Page 1 of Labor of Love

1

WEST

The text message arrived five minutes after six o’clock in the evening, right as the bright light of the day was mellowing into a dreamy, tawny gold that turned everything it touched to treasure. Now, two minutes later, West lingered in the sender’s bedroom doorway, hand in the pocket of his trousers, thumb running nervously up and down the side of his phone.

“Are you sure you want to do this?” he asked, heart pounding. Not brave enough to look the bedroom’s occupant in the eyes, he set his gaze on the mound of blankets kicked haphazardly to the bottom of the bed. “I’m still willing, but I’m worried that when this is all over, you’ll come to your senses and realize it was all a big mistake.”

“Why would having a baby with my best friend be a mistake?” The speaker—Luca—remained out of sight, but only because West had decided the blankets were too close to eye contact for comfort and had begun staring at his shoes. Regardless, from the sound of his voice, West knew he was smiling. Luca spoke with emotion in the same way that people spoke with their hands, and while West generally had a hard time getting a read on what other people were feeling, such wasnever the case with Luca. He was more than an open book; he was the baseline through which West interpreted every other person in the world, and the assured inflection of his voice alone did more to ease West’s uncertainty than words ever could. “I’ve wanted to be a dad since we were in high school, and we’ll be turning thirty-two this year. That’s more than enough time to have gotten cold feet. And yeah, sure, it’s not ideal that I haven’t found someone to settle down with, but maybe it’s a blessing in disguise. Why take the risk of romantically shackling myself to a guy who might turn into an asshole a couple years down the line when I have a best friend who’s never been unkind a day in his life? Platonic babymaking sounds like way less heartbreak.”

West snorted. “What are you talking about? I’ve been mean plenty of times. Like last week, when?—”

“West,” Luca said flatly. “Accidentally stepping on your mom’s cat doesn’t count, and even if it did, I’m not changing my mind. I want this. I can’t think of a single person I’d want to do this with more than you. But if it’s freaking you out, that’s okay. We don’t have to go through with it. We can put a pin in it and spend the six months between now and my next heat talking things through, or we can scrap the idea altogether. Whatever makes you the most comfortable. The only thing is, if you don’t want to do this, you need to tell me right now, because my heat is starting, and I haven’t taken anything to stop it.”

West’s pounding heart skipped a beat, and he jerked his head up, making eye contact with Luca. It was the first time he’d done so since he’d come to hover in the bedroom doorway.

Luca was indeed smiling. He lounged on his bed, propped into a sitting position thanks to a stack of pillows he’d piled between himself and the headboard. His hair—a chestnut brown—was pushed up at odd angles in the back from prolonged contact with comfortable things, but it was always a bit unruly. Luca claimed he was cursed with eternal bedhead, but West hadbeen served enough Prose ads to know that this “curse” was more than likely the result of wavy hair that wasn’t being treated right.

Despite the bedhead, Luca’s eyes were bright, alert, and curious. They peered at West unflinchingly, their greenish-brown color muted by the onset of twilight. With all the bed’s many blankets kicked into a heap, Luca’s body was as equally as brazen, on full display for anyone to see. Despite the chilly fall weather, Luca wore a pair of tiny black pajama shorts that, while loose in the legs, were barely long enough to cover his ass, and one of West’s old University of Aurora tees. It was ratty now, having gone so threadbare in a few places that it had developed holes, but while time had ravaged the garment, it had left its owner untouched. Luca didn’t look a day over twenty-five, and while it could have been a trick of the dying light or the onset of his heat, he had a glow to match.

West had never met a man more vibrant.

Or more beautiful.

“I’m not bailing,” West said after a pause. “I know how bad you want it. I just… I don’t want to lose you as a friend, and part of me is worried if we go through with this, you won’t look at me the same again.”

Luca’s happiness crumpled. Without another word, he swung his legs over the edge of the mattress and slipped out of bed, bare feet striking the hardwood in near silence. He was short—barely five feet—and weighed next to nothing, which had always made West feel like a giant. At nearly six foot three, he was all too aware of how much space he took up, but Luca had never paid the size difference between them much mind. He padded across the room, took West by the hand, and looked up at him with such tremendous honesty that West felt bad for ever having doubted him.

“It won’t change anything between us,” Luca promised. “We’ll do it once, just this one time, then everything will go back to how it was before.”

West closed his hand around Luca’s, giving it a squeeze. “Okay. I trust you.”

Luca smiled. “I trust you, too.”

“So, how do you want to do this?”

Luca looked over his shoulder at the bed, then took a step back, never letting go of West’s hand. “Come to bed,” he said. “If the scent of my heat isn’t enough to get you hard, we can watch some porn together to get into the mood. Once we’re horny, I figure things will progress pretty naturally from there.”

He wasn’t wrong, but as West followed him to the bed, he left the truth unspoken—when it came to Luca, pheromones and porn would never be necessary.

2

LUCA

The backs of Luca’s thighs hit the edge of the mattress, and upon contact, he plopped his ass down on the bed. It was starting to get hot—a symptom of his heat rather than an indication of the ambient temperature—and the brief stirring of the air as he dropped was so good, he considered popping back up onto his feet to do it again.

West was less willing to take action.

He stood frozen, arm outstretched, still holding Luca’s hand. Like always, he was immaculately dressed, his pressed white shirt done up to the last button and his gray slacks without a wrinkle, just a tie and a suit jacket away from being the most handsome rich kid at the ball.

And hewashandsome. Luca would be lying if he said he’d never noticed.

Back when they were kids, before hormones had turned West into a chiseled masterpiece, he’d been a scrappy, scrawny little thing. Awkward. Bumbling. Forever the last to be picked in gym class, partly because he had no friends, but mostly because he couldn’t be trusted not to trip over his own feet. Luca had always thought his too-big feet and Dumbo ears were goofy, but the more he saw how others treated West, the more he started tofeel bad for him. Always the butt of someone’s joke, always on the outside looking in, there was an otherness about him that divided him from the rest of their class as effectively as a chasm, and try as he might, West had never found a way to cross to the other side.

Which was why one day in gym class, when chosen by their teacher to be the head of one of that day’s teams, Luca had picked West first out of all their other classmates. He hadn’t expected to get a friend out of the deal—never mind one so committed to him that he’d stuck by Luca’s side even after puberty had reshaped him into a teenage dream—but that was exactly what happened, and it was how Luca, who was comfortably mid when it came to high school popularity, had ended up best friends with the biggest heartthrob in their grade.

Dark hair, almost black.

Broad shoulders.

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