by Tara Lain
“Yeah.”
“Where do supermodels live?”
Jake looked around. “I thought here. LA?”
The eyes crinkled as Roan chuckled. “You really do live in an ivory tower, don’t you, Rapunzel?” He tousled Jake’s hair as Jake looked mystified, and Roan continued. “Actors live here, supermodels live in…”
Jake breathed a sigh that was both ecstasy and chagrin. “New York.”
Chapter Four
New York City—right next door. Jake leaned back in his seat and felt the big 757 rumble as it began its descent into JFK. He’d helped pack up Em and gotten her on a flight this morning to visit friends in Sonoma. She’d been in a hurry but still stopped to ask him if he was okay. She’d said he seemed distracted.
Yeah.
He’d promised Roan he’d think about what he really wanted. Back there in the locker room, he’d known. They’d kissed again, and Jake had wanted to go on kissing forever—with a guy. But Roan had stopped the kiss and told him to think with his head and not his cock. He’d keyed his private cell number into Jake’s BlackBerry and told him he could make a lot of money selling it to the paparazzi, or he could use it to call and say it was Roan he wanted.
Was it? In some ways it would have been easier if Roan had lived in LA. Then Jake could use distance as an excuse and drop the whole issue. But as it was, he really had to consider it. Should he call? He hadn’t felt about anyone for a long time the way he’d felt when he was with Roan—except Em, of course.
Man, talk about screwed up. He was only attracted to a woman he couldn’t have and one beautiful guy. He didn’t want to make too big a thing out of this. It was only sex. A lot of guys back in college had tried sex with other guys when they were too busy to meet girls or didn’t want to put up with a lot of romantic bullshit.
But did he want sex with a guy? Shit, it was disturbing to think that was the only way he could get off. Back to the question: should he call? Doing that would only prolong this silly aberration when he should be finding an appropriate woman who turned him on.
Well, the decision wouldn’t be made this weekend, since his parents were picking him up at the airport and taking him home to Brooklyn. He knew it’d be a big family thing, and he’d been looking forward to it because he was close to his family. He didn’t get to see them enough on his crazy busy schedule. But suddenly he felt odd about the visit. He just felt different. He’d kissed a guy, and weirdly that was a more intimate thing, a “gayer” thing, than getting his cock sucked. It was like his family would look at him and know.
Shit, he was losing it. The wheels touched down, and Jake reached for his cell to check in with his parents. After another twenty minutes of waiting and walking, he was grabbing his bags and being grabbed by his mom at the same time.
“My baby, my baby, you look thin. Have you been eating enough?”
He laughed and hugged her back, leaving the abandoned suitcase and equipment bag to his younger brother. All of them always looked thin to his mom, despite the fact that at fifty-something, after four kids, she was still as slim as she’d been on her wedding day.
She smoothed his golden hair, exactly the same color as hers, though these days she did enhance it a little. “You need a haircut.”
“Always. Sorry I’ve been such a stranger, Mom.”
“You do important work, my darling.”
“Yeah, well, so do you and the whole family.” Still hugging her with one arm, he reached back to embrace his father with the other, no easy task since the older man packed over 200 pounds of muscle on his six-feet-three-inch frame. Jake—at six-two, one-seventy—was small by comparison.
“Glad you’re back, Son. How’s Emmaline?” Jake’s dad, Burt Martin, had a serious affection for Jake’s boss and never failed to ask about her.
“She’s visiting friends in Sonoma, or I’d likely be back in the lab again this weekend.”
“She works too hard. Glad she took some time off.”
“Her?” Jake wailed in mock horror. “What about me?”
“You’re a Martin, Son.”
And in his family, that was all that needed to be said. “You’re a Martin” meant you worked hard, never quit until the job was done, made a difference in the world—oh, and had a hell of a lot of fun in the process.
“What’s in this thing, rocks?”
Jake looked behind his dad at his younger brother, Caleb, who was hauling both Jake’s suitcase and the bag containing leftover handouts and stacks of sequencing reports. “Something like that. Give it to me, runt.” This was the family joke, since Caleb, at almost twenty-one, was topping six-four and could still be growing.
“Nah. I got it.”
Jake grinned. Caleb had gotten his mother’s beauty and his dad’s powerful stature, although there was still a lot of adolescent lankiness in that tall frame. His coloring was a combination of his parents, producing brown hair with golden streaks that he got teased about since they looked like a hairdresser did them. Like Jake, his eyes were clear blue. The kid was drop-dead handsome, and apparently the girls chased him relentlessly, although his mom said he didn’t seem too interested yet. Jake figured she just didn’t know about it yet.
Caleb was in college on a soccer scholarship, but he was still deciding how he wanted to make the Martin contribution to the world. Their oldest brother, Sean, was a firefighter like their dad. Sister Jenny ran a huge worldwide nonprofit, and their mom, Lydia, had practiced nursing all the while she raised her kids. It was a high bar, and Jake sensed Caleb was eyeing it with some trepidation. Maybe they’d get a chance to talk this weekend.
After a talkative ride, Jake was installing himself on a daybed in what was now a combination guest room and room for Caleb when he came home from school. Although Caleb had an apartment with a roommate or two near his college, he, like all the siblings, was close to his folks and came home whenever he could. The small, neat room was strained to contain a queen-size bed, a daybed, and a chest of drawers. The crowded closet still held various pieces of clothing from both Cal and Jake. Hell, there were probably a couple of Sean’s sweatshirts in there.
Cal had collapsed on the mattress, and his feet hung over a few inches. Yep, the boy was tall.
“How was LA?”
Jake could feel heat climbing up to his ears and turned toward his suitcase to unpack a few things so his brother wouldn’t see. “It was great and tiring. The presentation Em made was really well received. We may get some more funding out of it.”
“Cool. You really like your job, huh?”
“Love it.”
“Like your boss too.”
“Yeah, what’s not to like? She’s brilliant, and she’s really good to me.”
“Hot too.”
Jake grinned. “That too.”
“Did you ever fuck her?”
He turned on his brother. “Shit, no, Cal. She’s a great scientist. She’s, like, more than ten years older than me.”
But his brother wasn’t buying the Madame Curie routine. “Bet you’d like to, though, huh?”
Giving up, Jake laughed. “Yeah, I’d give my right nut.”
His brother looked at the wall. “You really like women, don’t you? I mean, you’ve got a lot of them?”
Ooohkay. Where did that question come from?
“Hey, boys, get cleaned up. We’ve got company for dinner tonight.”
His mother’s words called from downstairs and interrupted the intimacy, and Caleb leaped up from the bed. “Yeah, I need a shower. I smell like Beckham’s balls.”
“We have company for dinner?”
Caleb grinned. “Oh yeah.” And he headed for the bathroom.
* * *
Jake had to admit she was pretty, and easygoing too. When his mother told him she’d invited her friend-from-work’s daughter over for dinner to “meet the family,” he’d wanted to dive in a hole. At first he’d let his older brother and his wife chat with her over dinner, but now he was actually enjoyin
g their conversation. Her name, of all things, was Maude Delaney, but everyone called her Laney, since she was so not a Maude. Tall, with nice, medium-length brown hair, she was finishing her PhD at Columbia in history, so they’d fallen into easy talk about the rigors of the program and how best to squeeze a dissertation into a life. They both agreed the two weren’t compatible. She was complimentary about his rapid advancement in genetic research, and he applauded her for her dissertation topic on Alexander the Great. It was all so very normal. Why the fuck did it just feel wrong?
He knew the answer, of course. She wasn’t Em, with whom he had an easy rapport with an underlying lust that sometimes took his breath away. And, of course, though he’d love to bury the thought deep, she wasn’t Roan.
His dad questioned Laney about what she wanted to do as a career, and Jake let his mind wander. In a second he was back in LA, lying on that couch again with those gorgeous full lips wrapped around his cock, and he was coming so hard he couldn’t breathe and didn’t care if he ever did again because he was in such ecstasy. He gasped at the memory and suddenly looked up to find all the eyes at the table on him.
“God, I’m sorry. I, uh, just thought of something I forgot. Can you excuse me for a minute?” Clutching his napkin as long as he reasonably could to cover his sudden erection, he practically ran from the table and up the stairs to his room. He pulled out his BlackBerry and made a great show of texting, in case someone came to check on his abrupt departure. There it was in the directory. His dream. His nightmare. The name Roan Black.
Who the fuck was he kidding? Could he really live without the kind of pleasure he’d had with that man, now that he knew it existed, knew that he could have it with a phone call? But dammit, the man already made it clear he wasn’t some easy lay. Jake had to want him, a person, not just a beautiful set of lips to suck his cock. Could he really choose a gay relationship, even if it was only sexual?
After his hard-on subsided, he returned to the table in time to escort Laney into the small living room for some coffee. As they sipped, Jake took a deep breath. Time to meet everyone’s expectations. “Would you like to go to dinner or a movie sometime?” Nice and normal and appropriate.
She beamed. “Love to. I hoped you’d ask.”
Shit, he didn’t want to lead on this nice girl, but if he tried, he could like this girl for real, couldn’t he? “How about tomorrow night? I know it’s late notice.”
“Tomorrow night would be great. I had plans with my sister, but she’ll understand.” She gave him a shy smile.
“Okay, great. Give me your address, and I’ll pick you up about seven. Is there someplace you like to eat?”
They continued to chat until she left. Jake’s face hurt from smiling. C’mon, she’s a great girl; give her a chance.
When Laney was gone, he took up dish rinsing in the kitchen as his mom filled the dishwasher.
She looked at him with a small smile. “So, you liked her? I don’t have to apologize for playing matchmaker?”
“No, she’s great. We have a lot in common.”
She stared at him for a minute as he rinsed. “Are you okay, Jakey? Did I do the wrong thing by inviting her? Did I put you on the spot?”
“It’s okay. I know you want me to be happy like you and Dad and Sean and Abby.” He didn’t mention Jenny, since she was divorced and a single mom of two.
“That’s exactly what I want. You live too much in your own world, Jake. You need someone to help take care of you.”
“Well, women like you don’t grow on trees, Mom.”
“Jacob Martin, that’s not true. There are a lot of wonderful young women who would love to care for you, and I even suspect that charming girl could be one of them.”
Yeah, and he was hung up on an unattainable woman and the world’s most beautiful man. “It’s okay, Mom. I’m gonna take her to dinner tomorrow night. It’ll be fun.” He dried his hands. “I’m just making some decisions in my life right now, and I don’t know how it’s all going to turn out, but it’s nothing to worry about.”
She continued loading dishes like her third born hadn’t just told her his life was falling apart. “Anything you want to talk about, Jakey?”
“Not yet, Mom. Soon.”
* * *
The daybed was a little too small, and Jake shifted, trying to get his feet in a comfortable position. The room was dark except for reflections from a streetlight shining through the one window. Yeah, he was tired after the flying and the socializing. He sighed.
“You liked her, huh? You’re going to take her out?” his brother’s voice murmured across the room.
“Yeah, I asked her out.”
“She really turned you on. That date should be hot.”
Realizing hormones pretty much ran his brother’s twenty-year-old life, Jake asked with a grin, “Now why do you think that?”
“Hey, man, I saw you trying to hide that boner when you ran out.”
Jake flushed, glad that the room was dark. “Did everyone see?”
“Nah, just me. I was beside you, remember?”
“Yeah, well, I was thinking of someone else.”
“Ohhh. Your boss, I’ll bet. You’ve got it bad for her.”
Should he go with that suggestion? “Yeah, I do.” Then he decided to be at least a little more honest to encourage Caleb to be the same. “But actually it was someone else.”
He heard his brother sit up in bed. “No shit? You got another woman?”
Why did he have to phrase it quite like that? “Just someone I met in LA.”
“Wow. No wonder you’re so tired, big brother.” He laughed. “What’s her name?”
“I’d rather just forget about it.”
“No fucking way. Is she one of those LA chicks? Is she an actress? Wow. Is she famous?”
“Famous? Yes, that’s right. Now give it a rest.”
Suddenly the daybed was a lot more crowded, and Caleb was sitting on his legs. “Ya gotta tell me, Jake.”
“I don’t gotta tell you.” Shit, why didn’t he keep his mouth shut?
“Why don’t you want to tell me?”
“It’s personal.”
“I’m your brother,” he wailed.
“I know, but I can’t tell you about this.”
Cal was quiet for a moment. “Why not, Jake? Will it shock me? Will it despoil my lily-white ears?”
Jake sighed. “Yeah, it would shock you.”
“Really? Awesome! Let me guess. Threesome?”
“No.”
“S and M?”
“No!”
Cal flopped backward. “Orgy?”
“God, no. Hey, baby brother, what the hell are they teaching you in that college? Are you speaking from experience?”
“Shit, no.” He gave an evil grin. “Wish I was, though.”
“Come on, you like to be tied up?”
“I might consider it.”
“You want to be with a bunch of women?”
“Well, no, not really. But don’t change the subject, bro; we were talking about your indiscretions, not mine.”
“No need. I’m not talking. Get off me. Let’s go to sleep.”
The big body didn’t move, and all Jake’s pushing didn’t budge him. Okay, he’d just go to sleep. Jake turned his head on the pillow and sighed. Ignore the runt.
Cal was quiet, then a voice came out of the darkness. “Jake, did you have sex with a man?”
Jake swallowed hard. “Why the hell would you think that?”
“’Cause I remember that guy. Tom. So did you?”
“Yeah, sort of, but don’t think it was something major. I mean, it just happened…”
“Awesome.”
“What?”
Caleb shifted and brought his face down so he was looking straight at Jake in the dim light. “I said, awesome.” He was quiet for a minute, then seemed to have made a decision. “Jake, my roommate is my lover. His name is Charlie.”
“Holy shit.”
&
nbsp; “Yeah.”
They both just rested in the moment. Then Caleb practically pounced on him. “Tell me, Jake. Who was it? What did he do?” Suddenly Jake was being lifted by the shoulders and hugged by his giant of a brother. “Oh crap, Jake, I can’t tell you how much it means to me to have someone to talk to.”
Jake extricated himself gently from the bear hug and scooted back so he could sit up against the pillows. The light coming through the windows illuminated his brother’s handsome face. “Cal, why haven’t you told Mom and Dad?”
He looked a little sulky. “I didn’t hear you sharing your adventures at the dinner table.”
“Yeah, well this was a one-time thing. How long have you known you were…uh, liked guys?”
“It’s okay, Jake, you can say gay. That’s what I am, and I’ve known it since I went into puberty and all my raging hormones were pointing me in the wrong direction. Then I realized it was the right direction for me.”
“But you never told the folks.”
“For a long time I just kind of denied it. Then when I met Charlie and really got committed to the lifestyle, I just got tongue-tied. You know, Dad and Sean are such alphas.”
“I notice you didn’t include me in that description.”
“Well, you’re the pretty one. And you were always so comfortable with Tom. Man, I thought he was cute. Of course, I was just a kid, and he couldn’t see anyone but you. Fuck, that guy loved you.”
“You knew that?”
“Fuck, yeah. Didn’t you?”
“Not for a long time.”
“Wow. Poor guy.”
“Yeah.”
“So is that who you were with? Did he move to LA or something?”
“No, it wasn’t Tom.”
“Yeah, and I guess he wouldn’t be famous, or I’d probably have seen him. So who was it?”
“Doesn’t matter.”
“If it doesn’t matter, why won’t you tell me?”
“Don’t want to.” Shit, what was he, five?
“So what did this unknown guy do?” Cal grabbed him again. “I’ll bet he sucked you off, didn’t he? That’s a pretty heteroflexible activity. Who doesn’t like getting their cock sucked? Right?”
