by Cameron Dane
On the third penetration, Devlin bit his lip and reached out, searching for a toehold, and latched his fingers into the cabinet handles on his left and right sides. Watching Garrick take him with such precision heightened the mating for Devlin. Soon his arm muscles popped and strained under his weight as he lifted his backside off the counter and tried to thrust his asshole into the drive of Garrick’s cock, desperate for a rawer mating.
Glancing up, Garrick had a wildness in his eyes that matched the predatory flash of his smile. He looked back down at where they were one body and clutched at Devlin’s hips with digging strength, holding him in place for the sudden roughness of his fucking.
“Still the most incredible thing I’ve ever seen.” Garrick snapped his hips and jabbed his cock into Devlin’s ass in rapid order. “You’re so beautiful all over.”
“Please...” Devlin’s thighs and back screamed with the strain of vigorous use but he didn’t give a damn about the consequences of ignoring his rehab rules right now. “Fuck me.” He cried out at the fast, deep drives Garrick pummeled his passage with in response, and still it wasn’t enough. “Jerk my cock.” His balls swelled heavy and painful with seed for this man. “Five years...” Devlin choked under the tidal wave of unearthed emotions. Garrick’s gaze suddenly snapped up to his. Devlin couldn’t look away from the intensity in Garrick’s stare, and he couldn’t swallow down truths he hadn’t been able to share with anyone else. “I missed you every day. I loved you just as long.”
Garrick surged into Devlin full-force, and simultaneously claimed Devlin’s mouth as savagely as he took his ass. He released his crushing hold on Devlin’s hips and put an equally bruising one on Devlin’s head, angling him for a deeper plundering of his mouth. “I’ll make it up to you, Devlin.” His vow washed over Devlin’s lips as he spoke it. “I loved you the whole time too.” He let go with one hand, caressed his palm down Devlin’s throat to his chest, and drew an X over Devlin’s heart with the tip of one finger. “I promise.”
San Francisco. The motel bathroom. Their cum.
With that move, Devlin knew Garrick remembered too. “You knew in the bathroom that night?” Devlin asked.
Garrick shook his head. “Before. From the second I saw you sitting alone in that club something inside me knew I was meant for you.” The rasp in his delivery echoed the sheen filming his eyes. “I think it’s why I gave you my real name that night.” He pulled Devlin’s mouth to his again and whispered, his voice breaking, “I know it’s why when my life was in danger and I couldn’t think clearly my instincts brought me to Redemption and you.”
Devlin found he didn’t need Garrick pulling on his cock after all. He pressed his forehead to Garrick’s, touched their lips together, and got lost looking into a sea of blue that wasn’t that of a stranger anymore. “Garrick...”
The man kissed him while murmuring words of love, and Devlin trembled as his body pulled tight all over and then released every contracted muscle at once. He gasped as his rectum repeatedly clamped and let go of Garrick’s deeply-tucked cock, and he keened an inhuman sound when, without any hint of internal warning, he came, spilling his seed onto his stomach in spurting streams.
While Devlin rode the wave, he didn’t blink or break away from Garrick’s burning gaze. “Let me feel it,” Devlin said, brushing his breath over Garrick’s lips. He let go of the cabinet handles and grazed his fingertips over Garrick’s cheeks and forehead, down the bridge of his nose and over his reddened mouth, memorizing every inch with touch as well as sight. “Come inside me.”
Garrick’s pupils flared and took over the ring of blue. “Yes.” He burrowed his hands under Devlin’s thighs to his buttocks and lifted him right off the counter. He moved fast and shoved Devlin into the refrigerator with the force of his bigger frame, nailing Devlin there with a driving stab of his cock that felt like it went right through Devlin’s tender ass straight to his heart. Not letting up, Garrick took possession of Devlin’s mouth and staked a claim with his tongue just as aggressively as he did with his dick. “Yes.” He panted the word with each thrust of his hips. “Yes.” His fucking rocked the refrigerator and sent magnets and slips of paper dropping to the floor. “Yes.”
Devlin held onto Garrick, gloried in the pounding, even bumped his passage up into it, all the while looking into Garrick’s eyes. Devlin squeezed his thighs and rectal muscles, trapping Garrick within on a deep in-stroke. He licked his man’s nose and said, “Yes.”
Garrick shuddered, and it looked like he struggled to breathe. Distress seemed to consume him, but suddenly he jerked, shouted hoarsely, and fused his forehead to Devlin’s. “Mine,” slipped past Garrick’s lips with breathless softness just as a spurt of wet heat filled Devlin’s ass. Garrick held absolutely still, Devlin in his clutches with his back fused to the fridge door, both men pulsing where they were connected as Garrick warmed Devlin’s channel with endless lines of cum.
Afterward, they might have stayed there tangled in each other for five minutes or it might have been an hour, Devlin didn’t know. He didn’t want to be the first to look or break away. Eventually, though, his thighs and lower back did make their displeasure at his cramped position painfully clear. He winced, and Garrick acted the second it happened. One step backward on Garrick’s part peeled Devlin off the fridge. He pried his fingers from Devlin’s buttocks, gently lowered him to the floor, and in doing so, his cock slipped out of Devlin’s tender ass.
“Sorry.” Red slashed across Garrick’s cheekbones. “I got a little carried away.”
Devlin twisted side-to-side and then walked the length of the one-room apartment, working out the kinks in his muscles. “It’s okay,” he said, and grinned at a stunning, naked Garrick from over his shoulder. “I liked that you did.”
“What do you need?” Garrick rushed to Devlin’s side. “I can run you a shower.” In two big strides, Garrick reached inside a darkened space and flipped a switch, flooding the smaller room with harsh light, revealing a sink and what had to be the bathroom. “Or I could give you a heating pad to use.” Garrick broke away quickly and tore open a door. “I found it in the closet when I first moved in.”
Devlin put a hand on Garrick’s arm, and the man turned to face him, empty-handed.
Now comes the hardest part.
Devlin tried to make his smile an encouraging one but also didn’t take a step back and give this man any running room. “What I need right now, more than anything, are some answers. Who are you Gradyn Denny Garrick Connell Langley?” He squeezed the man’s forearm, begging in more ways than one. “I think it’s time I know the truth about what the hell happened five years ago and what the fuck has you running so scared right now.”
The man visibly trembled, but he took a breath, and held in place. “Today, I’m Garrick Langley, and I’m a mechanic,” Garrick answered, his voice bland. “But Gradyn Connell used to work for the San Diego Police Department and then was recruited and did undercover work for California’s Bureau of Investigation and Intelligence. Shortly after our weekend together, he got a gig working with the FBI. That’s when everything slowly went to shit,” Garrick’s Adam’s apple moved in a visible wave as he swallowed, “and Gradyn Connell had to die.”
Chapter Eleven
Police? CBI? Fucking FBI too?
Devlin’s head spun with the new information ... and the matter-of-fact way this man looked and sounded as he delivered it. Devlin glanced at the stony, still nearly blank expression shaping Garrick’s face and stuffed down a scream that would wake up the entire neighborhood. As an antidote to his frustration, he started to pace.
“I don’t understand.” Devlin scrubbed his face and tunneled his fingers through his hair, pushing the damp stuff off his forehead. “You told me you did outreach work with gangs in Oakland.”
“No,” more of that careful, even tone droned out of Garrick, “I made a vague statement about working with gangs and that I lived in Oakland. You drew your own conclusion.”
Devlin
whipped his head around to face Garrick at that.
“And I let you,” Garrick added with a shrug. “It’s what you do when you work undercover; you don’t tell people the facts about your job.” His lips thinned to a pale, hard line. “You don’t even tell your family, let alone a guy you picked up in a bar for a quickie.”
“Undercover?” Devlin couldn’t even care about the quickie comment coldly mixed in with so much other jaw-dropping information. A fast, easy lay was the unvarnished fact of being in that bar, for both of them. “So all that stuff you told me about the gangs was a lie?”
Garrick made a face that looked like a wince. “Not precisely, but only for the fact that I didn’t really tell you anything. You just think I did. Look, this is going to take a while. Why don’t we get cleaned up and get into bed?” Garrick walked into the bathroom without breaking that fingernails-on-a-chalkboard annoying monotone commentary. “You look like you’re about to fall over.”
Devlin rushed to the bathroom door and talked to Garrick’s reflection in the mirror above the sink. “The guy I love just told me everything I’ve thought about him for the last five years wasn’t his real life.” When Garrick started wiping down his cock--easy as you please--Devlin almost reached between the man’s legs and ripped his balls off. “You’ll have to pardon my lack of cool but I think I should be forgiven if I need to take a few minutes to digest and adjust to the new information.”
“Hey, look at it like this,” Garrick said as he reached back and handed Devlin a wet washcloth, “that means the stuff I told you about having a girlfriend and you being a weekend fling to get men out of my system wasn’t real either.”
Devlin narrowed his stare to slits as wildfire ripped through his core.
“I apologize.” Garrick broke his gaze from the mirror and busied himself with a handful of items lining the back of his sink. “Bad time for humor.”
“Yeah, it is.” Devlin was treated to the sight of Garrick’s back and ass. God, he looked, and wished to hell he cared one bit about the stunning view right now. “How about you cut out the flippant shit and start showing me some emotions so I know this matters to you and that I’m not just the butt of a nasty joke.”
Still looking down, fiddling with God knew what, Garrick murmured, “Can’t.”
Son of a bitch. Devlin shoved in between Garrick and the sink, forcing himself directly into Garrick’s line of sight. “Talk to me. Why?”
Garrick finally lifted his gaze and--Holy Mother--it was once again the pure green Devlin remembered from so long ago. Only this time, it was drenched in a layer of moisture.
“Why, Garrick?” Devlin asked again, this time gentling his tone.
Garrick blinked repeatedly and looked up at the ceiling for a handful of seconds before coming back to Devlin. “Because if you can’t accept my former life and some of the things I’ve done...” He breathed shakily. “If you can’t forgive me, it’s going to annihilate me, and I need to start armoring myself against that possible outcome right now.”
“Hey.” Devlin grabbed Garrick’s face and forced him to stay connected. “Do you see me running? I think you can safely assume that if I were going to ream you a new asshole and then walk away I would have done it a few days ago when you looked me in the eyes and pretended not to be who I damn well knew you were.”
“But it wasn’t entirely a lie.” Garrick’s voice, stripped bare of any machismo or detachment, echoed against the bathroom tiles with the sounds of despair. “I have to be Garrick now. With the exception of taking out the contacts before I go to sleep, Garrick Langley has to become real to me and to everyone around me. He’s the new me.”
Garrick took a moment, looked like he swallowed a few times, and when he started again his voice was a little less hoarse. “I’ve been other people in between our time together, Devlin--people who were complete fabrications and nobody I would want to be in real life--but this guy--Garrick--is okay, I think. The man you were with in San Francisco--Denny--who was the same man who loved hearing your voice on the phone and seeing your e-mails in his Inbox, he is in every way that matters the same guy who is standing in front of you right now. Every bit of that man in that motel room, except for the tattoos, bald head, and the extra bulk, is who I am at my core. He is who I am trying to be here in Redemption, only with a different name, a new job, and no family anymore.”
He drew Devlin to him and pressed a kiss to his hair. “I never lied to you about my family, or ever showed you anything different than who I really am inside. Everything we talked about that weekend, and later on with the phone calls and e-mails--except for that last one--is the real me.”
Devlin clutched at Garrick’s forearm as the nausea that came with reading that last e-mail a thousand times over spiraled through him again. “So you never had a girlfriend and you didn’t get married.”
“No. I hated doing it, but I knew it was the only way out of something I never should have let start in the first place, which was a relationship with you.” Garrick took a step back, and this time he looked like the one who might throw up. “I did it to maximize your hurt and betrayal so that you’d never want to go sniffing for anything about me again. The truth is, there’s never been anybody I’ve ever even thought about marrying.” His attention slid Devlin’s way. “Unless you count all those nights I was sleeping somewhere I didn’t want to be and couldn’t escape without detection; on all those nights in the dark, I thought about what it would be like if you knew the truth, could forgive me, and I was allowed to spend the rest of my life with you.”
Fuck.
Devlin’s knees suddenly turned to the consistency of Jell-o. “You’ve already sweet-talked me out of my pants,” he said with a rough chuckle. “There’s no need to pile it on.”
Garrick closed the distance between them and caged Devlin against the sink. “Now who’s nervous about the truth?”
Devlin exhaled a shaky breath. “Why don’t we get this thing back on the rails?” His cock automatically stirred and sent testosterone pumping to all four corners every time this man looked at him for more than a heartbeat, but Devlin wouldn’t allow himself to leave this apartment in the morning happily sated and sore but without answers. “Start at the beginning and tell me how it all ended up with you here in Redemption.”
*
If you want a future with him, you have to trust him with your secrets.
Familiar adrenaline that normally served to save Garrick’s life by signaling it was time to run for safety suddenly coursed through his veins, making him jittery. For the first time in his life, he refused to heed the warning mechanism that had saved his ass more than once.
Garrick looked down again, needing a minute to get his shit together. The sheen of dried cum still stuck to Devlin’s belly caught Garrick’s attention and tugged a response in his balls. Christ, it doesn’t take much with this man.
“Garrick?” Devlin’s prompt yanked Garrick back to reality. And to the fact that he still didn’t know where to begin with his history.
“Excuse me.” Garrick moved Devlin a step to the left. As he busied himself turning on the water and wetting down a new washcloth, he closed his eyes and relived what it had felt like to spill himself inside Devlin’s body--a first for him. He bit down a moan as he wondered what it would feel like to bend himself over the sink and let Devlin do the same to him. His ass throbbed for it, and he half reached back to spread himself and beg for it when he whipped his hand back to the sink.
Pull yourself together and start talking or he’s going to walk. “Here.” Garrick thrust the new washcloth at Devlin’s stomach. “The water on that other one is probably cold by now.” He grabbed the first out of Devlin’s hand. “You clean up, and I’ll unfold the bed.” While I figure out what I’m supposed to say.
Garrick left Devlin standing in the bathroom and made a beeline for the couch. He’d already pulled the coffee table aside hours ago but hadn’t been motivated to unfold the bed. He did so now, tossing aside c
ushions and fluffing up the two pillows, and then taking care to fold back the thin plaid blanket and white sheet. By the time he finished doing that, he’d listened to Devlin take a piss, flush the toilet, and the water turn on and off again. Garrick crawled into bed and folded an arm under his head just as the bathroom light went out, throwing the room into deeper shadows again.
He held his breath, almost as if he’d never had a man in a room with him before, and didn’t exhale until Devlin exited the bathroom and walked toward the bed. Garrick watched Devlin and openly admired the fluid grace of movement and the beautiful lines of his fit, naked body.
Don’t try to finesse him, Langley. If you do, this time you’ll lose him for good.
Devlin climbed onto the foldout bed, but rather than taking the second pillow, he stretched himself perpendicular to Garrick and used Garrick’s stomach for a pillow. He looked up at the ceiling and said softly, “Just start somewhere, Garrick.” He reached out and pulled Garrick’s arm across his stomach, then twined their fingers together in a hold, so gentle, yet sure, it burned tears behind Garrick’s eyes. “It’s going to feel like an impossible task until you do.”
Garrick let out a shaky breath. “Okay, well, I was living in Oakland when we met. That wasn’t a lie. I was involved with gangs too, just not the kind you were probably thinking. And when I used the term ‘worked with them’ I let you think I was a counselor of sorts for at-risk gang kids when actually I was undercover in one.” Garrick fiddled with Devlin’s fingers and focused on controlling his breathing. “I’d infiltrated a biker gang--a club is what it’s called. I was in for two years, living a completely fabricated life under a different name, gathering evidence of the many criminal enterprises this new club controlled. We had just brought them down the week before I met you in San Francisco. The weekend we met was my thank you from the CBI; a brief gift of freedom where I could relax and let go of the facade I’d been living with for two years before I had to get back to work.”
