Slow Pitch

by Amy Lane

  And a miracle happened. They did exactly that.

  “Fine,” his father mumbled. “But we won’t be held accountable for what happens to that child—”

  “That’s fine, Tim. Nina and I are doing a pretty good job at accountability. Now shoo. You guys leave first. I’m locking up.”

  He followed them outside, making sure the doors were locked and Nina’s alarm set. He had keys to her house, as she did to his, because it only made sense.

  They were, for better or worse, going to be in each other’s lives until death did they disentwine.

  But Nina wasn’t who Tenner was thinking about as he got into his CR-V and waited for his parents’ rental to take off. He pulled out his phone to see Ross had texted him sometime while he’d been inside.

  You surviving?

  And, like his parents hadn’t been able to do, the simple concern made his eyes burn.

  No. Kicked parents out of Nina’s house. Am meeting Nina and Piper for dinner. God, what a clusterfuck.

  The phone rang in his hands. “Oh, baby—when you said it would be awkward, I had no idea.”

  “They… I don’t know. Apparently decided Nina and I were going to fuck things up. They wanted custody, out of the blue. It’s….” He flailed. “God. No. I’d die before I let them raise my kid.”

  “Oh, Tenner!”

  Tenner realized that might have come out sounding a tad overwrought, and he tried to reel it in. “Anyway, Nina was barely holding it together. I told her I’d handle my parents, then meet her and Piper for dinner. Piper was so proud of her dress, you know?”

  “Yeah. She told the whole team about it, Ten. Couldn’t have missed that.”

  Tenner swallowed. “I… never mind. I’m just glad you called. I gotta go.”

  “Text me when you’re done with dinner. I want to know, okay?”

  “Deal. Later.”

  They signed off, and Tenner tried to forget what he’d been going to say to Ross but he’d chickened out on first.

  I needed you here so bad.

  It wasn’t Ross’s fault he hadn’t been there. Tenner needed to make that right.

  NINA HAD ordered for him, which was fine. He was starving, and sirloin and broccoli sounded as good as anything else.

  “I’m gonna miss the chicken bake,” he told Nina, with a smile, though. “I put some foil on it so it should keep.”

  “Thanks,” she said briefly, and they both watched Piper playing the restaurant’s electronic game with complete absorption. She seemed to have taken the change in plans relatively well, but then, she’d caught on that Tenner hadn’t been happy pretty quickly too.

  “Ten?” Nina said hesitantly, for his ears only.

  “Yeah?”

  “So, when you talk about dating… do you have someone in mind?”

  His heart started to pound. “Yeah.”

  “I… I don’t want anyone spending the night at the house while she’s there. Not in your bed.”

  “Deal,” he said. “Why the change of heart?”

  “Because there’s nothing like seeing the ultimate in judgment to realize you don’t have a place to throw stones,” she told him, sober and hurt.

  “I’m sorry, honey—”

  She shook her head. “Let’s just say I had a chance to think about it before you got here, and… God. You were right. We both deserve to be happy. Being like them isn’t going to make me happy.”

  Wow. Oh wow. “I won’t argue. When does the same-bed thing change?”

  She visibly swallowed. “Until I meet them?”

  Okay. So, serious. He got that. “Same,” he said. “But….” He’d already done this, but it made him look generous, right? “Guest room is fine.”

  She gave him a brief smile. “Deal.”

  “But we need a way to tell—”

  And at that moment, the waitress arrived with their food, and Piper was suddenly paying attention to Mom and Dad again.

  So, not out to Piper yet. But there was progress. Improvement.

  And he and Ross, maybe this week, maybe the next, could go out on the town in their nice clothes. They could see a River Cats game together. They could hold hands in public.

  The freedom he felt under his breastbone melted some of the ice that had formed there when he’d been alone with his parents.

  Seeing Ross, waiting in his car as Tenner pulled up to his house, melted the rest.

  Broken Rules

  ROSS HAD come to expect a certain amount of stoicism from Tenner. He could be a smartass, but his humor was best classified as “dry,” and he had the habit of understatement that made Ross want to grind his teeth sometimes.

  The look of naked relief, of longing, on his face as he parked his SUV in the driveway and met Ross on the walkway came up against the barrier Ross usually kept between him and his “fling” lovers and pounded it to dust.

  “Hey,” he started, keeping his voice gentle. “I hope it’s okay that I stopped—”

  Tenner swept him up into a kiss—blatant, carnal, and needy as fuck.

  Ross was needed.

  Wow. He wasn’t used to being needed; he was the youngest of four. People liked him and enjoyed his company, his banter, his sex, but they didn’t need him. He returned the kiss with a hunger he could have sworn he didn’t have.

  He’d been prepared to be sensitive, to be kind, to listen. He had not come prepared to be ravished. And with any thought of a barrier barely a memory, he was vulnerable as he never had been before.

  Tenner’s hands in his back pockets, kneading his ass, woke him to the fact that they were dry-humping each other on Tenner’s front lawn.

  “Inside,” he gasped.

  Tenner practically ran to the door, and they fell through the threshold, then slammed the door against the jam and dodging before it bounced shut. Their mouths meshed, hands shoved at clothes, breaths mingled—

  “Shit!” Tenner pulled back. “Did we let the cat out?”

  Ross’s heart stuttered. Oh God, no. Not before what could be the best sex in his entire life!

  Behind them, Joe let out a plaintive meow, and Tenner sagged against the couch while scratching Joe behind the ear. “Sorry, buddy. Could you, I don’t know, park it a minute? We’ve got something going no—”

  That was sweet, the way he talked to the cat. Ross was captivated, charmed, and he needed Tenner now. He took over the kiss, took over the undressing, until they were both naked in the living room, kissing.

  Ross took command first. “You stay down here. I’ll get the lube up—”

  Tenner turned and bolted for the stairs, Ross at his heels.

  “First one to the lube tops!” Tenner called, and Ross had to pause at the staircase to shudder.

  Tenner got to the bedroom first, and by the time Ross recovered, he was putting on a show. Tenner stood at the bed, covers turned down, oiling his cock with a fierce hunger in his eyes.

  Ross took the bottle from him, standing close enough to smell the heat from his skin. “Give me that,” he murmured before turning toward the bed and putting one knee up on the mattress, spreading his backside, exposing his opening. Then he squeezed a little slick onto his two fingers and reached behind himself, turning his head so Tenner could see his expression as he shoved his fingers in.

  “Ah….” A plaintive, needy note crept into his voice as he breached his entrance, stretched, made himself wide and ready. He loved to bottom—had toys for it when he didn’t have a partner—but he was always so aggressive, it didn’t happen often.

  Tenner, fierce, demanding, wanting inside Ross’s body as if his cock was the key to Ross’s soul—Ross wasn’t going to pass that up.

  He was going to do anything he could to goad Tenner on.

  Tenner, throwing off heat, buzzing with electricity, lined up behind him. “You want me to take you like this? Bent over the bed? Or face-to-face?”

  And Ross had to hide his face. God, he couldn’t let Tenner see how—

  Tenner shoved
at his shoulder, rolling him to his back. “No hiding,” he muttered. “Forget it. Took too long. My choice.”

  Ross had enough time to spread his legs, bracing his feet on the edge of the bed, before Tenner positioned himself and thrust in.

  “Ah!” Ross threw his head back, eyes squeezed shut, because he’d prepped just enough, and they were both slick. Possession was sweet and wonderful and it burned.

  Tenner rocked forward, taking him over, and the sound he made was no less surprised, no less wounded, for all he was the one penetrating.

  “God!” he groaned. “So good.”

  “Tell me about it.” Ross started to tremble as Tenner pulled out shakily, thrust back in with exquisite care. “Not made of glass, here—fuck me!”

  “God!” And it was like Tenner had been waiting for permission. Harder, harder, faster. The sound of their flesh slapping off each other probably scared the cat. But Ross was in heaven, possessed, owned, taken, his cock swollen and aching and his ass being plowed in the best of ways.

  Ross managed to pull up a taunting smile, although his head was swimming and orgasm felt like it lurked under the surface, a leviathan waiting to break into the world.

  “That all you got?”

  Tenner stopped, and Ross almost screamed.

  “You bast—augh!”

  Tenner’s fist around his cock, still slick, squeezing hard, from base to tip, while Tenner was still solidly lodged in his ass—it was like a new form of torture, a delicious, masterful way to have sex.

  “Gonna move?” he almost begged, and Tenner managed a little rocking motion that was designed to drive him out of his mind.

  “Want me to?”

  Ross whimpered, and Tenner squeezed his cockhead gently, skating his thumb through the precome at the end. “Not so’s you’d not—ice!”

  Tenner pulled out until his bell stretched Ross’s entrance. “I notice,” he rasped. “I notice that you’re gorgeous”—he thrust his hips hard—“and kind”—and he thrust again—“and all I ever wanted and you’re just fucking out of reach!”

  He stopped again, stroking some more, while Ross slid seamlessly into subspace, simultaneously needing to come before he exploded and able to wait until Tenner said it was okay.

  “I’m here,” he almost wept. “I’m here. Whatever you need, Tenner. However you need me, I’m here.”

  Tenner made a surprised sound, an indeterminate sound, and then thrust forward again, the final flurry of fucking, the moment designed to drive Ross mad.

  “I need you to come!”

  Searing climax roared through him, and he closed his eyes and gave himself over to it, convulsing around Tenner’s cock and spewing come across his own abdomen, chest, even shoulders. He kept shaking as Tenner cried out and fell forward, hips still pumping, coming inside Ross’s body, filling him up and overfilling him, possessing his ass, his heart, his soul.

  “God,” Ross mumbled into the silence, still in the floaty place where words were hard. “What was that?”

  Tenner buried his face against Ross’s neck, some of the dominating fierceness easing from his body, and then some more, and finally melting into Ross’s arms with all the sweetness he’d shown the damned cat.

  “I really needed you tonight,” he confessed, his voice throbbing. “So bad. I just kept thinking, if you were there, I’d know I was doing the right thing. If you were there, I’d be stronger. If you were there, it wouldn’t….” His voice hitched, and he shook gently, like he was trying to get himself back under control.

  “Hurt so bad?” Ross whispered.

  “Yeah.”

  And then Ross was holding him, comforting him, relieved, finally, because this need he felt for Tenner in his body, by his side, in his heart—this need for the two of them, joined somehow, always touching—it wasn’t his alone.

  Finally, Tenner slid away and went to wash up. Ross followed him, because he didn’t want Tenner alone in his almost pristine bathroom with the brown tile and the matching brown towels, looking in the mirror and wondering who he was.

  Ross knew that’s what he’d be tempted to do, if he went to the washroom alone.

  Tenner soaked a washcloth and met Ross’s eyes in the mirror, and tried to smile. Ross kissed his sweaty shoulder and shook his head.

  “Here,” he murmured. “Let me.”

  He could hear Tenner swallow.

  “Okay.”

  Ross washed Tenner and then rinsed out the washcloth and hung it up.

  “Not you?” Tenner asked.

  “You think you’re the only one who wants to feel marked?”

  Tenner closed his eyes. “Thank you. For… for wearing me in your skin, I guess.”

  Ross trailed fingers along his spine, down the small of his back. “Thank you for trusting me with….” Your need. Your want. Your gracious little family. Your time. “You.”

  Tenner caught his mouth again, the kiss a simple blessing. “I’m gonna jump in the shower—wanna join me?”

  Ross smiled slowly. “Yeah.”

  No acrobatic sex—just simple touches, made more sensual by the pounding cool water, the soap. They emerged and Tenner wrapped a towel around his waist and ran down the stairs, then came back with their clothes—and a mostly full quart of gelato and two spoons. He gave a small smile as he handed a still-naked Ross the gelato and pulled his phone out of the pants he’d brought up to put on the end table.

  “Since I get you on a Sunday night as a treat anyway.”

  “So I’m already dessert?” Ross set the gelato on the dresser long enough to put on his briefs and climbed into bed, watching as Tenner grabbed a clean pair and did the same.

  “And the main course and the appetizer,” Tenner assured him with a quiet smile. He climbed in next to Ross and scooted until the lines of their bodies were touching.

  “Talk to me,” Ross said quietly.

  Tenner took his spoon and a healthy bite of gelato, tilting his head back and sighing as if the sugar and cream was a hit of the good stuff.

  “I fell in love in college,” he murmured. “Like you do.”

  “So dramatic,” Ross agreed. “All six times.”

  Tenner shot him a grin. “Wow—six?”

  “Three boys, two girls, one enby. I was positive I was going to marry each and every one of them.”

  Tenner nodded. “And then…?”

  “Life. Summer vacation. A fight like a summer storm.”

  “Yeah. I was going to marry a boy. He was out and happy, and his family was… so kind. And I flew home over Christmas vacation to the ice and the snow and the house in the middle of the vast nothingness, you know?”

  “Nebraska is really that bad?”

  “Geographically and emotionally—at least for me. Anyway, I flew in for Christmas and texted Blaine the entire time. And I told my parents, and… and my mom said, as long as I continued to believe in the devil’s path, she and my father would have nothing to say to me. This was Christmas, mind you, and suddenly I… I was a ghost. I didn’t have a plate set at dinner. They didn’t listen to me when I spoke. It was….” He shuddered.

  “That is the most chilling goddamned thing I’ve ever heard,” Ross said, horrified.

  “It wasn’t fun. And I thought, ‘Okay, I can do this.’ And I was fine with it. They didn’t open the presents I brought them. They didn’t put any for me under the tree. Christmas was just a big day of me being… a shadow in their house. I left five days later, pissed and absolutely sure I would never see them again.”

  “What happened?” Because obviously he had.

  Tenner pulled up one shoulder. “On the way to the airport, I watched as the house got smaller and smaller and realized I’d never felt so alone in the world.” He closed his eyes and leaned back against the pillows. “I… I went back and ghosted Blaine. Broke his heart, I think.” He let out a sigh. “Not my best moment.”

  “Mm.” Ross teased his lips with a bite of gelato, pleased when Tenner opened up and sucked it of
f the spoon. “Well, obviously you’re going to have to suffer for all eternity for being a mixed-up college kid.”

  Tenner rolled his eyes. “I think the memory is sort of a torture as it is, don’t you think?”

  Ross nodded thoughtfully. “That if we want to be good people, the bad stuff we did—even if it’s unintentional—really does come back to haunt us? Yeah. I think we punish ourselves a lot.”

  “Well, wherever Blaine ended up, I hope he found someone he deserves. He was a truly awesome guy. I… I mean, I was in the middle of breaking up with him, and he didn’t call me a coward or blame me or any of the things he should have done. He just kept saying, ‘Don’t let them do this to us. Don’t let them do this to you.’” He opened his eyes and searched Ross’s face. “But I did.”

  “Was that when you met Nina?”

  Tenner’s smile turned bitter. “She was a baseball groupie. Stalked the team. So when she got a crush on me, I… let it happen. Told my parents I was dating a girl. They sent me a Christmas present the next week.”

  Ross sucked air in through his teeth. “What’d you get?”

  “A mint set of baseball cards. I sold them for baby furniture after I got Nina pregnant.” He grimaced. “She, uh, she lied about birth control. I haven’t told many people that. It makes her sound awful, but she was just… like me. Young and stupid. She confessed before we got married, and I promised I’d never hold it against her.” He let out a sigh. “It’s easier not to do that now. But yeah. I had to drop out of baseball when we got married.”

  “You hadn’t graduated yet?” Ross didn’t know this part.

  “No. Piper was born about six months before I got my degree and my job at CompuCo with Pat. By the time Pat met me, Nina and I were a nice young couple, starting out.”

  Ross finished off the gelato and set the container on the end table. Then he settled in with his head on Tenner’s chest, soothed when Tenner started to stroke his temple.