It was about trust.
He took Anne to Cedar Point, his treat, to prove he could be a good houseguest and not just an imposition. They rode the coasters, shared some lemonade, swapped stories. He hadn’t talked about his time working at the park in years, hadn’t met anyone who’d have understood or cared, but something about Anne opened his mouth on words he wasn’t expecting to say. He turned the tables, got her to talk about herself, instead. And on the way home, though he’d promised her it wouldn’t happen, a storm blew up over the lake and tried to tip the small sailboat that had belonged to James’ grandparents. Alex had promised to take care of her, and she’d trusted him, and so though he could feel his jaw set tight and hard at the wind and water threatening to tip them, he didn’t let her know how much trouble they were in.
He got them home just as the rain hit, soaking them both. The kitchen floor was slick beneath their wet feet, and they skidded as he slammed the door. Anne, dripping, stared at him with her arms clutched around her tight.
“You’re shivering.” He handed her a dish towel and forced his eyes to stay on her face and not the tight, hard points of her nipples poking through her thin, wet T-shirt.
“My father,” Anne said suddenly, “took me out on a boat. The storm came up fast. We weren’t too far out. But I didn’t know how to sail. And he was...”
Alex understood, then, what had allowed Anne to look so deep inside him without even knowing him. He put a hand on her shoulder, squeezing gently, nothing to say.
She shuddered and straightened her shoulders. Bucking up. Putting on the brave face he also understood. “We didn’t drown, obviously.”
“But you were scared. You’re still scared, remembering it.”
“I was ten. I didn’t know any better. My dad wouldn’t have done anything to hurt me.”
Alex didn’t need to know her father to believe that wasn’t true, but who was he to burst her bubble? He squeezed again as lightning flashed and made her jump; she slipped on the tiles but he was there to make sure she didn’t fall.
The lights went out.
He could have pulled her into his arms. Touched her. He could have put his mouth to hers and had the rain-diluted taste of her kiss on his tongue in no more than a heartbeat or two.
She spoke. “He was drunk.”
He hadn’t been too noble to take advantage of someone’s vulnerability in the past, not when it suited him. He had no doubts he’d find himself in a place to do it again in the future. In darkness, Alex knew all too well how easy fantasy could be, and what it could do, and where it could lead. But listening to the sound of Anne’s breathing, feeling the heat of her skin even as she shivered from the chill of dampness, he couldn’t move. He couldn’t take what Jamie had offered. Not like this, with her words pulling memories he’d rather have left buried to the surface.
“Families suck,” he said, his best attempt at giving comfort.
The lights came on. They moved apart. The moment broke and was gone, but the memory of it lingered there between them, something the storm had dredged to the surface and refused to sink again.
* * *
“Where are you, fucker?”
Alex laughed into the cell phone. “Ooh, I love it when you talk dirty to me, baby.”
Jamie snorted. “Just wondered where the hell you were off to every day.”
Since the day of the storm, Alex had been putting some much-needed distance between him and Jamie’s wife. “Trying to get my punk ass a job.”
“Any luck?”
Alex looked at his watch, then the empty table across from him. Troy Sauders, one of his contacts, was supposed to meet him for lunch. So far, the man hadn’t showed. Alex didn’t want to think it was because of anything Bell might have said about him, but you could never be sure. Sometimes corporate America, even when it was headquartered overseas, could be as vicious and backstabbing as high school.
“Not yet. I think I’ve been ditched, actually. Shit.”
“No worries, man. I’m sure you’ll get something. Hey, you could always come work for me. We could use a transportation guy.”
“Dude, transportation specialist doesn’t mean dump truck driver.” Alex laughed, though, thinking about it. “Maybe if I get desperate.”
“I’d be your boss.”
“Then I’m definitely not in. I’ll catch you at home later, okay?”
“Yeah, man, I’ll be back regular time. And...Alex.”
Alex’s smile faded. “Yeah, brother.”
“Have you been thinking about what we talked about? Just wondering. Because you haven’t been around as much as I thought you might be, and I thought maybe...”
“It’s cool,” Alex said after the pause Jamie left proved he wasn’t going to continue.
How did you tell a guy who offered you his wife that yeah, she was a smoking hot piece of ass, but no, you couldn’t bang her because you...fuckit to hell...you liked her too much?
“Good. I don’t want it to be weird or anything, that’s all.”
“Fuck you, Jamie, anything you do is weird.”
Jamie laughed. “Fuck you.”
“Fuck you!” Alex laughed, too, giddy with the sense of boyhood and the power of a curse word they’d once thought so grown up.
The guy passing his table, tall, brown-haired, built like a runner, paused to look back. Great ass under a designer suit and a hundred-dollar haircut.
“Gotta go,” Alex said. “I’ll see you later.”
He disconnected without waiting for a goodbye and shot his wrist another look. Sauders wasn’t coming, or he was hella late and too fucking rude to bother calling. Well, fuck him. Alex Kennedy had money and time, and now, courtesy of his best friend reminding him there could be a threesome in the future, he had half a hard-on, too.
“How’s it going,” he said to the guy with the nice ass when they both got to the cashier.
“Good. You?” He paid with a shiny silver card and made sure Alex could see it, along with the shiny watch on his wrist.
It was a cliché that gay men would fuck anything, but Alex had no problem with that. By the time he’d followed the guy to his shiny silver BMW, he was already getting hard inside his own designer suit pants. The backseat turned out to be plenty big enough for two.
The guy didn’t offer a name. Didn’t even ask about preferences. He just unzipped, tore open the latex condom package with his teeth and got to work, sucking Alex’s cock like it had been on the menu inside. His sloppy wet tongue circled the head and he used his lips to suck hard before sliding all the way down the shaft to Alex’s balls, where his hand met his mouth.
Even blunted by the rubber it was hot, hard, fast and good with a little bit of physical mess but no emotional garbage to deal with. Alex tilted his hips upward into the guy’s mouth and closed his eyes. They slid on leather seats growing hot in the summer sunshine. The scent of sex smothered him until he drew in small, shallow breaths but couldn’t stand it any longer, thrusting upward with a strangled groan when the guy’s fingertip slid backward to press inquisitively at his ass.
“Fuck, yes. Do it.”
Alex heard the sound of tearing plastic again and then the finger was back. Pleasure shook him, made greater by the anonymity. He knew nothing about this man other than his taste in clothes and cars and condoms. It was all he had to know.
The man’s finger slipped inside, pressing as the tight muscles relaxed. Alex grunted, shifting against the hot, sucking mouth and the slick, stroking finger sending shards of pleasure spiking into every nerve. The man between his legs; his moans muffled around Alex’s cock, moved faster.
Alex shifted, opening his eyes to look down to where the guy was not only sucking and fingering him, but stroking himself with his other hand. Fucking talented bastard. The sight pushed Alex closer to the edge. It was always better the other person got off, too.
Pleasure coiled tight and hard, low in his belly and balls. He fucked the man’s mouth harder and bore down wit
h inner muscles to take everything he was being given. Fuck, so close, so close...
He looked down, saw the man’s prick gripped tight in his fist, the head dark with arousal. Pre-come glistened on the head, disappearing and reappearing in his fingers. He was close, too, based on the sudden jerkiness of his strokes and the moans slipping from an occasionally lax mouth.
Anonymous, swift and without repercussions, that was all he wanted. His thighs shook as his body surged toward the explosion that would wipe his mind clean. Make him stop thinking. But as his muscles tensed and nerves began the rapid-firing release of sensation preceding orgasm, Alex didn’t just lay back and let it wash over him. His hand found the softness of the man’s hair and he pulled, just enough to get the guy off his cock.
Wet lips, hooded eyes, flushed cheeks. It was clear he was getting off on this as much as Alex, and that was all it took to send him over the edge.
“Look at me,” he said, and the guy did. They all did, when he told them to.
He came with a grunt and bit down hard on his lip as the ecstasy burst out of him. The scent of it filled the close, hot air inside the BMW as his anonymous friend shuddered and cried out with his own passion.
Breathing hard, the guy pulled away long enough to reach under the seat and pull out a hard plastic box of baby wipes and a couple plastic grocery bags. He handed the wipes to Alex and used the bags for cleanup.
Alex took them, amused and stated. “What a Boy Scout.”
The guy laughed. Sweat beaded along his hairline. It was getting too fucking hot in there. “Yeah. Never hurts to be prepared.”
“No, I guess not.”
They took care of what they had to do in silence. When it was done Alex sat back against the leather seat with a groan that had nothing to do with pleasure. He’d pulled something in his back from the awkward position.
“Would it be lame for me to give you my number?”
Alex cracked open an eye to look at the guy now wiping his face. “I’m not going to be in town much longer.”
The guy grinned and reached to flip Alex’s tie with a finger. “Right. No problem.”
Alex laughed, relieved the guy wasn’t a drama queen. “No, really. I’m just in on business. You can give me your number, though, in case I come back.”
The guy studied him before looking out to the parking lot. If anyone had walked past to peer in the beemer’s tinted windows and catch a peek at the show, they’d gone. “Yeah. Okay.”
He pulled a shiny silver card case from his breast pocket and handed it to Alex, who put it away without looking at it. Then, without so much as a handshake, he got out of the car and went to his own. He ran the air conditioner on high all the way from Cleveland to Sandusky and still felt like he smelled like sex by the time he got back. His back still hurt like a motherfucker, too.
* * *
She was there when he got back to the house. Of course she was. It was her house, he the piss-poor houseguest who’d been avoiding her.
She sat on the deck, lemonade in hand, and shaded her eyes to look at him as he stood in the doorway. “Hi. Long time, no see.”
He was always in the doorway, it seemed, waiting to come in. Thinking of going out. Always stuck in between.
“I’ve had a lot of meetings. Investors.” It was only half a lie. She didn’t need to know he hadn’t had much luck.
Damn, it was hot out here, and he was tired of being in this suit. His armpits were damp and his cock pressed obscenely against his briefs, reminding him that not more than a couple hours had passed since it had been down another man’s throat. He needed a shower, but couldn’t make himself leave her.
He kicked off his shoes, took off his socks and reveled in the deck’s hot wood on his bare feet. He unbuttoned his shirt as they talked and joked. He put his face to the sun and let it warm him all over the way her low, slow chuckle heated him inside.
He didn’t want to look at her, sure his lust would blaze in his eyes like some punk kid with a crush on the Homecoming Queen. He stretched, wincing, his back snap, crackle and popping in a line up his spine. “Christ, I’m tight. I got spoiled in Singapore. I had weekly massages there.”
Their banter took a turn toward teasing, toward flirting. It was easier when he was teasing. He could pretend he didn’t mean any of it. But in the end, the low and breathy tone her voice took on when he implied the massages in Singapore had been more than simply therapeutic sent him down a twisting, turning road to a very hot place.
He wished he had some lemonade and knew she’d get up to get him some, but Alex didn’t want to ask Anne for it. He wanted to stand across from her for a while with the hot sun on them and the wind blowing off the water. He just wanted to listen to her laugh.
When she drank, he watched her throat work as she swallowed and imagined how her lips would feel on his dick. She would drink him down like she did the lemonade.
A wedding ring had never been anything more than a challenge to him in the past. Worn by a man or a woman, it meant he never had to keep what he took. He’d never wanted to. But playing with other people’s toys had started getting old, not to mention complicated.
Wetting his prick wasn’t the only thing in the world that mattered.
Was it?
Even when he knew how much Jamie wanted it? Even when it was, maybe, the only way to ever come close to giving Jamie what he really wanted? Alex shook himself, shivering, and another slice of pain lanced him.
“Fuck, my back hurts. Would you rub it for me?”
He sat at the end of her chair and took off his shirt. Easier to do it looking away, when he didn’t have to see her face. When he could pretend again it didn’t mean anything, even though his heart stuttered at the thought of her touching his now-bare skin.
The clink of the glass on the table. Anne’s slow, slow inhale. Alex closed his eyes.
Waiting.
“Does anyone ever say no to you?”
Once again, the doorway, only this time he wasn’t in between, contemplating whether to stay or go. This time, he’d stepped all the way through with no going back. Alex looked at her over his shoulder. He told her the truth.
“No.”
Neither did Anne.
* * *
Mrs. Kinney, arriving unannounced, interrupted. Alex watched Anne handle her mother-in-law with more grace than he’d have managed under similar circumstances. He admired that.
Even so, things had been set into motion and he wasn’t sure he could back away from them even if he wanted. Anne still watched him with her quiet contemplation, her gaze on the verge of stripping him bare.
“You’re a master, man.” This came from Jamie, under the stars.
Alex tipped a beer to his mouth and said nothing.
Jamie begged a cigarette and lay back on the lounger, letting the smoke waft out of his mouth and nose in lazy streams. “I can tell she likes you.”
Alex didn’t agree or dispute. He closed his eyes and listened to the rise and fall of Jamie’s voice. When his chair dipped and he looked up into Jamie’s eyes, inches from his own, he didn’t move.
“Wake up, fucker.” Jamie breathed beer and smoke across Alex’s face. Jamie’s knees pressed Alex’s sides. The weight didn’t make it impossible to shift him off, but Alex stayed still. “She won’t make the first move, man. You have to do it.”
“What if you told her what you told me?”
“No.” Jamie shook his head.
Alex slid his hands up Jamie’s sides to anchor at his belt loops and noticed the way his friend’s eyes widened, just a little. “Why do you want this so much?”
“Why don’t you?”
Alex pulled, for the moment not caring what Jamie thought, but he didn’t turn this into an embrace. Instead he dumped his friend ass backward onto the deck with a thump that echoed in the night. They both burst out laughing, loud and long.
“I want to,” he admitted, finally, unable to keep a secret from Jamie now any more than he ever
had. “Soon. I told you, the time has to be right. You can’t just dive into this without thinking it through, and if you just won’t come out and tell her—”
From his spot on the deck, Jamie shook his head again. “No.”
“It would be easier just to be honest,” Alex said.
Jamie’s laughter eased, but though his smile faded, it didn’t disappear. “Look who’s talking.”
Alex thought about a past accusation in a beer-blurred voice, a shove, the shattering of glass and the sudden copper tang of blood. He looked at his friend, the only man—hell, only person—he’d ever truly loved. “Yes. All right. I’ll do it the way you want.”
* * *
Women liked men who could cook. It had been a while since he’d utilized his culinary skills, brownies notwithstanding, and it surprised him how good it felt to sauté and simmer and steam. Something therapeutic in it, something calming. With Jamie still not home from work, Alex had Anne all to himself again. He wondered if it was the way his friend had planned it. He found himself hoping Jamie would be late.
Later, dinner, drinks. Laughter. There were stories only Jamie knew, jokes only Jamie would get. Anne watched them both with her usual quiet concentration, and if she felt left out or jealous, she didn’t show it. Night fell. Full bellies, good booze and better company relaxed them.
Alex looked at the lake, his cock already getting thicker at the thought of what was meant to happen.
“Look at that water.” Jamie sounded content.
Alex stood. “You know what we’ve got to do, man.”
Jamie, that fool, started laughing in protest until Alex hooked the edge of his shirt and tugged. Only then did he get up as Alex stripped out of his shirt.
“You up for it, Anne?” He didn’t think she’d do it, but he wanted to see if she’d at least think about it, if she could be eased toward it.
* * *
“Swimming? Now?” She didn’t sound enthusiastic.
“She doesn’t swim, Alex.”