Recipe for Two Read online

  “I think that can be arranged,” Izzy choked out, despite feeling like the blood in his head was heading to his cock at an alarming rate. He pointed weakly at the correct direction, and Wyatt marched ahead with purpose.

  Wyatt might end up being the death of Izzy, but what a way to go, eh?

  Chapter 11

  Wyatt didn’t know where he’d found the courage to tell Izzy he wanted to see all his ink, because the moment Izzy closed the bedroom door behind them, suddenly his hands were shaking. Izzy was leaning on the door—how did he always look like he didn’t give a fuck?—and if it hadn’t been for Izzy’s admission that he’d never done this with a guy either, Wyatt might have thought he was totally relaxed about the whole thing.

  Which, maybe he was. Maybe in Izzy’s head it was all just body parts, and he figured it was just a matter of adapting, or just going with the flow, or something. Maybe he’d seen so many naked guys in prison that even if he hadn’t done anything before, it didn’t seem like such a big deal to him. Or maybe—Wyatt saw a flicker of something in Izzy’s dark gaze that made him rethink that—Izzy was just better than Wyatt at hiding his nerves.

  For some reason that made Wyatt’s courage swell again. He took a step toward Izzy and reached out to grab the hem of his thin T-shirt. “I saw some of these the other day in the greenhouse.”

  Izzy exhaled, lifting his arms so Wyatt could pull the T-shirt over his head. He was lean, almost wiry, and muscled in ways that Wyatt wasn’t. Wyatt made the muscles in his abs dance as he traced his fingers along them, following a line of ink. Most of Izzy’s ink was black, but there were a few color pieces here and there. The tattoo on his abdomen was a bird. Wyatt didn’t know what sort, but it had trailing tail feathers that curled around toward his hip, and Wyatt followed them with his fingertips.

  “Does it mean anything?” he asked, looking up.

  Izzy’s gaze was fixed on his mouth. “Not really. None of them do, really. Just stuff I liked.”

  “You like birds?”

  “Yeah,” Izzy said, but if he had anything he was going to add to that, the words were lost in a moan as Wyatt’s hand slid up, his palm grazing a nipple.

  Izzy’s skin was a picture book. Birds and animals and geometric designs and patterns. An ornate cross on his ribs on one side and a compass on the other. His arms were more heavily covered, with a full sleeve on his left arm, and a half sleeve on his right. There were stick and poke designs on his right forearm that looked a little faded compared to the others. Prison tattoos maybe. There was no theme that Wyatt could make out, nothing that tied them all together except they were all Izzy. Every cross and skull and bird and arrow and animal and dagger and rose.

  “You look like a rock star,” Wyatt said, turning Izzy’s wrist over in his hand to see the scales inked there.

  “I look like a con,” Izzy said. “That’s what my stepfather told me when I got my first one.” His mouth twisted into a grin. “Guess I proved him right, huh?”

  Wyatt lifted Izzy’s wrist and pressed his mouth to the scales. “People aren’t always right about people.”

  He wasn’t sure if it was the right thing to say, but Izzy’s sharp grin faded into something softer, and his eyes widened a little as he stared at Wyatt. And then he reeled Wyatt in for a kiss.

  Wyatt went willingly, opening his mouth and pushing his tongue against Izzy’s. It felt weird to do that, and kind of gross if he thought about it, but it also felt really, really good. It took him a moment to realize that Izzy was teasing him, drawing his tongue back to encourage Wyatt to follow, teaching him how to kiss in a back-and-forth exchange that left Wyatt breathless, and not just because he still hadn’t figured out when to breathe.

  “No,” Wyatt murmured at last, pulling back. “I haven’t finished looking at you yet.”

  Izzy ducked his head forward again, and sucked Wyatt’s bottom lip for a moment, like he couldn’t get enough of it. Then he leaned back again, his dark eyes dancing. He pushed Wyatt gently away from him, Wyatt’s shoes scuffing on the thin carpet, and then he turned around.

  He had wings on his shoulder blades. Intricate, colorful wings, and Wyatt’s hands shook as he traced them. “They’re amazing!”

  Izzy rolled his shoulders so the wings shifted. “Yeah?”

  “Yeah,” Wyatt said, and leaned in to press a kiss against Izzy’s spine.

  Izzy turned around again.

  “Is that all of them?” Wyatt asked. He reached for Izzy’s belt. The metal buckle was cold and smooth. “Or are you holding out on me?”

  Izzy shuddered out a breath. “I’m holding out on you.”

  The same reckless courage that had seized Wyatt before he came in here caught him again. He smirked and tugged Izzy’s belt open. He could see that Izzy was hard in his jeans, and he could feel his erection pressing up against his knuckles as he tugged Izzy’s zip down. Izzy was wearing gray boxer briefs, and Wyatt’s mouth watered when he made out the shape of his dick pressing against the fabric, and saw the dark spot where he was already leaking.

  He peeled Izzy’s jeans down further, and discovered the large tattoo on Izzy’s left thigh. It was the Virgin Mary, with stars on her blue shawl. Not just any Virgin Mary, Wyatt realized, but Virgen de Guadalupe.

  “What about this one?” he asked. “What does she mean?”

  “My mom used to take me to church when I was a kid, back in Nevada,” Izzy said. “Our nearest church was mostly Mexicans, you know? I always liked the look of her. Always felt like she was watching out for me.”

  “I used to get tutored in Spanish by this girl who lived with her abuela,” Wyatt said. “She had pictures of Virgen de Guadalupe all over her house. And also those ones where Jesus’s heart is like radioactive or something, and it looks like it’s about to burst out of his chest.”

  “That’s the Sacred Heart,” Izzy said, laughing. “You didn’t grow up Catholic, huh?”

  “Not even a little bit,” Wyatt said.

  Izzy tilted his head. “You got tutored in Spanish?”

  “Yeah.” Wyatt shrugged. “Dad and Justin thought it’d be good if I learned some of my cultural heritage and stuff, you know? So I learned Spanish all the way through school, and I used to go to the events at the community center. I mean, I liked learning all that stuff, but…”

  “But?”

  “But when I was with all those other kids, I wasn’t Mexican,” Wyatt said. “I was a white kid who could barely speak any Spanish and didn’t know a thing about anything. Too white to be a Mexican kid, and too brown to be a white kid. I’m always stuck in the middle, trying to figure out where I fit in.”

  Izzy cupped his cheek with his hand. “I like you the way you are.”

  Wyatt flooded with warmth.

  Izzy tilted his hips forward, his erection pressing against Wyatt. “I like you a lot.”

  And just like that the warmth transformed into a raging heat that burned through Wyatt’s veins. He kissed Izzy fiercely, grinding against him, and then he felt Izzy’s fingers on the button of his jeans, tugging them open. The rasp of his zip was so loud. And then Izzy’s hand, his palm dry and callused, was wrapping around Wyatt’s dick, and Wyatt let out a sound like a yelp.

  Izzy laughed, his breath hot against Wyatt’s throat. “Help me out here.”

  Wyatt looked down at the narrow space between them. Izzy was holding Wyatt’s dick—the sight of it caused him to throb as much as the touch—and Izzy’s dick was free now. It was cut, the head gleaming with precum, and it was dark with blood.

  “Help me out here,” Izzy said again.

  Wyatt licked his palm, and got his hand between them. Curled his fingers around Izzy’s dick, and felt a rush of dizziness when Izzy squeezed him in return. His knuckles bumped against Izzy’s, and Izzy groaned.

  “Take your shirt off,” Izzy said. “Please.”

  Wyatt pulled back for a moment to obey, and then he was standing in front of Izzy again, their bodies straining against each other.
It must have looked ridiculous. Wyatt thought suddenly, two guys crowded up against a door with their jeans around their knees and their dicks in each other’s hands, their heads bowed as they both watched. But holy shit, it felt amazing. And then they were linking fingers, and everything was hot and slippery as they jerked off together, their breaths coming short and fast.

  “Fuck!” Izzy exclaimed, dropping his head back so it knocked against the door. And suddenly he was coming, his body shaking, his cum fountaining over Wyatt’s hand and landing in spurts on both of them. That sudden heat was almost enough to push Wyatt over the edge too—almost but not quite—but then Izzy swiped his thumb roughly over the head of Wyatt’s dick, and Wyatt’s brain short-circuited, and then every muscle in his body did, and then he was coming too, gripping Izzy’s shoulder tightly with his free hand and shuddering against him.

  For a moment everything was quiet while they stood there catching their breath.

  “Holy fuck,” Izzy said at last, and it sounded like his mind had been blown.

  “Yeah,” Wyatt agreed, and leaned against him and laughed softly into the curve of his throat.

  * * * *

  They watched TV after that, back in the small living room. It was Sam’s TV, Izzy told him, and it took him a while to find the remote control. Then they sat on the couch together, fingers tangled and bodies leaning comfortably against one another, and watched some movie. They talked a little too, about nothing much at all, and Wyatt wondered what Izzy would say if he asked him why he’d been in prison. Except he knew a lot of people didn’t like to talk about that, and just because he and Izzy were, well, whatever the hell they were now, it didn’t mean Wyatt had a right to anything that Izzy didn’t want to tell him yet.

  Except he couldn’t help wondering. Was it drugs? If it was, was he off them now? Weed didn’t count, not for most people, but what if he still did other drugs too? Or what if it wasn’t drugs at all? What if it was something violent? Wyatt didn’t feel scared around Izzy, but what if he should have?

  He noticed, part way through the movie, that Izzy was tapping the fingers of his free hand against his knee.

  “You okay?” he asked, nodding at his fingers.

  Izzy looked almost surprised to find he was doing it. He splayed his hand out and then curled his fingers into a loose fist. “Yeah, I just get a little jittery sometimes, you know?”

  “Jittery?” Wyatt asked.

  “Yeah,” Izzy said, his forehead creasing as his eyebrows tugged together. “It’s hard to explain.”

  Wyatt snorted. “Izzy, I’m on so much Ativan right now!”

  Izzy looked surprised again “You are?”

  “Yeah.” Wyatt tensed a little, and then found himself looking into Izzy’s eyes. He saw nothing judgmental there. “I used to get really bad anxiety, and it’s never totally gone away, I guess. And I’ve got a lot going on right now, with like Dad’s show and stuff.”

  A flicker of understanding crossed through Izzy’s eyes. “You don’t want to go to Paris.”

  “I don’t want to,” Wyatt admitted. Wasn’t telling the truth supposed to lift a weight from your shoulders or something? Because it didn’t work. Probably because he was telling the truth to the wrong person. It wasn’t Izzy he needed to unburden himself to, it was Dad.

  “Why not?” Izzy asked curiously.

  “I’m not good with new people,” Wyatt said. Izzy squeezed his hand. “I’m not good with stress. Have you ever seen Alain Donadieu?”

  Izzy gave him a blank look.

  “He’s been on specials on the Food Network,” Wyatt said. “Doesn’t matter. Anyway, he’s the chef, the one in Paris. And he yells at his crew a lot. Like, a lot. He throws things too.”

  “He sounds like a dick.”

  Wyatt laughed softly. “I mean, not really? He’s probably a really nice guy most of the time. But kitchens can be really high pressure. You need thick skin to work with chefs like that, and I don’t have thick skin. And it’d be living in a whole different country, where I don’t know anyone, and I don’t even speak any French, and…and my family wouldn’t be there.” Panic gripped his chest, squeezing on his ribs, and Wyatt fought to take a breath. “The thought of it just makes me scared, you know?”

  And he wasn’t sure that Izzy did know, but Izzy nodded and said, “Yeah.”

  “So yeah,” Wyatt said, drawing another shaking breath. “I’m taking a lot of Ativan right now.”

  “Does it help you?”

  “I don’t know,” Wyatt said. “I can’t even tell sometimes.”

  They fell silent, their fingers still tangled together, and Wyatt relaxed as Izzy gently rubbed his thumb over the back of his hand over and over again.

  * * * *

  “I’ve never done this before,” Izzy said.

  In the moonlight slanting through the blinds of his bedroom window, his pale skin was striped. Like cell bars, Wyatt thought wildly from underneath him.

  “You don’t have to if you don’t want to,” he said.

  Izzy cocked an eyebrow. “I never said I didn’t want to.”

  And then he was shifting down Wyatt’s body from the kisses they’d just shared, and sliding back into the space between Wyatt’s knees.

  Wyatt had never felt more exposed in his life. Part of him was afraid to even look at Izzy, but he was more afraid of missing a single detail. So he kept his gaze on Izzy, on the light sliding over the planes of his body, over his gleaming skin and his tattoos.

  “Scoot down a bit,” Izzy said. “Maybe sit with your feet on the floor?”

  Wyatt scrambled to obey, trying not to come spontaneously when Izzy shifted off the bed and went to his knees on the floor. He knelt there, his hands on Wyatt’s thighs. And then, very slowly, he shifted Wyatt’s knees apart and leaned in.

  The first hot breath against his aching dick made Wyatt fight not to jerk his hips forward in response. He didn’t want to jab Izzy in the eye. Izzy smirked up at him, licked his lips in the moonlight, and then opened his mouth.

  Holy shit.

  The noise that escaped Wyatt wasn’t like one he’d ever made before, and he was sure he’d be embarrassed by it later, but right now the only thing that mattered was that Izzy had his mouth around the head of Wyatt’s dick, and his tongue was pressing into the slit. Then he curled his fingers around Wyatt’s shaft, and bobbed his head forward.

  Hot and tight and wet, and Wyatt made that noise again. “Izzy. Shit, shit!” He panted for breath. “I’m gonna come!”

  Izzy leaned back. He licked his lips again. “Isn’t that the point?”

  Okay, yeah. Wyatt blinked down at him. “I guess.”

  Izzy grinned.

  “What’s it taste like?” Wyatt asked, his heart pounding.

  Izzy shrugged his shoulders. “Like dick?”

  “I mean, is it gross?”

  “It’s okay.” Izzy tilted his head. “You wanna keep asking questions, or you want me to keep blowing you?”

  “Keep blowing me,” Wyatt whispered. “Please.”

  Izzy grinned again and leaned back in. He was more confident this time and took Wyatt a little deeper. Not like, not like swallowing him or anything, because he still had a hand wrapped around Wyatt’s shaft, so it was only as much as he could fit in his mouth. It was still the most incredible thing Wyatt had ever experienced. He twisted his hands in Izzy’s comforter, and fought the urge to thrust, because it was Izzy’s first time too, and he didn’t want to choke him or anything. He groaned, and Izzy gave an answering moan that vibrated all the way along Wyatt’s dick.

  “Oh God!” Wyatt stared down at Izzy’s back, at the wings that moved and shifted as he sucked, and then reached out and curled the fingers of one hand in Izzy’s hair. “Izzy! Izzy!”

  He couldn’t help thrusting forward as he came. Izzy jerked backward in response, spluttering. He was wide-eyed. Wyatt’s cum gleamed on his lips, and there were globs of it on his face too. And then, as Wyatt watched, Izzy swallowed.
>
  “Shit,” Wyatt said. “I’m sorry. Is it gross? I’m sorry! I didn’t mean to come that fast!”

  “Come here,” Izzy said, and his voice was rough. He straightened up as tall as he could on his knees, and pulled Wyatt’s face toward him. “You want a taste too?”

  And then they were kissing, and Izzy’s mouth tasted of Wyatt’s cum. They kissed until Wyatt couldn’t taste it anymore, and then they kept kissing just for the hell of it.

  It was Izzy who pulled back first.

  “Was it okay?” Wyatt asked.

  “Yeah,” Izzy said. “Like, it was weird because I haven’t done it before, and I haven’t ever wanted to before, but it was you.” He shrugged, like that should have made perfect sense to Wyatt. And then he smiled. “It was you, Wyatt.”

  And Wyatt realized in that moment that he wasn’t too much of a boy for Izzy, or too much of a girl. He wasn’t too white, and he wasn’t too brown. He was Wyatt—messy, confused, anxious, stuck-in-the-middle Wyatt—but whoever Wyatt was, Izzy wanted him.

  And there was a first time for that too.

  * * * *

  Wyatt headed home regretfully just past eleven. Izzy walked him as far as the main road, and they kissed again. Then Wyatt crossed the road and headed up the driveway to the house. It was a bright night, and he didn’t need his phone to light the way. He let himself in the house with his key, and went upstairs to shower and change for bed. And then, suddenly buzzing with a nervous energy his body translated into hunger, he went downstairs and made toast and peanut butter.

  He was eating it in the living room when the arc of headlights through the front windows told him everyone was home.

  Lettie bounced through the door first.

  “How was it?” Wyatt called out to her.

  “It was good,” Lettie said. “When I go back there I know how to order and stuff.”

  “That’s great.” Wyatt fist bumped her, and she headed upstairs.

  Dad and Justin came inside shortly after.

  “How was it?” Wyatt asked them, figuring their report might be a little different than Lettie’s. Lettie wasn’t great in social situations. She wasn’t anxious about them like Wyatt, she could just be a little tone deaf. She also generally didn’t give a fuck if she messed up, unlike Wyatt whose brain kept a detailed catalogue of every social faux pas he’d ever made and liked to wake him up in the middle of the night sometimes and run through it.