by Ella James
“Did you have a shit day?” He knows better than to look at me as he asks.
“Board meeting,” I manage. “And one of the main cams glitched up, so the camera people came from Sacramento.”
“No sneaking around while people fix the cameras,” he says softly.
I nod.
He shifts so he’s sitting by me. It’s a big tub, but it’s still a tight squeeze with our shoulders. We both stretch our legs out. He wraps an arm around my lower back and folds me to his chest. Then he leans back against the tub’s side.
“What do you do usually?” he murmurs, brushing his lips over my hair. “If you have a shit day?”
When I don’t answer, his long fingers stroke my shoulder. “You come home and have some of that whiskey?”
I shake my head.
“Go see someone?” he asks softly.
“What do you think?” The words come out sharper than I meant them.
“Doesn’t matter. I just want to picture you without me.”
I let my gaze lose its focus on the white of the tub. “Why?” I whisper.
“So when I’m thinking about you…after…I’ll know what to picture.” His voice is steady, but I feel his chest rise and fall. “You’re the reason I started praying.”
Heat suffuses my chest and throat. Then it blazes in my cheeks. “What do you mean?”
He shrugs. “Didn’t really get into that stuff when I was younger. Too pissed at the world. Then I met you and…” He inhales, blows the breath out. “I don’t know.” His voice is thick. “Couldn’t talk to you.” His cheek presses against my head. “Figured all that’s left was praying.”
I can’t swallow. I try a few times. A low-level buzz moves through my body, making my limbs heavy.
I stand. “Let’s get out.”
Part II
12
Vance
The gel is cold on my back. It’s so quiet in the bedroom, I can hear him pull the sticky pads off their clear backing. Thin wires brush my skin as he presses the small, round pads onto my back and shoulders. A spring creaks as he shifts his weight.
He didn’t like what I said—about thinking of him after I leave. Or maybe it was the praying part that got him. He rushed out of the bath and disappeared downstairs to get the little TENS machine. When he got back, he pulled a table over to the bed, set the thing up, and told me to lie on my stomach. Since then, he hasn’t spoken.
Damn Skywalker.
I thought of saying something, but now that he’s got me hooked up to this shock machine, I think I’ll wait.
“You ever done this?”
I shake my head, then realize my face is pressed into a pillow—so he can’t see. “No.”
“I had one in college. Rugby.”
Is that his way of reassuring me that he’s not going to electrocute me dead? I let out a long breath.
“I’m turning it on now. Starting low. Tell me when you feel it.”
My back and shoulders start to tingle weirdly. The sensation picks up till it doesn’t feel good.
“Feel it.”
“Uncomfortable?”
“A little.”
He turns it down.
“Still feel it?”
“Yeah.” It’s more creepy-crawly now.
“Good?”
“Yeah.” I guess.
He lies on his back beside me. For the longest time, he’s still and quiet. I feel hollow-numb from drinking, and a little helpless with this zapper making my back muscles twitch.
It seems fucking unfair how it’s never easy. And it’s never gonna be. My throat tightens, and I lock my jaw as my eyes ache a little.
That’s when he scoots closer. I feel his breath near my shoulder, feel his warm face brush the cool skin of my arm, which I’ve got raised up beside my head. His lips brush my bicep.
“Feeling good?”
I nod. Liar.
His hand sifts through my hair. “Vance?” It’s whispered against my skin.
“Yeah?”
He drapes one of his legs over mine, traces circles on my lower back. He’s so close he’s partway wrapped around me. That’s where he stays until he gets back up and turns the machine off. He wipes the gel away and stretches out beside me again.
This time, he wraps me against him. With our faces close together, his hand pushes my hair back. His forehead touches mine as his eyes close. Then his warm mouth takes mine, kissing deep and slow and hard—as if what he can’t say with words is being said with his mouth.
We break apart sometime later, panting. His eyes are hot on mine, his lips curving. His hands press my hair back again. One palm smooths over my beard scruff. He grips my jaw. For a second, his eyelids shut.
“You don’t know what you do to me.”
I reply with my mouth. It feels like I don’t do anything to you, you fucker. I press his shoulders into the mattress and crawl atop him, rub his dick through his briefs. He bites my nipple and flips me over so he’s on top, smiling before kissing my throat.
I bring his hand to my erection.
“Been a long, hard day.” I chuckle, and he rubs his palm over me.
“Turn back over, Rayne. Get on your stomach.”
I do, and he runs a soft hand over my back. Then he straddles my ass and starts rubbing where my shoulders hurt.
“I looked these spots up,” he says hoarsely. “On my phone today.”
Dude’s not lying. He knows all the pressure points. He rubs me until I’m moaning. I can feel his dick pressed to my lower back. My own cock and balls rest heavy against the bed’s blankets, throbbing as his thumbs rub my shoulders.
“Damn,” I groan.
“Right here?” He rubs the spot that I first showed him, and it’s so good I’m panting.
He stops, and his hand parts my cheeks. He strokes my balls, gives my stiff cock a few pumps, squeezes my base from behind.
I groan, thrusting my hips.
He holds my balls, rolling then tugging lightly. “Do you trust me?” It’s a low rasp.
“Some.”
He leans away, and I hear something rustle. Something cold presses behind my balls—one of the TENS leads. His face is a mask as he urges me onto my back and puts another one on the underside of my shaft, just below the head.
“Oh fuck…” I’m laughing in a nervous kind of way, reaching for myself. My hand hovers over my abs as his finger traces up my thick cock.
“I’m not going to hurt you.” He rubs a fingertip over the pad pressed to my cock. “It feels really good, I promise.”
He grips the base of my erection, pumps a few times. I shift my hips, groaning. “Have you done it?”
“All the time in college. I’ll start really low.”
He turns it on, and I’m hit with a hard rush of sensation. It’s like a kick…and then a hot flush through my junk. I groan and lift my hips as it builds in my balls. “Oh fuck…” They start to sort of throb. I can’t keep my hips from lifting…thrusting as a golden burst of pleasure spreads all through me.
“Aghhh.” I tense my glutes, making my cock bounce as so much tight, thick pleasure builds there, I’m just moaning…letting out these guttural hoarse groans. He cups my balls, squeezing just a little, and cum rolls down my tip.
I groan, hoarse and guttural.
“Good?” he whispers.
He does something to the machine, giving me a jolt of muscle-quaking bliss. “Oh, shit.” My teeth begin to chatter. A new wave of heat rolls through me. “I’m…about to come.” My legs start shaking. He leans down, tracing my cockhead with his warm tongue. I pull his hair and feel his low laugh vibrate through his body. His smart fingers press the lead behind my balls, which sends me out of this world. Then he works a fingertip into me, and I’m done.
I open my eyes later to a dark, quiet room. Pale light tilts in through the curtains—streetlights, traffic lights, the moonlight. My mouth is dry and my head feels fuzzy.
“Luke?”
He fits him
self around me. With a thick arm over my chest, he holds me against him. His cheek brushes my hair. With a deep breath and a long, slow exhalation, he’s asleep again.
13
Luke
Vance screws his face up as he sticks his tongue out, looking like a zombie as he grabs at his mouth. “What was that?” His face sours. “Shaving cream?”
I grin, rubbing my jaw. “Must have missed a spot.”
“Taste how bitter it is.”
His tongue thrusts into my mouth, and we’re kissing again. This time we don’t come up for air until we’re on the floor of the port-a-room in a tangle of hands and dicks and cum.
“Oh, shit.” A milk-white drop spills on my pants, and he grabs for toilet paper to dab at it. I’m trying to keep my laughter quiet as I grin at his troubled, paint-smeared face.
I clean my own hands off and wipe my dick. He’s still bent over the spot. “V.”
His gray eyes flash up to mine. I smile gently. “I can wear the jacket.”
“Yeah, but fuck—it’s Marky Mark, man.”
“We’ve met several times before for similar charity work.”
I lean up and ruffle his hair…wrap my hand around his neck and urge him to straddle my lap. Then I kiss him. Because, for this one moment, I can. It’s the way the songs and movies make it seem, like everything around us spins a little. Like we’re at the center of the universe.
When we come up for air, I pull him up against me and we lie flat on the blanket spread over the port-a-room floor.
“You want to see him?”
He laughs. “Hell yeah.”
“We’ll come through there. Walk and talk.”
“Those CK ads of his were life. And that catwalk video?”
I grin. “I know.”
“Was young Luke perving on him?”
I shift my gaze up to the little building’s ceiling. “Everyone has seen it.”
“Who’d you get all Jilly-y over back in your time, old guy?”
I snort. “We’re both millenials.”
“I guess we are.”
He rests his cheek on my chest, and we lie together, just being and breathing. I think of the odds that something like a fire will happen while I’m out here with him. That, or a shooting. All the footage would be reviewed and—
“Whatcha thinking about?” I jerk my thoughts away from that and force a smooth grin. “When to make you wear that plug again. Think you can do the real-deal painting with it in?”
“No.”
“Guess we’ll have to find out.” I kiss his jaw, then sit up. “Gotta finish writing a part of the sermon before our old friend the underwear prince gets here.”
Realization dawns on his face. “Tomorrow’s Saturday.”
I tap my temple.
“I don’t know if I can come.” He looks worried, which makes me laugh.
“Why not?”
“Like…sympathetic nervousness. What if you trip over a word?”
“I do. Rarely.”
“I might watch on TV.”
I shake my head. “Sleep in.”
He gives me a funny little smile before he slips out. “See ya later, preacher man.”
Vance
He doesn’t trip over a word on Sunday morning. Not one. I watch on the living room TV as he steps onto the stage wearing a flawlessly fitted navy suit, a pale pink tie, and an easy, Hollywood smile. It makes my heart thump because Skywalker, but for everybody else, I imagine that it’s almost soothing—that combination of his good looks and smiling face and affability, which I assume has gotta be at least a little calculated.
For the first fifteen minutes, I can only handle reading the subtitles. I’ve watched bits and pieces of his sermons on YouTube before, but never one from start to finish. In the past, it got to me too much—and it still does, for different reasons now. Sometimes the camera pans out and shows the entire audience. The sanctuary’s like an amphitheater. I don’t have a damn clue how he does it.
The service starts with music and some praying. He’s standing behind a podium. Then I watch as Luke walks to the front of the stage. If the text scrolling along the bottom of my TV screen can be believed, he says he’s had a busy week, and then he asks someone—the camera zooms in on a woman who looks my mom’s age—how her week went. She beams as she says her daughter just had her first baby. Closed captioning reports that everyone is clapping.
Luke takes a few steps back and starts to walk around the stage, the easy pacing reminding me of a comedian. He talks about how everyone is busy, and a lot of people have a lot on their plate. How we’re always looking for the thing that will make our gig easy. Maybe it’s more money. Maybe it’s a different job or a girlfriend. Maybe what’s under our skin is something even bigger than mundane stresses. Cancer.
We’re all petitioning God. He says that’s good—that God wants us to do that. Life is hard—a marathon—and a lot of it is uphill. I turn the volume up as he says, “It’s like that for all of us. At certain points along the way—at certain hard hikes—it gets tempting to say this is God’s fault. God’s not on my side. God is the cause of this pain. Maybe even God’s not real. Because I’m suffering, and why would a good God do that to me? I don’t want to engage with God. I don’t want to come to church. Life isn’t good. It’s just a place of suffering.”
The massive crowd is rapt as he does a slow about-face on the stage and, a second later, with his speech.
“It’s easy to feel that way—I’d say even natural. When you’re in pain, lashing out, looking for a cause, someone or something to blame, is what comes naturally. For me it does.”
I swallow as the camera zooms in on his face more.
“But this is an important moment—the moment that we start to feel that way. Because what we have to do—what we’re called to believe, as Christians—is that God is good. God is good during the hard times. God is more present with us, even, when we need him most. What do you think? Have you found that to be true?”
A loud round of applause moves through the arena.
Then the camera zooms in on a woman. She’s got long, blonde hair, and she’s holding a baby who’s got on oxygen tubing. Someone holds a microphone for her as she asks, in a cracked and teary voice, “How do you know? That God’s there?”
Now the camera moves to Luke’s face. It’s calm and unreadable. “It’s a choice.” He lets the silence linger after that statement—flawless theatrics. “Like benefit of the doubt, but on a grander scale. So let’s take spouses. Maybe your spouse has depression. Some days it looks like they’re just being a jerk. But you know the depression itself is beyond their control. You give them the benefit of the doubt. You trust that they mean well. Because, in many other ways, you’ve seen that your spouse cares for you. Loves you. And has good intentions.
“You could withdraw that benefit of the doubt. In fact…you’d be more likely to if you’re not spending time with your spouse and getting those other messages of love and caring. But if you keep the relationship between you strong by spending time together…I would say you’re probably not going to lose faith. You’ve got a strong bond. You trust your spouse’s intentions—based on evidence of their goodness. Evidence that’s visible to you and maybe sometimes only you…that comes from being in the relationship. From spending time alone together. Contemplative time, emotional time. Time where you have a need and your spouse is there for you. You’ve grown that relationship.
“So I would say you’ve got to choose to believe in the goodness of God—and let’s be real, all evidence, Biblical and theological, says that He is—to believe he’s got your best interest at heart. And doing that is something made more possible by engaging in a real relationship. Having a meditative spiritual practice where you rest with God. Studying the Bible, reading books and joining discussions that get you thinking more about its lessons. Spending time in prayer. Going to church, engaging in worship. Sharing your joy with God, as well as your pain. All that helps you shore up
that relationship so you can choose to believe God’s goodness. Not only can you choose to, but in that circumstance, it might even seem weird not to.” Contemplation paints itself in his patrician features. “What do you think? Does make sense?”
The woman’s nodding.
Holy hell. I didn’t realize this was so…conversational.
I watch as he talks to her more about God knowing and experiencing the pain of a suffering child, both through His son and all of humanity, and the look on the woman’s face is transformed from agonized and tearful to peaceful as she sits back down.
He answers two more questions. Then in his laid-back tone—I dub it “pastor-friend”—he goes back over his thoughts and some suggestions for things people can do to put his recommendations into action. I turn off the TV, feeling awed.
He’s so…natural. It was such a big arena—Pearl took me through the sanctuary that first shit-tastic day when he approached me in the atrium—but the tone of what went on inside it felt more like a coffee shop talk. It was nothing like I thought a televangelist’s sermon would be.
I’ve read before that he approaches things from a more “humble” perspective than other megachurch pastors. Now I guess I get it. It’s almost like he’s just offering his commentary as food for thought.
I run my hands through my hair then get up and pace the living room. He’s just so…Luke. He has so much power, and he uses it with so much care.
I’m still feeling shook when he shows up around 4:30 PM wearing gray sweats and a Hogwarts T-shirt and carrying two bags of Japanese food. His hair is sticking up in the front, and his Ray-Bans are hanging from his shirt collar. He gives me a little smile. I wrap an arm around him.
“My man. That was crazy.”
He looks amused when I pull back. “Not sure that’s what I’m going for.”
I explain while scooping our food onto plates, and we sit at the kitchen booth. “I gotta tell you, dude, I just didn’t know how good you are.”
His eyes are on his plate, but I see some color come into his cheeks. His eyes flicker to mine. “What?” His brows twist as he gives a little funny smile. Embarrassed.
