by Mary Calmes
Family, friends, all the women who knew Landry waited in breathless anticipation for his gifts. My sister would scream and squeal and take pictures of herself and post them on Facebook and link them to his website the day after her birthday or Christmas. She loved his jewelry—everyone we knew did—and once I started sporting the wrap bracelets, my male cousins and even some of my uncles started wearing them. The difference was that Landry never handed out pre-made things to my family or to me. Every piece he made was lovingly crafted with us in mind. All my mother’s jewelry had some shade of purple in it because he knew it was her favorite. Everything I owned had a ruby on it somewhere because, supposedly, a ruby symbolized love. I had teased him once because my green jade leather wrap bracelet had no ruby on it and he had shown me the small, inconspicuous stone under the clasp.
“What are you thinking about?”
I came out of my thoughts to find him looking at me, his eyes worried for whatever reason. “You. I was thinking about you and how nuts the women in my family go every Christmas.”
He cackled evilly, waggling his eyebrows at me. “They do, don’t they?”
“Yeah.” I leaned sideways and kissed him because he was too cute, and the worry that had been behind his eyes poofed away, and he was oozing happy all of a sudden.
“So Landry, where did you go to school?” his father asked him.
“University of Michigan,” he explained. “I have a marketing degree, obviously.”
There were lots of questions after that, and I sat and listened, watching everyone, seeing Chris’s eyes flick over to me worriedly. He was concerned, I was sure, about what he’d said to me on the plane.
Jocelyn was really interested in Landry’s answers and pressed him for more and more. I could tell that she had really missed him. Her husband Hugh was very interested as well. I noticed Landry’s father watching him, studying him, and I wasn’t quite sure what he was looking for.
Landry’s mother explained about the leukemia and the hard road it had been and how the remission was a blessing.
“The party tonight,” she said, smiling at all of us, “is to welcome you home, Landry, and to celebrate my new lease on life.”
Everyone clapped, and he leaned against me.
“We have the rooftop of one of the best hotels rented out for the party,” his father explained. “And tomorrow we’ll have brunch here for us and a couple of close friends.”
I heard Landry catch his breath.
“Once you’re settled into the guest house, you’ll have to come back up and sit with us. We have over eight years to catch up on.”
Landry made a strangled noise in the back of his throat, and I understood that he needed to be alone with me to decompress, to breathe, maybe even to scream. “Okay,” he told them, and then he turned his head and caught me in his blue-green gaze, willing me to fix it, to make it stop.
“And where is the guest house?” I asked, standing, putting my leather bomber jacket back on. It was cut long, and I liked that. I pulled my scarf back on as well, concerned about leaving anything behind.
“There’s more than one but I know where they are,” Landry told me, standing up beside me. “We’ll be back.”
No one said anything, and it was just weird. If I hadn’t seen someone I loved for eight years, I would have been sitting on top of them until I got every one of my questions answered in rapid succession. At gunpoint, if necessary.
We walked first back up to the living room—showroom—retrieved our luggage, and then we went down another set of stairs and came out on the side by the trees. There was a cobblestone path that led to a small gate opening onto a huge rose garden. It looked like something out of Alice in Wonderland.
“Jesus.”
“Come on.”
“I need the tour map,” I said snidely. “Can I get one at the gift shop on our way back?”
He snorted out a laugh. “You’re funny.”
I grunted, but I was watching him. “Why wouldn’t you just lie to them, let them pay for school and be gay thousands of miles away?”
“Because I didn’t feel like lying about who I wanted to love for the rest of my life. It seemed counterproductive. My father said I could go to the same retreat as Will and he would still send me to school. I told him no.”
The blanks were starting to fill in.
“I thought you came out to your folks the night you graduated from high school?”
“No, my father found out the day he caught me—well, whatever, that’s a whole other story—but no, the day he and Will’s dad found us, that was the day my father found out.”
“And what happened to Will?” I asked, even though Chris had told me already.
“Will went into one of those programs where they un-gay you after we graduated, and I left for college.”
“Did your mother know what happened?”
“Of course.”
He was so calm.
I realized that I didn’t want to have the floodgate-opening talk right there in the open. I cleared my throat. “I had no idea you came from this kind of money.”
“It’s shit.”
“Spoken like a man who never had to go without anything.”
“Oh, fuck you,” he growled at me, stopping, rounding on me as I tilted my head and appraised him. “I’ve gone without quite a bit in my life.”
“But you didn’t have to; that was your choice.”
“And so that makes me what, spoiled? Stupid? What?”
I stared at him, at his clothes. He bought things cheap at consignment stores and Target and then paired them with extravagant pieces like the ankle boots he’d bought or his cashmere peacoat. He had scarves that looked like they came off the pages of GQ that in reality came from small ethnic stores in our neighborhood. He had a flare for fashion, for accessorizing, so he always looked like a million dollars walking down the street. But I knew, the platform boots from the night before notwithstanding, that normally, frugal was his middle name.
“Trev?”
I squinted at him. “You live on my bullshit budget and you don’t have to.”
He spun around and started stalking away from me.
I followed, trying to think of what I meant.
The guesthouse, and the walk down to it, reminded me of Greece when I had seen it on the Travel Channel. How white it was, the walls—all that was missing was the azure Aegean and we would have had a damn postcard. I needed to hurry up and get used to the luxury, because it was screwing with me.
The entrance was a sliding glass door, and the back opened out onto a little pier that had five steps down to the water. In the summer, it had to be beautiful, but now that it was slightly chilly, I had no desire to dive in.
He flung his luggage down in the living room and pivoted around to face me. I walked by him into the bedroom, put my duffel on the wingback chair, took off my jacket and scarf, draped both over that, and then dived into the bed.
“What are you doing?”
I lifted my leg. “Take off my shoe.”
“What?”
I grunted, letting it fall. “I’m being an idiot because this is fucking with me. I’m sorry, I know you’re on a budget because it’s not mine, it’s ours. We’re working on building our life together, and this belongs to your parents, not you. So we’ll visit for the next week, and then we’ll go back to our shitty little apartment until we can buy our tiny dream house and live happily ever after.”
He was shaking.
“Oh.” I grinned at him, sitting up to unlace my wingtips, ready to put my Nikes back on because my dress shoes scrunched my feet. “You wanna fight instead?”
“No.” He rushed over to the bed, swatting my hands away, sitting with my feet in his lap, working the laces himself. I noticed that he had dumped his scarf and peacoat in the outer room.
I cleared my throat. “Your brother says you didn’t leave because you were gay but because your parents thought you were crazy.”
H
e continued what he was doing, dropping first one shoe and then the other to the floor before he finally turned and looked at me. “And you think what about that, since you wanted me to see a shrink a while back?”
“I was going with you; I’m just as fucked up as you are.”
He went to move, but I pressed my legs down, making them heavy, trapping him beneath them.
“Lemme go.” He sounded disgusted.
“Uh-uh,” I said, moving fast, flipping around and putting him on his back under me on the bed. “I need to get laid.”
“Well I don’t need—oh.” He gasped as I bent and licked a long wet line up the side of his throat before biting his neck. It tasted and smelled so good, like Landry. When I inhaled deeply, he jolted under me.
“You need me,” I said flatly, noting the goose bumps, the flutter of his lashes, his hands fisted in my jacket.
“Yes,” he hissed, bowing up off the bed, trying to get closer.
I yanked his hands off me, which made his eyes spring open wide, all big and beautiful, and I attacked him, his belt, his zipper, rough with him because I was frantic to connect, to be reminded of who I was.
He whimpered and whined, and when I yanked down the thong he was wearing and his cock sprang free, I deep throated him in one decisive movement.
“Oh fuck!” he shouted, hands on my head, gripping my skull hard since there was no hair to pull and fist.
I held him tight with one hand on his hip, the other squeezing his ass as I sucked and stroked with my tongue and mouth, swallowing down precum, making him wet.
“I can’t… I’m too…,” he rasped, pumping in and out of my mouth, holding me tight against him, knowing that I had no gag reflex at all.
I took him down the back of my throat and swallowed around his engorged shaft as he babbled and made a litany of my name. “Trev! I don’t wanna come, I want you to fuck me!”
No. He wanted to come.
“Trevan!”
I made the suction too good, too strong, and he came hard, yelling my name, filling my mouth before I drank him down, gulping the hot, salty fluid.
He clutched at me, my shoulders, tried to move, but caught between me holding him down, his dress shoes, and his pants, he was at my mercy. I held him as his orgasm consumed him and he moaned loud and long. His convulsions made him buck against me and slam his spewing cock against the back of my throat.
Sometimes Landry needed to be reminded that I owned him body and soul.
“You’re an idiot!” he yelled at me.
I lifted up, allowing the spent, flaccid cock to slip from between my lips. Landry, seeing the long strand of saliva that connected my bottom lip to the flared head of his cock, groaned deep and hoarse. When I licked my lips, he shuddered.
“Jesus, you’re so fuckin’ hot,” he stammered. “But you don’t have to blow me for me to feel it—to know that I belong to you, for me to know that you’re all there is.”
Our eyes locked together. “Maybe I needed to be reminded of who I am. You ever think of that?”
He reached down and put his hands on my face. “Take everything off; take your damn clothes off. I wanna see you… your skin.”
I rose up over him, not listening to him at all, still fully clothed as I loomed above him, over my man who was now a study in debauched beauty.
His eyes were glazed, his hair was tousled, he was flushed and panting, and his stomach was covered in a fine sheen of sweat. The dress pants were shoved down to his knees, and his sweater was pushed up to his hard pecs. He was less muscular than I was, but his body was toned and hard. I bent to taste him.
“I want your clothes off.” His voice rose, commanding.
“No,” I told him, turning away, getting up off the bed so he couldn’t see my smile, just hear the tone of my voice. “We need to go back up and talk to your folks.”
“Trevan!” he yelled at me as I grinned and left the room.
“Better hurry up,” I called back over my shoulder.
“One!”
He was counting?
“Two!”
Oh, shit! I bolted back into the room to find the man I loved standing beside the bed completely naked, hands on his hips in such a stance of indignation that I burst out laughing.
“I am going to murder you if you do not get your ass in this bed!”
But it wasn’t necessary anymore. I was real and he was real, and the love between us was vibrant and alive and sometimes ugly, sometimes even mean, but it was there, and I could see it all over him. His eyes couldn’t lie, and they were full of me.
I darted around the bed and grabbed him, and after a whimper in the back of his throat, he wrapped his arms around me and molded his beautiful body to mine.
“I want to make you feel as good as you made me feel.”
“Oh, but I feel good.” I smiled into his hair, pulling back to brush my nose along his and close my eyes with the surge of feeling that swamped me. “I’m perfect.”
He grunted.
“I meant I feel perfect, ass, I didn’t mean I am perfect.”
His head turned, and he kissed a wet line up the side of my neck as I leaned my head over so he could reach all my skin.
“I love you,” he told me, nibbling under my chin as I let my head loll back on my shoulders. His lips were so soft, and between the pressure and the nibbling, I felt my body heat.
“Trev.” His breath was hot on my face.
“I love you, Landry Carter,” I said, smiling as I bent forward and nuzzled his adorable little nose before zeroing in on his mouth. “How ’bout I kiss you until you come again.”
“Oh God.”
I chuckled before I slanted my mouth down over his.
“Not fair,” he whispered even as he returned each kiss.
WE MADE the mistake of getting back on the bed, and when I saw his eyes fluttering, I pressed my advantage, grabbed him, and lay down with him in my arms. Head on my chest, listening to my heartbeat, the man passed out minutes later. I followed him into sleep and smiled when I thought how weird it would be if anyone walked in on us. I was still completely dressed except for my shoes, and he was naked. I patted his ass as I smiled.
The nap was good, and when we woke up, we headed up to see his parents. They sent us right back to the guest house to shower and change for dinner. We never ate at six, but since it was supposed to be a whole night of fun and partying, we did as we were asked.
I was done fast—showered and shaved, the cologne Landry had bought me for Christmas clinging to me as I waited for him in the living room. I had one suit and I was in it, my beige Armani that I was wearing with a white dress shirt underneath.
When Landry emerged, I almost swallowed my tongue he looked so good. The black Prada suit fit tight, and the red dress shirt underneath was very sexy.
“No velvet?” I teased him. “No leather?”
“It’s my parents,” he said flatly, and there was a shadow in his eyes. “They don’t find my eccentricity the lyrical thing that you do.”
“I find you lyrical?” I teased him.
“Yeah, you do.”
I chuckled, holding out my hand.
“You’re breathtaking, by the way,” he assured me as he laced his fingers with mine and we headed for the door.
“And you’re the only one who thinks that.” I grinned, kissing his ear loudly, wetly, making him giggle.
“Knock it off, I can’t wrinkle.”
I shook my head and he laughed, deep and loud. I liked it.
“Well don’t you two clean up well.” Cece beamed at Landry and me when we met them in the driveway. The limousine was there to take us to the party.
The two of us had neglected to wear ties, but when I asked Cece if we needed them, she said no. But all the other men had them on.
“It doesn’t matter,” she assured us.
“Of course it doesn’t,” Landry said under his breath so only I could hear. “Because she’s already stunned that we even had s
uits. You heard her: we clean up nice.”
“Which was a nice thing to say,” I assured him, pulling him closer to me so that his head leaned against mine.
“It was a backhanded compliment at best, and I hated it.”
“You’re overthinking, maybe?” I offered.
“No,” he said, hand on my thigh.
I hated ties, and it had never even crossed my mind to put one on. Neil, Chris, Scott, and Hugh did all look very polished, but it was a party in a hotel on the Vegas strip. Was it necessary?
“The necklace looks gorgeous on you,” I told Jocelyn, who had chosen a crushed silk, low neckline wrap dress to show off her gift from Landry. I loved that the first opportunity she had, she wore it. Landry’s mother had chosen a diamond necklace, like a long tennis bracelet that laid flat. I understood––it was stunning––but it was not Landry’s piece. And no, he had not made it specifically for her, but he had still chosen two of the best pieces from his collection and gifted them to his mother and sister. My opinion of his mother dropped quite a bit, while his sister’s stock rose.
“Oh I just love it,” she cooed, hand on the necklace, smiling at Landry.
He nodded and nestled closer to me.
As we neared the strip, Cece turned to Landry and asked how he and I had met.
“We met at a party,” he told her.
“Yes, but how? Did you walk over to him? Did he walk over to you?”
“He walked over to me,” he told her. “And that was it. I knew he’d never lie to me and I knew he’d keep me safe and I knew everything would be okay.”
“Safe?” She looked concerned.
He shook his head. “It’s old news.”
Her brows furrowed. “I have so many questions.”
“That are better left for tomorrow,” he told her. “Not for a fun night of celebration.”
“Exactly,” she agreed and smiled at him. “I planned the party early so everyone could walk the strip later, and I figured after your plane ride that breakfast and a nap and then dinner was the best bet.”
“Excellent plan,” Chris assured her.
She patted Landry’s hand happily.
The strip was clogged with people, and the limousine had a slow slog down the street to the front of Caesar’s Palace. A staff member met us out front and led us to the penthouse elevator. We then went up to the roof nightclub’s lounge, which, along with the terrace, had been rented out for the party. There were already people there, drinking, milling around, when we walked in.
