St. Nacho's 4: The Book of Daniel

by Z. A. Maxfield

  At one point, he rubbed the tip of his nose with his thumb and smeared a bit of dressing there. It took all the sangfroid I had to keep my face blank—to keep from leaping over the table and licking it off.

  One moment, our meal was laid out before us, then after what seemed like very little time passed, we had nothing but plates and garnish left between us. My bottle of wine was empty, but Cam was still on his first beer.

  I paid the check, and we left, Cam leading me to the street, holding my hand in public as if it was just another day in St. Nacho’s.

  I pulled my hand away discreetly.

  “Are you worried about what people will think?” he asked.

  “This isn’t St. Nacho’s.”

  Public affection between same-sex couples was far more commonplace around St. Nacho’s. It wasn’t like living in a fantasy world, but it was easy to get into the habit of taking a lover’s hand or kissing a date on the street there. In Pismo the populace was older, more conservative, and less likely to approve of open displays of affection from anyone, let alone two men.

  “Fuck ’em.” Cam opened my car door and waited while I got in. “I do what I do.”

  I grinned up at him. “That’s one way to approach prejudice.”

  He knelt down next to the car, next to me, and brushed the hair back off my face. “I don’t hide who I am. If I want to hold my date’s hand, I do. I don’t care where we are. Physically, very few people are willing to push a guy my size around. You’re probably pretty safe with me in a place like this.”

  “I guess.” I’d never take him on, and bullies are almost all born cowards.

  “But people still talk crap all the time. That going to bother you?”

  I couldn’t lie to him. I wasn’t supposed to lie anymore anyway. “I don’t know.”

  “That might be a good thing to figure out.” He closed the door and walked around to the driver’s side. I caught him feeling his pockets for the key again and waited for him to remember he didn’t need one.

  “Where to now?” He got in and started up the car and glanced over, relaxed and ready for whatever came next.

  Even though I told myself I’d planned to make this a real date, to take it slow and amble along the beach, to show Cam a good time instead of jumping him the second we reached our destination, I said, “We could check in at the hotel.”

  He shot a knowing glance my way and backed out of the space. “Sure. Put our stuff away. Take a look around and figure out what there is to do.” He caught his lower lip between his even white teeth, trying to hide his smile.

  “Sure. Read the informative hotel brochure.” I really couldn’t look at him when I said that.

  It took only a few minutes to get to the resort where I’d booked our room. Cam insisted on carrying both our bags and my briefcase to the front desk. The clerk was friendly and didn’t bat an eye when she handed us our keys.

  “Have a pleasant stay, Mr. Livingston.”

  “We will, thank you very much.”

  Once inside the elevator we were alone. He pushed me against the wall, pinning me there, pulling my hands over my head and proving that he’d had the same reaction to our lunch that I had. I hooked a leg around his in a grossly indecent, needy maneuver that brought our groins together. A bright flash of heat surged directly to my cock when it came into contact with his, hard and ready, throbbing beneath the thin fabric of his shorts. He used it like a battering ram—rubbing and grinding it against me—until I saw stars.

  For the first time in my life, I went weak at the knees, and Cam, who already had my duffel on a strap across his shoulder and was carrying two other bags, leaned over and lifted me in an effortless fireman’s carry—probably just to prove he could.

  I laughed like a kid as he carried me down the hotel hall that way.

  Chapter Twelve

  Cam whumped me down onto the bed and divested himself of his other burdens. In no time at all, he was on me, wrestling me out of my clothes while I did the same to him. Finally clad in only socks, I wrapped my legs around him and let him pin me down.

  I let go of my deeply rooted need for control and clung to Cam. I was smaller, weaker, and arguably drunker. He kissed me long and hard, opening my lips with a forceful tongue and probing my mouth. I opened for him, but I gave him a fight, and I guessed we both found that satisfactory, because Cam gave me little time to recover between forays. I barely had time to breathe, but he did no more than kiss me and grind for what seemed like forever.

  What a sensualist. He ran gentle fingers over every inch of me he could reach, from my shoulders to my thighs to the bottoms of the feet I had locked behind his back. He gripped and squeezed my ass and nuzzled our cheeks and our noses together. At one point, I think he even brushed his eyelashes over my closed eyelids while he rubbed his lips over mine, his touch featherlight and then gone as quickly as it came.

  Then with a great, rolling heave of his upper body our positions reversed, and I found myself on top, able to explore him in equal detail. He had soft, curly golden hair on his chest and in his pits. It grew darker the farther it traveled down his magnificent abs to pool in a thatch of red hair now hidden by his erection.

  I thumbed the dark disks of his nipples, watching as they pebbled and flushed beneath my fingers. Laying the flat of my tongue on one, I sucked and swirled until he arched for me, offering both his nipple and his cock, trying to get more sensation, more contact between our heated bodies.

  “Dan.” His breath came in short puffs. “C’mon. You’re killing me here.”

  I slipped my good hand around his back and insinuated a finger between his ass cheeks as I sucked his other nipple into my mouth. He was salty and delicious, tasting of sweat and man and sea, and I couldn’t get enough. I reached for his jaw with my tender hand and touched his mouth. He licked my thumb and sucked it, shuddering as I teased the tight ring of muscles guarding his channel.

  “Ride me.” He panted. “Dan… I need you to ride me.”

  I nodded and left him long enough to scramble to my bag for supplies where I came up with a bottle of slick and a couple of condoms. When I got back to him, he lay there, one arm behind his head, one hand on his cock.

  I couldn’t believe he was mine.

  A smile bloomed over his lips as he welcomed me back, grunting and accommodating my weight. Something in his eyes made my heart lurch, a giddy, thrilling little spike of adrenaline, a rush of happiness that surged through my veins on contact with his skin.

  He took the lube from me and gave my hip a light slap. “Come up here.”

  One of Cam’s large hands gripped my ass, and he drew me up and up, until I was poised over his chest—my legs spread impossibly wide—so he could nuzzle my balls. I shivered all over when the wet heat of his mouth surrounded my flesh, engulfing me in a moist cave. It was almost-pleasure and almost-pain while his hand kneaded and gripped my cock and his mouth teased and fondled my balls. I had to grab for the headboard because I thought I’d fall right over and crush his head. He flipped the lube lid open, and the hand that held me disappeared only to return, slick and insistent, on my perineum, gliding toward my hole.

  I shook all over, weak with need, while he readied me for him. His fingers pumped inside me, and when I started to push against his hand, begging for more, he slipped it free, pushing me back until I hovered over his cock. I was almost senseless by this time, and he had to explain what he wanted.

  “Get me ready.” He pressed a condom into my hand. I must have looked at it like I’d never seen one before, because he took it from me and opened it, handing the latex circle back unwrapped.

  Feeling foolish, I rolled it down on him, giving him a pump or two, then held myself still.

  “What are you waiting for?” His eyebrows rose.

  “I want to kiss you while you push inside me.”

  He smiled faintly, gazing up at me, and then his entire body rippled beneath mine. It was like riding some magnificent, mythical animal as he ro
lled up onto his elbows. His abs strained, and when his lips met mine, I sank onto his cock, trying to relax. He seemed impossibly large, and I felt tight. I worried whether I’d be able to take him even though I wasn’t exactly untested in that area. He pressed his lips to mine, and for that bright moment, we were connected by a circle of hunger and need that raced from my lips to his, down through his body and back to me through his cock.

  I resisted him only as long as he resisted me. When my tongue swept in to take his mouth, his cock surged past the tight ring of muscle, past my brief, unconscious resistance until my body capitulated for him. I rocked back, and he pushed up, and little by little our bodies joined. With a groan he dropped back, and I sat up fully, one palm flat on his chest, split open and spread wide, impaled on him. I felt him as deep as my heart, and I let out a noise I didn’t recognize as coming from me at all.

  “Dan,” he whispered, shifting, drawing out and then pushing his hips up and around in tight circles to push deeper still. “Daniel.”

  I didn’t know where my hands should go, so I wrapped them around myself—across my body to grip my own shoulders—and rode him like that, letting him hold my hips so we could find a rhythm together. And fuck, it felt good and bad at the same time—confusing to let him in that deep. I opened myself so completely and yet I was still, for all intents and purposes, clinging to myself, alone.

  I wanted more. I needed him to pull me down and engulf me completely.

  I needed him to hold me. I needed skin. I needed to taste and touch more than I needed to be fucked, and I stretched and reached out for him, taking his face in my hands and bringing our mouths together for a searing kiss that I wanted to last forever.

  One minute I was on top, and the next, he’d pulled out and rolled me over facedown so he was lying on me, crawling up, nudging my legs apart, spreading me once more while he licked and kissed all along my spine. He entered me again, this time kissing my shoulders and my neck. He breathed softly against my temple and said my name and gimme and yeah, yes, mine until he seemed to lose even the power of one-syllable words.

  He fucked me slowly. Deeply. He drew grunts and satisfied little huffs of air from me until I couldn’t breathe except to pant.

  It was perfect. Cam was perfect, and at last, when he wrapped his arm around me like a python to pump my dick with his hand while he fucked me into oblivion, I blew all over, howling my delight into a pillow.

  He chuckled hot breath into my hair and rubbed his bristly face along my shoulders. “Daniel.”

  I was boneless and sated and oh, so very content to gather his hand in mine. I kissed and rubbed my cheek along the knuckles like his damned cat.

  His other hand, still splayed across my lower abdomen warmed me even though what spunk he hadn’t wiped away with the sheet had started to cool and dry.

  I felt his cock soften; he slipped it out of me, dropping the condom over the side of the bed.

  “Jeez.” He sighed.

  “Feel like a nap?” I turned and tucked my head between his neck and shoulder, shamelessly wanting his arms still wrapped around me.

  “Mmmhmm.” He sighed as our bodies came into contact again. I wrapped my leg over his to keep him close.

  I had planned other things for the afternoon. Exploring the beach, the pier, the shops. Dining. Dancing, if he wanted go to a club. I was just too comfortable to move. “Just for a bit.”

  “Mmmhmm.”

  * * *

  I lay beside Cam later, fading in and out of some forgettable dream. I had the peculiar sensation that I was being watched, and when I opened my eyes, I found Cam’s blue gaze fixed on me, curious, as if he were observing a slow growth of mold on my face.

  I shot up, startled. “What?”

  “Nothing.” He ran the tip of his finger down my nose. “Did you know you talk in your sleep?”

  Ah, no. I scrubbed at my face and glanced at the clock. Eight p.m. Perfect for a late supper and a walk on the beach. “Bree used to tell me that, but I can’t say I’ve ever heard proof. What did I say?”

  He grinned. “Mostly nonsense I think. You did say a name. Jack.”

  “Ah.” Jack. I chuckled. He waited, but I ignored his curiosity.

  “Who’s Jack?”

  Gotcha. “Jack was my zeyde’s dog—predictably enough, a Jack Russell terrier. I haven’t thought about him in years.”

  “Really.”

  I nodded, shifting so I could lay my head on his outstretched arm. Not a pillowy soft bicep, that. It was like sleeping on small boulders. I faced him. “I used to love that dog. My dad wouldn’t let us have one, but we could play with Jack. I was eight when Jake was born, and Zeyde made me this grand presentation of a key to his place and asked me if I thought I could handle the responsibility of walking Jack on my way home from school. I think he just wanted to keep me out of the house so my mom and Jake could nap.”

  “Your grandfather sounds like a great guy. Yasha told me a lot about him.”

  “He’s the one who always called Jake Yasha. He was a good man. He tried to make things better when…when they weren’t.”

  “He was good to you. He took Jake to Israel?”

  “Yeah. Jake had a hard time in school. When he was younger, I was always there to protect him, but when I went to university, things got bad. Mom lost it when he came out. She called me first thing, hysterical. She talked all that out to me so she wouldn’t let him see how much it bothered her.”

  “That’s why you never came out to her?”

  “I’d never seen her like that. No way she could have handled two of us. She was devastated. But you’ve got to hand it to her. Regardless of how much that upset her, she stood by him.”

  “I see.”

  “They’re gone now, though. I guess it’s finally my turn.”

  Chapter Thirteen

  Cam and I had dinner by candlelight in front of an amazing panoramic ocean view. I hardly paid attention to the well-prepared California fusion cuisine which took the disparate aspects of French and Asian cooking and merged them with typical fresh California ingredients. Cam frowned at his plate like the waiter had presented him with soylent green, but dinner was lovely. Maybe it was the first time in my life that good food took a backseat to watching my date.

  When the waiter presented Cam’s dessert in a flaming shot glass, it was nothing less than priceless.

  “Are you kidding me?” Cam asked, polite enough to wait until after the waiter left. He flipped the saucer from his coffee over the glass to smother the flame. “Pudding should never be on fire.”

  “What can I say? The reviews said this place was good.”

  The food had been delicious. I’d had black sesame seared ahi with greens and some sweet hot dressing with wasabi grits—or something. Was it white polenta? Cam had beef tenderloin with summer squash and wasabi mashed potatoes. It was first-rate, but maybe not Cam’s style, because he pulled apart the self-indulgent little towers of food suspiciously, separating the dish’s elements onto the plate like a child, after which he peered at each thing before he ate it like he expected it to move. He’d frowned in concentration to the point I thought sweat would pop out on his brow.

  Note to self: save pretentious restaurants for business lunches.

  “It is good,” he admitted, when he finally dipped his spoon into his dessert. “The fire kind of caramelized the sugar in the fruit on top.”

  I wasn’t too hungry so I let my dessert sit for a while, preferring to slouch on the table in a way my mother would have hated, leaning my head on my hand and watching Cam like some lovesick teen.

  “I’ve been watching every move you make, and next time I’ll get the restaurant exactly right.”

  The gaze that had been focused on his spoon rose to my face. His cheeks darkened. Maybe he wasn’t used to being the center of someone’s rapt attention like that. I couldn’t imagine why. I loved looking at him.

  “You don’t have to do that.”

  “I want to. I wan
t study you and figure out everything you like, everything that makes you happy, and then pour it all over you like…rain.”

  Cam’s brows drew together. “That’s—”

  “I know it sounds creepy. Like someone should be piping in the soundtrack to Psycho, huh?”

  “A little.”

  I shrugged. “I don’t really always know what to do with people.”

  “I’m starting to get that.”

  “But there are some people I want to make happy.”

  He sagged a little and put his spoon down. “And you figure that you’ll watch them and see what they like and give them that?”

  “Well…yeah.”

  “But there’s more, right? There’s more than just giving people things they like, or even experiences, like riding your bike or a horse on the beach.” Cam took my hand. “What I like is you.”

  Jeez. A bubble must feel something when it pops. It’s only air, floating along separated from a vast ocean of other air by the thinnest membrane of soap and water, a microns-thick skin containing it, keeping it from melting back into infinite space.

  Cam’s words popped some rigid bubble that kept me isolated even when I was with the people closest to me. The pressure around me equalized as I came to terms with my new reality. I was dizzy with anxiety, and my heart raced like I’d run a marathon.

  He pushed his dessert away. “Can you learn to give yourself away the same way you give away things?”

  Ah, fuck. Could I? I didn’t know. I was pretty sure I never had. Even looking all the way back, past Bree, past school, way back into childhood, I’d always functioned the same way with people. Like a cross between pet owner and classy Santa Claus, managing the environment for those I loved and gifting them with their favorite things.