“So what does all that have to do with the tattoo, then?”
Sydney chuckles. “Oh, right. Well that first night on my own I slept on the beach—didn’t have anywhere else to go. Just had the clothes I was wearing and my bag of stuff and my board. Woke up in the morning and I was mad as hell. I’d never been so pissed off in my life. I went down to the water and the only thing I could think to do was yell ‘fuck you’ as loud as I could at my father. Well, not at him, but, you know, at the waves.”
“I get what you mean.”
“And then this jellyfish suddenly swam right up next to me where I was standing in the water. Thought it would sting me, but it just . . . hovered there by my leg and let me watch. And for whatever goddamn reason, looking at that thing, I—I don’t know. I wasn’t mad anymore. It was all completely gone. So I saved up money fixing shit and found out about an artist over on the Big Island that would tattoo a kid my age if I showed up alone. Flew down and got this the first chance I could. Never been mad about any of it again since. Stupid, but, that’s the story.”
“It’s not stupid at all,” James breathes.
It’s the least stupid thing he’s ever heard in his life. He wants to take his splayed open heart right out of his chest and press it against the tattoo covering Sydney’s back—the tattoo he now won’t ever be able to look at without seeing a young kid, lost and alone on a beach.
He wants to lean down and press his lips to the inked skin and taste it. So he does.
Sydney gasps when James’ wet and parted lips touch his skin, kissing the top of his spine before slowly, carefully, dragging them down along one of the inked lines. He refuses to hesitate, in case even a second’s pause makes him lose his nerve, and he follows the jellyfish across the muscles of Sydney’s back and down towards his hips. James releases a shaky breath, stunned at his own daring, unsure if this is even happening in reality, or if he’s just dragging his lips across his own palm, deep in a dream.
But the ocean rushes in, and the salty wind caresses his bare back, and James knows it’s not a dream as he watches goosebumps form across Sydney’s back, shivering under the touch of his lips. James keeps tracing the lines up and back, following the flowing tentacles across his skin. He kisses them with his lips, licks and tastes them with his tongue, runs his nose along the smooth lines of muscle and breathes in the scent of him, salty and floral and warm.
“James.”
Sydney’s voice is low and ragged. The sound of it shoots heat through James’ veins and pools deep in his gut, throbbing once between his legs where he still sits pressed over the bottom of Sydney’s hips. Sydney quivers and rolls beneath him as James tastes every inch of the skin of his back, the tattoo as a tender guide for his wet tongue.
Without thinking about it, James grinds his hips down slowly, suddenly feeling his hardening cock press deep into the warm crease of Sydney’s ass through his shorts.
They moan simultaneously. James freezes, and the cool air crackles around them, rushing across James’ skin and sensitizing the tips of his fingers.
“James.” This time it’s a whisper. The air around them releases.
The breeze coming off the ocean rushes in to weave through Sydney’s curls, and James rolls his hips down once more onto Sydney’s body, rubbing himself off slowly, glacially on the heat radiating out from the dip of Sydney’s ass. He can’t remember the last time he even got close to being this hard. Can’t remember the last time he was lightheaded and breathless, muscles trembling and lungs shaking and lips wanting to taste, taste, taste. Hot and swollen between his legs, already tenting the fabric of his shorts.
A small part of his brain, the tiny alarm from the shower that now feels like a lifetime ago, starts to go off in earnest.
James is sitting out in the open air in front of the entire world with an erection between his legs and a man underneath him. A man who’s arching up into James’ touch, and reaching back with a shaking hand to grab tight onto James’ hip and squeeze. A man who’s panting on ghosts of little sighs, hovering on the tips of his full, wet lips. Who’s grasping a fistful of sand.
Who calls him James.
James Campbell tells the alarm in his mind to shut the fuck up. He raises himself up off of Sydney’s hips and leans down to press an open, wet kiss to the tattoo one last time.
“Turn over.”
He barely recognizes his own voice. It’s rough and hoarse, desperate—an entirely different kind of desperate than the way Keith Hartman had screamed over the chaos for him to run. Sydney turns slowly beneath him until he’s splayed out on his back, chest heaving and eyes blown wide, looking up at James with barely parted lips. The dying sun illuminates a sheen of wetness from when he must have licked them.
James licks his own lips and stares. Sydney’s skin is painted gold, bathed by the warm colors of the sun just barely hanging on in the sky. It molds across the muscles of his chest. Drapes over his stomach and down his lean, tan arms. James’ eyes track down the whole length of Sydney’s body, knowing Sydney is watching him look. He takes in his nipples, dark and peaked in the cooling air and the salty breeze. Takes in his hard, rippling stomach and the trail of hair leading from his navel down to the quivering waistband of his shorts. Down to the thick, bulging erection that’s now just inches from James’ own, throbbing and hovering in the air as a tented mound.
He meets Sydney’s eyes again and swallows hard. He’s on the cusp of a decision—one somehow more potentially dangerous then signing his name on an enlistment form. As if he could simply walk away right now if he chose to, even having kissed Sydney and willingly straddled his body. As if he could go back to Los Angeles, and return to his job, and have sex with women again and completely forget that the hardest he’d ever gotten in his life was when he was poised over the crease of another man’s body, imagining a stubble-covered cheek rubbing against his.
He can see a separate stream of thoughts playing out across Sydney’s pale and glittering eyes—nerves mixed with uncertainty and drowning in arousal. He watches Sydney blink a few times, as if he’s trying to clear them, then James reaches forward, still hovering just above Sydney’s body, and gently brushes the hair back from Sydney’s forehead with his fingers. Sydney leans into the touch and sighs, body going limp into the blanketed sand.
It’s a decision.
James gives a small nod, and at that, Sydney sucks in a breath and sits up quickly onto his elbows. He grips James firmly by the hips and, after a brief pause, pulls him down onto his lap. James settles his weight with a deep hum, and Sydney’s throat rolls with a hard swallow.
They stare at each other. James feels as if he’s never actually looked at this man before, never truly understood the physicality of the bone and muscle, the lines of his face. The young wrinkles starting to bloom from the corners of his eyes. He looks at those same eyes which spotted the jellyfish, which conquered the sea, which watched him take his first breath through blue lips on the rocky shore.
And while he’s still looking, lost in an eternal pause of time, Sydney tilts up his head, wraps his palm around James’ neck, and calmly captures James’ mouth in a kiss.
The taste of Sydney’s lips shiver down through his body and pool in thick warmth in the deepest part of his belly. He continues to straddle Sydney’s hips, sinking his full weight into his body, and an odd shiver of pleasure runs of his spine when he realizes doesn’t feel like he’s in the lesser position at all. Rather, his own thick erection presses down against the heaving skin of Sydney’s stomach through his shorts, pushing into his body with the force of his want.
James looks down at the bulge of his cock tracing the lines of Sydney’s tense abdominals and moans. Sydney’s hands are clutching at his back, running up his chest, cupping the side of his face and neck as his warm, wet lips once again caress his mouth. James tastes him. Their tongues meet, trembling in between them while they breathe gasps of hot, groaning air into each other’s mouths.
James disappears
. The edges of his body blend and smear into Sydney’s warm skin. The spray of the pounding ocean waves showers his back, and droplets of cool air dripping from the earliest stars run down his neck. His knees are caressed by the gentle warmth of the sand through the blanket as he looks down at Sydney’s face and kisses him deeply, not daring to pause for breath for fear that everything will suddenly halt. He thrills deep in his chest when Sydney’s lips and tongue press back against his, eager and firm.
His skin is electric—every touch, every grip, every caress from Sydney’s fingers pulsing through his body with a hot jolt, leaving permanent imprints of his fingertips on James’ back and chest. James runs his hand through Sydney’s hair and grips a handful of soft, velvet curls. His fingernails scratch warm scalp. Sydney gasps, his panting sighs melding with the hiss of the waves rushing over the shore.
James licks one last time into Sydney’s mouth across his tongue, tasting the salt on his lips as Sydney gasps in surprise. James sighs out through his nose with their mouths wetly pressed together before pulling back for air, fingers still clutching at a handful of curls. He wants to say something elegant, something casually important. Something that could somehow convey even one tiny portion of how he feels in this moment, where he’s a man who’s kissing a shirtless Sydney Moore on a goddamn Hawaiian beach. But, for some reason, the thought of opening his mouth to try to say any of that makes him feel like parts of him would fly out from his lungs, tumbling away into the open sky, and he’d never get those parts back again. And Sydney would see.
Instead all he can do is shake his head and whisper, “Fuck . . .”
Sydney lets out a breathy laugh and runs his nose along James’, trailing his fingers through the hair on James’ chest with one hand while the other grips under his thigh. Sydney opens his eyes, blinking a few times in the thin light from the dying sun, and James finds that he can only stare into them for a few seconds before having to close his own. He wants to press his lips right onto Sydney’s eyelids and feel his eyelashes brushing against his mouth. He wants to somehow taste the irises themselves on his loose tongue—the eyes that only he gets to see so bare and up close.
Sydney licks his kiss-swollen lips. “You are a marvel.”
James laughs, then prickles under his arms, acutely aware again that he’s basically sitting in Sydney’s lap. “Feel like I should be in the 50s hearing you say that. Wearing a petticoat.”
Sydney tries to smile back, but the steel glow of his eyes is intensely serious. “Well, it’s true.”
James’ skin runs hot, and he half-heartedly scoffs.
He’s the marvel? He’s thirty-two living like he’s twenty with no plans, no direction, a chain of dog tags in his sock drawer and a cheap surfboard taking up half the space in his tiny studio. And here’s Sydney Moore, with his private beach house and his own business and a list of championship titles longer than a sheet of lined paper. Smarter than James by half, with the body of a fucking model, who steps one foot onto a beach and sucks everyone’s breath clear out of their lungs.
An unwelcome mixture of indignation and embarrassment churn in his system. He starts to shift, lifting his weight back up onto his thighs and knees. The way Sydney’s lap has been cradling him, bony knees holding him close, suddenly feels a lot like pity.
But then Sydney runs his thumb along James’ cheek, still slightly damp from his tears. He doesn’t stop James from shifting away, but leans in and leaves the softest ghost of a kiss just on the corner of James’ mouth, tongue darting out to taste his skin.
James realizes that he’s never been more wrong in his life. Realizes that the man he wants to compare himself to, the man he tries so hard to convince himself is too good to be true, too good to willingly cup James’ cheek and kiss him—that man is not Sydney Moore. Not the Sydney Moore he thinks he knows.
Sydney’s mouth brushes against his once more, and James re-gathers the courage he’d flown through from the cliff. He whispers against his lips, in a voice that sounds too thin and fragile to be his own.
“Sydney.”
Sydney hums and tilts James’ head back gently with his hand before bringing his lips to his neck, leaving soft, wet kisses from his shoulder to his ear. James gazes up at the stars, tingling through his entire body, and tries to breathe. He feels himself growing hard again against Sydney’s stomach, and he lets himself press forward just once against the hot friction of Sydney’s body. He whispers Sydney’s name up to the stars, so softly he can’t even hear himself, just hot breath over his tongue, and he shuts his eyes tightly as the barest hint of stubble from Sydney’s jaw rasps over his throat.
Sydney’s wet, rolling tongue on his neck sends a zip of fire down his spine. The damp heat of his panting breath, saved for James’ skin alone. James rocks his hips down once more on to Sydney’s body, settling his weight, then, with a rush of boldness, looks down as he rubs the tip of his erection through his shorts against Sydney’s stomach.
Sydney watches too, eyes glossy and wide, and whispers a curse through his full lips.
James needs more. Now. Sydney pants more wet, hot breaths onto his shivering skin, devouring his neck, and James’ free moans echo out across the sea. Without warning, Sydney reaches around and grabs James’ ass firmly in both hands, pulling him forward hard and crushing James’ cock into his abs, and James’ hips explode in a white hot flame of want.
He grips Sydney by the shoulders and pushes him down into the sand with a grunt, looming over him on his hands and knees. Sydney whimpers as James leans down and kisses him fiercely, groaning into his mouth and biting his full, wet lips between his teeth. Sydney melts beneath him; he runs his hands down James’ back, grabs his hips hard and pulls, and James collapses down on top of Sydney’s warm and writhing body. Their bare chests touch, pearled nipples brushing over sensitive skin. James shifts his weight up just an inch so that their erections align, and they both gasp out of the kiss and moan.
“God . . .” James hears himself groan, and he feels more than he hears Sydney’s response rumble through his hair, “Yeah, come on . . .”
James aches between his legs. It’s a consuming, throbbing heat he’s never before felt while pressed against another person—one that makes him hyper aware of every place their skin touches, every groaning puff of breath from Sydney’s close, open mouth. He closes his eyes and simply feels Sydney arching up into him, pressing his hard cock up against James’ own as they rock into the heat of each other. James’ hand flies out, gripping the sand above their heads for balance, and he shifts his hips so he can rub his balls slowly along the length of Sydney’s erection through the fabric of their shorts. The thick, solid cock beneath him throbs and trembles at his touch.
Shocking words fly up into James’ mouth and slam into the back of his teeth. He wants to close his lips around Sydney’s ear and tell him he’s huge, that the sweat pooling between their bare chests is hot and slick across his skin, that Sydney’s giant hand trailing from the back of his neck to his thigh is driving him crazy, desperate. He wants to moan, for some insane reason and over and over again, the words, “your cock . . . fuck, your cock . . .”
Instead James yanks Sydney’s head to the side and bites the thin skin in the crook of his neck. Sydney whimpers, whole body pulsing, as James holds him down so he can rub their cocks along each other, hot and slow and smooth. He’s clenching tight through his thighs. Aching at the evidence of Sydney’s thick want for him bulging the front of his shorts, dripping fat, wet drops of precum onto the fabric as they move as one.
And Sydney’s huge, hot hands are everywhere at once, consuming every untouched inch of James’ sides and back. Long fingers grasp hard at his ass, at his neck and shoulders, at every bone up his rolling spine, quivering and dripping with beads of sweat in the salty breeze. James lifts his cheek from Sydney’s neck and realizes he’s been cradling the back of Sydney’s head in his palm for who knows how long. Something sharp flashes through his chest at the sight of the dark curl
s wrapped gently around his fingers, letting him protect them from the sand being flung onto the blanket. He hesitates for a moment, then keeps his hand there.
Just when James realizes neither of them has said anything for a long time, too long a time, that they’ve just been lying together in their shorts breathing shallow kisses and naively touching bare chests, not even naked, not even thrusting, not even touching cocks . . . Just then, Sydney’s hand suddenly slides under James’ waistband to grab the bare skin of his ass in his palm, gripping hard and rough.
The breath leaves James’ lungs. He rests his head with a crash on Sydney’s shoulder, running his hand up over the contour of Sydney’s chest and nipple, and Sydney lets out a cry, high and breathless, as James sucks on the smooth skin just beneath his ear.
“James,” he rumbles, voice nearly gone. The single sound seems to echo forever across the still, moonlit shore—so loud that James fears that all of Oahu just heard it, so deep that James feels it straight through to his own chest and bones.
And then Sydney’s lips are on his again, gasping breath straight down James’ throat, and his mouth pants wet, open, frantic kisses against James’ swollen, sensitive lips. James ignores the wave of crippling unease that slaps across his back as he tries to build a thick rhythm, his aching erection grinding down onto the pulsing heat of Sydney’s cock. He keeps time to the unprecedented moans and grunts escaping his throat, vibrating against Sydney’s lips.
Sydney catches on. Of course he does, he’s a fucking genius, isn’t he? James refuses to let his mind keep wandering down that trail—imagining the more sculpted bodies, the more impressive surfers, the more confident, desirable, arousing men who’ve felt Sydney’s hands on them before, no scars in sight. Instead he moans a reckless curse when Sydney’s palm snakes without warning between their bodies and cups James’ erection.
The Sea Ain't Mine Alone Page 24
