Gasp!

by Z. A. Maxfield

  Nigel practically fell into the chair next to Jeff’s, muttering a bloodthirsty, “Your lips to God’s ears, Ed. Jeff, you need a doctor.”

  “Not necessary.” Jeff wanted to move. He wanted to. But his legs still felt watery. He’d rather have gouged his eyes out than ask, but he figured Marsden needed to see his case, and Jeff wanted the man gone so he could lie down before he fell down.

  “Nigel, could you get my gun case from the closet of my room?”

  “Of course.” Nigel eyed him like he’d grown a second head. He studied Jeff’s face for several seconds before getting up—apparently whatever he saw there didn’t satisfy him. “Whatever you need, of course, but we’re going to rethink heading for casualty.”

  Jeff shut his eyelids against an unfamiliar burning sensation. “I’m fine.”

  Chapter Six

  Water sluiced over Jeff’s back, warming and soothing him even as his face throbbed. He didn’t think he’d actually broken his nose, but he’d cut his cheek and would be wearing a couple of pretty colorful bruises. He’d scuffed his forehead up too. The rest of his pain was all about personal shame.

  Nigel had been kind enough to avoid any comment about his lapse, and Marsden, even though he’d gotten in a jab or two, had taken Jeff aside before he left and let him know that facing down a bear was bound to fuck anyone up. Marsden had given him a fatherly pat on the shoulder and let him off the hook, saying some of the bravest men he knew would piss themselves in the face of a real-life bear encounter.

  Which helped a little.

  All Jeff’s joints were sore, though, as if he’d done wind sprints all day, and he was having a hard time forgetting the shock he’d felt when he’d rounded the corner and confronted the beast.

  Blind fear had snapped along his synapses like electricity, and he’d simply shorted out, probably due to dehydration and altitude. He was more accustomed to the extremes of desert heat, and he’d let himself forget to rehydrate properly.

  He wouldn’t make that mistake again.

  If there had actually been a threat to Nigel’s safety—a human threat—he’d never have dropped the ball like that. But he was coming down with something and not getting much sleep. He owed it to Nigel to admit that he hadn’t been able to do his job that day. That maybe he never had been capable of taking care of him properly, and to ask Nigel and Deidre if they wanted to keep him on or if they thought they could do better.

  He turned the water off and stepped from the shower stall. His bathroom was nice. Not luxurious, but it was roomy. He might even have a soak later if his muscles continued to tighten.

  He opened the window and toweled himself off while the steam dissipated, then studied his face in the mirror. Colorful, but not unexpected. He figured he could use a butterfly bandage or two on the cut on his cheek. While he dug through his toiletry kit for those, the strains of another familiar song—Nigel, at the piano—drifted to him. He carefully dried his skin and taped it, covering the abrasions with ointment in the hope they wouldn’t leave permanent scars.

  When the music changed and Nigel started a slow, sweet melody on the piano, Jeff stopped what he was doing and leaned a hip against the sink to listen. It was an Irish tune, plaintive and sweet, but Jeff couldn’t remember the name or the words. His mother used to sing it when she cleaned, and it made Jeff think of her—of growing up under older sister Deidre’s thumb, of arguments and horseplay and the smell of his mom’s very un-Irish spaghetti sauce drifting through the house like a delicious fog.

  There was longing in that song that planted itself directly under Jeff’s skin, especially when Nigel began to sing.

  Jeff slipped on clean flannel sleep pants and followed the music. Before he knew it, he was leaning against the door frame to the living room watching Nigel Gasp at work. And work it was, because Nigel had become…someone else again. Someone serious and professional—highly skilled and focused on his task.

  Nigel sat at the piano stripped of all the artifice Jeff had come to expect from him. The attitude, the hauteur, the mischief, and menace were long gone. He had pulled his hair back into a loose braid, allowing the shorter ends to drift in clouds of silken strands around his face. He wore nothing but a white T-shirt and blue boxers beneath. His hairless legs seemed strange because his feet were veiny and masculine and his calf muscles well-defined when he pressed the sustain and dampening pedals. He wore a pair of odd, old-fashioned tortoise-shell glasses and kept a pencil tucked above his ear, using it occasionally to mark up the sheet music he was playing from.

  Stripped of all his pretenses, Nigel was an ordinary, pale, middle-aged man with an amazing voice, above-average piano skills, and a profile any matinee idol of the thirties would kill for. He was fine-boned and handsome, sitting in the half-light of dawn as it stole in through the picture windows. The sight made a memorable image, one Jeff thought likely to burn into his brain—into his heart—forever.

  Jeff wasn’t a fanciful guy, really, but he respected the sheer blessed otherness of Nigel—the solid gold charisma that made him a star—and he admired it. He’d responded to it with a little skip of the heart every time he was in the man’s presence, even if to begin with he’d diagnosed the problem incorrectly as irritation.

  It wasn’t irritation. It was…attraction. Jeff acknowledged the horrid truth at last—he wasn’t immune to Nigel’s charms, dubious as they could often be.

  Nigel mesmerized him.

  Jeff stood stripped as bare and vulnerable as he’d ever been from shock and fear—from confronting a damned bear and passing out, for fuck’s sake, from confronting his feelings for Nigel at last—and Nigel had chosen that exact moment to be equally vulnerable, to be equally exposed and naked, just a man, a piano, and a voice.

  And ah, Christ. Nigel was beautiful. Utterly, splendidly, beautiful. And he sang like some kind of Irish angel, not like one of those phony-baloney, reedy Irish tenors from bad fifties records and not like some unnatural operatic tenor in a tuxedo in front of the philharmonic. Nigel sang with a damned pleasant, unarguably male voice, and it wrapped around Jeff’s spine like a boa constrictor and gave it a good, erotic squeeze.

  Jeff let out the breath he was holding, and it was so loud—such a shuddery, defeated sigh—that Nigel must have heard it. He stopped playing and glanced up.

  “Feel better?” Nigel rose from the piano, rubbing his hands along the fabric of his shorts.

  “Yeah.” What did I come down for? Oh yeah. The music. “You play really well.” He sounded like a damned cartoon.

  “My aunt Irene taught piano.”

  “I tried to learn when my sister took lessons. It didn’t stick much.” More nonsense. More small talk when what he really wanted was… “I play guitar.”

  “I know. Deidre told me.”

  “Yeah…only by ear, though.” Help me.

  “That’s a pretty cool thing if you do it well.”

  Jeff shrugged, unwilling to talk music with this most musical of all men. He started to back away. Hold me. Hold me. Isn’t it obvious I’m falling apart? “I need some more water.”

  “Jeff?” Nigel stepped forward. “If Marsden made you feel like your reaction to the—”

  “I don’t care about Marsden.” Jeff waved away Marsden’s opinion. “I just—I can’t understand myself lately.”

  “You—” Nigel frowned. “You what?”

  “I’m responsible for your safety. You could have been killed because I didn’t keep my shit together. That’s never happened to me.”

  “You had everything under control. I sauntered out there like an idiot and startled the bear. You’re lucky I didn’t get you killed.”

  “That’s not—”

  “Regardless, it was no one’s finest hour. We don’t have to tell anyone, do we?”

  “No.” Please no. No more talk. Jeff lifted his hand to his neck to rub out a twinge with trembling fingers. At some point Jeff would have to address the fact that what he said and did on the outside didn’t al
ways match what he was feeling on the inside.

  For once he needed more than the simple oblivion of skin. He needed to hold someone and be held in return. He needed a strong grip and arms wound tightly around him or he’d spin apart like so much ripe fruit in a blender.

  Nigel crossed the space between them and cupped Jeff’s face between his hands. Ah, Christ, thank God. Touch me.

  It’s been so fucking long.

  Jeff barely breathed while Nigel studied his injuries. “Your forehead looks like mince.”

  “It probably looks worse than it feels.” He sounded hoarse. Don’t let go just now. I need it.

  I need you.

  Nigel’s blue eyes held Jeff pinned there, his heart fluttering like a trapped moth. “You’re just a great big lapdog, aren’t you?”

  “Excuse me?”

  “You’re loyal and fiercely protective, but at the end of the day you’d just as soon have a fireplace and a nice warm pair of feet you can rest your muzzle on.”

  When Jeff didn’t respond immediately Nigel pressed a light, sweet kiss on his lips. When he drew back, Jeff followed, chasing the soft touch of Nigel’s mouth, deepening the kiss and asking for entry.

  Please, please, please.

  Nigel’s lips parted with a breath of surprise as he slid his hands around to the back of Jeff’s neck and into his short hair.

  Their tongues tangled. Their breath mingled. Jeff felt the scratch and burn of Nigel’s beard shadow catch with his.

  Nigel broke the kiss. “Maybe you should get into my bed.” Whispered.

  Yes. Jeff sagged against him. “All right.”

  Nigel nodded. When their cheeks rubbed together, Jeff almost groaned with relief.

  “I’ll be right up.” Nigel gave him a light push.

  Jeff wanted to roll Nigel beneath him and lose himself. At the same time he needed Nigel’s arms around him so tight he could find himself again.

  Jeff nodded. “I’ll just…” He headed for the stairs, hurrying up to Nigel’s bedroom without looking back. Without rationalizing or making excuses.

  Jeff slid between the thick linens and sank into downy pillows.

  There were definitely upstairs pillows and downstairs pillows, because the ones he had in his room didn’t feel this nice at all. Or maybe they did, and the ones on Nigel’s bed just seemed nicer because every breath he took brought Nigel’s peculiar juniper-berry scent with it. The moment he sank in, he relaxed.

  Maybe Nigel was easier to get used to than he thought.

  * * *

  JEFF HADN’T YET drifted off to sleep when Nigel entered, carrying some bottled water and a platter of fruit. He placed them on the nightstand but made no move to climb into the bed. “You look comfortable.”

  “I think you have a nicer bed than I do.”

  “I should. I bring my own linens.”

  “After carrying your luggage upstairs, I wouldn’t be surprised if you carried your own bed.” Jeff moved to the far side, and Nigel climbed in next to him. The sheets beneath him still held the warmth of Jeff’s body.

  “I sleep in different beds all over the world.” Nigel pulled the covers up and settled on his back with his arms folded under his head. “But I can’t bear used pillows.”

  “Don’t say bear,” Jeff groaned.

  “Sorry.”

  “They smell like you.”

  Nigel put a finger on Jeff’s lower lip—then drew it back. “I’m afraid to touch you.”

  Jeff shifted onto his side and propped his head on his hand. “How come?”

  “You’re all broken.”

  “C’mere.” Jeff pulled Nigel closer and nipped at his chin. “Watch the nose, though.”

  “The nose isn’t the main thing I want to touch anyway.” Nigel splayed his hand over Jeff’s chest—a featherlight caress of trembling fingers. Jeff’s nipple pebbled, and a moan escaped him, giving Nigel a reason to do it again. He focused his attention on that single, dark disk of wrinkled flesh for a few seconds. “You’re sensitive.”

  “Maybe I’m just ready,” Jeff admitted. “You know? I grew up fascinated by you. I couldn’t decide if I wanted to be you or if I wanted to do you.”

  “Doobie doobie do.” Nigel lifted his gaze to Jeff’s sleepy brown eyes.

  “You were my favorite impure thought. I had to go to confession.” Jeff slipped a hand around Nigel’s waist to cup his ass and give it a squeeze.

  “Ah yes. The rock star Nigel Gasp. You had a crush but you hated my dance mixes. Deidre told me.”

  “She told you that?”

  Nigel wrapped a leg around Jeff and welcomed him against his body. Jeff’s erection dug into his thigh. “Your sister said—”

  “My sister had no way of knowing how much more I’d want the man I found downstairs tonight.”

  Nigel’s heart lurched. “I’m guessing you don’t mean Officer Marsden.”

  Jeff rocked his hips back and forth a little, giving Nigel’s bare thigh a nudge. “Not him, no.”

  Nigel tilted his chin, offering a kiss. Jeff took his mouth with tender authority, slanting his lips over Nigel’s, parting them, nipping, nuzzling, and finally, catching Nigel’s lower lip playfully with his.

  Nigel pulled back and looked up at him. “Hello.”

  “Hello, yourself.” Jeff’s voice sounded hoarse.

  Nigel insinuated his fingers under the waistband of Jeff’s sleep pants, pushing them down until Jeff’s hot cock emerged to slap Nigel’s groin with a damp thud. Jeff groaned and lipped Nigel’s earlobe with a throaty laugh.

  Grinning up, Nigel pushed the fabric of his own shorts out of the way, and their cocks nudged together. Nigel moaned at the first faint prickle of friction. Jeff’s thick, cut cock tugged Nigel’s foreskin up and down his shaft. They rocked—hot and sweaty—gripping each other’s hips to vie for each electrifying long slide of skin against skin. Jeff tasted of salt and soap, and he smelled like coconuts, probably from those little shampoo bottles the resort had provided. He was deliciously male, and his crisp, crinkly chest hair crackled along Nigel’s bare skin, sending tickly messages to his brain.

  Man, man, man.

  Nigel wrapped his legs around Jeff’s hips and held him close while he stroked Jeff’s upper body, his arms, chest, wrists, and hands with the gentlest of touches. Nigel skimmed little circles and long lines over Jeff’s back with trembling fingers and lost himself in sensation, in giving pleasure, until things got ultraserious, until all movement between their bodies shifted focus from play to pleasure.

  Quick and fierce, Jeff’s hips stuttered some primitive, driving rhythm as he neared climax. He supported himself on one arm, wrapping the other around Nigel’s hips as they writhed in a passionate parody of fucking that found its echo in their kisses, in Nigel’s cries and ultimately Jeff’s groan of satisfaction as he shuddered and came.

  Nigel couldn’t take his gaze from Jeff’s face as he found the bliss of orgasm. The sight of Jeff’s eyes fluttering closed as he grunted with relief, the scent of Jeff’s release as it warmed and slicked the skin between them drew a surprised cry from Nigel as he went over the edge with him.

  Sweat-slick and loose-limbed, Jeff rolled off. Nigel lay on his back gazing up at the ceiling, allowing the air to cool his flushed and sticky skin. Jeff’s hand curled around his, firm and reassuring. Nigel held on tight.

  Whatever that was, Nigel wanted more of it.

  Maybe he could get Jeff to fuck him next time. Nigel flicked a glance Jeff’s way. Jeff lay on his back with his eyes closed.

  The room was so silent he heard the refrigerator hum to life downstairs.

  Nigel ran a finger through the semen drying on his belly and brought it to his mouth. Sharp and earthy. Salty and bittersweet. He turned, letting his feet hit the floor on his side of the bed.

  Jeff kept hold of his hand. “Going somewhere?”

  “Getting a towel. Back in a mo.” Jeff let go, and Nigel padded across the wooden floor to the bath, where he turned on t
he tap and waited for warm water to wet a cloth. He was rinsing and wringing it when Jeff came in behind him and nipped his shoulder playfully.

  “You okay?” Jeff was mostly made of shadows and planes in the dim glow of the night-light, and for the first time Nigel felt the difference in their size like a physical weight. Jeff towered over him, all thick neck and hardworking muscles. He stood there, sweat-soaked and still blotchy with passion.

  What a man.

  “Of course.” Nigel turned with the cloth in his hand. Jeff smiled and took it from him, using it to clean them off—first Nigel’s belly and then his own. He skimmed a curious finger over Nigel’s hairless crotch and balls.

  “You shave everything off?”

  “I have it waxed.”

  “Doesn’t that hurt like fuck? Doesn’t it itch or something when it grows back?”

  “I’m used to it. I was never very hairy to begin with.”

  Jeff thumbed Nigel’s chin where a beard shadow bloomed. “Except here, where your stubble is so dark against your skin. I like that.”

  “I’m a study in contrasts.” Nigel’s breath caught. “I’ll shave if you like, though.”

  Jeff shook his head. “I like how it feels against my skin.”

  “All right.” Nigel couldn’t help himself; he turned his face and nuzzled into Jeff’s hand.

  “Come back to the bed,” Jeff coaxed. “We don’t have to leave it for five weeks if we don’t want to, and it’s a surefire way to keep you out of trouble.”

  “Oh my God. It’s cute how you believe that.” Nigel laughed as he turned away.

  Chapter Seven

  Jeff opened his eyes to find Nigel hovering, face only inches away. A totally genuine smile of welcome made its way onto his lips before he could hide it. “Hi.”

  He felt for and removed the little elastic O that held Nigel’s braid, and combed his fingers gently through the long, silky hair. It formed a curtain that blocked out most of the morning light.