“I haven’t changed my mind. I’m still letting you go at the end of the cycle. You’re leaving to be an agent. I know I should tell you to leave now.” Brice grabbed a bottle out of the fridge. The wine was from two nights ago. They never finished drinking it since sex had become more important. When Brice turned back to Clay, he stared at the cork. “I should say all sorts of things about how this is wrong. How we can’t keep doing this.”
“I’ve heard it,” Clay muttered.
“But you haven’t. You aren’t listening.”
“I’m listening, I’m not agreeing with you. How about instead of telling me all the reasons this isn’t going to work, instead of that, you ask me to drink wine with you and then sleep here.”
“I keep asking you to stay. I do it night after night.” He sighed. “I know I’m sending you mixed signals. I’m weaker than I thought.”
“It’s no biggie. Whatever signals you send are fine. Come here.”
Brice manuvused to the bed with the wine in his hand. He climbed back into the sheets holding the bottle. Once he was stettled in the blankets, he popped the cork. After Brice handed the wine to Clay, he drank directly from the bottle before passing it back.
“One of the trainers called me a shell. Sometimes I think they’re right. I don’t know how to do stuff like this.” Brice gave the wine back to Clay. “I was so busy learning to fight and do what Keith wanted that somewhere along the way, I missed the lesson on having fun and relaxing.”
“I can teach you that.” Clay drank again. “My friends, I won’t say their names,” —Clay waved to his naked body— “They call me corpse-cock. Sometimes I think that I was so busy with my family moving and Butch and my sisters that I never got the lessons on how to find pleasure in the bedroom.”
Brice reached for the wine, and then his hand stilled. “Corpse what?”
“I’ve never done this before. Sex, like what we do,” Clay clarified. “I don’t really like sex normally. You know how you have a list of failed relationships? So do I. All five of them involved me going soft, getting grossed out, or them getting fed up with begging me to be intimate with them.”
“I have a hard time imagining that.” Brice cushioned his back on his pillows. “You’re hot in the bedroom, and the office, and the storage closet.”
“You forgot the top floor of HQ.”
“I’m so undisciplined,” Brice groaned.
“What I’m trying to say is that this thing between us is special, Brice. In more than one way. I don’t want to let it go. I want to stay here. I want it all with you.”
“You can’t ask me for more than I can give. I don’t have it in me to keep you. It’s too painful. It’s not worth it.”
Clay exhaled. That stung, but he had to be patient. Brice would change his mind. The man was damn stubborn, but he would come around. Clay would have to give him more time.
“Then let’s stick to the original mission. I will hang out with you until graduation. We will keep meeting in secret, and you can keep teaching me advanced skills.”
“Did you have some specific skills in mind?” Brice grinned.
“Yes.” Clay kissed Brice. “We need to keep going over all the ways to suck and fuck, and I need to lick everything. Oh, and if we have extra time, you can show me how to adjust a scope.”
“You’re not good at adjusting a scope?” Brice gave a mock cry of disgust. “I’m ashamed I slept with you.”
“Fuck that noise.” Clay pushed him. “And I can teach you some advanced skills too.”
“Advanced skills like how to eat in my bed?” Brice brushed crumbs off a pillow and scowled at him. “No, thanks.”
“Yes.” Clay shoved him again. “I’m going to show you how to smile more and stop being so damn unhappy. We can read books and listen to music, and sometimes talk. You don’t want to be a shell? I’ll make you human.”
“I don’t need human lessons.”
“I think you do.”
“Just until graduation,” Brice muttered.
“Until graduation.” Clay was sure that Brice would be so into him that he would beg him to stay by that time. “That’s the mission parameters. And if by graduation day you want me to stay, we can adjust to the new alterations.”
“I’m not going to ask you to stay. This thing between us is only until those gears are on your wrist. I told you that.”
“Is that a yes?” Clay wiggled his eyebrows. “Until the gears are on my wrist?”
“Affirmative.” Brice set the wine on the floor and pulled Clay into his arms.
“I think we should celebrate this mission,” Clay teased. “Especially since we just ironed out the details.”
“By mutual blowjobs?” Brice licked his lips.
“I think you have a thing for that. I’ll have to remember that.”