“Fuck, baby!” Hollis thrust his hips up over and over, his panting loud in the silence of the condo. A long, rumbling groan sounded just before Hollis’s back bowed off the floor. Hot semen hit Ian’s throat and he swallowed. And kept swallowing as his husband unloaded into him. When he was done, Hollis collapsed onto the floor, gasping air into his lungs. He sprawled there a moment before he tugged Ian onto him. He wrapped his arms tight around Ian and kissed him, no doubt tasting himself on Ian’s tongue.
They kissed for a long time before Ian slumped against him and buried his face in Hollis’s neck. He smiled because they hadn’t even made it to the bedroom. God, just knowing how much his husband wanted him made him so damn happy. He let the joy swamp him, and he lifted up to look into Hollis’s dazed blue eyes. He smiled. “Love you with everything in me.”
“Hell, Ian…I didn’t even know what love was until you. You’re my everything.”
“You’re my everything, too. Promise me we’ll be like this forever.”
“Oh, it’s for forever.” Hollis grinned. “We’re going to be eighty and still all over each other because I’ll never get enough of you.”
“Promise me.”
“I solemnly swear that I will ravish you in the doorway even when we’re old.”
Chuckling, Ian got to his knees and looked at Hollis, who still wore his clothes, with his jeans pulled around his thighs. His dick, soft now, lay against his thigh. It was still shiny and wet-looking. Ian ran a finger over it, then sent both hands up under Hollis’s shirt. He put one over his beating heart, loving the bump against his palm. “We’re going to have a good life together. I have a feeling we’ve seen the last of my past interfering. A good feeling.”
“So do I.” Hollis laid his hand over Ian’s, and he could feel the warmth of his skin through the shirt. “So, after a little time, we’ll resume all the steps to becoming foster parents and we’ll do this thing we both want.”
“I can’t wait to have a family with you.”
“We already are a family, GQ. You and me? We’re family.”
They were. And they had a big extended family with all their friends. Ones who dropped everything to help each other, support each other.
All the tension Ian had been carrying through this experience with Max drained out of him and he leaned down to press his lips to Hollis’s, pulling back just enough to see him. Their breaths mingled between them as he stared into the prettiest blue eyes that looked at him with so much affection. He still had Rialto to get straight, still had the new restaurant to open, and yes, he still planned to finish the steps needed to get foster kids in his home, but right then, he wanted to wallow in Hollis’s affection. He stood and held out his hand to help Hollis up.
“Come on, husband, let’s take this to the bedroom.”EpilogueThanksgiving, 2020
(One year later)Ian gripped the steering wheel of his new SUV as he carefully maneuvered the vehicle around a particularly tight turn into Lucas’s neighborhood. He loved his new car, but the thing was just so much bigger than his old Volt that its size took some getting used to. His eyes might tell him he was safely in his lane, but his body was screaming that they were taking up the entire road.
“Should I have driven?” Hollis asked from the passenger seat. There was no missing the laughter in his tone.
“No, I’m fine. I’m only going to get used to it by driving it,” Ian said primly.
A giggle from the back seat drew Ian’s eyes to the rearview mirror and the twins that were still safely secured in their car seats. Ian’s heart swelled every time he saw their smiling faces, and he was pretty sure that was never going to change.
Tyler and Thomas were three-year-old foster kids who had been placed in their home just a month ago, and Ian was already in love with them both. Honestly, it hadn’t taken him long at all to adore the kids. And he was thrilled to see Hollis fall for them just as hard.
That wasn’t to say that there hadn’t been plenty of rough moments and stumbles along the way. There had been nightmares, coloring on the walls, food disagreements, and even a few fights between the twins.
But there had also been snuggles, cartoons, bedtime stories, toys, splashing in the bath, and so much laughter. Ian was sure he’d already laughed more in the first month of the twins being in their house than he had in the last six months.
Ian turned his attention to the road and smiled as the large mansions flashed past their windows with their perfect lawns even at the start of winter. They deserved the laughter. The past year had been filled with chaos, but also fun. In Good Time had launched without a hitch to lots of enthusiasm on the part of Cincinnatians. He didn’t think it was going to be as popular as Rialto, but Ian didn’t mind. It meant that fewer people were being turned away each night because there wasn’t room for them.