sat me on the counter beside the can. Then he crushed our chests together, getting shaving cream all over me.

I grabbed the can, squirted it all down his back, and started rubbing it across his muscles. It started out playfully, but then I turned it into caresses up and down his back.

I felt the shaving cream on my back as well, and he drew lazy circles in it, up and down my spine. I shivered and moved my hands lower to cup that beautiful bubble butt.

He moved his hands around to my sides and tickled a little. I slapped his butt with both cream-covered hands. He laughed and moved his hands up my chest, hooking a slimy finger under my chin, and kissed me.

He still had shaving cream on his face, although he had smeared a lot of it on me, and I felt it on my cheeks as he sensually rubbed his face against mine. He kissed my cheek, my forehead, down my nose, and landed on my mouth again.

I tasted some shaving cream at the corners of my mouth, but I didn’t care. We stilled and gazed at each other, mesmerized, caressing each other, learning the other’s body.

Then the alarm came back on out in the bedroom.
Damned loud alarm,
I cursed mentally. Ten minutes gone, apparently. I wished the alarm clock was closer. I would have smacked the snooze again or just thrown the wretched thing across the room to silence it so we could go back to what we were doing, but the spell was already broken.

He ran his hand down my cheek, collecting some shaving cream, and plopped it on the end of my nose.

“We both need showers now,” Drew observed.

I hadn’t actually planned to take one, but looking at my white-coated body, I realized I had no choice.

“Can we share a shower and still have you be on time for work?”

He leered. “If I skip breakfast.”

I laughed, thinking he was kidding. He wasn’t.

Once in the shower, he took great care to wipe every speck of shaving cream off my body, caressing me as he did so. Of course I had to return the favor. We were both so hard by the time we were clean that we knew we were both going to miss breakfast if we planned to leave at the same time.

“I don’t want our first time, um, going all the way to be in the shower,” Drew whispered in my hair.

He seemed to place much more importance on what we did when and where, and I loved him enough to want him to be happy, even if I was sure I was going to die from terminal blue balls if we didn’t do anything.

“You’re not just going to leave me hanging, are you?” I wasn’t sure I was completely joking.

He chuckled, though, and grabbed the soap. “Of course not.”

He lathered his hands and finally touched me in the one place he’d been avoiding. I picked up the soap and repeated his actions. We held on to one another with one arm as we moved the other hand frantically between us. It didn’t take long before we collapsed into each other, panting and whispering the other’s names.

“Sometime we’re going to actually….” I paused, trying to find the right words.

“Have penetrative intercourse?” Drew suggested.

“Why yes, Drew. Those are the exact words I was searching for while standing naked in the shower with you after just coming so hard I’m not sure my balls aren’t inside out. The very first words to come to my mind were ‘penetrative intercourse.’”

I could be a sarcastic ass when I wanted to be, but I knew Drew loved that side of me too.

He slapped my butt and it sounded more forceful than it felt.

“Oh shit, I didn’t mean to hit you that hard.”

I slapped him with the same amount of force to show him it hadn’t hurt. He cuffed my arm, and I cuffed back, then he tickled me.

“You know, it’s not going to be real romantic if our first shower together ends with a trip to the emergency room because one of us cracked our skull open when we slipped and fell.”

His face reddened a little, but he smiled as he turned to cut the water off. I savored one last look at the gorgeous rump that had caused the morning’s festivities, and we exited the shower and got dressed.

A
S
IT
turned out, we weren’t running as far behind schedule as we had feared. I always set my alarm much earlier than I really needed to because I was in the habit of smacking the snooze button at least two or three times. So we still had time for breakfast after all.

When we came into the kitchen together from my apartment, Dottie laughed. “Well, it’s about damned time. Please tell me you didn’t sleep on the couch, Drew.”

He smiled. “I didn’t sleep on the couch, Dottie.”

Her smile grew wider, but then she seemed to think of another possibility. “And you didn’t either, Jesse?”

I joined the smilefest. “I didn’t either, Dottie.”

“Well, hallelujah. You two do have half a brain between you after all.”

N
OT
ALL
new developments were good ones however. Hank came in one afternoon after having taken a half day off. “Hey everyone, guess who I just saw at the local McDonald’s?”

Guesses ran the gamut from various other current or former staff members to Drew’s guess of “Ronald McDonald?”

Hank just rolled his eyes at Drew and said, “Charles Edward Tyler.”

Everyone was stunned.

Drew broke the silence. “I thought he was denied bail.”

“Couldn’t tell you. He must have been granted it after all, because he didn’t look like he was trying to hide. Just sitting in a booth eating his Big Mac.”

“As long as he stays away from me and Stevie.” I was starting to wonder if maybe I should take out a restraining order against Chuck. For me too, but mostly for Stevie. I wasn’t sure if my limited power of attorney allowed me to do that. I decided I’d have to talk to Kyle about it.

With that, we put Chuck out of our minds… again.

Turns out maybe we shouldn’t have done that quite so easily.

D
REW
AND
I were getting even closer and more comfortable with our new relationship status. After that first night together, we were starting to tease each other more, even around others. We used more and more innuendo.

One afternoon at McDonald’s—the same one where Hank had seen Chuck, since there wasn’t much else that far out on the center’s side of town—I was having trouble with my straw. It must have had a hole in it or something, and I couldn’t get the milk shake to cooperate. It wasn’t that thick, so it shouldn’t have been that difficult.

“God, I can’t suck this anymore. My jaws are starting to hurt.”

Drew leered. “I have that trouble
all
the time. Doesn’t make me stop, though.”

I was sure my mouth was just hanging open.

“Because you know I love me some cream.” He was still at it. But he laughed at my expression. “
Ice
cream, that is.”

I found my voice. “What makes me think you weren’t really talking about milk shakes?”

He shook his head and chuckled. “Because you’re a smart man?”

I didn’t have the slightest clue what I was supposed to do with that. I leered back at him. “You want to show me the technique you use to get that…
ice
cream?”

“Anytime, lover,” he purred. “But maybe not in the middle of McDonald’s.”

I decided it was a good thing the recalcitrant milk shake gave me a legitimate reason to stay seated for a while, because it would have been embarrassing to get up right then.

S
TEVIE
HAD
been sleeping through the night the last several nights, and everything seemed to be getting back to normal. I was home most every night again, and there hadn’t been any midnight summonses to the center or even frantic meetings in the forest for the last several days, though he usually checked in just to make sure he still could, but he’d leave before long and go on to sleep himself.

Drew had started to stay at my place most nights, especially if he had to work the next morning. Everyone at the center just thought he liked being closer to work, and we let them think that for now. We hadn’t really discussed coming out to our coworkers. We weren’t hiding per se, but we didn’t want to flaunt it yet either.

So life was pretty good—calm, even.

That all changed at 2:00 a.m. on the third Wednesday after the trial.

I woke up from a sound sleep with such a feeling of dread, I got up and started pacing, trying to decide what to do. About two minutes later, a fire truck went by.

Dottie’s neighborhood was the farthest one out from the center of the city. Before leaving the city limits completely, there were only a couple of houses and the autism center past her house. Vehicles with sirens almost never went by. Tonight they did. Not three minutes later, another fire truck zoomed by. That did it. I had to go. I had to do something.

Something was wrong. The sense of urgency wouldn’t leave. I felt like I had to get to Stevie.

“Drew. Wake up, man. That’s two fire trucks by here in five minutes.”

“Huh?” He was still half-asleep, but he had turned to look at me and had said a coherent word, sort of.

“I can’t think of too many places the fire trucks could go, Drew. And I’m terrified it might be the center. I somehow just
know
it’s the center.”

That woke him up instantly. “The center?”

“What else is there?”

“Two or three other houses. Maybe it’s one of them.” Then he thought about what he had said. “Oh shit, not that I’m wishing a fire on them either.
Shit
.”