Turn on the cab light, Gavin. Give me something.
Lungs on fire, Jamie swam around to the other side and began working at that door. He dug his fingers into the frame and kicked into the window. He stripped off his belt and tried beating the buckle into the empty cold glass, jabbing the prong against it again and again.
When hands grabbed his arm on a back swing, his first thought was that it was Geist, that he was on a rescue, but Geist would never try to stop him and this wasn’t a rescue, this was Gavin, and it would take three Geists to pull him out of the water because they’d have to sit on him before he stopped trying to get Gavin out of the car.
He jerked free, kicking back and pressing his face onto the glass again. The green lights on the instrument panel were faint, but there. Where was Gavin?
Someone yanked Jamie’s head back by his hair, and an arm wrapped around his chest. Jamie fought, shifting his hips and trying to wriggle free, but fingers dug tight into his armpit, and both the man’s arms squeezed him tight and hauled him to the surface.
Once his lungs had a fresh gulp of air, Jamie was ready to fight more. He rolled and thrashed and dragged his would-be rescuer back under the water. He dragged them under again and again, and arms stayed tight around his chest.
“I’m not letting go.” The words were grunted into his ear. “I don’t care how much you love that truck, I’m not letting go.”
Jamie froze, and they started to sink. “Gavin?”
Gavin didn’t relax his grip but kicked a little to keep them at the surface. “Who else would be dragging you out?”
Jamie grabbed Gavin’s arm where it was across his body. “Gavin?” It was him. The smell, the feel, Jamie knew him.
“Did you hit your head when you went in?”
“I’m fine, let me go.”
“Not happening.” The water churned under him as Gavin started towing them toward the rocky shore.
Jamie took a deep breath and stared at the sky. Everything was the same. It was night. They were in a park in the south end of Dundalk. His truck was under water. But everything was different because Gavin wasn’t drowning, trapped in the truck.
Jamie reached up to touch Gavin’s arm again. “You’re not in the truck.”
Gavin released him suddenly, and Jamie realized he could stand.
He turned, hungry for a view of the face he thought he’d only find floating behind that black barrier of glass. He cupped Gavin’s cheeks.
“You’re not in the truck.”
“Of course I’m not in the truck. I’m standing next to you. Oh.” Gavin put his hands over Jamie’s and glanced away. “I didn’t—” Gavin’s head came up and he stared back. “That was for me?”
Jamie flung his hands off so fast Gavin probably would have fallen if they hadn’t been in waist-deep water. “Of course I was looking for you. Didn’t you hear me call you?”
“Yes, but I thought it more a cry of dismay because your beloved truck—”
Jamie started to turn away, and Gavin grabbed him. “Please.”
“Please what? I can’t believe you. I tell you I love you, and you think I half killed myself for a hunk of metal.” Jamie started to trudge toward the shore. Gavin tackled him, and no matter how Jamie rolled or thrashed his hips or dug his fingers into Gavin’s forearm muscles, his cross-chest grip never slackened as he towed them out to deeper water.
Jamie stopped fighting, waiting for an opportunity. “Just so you know, Mr. Junior Lifeguard, the shoreline is the other way.”
“I wanted to be sure you were listening.”
“To what?” Jamie was listening, he also happened to be waiting for Gavin’s grip to slacken a fraction.
“You never said you loved me.”
“That’s bullshit. What do you think I’ve been saying? Why do you think—?”
Gavin rolled them both under water, and unprepared and in the middle of—all right—a rant, Jamie got a good snortful. He coughed and sputtered as they came back up.
“You’re not listening,” Gavin said.
“If I promise to listen, will you let go?” Jamie waited for the slightest indication Gavin would relax.
After a pause Gavin said, “No.”
“You’re a major fucking pain in the ass, Montgomery. Can you hurry it along before hypothermia sets in?”
“You haven’t exactly said you love me. But I’m in love with you.”
“Excuse me? You’re holding me out here in freezing water because—”
Gavin released him and started swimming back to shore. “I wanted there to be no chance you didn’t hear me.”
“Oh I heard you.” Jamie shook another wave out of his nose and swam after him. Christ, the fucker was fast. He was already scrambling over rocks and up the steep bank before Jamie got close.
By the time Jamie got to the top, he felt like he’d scaled a twenty-foot wall in full kit. Thank God Montgomery looked just as beat to hell as he sat there, panting.
“So now what?” Jamie flung himself on his back in the grass.
“Well…” Gavin let out a long breath. “I don’t think you finding your keys will help.”
“Neither will reminding me of that.”
“I’m assuming your phone was on you when you dove into save—”
“You, you snarky bastard.”
“Me.” Gavin coughed. “So. I suggest we either sit here and chat for a while in the hope that Perry installed a GPS tracking device on my person and will send help, or you can demonstrate that you understand how very much you do mean to me, then we can walk to the nearest public accommodation where either through a presentation of my cash or your identification we can get access to a phone.”
“How do I start off that second part?” Jamie looked at him through one half-closed eye, waiting to see if Gavin would back down now.
He never broke eye contact, smirking back. “You tell me you love me. I think a kiss might be in order too.”
Jamie rolled onto Gavin’s chest. “I fucking love you.” Lips an inch from Gavin’s, Jamie asked, “Can Annabelle figure into this somehow?”
“I guess with your truck in the bay you might be pining for a new commitment.”
“You could put it that way.” Jamie kissed him.
About the Author
K.A. Mitchell discovered the magic of writing at an early age when she learned that a carefully crayoned note of apology sent to the kitchen in a toy truck would earn her a reprieve from banishment to her room. Her career as a spin-control artist was cut short when her family moved to a two-story house, and her trucks would not roll safely down the stairs. Around the same time, she decided that Chip and Ken made a much cuter couple than Ken and Barbie and was perplexed when invitations to play Barbie dropped off. She never stopped making stuff up, though, and was surprised to find out that people would pay her to do it. Although the men in her stories usually carry more emotional baggage than even LAX can lose in a year, she guarantees they always find their sexy way to a happy ending.
To learn more about K.A. Mitchell, please visit www.kamitchell.com. Send an email to K.A. Mitchell at [email protected].
Look for these titles by K.A. Mitchell
Now Available:
Custom Ride
Hot Ticket
Diving in Deep
Regularly Scheduled Life
Collision Course
Chasing Smoke
An Improper Holiday
No Souvenirs
Life, Over Easy
Not Knowing Jack
But My Boyfriend Is
Bad in Baltimore
Bad Company
Bad Boyfriend
The most dangerous lies are the ones you tell yourself.
But My Boyfriend Is
© 2012 K.A. Mitchell
Dylan Williams is not gay. Sometimes he gets off with other guys, but so what? He plans to get married someday—really married, like with a wife and kids. And he’s determined that his future family’s
life will be the normal one he and his brothers never had.
Mike Aurietta is gay, but his job keeps him in the closet. He doesn’t usually risk frequenting infamous cruising places like Webber Park. But when he’s cutting through one night, he finds himself defending a victim from gay bashers.
It’s all Dylan can do to process the shock that anyone would want to hurt his quiet twin brother. At first he needs Mike’s eyewitness report to satisfy the gut-wrenching desire for revenge. Then he finds himself needing Mike’s solid, comforting presence…and the heat that unexpectedly flares between them.
In the aftermath, Mike quickly learns not to expect too much from his conflicted lover. Though he never thought his good deed would come back to bite him in the ass. Or that hanging on to the possibility of love could force too many secrets out of the closet—and cost them both everything.
Warning: Contains more denial than you can float a barge on, bigger issues than a special end-of-the-year compilation of your favorite magazine, and better sex than most people deserve. After all, it takes place in Texas.
Enjoy the following excerpt for But My Boyfriend Is:
Mike had lived through a lot of locker room explosions, through frustrations over injuries, through watching players learn what they’d worked for their whole lives was gone in an ankle-shattering instant. Dylan’s sudden calm, the brittle sheen of control visible in his rigid body and whispered words, was somehow more alarming than his earlier outbursts. “Darryl told me you were from Jacksonville. If your brother is flying—”
“I know.”
“Someone else you want to call?”
Dylan shook his head. “We have two sisters, but…” He swallowed. “I can’t— I don’t want to talk to them until we know.”
“He’ll be okay.”
“You don’t know that.” The anger was back, but Dylan’s voice was still pitched barely above a whisper. “No one here seems to know shit. Why don’t you find someplace else to wait for the five-o and leave me the fuck alone?”
“Because you look like you’re in as bad a shape as your brother.” And Mike couldn’t walk away any more easily than he could let someone bleed to death in front of him.
Dylan started following the blue line the nurse had told them about.
“So it’s true?” Mike asked, half-curious, half-trying to get Dylan to slow his long legs down.
It worked. Dylan froze. “What?”
“That twins have a bond where they feel sympathetic pains.”
Dylan looked at Mike as if a parasitic twin had suddenly sprung from Mike’s neck. “Like psychic?” Dylan’s lip lifted in disgust. “No way.” He strode to the elevator and punched the button for the fourth floor.
“So why do you look like you’ve been kicked in the ribs?”
As they stepped into the elevator, Dylan glanced down at the left arm he had tucked around his torso. “Maybe I’m trying to keep from punching people who won’t leave me the fuck alone.” He let his arm hang loose as they stepped from the elevator and picked up the blue line again.
The waiting room she’d sent them to was small, eight chairs and a few tattered magazines. To Mike’s relief, there was no one else there. Dylan paced the ten feet to the window and back to the door.
“They’ll find us here? They should have given us a pager.”
Mike kept his mouth closed and shrugged. For someone who wanted Mike to disappear, Dylan kept talking to him.
“What?” Dylan snapped.
Mike raised his hands in a placating gesture. He hoped that the older brother would be here soon. Dylan was about to fly into pieces. Mike found a space on the wall that needed holding up while Dylan maintained his three-steps-forward, three-steps-back pacing.
He was about to suggest Dylan take his raw nerves for a walk outside when Dylan picked up the pile of magazines and threw them halfway across the room. “I can’t fucking do this.”
Mike’s ex-boyfriend had claimed Mike had boundary issues, though Carl would have been shocked as hell to see Mike follow Dylan across the hall and into the men’s room. Mike had come a ways since then, and he couldn’t stand back and let Dylan self-destruct.
Dylan was resting his hands on the sink. “Goddamn, what is with you, man?”
The bathroom was single occupancy. Mike locked the door. Either he’d get his face punched in, or he’d get Dylan to ratchet it back enough to make it through the night, but either way, they were better off without the chance of an audience.
At the sound of the click, Dylan’s head snapped up. “You got the wrong idea. Totally.”
Well, that was one way to take off some of the tension. That possibility hadn’t occurred to him until Dylan brought it up. And the way Dylan’s tongue came out to put a shine on his full lips wasn’t doing a lot to get it out of either of their heads. Whatever Dylan was able to admit about himself, Mike hadn’t been wrong earlier. They turned each other’s crank.
Dylan pushed away from the sink, reaching for the door handle. Mike leaned back, the cool satin of the wooden door pressing into his ass and shoulders.
Dylan took a step back. “Do not start this shit.” The hand that had been reaching for the door went to his head, fingers sliding along the grooves between the cornrowed braids on his scalp.
“So get me out of the way. Throw a punch. C’mon. Because you have got to burn some of that off or you won’t be much good to your brother.”
Dylan was on him in a second, his fists wrapped tight in Mike’s T-shirt. Mike tried to relax, to let Dylan shove him out of the way, but Dylan hauled him in closer, and his mouth crashed down onto Mike’s.
Dylan didn’t kiss guys. Even that one time when it had gotten farther than just getting sucked off, he’d only touched the guy’s hips and dick. Kissing Mike wasn’t anything like kissing a girl. It was harder, rougher. Not just the scrape from stubble on Mike’s jaw, but the way Mike didn’t let Dylan’s tongue into his mouth, but dragged it in, hand coming up to grab on to the end of his braids.
There was only one reason Dylan was doing this now. Any sensation beat sitting around with more pieces of his insides being scooped out with every minute of waiting. Not that Dylan had some psychic connection to Dare on that table. If he did, he’d be feeling the pain…where they were working on Dare. In the head, fucking Christ, they were cutting into Dare’s brain.
So Dylan had a reason, but kissing this white boy—man—was still a giant mistake.
Knew it because of the electric rush that went mouth-balls-dick.
The buzz didn’t build slow and nice like when a girl let him feel her up when they were kissing. Blood pumped thick and fast in his dick, an instant ache despite the loose fit of his jeans. His hips tried to rock him closer, to get his hard-on rubbing onto Mike’s. Which was something else he’d always made a point not to do.
Dylan jerked his head back. “I don’t…kiss.” He knew it was stupid even as he said it.
But Mike didn’t laugh or say something sarcastic, though Dylan had that coming. Mike only arched his sandy brows, but the expression in his eyes wasn’t questioning. It was the same cynicism Dylan knew from his own mirror. Mike twitched his lips in a way that might have been a whatever shrug as his fingers slid wide, cupping the back of Dylan’s scalp, tingling the edges between his braids.
Fuck it.
Dylan grabbed Mike’s shoulders to pin the smug asshole against the door and kissed him again. Hard. Dylan’s dick kept trying to cross the space between them, no matter what Dylan tried to tell it about limits.
Mike saved him from breaking that rule. His hand shot between them, found Dylan’s dick through his jeans and rubbed him until the tip tingled as juice leaked from the slit. Mike’s tongue was deep in Dylan’s mouth when Mike worked through the fly. His hand burned as it landed on Dylan’s bare skin. With a gasp, he broke off the kiss.
The shock wasn’t about the sudden escalation. That was the number-one thing Dylan liked about sex with guys. No bullshit. Get off. Get go
ne.
No, it wasn’t shock, but Dylan had never been kissing a guy when that guy went for Dylan’s dick before. That made it tough to breathe, let alone do anything about kissing him back.
Sometimes family chooses you.
Family Man
© 2013 Heidi Cullinan and Marie Sexton
How does a man get to be forty without knowing whether he’s gay? That’s a question Vince Fierro is almost afraid to answer. If he is gay, it’ll be a problem for his big, fat Italian family. Still, after three failed marriages, he can’t help but wonder if he’s been playing for the wrong team.
There’s only one way to settle it, once and for all—head for Chicago’s Boystown bars, far from anyone who knows him. Naturally, he runs smack into someone from the neighborhood.
Between working two jobs, going to school, taking care of his grandmother, and dealing with his mother’s ongoing substance abuse, Trey Giles has little time for fun, let alone dating someone who swears he’s straight. Yet after one night of dancing cheek-to-cheek to the sultry strains of Coltrane, Trey finds himself wanting to help Vinnie figure things out—no promises, and no sex.
It seems like a simple plan, until their “no-sex” night turns into the best date of their lives and forges a connection that complicates everything.
Warning: This book deals with alcoholism, broken promises, and overbearing little sisters.
Enjoy the following excerpt for Family Man:
After the show they went to the bar Trey had taken them to that first night when Vince had gone out. They didn’t hold hands on the way, which would have been weird, but they did walk closely together on the sidewalk, which was nice.
Bad Attitude Page 22
