Snow Storm

Chapter 18

Harley

Everything on the page was chicken scratch. No, it was worse, and yet, he still managed to do what his lover had demanded. No, demanded wasn’t the right word. It didn’t really feel like an order. It felt like something else—something that didn’t have a proper word for it yet.

Focusing had been damn near impossible with Claude taking Harley all the way down to the back of his throat, then pulling back to suckle at the tip. He kissed his slit and played with his balls, and his fingers trailed up between his ass cheeks to toy with his hole.

It was a damn miracle that Harley’s knees managed to keep him upright or that he could form sentences. But he had. Somehow, he’d made some sort of sense on the page. Writing was second nature to him, of course. He had no idea why there was a disconnect between his fingers and his tongue, and for a moment, he’d worried that was going to break them. It was going to deprive Claude of something he wanted.

Except instead of calling it quits and saying it was fine, Claude found a workaround. And he’d worked it into their play, so erotic that Harley was pretty sure he wasn’t going to be able to look at another journal again without getting at least half-hard.

“I’m f-finished,” he got out. He didn’t write more than a page, but he was hoping it was enough for now. His imagination had taken over, and being able to picture Claude in every single one of his requests had almost sent him over the edge.

His balls were aching, and his cock was throbbing. He wanted to come so badly he could cry.

Then Claude pulled off his dick, and Harley couldn’t stop his noise of protest. But he wasn’t left alone for long. Claude yanked his pants down to his ankles before helping him step out of them, and then he tugged Harley until his knees were pressed to the bed on each side of Claude’s hips.

His calloused, tender hands held him tight, urging him close. Harley rocked his hard dick down against Claude’s soft one, and Claude moaned, stretching up to nip at the underside of his jaw.

“Was it too much?” he murmured.

Harley shook his head. “No. It was everything.” And he meant that. He felt Claude’s grin against his neck, and then the journal was plucked from his hands, and Claude leaned back.

Oh God, was he going to…

“Pin me to the bathroom counter…”

“Don’t read it aloud,” Harley begged, covering his face.

Claude used his free hand to tug Harley’s face free, and he smiled at him as he finished reading, “…and eat my ass until I’m begging, then fuck me while I watch us in the mirror.” Claude’s tongue dragged over his lower lip. “If I can’t perform like that?—”

“Keep reading,” Harley said, both miserable and turned on.

Claude’s gaze darted down to the words. He squinted like he was trying to decipher the terrible handwriting. “It doesn’t need to be your dick all the time. You can fuck me with a dildo or your fingers. I want to come with four of them in my ass.”

Claude slammed the book shut and threw it to the side before yanking Harley all the way against him. “And now? You would want that one now?”

“You’re not going to read the rest?” Harley asked.

Claude lifted a brow. “Is that what you want? You want me to lay you out on the bed and read them while you jerk yourself off to your own words?”

Harley’s body flushed so hotly, for a moment, he thought he was going to pass out. “I…it…no,” he whispered. “Just…um. Maybe what you said.”

Claude lifted two fingers to his lips and stuck them in his mouth. He pulled them out, sticky with spit, then reached around and eased them into Harley’s hole. It was a little too dry and too thick, but he fucking loved it.

God, he loved it.

His balls twitched hard, the heat of his impending orgasm like a blaze at the base of his spine. “Oh. I’m…I’m close,” he gasped.

“I thought you might be, mon ange.” Claude leaned to the side, and somewhere in his daze, Harley heard the click of a cap. There was cool slick suddenly, sliding with Claude’s fingers, and two turned into three. The stretch was so intense he lost his breath. “Easy, chéri. Easy.”

Harley forced air into his lungs and then out. He whined, rocking himself backward. Three was enough. He’d have to work up to four. He couldn’t get the words out, and for a moment, he was afraid, but Claude had been right: he was learning him. He was damn near fluent, and it had only been a few days.

Christ. He was so in love.

He looked down into Claude’s eyes and squeezed around his hand.

“Yes. Yes. Just like that. Take me, my love. Mon amour,” Claude babbled. He fucked his hole hard with his hand, the other going around his cock, and with three firm, tight, hard strokes, Harley let go. He’d been on edge for so long that the orgasm rocked him blind. Everything went white, then dark, and he felt outside of his body as he heard his own moans.

Claude slowed after a beat, holding him close, kissing his neck. His fingers had already slipped out, and Harley was gently rocking himself against the mess he’d left on Claude’s pants.

“With me?” Claude asked softly.

Harley managed a soft groan, which got lost in the sound of Claude’s laughter. There were more kisses after that—gentle, bringing him back down. His vision started to return, but his eyelids were heavy. He’d never come so hard in his life. Claude laid him on his side, and then he was gone from the bed, and before Harley could panic, he’d returned with a warm cloth.

He was wiped down, then tucked under the covers, and he was finally more cognizant when Claude’s body slid next to his. He was naked, the muscles in his legs hard and twitching, his cock soft and pressed against Harley’s hip.

Harley lifted his face, and Claude gave him the kiss he was wordlessly asking for.

“Thank you,” Harley murmured.

“For what?”

Loving me. Liking me. Keeping me. His tongue felt stuck to the roof of his mouth, so he just shrugged and kissed him again. Claude didn’t seem to mind, and he didn’t press for more. He just held Harley a little tighter, and soon enough, his breathing evened out, and they both slipped off to sleep.

Harley groaned at the first stroke of warm hands. Warm…oiled hands? He looked over his shoulder with bleary eyes as his heavy sleep began to fade, and he saw Claude on his knees. Then, he smelled the familiar orange-spiced scent.

“What are you doing?”

“Massaging you.”

“Well,” Harley said, then groaned softly as Claude’s ridiculously talented hands hit a hard knot between his shoulder blades. “That’s…uhg. That’s obvious, but why?”

“Because I can tell the knots in your back are giving you a headache, and I think our vigorous sex last night made it worse.”

Harley buried his face in the sheets beneath him and laughed. “I guess that’s fair, but it also seems a little unfair. Isn’t sex supposed to relax me?”

“Yes, but you came very hard,” Claude pointed out. “You said so yourself.”

Harley flushed. That was true. Every muscle in his body had been tense. He’d slept amazing afterward, but yeah. He felt a little wrecked.

Claude quickly got to work though, and it wasn’t long before Harley felt boneless and on the verge of falling asleep all over again.

The massage ended after a bit, with a firm kiss to the back of his neck, and then Claude curled around him. “I have to do some work today. The snow stopped, and I need to check on the animals.”

Harley cracked open one eye. “Do you want help?”

Claude grinned and traced a touch down his nose, making Harley’s eyes heavy again. “No. I want you to stay here and be waiting for me when I get in.”

Harley couldn’t help a grin. “I can live with that. I should actually try to get some work done too. Do you think you could have someone bring my phone back?”

“Lyric already dropped it off this morning,” Claude said. “It’s in the kitchen with breakfast.”

“I’m never leaving,” Harley said, nestling closer.

Claude laughed, but there was a tension to the sound, and when Harley looked up, his eyes seemed a little…sad.

“Did I say something wrong?”

“You said everything right. But I know this can’t last forever.”

Harley rolled onto his back, tugging Claude down until he was pillowed on his chest. It was a rare position between the two of them. Claude had been doing all the caretaking, so it felt good to be able to offer something to this man.

“I don’t want to ruin us by moving too fast,” Harley told him, carding his fingers into his coarse grey locks. “I’m falling for you. No, I’ve fallen for you. I’m not going to pretend that this feeling I have in my chest is because I’m lonely or sad about Darren. It’s not that. But I also want to make sure I’m the version of myself that you deserve.”

Claude rolled his head to the side to look up at Harley. “That’s a little too reasonable for me right now.”

Harley laughed. “I know. But this is me, and you chose me.”

Claude pushed up on one arm and took a long, deep kiss. “And I will keep choosing you. And I will be here however and whenever you need me.” They kissed again, tongues touching, lips soft and pliant.

But eventually, it had to end. Claude dragged himself away, swinging his legs over the bed, then standing up. He was steady, which probably meant he had on his orthotics, and he grabbed his cane instead of his chair as he headed for the door.

“I’ll be back with lunch. I left you my number on the table beside your phone. Call me if you need anything.”

Harley nestled back under the covers and smiled at him. “I will. Be safe out there.” He watched Claude smile back, then make his way out. He could hear him puttering around in the living room, and then silence fell with the firm click of the front door.

And he was alone.

Like he always was.

Except this time, the pressing loneliness was missing. There was still grief lodged in his chest. He’d been distracted by Claude, but now that things were settling, he realized he still missed his dad. It was even worse now because Claude was a man he would have wanted to bring home.

His dad would have loved him. He would have looked askance at their age difference and probably given Claude endless amounts of shit about it, but there would have been love too. And support. And happiness.

His dad had never liked Darren, and it felt almost cruel that the first time Harley found a man worthy of his love, his father—the man who had taught him everything he knew about himself—wasn’t around to see it.

The thought followed him out of bed and into the shower, then into the kitchen, where breakfast was waiting. It was pastries and fruit like they had on the buffet in the lounge café, and he grabbed a cheese Danish and a small bowl of grapes and apples.

There was coffee in the pot, but he skipped it that morning and instead picked up his phone and the little piece of paper where Claude had scribbled his number. Curling up in the corner of the sofa, Harley put the number in, and something about that felt real.

Final.

Like this wasn’t a weekend winter fling. Maybe it should have been. Maybe it was meant to be that, but there was no chance in hell he was letting go now.

He stared at Claude’s name for a beat, then sent him a quick message.

Harley: So you have my number too.

He got an immediate heart in response, and he let the feeling sink into his chest before he summoned the courage to open the rest of his text messages. Most of them were from Wes, and he knew what they were going to be about.

Wes: You were supposed to be recovering? Who’s this guy, now?

Wes: Answer me.

Wes: Is this a joke? Are you trying to piss off your ex?

Wes: I know what Darren wrote was fucked up but you don’t need to make shit up on the internet.

Wes: Okay I recognize that guy. He’s the resort owner. This isn’t funny at all.

Wes: Harley!

He skipped the rest. There was no point in reading his brother’s increasingly frantic rants about Claude. He debated about answering him at all because he didn’t think Wes was going to understand. Or, at the very least, he wasn’t going to believe this was real. He never did trust Harley with his own mind or his own heart.

Just like their mother, Wes saw him as a complete disaster.

And he refused to be defined by that any longer. Enough was enough.

He hit Wes’s contact and listened to it ring. For a moment, he thought it was going to voicemail, but then his brother picked up, breathless like he’d been running.

“So you’re not under duress?”

Harley sighed. “A cozy photo by a Christmas tree makes you think I’m under duress?”

“Considering you were there to recover from a nervous breakdown…”

“I was here in hiding because I was sexually harassed by a reader onstage, and my agent berated me in front of a crowd of people, and I snapped. Like most reasonable, rational people would do. I did not have a nervous breakdown.”

“Is that what everyone is telling you?” Wes demanded.

Harley winced. “Does it make you feel good to be cruel?”

“I…look, Harley, I don’t mean to?—”

“Yes, you do,” he interrupted, not willing to hear any more of his brother’s excuses for the way he treated Harley. “You do mean to imply that I’m a hot mess who has no business being loved by anyone. Mom always hated that I was gay. I learned my first slurs from her, in fact. And you always loved it because that made you the favorite. I have a feeling you’re enjoying the fact that my relationship fell apart, too, because it proves your fucked-up assumptions about me were right. Even though they’re not.”

Wes was quiet for a very long time. “Is that what you think?”

“That’s what you’ve shown me over and over. And no, Wes. No one is sitting here feeding me bullshit about you and Mom. I’ve had a lot of quiet time to think about how unbearable my life has been over the years. I’ve been able to realize that Darren leaving me wounded my pride, not my heart, because I never loved that man. And I’ve been able to realize that I deserve better—and the one person who knew that is gone.”

“I miss him too,” Wes said softly.

Harley felt rage bubble in his chest. “Fuck you. You were just as cruel to him as you were to me. You don’t get to claim that.”

“I know. I deserve that. I’ve been wracked with guilt over leaving you at that place when shit hit the fan. I know I’m a garbage brother, okay? And I know I was a terrible son.”

Harley froze. “Did you hit your head?”

Wes scoffed, and Harley heard him flop down on his mom’s favorite leather sofa. “No. I had a moment.”

“Explain.”

“We were having dinner two nights ago, and I was telling Mom how bad I felt for just dropping you off on the side of a mountain in the middle of nowhere?—”

“In a posh resort that costs a grand a night,” Harley corrected.

“That’s not the point. It’s fucking Christmas, Harley. And I left you there because I was too afraid to face what you’d been through.”

Harley didn’t know what to say. For years, his brother was judgmental and unkind. And what? Now he’d suffered at the hands of some Christmas miracle to awaken him to the fact that he’d been an asshole?

“Mom told me it was better for you to be out of the way, and I realized if someone said that about one of my kids—if my wife said that about one of our kids—I’d lose my fucking mind. I would leave her and make sure she got nothing.”

“That’s…surprisingly self-aware,” Harley said.

Wes let out a small chuckle. “Yeah, I guess it is. I have my moments. But I still stand by my worries. I don’t think jumping into the bed of some horny mountain man?—”

“Don’t,” Harley said, his voice suddenly dark. “That’s not what I did, and that’s not what this is. I know I’m fresh off my split with Darren, but I have never felt like this before, and I know myself. I’m not someone who gets caught up in feelings.”

“No, you’re not,” Wes admitted. “You’re freakishly rational.”

“He’s…different. Special. And I think I’m going to stay.”

“You’ll go broke trying to live there. I don’t care how much your next advance is,” Wes warned.

Harley rolled his eyes. “Not here at the hotel. Darren’s been up my ass about selling the condo, so I think I’m going to get a rental place in town here and, you know, maybe be happy for once.”

Wes was silent again. Then he let out a long, slow breath. “Look, I have a friend—Andrew? I don’t know if you met him last year, but he’s a Realtor, and he’s good. Let me do this for you, okay? I can have him run by your place and take photos, and then we can get it up on the market.”

It felt real, suddenly. Very, very real. But also good, even if it was slightly terrifying. “You have my door code, right?”

“I do.”

Harley hesitated, then said, “Okay. Have him email me the contracts, and I’ll get them all signed. I’m the only one on the mortgage, so we don’t need Darren to fill anything out.”

“But you’re giving him half?” Wes pressed.

“If it gets him out of my life for good, then yeah. I’m going to give him half. I don’t need it anyway. What I need is peace.”

“And some sliver fox to dick you down,” Wes added.

Harley’s cheeks flamed. “I never want to hear that come out of your mouth again.”

His brother laughed for a good, long while. “Fine, fine. But, uh…I miss you. And I’m sorry for everything Darren was posting online.”

“I haven’t looked,” Harley told him. “I hired a social media manager. She took the photo of me and Claude and posted it.”

“Oh. Well…fuck. Don’t look, okay?”

“Okay,” Harley said.

But unfortunately, backing him into that promise was the best way to ensure he did look. Even if it was going to cost him.