by Marie Harte
*
THEY’D ALREADY FUCKED, and while Quinn didn’t know all of Con’s hot buttons, not even close, he had an edge.
But Con was pacing a little. Nervous energy to burn. Quinn walked over, kissed Con the way he had in the car, feeling the tension bleed from Con’s shoulders immediately.
Con moaned in Quinn’s mouth, grabbed his ass and tugged Quinn’s pelvis to his. And Quinn didn’t mind that kind of initiative one bit.
“Bed. Hands and knees.”
Con held his eyes a second too long.
“You’ll get that punishment you seem to be bucking for,” Quinn promised, and he swore Con’s entire body shuddered. Without another look, Con crawled onto the king bed and waited.
“Spread your legs,” Quinn told him, and Con complied with that order easily as well. Quinn walked around him, admiring. Con’s face was down, eyes pointed at the pillows. Quinn ran a hand over his back. “You’re tense. Why?”
“I…” He shook his head and Quinn moved his hand to Con’s cock and stroked it. Con groaned, muffled because he kept his mouth closed. At the same time, Quinn ran his finger in between Con’s ass cheeks.
And then he squeezed lube there. Cold, but it would warm quickly with Quinn’s fingers playing, rubbing. Pushing inside to find Con’s gland and stroke it.
“Fuck, Quinn.”
There was a warning in there… Quinn would have to play this carefully. Con wasn’t the kind to want the power. He wanted the exchange, but he didn’t trust it.
Because he probably didn’t trust himself. Last night had been a surprise, a revelation. But now, Con’d had a day to think about it. To second guess the way he’d felt.
“Con, can you just let me? Trust me. I’m not going to do anything to hurt you. I won’t tie you down—the only person you’ll fight tonight will be yourself.”
Con swallowed hard at that revelation. Muttered, “Shit,” then, “Yeah, take care of me, Quinn.”
“I will, baby.”
Con flushed at the term of endearment.
Quinn, in response, slid another finger inside of Con to work him. “Don’t move.”
Con drew in a harsh breath, but he followed as best he could. Quinn was keeping him purposely on edge, seeing how far he could push Con without pushing him over the edge.
Con had incredible will, and that served him well in his job. It made for an impressive standoff here too, one that had Con begging, pleading with soft whimpers. But he remained in place, doing what Quinn asked, his body responding unerringly to Quinn’s touches.
He’d slid two fingers inside of Con, was brushing his prostate just enough to make the sensation close to unbearable. “You’re doing so well, Con.”
Con moaned as Quinn added a third finger. He leaned in and bit Con hard on the shoulder, felt the man tremble under him.
God, he could push so much harder. Wanted to…but he wanted to be inside of Con more. And so he sheathed himself and climbed behind Con. Whispered, “I’m going to fuck you now.”
“Hurry,” Con whispered back, his voice raw. He was practically shaking at that point, and Quinn didn’t waste time, pushed in hard and fast. Con cried out his name, but he didn’t come, not until Quinn grabbed his hips and pulled Con back against him.
“Come, Con. Right now,” he ordered as he felt his own orgasm building quickly. Con hung his head and came hard, his ass milking Quinn’s cock to an orgasm that blasted through him.
By the time Quinn could see straight, both he and Con were half collapsed on each other, slick with sweat. Quinn eased out, cleaned them both up and then tucked Con into bed.
Con let him, easily. His only concession was to sleepily tug on Quinn’s arm until Quinn got in next to him.
Chapter Six
‡
LATE THE FOLLOWING afternoon, they were at their next destination, still in Texas but close enough to New Orleans that tomorrow would be an easy day of driving. At their hotel, Con was leafing through the itinerary again, but this time he was focused on the wedding invitation.
“Taking notes for your own?” Quinn joked.
“Yeah, that’s it.” Con was rubbing the paper, though. “Just wondering what I’m walking into there.”
“Just a regular Army family.”
“Care to elaborate?”
Quinn didn’t want to, fought the urge to tell Con he didn’t share shit about anything, but hell, things were going well between them. If Quinn thought about it, Scott talked about Con’s exploits, but not his family life, his past. It was like the guy was just born on the bus to Basic, and there was definitely a story there. Quinn told himself that he didn’t care, wouldn’t get involved, but it was too late for that already.
And Con wasn’t asking for any bad reason—he was going cross-country and bringing a guy along who he’d never seen interact with his best friend’s family. “I haven’t seen them in a while.”
“Yeah, I know. Why’s that?”
“Lots of reasons. I’ve been busy. Plus, for a while, it seemed like the whole family likes it better when I’m not around.”
“Except for Scott,” Con pointed out.
Quinn couldn’t argue. Scott always wanted him there. Called for him. Tried to arrange meetings, even before Dad and Joel were KIA, three years apart, thanks to the Army, which seemed determined to rip his family apart. Thing was, his family seemed to enter into the arrangement quite willingly, something Quinn refused to help along by offering himself up to the altar of the military. “You can’t arrange peace. Can’t force it to happen.”
“Anyone’s going to make it happen, it’d be Scott.”
Quinn laughed. “I can’t argue.”
“For once.”
Quinn turned to him sharply. “What’s that supposed to mean?”
Con stretched. “You ever stop to think you’re part of the problem?”
“No. Scott accepted me just fine, and I didn’t want to make him choose between me and the rest of the family. The others—Dad, Joel, Mom…they couldn’t accept the fact that I didn’t want the military.” That I’m gay. That he was a Dom, forget it. He’d never even bring that up, even if all the other shit was accepted. That part of his life was private, just for him.
“Did you try to accept them?” Con asked.
“Now you’re the voice of reason?”
“Shocking, right?” Con said without a trace of irony.
“Did you accept yours?”
Con’s expression shuttered. “Yeah. Maybe a little too much.” Then, after a few minutes, he asked, “Would Scott have taken this trip with us?”
“Probably just with you,” Quinn confirmed.
“Although not for lack of him asking you, right?”
God, Con hit way too close to the truth. “Fuck you, Con.”
“Christ, calm the fuck down. I get it. Scott’s accident shook us both up, but…”
“But what? Because you visited him and I didn’t?”
“I didn’t visit him,” Con admitted. “Couldn’t.”
Right, because Con was deployed at that point.
“What’s worrying you so much about seeing him?” Con asked gently.
And for once, for the first time, actually, Quinn let loose. “He shouldn’t have been there in the first place. He was supposed to come home that week. Come to see me. But I cancelled a week before, because I knew he’d lecture me about still not being stable. And so he stayed and ended up going on that mission, taking another guy’s place and…” Quinn rubbed his chin. “I wish he hadn’t been there. And wishing that is wishing someone else had been caught in that explosion.”
“Or maybe it means we wish it hadn’t happened at all.”
“That’s not how the world works, Con. We bargain, say, if you give this to someone else, I’ll never be bad again. We always bargain with someone else’s life.”
Con didn’t argue, closed his eyes. His face was etched in a familiar grief, his features tight like he was in pain. Physical or other, it didn�
�t matter. Pain was pain.
Quinn could only help with the physical pain right now. He grabbed Advil, had Con take four, then rubbed his neck and back until Con’s shoulders relaxed a little bit. He stared at the man’s powerfully muscled back and the scars there, and thought about what Con had said about guilt…
Ah, fuck. “Con?”
“Don’t, Quinn.” There was a rumbled warning in Con’s tone that Quinn had never heard before. It intrigued him more than scared him, and he would fucking push.
“I wouldn’t have said that if I’d known.”
“Well, now you do. You’re allowed to say how you feel—free country and all. At least that’s what I’m told when I’m fighting for it and not on vacation trying to track down my old man while my friend’s in the path of a land mine.”
“I never would’ve said it if I’d known.”
Con turned. “And that’s a problem, isn’t it? You’d have gone around thinking it, never saying it, worried you would. Now we don’t have that issue.”
Quinn didn’t know what else to say. His normal skills of soothing, ordering, commanding weren’t going to fly here. “Con, come on…”
“What? You wouldn’t have wished me there instead of Scott? If it was a choice between me or your brother? You would’ve chosen Scott. I get it, all right. Can we drop it now?”
Quinn supposed there was no choice. Nothing he could say now would change anything—it would only make it worse. I’d never want anything to happen to you. And how did I get so far in with only four days under my belt when I spent the last three years running from anything remotely close to this kind of intimacy?
Quinn heard the click of the hotel room door and realized Con had already slipped out of the room.
*
AN HOUR, SOME room service to help his whiskey from the mini-bar down, and a lot of pacing later, Quinn texted Con. To his surprise, Con texted back with his location. A bar, not a club.
Granted, both were equally dangerous, and Quinn had no idea what he’d be walking into. But that wouldn’t stop him.
He hadn’t had that much to drink but he grabbed a cab anyway, especially since Con’s bike was missing. Better to only have one mode of transportation between them, because Quinn didn’t know what condition he’d find Con in.
Because if he’d been carrying around that much guilt about Scott’s accident…well, he could only imagine the ten-ton load Con had strapped to his back.
He found Con exactly where he said he’d be, but he was at the bar, nowhere near the pool table. It was an understated gay bar, and Quinn had to force himself not to growl at the men circling Con’s seat.
Quinn sat next to him, glanced over at the pool table, then back at Quinn before lifting a brow.
“I already played a couple blocks over,” Con admitted.
Quinn reached out and rubbed the back of Con’s neck. “I didn’t mean to bring that up.”
“Was going to come out sooner or later, right? I mean, look, of course I’ve got guilt. Could’ve been me. Should’ve been me. I’m sure there’ve been times he’s hated that it wasn’t me. That it was him, and felt guilt because the other option was me.” Con wiped some sweat from his brow.
“I don’t think Scott thinks like that.”
“How do you know that?”
“Because you wouldn’t.”
Con glanced at him and visibly relaxed. He didn’t come out and say Quinn was right, but the mood shifted. “You’ve been drinking.”
“A little. That a crime?”
“Nope. But I haven’t been, so go for it.”
Con waved the bartender over and Quinn ordered a whiskey—with ice, because there was no way he was drinking that much more. Not when he wanted Con that night.
“Guess we missed the dinner reservation.”
“There’s still time. Come on, before the control freak starts texting.” He drained his shot and then they walked the two blocks to the restaurant.
They didn’t seem surprised that the men were late, and once again, Scott had paid the entire bill, which the owner told them up front after escorting them to a semi-private room in the back and said, “Order anything you’d like.”
Both of them had stopped worrying about it.
“It’s actually going to suck when he stops doing this,” Con said as he dug into one of the many appetizers laid out for them.
Quinn laughed, an easy sound that surprised him. God, had it really been that long since he’d just been able to be this damned easy?
He guessed it had. “Grab me that plate.”
Con’s hand went for it, then he stopped. Stared. “You’re doing it again.”
“What’s that?”
“Dom mode.”
Quinn stared at him. “Really? Do go on.”
“Oh, I will. Dude, you sit there and expect me to fetch things for you.”
His hand went to the back of Con’s neck. “But you do, don’t you?”
Con drew in a deep breath. “Yeah. Why is that?”
“Some people are born to need it. Some people are born to be needed.”
Con watched him. “And that’s you? The second one?”
“Yes, Con.” He rubbed the man’s neck. “You realize it takes a very strong man to submit, don’t you? It makes perfect sense to me that a man who’s as in control on the battlefield, and so confident in other places, needs to submit.”
“I’m glad you understand it.”
Quinn smiled. “You need someone you can let down your guard with. Someone you trust when you want to not bear the weight of the world on your shoulders. Doesn’t need to be a Dom, though. Or in a D/s sense. I’m not looking for that.”
“Yeah, me neither. Not…like I’ve read about or seen.”
“You went right to that club and didn’t seem all that uncomfortable,” Quinn pointed out, although Con had some definite rules he’d laid out easily about not doing anything without Quinn there. And that had been a mild taste. “Have you ever?”
“Been with a Dom in a club? Tried it a few times.”
Con didn’t offer anything else, so after a couple of long moments, Quinn pushed. “You’re going to make me pull teeth on this?”
Con gave him a sheepish look. “I, ah…freaked out a little, you know? I don’t trust well…”
Quinn ran his hands through Con’s hair as Con looked up at him. “That happens.”
“A lot of guys can do it with random Doms,” he said stubbornly.
“And a lot can’t,” Quinn reassured him. “Some guys need way more of a connection. Some don’t. Besides, for you I’d do something different anyway.”
“Yeah?” Con’s brows raised. “Like what?”
Were they seriously having this conversation? “I’d rather show than tell.” Con flushed and Quinn smiled, his stomach flipping in a way it hadn’t in forever.
“I thought you already did, last night,” Con murmured.
“Little taste, yeah,” Quinn agreed. “The thing is, liking kinky sex, liking control, doesn’t mean I’m going to be leading you around on a leash. For some guys, that works. But that’s not why I like controlling anyone in bed.”
“Then why do you?”
“It makes me feel good.”
Con side-eyed him. “And outside the bedroom?”
“I’m not looking for anything outside the bedroom,” he said firmly. Convinced himself that he meant it, too. Con looked at him carefully. Nodded. Quinn smiled, told him, “You’re fucking gorgeous.”
He was rewarded with a deeper flush. An appreciative smile. The waiter brought their food and for several minutes there was only the comfortable quiet that only a good meal—and good company—could bring.
Then Quinn put a heavy palm on Con’s thigh, just to see what kind of reaction he’d get. And fuck, the reaction was perfect. Con’s calm went further—he visibly relaxed and told Quinn, “Thanks,” with the hint of a flush on his cheeks.
“You don’t have to thank me. That’s what
I’m supposed to do,” Quinn assured him.
“Touch me?”
“Keep you calm.”
That’s when it clicked in Con’s mind—Quinn watched it happen. Con sat back for a second and almost reveled in it, that connection between emotion and sex that was so completely necessary for either to be worth it. And when Con began eating again, Quinn did too.
No reason to rush it. Not when it was right within his grasp.
*
QUINN KEPT HIS hand there for the majority of the meal. Even when he took it away, Con felt the weight of Quinn’s touch like a phantom.
Con rubbed his biceps. “What about the tattoo you’re planning?”
“Just a cool tattoo. I like working with good canvases. I don’t always get that,” Quinn assured him, but Con’s gut tugged.
What did you want him to say? That he wanted to mark you after, like, four days? “What do we do when we get back to the hotel?”
“What do you want to do?”
Con swallowed. “I want you to make the decisions.”
Quinn’s hand slid back along his thigh and squeezed. “Order dessert.”
Con nodded, reached for the dessert menu without a second thought. “How about cheesecake?”
“Yeah, that’s good. Gonna feed it to you anyway.”
“Jesus, Quinn.” Con couldn’t help but feel pleased, though. He and Quinn could fuck the weeks away—what was the harm? It wasn’t like they’d see each other after it was over. They wouldn’t have awkward meetings with Quinn’s family at dinners and shit. And Con was shipping out again soon.
The close quarters was like shooting fish in a barrel to begin with and he and Quinn had an instant attraction.
Then again, he had a whole country full of more than enough willing men to fuck, and so he’d been wondering if maybe that was a better idea than pushing his luck with Quinn and risking pissing Scott off.
Until Quinn had gone and changed his mind.
Chapter Seven
