The light didn't wake us; it was the new sound that invaded the background sounds we had been enjoying before we fell asleep.
For a few suspended seconds, I existed in a hazy, gold-tinted vacuum, the kind of deep sleep where you can still feel the ghost of a heartbeat against your ribs. Then, a soft, rhythmic clearing of a throat vibrated through the air, and the sudden, sharp awareness of a third presence in the room snapped the world back into focus.
I blinked, my vision clearing to find Arthur standing at the foot of the bed. He wasn't hovering with judgement or shock; instead, he looked at us with that same detached, artistic curiosity he had shown the first time he caught us.
We were a tangle of tanned limbs and rumpled linens, our nakedness an open book that he seemed to be reading with a faint, appreciative smile. He didn't look away or offer a clumsy apology for the intrusion; he observed the tableau of our exhaustion as if we were a carefully composed still-life painting.
"The dawn has been up for an hour, and the scent of coffee is beginning to lose its potency in the kitchen," Arthur announced, his voice a gentle, melodic intrusion into our sanctuary. He stepped closer, the light from the hallway casting a long shadow across the duvet. "As much as I admire the sculptural quality of your slumber, I suggest you both migrate toward the shower. Breakfast is waiting, and it would be a tragedy to let the eggs turn rubbery."
Curtis stirred beside me, a slow, feline stretch that pulled the sheets down, exposing the curve of his hip. He didn't scramble to cover himself; he simply looked up at his father with a sleepy, trusting gaze. "Five more minutes?" he murmured, his voice a gravelly, morning hum.
"Boys, you are aware you've slept all night. I found you like this when I got home and decided to leave you," Arthur declared.
"You're kidding?" Curtis asked while I looked out of the window, taking in the early morning light that proved Arthur wasn't joking.
"Nope. I'm not kidding, son. It's a new day with new things to experience."
At that, Arthur left the room, leaving Curtis snuggling into me for another cuddle, taking advantage of another five minutes of slumber.
The shower was a frantic, laughing scramble of soap and steam, the water hammering against our skin to wash away the salt and silt of the previous day. We scrubbed each other with a lingering, unhurried intensity, the tiles slick beneath our feet, before finally stepping out into the cool morning air, wrapped in oversized towels that smelled of ozone and laundry detergent.
Downstairs, the kitchen had been transformed into a continental sanctuary. Arthur had laid out a spread that mirrored a high-end European hotel; small, precise bowls of mixed berries, slices of rye bread toasted to a golden brown, a platter of sliced Gruyère and sharp cheddar, and a centrepiece of soft-boiled eggs resting in porcelain cups.
We ate in a comfortable, domestic hum, the clink of silverware against china providing a rhythmic backdrop to our shared, knowing glances. The coffee was the true catalyst, as the dark, aromatic liquid hit my system, the last remnants of the same-day haze evaporated, replaced by a sharp, revitalising clarity.
Arthur watched us over the rim of his cup, his eyes twinkling with a silent, analytical approval, perhaps more related to the towels that provided modesty wrapped around our bodies. He didn't push for conversation or demand an accounting of our night; he simply existed as a benevolent ghost in his own home. As the meal concluded, he rose with a graceful, feline stretch and drifted toward the hallway.
"The study calls," he murmured, a small, enigmatic smile playing on his lips. "I have a few sketches that require my undivided attention. I shall leave you to the spoils of the morning."
As Arthur walked away, I asked Curtis, "You’ve never told me what your dad does. What does he do for work? He mentioned sketches. What sketches?"
Curtis leaned back in his chair, the oversized towel slipping slightly at the shoulder, and let out a small, thoughtful hum. "He’s a consultant of sorts, but that’s the boring version. Really, he’s a curator of things people have forgotten how to look at."
He paused, a playful glint appearing in his eyes. "He does architectural restoration and conceptual art. Those sketches are likely for some eccentric millionaire’s villa in Tuscany or a boutique hotel in the city. He spends half his life dreaming up spaces that emphasise light and shadow, and the other half making sure the plumbing actually works."
I looked toward the hallway where Arthur had disappeared, suddenly seeing the man in a new light. The clinical, artistic way he had observed us in the bedroom wasn't just a quirk; it was his professional lens. To Arthur, the world was a composition of forms and emotions, and our relationship was simply another beautiful piece of art to be catalogued and admired.
"What do your parents do, Steve?
"Gosh, I forgot to tell you. Dad is the managing editor of Evangelical Christianity Today and works mostly from home, although he does travel eight times a month to Chicago."
Curtis looked slightly shocked at that secret revealed. "Never heard of that publication before. Sounds pretty right-wing evangelist bollocks to me."
"Not entirely, Curtis. Evangelical Christianity Today holds a centrist, intellectual evangelical editorial position, maintaining a slightly right-of-centre or traditional stance on theology and social issues while remaining politically independent and distinct from partisan-driven Christian nationalism.
"Fuck me," Curtis responded. "Where did that come from?"
Laughing, I told Curtis, "Fucking Google mate, fucking Google. You don't think I could come out with that level of shit even if I tried."
Curtis chuckled. "And your Mom?"
"And my mom?" pausing for a moment.
Having thought for a moment, I then continued, the word tasting of a complicated mixture of affection and apprehension, "she is the self-appointed pillar of the community, mainly because of my dad's involvement and reputation."
I leaned back, picturing her in her floral-print dresses, her eyes perpetually scanning the neighbourhood for any deviation from the norm. "She doesn't just know who's attending the church meetings; she knows who arrived late, who’s using a new brand of laundry detergent, and whose teenage daughter is spending a bit too much time at the library. She’s a right busybody, a professional curator of other people's laundry."
Curtis chuckled, the sound a warm, vibrating chord that seemed to resonate in the quiet of the kitchen.
"A pillar of the community," he repeated, his voice laced with a playful irony. "That sounds exhausting. Does she have a formal ledger for the town's sins, or is it all stored in a very organised mental filing cabinet?"
"Definitely a mental filing cabinet," I replied, a smile tugging at my lips as I pictured her meticulously indexing every perceived flaw in the neighbourhood.
Curtis laughed, the sound echoing softly against the kitchen tiles. He reached across the table, his hand finding mine, his thumb tracing a slow, comforting circle over my knuckles, looking straight into my eyes. "Fancy listening to me play for you? I need to practise every day, as you know, and I enjoy you being my audience."
"I do. What are you going to play today?"
"I have to brush up on Mozart No. 21 in C major for a recital in six weeks, and I think you’ll enjoy it. It's a graceful, calm and dreamlike piece that, when I close my eyes, I just picture the notes flowing towards me."
"Do you always close your eyes when you play?"
Curtis didn't hesitate, explaining, "I do. It's the only way I can see the music. The notes become visual in my mind, setting the tempo and musical interpretation I wish to present to my audience."
"Well, in that case, maestro, lead the way."
Curtis didn't just lead me to the piano; he led me into a state of total suspension. Our towels were discarded on the hallway floor as we stepped onto the porch. There was no modesty to maintain, no fabric to create a barrier between us and the air. As we stepped onto the porch, the morning breeze felt like a cool, invisible garment brushing against our bare skin, but the physical sensation was secondary. We weren't moving towards a sexual encounter this time; we were moving towards a shared audible experience.
I settled onto the cushions beside him, my skin pressing against the warm fabric, and as the first notes of Mozart’s *No. 21* rippled through the air, I closed my eyes. I didn't want to see the same thing Curtis saw; I wanted to try and find it for myself. I stopped thinking about the curve of his shoulder or the way the sunlight hit his thighs and instead focused entirely on the sound.
The music wasn't just a melody; it was a landscape. As the C major chords unfolded, I began to visualise a vast, shimmering plain of silver water under a white sun. The notes weren't sounds any more; they were ripples of light expanding outward, touching everything in their path with a gentle, insistent grace.
For the first time, I understood what Curtis meant by "seeing" the music. The technical precision of the piece vanished, replaced by a fluid, dreamlike architecture that built itself in the darkness of my eyelids. It was a sanctuary of sound where the noise of my mother’s expectations and my father’s professional stature simply ceased to exist.
There was a profound, holy stillness in the moment. The desire for touch was still there, humming quietly in the background, but it had been consumed by something larger. The music filled every gap in the atmosphere, weaving between us and anchoring us to the porch.
I felt a sense of lightness, as if the act of listening had stripped away the last few layers of my old self, leaving only a raw, attentive consciousness. We were two naked boys in the open air, but we were draped in a symphony that felt more substantial than any clothing.
The music reached a shimmering crescendo, the silver water of my imagination crashing into a wave of pure, gold-tinted light. I was so submerged in the sensory bloom of the Mozart that the outside world had ceased to be a physical place; it was merely a distant, irrelevant hum. I didn't hear the gravel crunch under a pair of sensible low-heels, nor did I hear the sharp, authoritative rap of knuckles against the front door that sounded like a gavel announcing a sentence.
Inside, Arthur had been drifting through the hallway, perhaps contemplating the composition of the light on the walls, when the intrusion occurred. He answered the door not as a host, but as a man caught in a moment of domestic leisure, wearing nothing but boxers for comfort. He stood there, his lean frame framed by the doorway, facing the formidable silhouette of my mother. She stood on the welcome mat like a sentinel of morality, her eyes instantly scanning the interior of the house for any sign of disorder, her expression a mask of disciplined concern.
"Where is my son?" she demanded, her voice cutting through the morning air with a precision that could have sliced through stone.
Arthur felt a ripple of danger, a sudden, visceral awareness that the sanctuary he had curated for us was under siege. He knew the volatility of the woman before him, the way she catalogued deviations from the norm as if they were spiritual failings. He looked past her, sensing the fragile peace we had established on the porch, and made a split-second decision to act as a buffer.
"He's in the back, Mrs Miller," Arthur replied, his voice a smooth, unflappable melody that betrayed nothing of his own lack of attire. "Listening to my son play the piano. A moment of artistic appreciation, if you will."
My mother didn't wait for a formal invitation. She swept past Arthur with a level of momentum that suggested she was on a divine mission to retrieve a stray sheep. As she marched towards the back of the house, Curtis and I remained oblivious to the impending confrontation, absorbed by the music that was pure harmony.
The scream didn’t just break the silence; it shattered the silver landscape of the music, a jagged, visceral sound that ripped through the Mozart like a blade through silk.
For a heartbeat, the world remained a blur of golden light and vibrating chords, and I wondered, with a detached sort of curiosity, who could possibly be in such agony. Then, the sensory vacuum popped. I opened my eyes to find my mother standing on the edge of the porch, her face a pale, horrified mask of disbelief.
She wasn't just looking at us; she was staring as if she had stumbled upon a glitch in the universe. Her gaze flickered from my nakedness to Curtis’s, then back again, her eyes wide and frantic, attempting to process a scene that existed nowhere in her mental filing cabinet of acceptable behaviours.
The authoritative poise she had worn since birth had vanished, replaced by a raw, primal shock that left her mouth slightly agape, the scream still echoing in the sudden, heavy silence of the morning.
Curtis didn’t jump. He didn’t scramble to cover himself or dive for the towels that weren’t there anyway. He simply stopped playing, his fingers resting lightly on the keys, and turned his head toward her with a calm, almost ethereal detachment.
The contrast was jarring: my mother, a whirlwind of moral panic and floral-print indignation, and Curtis, a picture of serene, unashamed vulnerability in the morning sun.
"Steven!" she finally gasped, her voice regaining its strength but losing its composure. "What in the name of all that is holy is *happening* here?"
She didn't move closer; it was as if she feared the lack of clothing was contagious. Her eyes darted to the way we were sitting, close, intimate, and utterly unbothered. To her, this wasn't just a lapse in modesty; it was a total collapse of the social order. I could see the gears turning in her head, the frantic attempt to categorise this as a prank, or perhaps some strange, bohemian influence of Arthur’s, but the evidence was too visceral. We were stripped bare in every sense of the word.
"Hi, Mom" was all I could say as I stared at her.
"Hi, Mom," I repeated, the words hanging limp in the air. For a second, there was a vacuum of silence, and then the dam broke.
She didn't just speak; she erupted. The "pillar of the community" collapsed into a whirlwind of righteous fury, her voice ascending into a piercing, rhythmic cadence that sounded less like a mother and more like a street preacher at a revival tent.
"Abomination!" she shrieked, her finger snapping out to point at us, trembling with a fervour that seemed to vibrate through her entire frame. "This is a sickness of the soul, Steven! A perverse deviation from the divine order!"
She began to pace the edge of the porch, her heels clicking like a countdown to a catastrophe. The tirade was a blur of scriptural citations and moral imperatives, a torrent of fundamentalist dogma that painted our intimacy as a spiritual contagion.
She spoke of "the narrow path," of "cleansing the temple," and of the "shame that now stains this household," her voice growing louder with every sentence until she was practically vibrating with the effort of her own indignation.
To her, we weren't just two boys without clothes; we were symbols of a decaying morality, a visceral manifestation of the very "modern decay" she had discussed at her church meetings.
Curtis didn't flinch. He sat there, his back straight, his expression one of profound, quiet curiosity, as if he were watching a particularly intense piece of avant-garde theatre. He didn't even attempt to cover himself; he simply remained a still point of serenity in the centre of her storm.
I felt a strange, detached sensation, a realisation that the version of my mother who was currently screaming was a character, a role she had played for so long that she no longer knew how to step out of the costume.
"Get dressed! Now!" she commanded, her voice reaching a crescendo that actually made a nearby bird take flight in a panic. "You will come home this instant, and we will seek a way to scrub this filth from your spirit before the entire valley knows of this... this carnival of sin!"
I stood and faced her. Not in defiance but ready for her to know the truth.
"Mom, I've planned this moment ever since I fell in love with Curtis here. I even asked God for guidance, and I think the answer to your question lies in two parts. Firstly, God has clearly given Curtis the gift to play the piano. To bring peace and harmony to a world that most days appears to be falling apart."
I paused to take a deep breath.
"Secondly, I think God answered me by reminding me that he created us exactly as we are, and our capacity to love is a reflection of his image. Mom, this aligns with the theological view that God creates all people intentionally, including gay people, and that human love mirrors divine love."
Taking another breath of air, I continued. "I also remind you that God says, treat each other with kindness, respect, and selflessness. This emphasises the quality and fruit of the relationship rather than gender, drawing on Corinthians 13:4-7, which defines love by its patience, kindness, and lack of envy."
I can't believe I countered my mom by quoting scriptures, and she remained speechless, allowing me to finish my response.
"I am in love with Curtis," I said, the words landing with a definitive, heavy thud that seemed to vibrate through the porch boards. "And I am gay. Not as a choice, not as a phase, and certainly not as a 'sickness,' but as the most honest thing about me."
I stepped forward, the lack of clothing suddenly feeling less like a vulnerability and more like a shield of truth. "I love you and Dad with everything I have. You are my parents, and that love hasn't changed, but the way I’ve been living, the way I’ve been pretending to be someone else just to fit into your filing cabinet, that has to stop. I can't hide behind a veil of hypocrisy any more, Mom. It’s too heavy to carry, and it's suffocating the person you actually raised."
The silence that followed was absolute. My mother stopped her pacing, her body frozen in a posture of rigid shock. For a moment, I thought she might actually faint, her eyes fluttering as she tried to reconcile the son she thought she knew with the naked, assertive young man standing before her. The air was thick with the scent of damp earth and the lingering ghost of Mozart, a strange juxtaposition of high art and domestic crisis.
I watched my mother turn away while at the same time I became aware that Curtis had turned towards her. "Wasn't music present during the creation? It's my understanding that God describes the dawn of the physical universe with a musical metaphor, noting in Job 38:7 that the morning stars sang together, and all the sons of God shouted for joy when the foundations of the earth were laid while the harmony and trumpets of heaven saluted the achievement of God."
My mother turned to Curtis, her eyes not even seeing me. Do you know Franz Liszt's Harmonies poétiques et religieuses?"
"Of course I do. Why?" Curtis demanded.
It was a moment when Arthur and I held our breath. Something had just happened, and I had no idea what it was, but my mother turned to Arthur. "Get me a chair to sit on while your son plays the Bénédiction de Dieu dans la solitude, which I assume he knows considering he graduated from Juilliard."
Curtis didn’t treat her request as a concession, but as a challenge, a musical duel where the stakes were the very legitimacy of our existence. He didn't offer a smile or a nod; he simply pivoted with a fluid, feline precision, his body returning to the piano bench as if he were a soldier returning to his post.
He didn't reach for a towel or attempt to shield himself from her gaze. Instead, he sat centred and stark, his bare skin glowing under the morning sun, turning his nudity into a statement of absolute transparency.
Arthur, ever the graceful diplomat, moved with a quiet efficiency that bordered on the choreographed. He vanished into the house and returned seconds later with a heavy mahogany dining chair, placing it with a soft thud just a few feet from the piano.
He did so without a single word of apology for his own lack of attire, his presence a steady, grounding force that mirrored Curtis’s composure, as my mother sank into the velvet cushion, her floral dress billowing around her like a collapsing parachute from a strange shift in the atmosphere.
The shock that had electrified the porch moments ago curdled into something else, a heavy, expectant curiosity. Suddenly, the fact that three of the four people on the porch were either completely naked or partially became a footnote, a trivial detail eclipsed by the looming presence of the piano and the weight of the music about to be unleashed.
Curtis waited. He let the silence stretch until the only sound was the distant call of a crow and the raggedness of my mother’s breathing. Then, he leaned into the keys.
The first few notes of the *Bénédiction de Dieu dans la solitude* didn’t strike the air so much as they dissolved it. It was a piece that demanded a specific kind of silence, a sacred space where the ego ceased to exist, and as Curtis played, he carved that space out of the tension that had nearly choked the porch. The melody was a slow, ascending prayer, a shimmering thread of gold that wound itself around the jagged edges of my mother’s fury.
I watched her, truly watched her, as the rigid architecture of her posture began to crumble. She didn't move a muscle; her hands gripped the armrests of the mahogany chair, but the mask of the sentinel had cracked. Her eyelids fluttered and then closed, as if she were trying to shut out the sight of our nakedness to better hear the truth in the music. Then, a single tear escaped, carving a slow, glistening path through the powder on her cheek, followed by another, and another. She wasn't sobbing; she was leaking, the dam of her certainty breaking under the weight of a harmony that refused to judge her.
For the first time in my life, I saw my mother not as a pillar of the community, but as a woman who had spent decades suppressing her own longing for a peace she couldn't name. The music was doing what my words couldn't; it was bypassing her defences and speaking directly to the small, frightened girl she had been before the world told her that discipline was the only form of love. She looked fragile, stripped of her indignation, her breathing syncing with the slow, rhythmic pulse of the piano.
The final chord didn’t just end; it evaporated, leaving a vacuum of silence that felt more profound than the music itself.
For a long minute, the only sound was the distant, rhythmic thrum of the valley waking up, a world that felt suddenly small and insignificant compared to the emotional wreckage on the porch. Curtis remained perfectly still, his hands hovering over the ivory keys, his chest rising and falling in a slow, measured cadence.
He didn't look at the piano, nor did he look at the horizon. He turned his head slowly, his gaze locking onto my mother with a clarity that felt surgical.
"I hope, Mrs Miller," he began, his voice a low, resonant vibration that seemed to echo the depths of the piano’s lowest strings, "that you are reminded through this music that we all seek the same thing: divine peace, inner renewal, and that quiet, religious joy that transcends the labels we use to categorise one another."
He paused, his eyes softening but remaining firm, the nakedness of his body now serving as a living testament to the honesty of his words. "Steve and I have found that divine peace through our love. We have experienced an inner renewal where trust and truth are the only currencies that matter. It is, perhaps, unfortunate that our joy doesn’t fit into the rigid model you have constructed for your world."
Curtis paused for a moment, as a ghost of a smile touched his lips, not one of mockery, but of a profound, liberated pity. "But then again, looking at you now, I think your model has simply collapsed."
My mother didn't speak for a long time. She looked up at Curtis, her eyes tracing the line of his jaw and the unashamed openness of his posture, and then her gaze shifted to me. The silence was no longer a battleground; it had become a bridge.
"The music," she whispered, her voice sounding as though it had been scraped raw by the silence. "The way you played... it was not a carnival. It was a liturgy."
She paused, her gaze returning to Curtis with a strange, flickering intensity. "The congregation has spent years praying for a sign of renewal, for something that speaks of the divine without the dryness of a textbook. I think," she added, her voice gaining a sudden, unexpected steadiness, "that you should come and play for the congregation and let the truth be known."
She was offering a compromise; a way to integrate our truth into her world, provided it was wrapped in the sanctuary of music.
The silence snapped when Arthur asked, "Mrs Miller, would you like a cup of coffee?"
The offer of coffee acted as a sudden anchor, dragging the scene from the ethereal realm of spiritual revelation back down to the mundane realities of a Tuesday morning.
My mother blinked, the remnants of the musical trance receding from her eyes, and she looked at us, really looked at us, and a flicker of her old, habitual pragmatism returned. The shock hadn't vanished, but it had shifted from a scream of horror to a squint of maternal assessment.
"Yes," she said, her voice still fragile but regaining its structural integrity. "I would like a cup of coffee. Provided," she added, her gaze sharpening as she pointed a finger at the two of us, "that you boys put some underwear on. I suspect we have much to talk about, and I cannot possibly conduct a family summit while staring at the anatomy of two hormonal teenagers."
The tension broke not with a crash, but with a collective, relieved exhale. Curtis caught my eye and gave a small, triumphant wink, the kind of silent communication that felt more intimate than any word we had spoken that morning.
Curtis and I restored our modesty to placate my mother, and returning to the porch, we settled into a circle of chairs, the morning air cooling the lingering heat of the confrontation, while Arthur poured the coffee with a rhythmic, steady grace that anchored us all.
The conversation that followed didn’t flow so much as it eroded. For years, our family dynamics had been built on a foundation of polite silences and carefully curated versions of the truth, but the music had acted as a solvent, dissolving the barriers.
I spoke of the crushing weight of the "glitch" I felt I was, the way I had meticulously mapped out a life that felt like a costume. My mother listened, her gaze drifting toward the horizon, her expression a complex map of grief for the son she thought she knew and a burgeoning, tentative curiosity for the one who actually existed. She didn't agree with everything, her traditionalist instincts still twitched, but she no longer screamed blasphemy.
Curtis spoke too, not as a prodigy, but as a young man who had known the coldness of isolation. He talked about the silence of his own house before he and Arthur had truly bonded, and how the music had been the only language he trusted not to lie to him.
As he spoke, I reached out and took his hand, locking my fingers with his. My mother watched our joined hands, her breath hitching once, twice, and then she looked away, not out of disgust, but as if she were witnessing a truth too bright to stare at directly.
"Steven, I'm going home to talk to your father, and perhaps we can invite you all to a barbecue this evening...to address...well, whatever has to be addressed."
The invitation to a barbecue was the same language my mother used for everything; a social ritual designed to sanitise a crisis. By framing our existence as something to be "addressed" over grilled meats and potato salad, she was attempting to move us from the realm of spiritual warfare into the realm of domestic management.
It was a clumsy bridge, but it was a bridge nonetheless. I leaned in and pressed a lingering kiss to her cheek, the scent of her floral perfume now mixing with the salt of her earlier tears. She didn't lean back into the kiss, but she didn't pull away either; she simply stood there, a statue of a woman waiting for her own internal architecture to settle.
Arthur escorted her toward the gate with the poised, gliding gait of a man who had just watched a particularly challenging piece of performance art reach its finale. He opened the door for her with a slight, courtly bow, his voice a low, soothing murmur that smoothed over the remaining jagged edges of the morning. As the latch clicked shut behind her, the sudden silence of the porch felt heavy, like the air after a thunderstorm has passed and the world is left dripping and transformed.
The carefully maintained composure of the morning evaporated. Curtis didn’t just sit; he collapsed backwards onto the sofa with a dramatic, sprawling thud, his limbs flailing like a marionette whose strings had been cut. He let out a long, shuddering exhale that seemed to deflate his entire chest, his head lolling back against the cushions until he was staring at the wooden slats with wide, exhausted eyes.
"Wow, that was intense," Curtis finally said as he lay on the sofa catching his breath. "Come and give me a kiss, loverboy. I think we've received a stamp of acceptance and I've got a recital to plan."
I didn't just walk over to him; I drifted, drawn by the magnetic pull of his exhaustion and the electric residue of the outcome. As I reached the sofa, I didn't hesitate, stepping over his sprawling legs and sinking onto his lap. I straddled his hips, my weight pressing him deep into the cushions, feeling the sudden, sharp hitch in his breath as my skin met his.
We collided in a kiss that wasn't just about desire, but about survival, a frantic, stress-releasing exchange that tasted of salt, coffee, and the sheer, dizzying relief of no longer having to hide. It was a desperate kind of suction, a reclaiming of each other after the storm of my mother's judgement had finally receded.
Arthur took in the sight of us entwined, the raw hunger of our embrace, and let out a small, rhythmic hum of acknowledgement as he turned towards his study and retreated, leaving Curtis and I to absorb that the truth was finally out.
"Steve, do you know that sex helps relieve stress by releasing feel-good chemicals and hormones?"
The sudden change of subject caught me by surprise. "I do. Why?" I asked, knowing full well what he was suggesting.
Curtis didn’t wait for a verbal confirmation. He reached up, his fingers sliding beneath the waistband of my briefs with a sudden, possessive urgency that made my breath hitch. The air on the porch felt thick and charged, as if the emotional storm of the morning had left behind a static electricity that only physical contact could ground.
"Science is a wonderful thing," he murmured against my neck, his voice a low, vibrating hum. "I fancy leaning over my piano if you want me."
The invitation was a siren song, a sudden shift from the heavy weight of emotional revelation to the sharp, electric pull of physical necessity.
I didn't just agree; I moved with a focused, singular purpose, crossing the porch to where the small bottle of lubricant still sat from the first time we'd used it.
Curtis didn't wait for me to return; he was already in motion. With a fluid, feline grace, he stepped towards the piano and leaned forward, his palms flat against the polished mahogany. The wood groaned softly under his weight as he hooked his thumbs into the waistband of his briefs and slid them down in one seamless motion. He didn't look back, but the curve of his spine and the expectant tension in his calves told me he was waiting for the impact.
I stepped behind him, the air between us humming with a static charge as I took a moment to lubricate myself, the slick sensation a stark contrast to the lingering dryness of the morning's tension.
The first point of contact was a jolt of pure electricity. As I guided myself against him, the friction of skin on skin felt like a homecoming. Curtis let out a low, guttural sound, half-groan, half-sigh, that vibrated through the piano's frame and echoed into the quiet of the room. He pressed his chest harder against the keys, a discordant, crashing chord of C-minor exploding beneath him. The sound was chaotic and raw, mirroring the sudden, frantic rhythm of our breathing.
I sheathed myself entirely, the slide of skin against skin feeling less like a physical act and more like a desperate reclamation of our space.
I began to thrust deep and long, using the residual tension of the morning, the shock of the door, the weight of my mother’s gaze, the shimmering fragility of the music, as fuel for my need for release. Every movement was a punctuation mark on the day’s chaos, a rhythmic insistence that we were here, we were real, and we belonged to one another.
With each heavy, driving surge, I could feel Curtis's prostate react, a rhythmic pulsing that met me halfway, and for the first time, Curtis stopped holding back. He began to groan loudly, the sound raw and uninhibited, echoing off the porch like a long-overdue confession.
He gripped the edge of the mahogany piano with white-knuckled intensity, his knuckles straining as he anchored himself against the force of my momentum. The polished wood, which had an hour ago played host to the disciplined grace of Mozart and subsequently, Liszt, now bore witness to something far more primal.
His breath came in jagged, staccato bursts, mixing with the low, guttural sounds that tore from his throat each time I hit that sweet, sensitive spot. It wasn't just pleasure; it was a purging.
"Don't stop," he gasped, his voice strained and trembling. "God, Steve, don't you dare stop."
I leaned forward, pressing my chest against his back, my arms wrapping around his waist to pull him tighter against me. The friction was electric, a searing heat that seemed to melt the boundaries between us until I couldn't tell where my own skin ended and his began.
The pace accelerated, the rhythm becoming a frantic, driving force that mirrored the drumming of my own heart. I could feel the tension in his buttocks and thighs, the way he arched his back to meet me, his entire body vibrating with a concentrated, singular focus.
The world outside the porch, the barbecue invitation, the church, the silent judgement of the valley, collapsed into a single point of intensity. There was only the scent of the wood polish, the cool breeze on our backs, and the intoxicating sound of Curtis unravelling beneath me.
As the pressure built towards an inevitable peak, he let out a loud, shuddering cry, his head dropping forward against the keys in one final, discordant crash of sound that signalled his surrender.
The release didn't just arrive; it erupted. Curtis’s body stiffened into a rigid, vibrating chord, and then he let out a sound that was less a groan and more a primal roar. From his release, white streams surged forward with an impossible, violent velocity, arching across the polished mahogany of the piano in erratic, shimmering arcs.
It was a torrent that defied the laws of biology, a volcanic outpouring of relief and desire that splattered against the ivory keys and pooled in the crevices of the wood, as if the music he had played all morning had finally found a physical form to exit his body.
The sight of him unravelling so completely acted as the final trigger for my own restraint. I felt a sudden, searing pressure build at the base of my spine, a tidal wave of tension that had been accumulating since the first moment my mother’s voice shattered the silence of the porch.
As I felt his internal muscles clamp around me in a series of rhythmic, desperate pulses, I gave in to the surge. I poured myself into him in a mirrored display of intensity, a hot, heavy torrent of seed that felt as though it were emptying every secret and every fear I had ever carried.
It was an eruption of truth, a physical confession that matched the spiritual honesty of the music, leaving us both gasping and hollowed out in the wake of the storm.
For several minutes, the only sound was the ragged heave of our lungs. I stayed buried deep inside him, my forehead resting against the warm skin of his shoulder, feeling the slow, receding tremors of his climax ripple through his thighs.
The silence that returned to the porch was different now; it wasn't the heavy, expectant silence of a confrontation, nor the curated silence of Arthur’s art, but the exhausted, honest silence of two people who had been completely stripped bare.
Curtis let out a soft, wet chuckle, his head still resting against the keys of the piano, though the discordant crash of his surrender had long since faded. "I think," he murmured, his voice raspy and light, "that we might need to give the piano a very thorough cleaning before the next recital."
I laughed, the sound bubbling up from my chest as I slowly withdrew from him, the slick friction of our separation feeling like a gentle goodbye to the intensity of the moment. I looked down at the mahogany, where the remnants of our passion were mingling with the dust deposited from the air, a chaotic map of our shared liberation clearly visible to even tired eyes.
Curtis shifted his weight, the movement fluid and feline as he pivoted from the mahogany. He reached out, his fingers grazing the line of my jaw with a touch as light as a piano note, before he leaned in and pressed his lips to mine. The kiss was slow, tasting of salt and shared secrets, a soft punctuation mark to the intensity of the last hour.
As he pulled back just enough to let the cool breeze slip between us, he leaned into my ear, his voice a playful, raspy murmur. "Fancy cooling off in the creek?"
The suggestion hit me like a sudden chord of resolution. The thought of the shimmering, hidden water, the place where I had first let go of the ghost of the man I was supposed to be, felt like the only logical destination.
The walk to the creek was different this time. There was no defiance in our stride, no desperate need to rebel against a world that didn't understand us. Instead, there was a profound, quiet confidence. We walked through the tall, golden grass that brushed against our thighs, the natural world welcoming us back into its fold. Every touch of the wind, every erratic buzz of a dragonfly, felt like a confirmation that we were exactly where we were meant to be.
When we reached the bank, the water was still shimmering under the midday sun, a mirror of silver and emerald. We didn't dive in with the frantic energy of the morning; we entered the creek with a slow, deliberate grace. The first plunge of the cool water against our heated skin was a visceral shock, but then, the warmth of the sun mixed with the heat of desire renewed our arousal.
The water swirled around us in lazy, amber eddies, but the atmosphere between us had shifted from a gentle drift to a focused, magnetic tension. Curtis didn't just guide me toward the shallows; he manoeuvred me with a sudden, playful strength, his hands sliding across my chest to press me flat onto a wide, sun-baked slab of granite that sat like an altar in the centre of the stream.
The rock was warm, holding the stored heat of the midday sun, and as my back hit the stone, the contrast of the searing granite beneath me and the cool, rushing water licking at my sides created a sensory dissonance that made my nerves sing.
Before I could catch my breath, Curtis shifted. He didn't just lean over me; he climbed, straddling my torso with a fluid, athletic grace that left his thighs framing my hips. He looked down at me, his eyes dark and shimmering with a mixture of mischief and raw longing, his damp hair clinging to his forehead in golden streaks.
He didn't say a word at first, simply letting the weight of his body settle against mine, his heart drumming a frantic, matching rhythm against my own. Then, with a slow, deliberate movement, he reached down, his fingers grazing the head of my length, and looked me dead in the eye.
"I've been thinking," he whispered, his voice a low, gravelly vibration that seemed to echo the rumble of the creek. "Why settle for a sequence when we can have a symphony? I want us to feel everything at once. I want to taste you while you're tasting me."
The suggestion was an electric current. The logistics were a tangle of limbs and proximity, but as we shifted, adjusting our bodies into a precarious, intimate knot, the challenge only heightened the desire. We folded ourselves together, our hips locked and our breaths mingling in the humid air, until we were positioned in a mirrored, breathless symmetry.
The first contact was a sudden, searing collision of heat and wetness. The sensation of Curtis’s mouth enveloping me, warm, tight, and insistent, happened at the exact micro-second that my own lips closed around him. The dual sensation was overwhelming; it was a feedback loop of pleasure that blurred the line between giving and receiving. I could feel the rhythmic pulse of his heart against my chest and the frantic, desperate slide of our tongues, creating a sensory circuit that felt like it might actually short-circuit my brain.
The world narrowed down to the wet, rhythmic slide of skin and the frantic sound of our shared breathing, drowned out by the constant, rushing white noise of the creek. It was a feedback loop of raw sensation; every flick of my tongue against his velvet heat triggered a corresponding shudder in his thighs, which in turn sent a jolt of electricity shooting through my own spine.
We were locked in a desperate, mirrored symmetry, our mouths working with a singular, starving focus, tasting the salt of the air and the musk of our arousal. It wasn't just a physical act; it was a mutual consumption, a way of erasing the boundaries between us until we were nothing more than two pulsing hearts beating in a single, frantic rhythm.
As the tension coiled tighter and tighter, the pleasure ceased to be a gentle wave and became a crushing tide. The friction intensified, the suction becoming an insistent, demanding vacuum that pulled every hidden reserve of desire to the surface.
I could feel the sudden, sharp hitch in Curtis’s throat, the way his fingers dug into the sun-baked granite beneath me, anchoring himself against a storm that was about to break. We pushed past the point of no return, our movements becoming frantic, almost violent in their urgency, chasing a peak that felt less like a destination and more like a cliff edge.
Then, the dam broke.
It happened in a synchronised explosion of light and heat.
As I felt the first searing surge of my own release, Curtis’s body stiffened into a rigid, vibrating arc of surrender. We collided in a climax that felt seismic, a visceral eruption that mirrored the sheer force of our earlier encounter on the piano, but amplified by the raw, primal nature of the creek.
Thick, hot torrents of seed surged forward in violent, rhythmic pulses into our mouths. It was a volcanic outpouring, an overflowing of everything we had held back from the world, leaving us both gasping for air as the white-hot intensity continued as we both swallowed each other's cum.
For a long time, neither of us moved. We stayed tangled together on the warm rock, the cool creek water swirling around our hips, washing away the remnants of our passion in slow, amber eddies. The silence that followed wasn't empty; it was saturated with a profound sense of peace. The terror of my mother’s scream and the weight of the "divine order" felt like a distant memory, a faded photograph from a life that no longer belonged to me.
Curtis didn't just move; he dissolved. With a slow, feline stretch that seemed to ripple through his entire frame, he rolled off my chest and let the current claim him. He didn't swim away so much as drift, kicking his legs lazily to propel himself backwards into the centre of the stream.
He floated there for a moment, suspended in a shimmering veil of silver and emerald, his eyes locked onto mine with a look of absolute, uncomplicated adoration. I watched him, this beautiful, unashamed creature, and felt a surge of gravity pull me after him. I rolled off the sun-baked granite, the sudden plunge into the cool water feeling like a baptism into a life where I finally belonged to myself.
For the next hour, the creek became our own private playground of skin and current. We forgot the world existed beyond the canopy of weeping willows and the rhythmic pulse of the water against our ribs. We played like children and loved like men, our bodies weaving together in a slow, liquid dance.
We drifted in circles, our limbs tangled, pausing only to press our lips together in kisses that tasted of fresh water and lingering heat. There was no urgency now, only a tender, exploratory curiosity. We floated on our backs, staring up at the dappled sunlight filtering through the leaves, our hands wandering with a gentle, rhythmic synchronicity as we jerked each other off a couple of times.
It was a period of profound emotional recalibration. Every touch was a reaffirmation, every soft laugh a brick in the wall we were building that portrayed our love.
By the time the sun had shifted, casting long, amber fingers across the creek bed, we felt a shift in the atmosphere. The manic energy of the morning had settled into a quiet, iron-clad strength. As we stood in the shallows, the water dripping from our skin in shimmering beads, we looked at each other and knew that something fundamental had changed. We weren't just two boys hiding in the brush; we were a unit.
We walked back toward the house, not with the haste of those who feared being caught, but with the measured pace of people who had already seen the worst the world had to offer and found it wanting.
The looming spectre of the barbecue, with its forced smiles, rigid expectations, and my mother’s inevitable interrogations, no longer felt like a trial to be survived. It felt like a stage.
As we approached the porch, our skin still glowing from the sun and the water, we shared one last, lingering look of mutual devotion. We were renewed, stripped of our doubts, and entirely ready to face whatever judgement awaited us that evening at my family home.
As we flopped onto the sofa on the porch, Arthur poked his head out of the kitchen door. "Boys. Change of plans. The barbecue is going to be here. The Pastor has been invited and wants to hear you play. Steve, your mother's bringing all the meat over here for me to do the barbecue, and I'm doing salads. Go and get showered and make yourselves look presentable. This is important."
Understanding the importance of the demand, Curtis and I retired to the shower for a little bit of fun whilst overshadowed by the impending 'tour of inspection' the evening promised to become.
For the first time, I actually saw Curtis wearing clothes. Not just briefs, but proper clothes in the form of an ironed shirt, with suitable long trousers. I managed to find the clothes that I had left the first time we shared each other, but whilst my cargo shorts were fine, I had to borrow a shirt from Curtis.
With Curtis and me transformed, we stood welcoming the guests as they arrived. My mother and father managed to compose their own nervousness. Arthur was a natural as he stood cooking the food, enjoying a glass of wine whilst partaking in meaningless but polite conversation with some of the guests who gravitated towards the smell of grilled steaks and burgers.
Curtis and I mingled with the other guests, likewise entertaining small talk until my mother clinked her glass, drawing everyone’s attention to an announcement that changed the whole dynamic of the social event.
Thank God, the evening ended and Curtis and I stripped off and collapsed onto the sofa, the house finally silent after the choreographed chaos of the barbecue. Curtis and I found out from Arthur that my mom and dad had thoroughly enjoyed themselves. We also enjoyed the fact that gossipers would be working overtime now, and the memory of the major announcement still reverberated within our very souls as my legs wrapped around Curtis in a possessive lock as his back settled against my chest, digesting events of the evening.
"That was one bizarre evening, Steve. Did that actually happen or what?"
I sat thinking about the word bizarre as Curtis then continued. "Did you see Pastor Miller’s face when your parents actually introduced us as a couple?" Curtis murmured, his voice vibrating against my chest as he shifted his weight. "He looked like he’d just seen a ghost that happened to be wearing a very expensive tie."
I let out a tired, genuine laugh, tightening my hold on him. The image was still vivid; the Pastor, a man whose entire career was built on the rigid architecture of tradition, standing frozen with a potato salad fork halfway to his mouth. His eyes had darted between my father and us, searching for some sign of a joke or a lapse in judgement, only to find my father’s gaze steady and unapologetic.
The shock had been a physical thing, a momentary glitch in the social fabric of the entire barbecue, where the air had suddenly become very thick for the church elders to breathe.
"And then," I added, kissing the back of his head, "the look on his face when you started to play. That was the defining moment."
Curtis chuckled, a low sound of satisfaction. The transition had been surreal. One moment, we were the subjects of a hushed, scandalised perimeter, the "taboo" pair being whispered about by the church elders, and the next, Curtis had transformed the backyard into a cathedral as he played.
The judgement had melted into a reluctant, shimmering awe. The elders hadn't just listened; they had been subdued by the sheer, undeniable brilliance of the music. It was impossible to maintain a posture of moral superiority when the 'abomination' was producing something that sounded like a conversation with God.
"I still can't wrap my head around it," Curtis admitted, his fingers tracing lazy circles on my legs wrapped around him still. "Your mother is a force of nature. I don't know what she said to him in the kitchen, or how she managed to pivot from calling us a 'carnival of sin' to presenting us as an asset to the congregation, but she did it. She’s the only person I know who can weaponise social propriety to actually dismantle a prejudice."
"Well, whatever she did, it worked," I murmured, my voice thick with a contentment that felt like a heavy blanket. "And for the first time, we can actually be ourselves."
Silence returned during a natural pause in our conversation, as the decking of the porch groaned softly as Arthur arrived, his silhouette framed by the amber glow of the porch light. He was carrying a small tray with three steaming mugs of hot chocolate, the rich, cocoa scent cutting through the lingering musk of our intimacy.
He didn't interrupt the silence with a question or a comment on our nudity; he simply navigated the porch with a serene nonchalance, muttering something about the midnight warmth still being oppressive.
He set the tray on the coffee table and claimed the single armchair opposite the sofa, settling into the same upholstery with a relaxed sigh. In the soft, flickering light of the porch, I found myself examining him with a newfound intensity.
There was a stillness to Arthur that I hadn't fully registered before, a kind of quiet, architectural strength. He wasn't merely a passive observer of our lives; he was an active architect of this sanctuary, while my father’s acceptance felt like a hard-won concession to truth, Arthur’s felt like a foundational element of his character. He hadn't just opened the door for us; he had built the house specifically to hold a love like ours.
For a moment, we just sat there, a strange, silent triad of comfort and vulnerability. The heat from the mugs rose in lazy spirals, mirroring the slow, rhythmic breathing of the porch.
"I saw you boys," Arthur said suddenly, his voice a low, resonant hum that didn't startle us so much as it anchored us. "At the piano. I saw you make love."
The admission hung in the air, stripped of any voyeuristic edge or judgmental weight. There was no shame in his tone, only a profound, artistic appreciation. He leaned back, his gaze drifting from me to Curtis, his eyes softening with a genuine, warm affection. "I have to confess, it was all too much for me to ignore my own needs."
The silence that followed Arthur’s admission was not one of shock, but of a sudden, shifting gravity. Curtis and I didn't pull away; instead, we shifted our gaze toward him, our bodies still entwined in a tangle of limbs and shared heat.
Arthur didn’t move, but the air around him seemed to vibrate with a sudden, focused electricity. As he sat there in the dim amber light, the relaxed slouch of his posture shifted, revealing the unmistakable, heavy tenting of arousal straining against the fabric of his boxers.
He didn't attempt to hide it; instead, he looked at us with an expression that was less like a parent and more like a curator admiring a masterpiece that had finally been unveiled.
"Can I watch you again?" he asked, his voice dropping an octave, turning into a velvet rasp that mirrored the intimacy of the room. "You’re beautiful when you join together."
The phrase *join together* felt meticulously chosen. It wasn't the language of a voyeur or a casual observer; it was the vocabulary of a conceptual artist. To Arthur, our bodies weren't just skin and desire, but living sculptures, a fusion of form and emotion that created a composition more complex than any painting. He wasn't asking for a show; he was asking to witness a synthesis of two souls becoming a single, fluid entity.
Curtis and I shared a glance, the friction of our skin still humming from the day's exploits. There was no hesitation, no reflexive urge to cover ourselves or pull away in shame. The boundaries of our privacy had already been dissolved by the music and the creek; the invitation to be seen by Arthur felt like the final brick in the wall of our liberation.
"We'd like that," Curtis murmured, his voice a low, encouraging vibration against my side. He shifted his weight, his movement fluid and feline, arching his back slightly to put the golden line of his silhouette in full view of Arthur. He reached for my hand, interlacing our fingers, pulling me closer until there was no space left between us, turning our shared heat into a beacon.
The shift on the porch was visceral, a sudden realignment of gravity that pulled us all into a tight, humming orbit of desire. Curtis didn't just move; he blossomed as he turned around to sit on my lap.
Finding the bottle of lubricant, Curtis smeared the gel along my shaft, and then he started to position himself, slipping down the full length of my throbbing member until he became fully seated. We didn't perform for Arthur; we simply invited him into the sanctuary of our heat, allowing the gaze of the man who had architected our freedom to become the catalyst for our final release of the day.
As we merged, a low, guttural moan escaped my throat, as Curtis started to ride me ever so slowly.
Arthur didn't approach us, nor did he attempt to intrude upon the physical space of our union. Instead, he simply reached down and slid his boxers off in one fluid motion, his arousal springing free, heavy and honest. He began to stroke himself, his eyes locked on the point where Curtis and I became one.
At first, a flicker of disorientation sparked in my mind, the same reflexive social programming that whispered this was *weird*, but the feeling vanished as quickly as it had arrived, the suggested weirdness of the moment resigned to instant history.
In the steady, focused rhythm of Arthur’s hand, we saw a mirror of our own vulnerability. He wasn't merely watching; he was participating in a shared confession of need. By exposing his own desire, he was stripping away the last vestige of the paternal pedestal, meeting us not as a guardian, but as a man.
It was his ultimate act of acceptance: a demonstration that he understood the raw, pulsing electricity of our attraction because he felt it vibrating within his own skin. His pleasure was a silent validation, a way of saying that our love was not a curiosity to be studied, but a human truth to be shared.
The energy on the porch reached a fever pitch, a feedback loop of sight and sensation. The sound of our shared breathing mingled with the wet, rhythmic friction of Arthur’s hand, creating a symphony of intimacy that felt entirely natural. I felt Curtis’s fingers dig into my shoulders, his head thrown back in a silent scream of ecstasy, and as we reached the peak together, I saw Arthur’s eyes close, his body shuddering in an eruption of release.
The release was not a singular event but a cascading collapse of boundaries. As the final wave crashed over us, I felt a visceral, impossible surge, as if every reservoir of desire I had ever suppressed had suddenly ruptured.
I shot into Curtis in quantities that defied physical logic, a torrential outpouring that seemed to vibrate through both our frames. Simultaneously, Curtis arched his back, a sharp, breathless cry escaping him as his own seed spilt across my chest and stomach in hot, glistening arcs, marking us both with the evidence of our mutual surrender.
Beside us, the silence of the porch was shattered by Arthur. He didn't just release; he succumbed. A guttural, primal groan ripped from his throat, a sound of profound liberation that echoed the same spiritual release we had felt at the piano. His climax was violent and honest, his seed launching in high, frantic arcs that landed across his own face and chest, a messy, uncurated testament to the raw intensity of his arousal. For a few breathless seconds, we were three men anchored by the same rhythmic pulse, stripped of every social mask and every inherited shame.
As the echoes of our breathing slowed, the aftermath felt like a shared baptism. The shared release, the sight of us all, spent and glistening in the amber light, said everything that words had failed to convey. In that mess of sweat and seed, the hierarchy of "guardian" and "ward" had vanished. We had become equals in a new family dynamic, a triad of trust where there was simply nothing left to hide.
We stayed like that for a long time, a tangle of cooling skin and heavy limbs. The hot chocolate on the table had long since gone cold, the steam vanished, but the warmth between us remained. Curtis leaned his forehead against mine, his eyes heavy with a drowsy, post-coital peace. He looked at his father, then back at me, and a small, sleepy smile touched his lips. There was no awkwardness in the silence, only a profound sense of arrival. We had reached a place where the truth was no longer a confession to be made, but a state of being.
Arthur slowly reached for a towel, his movements regained their usual grace, though his eyes remained softened by the encounter. He didn't apologise for the spectacle or his nudity, nor did he attempt to reclaim the distance of a father figure. Instead, he looked at us with a quiet, enduring pride. He saw not just two young men in love, but the successful creation of a sanctuary where authenticity was the only requirement for entry.
Arthur stood, holding the towel in his left hand. "I'm going for a shower boys, and then off to bed. One way or another, it's been...a good day. Not one that was planned though, unless...God was the conductor of this orchestrated moment in time. I'll see you in the morning."
As Arthur walked towards the house, Curtis surprised me. "He's not bad looking, my dad is he?"
I shifted my weight, still feeling the phantom hum of Arthur’s presence lingering in the air. "He's more than not bad," I admitted, my voice still raspy from the release. "There's something about the way he moves. Like he's always in time with a piece of music only he can hear."
"I think he needs to find a partner," Curtis murmured, his voice still thick with sexual satisfaction. He shifted slightly, his cheek rubbing against my chest as he looked toward the door where Arthur had vanished. "I think he needs what we've found. Love. Do you know any suitable candidates for him?"
I chuckled in response. "The only women I know are our age, and I'm not sure I would fuck them, so I can't recommend them to your dad either."
Curtis let out a soft, melodic laugh that vibrated against my ribs, his body finally beginning to lose its post-coital tension and sink into a heavy, blissful lethargy. He shifted his head, looking up at me with eyes that were half-lidded and shimmering with a playful, knowing light. "Who said anything about women?" he whispered, the suggestion hanging in the air like a lingering chord of music.
"Are you saying what I think you're saying?" I murmured.
"He’s an artist, Steve," Curtis whispered, his breath warm against my skin. "And artists don't just appreciate beauty from a distance. They want to be part of the composition, and I think my dad appreciates both sides of the canvas. Anyway, enough about my dad. Let's go to bed. I want you to make love to me like you’ve never done before."
To get in touch with the author, send them an email.
