“What are you looking for, then?”
Another one of those goddamned visions of a black leather jacket flashed into his mind. He didn’t answer.
“Well, apparently not that nice boy. That nice, criminally attractive boy.” Barbara shook her head and tsked, but she patted him on the arm as she did so. “It’s a good thing you’re better at banking than your social life. Still, though, I’d like to know what you think you’re holding out for. The second coming?” Laughing at her own joke and giving him a final tsk, she turned and headed for the house.
Alexander sighed.
And Cary Bell stepped out from behind a tree.
Chapter Thirteen
Aww fuck.
There was no way to spin what Cary had heard in any way that didn’t make it seem like Alexander had dumped David because of what happened with Cary.
But damned if he wasn’t going to try.
“He had made a customized channel list on my TV,” Alexander said.
“Excuse me?”
“I don’t like people getting too presumptuous. I don’t like people in my space.” Alexander mentally replayed his conversation with Barbara. Though he hated that Cary had probably heard Barbara telling him how invested the board was in the outcome of the Liu situation, he consoled himself that nothing truly proprietary had been said. He wondered what Cary was doing out here. Hiding? That’s what Alexander had been doing, but here he was face to face with the man he’d been trying to escape.
“You don’t like it when other people exert agency, is what you mean,” Cary said, raising his eyebrows and taking a step closer.
“No, I mean exactly what I said: I don’t like other people in my space.”
“Like this?” He took another step. “You don’t like it when you’re not in control, do you, Alex?”
Jesus. Maybe there was some truth to those sexual harassment allegations. Not that Alexander felt harassed. But this aggression-bordering-on-belligerence was a side of Cary he hadn’t seen before. “The name is Alexander.”
Cary took another step. Alexander would be damned before he’d take a step back, though. He planted his feet, even if it did prove Cary’s point. What was wrong with wanting to be in control of your own life? It had served him pretty well thus far. “What do you want, Bell? I was just getting ready to leave.”
Cary didn’t answer right away, just stared, his mouth a grim, unforgiving line. When he finally spoke, what he said took Alexander’s breath away. “Honestly? I want to finish what we started last weekend.”
The astonishing proposition was so at odds with Cary’s forbidding expression that it would have been funny—if it weren’t so hot. But the impulse to laugh was obliterated by the jerking of Alexander’s cock, by the fact that every hair on his body stood on end, like they were all leaning toward the suggestion, as if they could somehow propel him forward as they screamed, “Yes.” But his higher mind, the part that was into concepts like self-preservation, hesitated.
Until Cary licked his lips. Alexander remembered what those lips had felt like parting beneath his own, opening so fully and readily and hungrily. Those lips that had haunted him for so many years. He wasn’t sure that Cary wasn’t playing him, but he was confident that Cary’s reaction last weekend had been genuine. You couldn’t fake that kind of desire. He cleared his throat. “If we…did that, it wouldn’t mean anything.”
“Of course not.” Cary agreed so quickly that Alexander felt a little foolish for even implying he might think the contrary. Then Cary flashed him an evil grin. “We’re at war, right? All I’m suggesting is a temporary suspension of hostilities.”
Alexander waited a beat before saying, “Your place.” He meant it about not wanting people in his space. He wasn’t making that mistake again, at least not this soon after David.
“Follow me.”
And eff him if Alexander didn’t then do exactly what Cary told him, following him around to the back of the pool. Cary tried the back gate, but it was locked. The only way out was going to be through the house, and Cary apparently didn’t like that option because he rattled the lock in frustration. Alexander didn’t either. The party was stifling, and they were likely to get pulled into conversations. They might have to see Liu, which would be the human equivalent of a hundred cold showers, so surely would it remind them why this was a terrible idea.
Alexander moved next to Cary to look at the gate, which was secured shut with a flimsy, rusty padlock. Cary rattled it again. “I guess we’ll have to go through—”
No.
If they went back through the house, Alexander wouldn’t be able to continue suspending his disbelief enough to actually go through with this.
So he pushed Cary aside, retracted his leg and kicked—a hard, swift blow that was rewarded with the breaking of the lock.
Cary inhaled sharply and glanced at Alexander. Alexander merely opened the gate and gestured to Cary to precede him.
They covered the large estate quickly and in silence, bypassing the valet stand outside the front door and continuing to the open field where the guests’ cars were parked. They passed Cary’s BMW first. He paused with his hand on the door and turned to look at Alexander. The heat was back in his eyes, and he was smiling a little proto-smile, like he had a secret. Alexander almost groaned right then and there as a rogue thought exploded across his consciousness. That mouth will be your undoing. Again.
“Three-fifty Kendall Avenue, main floor,” Cary said, still smiling, giving no sign that he felt any of the turmoil that was roiling around in Alexander’s chest.
Alexander nodded. It was a long drive back to the city from the Lius’ bucolic country spread. A long time to think, to come to his senses and realize why this was the worst plan in the world.
He needed to do something to prevent that from happening.
So he grabbed Cary’s wrist and pulled him against his chest. “Will you do something for me?” He was surprised at how raspy his voice was. He shouldn’t have been—it merely sounded like he felt, which was on the verge of losing control.
Cary nodded, and his cheeks flushed. Good. Finally an outward sign that Alexander had gotten to him.
“Turn off your goddamned music for the drive home.”
Cary must not have appreciated the directive, because he pulled back against Alexander’s grip.
“Why the hell do you care what I listen to in the car by myself?”
“Because I want you to concentrate—no distractions. I want you to spend the whole drive thinking about what I’m going to do to you. I want you to be ready for me.”
Cary raised his eyebrows, but he stopped trying to free his wrist from Alexander’s grasp. “And what are you going to do to me?”
“Everything.”
…
When Cary pulled his car into the driveway forty-five minutes later with his cock aching so badly he thought it might fall off, he turned his music way up. He turned it up enough so that Alex—his brain still refused to add the “ander” to the name—who had arrived just ahead of Cary and was waiting on the porch, would be sure to hear it.
Yep. Alex turned and scowled as Cary pulled past him to park in the drive, keeping an eye on Alex as he jogged down the steps and came toward the car. Cary would have thought he was going to open the door for him, all gentleman-like, except for the fact that he looked supremely pissed.
Good. Cary needed to appear in control. Obviously, Alex was getting to him—he wouldn’t have propositioned him otherwise, would be? But there was no need to let Alex know how much. How much the idea of Alex’s hands all over him had him practically drowning in desire.
He could only hope it was mutual. He didn’t flatter himself that the whole thing about dumping the model boyfriend had anything to do with him. Cary was pretty sure Alex did whatever he wanted whenever he wanted, damn the consequences. The way he’d talked to that Dominion board member back at the party was a prime example. Cary did flatter himself, though, that the heat in Ale
x’s eyes was genuine. That the urgency with which he’d kicked open Liu’s gate meant that he wanted Cary as much as Cary wanted him. They were about to have meaningless sex, sure, but Cary was pretty sure it was going to be spectacular meaningless sex. He just needed to remember that they were still at war, and that he had as much power here as Alex did.
So, in service of that aim, he paused a little too long with the door open so Alex could get a proper earful of Metallica.
“Turn that shit off.” An annoyed Alex reached into the car as if he were going to cut the engine.
Cary relished a surge of triumph that almost made him want to pump his fist at having gotten a rise out of Alex so easily. It was like pushing Marcus’s buttons, except…not at all like pushing Marcus’s buttons. “Don’t touch my car,” Cary said, turning the keys himself and avoiding eye contact as he brushed past Alex and walked up the porch steps.
As Alex followed him into the entryway, Cary wondered if Alex had ever hooked up with someone in such a humble abode before. Cary had sold his house when he started the new company, wanting to free up as much cash as possible to get it started. Renting suited him right now, and he had grown quite fond the nearly two-hundred-year-old house whose main floor one-bedroom apartment he called home. But though it was nice enough, it was certainly a far cry from the luxury Alex would be accustomed to.
He didn’t have to ponder the question for very long, though, because before they even got inside, while he was unlocking the door to his apartment, Alex pushed up against him. Not overly aggressively, but enough that Cary could feel his erection against his ass.
“I thought you didn’t like people in your space,” he said, unlocking the door but not moving. It took everything in him to just stand there, to tamp down the onslaught of desire that made him want to climb Alex like a tree.
“That’s true.” Alex’s cock pulsed and Cary bit the insides of his cheeks to prevent himself from making any noise. “But I have absolutely no problem getting in other people’s spaces.” Cary let his head fall back. The effort of holding it up was, suddenly, too much. He couldn’t hold his head up and keep himself from moaning at the same time, and right now, in the name of maintaining some dignity, he was concentrating on the “not moaning” part.
Alex lowered his mouth to Cary’s exposed throat. When his lips made contact, it was a jolting wake-up call. Cary jerked away and pushed open the door, which put some distance between them. He couldn’t let Alex drive this whole encounter.
Resolved, Cary pushed open the door, which led directly into his small living room. He didn’t bother turning on any lights. It wasn’t like this was a date. Or a seduction. It was a temporary ceasefire, which didn’t require mood lighting. Turning the tables on Alex in an echo of what Alex had done to him last time, Cary turned and pressed him back against the door, sliding his hands inside Alex’s suit jacket and pushing it over and off his shoulders and arms. The jacket dispensed with, he moved directly to the tie, undoing the double Windsor knot with hands he willed not to shake. Unlike last time, they didn’t kiss. Alex just watched him as he stood passively, letting Cary slip his shirt buttons from their holes.
Cary took a shuddering sigh when Alex was bared from the waist up. He lifted his hands to stroke that magnificent chest, was so single-mindedly focused on it, in fact, that he didn’t notice Alex’s hands come up until they had grabbed his wrists.
“Ah, ah, ah.” Alex said, his voice rolling like warm honey through the empty, dark apartment.
Cary tried to free himself. He needed to touch Alex’s skin. The compulsion was just as strong as it had been the other night. Just as strong as it had been that night twenty years ago on the lake. Stronger.
“While I fully endorse the concept of nudity here, I don’t think I should be the only one to do it this time,” Alex said.
Raising his eyebrows at the unexpectedly playful tone, Cary took a step back, waiting for Alex to do his worst. But nothing happened.
Alex nodded. “Go on.”
Cary shrugged out of his jacket. He’d lost his tie in the car, so he started right in on his buttons. But after he was halfway down, he realized what was happening. God damn Alex. He stopped undressing and took a step back. It was all about control for Alex. He might genuinely want to see Cary naked, as he’d said, but he wasn’t going to be the one to make it happen. Cary was beginning to understand the man Alex had become. To express desire now would make him feel weak. He wanted Cary to want him more than he wanted Cary.
Well, fuck that.
He started buttoning the shirt back up.
This time, when Alex’s hands circled around his wrists again, he was ready. He stopped working his buttons back into their holes, but he didn’t lower his hands, just stood there gazing at Alex, his balls aching and his cock hard as a rock. After a few seconds of the standoff, he allowed his gaze to drop, just for an instant, before lifting it back up to meet Alex’s eyes again. But it was enough to validate his theory that Alex was as turned on as he was. The tenting in his guest’s pants didn’t lie. Cary pulled back ever so slightly and said, simply, “Pity.”
It worked. Alex lunged, grabbing him by the shoulders and turning them both a hundred and eighty degrees so Cary’s back was to the door. He hadn’t wanted to be in the same position as last time, had wanted to be more hunter than prey, but hell, if this is what it took to get Alex to break his nonchalance and fucking act, he figured he was still coming out ahead. But when Alex reached out and grabbed one side of Cary’s shirt in each hand and ripped, causing the buttons on his shirt to scatter, hitting the hardwood floor at their feet with series of pings, Cary wasn’t sure anymore.
But he stopped caring because—holy God—Alex didn’t stop with his shirt. He took a moment to run his hands over Cary’s chest, causing goosebumps to rise on flesh that had, a moment ago, been overheated, then went straight for the pants buttons. There was no intermediary step—no cupping of Cary through his pants, no press of their hips together through their clothing, like last time. It was as if once he’d decided that undressing was what was happening, he wasn’t stopping until the job was done.
Cary had no problem with that. Or almost no problem. As Alex shoved Cary’s boxers down and tapped his leg, prompting him to lift it up so he could step out of them, Cary entertained a fleeting thought of how pliable he was being, despite his earlier vow to maintain some dominance. But as Alex slid his hands back up, one on each side of Cary’s outer legs, lightly gliding up, up, over his thighs and hips and coming around and parting so one grabbed an ass cheek and the other slid around to cup his balls, he could no longer hold on to that thought. “Fuck, yeah,” he groaned as Alex wrapped a hand around his dick, squeezing only lightly, experimentally pumping a few times. Cary heard Alex’s breath hitch and he bucked into Alex’s hand, chasing more pressure, needing more pressure. But then Alex pulled away, starting to work on his own pants, and Cary thought that he’d been wrong a moment ago when he’d thought he needed more pressure. What he really needed was Alex’s cock. Like, right now. So he moved to help, shoving the unbuttoned pants and the boxers underneath them down in one fluid motion. And Oh My God.
Cary was a dick man. He was an equal opportunity dick lover. He could write his own Dr. Seuss book about them. Because he liked them here, there, and everywhere. He liked them in his hand. He liked them in his mouth. Though he wasn’t going there today with Alex, he liked them other places, too.
And he appreciated them all. Big, small, fat, thin, cut, uncut. Didn’t matter. They were all beautiful.
But this one. Oh, this one. Like its owner, it was beautiful. Not porn-star huge, but plenty sizable, maybe six inches long, slightly fatter than average, and uncut. It was surrounded by a thatch of dark hair that had been trimmed but not shaved.
And it possessed the most important quality in a dick—it was straining toward him.
He knew he should be gentle, at least to start, but he couldn’t help it. He wanted. He pulled Alex to him s
o their cocks were touching between them and wrapped a hand around both, rubbing them together and being rewarded by the sound of a ragged inhale. Alex grabbed his ass and ground their hips together as he lowered his mouth to Cary’s. With a jolt, Cary realized they still hadn’t kissed yet. They’d moved straight to stripping. Alex plunged his tongue into Cary’s mouth, like last time, stroking him so deep it felt like he was trying to crawl inside Cary’s body.
“What were you doing on the patio at Liu’s?” he growled, sweeping his tongue even deeper.
“Trying to hide,” Cary answered immediately, unable to lie.
“From me?”
“Yes.”
“I don’t like you hiding from me.”
Oh, shit. He was going to come. Like a teenager who couldn’t keep himself under control, he was going to cause this to end before it had even begun. He broke the kiss and shifted so he was holding only Alex’s dick, removing his own from the situation for the moment. A drop of pre-cum leaked out of Alex’s slit. “I’ve thought about this since—” He checked himself. Mentioning that night would be a surefire mood killer. But it was true. Alex had been his first kiss. His first crush. As they had kissed and fumbled against each other on that dock, both of them wearing only wet shorts, Cary had felt Alex’s hardness. He had thought about it obsessively afterward, lust mixed with guilt. And, in his heart, he’d never stopped wondering what it would be like to be with Alex Evangelista. But, shit, he didn’t need to tell Alex any of that.
“Since when?” Alex prompted, his voice gruff. When Cary had pulled away, Alex had followed him, licking and kissing his throat, a determined assault that was making Cary’s legs feel week. “Since you broke into my house?” His stubble grazed the sensitive skin of Cary’s chest as he took a nipple into his mouth and bit down gently.
Cary’s hips surged forward of their own volition. “Since camp,” he panted, because for a moment of temporary insanity, he wanted the war to be off. Not just suspended, but over. Though it was probably unwise, he wanted Alex to know that he had thought about him over the years. As if that might somehow make up for what he had done. “Since the meteor shower.”
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