Keeping House Read online

  The boy had pierced his tongue. Shuddering, he jerked his gaze higher with effort and met knowing green eyes.

  “I’d also like to buy a crock-pot and some pans. You have crap to cook with in this kitchen.” Wicked laughter twinkled in the boy’s eyes and he no longer seemed so tired or innocent as he had before dinner.

  “Uhh, sure, little things like that you don’t need to ask about.”

  “You said to get large purchases preapproved, and the pans you need are going to cost over a thousand for a basic set.” Mischa’s eyes were sparkling with excitement now, and he reached across for his computer, turning it to show Donovan a website.

  Donovan noted absently that the laptop was a top of the line Mac. He took in the displayed pictures of shiny copper pots and heavy looking pans. His eyes widened slightly at the figure in the bottom corner.

  “I need those? Why? Do they do the cooking and shopping for you?” Jesus, those pans cost more than the entire contents of his kitchen—including the appliances! Fascinated, he stared as the boy straightened and drew in a deep breath before words tumbled out pell-mell in what appeared to be a single breath.

  “These pans are the highest rated in customer satisfaction for use, durability, and functionality. Nothing sticks, they’re easy to clean, and they have like a hundred year warrantee. Also, they are nice to look at and would look great hanging from a rack over your stove or work island.”

  Work island? He had a work island? Swift glances around the kitchen revealed no island, but he let it pass. “But, thousands of dollars for pans?” A childhood of deprivation made the idea ludicrous. He’d cooked meals for himself and his parents in the tiny kitchen of a converted school bus with two pans, one pot, and large skillet. The items he had on hand in his kitchen today put that existence to shame. He shook his head doubtfully. “I—”

  “They would be heirlooms.” Mischa interrupted him, face already tinged with disappointment,”Hundreds of years from now, these pans will be used by your descendants.”

  Heirloom treasures that he could pass on to his children and grandchildren. Items like Mischa’s cherry wood secretary and the Chippendale table his grandmother had once owned. He liked the idea. His parents hadn’t passed anything on to him. If they ever owned anything of value or beauty, it had been hocked long before he was old enough to know about it to pay for drugs or some grand social justice scheme.

  Making a snap decision, he reached for the computer. They were beautiful pans. Mischa leaned over the small table to point out the pans’ many valuable benefits, and instantly Donovan was distracted by the proximity of the other man. Warmth seeped through the thin layers of gauzy shirt and silk pants, and a tingle of sensual awareness bled into his body with the heat.

  “I don’t want to buy something like this online. Can you get them locally?” Concentrate! Seductive employees were not a new experience in Donovan’s life. He’d once hired a personal assistant, before Margo, his omnipotent secretary, who had no concept of personal space and the two of them had functioned just fine. Of course, that personal assistant had more the physique of a body builder on steroids and really wasn’t his type anyway. Mischa, however, was perfect. Every inch of the lean, firm, white flesh fulfilled his fantasies with the possible exception of the black Mohawk and piercings. The overall effect was so sexy, he was eager to amend his fantasy to include the piercings.

  Without further thought, he twisted sideways in his chair and pulled the younger man into his arms. Mischa met his seeking lips with an open-mouthed caress of his own. Grateful for the access, Donovan slipped his tongue into the waiting heat. Mmm, the vaguest hint of mint and a seductive dark sweetness teased his taste buds and he eagerly probed the moist interior seeking more of the intoxicating flavor. He gasped into Mischa’s mouth as the other man’s tongue joined his in playing. The tiny silver ball, which pierced Mischa’s tongue rubbed against his own then clicked gently over his teeth before stroking the roof of Donovan’s own mouth.

  The clicking sound brought Donovan back to his senses abruptly. Reluctantly, he pulled away. Gazing down into Mischa’s passion-glazed green eyes, he pressed a finger to the temptingly pouting lower lip. “We can’t do this.” He carefully lowered his hand and backed away. “I’ll transfer enough into the household account to buy the pans and whatever else you need for the kitchen, just please buy them locally and not online.”

  Certain he’d doomed himself to another cold shower and a night of restless dreams, Donovan regretfully headed down the hall to his office.

  Chapter Five

  Dreaming of Phillip Henderson

  Donovan threw the pen he’d been doodling with across the room at his whiteboard when he realized that for the third time in as many minutes, his mock-up of a print ad for a local Mexican restaurant chain featured a character sketch of a heavily pierced, Mohawk-wearing man eating a taco instead of a sombrero and poncho clad bandito. Visions of Mischa and memories of that kiss kept getting between him and his creative side.

  Sighing, he decided to call it a night and head to bed. Aware from the darkness at the back of the house that Mischa had finished in the kitchen and retired to his own room, Donovan resisted the urge to creep through to the boy’s room and check on him. Avoiding temptation was the better part of valor in this case, and he didn’t have the fortitude to pull away from another kiss like that one. Yesterday it had been hard enough, but now that he knew the taste and texture of Mischa’s mouth, it would be fucking impossible to resist.

  Trudging up the stairs, he made a mental note to ask Mischa to do some laundry the next day. Clothing littered his room, and he was running out of towels in the bathroom. Shivering as a delicious tremor spread through his body, he stepped under the warm spray of the shower and raised his face to the water. Mischa was back in his mind, and in this setting, Donovan could indulge his imagination.

  His soapy hand running over his body switched from business-like to lingering caresses. His hands became Mischa’s smooth white hands, stroking the hard muscles of his chest, pinching at his nipples until they hardened into tiny nubs.

  “Oh, yeah,” he groaned, confident the rumbling patter of the water covered any sound he might make. He’d always been vocal in bed, and wondered if Mischa would be as well. The very thought of Mischa’s piercing rubbing over his nipples and trailing down the grooves of his chest had his cock throbbing hungrily, eager to experience that slick silver ball working over the rim and fucking the slit at the top.

  Moaning loudly, Donovan grasped his cock with one hand and traced soap slick fingers down his body starting at his throat and Adam’s apple with the other. Pressing against his flesh with the tips of his fingernails, he raked gently, trying to recreate the sensation of that tongue piercing assaulting his flesh. His blood rushed and his skin prickled with awareness as his balls drew up tight against his body.

  “Oh, fuck, Mischa, harder, baby. Suck me.” His imagination fired by the sensations, his hand moved in rapid jerking motions up and down the length of his cock, relentlessly, building the pleasure, increasing the pressure of his strokes. He brought his other hand down and tapped the tip of his cock with the blunt nail of his index finger, moaning again.

  The burst of cum came with a vision of Mischa’s smiling eyes, and Donovan collapsed gasping and whimpering against the wall of the shower. Shaking drops of water from his hair, he reached with a trembling hand to shut off the flow. He was in so much fucking trouble with this relationship. He’d had less powerful orgasms with fully active, real life partners. Genuine sex with Mischa might well kill him.

  Wrapping a towel around his hips, he hastily brushed his teeth and flicked off the light before stumbling down the wide hallway to his bedroom. He considered climbing into bed without bothering with pajamas, but perhaps it would be safer to put on his flannel sleep pants just in case Mischa’s friends showed up in the middle of the night again. The memory of the twins wrapped around each other in full sight of the neighbors on his front porch mad
e him groan again. His cock gave a valiant stir, but he quelled it with an image of the police arresting him for public indecency and the image of the homophobic second applicant for Mischa’s job. Indulging his creative side was one thing, being ruled by his cock, quite another.

  He snapped the waistband of the white flannel pants into place for emphasis, and then crawled under the soft blue sheets. Stretched out with his head on the pile of feather pillows, his mind turned once again to Mischa.

  “Damn it!” He rolled over and squeezed his eyes shut. Get out of my head! Grimly he began counting by threes, focusing his attention away from Mischa lying in the bedroom downstairs, sprawled in the black sheets and jewel-toned pillows of his cozy daybed.

  Eventually he drifted off to a restless sleep, plagued with vague, disconnected dreams. In his dreams, he ate a dinner from Boston Market with Florence Henderson while the Thompson Twins made out in the background. Mischa popped into the room with a Cheshire cat grin and demanded, “Aren’t you gay?” The dream scene vanished and he stood in a desert, stumbling about and looking for something he couldn’t find, but surely needed desperately. In the distance something moved closer to him, stirring up huge clouds of dust. Thank God, he flung up a hand to stop the rapidly moving vehicle, shocked to note that it was the converted school bus he’d been raised in. The wildly painted vehicle stopped directly in front of him, and he backed away. Instead of his hippie parents climbing out the open doors to greet him with their over-effusive hugs and offers to hook him up, Mischa climbed out again asking, “Which way is the right way?”

  Before he could find an answer to that, a whirling sandstorm rose up around them, and he, the bus, and Mischa were swept into a whirling spiral that swept them high above the desert then abruptly ceased. He had a Wile E. Coyote moment of stillness before his mouth opened on a silent scream and he accelerated rapidly toward the earth far below.

  Crashing into wakefulness, still reeling from the vertigo as though he’d really fallen, Donovan realized that it was four thirty in the morning and he’d have to be getting up soon anyway.

  Shaking his head at the crazy dreams, he pushed himself upright amid the tangle of sheets and rubbed at his eyes. He’d gotten six hours sleep, but no rest. He forced his achy body from the bed, slipping into a pair of flip-flops from the floor as he listened for sounds of Mischa moving around down stairs. He smiled in amused memory. Maybe Mischa was already out at Starbucks scrounging up breakfast again.

  Whistling, he headed off to his bathroom to shower, shave, and brush his teeth before heading down to the kitchen to see Mischa.

  The aroma of delicious spiced coffee reached him immediately as he exited his bedroom. Mmm, heavenly—that definitely didn’t smell like Starbucks. He tromped loudly down the stairs, light hearted with anticipation at seeing Mischa, and wondering what breakfast might bring today in addition to what smelled like an amazing cup of coffee.

  Mischa sat at the breakfast bar with his laptop open in front of him again, and a mug of coffee sat next to him. Donovan inhaled deeply, taking in the delicious aroma of the coffee and the essence of the man across from him as he sat on his own stool.

  Mischa looked up and met his eyes with a smile and a cheerful greeting. To Donovan’s surprise, his own eyes skittered immediately away from that clear green gaze. What the fuck? He forced his gaze back to Mischa’s and realized the source of the problem when his cock stirred eagerly. The sight of Mischa’s sparkling eyes brought back the erotic memory of his self-induced orgasm from the night before. His cheeks heated and he worried that his masturbatory fantasy might show in his own eyes. He glanced desperately around the kitchen for a source of distraction.

  Spying the pot of coffee on the counter behind Mischa, he hurried over to pour himself a cup. Mmm, he closed his eyes in blissful anticipation but they popped back open immediately as the image of Mischa on his knees flicking his pierced tongue against Donovan’s cock seared into his eyelids.

  He poured his coffee with shaking hands and turned back to the breakfast bar. To save himself the tease of looking directly at the man who starred in his fantasies, he sat on the bar stool next to Mischa and pulled the covered breakfast plate across the marble counter. Uncovering the plate, he surveyed a meal similar to yesterdays, but with the unmistakable look of home preparation. A bowl of Greek yogurt drizzled with golden honey and sprinkled with chopped nuts sat next to a plate of mixed berries and a few triangles of toast. It wasn’t bacon and eggs, but it was a simple, elegant breakfast, probably more nutritious than what he would have picked. Not very filling though, he’d have to get a mid-morning snack at work.

  Shrugging, he turned to thank Mischa for the meal. A hint of fragrance clung to Mischa, an earthy undertone to his usual scent of warm spice. Some vague familiarity about the fragrance nudged at his consciousness but he shoved it aside.

  “This looks great. Could you make time to do some laundry today? I need towels for my bathroom upstairs. And I’m sorry to say I don’t have time to bring my stuff down from my room, but maybe you could make that your priority for the day.” The last words had scarcely left his mouth before the source of that familiar odor hit him. He knew that smell, had been raised in a broken down bus on hippie commune in the desert a hundred miles from here surrounded by that smell. Fuck.

  He ate in silence for a few moments, nodded without comprehension to what he could only assume was Mischa agreeing to do his laundry today, and wondered if he should say anything. Was it his business? Fuck yeah, it was. Everything he allowed to happen in his house was his business. How would Mischa react to a confrontation over his smoking pot in Donovan’s home? Did it matter? If he objected, then he’d have to go. No way was Donovan living through the drug infused nightmare of his childhood with another person he loved.

  Oh, fuck. He loved Mischa? Since fucking when did he fall in love on twenty-four hour’s notice? His heart shrugged, his dick applauded and his brain shriveled up and ran for a darker corner. That made his choice all the clearer, didn’t it?

  “Mischa,” he spoke softly, trying to keep any anger out of his voice. “Maybe I should have told you a little more about me before you agreed to work here.”

  Mischa met his gaze curiously. “You said you were gay. That’s about it. But I already know you’re a slob, and a kindhearted man. And family means a lot to you.”

  Family? Oh, the pots-and-pans-heirlooms conversation. “Well, I should maybe have mentioned that I grew up in a commune about a hundred miles from here. My parents and I lived in a converted school bus. It was a pretty stark existence. They were always so high; I spent more time taking care of them than of myself. Any money they had went first for drugs and then for food.”

  He met Mischa’s stunned gaze directly, pouring all the emotion he could into that connection. “Mischa, I lost both my parents as a result of their dependency on drugs, and I can’t go through losing another loved one like that. I’d really prefer that drugs not be brought into my home. That’s a deal breaker for me, sorry.”

  Hoping he’d struck the right balance, said enough but not too much, he slipped off the stool and headed through the laundry room to the garage and out to his car. Mischa still sat silently at the breakfast bar behind him.

  Chapter Six

  Learning New Things

  Try as he might, Mischa couldn’t shake the image of a little brown haired, brown-eyed boy struggling to care for two aging hippies addicted to drugs and living in a school bus. That’s not going to happen to you. He thought of the black ebony and bone box on his coffee table. It probably held a couple of hundred dollars worth of pot and paraphernalia, sure. But the box itself had cost him more, as had the table it sat on.

  I’m not addicted to that shit. It’s just fun and relaxing, something to do with my friends. He pushed the thought aside and gathered up the breakfast dishes. As he rinsed the plates and bowls in hot running water, he remembered the intensity of Donovan’s brown eyes as he made the statement, “I can’t go thro
ugh losing another loved one like that.”

  What did that mean? Was Donovan claiming that he was in love with Mischa after only a day of knowing him? He carefully placed the rinsed dishes in the machine with last night’s dinner dishes and added detergent. No, that would be impossible. Mischa found Donovan highly attractive, and most likely Donovan reciprocated the attraction, but love?

  The machine slammed shut and with a twist of the dial, purred smoothly in the background.

  Next issue—laundry.

  Sitting at the breakfast bar he Googled laundry and began skimming articles. Most of them agreed on several key issues that made sense, but many just pimped their own favorite laundry products. As he flipped from article to article, making sure he’d got the basics down, an inner voice nagged at him.

  So if you’re not an addict, why not give it up? Donovan doesn’t like it, doesn’t want it in his house, and if it means nothing to you anyway, why not indulge him?

  He slammed the lid of his computer down with more force than necessary—maybe more than was healthy for the machine, which he could not afford to replace any longer. He paused and patted it remorsefully.

  I have the right to do as I please. I’m not hurting anyone by smoking up a bit with my friends. He marched up the stairs, pausing in the wide hallway. Hmmm, this space had potential. He could picture it as a Grecian lounge with column styled plant stands and mahogany bookcases, a divan or Roman couch or two. Four doors led off the hallway, and he could tell the open one led to Donovan’s room because clothing covered every inch of floor visible through the doorway.