Home for the Holidays: Mr Frosty Pants, Mr Naughty List
Page 44
RJ was looking through the little tree of coffee cups, smirking. “French vanilla, cinnamon bun, hazelnut, vanilla nougat…got any plain old coffee? Ah, here we go. Dark roast. Perfect.”
“I have a whole case of that beneath. It came with the machine. I don’t drink it.”
“Write my name on it, then,” RJ said. “I’ll be glad to drink it for you.” He met Aaron’s eyes hopefully. “I’d like some more mornings waking up here with you.”
Aaron looked away. Truth be told, he’d like that too, but that was a lot to ask. Too much of everything was wrapped up in agreeing to something like that. His mom, his job, his family out on the farm, and RJ was leaving anyway. He’d go back on tour. No reason for Aaron to let his body or mind or stupid heart want anything more than another fuck.
Because he did want that. At least one more fuck.
More like ten.
“How long are you in town for?” he asked, crouching down to pull the dark roast box of Keurig cups out and broaching the easiest concern first. May as well set clear expectations now.
“Until the new year.”
“Consider this your box until then.” Aaron’s tummy fluttered. Was he making a mistake? He thought he probably had, until he caught RJ’s expression: vibrant, alive, intense. RJ came at him then, wrapping him up against his tall, firm body, holding him tight.
“Thank you,” RJ whispered.
“You don’t have to keep doing that,” Aaron said.
“What?”
“Thanking me for everything.”
RJ pulled back, touched Aaron’s chin gently, and forced their eyes to meet. “Babe, I’ll thank you every time you give me something, because you deserve that gratitude. And as long as we’re doing this, whatever this is, I’m gonna give you what you deserve. It’s part of my honor code.”
Aaron swallowed, his dick stirring. “Oh yeah?”
“Yeah.”
The sound of the Keurig filling the mug behind them broke the spell, and RJ let him go, gathering the mug of dark roast between his big palms and taking a closed-eyed sip.
“Ah. Perfect,” he said again. He leaned his hip against the counter and chuckled when Constance walked back into the room, went to her food dish and started to eat with a little chirrup of joy, like she hadn’t just disdained that meal a few minutes before. “She’s something else.”
“What are your plans today?” Aaron asked, a wad of weird feelings balling up in his gut. He didn’t know what he wanted RJ to say, but he wanted to know as soon as possible so he could get on with his own plans. He’d need a distraction if RJ wasn’t sticking around, lest he fall into a pit of post-sex shame and post-fight-with-his-mom stressing.
Aaron supposed he could take his father up on his recent request for a visit. That would take up most of his day and would keep him out of his mother’s crosshairs, since cell reception wasn’t great on the farm. He wondered what RJ might think of the Danvers Farm. It was a pretty piece of land…
“I have a show tonight. Before that…” RJ shrugged. “I need to go into my friend Chip’s recording studio and talk to him about a demo I want to make. How about you?”
Aaron was glad he had a ready answer. “I was going to head out to Strawberry Plains to visit my father. He mentioned some sort of gift he wanted to give to me before Christmas, so I thought I’d go see what it is.” Disappointment welled up. He hadn’t realized how much he’d wanted RJ to stick around for the day, or that he’d planned to ask RJ to come out to his dad’s farm with him. Or that he’d wanted RJ to say yes.
“Chip’s studio’s in Strawberry Plains,” RJ said, surprised delight coloring his tone. “Weird, huh? There’s not much out that way, but we both planned to go there today.” He raised his coffee in a toast and winked. “It’s almost like the universe is setting us up.”
Aaron raised his brow. “Meaning?”
“How about this…” RJ paused, took another swallow of coffee, and motioned at the coffee cup tree. “What do you like? Cinnamon bun?”
Aaron felt a rush of pleasure. “Actually, that’s my favorite.”
“I knew it.” RJ winked. “Okay, so how about this…” He started the Keurig for Aaron’s mug. “We go out that way together. I’ve got this cushy SUV I’ve been forced to borrow—long story—and so I might as well use it.”
“Oh. Well.”
Yes, a part of Aaron had wanted to ask RJ to go out to the Danvers Farm with him. But now that it could actually happen? His gut twisted up with anxiety.
He’d never taken a man out to his father’s place before. All or some of the cousins might be around. He’d never explicitly told any of them that he was gay. Not even his dad. Though, Aaron assumed his dad knew. He was sure that his mother had thrown it in his dad’s face during one of their incredibly rare and always toxic interactions.
Taking a man out there seemed risky. Especially when it was a man he was just fucking and not in love with. They were country folk, after all. Loving, but traditional for the most part. Casual hookups were not part of their ideal for love of any kind, much less homosexual love.
The Keurig kicked off again.
Aaron took the mug from RJ’s hands, taking a deep sniff of the cinnamon bun scent, suddenly unsure if he needed the extra jitteriness of caffeine. “So, what? You’d drop me off at the farm and then pick me up on the way back?”
“I could. Or you could come to the studio with me. It won’t take long for me and Chip to figure out what we want to do, or if he’s even up for working with me right now given that I’m about three songs short of a four-song demo.”
“I’ve never been inside a recording studio.”
“It’s small, but good quality. You should come. Chip will like you.”
Aaron gulped. “I don’t know. I’m not really…out.”
RJ tilted his head. “Because you’re a teacher.”
“That. And a few other things.” His mother’s reaction at the dance the night before, for example.
“Okay. That’s fine. I’ll just say you’re my friend. No big.” RJ shrugged. He glanced up, his hazel eyes raking over Aaron. “I mean, we are friends, right?” He lifted his chin and said more definitively, “We’re not just fucking anymore.”
“Aren’t we? Just fucking?” Aaron’s heart started to pound, and he put the coffee cup aside on the counter. He definitely didn’t need the extra stimulant right now.
RJ shook his head, slipping into that relaxed certainty he used while they were screwing. “No, babe. We passed ‘just fucking’ when you started texting me about your day, and then when you slept wrapped around me like a boa constrictor last night. We’re definitely in the friends-with-benefits category now, leaning toward outright holiday lovers.” RJ grinned, taking in Aaron’s body, top to bottom again.
“Oh, shit.”
RJ laughed. “Sorry. But it’s true.” When he caught the expression on Aaron’s face, he reassured him, “But don’t worry. We’re not boyfriends. We’re definitely not that.”
“Holiday lovers?” Aaron kind of liked the sound of that. The men in the documentaries he’d watched about queer culture of the nineteen seventies and eighties all called each other that: lover. It was so much better, he’d always thought, than boyfriend or partner. He’d always wanted to be someone’s lover. It sounded sexy, romantic, and fleeting.
Fleeting.
Well, okay. He could get behind fleeting.
“Lovers,” he agreed. “We’re lovers.”
RJ grinned. “Cool. So we’ll go out to Straw Plains together, then? No sense in taking two cars. I mean, really, think of the environment.”
Aaron smothered a grin. “You don’t have to convince me. I’m in.”
RJ swooped over and wrapped his arms around Aaron, his coffee sloshing on Aaron’s bare arm, still hot but not scalding. “Great. I just need to grab my guitar from my mom’s, and we can get on our way.”
“Your mom’s?” Aaron blinked. Never mind whether RJ was ready to meet his f
amily, was he ready to meet RJ’s?
“Breathe. She’s just my mom. And we’re just friends, remember?”
“Lovers,” Aaron insisted, tasting the word.
“Right.” RJ grinned a little soppily. Aaron’s inner alarms went off at that, but he silenced them, reveling in the way RJ looked at him like he was precious. “But I get the impression you’re not ready to tell people about that part?”
“Oh, no. Right.”
“My mom will guess, but she won’t say anything. I’ll just dash in and get the guitar and then we’ll go.”
“Can I wait in the SUV?”
“Probably not.”
“Are you sure?”
“Eh, maybe I want you to meet my little siblings.” RJ laughed. “Since we’re lovers and all.”
Aaron chewed on his bottom lip. He liked older kids, but he was intimidated by little ones. “We should shower.”
“If that’s a euphemism, I’m all for it.”
Aaron laughed, tugging out of RJ’s embrace. “C’mon. Let’s get cleaned up.”
“I’m gonna get you so dirty first,” RJ said. “You’re still on my naughty list, you know.”
“I hope so,” Aaron said, his cock lifting and growing achingly hard in seconds. “Santa needs to show me again how he deals with bad elves.”
RJ tugged Aaron toward the bathroom. By the time they left, they’d both come two more times, and their balls were aching and utterly drained.
Chapter Sixteen
Aaron was relieved when they pulled into RJ’s mom’s neighborhood to find that it was far outside of his school zone. When RJ dropped the fact that he had three younger siblings, Aaron had lost several minutes entertaining awful fantasies of having to teach them one day. He’d nearly broken out in a cold sweat thinking of looking a young student in the face while knowing he’d done filthy, dirty, amazing things with their older brother. School was for teaching, and hookups and school never mixed. He’d learned that lesson well.
But West Knoxville was firmly outside of his territory. He was safe.
As RJ parked on the pad in front of his mom’s house, with the front yard a veritable explosion of Christmas decorations, he let out a low groan.
“What?” Aaron asked, glancing around to see if he was missing something.
“This is the first time I’ve brought a guy home.”
“Oh? Why?”
“Well, my relationships have generally been with other musicians on the road, or people in the music business anyway. Not only short lived, but also not here. Besides, my last boyfriend was a bit of a drug fiend, and I wouldn’t have wanted an active user around my family.” He shrugged at that, and Aaron made a note to ask more about this ex later.
“And before I went out on the road… Well, I was always out to my mom. She always knew. But this isn’t how I grew up.” He motioned at the house. “I didn’t live in a house. It was just me and my mom. Or more like, it was just me.” He frowned and ran a hand over his hair. “Times got rough. For six months we lived in a van. Various run-down apartments. Rooms in strange houses. Trailers. We moved around a lot. Living in a hotel room when I started touring was nothing new. More like old times.”
“She couldn’t find work?” Aaron ventured, looking up at the nice, middle-class home in front of them.
“More like she had two jobs and a bunch of debt to settle. My dad left it behind as a going away present.” Disgust filled his voice at the mention of his father and didn’t drop away with this next words. “How can I put this? Okay, so, it was like this: when I was fifteen, I basically lived with a forty-year-old guy for a few months. I told no one. Not even my friends. I’m not sure they know about it even now. But I had a warm bed most nights so long as I sucked his cock, and he gave me plenty of food. My mom was gone so much that she didn’t even realize I wasn’t living at home.”
“I…I’m sorry. You were too young to deal with something like that alone.”
“Yeah. Well, I wasn’t in love, and I didn’t imagine he was either.” RJ sneered. “He was using me, but I was using him too.”
“You were still just a child.”
“I was,” RJ agreed. “That part of my life sort of prepared me for this part, though. Living on the road, going from hotel to hotel. Back when I started touring it felt like nothing new. We’d lived in so many dumps growing up that most places the bands stayed felt like heaven.” His eyes went dark, like he was seeing something from years before. “My senior year, when I was a student in your class—”
“Oh, God. Were you with that man when you were in my class?” Had Aaron failed to protect RJ when he was his student, writing him off as a scary, potentially dangerous kid instead?
“No,” RJ said, putting a soothing hand on Aaron’s shoulder. “Like I said, I was nineteen when I was in your class. I was only fucking that guy for a year.”
“When you were a freshman?”
RJ nodded. “When I was in your class, my mom finally got a little stability. We were living in a two-bedroom mobile home then. But one whole bedroom was filled with unpacked boxes because my mom was sure there was no way she could afford it long enough to bother unpacking. I slept on the sofa. That was one of my best years growing up.”
“Oh.” Aaron looked up at the big house. “So, did you buy this place for your mom and your siblings? With your touring income?”
RJ laughed. “Hell no. I do okay, but I’m not that well off. No, my mom married the kids’ dad. He’s a doctor. They met at a mutual friend’s birthday party. She got knocked up. They got married. I like him fine, but it’s weird. A whole different world from how I grew up.”
“I can only imagine.” Aaron’s heart ached. He’d failed RJ so much back then, and he knew there was no making up for that now.
“Anyway, yeah.” RJ gestured ruefully at the house. “This is where I’m staying for the time being. It’s not really my home.”
RJ unbuckled his seatbelt.
“I’ll just wait here,” Aaron said, but two little kids spilled out of the house, running for the parked SUV. “Oh, God.”
“They won’t bite,” RJ said, laughing. “C’mon. It’s not that bad. They’re just kids.”
He opened the door and the little voices rose in a clamor of excitement, both of them shouting, “RJ!” and variations of, “Where were you? Are you staying? Please stay!”
Then a lovely woman appeared at the front door. She was tall, like RJ, and long-limbed like him. Her blond hair was held back in a messy ponytail, and she looked harried despite her attractive face. She crossed her arms over her chest, shook her head, and rolled her eyes.
“At least you texted this time,” she called out. Her eyes caught Aaron’s where he sat frozen in the car. “Oh. You brought someone home?” She grew flustered, and then smiled nervously. “I, uh, hello. Welcome.”
Aaron climbed out of the car and waved awkwardly. “Hi, I’m Aaron, Mrs…” He didn’t know how to end that greeting. RJ hadn’t said if his mother shared his last name now that she’d remarried. His own mother had never changed hers.
“Just call me Betsy,” she said, smiling widely, her gaze darting from him to RJ and back again. “Come on in, both of you.”
“We’re just here to grab my guitar and go. I’m meeting Chip at the studio to talk about that demo.”
“Oh, right. Of course. Well, you can stay a few minutes, surely. I’ll make coffee. The kids saved you those cookies you asked for.” She shot Aaron an anxious glance. “You can share them with your…friend.”
Lover, Aaron corrected in his head, surprised by the fierceness of his attachment to the term.
Loud rap music played loudly from upstairs, but Aaron didn’t recognize it. Betsy ushered him into the kitchen. RJ followed at his heels, one hand on his lower back, reassuringly. The kids ran in past them, the boy making a helicopter noise with his mouth, and the girl yelling, “I’ll get the cookies, RJ! We saved four for you.” She gave Aaron a skeptical look. “I guess you can sp
lit them with your friend.”
“That’s Perri,” RJ said. “And the other one is Beau.”
“Ah. I thought you said you had three?” RJ had mentioned that tidbit on the way over.
“I have a stepbrother.” He pointed up at the ceiling where the beat of the rap music pounded. “I doubt we’ll see him.”
“He’s in a mood,” Betsy said. “I never know what to expect from him these days. When Doug and I married, he was a cherub. Now?” She shrugged. “He’s a teenager. I suppose it’s to be expected.”
“Hormones,” Aaron offered. “They make a moody monster of them all. I teach middle schoolers, so I know.”
She laughed. “Great. So happy I’ll be dealing with it two more times. I’d hoped RJ and my stepson were outliers.”
Betsy put Aaron in a chair by the window facing a lovely winter garden. It was well-tended, and he enjoyed the choices that kept the colors popping even during the dreary month of December.
He chatted with Betsy about the garden (it turned out it was maintained by her husband, who was at work). He kept everything relaxed and easy, hoping to erase the occasional speculative look sent his way.
Yes, I let your son fuck me blind last night, Betsy. And, no I don’t regret it.
Thankfully, it wasn’t long at all until RJ returned from upstairs with his guitar case slung over his back.
“Don’t go again, RJ!” Beau called, running to cling to big brother’s leg. “You said you’d stay for Christmas! You said!”
RJ ruffled his brother’s hair and then squatted to meet his eyes. “I’ll be here for Christmas. I’d never break that promise. I’m just going out for the day, that’s all.”
“But you were gone last night, and you just got home, and we miss you,” Perri said, coming to RJ’s other side and wrapping her arms around his opposite leg.
“I know. I miss you too. But I might not be home again tonight,” he met his mother’s eye and she lifted a brow but didn’t seem actually annoyed. “It depends on how my show goes.”
Aaron tried not to squirm with embarrassment. Was RJ’s mother now imagining the reasons why RJ wouldn’t be home? And RJ doing those things with Aaron? Because he was. Fuck. Why did RJ have to be so sexy? Even with two kids clinging to his legs?