8. Jonah

Chapter eight

Jonah

T he mansion was immense. That was really the only word for it. Jonah had been inside some damn big houses before; hell, he’d lived on a Drifter commune ship that had been cobbled together to consume a cubic mile, only cohesive in the central core. That had been damn big, but it wasn’t the same as this place. This house was intended for a single family: the governor’s. The governor of an entire Alliance planet who was also Garrett’s father, and a general, and the son of one of the oldest, wealthiest Central System dynasties. To say that Jonah was comfortable with the situation would have been grossly overstating it.

Cody was having the time of his life, though. His shyness had lasted all of about a minute, and from there on out, he became the cheerful, friendly, and above all noisy child that Jonah recognized. He bounced between the different members of the welcoming committee, talking nonstop about the movie he’d made for them and how soon they could watch it, about how different it was here and whether there were any toys in his room, when they could have dinner and what it was going to be, and when he could go for a ride on Wyl’s bike. Wyl was encouraging him, and Claudia looked completely smitten, even with the baby in her arms. Miles was quieter, but Jonah kind of liked it that way. The man intimidated the hell out of him.

They got to Cody’s rooms, which were around the size of the entire top floor of Jonah’s house back on Pandora, and his kid promptly lost the last of his self-control and just ran around, eyes wide, mouth open, and joyfully whooping at everything he saw. The rooms looked like they had been designed for Cody. They probably had been, actually, given the company. The walls were covered with Space Ranger holograms, the bed was shaped like a rocket bike, and the floor had pressure sensors that triggered a lightning-bolt effect wherever someone took a step.

“You can change it to do other things,” Wyl added, pulling up a control pad on the wall beside the bed. “Jump.” Cody jumped, and a ripple effect flowed from his feet across the floor.

“Wow …”

“Jump again.” This time it was fireworks, a different color every time.

Cody looked over at Wyl worshipfully. “What else can it do?”

“Oh, man, whatever you can think of; come here.” Cody ran over to join Wyl, and they settled in to play with the floor. Claudia held up Renee to watch the colors change as she stepped around the room, and the baby seemed transfixed.

“That’s it, hand her over.” Garrett made peremptory, grabby fingers at his stepmother. “You’ve had her forever; it’s my turn to hold my little sister.” Claudia rolled her eyes but handed Renee over to Garrett, who curled her into the crook of his arm and grinned at her. It was an expression Jonah didn’t see very often on his fiancé, one that was totally open and uncalculating, even more than with Cody. Renee was too little to need teasing or coaxing—all she wanted was Garrett’s undivided attention and apparently his face to grab onto. Garrett let her little hands roam freely over his mouth and nose but backed up a bit when they got close to his hair.

“What?” he said when he saw Jonah smile. “It took forever for me to get it this way.”

“I didn’t say anything.”

“I can hear you thinking it,” Garrett said with a sniff, turning to look back at his little sister. “You’ve got good genes, Renee, but remember, being beautiful still takes work. You can’t let the haters bring you down to their sartorial level.”

“Hey, I like the way you look no matter what,” Jonah protested.

“Gare spent hours in front of the mirror as a kid,” Miles said. “I’m hoping Renee won’t be quite so attached to her own reflection.”

“We can’t heeear you,” Garrett singsonged, spinning in a slow circle. “La la la la la …” Images of blue orchids sprang up beneath his feet, the result of Wyl and Cody’s latest try, and Jonah couldn’t have looked away if he tried.

A quiet knock sounded by the door. They turned, and Jonah finally saw Robbie Sinclair, the last member of their intimate group. He was in his marine uniform, a black military jacket and slacks with a colonel’s insignia on each shoulder. His hair was short, sandy with gray at the temples, and he had a calm, almost grave expression on his handsome face. It changed to a smile as soon as he and Garrett made eye contact.

“There you are! Honestly, what is wrong with your people, shooting guns at tanks and making you late for the important things in life?” Garrett groused. “Hang on a sec.” He turned to Jonah. “Can you take her for a moment?”

“Uh … sure.” An instant later, Jonah’s arms were full of baby, and Garrett was at the door and in Robbie’s embrace. It was tight and warm and …

Jonah turned his eyes back down to Renee. She stared back at him with bright, curious blue eyes. They looked a lot like Garrett’s, actually—the same warmth and long, long lashes. She reached for his face, and he intercepted her little fingers with one of his own, letting her tug on that instead. It had been a long time since he’d held a baby. Those had been a tense couple of years with Cody, always worried about his health and dealing with a slow and painful separation from the life Jonah had always known. Renee started to squirm, and a moment later, Claudia was there, reaching for her.

“She’s probably hungry,” she explained. “I should take her back to our wing and feed her. Miles—” She turned toward the door, then frowned. “Where has he gotten off to?” Miles and Robbie and Garrett were all missing although Garrett came back into the room after a few seconds.

“Sorry, Robbie had to steal Dad because he’s a heartless bastard with a lousy sense of timing,” Garrett explained nonchalantly. Wyl sent him an aggravated look. “I’m sure it’s nothing serious,” Garrett added. “Some kind of a thing over a thing, whatever; their work is never done. So!” He looked at Jonah. “We should get moved in ourselves. Our suite is right down the hall.”

“We should get Cody settled first, grab the rest of his stuff out of the ship—” Jonah started, but his son looked up with wide eyes.

“No, not yet! Wyl has to show me how the rest of the room works. Can we do it later? Please?”

“It’s not a problem, I have nothing else on my schedule today,” Wyl added, his fingers tapping fast against the tops of his thighs. He never seemed to get entirely still. “I’d love to spend some more time with Cody. You guys go get moved in, and you”—he smiled at Claudia—“feed your baby. We’re good here.”

“You sure, bucko?” Jonah asked. All he got was a distracted nod as Cody began experimenting with sound effects.

“I guess we’ll all meet for dinner.” Claudia sighed. “Your rooms are all set up, Gare, but just let me know if you need anything else.”

“I’ll let the staff know, not you,” Garrett chided her. “Honestly, woman, are you not busy enough? Do you need another baby to use up that extra time?”

“One is enough, thanks,” she said dryly. She left, and after a few moments of reassuring himself that Cody would be fine, Jonah let Garrett tug him out of his son’s rooms. They walked fifty feet down the hall and turned into the open door.

Garrett’s suite was huge. The ceiling was vaulted marble, the furniture was sparse, and there were no rugs to soften the hard, cold lines of stone and metal. It felt oddly sterile and sort of uncomfortable. Garrett shut the door behind them, then looked around.

“I almost never stayed in these rooms,” he said. “I always preferred sleeping on my ship. I’ve had the Icarus for more than half my life, and no matter where I was living, it was a constant place that was just mine, where I could do what I wanted to.”

“Yeah, this place is … it’s …” Jonah wasn’t quite sure how to express how awkward he felt there—not just in these rooms but in this entire place. He had none of his son’s ease of integration; he felt every footstep like it hurt. “Different,” he finished.

“I know. Try to ignore it.” Garrett took Jonah’s hand and pulled him further into the suite, past an uncomfortable-looking couch and a tremendous holoscreen. “Honestly, the only advantage that these rooms have over the ship is the size of the bathroom and the size of the bed.” Garrett pulled Jonah through an archway with a holographic barrier for a door, showing a stone facade on the outside. Jonah flinched a little as he passed through, then relaxed once he saw they were entering a bedroom.

“Wow.” That was a big, big … “That’s a big bed.”

“Yeah, I think the original decorator just lost their mind when it came to this room and decided, fuck it, let’s just fill it all with mattress.” It covered the entire back wall and left a slender walkway around the edge of it so someone could get to the bathroom and a retracting closet in the left wall. “I mostly used this place to store my wardrobe.” Garrett considered the bed for a moment. “And to have threesomes, but I didn’t really do that very often.”

Jonah could just see it. “You sure we can’t sleep on the ship?”

“Oh, baby, are you jealous?” Garrett wrapped long arms around Jonah’s back, holding him securely. “You don’t have anything to be jealous about.” Warm lips pressed to the back of Jonah’s neck. “I never loved my life here, no matter who I was with. I never even came close to loving it with anyone who came into this room. But I love my life now. And I could totally love you on my bed right now.”

Sometimes sex was the question and the answer all in one. “Hope they’ve changed the sheets since the last time you were in here,” Jonah said.

“Oh, they’re fresh,” Garrett assured him, swiveling around Jonah’s body and sitting down on the edge of the bed. “White and virginal. Perfect for making all delicious and filthy and debauched.”

“You wanna debauch our sheets?” Jonah asked, distracted by Garrett’s swift undressing. Blue cloth fell away and was tossed aside as Garrett got nude. He wasn’t hard yet, but he looked well on his way.

“Well, I want to debauch you on them. It’s debauchery through osmosis, baby.” Garrett tugged Jonah closer, then set to work getting him naked. Jonah tried to help, but Garrett slapped his hands away. “Mine,” he said simply. Jacket, shirt, belt, pants … Jonah’s brain went back online when he realized he was effectively hobbled as long as he kept his shoes on, and he kicked them and his pants off before joining Garrett on the bed.

“We don’t have a lot of time,” Jonah mumbled around the kisses they shared, both of them on their knees, touching each other nonstop. “Cody could come in here any time.”

“No, Wyl knows the score. He’ll keep him occupied for at least half an hour,” Garrett said, biting gently at Jonah’s lower lip. “That’s enough time for me to blow you.”

“Oh, hell.” Jonah clenched his eyelids shut for a moment. “Gotta save some time for me, darlin’. I don’t want to leave you hangin’.”

“I can come just from looking at you,” Garrett assured him. “But we’ll see.” He pushed Jonah onto his back and crouched between his legs. He looked strange there, beautiful and a little untouchable all made up as he was, and Jonah reached down and worked his fingers into Garrett’s sculpted hair, messing it up as well as he could from that angle.

“Better?” Garrett asked archly, no word about his hours of work gone to waste now.

“Almost.” Jonah tugged, and Garrett bent down immediately and sucked him into his mouth.

Fuck … there was nothing like this, nothing. Being inside of his fiancé’s body was good, it was so good, but when it came to coming hard and fast, there was no substitute for Garrett’s mouth. Warm heat enveloped Jonah’s length, sliding up slowly, with his slick tongue bathing the underside of the shaft and circling the head eagerly. Eager, Garrett was always so fucking eager to take him in …

A hint of teeth caught at the flare of his foreskin. “Fuck,” Jonah groaned, his body caught between flinching away from the sensation and moving into it. Garrett hummed appreciatively as he pulled back.

“Good?”

“Naughty,” Jonah said, and Garrett smiled.

“That means good.”

“Garrett—”

Warmth again, heat and pressure and fast , this was going to be really fast, so fast it would have been embarrassing if they were at home, but this was the first time since they’d left that Garrett had really laid hands on him outside of a few very tight, very hurried showers on the ship, and fast was all Jonah was capable of giving right now. Fast, hips rocking up without him realizing it, noises he hadn’t approved coming out of a rebellious throat, all of it tight and on the edge of losing control, the very fucking edge, and when Garrett just opened his throat and took him deep and pressed down hard on the skin right beneath his balls—

It was over. Done. He came with a flash of light, with a flare of darkness, all the effects Cody had been displaying on his floor erupting behind Jonah’s eyelids. He came hard and panting and mostly delirious, and Garrett just let him flail and grasp and hold his once-perfect hair way too tightly as he rode out the sensations, one shivering wave at a time.

Slowly the tension slid away and so did Jonah’s grasp on Garrett, dissolving into pleasant lethargy. Garrett petted his thighs gently for a moment before straddling his chest. Jonah’s arms were trapped by his sides, and it was all he could do to open his eyes and look at his lover as Garrett took himself in hand and beat off quickly, short, jerky strokes of his wrist culminating in a spray of white all across Jonah’s neck and chin. The scent of it filled his nose and made his mouth water. Garrett, because he had to be psychic, caught his breath and swirled a finger through the mess, then lifted it to Jonah’s lips. He took it into his mouth and suckled gently, cleaning it off with his tongue.

“You’re mine,” Garrett said hoarsely, his expression strangely fevered and needy. “We’re for each other. Nothing else matters.”

“Just you,” Jonah said, wondering how they had gone from sexual to soothing so fast. “’Course it’s just you, darlin’.”

For a second it looked like Garrett would say something else, something serious, but then his body became like liquid, and he slid down onto his side, draping himself casually over Jonah. “Good. Shower? Because no offense, but you’re a fucking mess, baby.”

“I blame you.”

“Fair enough.”