Just Like This (Albin Academy)

by Cole McCade

  Omen was a collection of small cozy houses in that time-worn gray that seemed to belong specifically to the Atlantic, accented with the last bright traces of whatever color they had been painted last. Even the businesses were just small shops set up in the same type of buildings, homes that had been given glass storefronts advertising fresh seafood, antiques, craft supplies, flower arrangements, groceries, secondhand clothing, the one tiny “mini-mall” that was more a collection of converted buildings with several shops linked together and a food court that was just two diners with a shared patio full of cozy seating arrangements. The biggest attraction in Omen was the theatre, and even that had only three big screens indoors and one massive drive-in canvas hanging from the back wall of the concrete building, and a marquee that advertised showings at least six months behind every new release in the country.

  The kind of town where everyone knew everyone, Rian thought.

  And where people like him ran away to be known by no one at all.

  The only bar inside the town limits was a small, friendly pub that stopped serving liquor by ten p.m., and they drove past it on the way along the main road to the bridge that led over the Mystic. Barely half a mile over the river’s choppy, almost metallic gray expanse, a hard-packed, well-worn dirt lane led into the trees, deep tire ruts grooved into it; Damon’s Jeep bounced into the ruts as he turned onto the road, easing down the curves of it until the main road vanished behind scrub brush and clusters of tired-looking trees.

  Rian pulled from his drifting half-thoughts, though, as on the next turn the trees opened up into a broad clearing; Hank’s Roadhouse was a grimy single-story brick building with a black gabled roof that looked more like an abandoned smokehouse than anything else. The same logo from Chris’s T-shirt had been emblazoned on the side, spray-painted in jaunty graffiti, and the tiny windows were dark, the doors closed, the dirt lot surrounding the place empty of all but a few broken beer bottles and what looked like motorcycle racks.

  Rian arched a brow. “Biker joint?”

  “No self-respecting biker would be caught dead here.” Damon snorted. “Branding.”

  He eased the Jeep forward a bit, then shifted gears, stretching one arm out to rest his hand against the back of the seat with his fingers tickling too breathlessly close to the nape of Rian’s neck as Damon twisted to look over his shoulder, backing the Jeep into a reverse arc.

  “What are you doing?”

  “Hiding,” Damon said, as he navigated the Jeep backward around the side of the building, and eased it into a crack in the trees, fallen twigs and brush crackling, the car jouncing as the Jeep scraped by with the branches around them scratched at the doors. Rian winced.

  “You’re murdering your paint job.”

  “Cars can be repainted,” Damon said. “Not that easy to fix Chris if something out here fucks him up worse.”

  “...yeah.”

  Rian held his tongue, then, as Damon managed to squeeze the Jeep back into a niche in the trees, mostly hidden by the brush but with enough of a view through the trees to keep an eye out for anyone pulling up to the bar. Damon killed the engine, then unsnapped and loosened his seatbelt, settling to slouch behind the wheel. Rian unbuckled his seatbelt, too, shifting a little toward Damon, propping his shoulder against the seat.

  “So what now?” he asked.

  “We wait,” Damon answered. “I wanted to get out here early enough that we wouldn’t be spotted pulling in. But it’ll probably be a bit before the owner shows up.”

  “You know the owner?”

  “Not know him, but...know of him.” Damon grimaced. “Enough that as a kid my parents always told me to stay away from him. Drew. Gordon Drew. Kind of a slimy fucker. The kind of guy a town like this always says ‘ain’t from around here’ even when he’s been here for decades.”

  Rian made an amused sound. “Not Hank, then. So where’s he from, then?”

  “Dunno. We don’t talk to him, he doesn’t talk to us. Most of his clientele come from out of town. Small towns around this area cut you off before midnight. Even bigger cities mandate one a.m. But state law is actually two a.m., and some people don’t wanna stop until they have to.” Damon shrugged. “So they come out to places like this. And if a few people die ’cause he doesn’t take their keys, a few more get wrecked ’cause he didn’t cut them off past the legal limit...he’ll always find a way to spin it to the cops and the state liquor board.”

  “Fine, upstanding citizen, then,” Rian murmured, letting his gaze drift to the bar. “No... I... I guess I wonder what makes people look for that. Makes them need that.”

  “Different for everyone, probably.” Damon draped his forearms on the steering wheel, leaning his powerful body against them. “Pain chases some people into that life. Loss. Heartbreak. Bitterness. Disaster. Some people feel like they got nothing else. And some people, well...some people just ain’t very nice people, are they?”

  Rian half smiled. “So what kind will we be dealing with tonight?”

  “Dunno. Who knows what kind of customers are coming out tonight, but if we’re dealing with Gordon Drew...” Damon’s smile wasn’t particularly pleasant. “We’re dealing with a straight-up asshole.”

  “Mm.” Rian lingered on that dirty building, that emblazoned logo. “Stories always romanticize this kind of place. Where the darklings come to find family when everyone else rejects them.”

  “Maybe somewhere else. Here, though...it’s just where Gordon Drew makes a few extra pennies off sucking out people’s lives through their livers. And their veins, considering he probably looks the other way about a few more things.”

  “I think I dislike him already.”

  “I’d say I’m sorry for biasing you against him, but I’m not.”

  With a frown, Rian asked, “Isn’t it dangerous, to have a place like this so close to the school? Aren’t the boys easy targets?”

  “That’s why we keep such a close eye on them,” Damon said. “And why they’re only allowed off campus on weekends. But at least once every few years, someone’s parents try to get this place shut down. Afraid of their precious baby boys finding trouble. Drugs, booze, sex, whatever.”

  Rian winced. “Sounds like it doesn’t go well.”

  “All the money in the world can’t get around iffy zoning laws, and Drew just ends up flipping his middle finger every time and walking off laughing.”

  “What a...delightful person.”

  Damon only scoffed softly, before falling silent, his half-lidded eyes trained forward, distant and thoughtful. Rian watched him for several moments in the stillness that fell between them—not quite strained, no, but in the silence Rian was painfully aware of Damon; of his quiet, even breaths and his warmth and the space he took up and the way the soft-shaded afternoon light seemed to define him in hues of bronze and copper and black. Rian’s thoughts were blank things, vague, but all circling around Damon, around...around...

  Just wanting to stay near him.

  But he could almost hear that dry tone, that hint of a smile, that You’re staring at me again, and after a few more stolen seconds to just look Rian made himself look away, leaning down to fish in his bag until his fingers brushed up against the soft edges of pages.

  He pulled out A Princess in Theory; he’d not even managed to start it when he’d been too restless on sleepless nights, but if they were going to stake out the bar he might as well give it a shot to fill the passing hours.

  But as he scrunched down in the seat, propping his knees up against the glove compartment and opening the book against his thighs, Damon glanced over at him with a half laugh, half snort.

  “You were serious, huh?”

  “I’m curious,” Rian said, chuckling and flipping open to the first page. “It’s something you like. So I want to know about it.”

  Damon went still, his laughter fading to a bemused smile. �
��...yeah?”

  Oh God, had Rian said that out loud? He cleared his throat, keeping his gaze trained on the page and a story that...apparently started with a series of emails that read like something from a Western Union scammer. “I, um...well, yeah. I guess you know, it’s...different, that a man likes romance novels.”

  “Shouldn’t be,” Damon said simply, and Rian realized...

  He was right.

  And that was that.

  So he settled in to read, and smiled slightly at Naledi’s exasperation...only to pause at the mention of foster care. “Oh,” he said softly.

  “Hm?” Damon answered, absent, his gaze fixed on the windshield again.

  “I...do you know why I picked this one?”

  “Wondered a little.”

  “...the cover’s more worn than all the others. Like you read it more.” Rian bit his lip. “The heroine... Naledi. She was in foster care.”

  “...yeah.” Damon’s head angled toward him, brown eyes watching him sidelong, thoughtful. “Sometimes you see yourself and the life you lived, the things you want, in places you never expected. I saw me in her. Still do. Every time I read it.”

  “Does it hurt...?”

  “No.” Damon smiled, and it was a wondering, thoughtful, breathtaking thing. “Can’t think of many things that feel better. Just in seeing myself, and knowing I’m not alone.”

  Rian lowered his eyes, tracing his fingertips along the letters but only half processing them. “... I feel that way around you.”

  Again that stillness—charged, shivering, waiting. “Yeah?”

  “When you talk about wanting to build something. Wanting to make something that’s yours, instead of taking from someone else.” Rian bit his lip. “I’ve...wanted that, too. I think that’s what I’ve wanted, all this time. To make something of my own, instead of what someone else gave me. It’s...it’s all I’ve been able to think about lately, when I’ve been painting. Wanting this thing I’m making to be mine.”

  He didn’t know what he was trying to say. What he was trying to tell Damon, when even though he was painting for himself, trying to find his own heart in the washes of color on canvas...

  Every stroke of heart-shade he slashed from the tip of his brush seemed to whisper Damon’s name.

  Rian lifted his gaze to find Damon watching him—silently, intently, but there was something in it that drew Rian, that begged him to come closer, even as Damon leaned in subtly.

  “You want to make something you can love,” Damon rumbled.

  Rian could hardly feel the pages against his fingers, the weight of the book lowering into his lap. He could only feel Damon, the small space between them, and the...the...

  The heaviness of wanting someone for himself.

  Not something.

  Wanting Damon simply for Damon’s sake, and not for anything Rian had to fix about him to make himself feel worthwhile.

  When with Damon, Rian just...

  Felt like enough.

  His heart ran hot and fast and wild as he let the paperback fall to his thigh; as he met Damon’s heated, questioning eyes. Rian reached out tentatively, feathered his fingers against the warm fullness of Damon’s lips—and they parted for him, breath washing over his hand, before a slow kiss pressed to his skin.

  “Damon,” Rian whispered—asked, pleaded, he didn’t know, but Damon caught his hand, stroked his thumb in a sensitizing, tingling caress against Rian’s palm, followed by his lips. The way he kissed Rian’s palm bordered on obscene: wet, stroking, luscious and slow, and Rian’s entire body felt like a caught breath, held tight.

  “You gotta tell me, Rian,” Damon rumbled deep. “You gotta tell me what you want. I need to hear it from you.”

  “You,” Rian breathed, as he swayed across the small space between them. “I just want you.”

  Chapter Seventeen

  I just want you.

  Those words ignited under Damon’s skin, washing away every frustrated feeling until it forced him to confront something he’d been trying so, so fucking hard to ignore:

  He fucking wanted Rian to want him, and goddammit, every last fucking feint and pushback between them had made him feel like that would never fucking happen.

  Until those words fell past soft pale lips, I just want you, and he didn’t know if he reached for Rian or Rian reached for him but suddenly they were crashing together over the center console, Damon’s arms snared around Rian’s waist and Rian’s fingers tangled in Damon’s hair and their lips coming together like two storm fronts meeting in a lashing of lightning and chaos and thunderous need. It was always like this with Rian; they just built up and built up and built up until they exploded into a fight.

  Or into desire.

  And the next thing Damon knew, he was drunk on the taste of Rian as those yielding lips opened for him and Rian melted against him with a low moan.

  His breaths came fast and rough, scorching like smoke inside his chest and throat as he dragged Rian against him, cursing the console in the way, the awkwardness of the front seat of the car, but he couldn’t seem to stop kissing Rian to do anything about it—seeking deep, soaking up every hint of that sugar-candy taste and searching for more. Rian’s mouth was so obscenely soft inside, the texture a plush wet thing that gripped and worked at Damon’s tongue until his cock jerked in response as if that mouth had sucked him in deep and left him drowning in heat.

  A heat that was answered as, without warning, Rian climbed out of the passenger’s seat and into Damon’s lap, fitting his slender frame between Damon’s body and the close press of the steering column.

  Like this there was no mistaking the fire burning between them, the sleekness of Rian’s thighs straddling Damon’s lap, and Damon dragged his hands over those ragged scraps of denim, slipped his fingers through the rips in Rian’s jeans, held fast to smooth bare skin as he hauled Rian in closer until they pressed hips to hips, cock to cock, and Rian let out a helpless, erotic little sound as they ground together roughly, hard-dragging pressure throbbing through Damon until he couldn’t help jerking up to thrust against Rian as he tilted his head up to steal that pretty little mouth again.

  “Fuck, Ri,” he whispered, before his voice was swallowed as their lips fused, mated, fit together in such a perfect lock that he couldn’t tell his breaths from Rian’s anymore.

  Couldn’t tell anything but that he needed this with a desperation that gutted him with its intensity, stealing his thoughts and his everything with the craving to have Rian all to himself.

  “Damon,” Rian moaned, moving against him with his tongue a slick dart caressing over Damon’s mouth, teasing at him, and Damon groaned, a full-body shudder racking him as he clutched more desperately at Rian’s thighs.

  Before he could second-guess, before he could tell himself this was a bad fucking idea all over again, he fumbled a hand away from Rian and reached down to the side of the seat, catching the release. A hard jerk, and it sent the seat spilling back with choppy motions, jolting them both—but giving space for Damon to roll them together, catching Rian around the waist and holding his slim frame against Damon as Damon tumbled them to the side and through the gap between the front seats to let them into the back of the Jeep.

  They hit heavily, landing on the lowered seat in the cargo area and atop the sleeping bag he’d left there, sprawling out with Rian underneath him; Damon winced as his elbows struck painfully even through the layer of padding, but managed to keep from crushing Rian underneath him. Rian blinked up at him with his eyes wide and startled, lips parted and gasping, all that gorgeous hair spraying around him until he looked like an untamed hedge witch in his flowing clothing, this bramble-child who should have his hair full of flowers and butterflies, wildness beneath that civilized exterior.

  Damon lingered to just...take him in, shifting his weight to one elbow so he could trace his fingertip
s down Rian’s fine, fragile jaw. “You’re so goddamned beautiful.”

  Rian’s tongue caught between his teeth as he lowered his eyes with an embarrassed sound. “Speak for yourself, Mr. Louis,” he lilted softly, and caught Damon’s hand, turning his head to press his mouth into Damon’s palm. “I should be saying that to you.”

  Damon’s heart practically purred with the deep contentment running through him. “Most people don’t say things like that ’bout men like me.”

  “I don’t care what most people say,” Rian whispered, and flicked his tongue against Damon’s palm. “It’s how I feel.”

  So how do you feel about me, then?

  But Damon couldn’t ask—couldn’t break this when that question would turn all razor edges and spikes again. So he only leaned down and caught Rian’s mouth, coaxing it away from Damon’s hand until he could have those lips all to himself, plying them and tasting those words, taking his time until Rian trembled so satisfyingly underneath him, responding to him so pliantly there was no doubt that no matter how Rian might feel about Damon...he at least wanted him with an equal desire.

  Yet Damon still needed to hear it, still needed to steal that affirmation from Rian’s hot, flickering tongue, and Damon caught Rian’s upper lip in his teeth, nibbling gently at the little bud of flesh at the center before lashing his tongue against it with a whisper. “...you wanna let me in, Ri? You wanna feel me inside you again?”

  “Oh, God.” Rian let out a ragged little groan, arching his body against Damon’s, sleekness sliding against him. “Why do you have to be so...so...”

  “Crass?” Damon teased with a grin.

  “...intimate,” Rian admitted, hoarse and velvet-gritty. “You say the most filthy things, and they shoot right through me.”

  “Yeah?” Pleasure flushed through Damon, and he stole another nibble of that sweet sugar-candy mouth before drawing back, unable to stop his grin from widening. “Let’s see how it feels when I do a few filthy things to you, too.”

  “What are you—oh!”