“The best that money can buy,” Russ said, looking over his shoulder.
“You have to trust somebody some time,” Jarold said, interpreting the look.
“I trust you and I trust me,” Russ said. “And I’m not so sure about me.”
Jarold smiled as he crossed the short space to where Russ was sprawled on a lounge chair in a deceptively casual pose. “Scoot over,” he said.
Russ grabbed Jarold’s wrist and pulled him down across his lap. Jarold laughed and tried to get back up, but Russ wrapped arms and legs around him, holding him there. Propping his chin on Jarold’s shoulder, Russ spoke in the other young man’s ear. “Wouldn’t it be lovely if this were our deck, our house overlooking the bay?”
“Yeah, that would be really nice, but maybe we should talk about the immediate future.”
“It’s being decided for us right now.” Russ’s warm breath stirred the fine hairs at Jarold’s nape. “God, I can’t get enough of you.”
“That’s mutual,” Jarold said, letting his cheek rest against Russ’s. “They say ‘seek and ye shall find’. Well, I sure wasn’t expecting to find you when I came to Oz, but I’m not sorry.”
Russ sighed in relief. “Does that mean you’d wait for me?”
“It means I’d come for conjugal visits.”
“You’re a beaut, Jazza,” Russ said, and couldn’t resist teasing. “For a straight boy.”
Jarold bit playfully at his lover’s nose. “You can laugh, but I was looking around at the beach and not one of the guys there interested me.”
“What about the girls?”
Jarold shook his head. “I saw a lot of beautiful women, but I didn’t feel the urge to do any of them. Don’t know what you did to me, but you’re the only one I want. Whoa! Hey!”
Jarold flailed as Russ surged up, hugging him fiercely, lips questing for his. The American turned in the other man’s arms, one knee pushing against the inside of Russ’s thigh as he brought their mouths together. One deep kiss and a flurry of frantic caresses later, they drew apart, panting and trembling with noticeable swellings at their groins. Jarold sat astride Russ’s lap, the hard ridge of his erection pressed against the Australian’s.
“I’ve faced it,” Jarold said softly. “You’re catnip to me, and I’m not even going to try and fight it.”
Russ made a rumbly, purring noise as Jarold rocked almost imperceptibly against his pelvis. “You can do that for the rest of my life, mate.”
Jarold looked up at the French doors that framed Russ’s head and remembered that they weren’t alone. “It’s Ripley’s,” he said in wonder. “Swear to God, you make me forget everything. All I want to do is you.”
“Think your mum will approve of me?”
“I know you’re not being serious, but yeah, I do; I think she’d like you a lot. And I think she’d be okay with us being together. My family’s pretty liberal. My sis is having her boyfriend’s baby and no one’s said a word about them getting married. Not saying they don’t want her to get married, but my folks would never push it.”
“They sound lovely. Maybe someday….”
“Incoming,” Jarold said, climbing off Russ and standing awkwardly next to the deck chair.
Russ sat up as the doors behind him opened. “And that’s why Sydney Swans are my Aussie Rules footy team,” he said, as he rose from the chair. “Hi, Officer Davis. Ma’am.”
Jennifer Coolidge nodded to Jarold and Russ. “For now, you can consider yourselves in my custody. I’ll have to recuse myself from any trial resulting from the investigation, but I’ve given Ben here a warrant based on his word that Mr. Jason Leith has violated the public safety laws at his place of business at Oxford Street.”
“It’s a dodgy locale and no mistake,” Russ said.
Jen turned to Jarold. “Mr. Lake, I’d like to offer you the opportunity to get in touch with the American Consulate, or perhaps your family?”
Jarold shook his head. “I’d rather my folks didn’t know about this until it’s over.”
“I believe you’re making a mistake,” she replied. “But you’re an adult, legally and chronologically, and you’re free to make your own mistakes. That said, you’re welcome to stay in my home for the present.”
“I’ll ring as soon as I have anything of interest to report,” Ben Davis told her, looking much like a Greyhound at the starting gate. “Don’t worry, lads. We’ll get this sorted out.”
“Off you go,” Jen said. “And Ben… do take care.”
“Ma’am.” Ben gave her an ironic little bow as he left.
“Well,” Jen said, fixing Russ with her level gaze, “I’ve work to do in my study. May I take your word that you’ll behave like civilized beings? Good. The loo is down that hall and you may use the second bedroom on the right if you want to rest. I’ve no idea what’s in the fridge, but you’re welcome to see for yourselves.”
As soon as her back was turned, Russ grabbed a handful of Jarold’s crotch and squeezed. Jarold made an indeterminate little noise that Jen pretended not hear as she entered her home office and closed the door. Jarold smacked Russ’s ass hard.
“Asshole!”
Russ tightened his grip slightly. “You might want to rephrase that.” Jarold moaned. “That’s much better,” Russ smiled, leading Jarold away by the most convenient handle.
Chapter Seven
Standover Man
“SURE you’re all right?”
“I’d be better if you’d quit stopping to ask,” Jarold said in a strained voice.
“Tough guy,” Russ said fondly as he eased forward.
Jarold let out the breath he’d been holding in a long sigh as Russ sheathed his length. He looked up from the point where their bodies joined and met the other man’s eyes. Bearing down with his interior muscles, he watched the expression change on Russ’s handsome face. “That feels pretty good, huh?”
“Strike me! What’ve I done?” Russ replied. “I’ve created a monster.”
“Yeah, but I’m your monster.”
“Too right, and don’t forget it. Do you really like this?”
“What? Having your dick inside me? Yeah, it feels good. Well… maybe not right at this moment, but when you get going, it feels incredible.”
“I’ve become such a soft bugger since I met you. Can’t stand the thought of hurting you.”
Jarold rolled his eyes. “I’m a big boy. I can take it.”
Russ grinned wickedly. “And so you shall,” he said, rocking in the saddle, making Jarold hiss at the sensation of being filled to capacity in the best way imaginable.
“I think I can feel the thunder,” Jarold gasped, as Russ gave his hips a roll at the end of the next short stroke. “Down under.”
Russ groaned at the lame joke, smacking Jarold’s thigh as he withdrew from the tight passage. Before the American could protest, Russ took hold of his ankles and raised them to his shoulders. Jarold relaxed back against pillows, open and vulnerable, his trust in Russ shining in his eyes like the azure runway lights that guide the weary traveler home. Against all expectation, he felt a connection to the Australian that was more than friendship, more than lust, more like the nebulous thing he’d heard about all his life in books, movies, and popular music, the thing that you were supposed to know when you felt it: the thunderbolt of love. The idea that he was in love with a man didn’t scare him, but the thought of being separated from that man was unbearable. As if reading Jarold’s thoughts, Russ leaned in and kissed him so sweetly that Jarold’s eyelids prickled with a sudden rush of salt water.
“What’s all this?” Russ asked, licking at the moisture that trickled down Jarold’s temples into his hair. “I’m happy to switch places if you like.”
Jarold shook his head. “It’s not…. You’re not hurting me, not in a bad way. I was just having one of those little epiphanies where you see things very clearly for just a second.”
“And that made you weep? Sure it wasn’t my enormous bum-tickler?”<
br />
“Stop it,” Jarold laughed through his tears. “You’re impossible; you know that, don’t you?”
“I’d be lying if I said you were the first to tell me that.” Russ re-seated the tip of his arousal, rubbing the blunt head against Jarold’s opening. “But I do have some redeeming qualities, I promise you.”
Russ bumped against Jarold’s flexing port a few times, applying a bit more pressure on each pass. Jarold twisted against the sheets, lifting his pelvis, seeking greater contact with the teasing shaft. When the swollen tip pushed through his entrance, Jarold moaned his approval. Russ flattened his palms against Jarold’s chest, rubbing the pink areolas, thumbing the peaked nipples, pinching and rolling them between his fingers as he sank into the other man by degrees, seeking optimum depth. “Give me a clue, Jazza,” he requested softly.
“Sorry,” Jarold said. “I was thinking about something else. Keep it coming. Yeah. Yeah. Oh, shit. Back up. Back… oh, God, yes!” he yelped as his back arched off the mattress.
Russ slid his hands down to grip Jarold’s sleek flanks, holding him in place as he thrust shallowly. Tanned buttocks bunched and released as Russ held himself to a sedate pace, plumbing the narrow ingress, navigating by sound as Jarold steered him with moans and small whimpering cries. Lowering his lover’s left leg, Russ pushed it flat against the linen and altered his angle to drag across Jarold’s sweet spot on a diagonal.
“Fuck!” Jarold gasped from between gritted teeth, stroking himself faster. “I can’t believe anything could feel this good. How in hell do you… oh, shit. Oh, God. Russ. Russ, wait! I don’t… oh! God!”
Jarold’s quivering length jerked and spilled warm, thick fluid over his knuckles. Russ grasped Jarold’s wrist and drew the sticky fingers into his mouth one at a time. Jarold groaned, his shaft dribbling one more spurt to puddle on his lower belly, as Russ licked and sucked every trace of cum from his hand.
“God damn, that’s sexy,” Jarold murmured.
“And scrumptious,” Russ smiled, lengthening his stroke. “I love the taste of you.”
“I wasn’t ready to come,” Jarold complained.
“Yes you were.”
“No I wasn’t.”
“I think I know a bit more about buggery than you, sport. And you’re still hard.”
Jarold grinned. “I can’t help it.”
“No worries. I’ll take care of it,” Russ said, and he did. He took care of Jarold very well indeed.
Jarold didn’t even know that he could climax three times in a row, but Russ was happy to educate him. The third orgasm was mutual, with Russ supporting Jarold’s wrung out frame as he pushed into him from behind, stroking him inside and out until friction produced the reliable result. As his sated shaft twitched dryly, Jarold turned his head as far as he could to meet Russ’s lips. Russ claimed the sweet mouth as his seed unspooled deep inside Jarold, lowering him to the linen as both melted into the afterglow. Jarold’s eyelids fluttered as he settled into the mattress.
“Ssssublime,” he whispered.
Russ carefully disengaged and spooned back up against Jarold. “Where have you been all my life?” he joked gently, his lips moving against Jarold’s damp back.
“Everywhere,” Jarold murmured. “Looking for you.”
“What shite.”
“No, really. I was looking for inner peace and you gave it to me.”
“Rubbish.”
Jarold rolled over to face Russ. “We’ve known each other approximately forty-eight hours, but I know in my soul that I want to be with you for the rest of my life.”
“Easy, sport,” Russ said, playing connect the dots on Jarold’s face. “What’s happening to us is bloody intense, but that doesn’t mean it’s going to last.”
Jarold blinked at the brutal frankness of Russ’s words. “I think it will. I’ve never felt this way about anyone, and I can’t imagine it going away.”
“Even if it didn’t, even if the fire was just as hot twenty years from now, who’s to say it won’t burn us up or burn us out? Perhaps it’s too much passion to sustain on a daily basis for years upon years. Maybe the very strength of what we feel is what will drive us apart.”
“Perhaps? Maybe? I’ll take those odds,” Jarold said, sounding much more awake than he had a minute ago. “If you can’t tell me one hundred percent that this thing will destroy us, then I’m willing to take the chance. I know that you make me happy. You make me feel… right… like I’m where I belong. I feel like as long as we’re together, I won’t have to sweat the small stuff. Isn’t that enough to at least give it a try?”
“It might not be the safest or smoothest road.”
“Fuck safe!” Jarold sat up. “And fuck smooth while you’re at it. If you give me a choice between a comfortable life and a hard life with someone I love, well, that’s no choice at all for anyone with a heart and soul.”
“Maybe that’s what you can give me.”
“Oh, eat me. You have a heart, or you’d have given Leith the footage from those cameras, and you have a soul, or you’d have let that guy Norton fuck me. Stop dodging it. If I can overcome my learned sexual prejudices enough to sleep with you, surely you can consider for one tiny moment the possibility that we could love one another and be happy.”
“Shhh, Jazza.” Russ put a finger to Jarold’s lips.
“I don’t care if she hears. If she didn’t hear me come that second time, she’s deaf anyway.”
Russ chuckled, and then couldn’t stop his laughter. In a lifetime of unlikely circumstances, this was the topper. He was in the borrowed bed of a criminal court judge, on the run from a fearsome crime boss, listening to an avowed straight boy tell him they were soul mates after having the screw of the century, and he was worried about eavesdroppers.
“You’re not all there, are you?” Jarold said affectionately as someone knocked on the door.
“Gentlemen?” Jennifer called out. “Could you do with some tucker?”
Russ bounced out of bed, pulling on his trousers as he went to the door. “Just give us a few minutes to wash up,” he said.
“Right-o,” Jennifer said, and they heard her footsteps recede down the hall. She was waiting in the front room when they emerged, hastily dressed with finger-combed hair. Jennifer tilted her head to one side. “You’ve switched shirts,” she said.
“No we haven’t,” Russ said as he and Jarold glanced quickly at one another.
“Ah, but you checked, didn’t you?” she pointed out. “Just a wee joke to show that we magistrates aren’t all gloom and doom. I thought we’d stroll down to my favorite seafood restaurant and walk off the calories on the way back. Objections?”
“As we’ve hardly any money, it would be a bit rude to complain,” Russ said as he and Jarold followed her out the front door and down the terraced hillside to the bay. Jennifer led them to a small restaurant hard beside a dock with graceful sailboats moored down its length. They sat outside and ate the biggest shrimp Jarold had ever seen, puzzling Jen with his snort of laughter when she informed him they were called prawns.
“I’m teaching him Strine,” Russ said. “But it’s slow going. Mind if I pop across the way for a packet of smokes?”
Jennifer nodded, her attention focused on disabusing Jarold of the notion that all Australians talked like Russ. Jarold watched Russ cross the road, and then turned politely back to Jennifer as she asked him a question.
Russ disappeared into the newsagent’s, digging in his pocket for coins. After paying, he walked to the back and out the service door to have a minute to himself. Ripping open the cellophane, Russ lit a cigarette and walked along the alley until he could see Jarold on the other side of the street. He didn’t see anyone watching them and was about to return when he felt a tap on his shoulder.
“How ya goin’?” Hugh Stanwell asked.
Russ’s cigarette fell to the ground. “How the bloody hell did you find me?”
Hugh reached out and Russ recoiled. The enforcer gave the y
oung man a rueful smile. Holding up his arm, he tapped his wrist. “It’s your watch, mate.”
Russ looked down at the expensive timepiece that Leith had gifted him with. “What about it? Are you telling me I’m bugged?”
“There’s a thingo in your watch that puts out some kind of signal that can be picked up by GPS,” Stanwell said. “I told the boss he was being paranoid, but you know what he was like about technology: the more the better.”
“You said was.”
“Pardon?”
“You said the boss was, past tense. Is he dead?” Russ said.
“Not quite, but he is in custody, so I reckon he might as well be.”
“Leith’s been arrested?”
“That’s right,” Stanwell said. “Please you, does it?”
“And why wouldn’t it? Bastard.”
“A bastard who took you off the streets, sunshine, cleaned you up and employed you.”
“He got good use out of me. I reckon we’re even.”
“He doesn’t. You know why I’m here, don’t you?”
“Honestly? I was expecting Gruesome Guy.”
“Ah well, can’t be helped. Gruesome actually is dead. Took a shot at the coppers. They reacted badly. Can’t say I’ll miss him. He was a bit off.”
“He was a bloody psychopath.”
Stanwell chuckled. “Why call a spade a spade when you can call it a fuckin’ shovel, ay?”
Russ didn’t smile back. “If you’re here to kill me in some sort of pointless revenge, you should know that I won’t go quietly.”
“I could always shoot your mate across the road.”
“I wouldn’t let you,” Russ said firmly.
Hugh Stanwell fixed his intense gaze on the young man. “You’re different, Russ,” he said. “What’s become of you? You used to be King Bludger. You couldn’t be bothered to take a stand on anything. So long as you were taken care of, you went along with whoever took care of you. Look at you now: standing up on your hind legs, making threats and ultimatums. Where do you get the hide?”
The Raw Prawn Page 7
