by R J Scott
“Are you saying that you want to try to make a thing here with me?”
He nodded and bit down on his lower lip. “If you want to try to make a thing with me, yeah. I mean, I totally get that you’d be sick of my shit. How I keep bolting when we get close. If you don’t want me, then I—”
“Bryan, maybe we should put our wine down.” His expressive brows dropped in confusion. “I’d really like to take you into my bedroom and show you just how much I want you, but I’d hate to spill the wine. It’s too tasty to end up on the floor.”
A slow, brilliant smile was his reply. He put his wine glass on the coffee table. I did the same. Then I stood and offered him my hand. When he stood, he slid his fingers between mine. He ducked his head down to taste my mouth. I lapped at his lips, eager to spread the taste of that tart zinfandel all over his tongue.
Our progress to the bedroom was slow. We had to stop and kiss, touch, peel off clothing, and locate ELP’s masterpiece, Brain Salad Surgery, before we could fall into my freshly made bed. Which was another thing on the list. Make that two things.
Clean sheets. Check.
One of the hottest men ever to grace my life lying naked on those clean sheets. Big check.
When I say hot, I mean a masculine, incendiary beauty that made me slack-witted. He was the athletic form. Like a sculpture of an ancient Grecian gladiator, his body was long and firm, muscled and ripped, hair the color of mahogany ran from his chest to his cock, surrounding it with a bush of curls. His balls hung between his legs, fine dark hair covering them, begging me to cup and cradle them. The man was a sensual masterpiece who had somehow ended up in my bed. I should pay homage to his perfection.
I slithered up over Bryan, eager to get to it, yet sensing he needed a slow hand. Toxic and abusive. That was what he’d said his last lover had been. Then he would need tender touches, soft thrusts and lots of endearments. Those I could supply. Kissing him started timidly. He was hard, yes. Apparently, his body was there and into things, but I wanted all of him there, not just a stiff prick.
Taking my time, I tasted him and eased him as best I could. Tasting his mouth and elbows, his knees and, yes, those beautiful balls of his, and then taking his cock into my mouth. It was heavenly, his taste, salty pre-cum resting on my tongue before I sucked him deep into my throat. He gyrated under me, hips punching upward. I wanted more. Needed to taste every inch of him this night because God knew I would somehow fuck this up, and he would be gone. Like Rex, like Gina, probably like that damn cat sleeping outside my back door.
“Mm, yeah,” he moaned as I licked a wet trail from his cock to his chest, flicking his nipple until he arched up into me, his hands wound in the crisp, clean sheets. I took him in hand and stroked. The man was well-hung, long and thick. When he arched, he really arched. His heels dug into the mattress, and his back bowed a foot off the bed. Flexibility, thy name is Bryan Delaney.
I slipped off him, laughing. He covered me then, those powerful skater’s legs tangling with mine, his mouth hot and greedy. I let him lead. His teeth scored my throat. His tongue followed a line of ink across my shoulder and down my arm. Cocks bumped, fingers clutched, and groans filled the room.
“Fuck me.” I panted as I grabbed his ass. Firm muscle filled my palms. I squeezed hard, getting a grunt from the man gyrating away on top of me.
His head came up from my neck, where he’d been sucking a mark that I’d probably carry for two weeks. Not that I minded a love mark from my glorious young lover, but I suspected my employees and brother would have comments.
“What? No. You don’t really…” I saw the confusion in his dark eyes. His cock rested beside mine, both flattened between us. “I never did that for….you sure?”
“I am positive. I’m versatile. Fuck me, Bryan, and then next time, if you want, I’ll get inside of you.”
He lowered his head to capture my mouth, his body throwing off some incredible heat. I wrapped myself around his long, strong form, eager to feel him moving inside me. When the kiss broke, we worked on getting him ready. Condom and lube, both of us fumbling and chuckling at our ineptitude.
“Watch me,” I said. He positioned my foot on his shoulder, his gaze jumping from my face to my ass as I worked two fingers into myself. “Shit.” Oh hell, that was nice. And hot. Him kneeling between my thighs, his cock just a few inches from my hole…
“Shit, that’s…yeah, you need to get in me.” That sounded bossy. “Sorry, no, do what you want.” I slid my fingers out of my ass, and he moved to replace them instantly, the fat head of his cock slipping inside. I said words. I mean, I think they were words. Inch by inch, he filled me, his brown gaze moving over us, from where we were joined, to my face, then over my chest and back to his dick deep inside of me.
“I want to love you,” he whispered, his long fingers wrapped around my ankle. “I’ve never been allowed to love another man like this.”
“Then love me, Bryan.”
He fell over me, catching his weight on his hands, and moved his hips. He watched, intently, as I writhed and whimpered in pleasure. I wondered if he was lost in that vision of his. I grabbed the back of his neck with both hands, rolled my hips, and held on tight.
“Do not hold back,” I huffed.
He didn’t.
Bryan fucked into me so hard I yelped, and he paused, worry deep on his face.
“No! Oh, shit, no, do not stop. Love me, Bryan.” I clenched around him, and his eyes rolled back. Then, he gave himself over to the pleasure of my body gripping his. He moved with grace and power, slamming into me over and over, his grunts and hisses spurring me along until I shot all over my chest. Bryan went deep twice more and then blew apart. I tried to hold onto him, but our skin was too sweaty to get a good grip. When the tremors rumbling through him subsided, he fell on me. I kissed his face, getting my lips to his cheek before he shimmied off me, mumbling something that got buried in the rumpled bedding.
“Holy fuck knuckles,” I gasped, my breathing far from normal. I let my eyes drift shut as he lay beside me, tacky skin clinging to tacky skin.
Bryan managed to roll to his side, his hand coming to my chest. He rubbed at a few droplets of semen with a finger. I opened my eyes and turned my head in his direction.
“I love loving you,” he whispered, grabbing a sultry kiss before he had to leave the bed to attend to the condom. While he was down the hall in the bathroom, I sat up gingerly, feeling a slight twinge here and there. I stared down at my toes, letting my body cool a bit while giving the man some privacy. I heard the gentle slap of bare feet come into the bedroom, the floorboard by the door creaking. Then the bed sagged. He sat behind me and passed a damp cloth around to me. Thanking him, I wiped myself clean, then threw the washcloth at the hamper in the corner.
“This on your back… this ink. It’s amazing.” His fingers danced up my spine, making me shudder. “This angel is stunning. What does this mean?”
This was not supposed to be the topic of discussion. We were supposed to talk about, romantic things now. Not this. He traced a long white wing with one rough fingertip. Starting from the middle of my back out over my right shoulder, his touch went, making it harder and harder for me to sit there quietly.
“It’s my sister,” I said, praying Emerson, Lake & Palmer would drown my words. He sat up, his palm resting on my lower back, right where the gossamer edges of Gina’s robes would be. “She died when she was ten.”
“I’m so sorry.” He moved around me and leaned into my side, his shoulder behind mine, and pressed a kiss to my throat. “Was she sick?”
“No.” I wasn’t sure I should go on. I mean, who was this man, really? We’d fucked once. That gave him no right to see my sickly innards.
“If you don’t want to talk about it…”
I lifted my chin and turned to find his beautifully sad gaze on me. “If I tell you, will you promise not to leave me tonight? I won’t ask more of you than that, just this one night.”
I wished he
would have spoken, but he gave me a bob of his head, so I took that as his vow that he would stay the night. It was all I could ask of him.
“My parents had gone to Virginia for a weekend when Gina was ten. They left her home with me. Garrett had long since moved out, and I was in my senior year, getting ready to graduate and join the Navy.”
“Is that why you have Polynesian stuff on your arm and all that sea stuff here?” He patted my chest.
“Yeah, got my first tat when I was eighteen from a shop two blocks from the base. I was hooked. They’re kind of addictive.” Sitting there with him, in my home, in my bed, listening to one of the greatest bands ever, made me feel as if I could maybe tell this story without losing my shit. “Vowed I would learn the trade as soon as I was discharged, which I did.”
He never prodded when I fell into silence or paused to gather my strength.
“Right. So Gina. I was watching her. It was the weekend and early. She woke me up to have breakfast with her. We had cereal. Cocoa Rice. It made the milk all chocolatey, and she loved that.” I smiled at the memory of that last smile of Gina’s. “She wanted to go outside and play with her friends, but none of them were up yet. I told her to play in the backyard while I took care of the dishes. She went outside, calling to me that I had better not be too long or she’d turn the hose on me. She liked to do that. Surprise you with a hose blast.” I smiled over the flare of pain.
And this was where it got bad. The crushing weight of it all began pressing down on me, making breathing and talking hard. Bryan rubbed that angel on my back, the one with the bright blue eyes and flowing hair. The one that was my baby sister as I wanted to remember her.
“I loaded the dishwasher and started a load of washing. Mom hated coming home to piles of dirty laundry or dishes. Then I made a fast pass through the living room to tidy up where we’d watched movies the previous night. All totaled maybe fifteen minutes…”
Bryan said nothing, just moved his hand in a tight circle. I sucked it up and forged on. In for a miserable penny as they say…
“When I— When I stepped out into the backyard, I saw her lying on the grass. Nothing new, right, because she would do that on occasion. Lie on her belly to study a caterpillar or a dandelion or stretch out on her back to study clouds. Gina was a dreamer.” Another pause to gather my strength. “It was when I walked up to her and asked her what she was looking at this time that I saw something was wrong. She uh…she wasn’t moving or breathing. I knelt beside her and saw that she had vomit on her lips and chin.”
And yet another pause, this time to push back at the memories. They rushed over me anyway, every damn second of that morning, like a tsunami.
“I had no idea what to do. I tried to do CPR, but it was too late. She’d been dead for too long when I finally got to her. They said she had a seizure. What they used to call a grand mal, but they now call them SUDEP. Sudden unexpected death in epilepsy. It was the first seizure she had ever had, and when she went down, she fell on her back and choked to death on her own vomit.”
I wiped at my mouth with the back of my hand unconsciously, to clear away the memory of that day when I’d put my lips to Gina’s and tried to blow life back into her.
The shaky breath I sucked in failed to stem the short, violent sob that got out. They always did, those fucking sobs. They broke free whenever I talked about Gina’s death. Which is why I didn’t talk about it much.
Bryan slid his arm around me and held me close.
“My family kind of fell apart after I let that happen. The Navy was the only thing that kept me from drinking myself to death. My parents won’t talk to me, and my brother really kind of hates me. Shit. Sorry, this is hard. It was my fault that she died. If I would have just gone out with her when she….when she asked the first time.”
I coughed and sputtered, dragged my hand over my face. The heaves set in. Then the shakes. And then, the silent tears. And through it all Bryan sat beside me, embracing me, whispering that it was not my fault, that sometimes good people die young, and that I was not to blame for God’s plans.
When the worst of the ugly was over, I was curled into his side, my cheek on his chest, his fingers back to tracing Gina’s wings.
“So, wow, we’re having us some fun times tonight,” I choked out, hoping to get us out of this shitty pit of despair we were in. “Want to play some Uno or something?”
“We could eat but maybe later. Right now, though, let’s just hold each other. I need it.”
“Yeah, so do I.” I cupped his beautiful face in my hands and kissed him with everything that was left inside of me, which probably wasn’t much, but what there was I gave to him. “Thank you for not sprinting for the door.”
He pulled me closer, his arm over my back, and we lay back down and pulled the covers up over us.
“You listened to my bad stuff and didn’t throw me out,” he said, his voice soft and low, his fingers moving through my hair. My cheek was on the beefy part of his arm. His chest rose and fell sharply. “You have no idea the things that I allowed him to do to me. The things that I helped him do to other people. I hurt people too, Gat.”
I rolled into him a bit, enough to press a kiss to his chest.
Maybe, just maybe, the two of us could help the other learn how to move past the horrible mistakes that plagued us? Could the healing start tonight, with this embrace?
Eleven
Bryan
“Where did you get this scar?”
Gatlin had woken me up with coffee and pressing kisses to the top of my spine. Gentle kisses and whispered words of good morning, and I’d been lulled into the peace of it all. I’d drunk my coffee, relaxed too much, and he’d found the scar.
It curved from behind my hip bone and ended close to my spine, a pale pucker of flesh that was a reminder of a fight I wished I could forget, particularly with everything that had happened since. It wasn't obvious in the half dark, but in daylight, it was plain to see.
I rolled onto my back quickly, and pulled Gatlin close, distracting him from his question, knowing I wasn’t ready to explain.
“Kiss me,” I ordered him.
He pulled back a little and smiled down at me.
“Stop changing the subject.”
“I wasn’t,” I denied and kissed him again. This time the desperation to stop him talking was real. We’d done enough talking last night, and I didn’t think it was all we’d be doing.
What about sex? Why weren’t we having more sex?
I slid my hands down his back, imagining the angel, tracing his muscles, until I could grip his ass and grind up against him. That stopped him wanting to talk. He groaned into the kiss, and then somehow, he got free from my hold, sitting up and on his knees and staring down at me. He was hard. This wasn’t about not being turned on. So why was he stopping?
“Bryan, where did the scar come from?”
“Why is it important?”
“It wasn’t,” Gatlin began with measured patience, “but you didn’t want to talk about it, so I figure it means something to you.”
“It’s nothing.”
“Was it a skating incident?”
Gatlin waited for me to answer, and at that moment, I could’ve said yes, and it would’ve been gone and done with, he would’ve believed me and moved on. His beautiful eyes were filled with so much compassion, and after what he’d shared with me last night, was this one thing I could share with him?
“Kind of,” I hedged and then sighed noisily when the lie tasted bitter on my tongue. “No.” I didn’t know what else to say. I had imagined telling someone someday about what happened, but in my head, it had been Aarni who listened to me and understood my story. Aarni who was my knight in shining armor.
“Wait there,” Gatlin instructed and padded, gloriously nude, over to a cabinet in the corner of the room. I hadn’t really looked at it before, but notebooks were strewn on it, along with a pot of pencils. He chose the top book, and I recognized his sketchpad, which he br
ought back to the bed. Taking up his position sitting cross-legged opposite me, he then opened the pad and placed it in front of me.
“Look,” he said, and I was relieved he’d stopped the line of questioning.
I examined the drawing, my chest tight at the art. It was stunning, the sweeps of blue and the edgy touch of a steampunk owl against the steam of an old-style locomotive, iron engine. He’d sketched a couple more views of the same design. In the center was a compass, with the compass points fading into the blur.
“What does the compass mean?”
“I feel like hockey is your home, and that your life expands away from it.”
I listened to what he said and felt unaccountably sad at the words. I did have a family. Daisy, George, Emma, and Tom might have been a temporary billet family, but I had grown up with them in the three years I’d lived in Erie. I needed to tell Gatlin that, but I didn’t have the words in my head.
“That’s perfect,” I murmured.
“Hey, you know who Matt Groening is?” he asked.
I looked up at him. “He’s the dude who draws the Simpsons.”
“Yeah, and did you know that when he originally drew Homer, he deliberately put his initials into the shapes of Homer’s hairline and ear? I mean, he changed his mind about the G in the ear, but the M of Homer’s hair is still there.”
I wasn’t sure where this was going, but it almost sounded like Gatlin was leading up to something. Knowing Gatlin, it would be artistically profound; I loved that passion in him.
“I didn’t know that.”
He dipped his gaze momentarily as if he were embarrassed, then pointed to one of the detailed feathers vanishing into a stylized clock piece. “I do a similar thing in my helmet designs.” He traced what I could see was actually a G.
