The Growing Season

by Diana Copland

  “Give it to Will.”

  Danny blinked, shivering.

  “Give the names to Will.”

  While Cal was occupied, Danny sidled up next to Will and slipped the note into his hand.

  Will looked down at it with a quizzical tilt of his head.

  “There’s an ancestry site.” Danny didn’t know precisely where the knowledge came from, but he could guess. “It’s important.”

  Will looked at the note again and nodded. Within a few moments they were up the stairs and the sound of doors closing softly echoed from above.

  “Was it something I said?” Sam asked as he reclined into the corner of the couch and sighed deeply.

  Danny sat beside him. “I think they were just trying to give us some time alone.”

  Sam smiled faintly as he dropped his arm around Danny’s shoulders. “Sounds good to me.”

  “Me, too.” Danny leaned against his side, pushing a spiking tendril of anxiety back down. He could do this.

  Sam looked over at him, lifting his hand to finger the short strands of hair above Danny’s ears. “I about swallowed my tongue when I saw you this morning,” he murmured. “When I saw what you’d been hiding under your hair...” His fingers carded through the rest of Danny’s hair. “Christ, Danny.” He cupped Danny’s face in his palm. Dark eyes searched his and a calloused thumb stroked his lower lip. “I want to kiss you.”

  Danny studied Sam’s earnest expression in return. “I want you to.”

  “Good.” Sam smiled fleetingly, then leaned forward and covered Danny’s lips with his.

  The first kiss was sweet, brief. Lips touching, but little more. Plump lower lips brushing, a prelude. The second was deeper, mouth open, tongues gently searching. Sam cupped the back of Danny’s head in his large hand; Danny lifted a palm to press against the front of Sam’s dress shirt.

  They kissed for quite a while, slow, sensuous kisses that warmed to a low heat, before Sam caught Danny around his ribcage and lifted, pulling him astride his lap. Danny loved the feeling of Sam’s hard thighs beneath him, and his solid chest against him, but he also felt a fissure of alarm. Ignoring it, he ran his hands over the broad shoulders and down strong arms, then pulled Sam’s tie loose and kissed the side of his throat. The old house was uncharacteristically quiet.

  Sam curled his hand around Danny’s nape. “Danny, I want you.” He pulled him close until they were chest to chest, his hand sliding up beneath Danny’s shirt in back, his palm warm against Danny’s spine. He shivered.

  “I want you, too,” Danny murmured, and it was true. He did. He wanted Sam badly, but a part of him stood back, watching, waiting.

  Sam’s hand slipped beneath the loose waistband of his jeans, his fingers slipping onto the upper curve of Danny’s ass. He arched into the blatantly sexual invitation. He wanted those fingers to follow the crease of his ass, to push down, and in.

  But as he’d feared it would, doubt slipped insidiously into his mind. He hadn’t been with anyone since Mark, and that was before... He knew where they were headed, and wanted it, God he wanted it, but what if he freaked out, couldn’t do it anymore? Once, sex had been the easiest thing in the world to him, given with little more significance than attached to a handshake. Now, even with one of the kindest, gentlest men he’d ever known, the thought of offering up his body caused the hated fluttering behind his navel and a breathlessness he couldn’t control. His heart began to beat in a hard, jarring rhythm that had nothing to do with arousal, and he realized with a jolt that he was afraid.

  “Goddamn it!” He stiffened and jerked away, sitting on the edge of the couch, his face in hands that trembled and were damp. Sam went still behind him.

  “Danny, what’s the matter?”

  He shook his head, unable to form an answer.

  “Did I do something wrong?”

  “No!” His voice came out louder than he’d intended, and he cringed. How did he explain? His mind was jumping from thought to thought.

  “Well, I’m the only other one here, so...” Sam sat up slowly, the old leather creaking.

  Danny let his hands fall from over his face. “Honestly Sam, you didn’t do anything.” He almost said, “It isn’t you, it’s me,” but thought if he ever actually uttered those words he might have to shoot himself.

  He looked at Sam, who didn’t look impatient or annoyed but concerned, and his kindness gave Danny the strength to speak.

  “Sam, there’s something...” The words died as quickly as his brief flash of courage and he closed his eyes, miserable.

  Sam sat up beside him, reaching over and taking one of his hands. He linked their fingers. “Danny, talk to me.”

  Danny wasn’t sure he could. His throat ached, it was so tightly closed. And then a soft, musical voice came to him, tempering his fear.

  “A burden shared is a burden halved, remember, love?”

  She’d told him that a dozen times when he’d first arrived at Neverwood, an angry, belligerent shell hiding a terrified little boy.

  “Let him help you.”

  Sam rubbed his thumb tenderly over Danny’s knuckles. “Danny?”

  Danny studied his handsome face. “I’m afraid you won’t want me anymore, once you hear.”

  Sam shook his head. “Impossible.”

  “You say that now.”

  “Let him decide how he feels about it.”

  “Why don’t you let me decide how I feel about it?”

  Their voices overlapped, but the meaning came through loud and clear. Danny took and released a deep breath. “I’m the convicted felon.”

  “I’ve known that for a while.”

  That was a surprise. “You did?”

  “I knew it the moment Cal said he was the former drug addict.”

  “How?”

  “Mostly because of the way he stepped in. He was obviously protecting you.” He shook his head. “Whatever it was, whatever you did time for—I don’t care. You aren’t that person anymore.”

  “How do you know?” Danny was mystified by Sam’s calm assurance.

  “Because the man I know now isn’t a criminal. The man I know worked for one of the best landscape architects in Southern California, and took the time to really learn his trade.” Danny slid him a wry look, and Sam smiled. “See, I did hear you. The man I know busts his balls, and the balls of everyone around him, to restore his mother’s gardens. The man I know came and sat next to me at my mother’s funeral and held my hand, something for which I will always be grateful. You might have been a convicted felon once, Danny, but you aren’t anymore.”

  God, if it was only that easy. He took a deep breath. “There’s more you need to know. I ran away from here just after I turned seventeen. With a guy named Mark.” He closed his eyes. “Mom didn’t trust him. She was right not to.”

  “Moms usually are right about a lot of things,” Sam offered softly. “Not that any of us listened to them.”

  “I didn’t. I was so sure of myself. And so positive Mark wasn’t lying when he said he loved me. We broke every house rule there was, running around town in the middle of the night, smoking grass.

  “We finally got busted at a gay bar in Spokane, and the cops brought us home at two in the morning. Mom was really mad. She sent Mark to bed, but made me stay. She told me she wasn’t willing to watch me destroy my life, and that Mark was bad for me. I told her to butt the hell out, I was in love, and if she didn’t want to watch we could always go someplace else. I was so fucking proud of myself, standing up for him. When I told him, he said maybe we should go. I even agreed with him. I was so stupid.”

  “Where did you go?”

  “L.A. Everything was cool for like...two days. Then we ran out of money.” Danny shuddered, and Sam noticed.

  “Are you cold?”

  “No.” Danny shook his head, wondering how to go on. This was the hardest part. Admitting aloud how he’d been duped. He cleared his throat. “Mark told me there was a way we could make a lot of mone
y, that we could use my looks to set us up nice.”

  Sam’s thumb, which had been moving over his knuckles, stilled. “He wanted you to hook.” Sam’s voice sounded deadened.

  Heat filled Danny’s face. “Yeah.” There was a pause.

  “Did you?”

  “I thought about it,” Danny answered. What was the point of softening the truth now. “Mark said we could do it safely, that he would be nearby so I wouldn’t get hurt.”

  “Nice boyfriend, offering to be your pimp.” Sam’s voice was tight.

  “That was what finally got through to me. I thought, if he loved me, he wouldn’t want some other man...having me.” The memories began assaulting him, and he clenched his eyes closed. “He told me if I wouldn’t carry my weight, then I was useless to him. I finally told him to fuck off.” A sour taste filled his mouth. “He responded by throwing me out of the car and driving away.”

  “What did you do?” Sam’s hand, warm and reassuring, tightened around his.

  Danny felt grounded by the touch. “Ate out of dumpsters behind restaurants. Slept on benches in parks. Fortunately it was summer, so it wasn’t cold.”

  “You’re lucky you weren’t killed.”

  “I know.” Danny could see it all again in his mind. “After that, I met a bunch of street kids. They took me in. It was as close to a family as I’d had since...” He shrugged, feeling awkward. “We squatted in vacant buildings or under freeway overpasses, but we hung together, watched out for each other. Some of them hooked, but the oldest, Mick, he told me I didn’t have to, but I had to do something. He taught me how to pinch stuff. I was good at it. Good enough we could afford an occasional crappy hotel room. Good enough the younger kids could eat without being forced to let some old pervert manhandle them. But nobody is so good they can afford to get sloppy. I was hungry and I lifted a box of Pop-Tarts. Store security caught me on camera and that was it. I got busted. When the cops searched me, I had a bunch of stolen IDs on me. They weren’t mine, I was holding them for one of the kids who was over eighteen. But it was enough to get me charged with grand larceny and identity theft.”

  “How old were you?”

  “Six months shy of my eighteenth birthday. Lucky, I guess.” He chuckled humorlessly. “My jerk-off public defender told me to count my blessings—if I’d been eighteen and placed in prison general population, I’d have been someone’s bitch in ten minutes.” He felt Sam stiffen. “No, he was right. It pissed me off at the time, but he was right. Anyway, I ended up in a juvenile detention center outside of L.A. It was a shithole, but better than a cardboard box, and I’d slept in a few of those. There were three of us to a cell, and the two kids with me were younger, more naïve. They looked up to me.” He rolled his eyes. “Like I was a big fucking stud.” He paused, steeling himself. “There was this guard. Fat, ugly bastard. From the moment I got there, I could see him checking me out. He was disgusting, the way he looked at us, even the little kids. He scared them, but he didn’t scare me. And so I mouthed off. More than once.”

  He began to tremble. Even the warm hand that gripped his didn’t help. “One afternoon I saw him watching me. I’d found one of the younger ones earlier, puking in the showers, and I knew the nasty bastard had touched him. And so I told him I’d rather fuck a geriatric leper than let him touch me.”

  “Creative,” Sam said, clearly trying to lighten the atmosphere.

  “Stupid,” Danny replied. “I woke up that night, handcuffed to the headboard of my bunk with him on top of me.”

  The silence that met his words was complete.

  “Did he...force you?” Sam sounded faintly ill.

  Danny shook his head. “Not completely.”

  “What does that mean?”

  “He tried. He got my boxers down and his fingers up my ass, no spit, no lube, nothing. He just shoved them in me, and, and...” He was shaking, hard.

  “Jesus, Danny,” Sam groaned. “Come here.”

  Sam pulled, and Danny let himself be hauled into his embrace. Sam held him, his chin on the top of his head. Danny could feel Sam’s Adam’s apple bobbing against his forehead as he swallowed.

  It was a while before he finally spoke. Danny felt him clear his throat as much as heard it. “Did the guard stop on his own, or...”

  Danny shook his head. “No. And he’d had my two bunkmates relocated for the night, so he wouldn’t have. But one of the janitorial guys heard me yelling. He saw what was going on through the window in the cell door, and he hit the panic button.”

  “Panic button?”

  “Yeah. An alarm the staff could trigger if there was some kind of problem. These sirens started sounding, and the guard flipped out. He uncuffed me and told me to put my boxers back on and threatened me. Told me if I ever told anyone, he’d make what had just happened look like a picnic.”

  “The nasty son of a bitch.”

  “He thought he could threaten the janitor into keeping quiet, but Manuel told the night watch commander what he’d seen. The guard was suspended, and then transferred.”

  “Suspended and transferred?” Sam’s voice was tight. “Is that all?”

  Danny shrugged. “I don’t know. They put me in solitary for the rest of my time, and made me see some quack shrink. Like that was going to help. She told me to ‘journal about my feelings.’ Tough to do that when they won’t let you have anything sharp.”

  Danny went limp, let himself be held against the hard chest, in the strong arms. He laid his face against Sam’s neck and hid there in the safe, fragrant darkness.

  “I’m afraid it’s really fucked me up, Sam,” he was able to admit.

  “I’d be astonished if it hadn’t.” Sam rubbed comforting circles on Danny’s back.

  “I have nightmares and I can’t sleep. I hate the evil bastard so much. I hate what he did, but I hate even more that I can’t just forget about it. Especially now.” He gripped Sam’s shoulders. “It hasn’t been so hard, you know? Because I didn’t really want anyone before. But now I do. And I don’t want my neurosis to fuck it up.”

  Sam gentled his hold. “Danny,” he whispered. “It won’t fuck anything up.”

  Danny growled. “The hell. What if I...can’t?”

  Sam pulled back to look into his eyes. “Can’t do what?”

  “You want me to say it?”

  “I think it’s probably a good idea to be specific, don’t you? Do you mean you can’t do anything at all, or can’t...”

  “Can’t let you fuck me.” The words came out in a rush, and Danny felt heat sear across his cheekbones.

  “You do realize there are lots of things we can do that don’t include that, right?” Sam’s voice was low. It made Danny’s nerve endings throb.

  He studied Sam’s features, looking to see if he was mocking him. All he saw was Sam’s open, handsome face. “Yeah, I know that. But I also know most men take one look at me and want to toss me on my back.”

  Sam’s expression didn’t change. “And I strike you as being like most men, do I?”

  Danny’s breath caught. “No, you don’t. Not really. It’s just—”

  “Danny,” Sam interrupted him gently. He leaned slowly closer and ran his lips along Danny’s jaw, mouthing it. “If you want me, you can have me. If you don’t, that’s okay, too. We can do as much or as little as you want.” He pulled back and stared intently into his eyes. “You just have to be honest with me. And with yourself.”

  Danny stared at his mouth. “I want you. A lot.”

  “I’m right here.”

  Danny lifted his hand, brushing his thumb over Sam’s full lower lip. When Sam nipped it, then took it into the wet heat of his mouth and sucked on it, Danny felt it clear to his toes. He leaned in and replaced his thumb with his lips.

  Sam let Danny lead. In the kisses that followed, he responded eagerly, but he never took over, never pushed for more. Because of how he looked, Danny had been type cast as submissive as a teenager and had let men direct their encounters. This diff
erence was heady. Having a big, strong man allow him to push him into the corner of the couch and straddle his hips, all the while taking his mouth in drugging kiss after deeply drugging kiss, was the most erotic thing Danny had ever experienced.

  Even when Sam was fully hard and straining against his slacks, he didn’t thrust against him until Danny initiated it. And by then, Danny was so hard he ached.

  He spoke against Sam’s mouth. “Can we take this to my room?”

  “Absolutely.”

  They held hands as they mounted the staircase, pausing to kiss, to touch. When they reached the second floor, Danny stopped with Sam one step below him so they could kiss at Danny’s eye level. He wrapped his arms around Sam’s neck, and Sam’s large hands spread over his ribcage.

  “I like this.” Danny nipped his lower lip.

  “I like it, too.” Sam nuzzled his neck. Danny smiled.

  “I mean I like being in control.”

  “I like it, too.”

  Danny leaned back, looking into Sam’s eyes. “You don’t have to say it if you don’t mean it.”

  Sam’s lips lifted slowly, and he reached for Danny’s hand, pressing his palm over the front of his slacks. His erection filled Danny’s hand. “Does that feel like I don’t mean it?”

  Danny returned his sensuous smile, mapping the size and width of him with dexterous fingers, rubbing slowly up and down. Sam closed his eyes on a deep breath.

  “I’d love it if you stopped before I come in my trousers.”

  Danny grinned and grabbed Sam’s hand, pulling him down the hall to his bedroom.

  He didn’t turn on any lights. A full moon shone through the sheers at the window, throwing rectangles of light onto the hardwood floor. Sam stood next to the bed waiting silently for Danny, and moonlight lit his broad shoulders and fair hair. Danny went to him and unbuttoned his shirt.

  Sam stood pliant under his hands. “Do you want me to help, or do you want to do this part yourself?”

  Danny parted the sides and rubbed his hands over the hard planes of Sam’s chest, delighting in the feel of the soft chest hair that lightly furred his pecs. “I want you naked.”