“I told you,” Bryce said into the phone. “Anything you need.”
That didn’t surprise me. Not only was Kurt Campion Gas’s top geologist, they were good enough friends that Bryce was Kurt’s best man for the wedding.
Kurt wasn’t whispering anymore, but the only word I could make out was money. Yeah, Bryce had a lot of it, and whatever the arrogant bastard’s faults were, it wasn’t a lack of generosity to his friends.
“Well, is it for you or her?” Bryce’s tone was mild, but his body was rigid. “Okay. Later then.”
He didn’t try to stop me as I sprinted for the chair. I was only a little disappointed as I did my best to jump into the black Dockers. “What was that about?” I asked.
Bryce cupped his hands behind his head and stretched. In what had to be a neat trick with wires, the quilt edged down until it was just above his hips and suddenly I knew what I wanted for breakfast.
“Kurt thinks that since he decided to go back to MIT and do research it would affect our friendship.”
“Wait. He quit?”
Bryce shrugged and the quilt slipped another inch. “He wants to sell his shares in the company too.”
“What happened?”
“He went to visit some of Tiffany’s cousins in Cameron County. They told him about problems with their water supply. Then they lit the faucet on fire.”
I poked my head out from my shirt. I’d heard rumors, enough to make me think I’d done the right thing keeping the drills off Halner land, but that wouldn’t make a difference if all the water went bad. “I thought that was an exaggeration.”
“Me too. But it convinced Kurt.” Bryce tossed aside the quilt and began tugging up his jeans.
“So—”
“I told him that was business, but it didn’t affect us.” He said it with conviction, but I was starting to compile a list of potential disasters in my head. Tiff going Bridezilla, the groom and best man at war, oh yeah, and the fact that this was our busiest week.
That didn’t answer all of my questions, though. I wanted to know what Bryce Campion, CEO of Campion Gas was going to do about our potentially poisonous watershed. But I wasn’t about to ask a question when I wasn’t sure I was ready for the answer. What if it was “Sucks to be you poor bastards”? I might not be getting that week in St. Thomas, but based on the way things had gone last night, I could at least count on a week of Bryce in my bed. In this case ignorance was bliss. And orgasms.
“Want to get some breakfast?” Bryce asked.
Our main choices were Skipper’s or the bagel shop. I already felt as if I lived at Skipper’s and Bagel Bounty served more gossip than coffee. “We open at nine.”
Bryce held my gaze. “I thought that’s why your brother and sister were here. To run the farm while you went to the wedding.”
“I don’t have too far to go for that now, do I?”
“Guess not.” The intense look he’d been giving me fell away as if I’d done something to let him down. “In that case, mind if I borrow your truck for awhile?”
“Go ahead. Just don’t make any new friends.”
“Jealous?” He smiled.
“No, but one more guest and someone will be sleeping in the barn.” Recognition of the Christmas coincidence hit, and I started to laugh.
Bryce looked at me quizzically. “Kurt told me he was parking some guests here. Said there’s no room—” He broke off and grinned back.
“At the inn,” I finished.
By the time Bryce bounced my truck into the driveway a little before noon, I was so happy to see anyone not named Tiffany Meuller I could have blown him right there on the bench seat. I wasn’t sure Tiff’s baby blues weren’t shifting to a demonic red out of the corner of my eyes as she dragged me and Bal’s wife, Allie, around. I guessed since Allie had survived her own wedding, she was an expert who could be counted on to answer in the affirmative whenever Tiff said something like, “And I think we should build a new platform here because the old one won’t look good in the pictures, right, Allie?”
As for me, I was triply cursed. Not only was I to be her Man of Honor or whatever they called guys drafted to the position, I was the proprietor of the appropriated venue and the nearest gay man, which was supposed to have magically gifted me with some wedding planning talent. Tiff was marching off space, dictating how much plywood she thought we should put down to cover with something suitable for the bride’s delicate size nine and a half’s to mince along when all my senses shifted to feeling Bryce striding up behind me. The sound of his boots on the frozen ground, the hum against my skin as he got closer, the smell of winter wool and sweat as he stepped up to bump my shoulder.
Early on in Tiff’s monologue, I’d crossed my arms defensively across my chest. I guess that didn’t invite much else in the way of welcome.
“Please tell me you got the gay genes that let you give a shit about bunting or swag and floral arrangements,” I muttered to him.
He laughed and shook his head. “I could DJ.”
As I’d learned to my horror, Bryce’s mom had raised him on a steady diet of Gloria Gaynor, Diana Ross and Sylvester. If there was anything to nurture over nature, there was the example right there. “No disco divas, thank you. Tiff has some taste.”
“Of course I do.” Tiff marched up to us. “And I’ll want to dance a little. We can use the lot’s speakers and run his iPod through them. You’ll have to download ‘Pachelbel’s Canon’ though,” she said to Bryce. “Here.” She slapped the end of a tape measure into his chest. “Hold this.”
Tiff had come prepared. Not only was Allie taking notes rapidly, Tiff had brought a bunch of those little fluorescent orange flags to stick in the ground as she laid out her plans.
“Hey, Tiff,” I called. “Maybe we should think about the barn in case the weather turns on us.”
For three years we hadn’t had more than a couple of inches of snow before mid January.
“Global warming,” she snapped, as if the weather wouldn’t dare contradict her. “The barn.” Her disgusted snort would have fit right in with one of Fred’s though. “And stop trying to jinx it.” That last was almost a screech.
“Trust me, Mel. My mom’s first marriage was when I was thirteen. You learn to get out of the way.” Bryce held his end of the tape measure steadily as Tiffany yelled back the numbers to Allie.
“But I don’t get what the big deal is.” Whether it was Pennsylvania politics or a lack of eligible bachelors, I’d never really thought about marriage for myself. Bal and Allie had been married in California by a county clerk and told us after the fact. My parents held a kind of dinner out/reception for them the first time they came back here to visit.
“It was a big enough deal when it was getting you to St. Thomas.” Tiff yelled. Damn, did her were-bride transformation give her super hearing?
“And you’re still getting your wedding, so chill,” I yelled back. I had half a mind to search the house in case I’d missed one of Cas’s pharmaceutical stashes. Tiff could stand a little medical intervention. To Bryce I muttered, “It’s a whole lot of fuss for a piece of paper.”
Bryce shrugged. “I’m not saying the decorations or the setting are important. It’s about saying I choose you, forever, in front of the people who matter to you. That’s kind of a big deal.”
I tried to imagine it. Was that what I’d thought Stuart and I would have? That one day, when he was done with school, we’d stand up—okay, not on a platform at the farm, thank you—but in front of our friends and families and say “It’s you”? But in my head, it wasn’t Stuart but Bryce, standing sure and solid and waiting for my promise.
The idea petrified me. As in, I was frozen. Feet, brain, tongue. Couldn’t find anything to say to help me laugh off the ludicrous idea. Because first of all, the idea of Bryce, who flew off for spearfishing vacations and never stayed in the same place longer than a few months, choosing to settle down was insane. And even if he did, even if he asked me, then what? I had
to take care of the farm, to take care of Cas. Halners had been scratching out a living from this rocky valley for a hundred and sixty years. We had roots deeper than the tallest pine here. I couldn’t be the one to walk away from it. Bad enough I was the queer one. I wasn’t going to be the one who put an end to it for good.
Tiffany shoved a notebook into my hands. Lost in freaking out, I hadn’t seen her move. How long had I been standing there, a look of stark terror on my face?
“Mel.” Tiffany snapped her fingers in my face. “You guys better hurry. The lumber store closes at five on Sundays.”
Bryce pulled out a credit card when we hit the register with our cartful of the required supplies. “I told Kurt I’d handle anything he needs.”
As if I could have objected. Every penny I’d saved to spend in St. Thomas would barely cover the four figures popping up on the cash register. “That was nice.”
We loaded the truck, and after I’d looped off a piece of the inescapable twine to secure the boards, Bryce leaned in to fish my keys out of my jacket pocket, grinning as if he dared me to complain.
As the side doors sealed us in, he said, “You’re quiet.”
I didn’t know what to say. And that was strange since I’d never run out of things to say to Bryce before. Granted, a lot of those conversations didn’t get beyond harder, yeah, like that, and how about pizza? but right now I didn’t know what to say to him. I kept thinking about what he’d claimed was the point to a wedding, about standing up and saying “I choose you.” Maybe he was trying to tell me something, but if it was nothing more than a random statement and I asked him…
Even having to wear my Melchior costume and stand on stage every day for the next week wouldn’t match the potential for humiliation in that question.
“Tired, I guess.” Until I’d said that, I didn’t know how glad I was that yesterday had been my last shift at Skipper’s for nine days. Tonight was when I was supposed to pack for St. Thomas.
“Then maybe we should try to get to bed early tonight. Don’t want to wear you out.”
“Maybe I’ll wear you out instead.”
Bryce laughed and slid his hand up along my inseam.
When we shut the door behind us, my siblings’ laughter following us up the stairs to accompany our obviously early departure, I honestly planned to pounce on him. Instead, I was the pouncee, flat on my back as the bedsprings made an embarrassingly loud squeak when Bryce landed on top of me. After doing some amazing things with his tongue against mine in a breath-stealing kiss, he shifted his mouth to a spot below my ear. I had a feeling the bedsprings wouldn’t be the only source of embarrassing squeaks.
Still, I’d had plans. Plans that always seemed to go awry when Bryce was around.
He reared up to yank his double layer of shirts over his head. I followed, getting my mouth on a tasty piece of broad shoulder, my hand sliding down the silky thick hair along his sternum. I loved the way it made a direct line to his dick.
Bryce kissed me again, a deliberate, slow fuck of my mouth, until my tongue and lips were aching for something thicker, heavier.
“Wanna suck you,” I murmured when he lifted his head.
“Funny. I was just thinking the same thing.” He slid to his knees at the side of the bed, yanking my jeans open.
The bite he sucked into my hip had me straining to get the tip of my dick toward his mouth, while my mouth stuttered, “There’s a way we could both…” His lips and tongue moved along the crease of my groin and my dick was seizing control of the agenda. I managed to spit out the last word, “…win.”
He lifted his head, and I propped myself up on my elbows, hoping I had a semi-competent cocksucker look on my face. “I thought of that.” His breath hit me, hot and damp. “But I want to concentrate.”
His bronze-tipped lashes dipped toward his cheeks as his mouth lowered onto my dick, and what the hell was the point of this argument?
I flopped back and let him blow me.
Stuart and I had started slow, but in eighteen months, we’d pretty much covered everything we could think of. Since then, there’d been a few hookups that rocked my world. But Bryce… It wasn’t only that he knew what he was doing—hell yeah, he knew what he was doing, warm lips tight and tongue flicking under the head—it was who he was out of bed that sent the sex soaring from amazing to fan-fucking-tastic. All that swagger and confidence, all his take-charge attitude, and he was on his knees with my cock in his mouth. And when we fucked, when he turned that loose on me, demanding, then pleading, I got this crazy heat spilling out of my belly, a rough desperation to keep him deep inside.
Right now I was squirming to get farther in him, but his hands gripped my hips and pinned me, even though the bastard was licking all around the head, no pressure, just sensation, the kind that would take forever to build into an orgasm.
I got my hands in his hair and tugged, but that didn’t make him hurry. Suddenly, I couldn’t imagine what the hurry was either. Who in their right mind wouldn’t want to stay here forever?
I let go of his hair and shoved my shirt up to put my fingers on my nipples. My surrender must have been what he was waiting for because he rewarded me with long licks, then buried his nose at the root to get his mouth on my sac. A deep suck, one then the other, tongue looping around, everything hot and wet. Bryce buried his face in my crotch, stubble, lips, tongue and skin an overwhelming sensation. I lifted my head to get the visual aid and he raised his, eyes glittering as he met my gaze, then lowered to take in my fingers playing with my tits.
With a groan, he sank back on my dick, tongue dragging down the shaft as he took me to the back of his throat. As much as I would like to say I took it like a man, stoic and appreciative, the sudden switch in speed had me arching off the bed, wanting to cram my dick deep, feel his throat spasm around me as I choked him.
He held me down with a bone-bruising grip as he set the pace, quick and wet and sloppy, flirting with edge of swallowing me all the way. His tongue moved with a purpose, finding all the spots that were aching for extra pressure. Even the way he held me down felt right, part of the struggle to get to the top, to where I could drown us both in that hot flood rising in my balls.
When I came, it was as if I’d swallowed a bottle rocket, heat and light rushing through me, pleasure so bone deep it shot out everywhere, from my toes to my fingers to the tips of my hair, but mostly that endless spill of sweet shocks of fire from my dick.
He licked me back down into reality before wiping his face on the jeans I’d been planning to get another day’s wear out of, the bastard. But it was hard to work up a scowl when I couldn’t stop smiling.
I hauled him up and he came along quietly enough, somehow leaving his own jeans on the floor.
I reached into his boxer briefs and wrapped my hand around a hot piece of steel. The skin of his cock was so tight I could barely move it, which I took as a tremendous compliment.
“Smug is a good look on you.” He grunted the words into my ear. “You should wear it more often.”
“You shouldn’t be wearing anything.”
“You’re pretty bossy for a guy who just got his dick sucked,” he said, even as he lifted his hips to help me slide the CK’s off his ass.
“You want bossy? I’ll give you bossy.” I knelt between his legs and pinned his shoulders to the bed.
I knew he was seven years older, but I’d never felt the age difference until he looked at me then.
“Mel, this isn’t an exchanges-only kind of transaction.”
“What do you mean?”
“I mean, we don’t have to follow some kind of rule. You don’t have to blow me because I blew you.”
“I’m not. I happen to like dick in my mouth.”
He pushed up against my hold, and I pressed him down again.
“Look,” I said. “I get that everyone from board members to truck drivers trembles at the mere mention of your name. But right now, just lie back and let me suck your cock.”
Bryce moved his hands palms-up in a gesture of surrender.
Of course, having won that round, getting things rolling was a little anticlimactic. Until I wrapped my arms around his thighs and breathed him in. Pubes, balls, cock, a little taste of him beading up at the slit. Yeah, this was where I wanted to be. I went looking for more, only using my tongue, sweeping along the slit, until I felt the muscles under my arms start to shake.
“Mel.” I liked the sound of that. A warning, a plea, Bryce saying my name over and over, as if it was the only word he could remember, as I went down on him fast enough to make my eyes water, ignored the pressure and gulped him all the way in, holding him there for a second before pulling off and repeating the motion.
“Mel.” A little more urgency now, his fingers sifting through the curls on my head. I loved it. The fat shaft sliding past my lips as I sucked, tongue tasting, working over him with every stroke. A little more desperation, fingers tugging my hair, his hips bucking until I had to get a hand involved on his shaft. I got him halfway down and held him there, tongue rubbing on that spot under the head, the rest of him crammed tight against all the soft places in my mouth as I sucked.
“Mel.” A grunt this time. Like the word was surprised out of him. Then harsh grating, “Fuck.” And he flooded my mouth, hips jerking as he fired off round after round.
I crawled up next to him and wiped my chin on his shoulder.
He played with my hair, lifting and dropping the cherubic curls I’d been cursed with. “Remind me not to argue with you next time.”
“Deal.”
He kept stroking my hair, and as much as I knew we’d be cold once the sweat dried, I didn’t have the energy to get under the blankets.
“I was going to get it cut. At the resort salon.”
“I like it long.”
“Obviously.” I pushed some of his own chin length hair from his face.
Neither of us said anything for a long time, then he whispered, “I was looking forward to the trip too.”
Bryce could take off for St. Thomas anytime he wanted to. Hell, he could fly to Paris for a breakfast crepe if he was in the mood.
The Christmas Proposition Page 4
