Learning to Love Christmas: Audie and Calhoun 3 (Low Country Lovers)

by Julia McBryant

  “Au-die.” The whine creeps into his voice and it’s cold. “Baylor, can I like borrow a hair tie so my hair doesn’t get all wet?”

  She wordlessly hands him one. Audie holds his Santa hat while he pulls his hair up like a girl and sinks up to his nose. Audie sighs. Amory holds out the pen. He inhales, tips Calhoun’s mouth up to his, and exhales the smoke into it. Calhoun breathes it in and it’s not that bad, really, until he starts hacking. He slugs at the Grey Goose and it stops.

  Everyone’s laughing and the realization comes slow that it’s at him. “Aw, shut up. I never smoke.”

  “Never thought I would see Calhoun Chatterton high.” Wills is cracking up. “I declare this a Christmas Miracle.”

  Calhoun splashes water at him and he splashes it back. He misaims and hits Crispin.

  “You high as all fuck, son.” Crispin’s accent is as thick as his.

  “Shut up, Hendricks.”

  “I’m taking him downstairs before he hurts himself.” Audie heaves himself out of the tub. “C’mon, Calhoun.”

  Calhoun sprints into the living room behind him. Then down to the bedroom. Audie doesn’t much bother to dry off before Calhoun’s back hits the wall. “I knew you’d be hard for me,” Audie practically purrs. Calhoun’s cock rubs against his. “That’s it, baby boy. I love that hard cock. You tell me what you want.”

  “You.” Calhoun can hardly stammer it as he wraps his arms around Audie. “I wanna dry off and I want you to fuck me like you said you would on the phone. Pin me against something and fuck me with my legs on your shoulders.”

  “Oh, look, there’s a very convenient couch. Hope you feel flexible.” Audie’s mouth crushes down on his. His teeth nip sharp at Calhoun’s lips, and Calhoun opens his mouth with a gasp; when Audie’s tongue slips inside, Calhoun shivers, and Audie kisses hard, Calhoun’s head pinned against the wall, ohgod, the way he likes it. Warm hands stroke down his sides, which shake with cold.

  “Oh, baby, we need to get you outta this suit and get you warm.” Audie smirks. “Strip.”

  Calhoun lowers his eyes and pushes down his bathing suit. His cock springs up and damn, but it’s freeing, and so hot that Audie’s looking. Audie’s soft hand closes on him and Calhoun bites back a moan. “You need dried off.”

  Audie starts at Calhoun’s neck and moves downwards. The towel’s soft and fluffy, a little rough on his skin. Audie dries him slowly and stares at Calhoun with those big dark eyes. When he reaches Calhoun’s stomach, he teases more slowly, lower and slower, a near-cruelty that has Calhoun squirming for more, drying the short hair around his cock, the fabric rubbing on his balls.

  “I love these.” Audie’s breath tickles him. “Do you have a lot of come in these for me? I bet you do. I bet you’re gonna pump it all out.” The towel slips back and Calhoun parts his legs. It circles his ass carefully, tickling. Calhoun’s breath catches. “You want me right there? Tell me.”

  “Uh-huh.”

  “Use words, honey. I love when you use words.”

  He arches his back at the slight roughness on his ass. “I wanna get fucked so bad, Audie.”

  “This needs dried, too. But now you’re all sticky.” A thumb swipes the precum off his cock, oh god, and he lifts his eyes to watch Audie suck it off. Then the towel gently wraps around his dick and begins jerking it, the perfect roughness, the perfect rhythm. Calhoun watches it stroke back and forth on him before Aude drops it. He moves his silky cock to rub against Calhoun’s while they make out. This time Audie sucks his lips gently, and Calhoun kisses back just as carefully.

  “You want it now. Look how stiff you are for me. I’m gonna try so hard to go slow. Get up on that couch. Curl up with your head on the back, your back on the cushion, and your knees as close to your shoulders as you can get them.” Audie laughs. “Like I said, I hope you feel flexible.”

  Calhoun lies almost curled up, knees resting on his shoulders, his ass totally exposed. Audie kneels and Calhoun moans as his boyfriend’s warm lips meet his entrance. Audie’s laughter feels all hot breath, but his tongue — god, his tongue traces circles around Calhoun until he opens, until it fucks in and out of him. Audie licks him one more time and then stands. He drizzles lube on his hands.

  Against the back of the couch, legs at his shoulders, spread, vulnerable, Calhoun gazes up at Audie, cock unbelievably stiff. Audie carefully slicks his ass and fingers. “You want this so bad. Lookit how hard you are.” Fingers stroke him gently then slip inside, and for a brief moment, it won’t work, then it does, and Audie finds the perfect spot and presses it. “That’s it. You love that. Gonna come so hard for me. I can’t wait to watch my cock slide in and out of you.” Another finger joins the other, very slowly, then they begin fucking him while Audie’s lube-slicked hand closes over his shaft. “You want this too, don’t you?”

  “Please, Audie?” Calhoun widens his eyes and bites his lip. He can’t thrust his hips in this position. Audie’s hand slides up and down, up and down, playing under his head while fingers fuck in and out of his ass. Calhoun needs it now. He needs it so much, the combination of the two threatening to send him over the edge.

  Audie grins at him. “You just tell me when you want my cock.”

  “Please fuck me. Fuck me or I’ll come.”

  “Will you, now?” Audie’s grin widens. His fingers slide out, and Calhoun feels suddenly, cruelly empty. The good fullness is gone and he whines. Audie holds his cock but his hand doesn’t move; he grips himself. “Want it?” It trails from Calhoun’s balls to his ass, precum slicking him.

  “Please, Audie?”

  He smacks Calhoun’s ass with it. “God, do you know how much I’ve always wanted to do that, and I could never manage to tease you?” Another soft smack on his most sensitive part; Calhoun whimpers. “Oooh, you’re fun to tease.” His ass is so open and Audie’s cock taps against it. “You want this so much.”

  “Please fuck me. Please, Audie, please fuck me, I can’t last like this, please.”

  Audie laughs. “You won’t come until I let you.”

  This is new.

  His cock finally, finally slides into Calhoun, and oh god he can take it because Audie’s been fucking him with his fingers so hard and he wants it so much. Audie’s in him and he’s so full and ohgod it rests right on the perfect spot, right on it. Calhoun moans.

  “You think I can’t tell when you’re about to come, baby boy? You think I don’t have the patience to — oh god. Oh god, this is too fucking good. Lemme fuck you, baby, please can I fuck you?”

  Audie’s eyes are wide with pleading.

  “Ha, look who’s on the other side.” Calhoun grins. “You can go really slow. Stay right on that spot and rub it real slow for me.”

  “Please?”

  “No.” Calhoun laughs this time.

  Audie starts it slow, right against that perfect spot. Calhoun sneaks his hand in and jacks himself luxuriously. “Oh god, this is so good. You’re gonna make me come so hard with that big cock.”

  “Lemme fuck you harder.”

  “No. I wanna enjoy it.”

  “Please?”

  “No.” Calhoun loves this.

  “Calhoun!” Audie practically wails.

  “Make me come. Then you can pull out and jerk off.” He smiles sweetly. This is way fun.

  “Calhoun!”

  “Okay, fine.” Calhoun’s so close his legs shake. “Fuck me.”

  Two thrusts from Audie and Calhoun freezes, somehow curls up even more, then spurts all over his belly. Audie gasps, buries his cock in Calhoun, and Calhoun feels that hot rush, the pump and shudder. Audie practically collapses.

  “I’ll never tease you again.” He’s breathing hard. “If you don’t top from the bottom.”

  “Deal.”

  Audie looks up and suddenly roars with laughter.

  “What?”

  He slips out, leaving Calhoun with that sudden empty feeling. “We just fucked bare-assed in our Santa hats.”

  Cal
houn untangles himself and cracks up. He can hardly breathe for laughing. “Oh my god, Wills would die.”

  “Wills would high-five us.”

  Calhoun can’t sleep since he napped. After they clean up, he stays with Audie until he falls asleep, then wanders back upstairs as quietly as possible; it sounds like people are going to bed. On the way, he sees Isa open the door to Henry and Thor’s room and shut it behind her. Well, shit. Gran said they were sleeping together, but he didn’t believe her. Trust Gran to know the score before anyone else.

  Amory’s still upstairs chugging liquor on the enormous blue suede couch. The Christmas lights blink on and off, and he has his feet up next to the manger, which strikes Calhoun as somehow vaguely sacreligious, though he can’t quite put his finger on why. “Oh good, a drinking buddy.”

  “Oh, I’m not —”

  “You are now. What’s your poison, Grey Goose? Here.” He grabs Calhoun a bottle. “Quinn’s asleep. Fucking finally. God, his cousins are pissing him off. You have a good time?”

  “What d’you —”

  “Aw, c’mon, you and Audie were totally banging. Oh my god, you’re still wearing your Santa hat. Did you fuck with your Santa hat on?! OH. MY. GOD. BAYLOR!”

  Calhoun drops his head in his hands, sinks down in the white armchair, and pulls a fuzzy chenille throw over him. He chugs some vodka. This calls for some serious alcohol.

  She pads in. Baylor and Isa are sleeping right off the living room. “What?”

  “Calhoun and Audie done fucked in their Santa hats.” He can hardly get the words out for laughing.

  She rolls her eyes. “Audie’s done so much worse in his life than fuck such a sweet man in a Santa hat, Jesus Christ, Amory. I mean, as long as it wasn’t part of a thing —” She eyeballs Calhoun. “Was it part of a thing?”

  “NO! What the hell!”

  “Then who gives a fuck? They probably got high and forgot they were wearing them.”

  “What’s going on?” Thor wanders out — of Isa and Baylor’s room, in nothing but a pair of pajama pants. Well, this is a new development. Thor, from what Calhoun recalls, hasn’t gotten laid since Alice Bennett in high school, if they even mustered the courage to have sex, which he’s not sure they did. Trust Baylor.

  “Uh, why was Thor in your room?” Calhoun can’t resist.

  “The usual reasons one is in a girl’s room.” Baylor flips her blond hair over her shoulder.

  “Oooooookay.” Calhoun drinks again.

  “I just saved your ass with the Santa hat deal. Don’t throw me to the wolves here, Calhoun, just because you hate my ass.”

  “I don’t hate you!” Mostly because “hate” is a strong word.

  “C’mon. You do so. Admit it.”

  “I do not.”

  She crosses her arms. “I don’t believe you.”

  “Okay.”

  “This is Christmas. You can’t hate people on Christmas.”

  “I don’t hate you.”

  “You do. You think I get Audie in trouble and you hate all his college friends.”

  “I do not!” Really, “hate” is a pretty hefty word. “Don’t like.” “Think they suck.” “Would rather not spend time with, and would likewise Audie not spend time with.”

  “Audie says you hate me.”

  Busted.

  “You know Audie exaggerates.” Kinda weak. Calhoun chugs at the Grey Goose and wishes Quinn were here to back him up, because Amory sure as hell isn’t. “What do I have to do to prove I don’t hate you, Baylor?” At this point, it’s really all he can do.

  She thinks about it. “It’s Christmas.”

  “Yeah, it’s Christmas.” Calhoun drinks some more.

  “You’re pretty drunk.”

  “So’re you.”

  “You know, when I was a little kid, my grandfather used to make us go to church on Christmas when we came down to Savannah? And there would be Delia and Quinn in their perfect little outfits singing their little Christmas carols. And there was one I begged them to teach me.”

  Calhoun gives her a look. “I don’t think I like where this is going. I think it involves me singing. I can’t sing, Baylor.” He drinks some more, just in case it does, because whatever this thing is, he’s gonna have to see it through.

  “It was called ‘Go Tell It on the Mountain.’”

  Amory cracks up.

  Calhoun’s face must do something.

  “So go tell it on the mountain, Calhoun. Walk out on the balcony and scream to the world that you do not hate Baylor Kirkman. Multiple times. And I’ll believe you.” She crosses her arms and starts singing. “Over the hills and everywhere/ Go tell it on the mountain …”

  Whatever. Calhoun stands up. He walks, mostly straight, to the sliding glass doors and opens them. The jets are off, the hot tub shut. He hears the roar of the waves. “This is the only way to prove I don’t hate you?”

  “Nope, but you’re too drunk to drive to Wendy’s and get me fries.”

  Calhoun sighs. He takes a deep breath.

  “Aw fuck me, you’re really gonna do it.” Amory swigs at his bottle.

  “I DO NOT HATE BAYLOR KIRKMAN!” Calhoun screams over the waves.

  This is why, when he was a kid, Henry used to beat people up for him. This is the kind of shit that happened otherwise.

  “Mmmmm, like two more times will convince me.”

  “I DO NOT HATE BAYLOR KIRKMAN! I DO NOT HATE BAYLOR KIRKMAN!”

  He is twenty-two years old; he is screaming at the top of his lungs into the night at god knows what time that he doesn’t hate some girl, some random cousin of his best friend’s, and his boyfriend’s college buddy, just so she’ll the hell shut up. This is one of the stupidest things Calhoun Chatterton has ever done.

  He cracks up.

  “I DO NOT HATE BAYLOR KIRKMAN!” he screams again. “I LOOOOOOOOOOOOVE BAYLOR!”

  Quinn stomps up the stairs. “What the fuck, Calhoun? Some of us are trying to sleep? And you should hate Baylor Kirkman because she is a bad person.”

  “She’s your cousin!” Calhoun can hardly speak for laughing.

  “Doesn’t mean she’s not a bitch!”

  “I’m proving I don’t hate her. I LOOOOOOOOVE BAYLOR!” Calhoun screams again.

  “I made him go tell it on the mountain, ‘cause it’s Christmas.” Baylor examines her nails.

  “You sang that stupid song at the top of your lungs without the Jesus part because you said you were an agnostic and Grandfather almost beat your eight-year-old ass.” Quinn looks admiring. “He made you spell the word and give him a definition.”

  “I spelled it right too, didn’t I?” She grins. “I forgot that.”

  “BAYLOR IS SOOOOOOOO BADASS!” Calhoun yells into the wind. It feels good.

  Audie pads up the stairs. “Okay. Far be it from me to inquire how the fuck Baylor talked someone into doing something. But how the fuck did Baylor talk you into this, Calhoun?”

  “I’m proving I don’t hate her.”

  Audie sighs. “Baylor.”

  “What?”

  “Do not torment Calhoun. He is a sweet, innocent soul and he’s high as all monkeyfuck. Do not mess with him. Go fuck Thor, or whateverthefuck you were doing, and leave him alone.”

  She huffs and stomps into her room. Thor follows.

  “How’d you know she was banging Thor?” Amory drinks again.

  “He’s her type, and he’s not wearing a shirt. Also — nevermind.”

  “What?”

  “Nothing.”

  “Not nothing if you can’t say it.”

  “I don’t call people out.”

  “I’ll respect that.”

  “And I’ll take Calhoun back to bed. C’mon, baby.” Audie leads him down to the room.

  “Baylor said I hate her. And what did you mean that you don’t call people out?”

  “You don’t like Baylor because she gets people to do things like you just did. But you’ve also never seen how loyal she is to
her real friends, how smart she is, or how deeply, deeply sweet. Baylor’s very smart and she gets bored easily, number one. Number two, she’s terrified everyone’s laughing at her all the time. You think you love Quinn? Baylor loves him more than you do, I promise.”

  “What about the other thing?”

  Audie laughs. “Oh, that’s easy. And you’re too sweet to tell. I sort of figured out by the arrangement of who was where that Isa and Henry —”

  Calhoun gives him a half-smile. “You heard Gran call it. I saw her going into his room.”

  Audie roars. “How the hell did Gran know?!”

  “Because she’s Gran. She always knows.”

  They cuddle up in bed. “Don’t you go wandering again.” Audie kisses the back of his neck. His chest is warm against Calhoun’s back. Calhoun snuggles in. “I love you.”

  “Love you too.”

  “Even when you top from the bottom.”

  Calhoun laughs. “Even when you tell me I can’t come until you say so.” He turns around and hits Audie with a pillow. “Seriously, Audie? Are you auditioning for dom school now?”

  “That’s so hot though!” He shields his face.

  “You are so ridiculous. You think you can get away with murder.” Calhoun hits him again, belly hurting from laughing so hard. Audie hits him back with another one. Calhoun ducks.

  “I do not think I can get away with murder!”

  “You think ‘cause I like it on the bottom I’ll let you do whatever you want!” Calhoun gets in a good one on top of Audie’s head. Audie hits him on the chin and he falls back on the bed.

  Audie pins him. “‘Cause you will.” His hard chest presses down on Calhoun’s, nipples hard; a stiff cock tents between Calhoun’s legs. He leans down to Calhoun’s ear. “You will do whatever I ask you, baby boy. You like it that way. Don’t lie. You liked it that way from the first time I fucked you. You laid in that beach house with all that pretty hair spread out begging when I told you to ask for it.”

  Oh, fuck Audie, he had. And it’d been so good, even if it was both of their first times. Not that Calhoun knew it was Audie’s first then. Or that Audie knew it was Calhoun’s.

  “I do not do everything you ask.” Calhoun makes his mouth twist.

  Audie nips at him. “Be good.”