The Complete Veterans Affairs Romances: Gay Military Romances

by A. E. Wasp

  “For him or for me?”

  “For him first.”

  “Nothing, probably. He thinks he needs me. He seems so alone, and so lost sometimes. He needs some guidance.”

  “Seems like something you could do with your clothes on,” Matt said.

  “Probably, but it wouldn’t be nearly as much fun.” Jay-Cee took a drink.

  Matt barked a laugh. “Probably not in the short run. But long-term?”

  “Long-term, he’ll get his act together and move on. As he should.” Jay-Cee tried to rein in the self-pity even he could hear in his voice, but it was very late, and he was very tired.

  “Stow that self-pity,” Matt ordered. “You are a good man, Jay-Cee. I’m not even telling you not to do what you want. You just need to think about it; what’s best for you and him.”

  “I know. You’re right. I think I needed to hear it out loud.” He paced around the room, breathing deeply, pulling himself together. “Thanks, Colonel. As always, you are a font of wisdom.”

  “Anytime, James. You know that, right?”

  “I do. Thank you. Sorry to disturb your sleep.”

  “Don’t worry about it. I haven’t slept through the night in decades. Good night.”

  “Good night, sir.” Jay-Cee set the glass down on the tray. He knew what he had to do, and he knew he could do it.

  Soft morning light pushed through the velvet curtains. Chris feigned sleep and watched through slit eyelids as Jay-Cee got dressed and opened the door to room service. He closed his eyes, listening to Jay-Cee thank the man and sign the check. With no surprise, he heard Jay-Cee gather his belongs together and leave. The door sighed closed behind him.

  As he ate his enormous breakfast, flicking through the morning news shows, Chris started to plan. He knew what he wanted, and he was going to get it. No one had ever had any luck trying to stop Chris from doing things they felt were bad for him. Jay-Cee wasn’t going to be the first.

  6 – My dirty little secret

  When he heard the boys moving around in the studio, Jay-Cee pulled on a faded pair of ripped jeans and the t-shirt closest to him and forced himself down the stairs. He had to make sure he and Chris were on the same page; that what had happened two nights ago couldn’t happen again. It would be the first opportunity he’d had to talk to Chris alone since then.

  Like a coward he’d texted Chris the morning after he’d left the hotel, telling him not to bother helping pack up. The movers he had hired could take care of it.

  Chris had shown up anyway, in the clothes he had worn the night before, looking fresh and relaxed and so gorgeously young. He’d smiled at Jay-Cee like it was any other day; like it was any other morning after. Maybe it was just another morning to him. Maybe Jay-Cee was the only one concerned about lines crossed, and what they had done was no big deal to Chris. That should make Jay-Cee feel better, right? So why did it make him feel like dragging Chris into some semi-private place and showing him what a big deal it was?

  When Chris bent down to load up some display cases, Jay-Cee had seen the purple marks of his mouth on the inside of Chris’s thighs. Heat flared up inside him, and he had to walk away before he did something stupid.

  He’d gotten control of himself, of course. And now here they were at work. He could hear Benny and Chris laughing, the sound echoing off the high ceilings, as he entered the main room of the studio. It was hot today. The heat from the weekend hadn’t dissipated, lingering even in the cavernous depths of the studio.

  “Are you fucking kidding me?” Jay-Cee heard Chris exclaim as he stopped pushing the hand truck. “You blew your best friend from high school in the bathroom of the club and didn’t even know it was him?”

  Jay-Cee bit the inside of his cheek to keep from smiling. Life was never boring with Benny around. That sounded like something that could plausibly happen only to him, and he’d only known the kid for a few months.

  Benny had come to them via Raul. Raul, aka Honey Dijon, was a drag performer in San Diego and an old friend of Jay-Cee’s from the Army. Raul and his fellow performer Venus de Mile HiLo, had found Benny wandering drunk down the streets of Hillcrest.

  They had clasped Benny to their padded bosoms and taken him into their family, but the club scene not been the best place for Benny. He’d hit a serious bump in the road and needed a safe place to land for a while. Jay-Cee couldn’t say no, especially when he’d found out the kid was a vet. There were parts to that story he didn’t have yet. Eventually, it would come out. Everyone had a story. Everyone had a past.

  Jay-Cee listened with half an ear as he walked to the large studio sink and washed his hands, splashing water on his face and shaking it off.

  Chris waved him over. “Wanna see what Benny found himself while we thought he was tucked up safely at home?”

  Jay-Cee walked up behind Chris and looked over his shoulder at the cell phone clutched in his hand. On it was a picture of Benny and a strikingly handsome African-American man with shoulder length dreadlocks and well-defined muscles. The gladiator costume he wore showed off the muscle to great effect. Despite his normally tightly controlled demeanor, Jay-Cee’s eyebrows raised and he flicked a glance at Benny. Benny really had gotten lucky two nights ago.

  Benny stared back at him wide-eyed. “I know, right? Believe me, Mikey didn’t look like that the last time I saw him.”

  “How long ago was that?”

  Benny took the phone from Chris and stared at the picture. “Eight years ago almost exactly. A few days after we graduated high school, right before I stormed off to join the Marines.” He shook his head; mind turned inward. “I missed so much. He has a kid now. She’s four.”

  “Damn,” Chris said reverently.

  “Yeah.” Benny shook off whatever he had been thinking and stuck the phone back in his jeans pocket. He ran his fingers through his unruly brown curls and sighed.

  Chris wore tight black jeans, despite the heat, and a loose white t-shirt that threatened to slip off his shoulder. A tangle of rubber and leather bracelets surrounded his slender wrists, and the cheap beaded chain he always wore circled his neck, disappearing beneath his shirt. Not that Jay-Cee was looking.

  Chris’s hair was slicked back today, and he smelled amazing. His cologne somehow reminded Jay-Cee of crisp cotton sheets and the scent of summer heat coming through an open window. The scent eluded him, shifting with the air currents in the room, and Jay-Cee wanted to press his nose against Chris’s skin to track down where it lived on his body.

  He took a step back. This had to stop. “Chris, can I speak to you when you’re done? I had some thoughts about a new direction for the studio, and I wanted your input.” Jay-Cee wasn’t lying. He actually did want Chris’s opinion.

  Jay-Cee looked closely to make sure Benny didn’t feel slighted, but he didn’t see a hint of jealousy and Benny’s face was an open book. Benny knew Chris was a better artist than he was, but Jay-Cee knew there was something in Benny that hadn’t found an outlet yet. After all, he had barely had time to practice his art in the last few years. Jay-Cee would work on that with him in the coming months.

  Benny nudged Chris out of the way and grabbed the handles of the dolly. “Go. I got this. I need to work off some of this energy. Lifting heavy, naked bronze men sounds like the perfect way.”

  Jay-Cee nodded his thanks. “Just be careful, please. Don’t lift anything too heavy by yourself.”

  “I won’t, Dad. I promise.” He tilted the dolly back and swiveled it away from them, whistling as he went.

  Jay-Cee motioned for Chris to follow him into the office.

  Jay-Cee’s office was light and airy, all curved metal furniture, blond wood, and huge windows. A sleek new MacBook sat on the desk and notes covered the large dry-erase wall calendar.

  Chris pulled the door shut behind him. They both watched it swing slowly along its curved path to shut softly with a click.

  Jay-Cee looked sexy as fuck in his black t-shirt and ripped jeans. Chris’s eyes lingered on
the curve of his tattooed arm as he pushed his fingers through his silver hair. Chris knew what was coming. The ‘that can’t happen again’ speech. No one had ever directed one to him before, but he’d seen enough television to know how it goes.

  A slight feeling of relief took Chris by surprise. Sex with Jay-Cee amazing but way more intense than anything he had felt before. Of course, most of his experiences had been drunken or stoned hookups with friends or business transactions.

  Toby had been different, of course, and look how that had ended up. Toby had been dead for two years now, and it still hurt. Chris gripped the cheap metal lightning bolt that was all he had left of his first love and slid it back and forth on the chain.

  Screwing around with Jay-Cee fucked with Chris’s head, and he didn’t need that. But damn, he wanted it. Just standing near to him right now was making it hard to concentrate. All he could hear was Jay-Cee saying ‘kiss me.’ All he could see was the look in Jay-Cee’s eyes when he begged Chris to touch him. And Chris really wanted to touch him. He could handle it. Maybe. His head spun as he argued for and against it in his own mind.

  Jay-Cee leaned against the desk, arms folded over his chest, legs crossed. Sunlight lit his face, shut his pupils down to black dots in his baby blue eyes. The harsh light emphasized the fine lines around his eyes and picked out the darker hairs peppering his gray beard. Chris shoved his hands in his pockets to keep from trailing his fingers through it.

  Jay-Cee watched as Chris stood in front of him, not too close. He kept a respectable distance from Jay-Cee, but the air between them was electric. Chris bit his bottom lip, and Jay-Cee’s eyes dropped to his mouth. “So.” He smiled and braced himself on the desk with his hands curled around the edges.

  Chris stepped forward until he stood just inside Jay-Cee’s spread legs, the outside of his high-tops touching the inside of Jay-Cee’s work boots. “So is this where you tell me it was a one-time deal? Because I kind of figured that when I woke up alone.” His hands hung loosely at his sides.

  Jay-Cee sighed and, bending his knees, slid his feet towards him. Chris could see his knuckles whitening around the desk. He held back a smile. Now it seemed like a challenge to see if he could get his tightly controlled boss to break, just a little. Now that he knew what lay beneath all the control.

  Under the pretense of scratching an itch, Chris reached one arm across his body in a way he knew would make his too-large t-shirt slip the slightest bit off his shoulder.

  Jay-Cee’s pupils dilated despite the bright light, but his mouth twisted in a sardonic half-smile as if he knew exactly what Chris was doing.

  Chris was glad one of them did. But Jay-Cee was giving as many mixed signals as Chris was. One of them needed to make a decision. “I think you’re right,” he said. Apparently, it was going to be him.

  A flicker of surprise flitted across Jay-Cee’s face, and Chris forced his expression to stay serious. He liked surprising the man. “It was fucking amazing. Really.” The licking of his lips was completely involuntary this time, as the memory of Jay-Cee sliding into him hit him with the force of an aftershock. Damn it. He inhaled through his nose, trying to unobtrusively control his arousal. The way Jay-Cee’s eye dropped to Chris’s crotch didn’t help the situation.

  Chris took a step back. “I don’t want to do anything that would… would threaten this.” He waved a hand in the direction of the studio. “My art is everything. You know that.” The words came from a place of honesty, surprising even him. All of a sudden it wasn’t about the game anymore. “I can’t risk it. I need you to view me as, and I feel stupid saying it, but as a peer. An actual artist.”

  Jay-Cee loosened his hold on the desk and nodded. He stood up, taking a step forward that put him close into Chris’s personal space. “I do. You don’t ever have to worry about that. You’re an amazing artist, and one day you will far surpass me.”

  Chris could feel the heat coming off Jay-Cee’s body. He watched, fascinated by the way the tattoos covering Jay-Cee’s neck moved with the pulse beating below his skin.

  Jay-Cee reached out and slowly slid the collar of Chris’s shirt back up. His index finger slid slowly up Chris’s neck. Chris’s jaw relaxed, and he shuddered. “That’s what makes you even more difficult to resist.”

  All Chris wanted right then was for Jay-Cee to grab his t-shirt with both hands, walk Chris backward, and slam him into the door. Chris could almost feel Jay-Cee’s strong body crashing into his, his lips claiming Chris’s mouth. Wanted him to bite his way down Chris’s neck and leave behind teeth marks and bruises neither one of them could disavow.

  But no. Somehow Chris knew that if that happened, it really would be the last time. Jay-cee wouldn’t forgive himself for losing control and wouldn’t put himself in a situation to be tempted again. Chris would lose a mentor and a potential lover in one fell swoop.

  Reaching for the iron will that had gotten him clean and away from the life that had come within a hair’s breadth of killing him, Chris took a step back. Letting the regret show in his eyes, he nodded at Jay-Cee and walked out of the room. He felt Jay-Cee’s eyes on him every second it took for the door to swing slowly closed behind him.

  7 – Acting like a mover shaker dancing to Madonna

  Jay-Cee dropped his sculpting tools on the table and stepped back with a sigh. Rolling his head around his neck, he stretched out his fingers and rubbed the cramps out of them. He stared critically at the clay statue taking shape in front of him. What a piece of shit.

  In the two weeks since Pride, he’d done nothing but work on the new designs, and all he had to show for it was frustration.

  Technically the piece was fine. Solid work he would be able to sell with no problem. But that ineffable something that elevated a creation from hotel lobby material to personal art statement eluded him. No matter what he did, he couldn’t seem to get a grasp of what he wanted. Despite everything, this new line of statuary looked like every other line he had done, but with longer hair.

  He knew he should be grateful he sold at all, let alone made a living wage from it. The art market was brutal. But he was starting to feel more like a wholesaler than an artist. After Pride, he’d started working on some new ideas. He’d sketched a few, then had Chris transfer them into the 3-D software that they used for rendering. Benny and Chris had built the armature, and now Jay-Cee was staring at a lump of clay that refused to become anything special.

  He resisted the urge to sweep it to the ground with a satisfying dramatic curse. Sighing, he almost brushed his hands through his hair before remembering they were covered in red clay.

  From the look of the light coming through the high windows and the way his back ached, it was break time anyway. They had all been hard at work for hours. Conversation had been non-existent. Hearing the classical music streaming from his phone playing softly over the speakers, he was surprised Benny hadn’t started bitching at him to play something different by now.

  As he walked to the sink, he checked on the boys. They sat near each other at the long butcher-block workbench. The earbuds trailing from Benny’s phone to his ears explained the lack of complaint.

  Benny was working on completing some paperwork for the various competitions and shows Jay-Cee was submitting to. He didn’t need the artistic validation of having a show so much as he needed the bragging rights. Framed awards and newspaper clippings looked good on the walls when customers came into the studio, and it gave him something to have Benny put in the bi-weekly emailed newsletter. Marketing and promoting were the worst part of the job. Luckily, it suited Benny’s personality. Jay-Cee was going to start taking him to shows and meet-and-greets. Benny was a born schmoozer.

  Chris slid the piece he was working on into a beam of sunlight that landed on the desk. He rotated the two-foot tall statue Jay-Cee had worked on earlier that week. Gently, he smoothed off the rough edges, adjusted the curve of a muscle, and erased the joins between parts.

  Warm water cascaded over Jay-Cee’s hands while h
e watched Chris’s hands moving across the clay. Since that morning in his office, he’d been watching Chris as much as he could get away with.

  He was captivated by the way Chris moved across empty space. He was graceful when he knew people were watching him, sauntering and slinking, leading with his hips, eyes half-lidded. But Jay-Cee was more interested in how Chris acted when he thought he was alone.

  Jay-Cee knew his actions bordered on stalking. The looks Benny had thrown his way in the past week let him know his behavior had been noted. But he wanted to see a little bit behind the mask to the man he had had in his bed for one night and couldn’t forget no matter how hard he tried.

  Chris alone in the studio was pure, focused energy. Everything he touched, from the drawings in his sketchbook to the digital paintings and the sculptures he strung together from materials found around the studio, displayed a passion Jay-Cee knew he’d lost if he’d ever had it in the first place.

  He couldn’t remember ever feeling the kind of driving passion that threatened to burn him from the inside out that blazed from Chris. Sometimes he wondered if he stood close enough to Chris, he could recapture some of it.

  Frankly, Chris had surprised him. Jay-Cee had expected Chris to push the boundaries he had drawn between them. But apparently Chris had meant what he’d said that day in Jay-Cee’s office, and though the sexual energy between them hadn’t dissipated, Chris hadn’t made a move.

  Looking at it logically, Jay-Cee knew getting involved with Chris would only end in disaster. The frustration at the art block simmering in his veins made it difficult to believe. He knew he could make Chris feel whatever Jay-Cee wanted him to feel. If he could make Chris feel anywhere close to how Chris made him feel, it would be so good for both of them.

  Jay-Cee chewed at his bottom lip as he paced across the studio, hands on his hips as he passed in and out of the stripes of light and darkness on the floor. After Jay-Cee’s third pass across the floor, Chris stopped working and turned to watch him. Benny had his headphones stuck firmly in his ears to focus on the paperwork and wasn’t paying attention to anything else.