by Emma Lyon
“Oh, please,” Ethan scoffed. “I know what sex with guys sounds like. I have sex with guys.”
Lane covered his ears. “I don’t need to hear that my little brother is having sex.”
Ethan rolled his eyes. “I don’t know why everyone in this family thinks I’m a child. Of course I’m having sex.”
“As long as you’re being careful.”
“Ugh, we are not talking about this,” Ethan said. “Zach, distract him.”
“Like this?” I leaned over to capture Lane’s lips and got a mouthful of beer instead, since he clearly hadn’t expected it.
I grinned and wiped my mouth with the back of my hand while Ethan cracked up and Lane looked even more embarrassed. “Oh God,” he said, handing me some napkins. “I’m so sorry.”
“Don’t apologize.” I accepted the napkins and leaned down to kiss Lane’s red cheek, and to hell with anyone watching who didn’t like what they saw.
Because Ethan’s little talk had only made me even more resolved to see where this thing led us.
19
Lane
When we got back to the house, my mom was in the sunroom putting together a puzzle on the coffee table. Ethan snorted. “Did the electricity go out or something? Did we get transported back to olden days?”
“Hush and come help me,” she said. I wasn’t surprised when Ethan knelt at the coffee table next to her and picked up a puzzle piece. It had always been their thing. “How was town? Did you get oysters?”
“We did.” I sat in one of the over-cushioned wicker chairs and watched as Zach took his phone into the kitchen. His sister had called while we were out and he’d wanted to call her back.
“Your father called.” She held up a piece and frowned as she scanned the half-finished puzzle in front of her. “He’s leaving early enough tomorrow morning so he can be here by breakfast.”
“Great,” I said, feeling a pang of guilt that I hadn’t actually missed him that much, though it would still be good to see him. Even working on his campaign, I rarely saw him. The last time had been at the donor dinner, where I hadn’t even had the chance to speak to him.
Zach came back into the living room, hands in his pockets as he looked down at the puzzle board. I asked, “Everything all right?”
He nodded. “My sister and her husband found out the baby’s sex.” He grinned. “It’s a girl.”
My mom’s head shot up, to my complete lack of surprise. I’d once caught her looking at online sites once for adoption and surrogacy for gay couples, and after I’d broken it to her that it would be years before I was ready for that, if ever, she’d just sighed and said, “I know. I’m not trying to pressure you or anything. I just wanted to see what options were available.”
At the time I’d been with Bryce, so maybe she’d thought we’d settle down and get married and start thinking about kids, but that sure as hell hadn’t happened.
She eyed Zach with an avid gleam in her eye. “First time as an uncle?”
Zach nodded, and I found myself entranced by the grin lighting him up with obvious love for his sister. “Angela and her husband were married a few years ago. This is their first.”
“That’s wonderful. Children are a joy.” Ethan pretended to vomit, and she smacked him lightly on the head. “Some of them.”
“You still love me,” Ethan said, placing a puzzle piece in its spot.
She smiled at him. “I do.”
I felt a yawn well up, even though all I’d done that day was eat and sleep. I covered it and said ruefully, “I have no idea why I’m tired.” I felt Zach’s eyes on me and looked up to something suspiciously close to a smirk. I raised an innocent eyebrow.
“You’re probably catching up from too little sleep,” my mother said practically. “I know you’ve been putting in a lot of hours on your father’s campaign.”
I shrugged. “It’s fine. But I think I’m going to go up and take a nap.” I dragged myself up from the chair and cocked my head at Zach. “You’ll be all right?”
“Of course,” Zach said, hands in his pockets in an easy pose. “Go get your beauty sleep. I’ll wake you up later.”
“Don’t forget about the fireworks tonight,” my mom reminded me.
“I won’t sleep that long.” I nudged Zach’s shoulder as I passed. I was, actually, going upstairs to sleep from the accumulated effects of the beer and oysters, but if Zach wanted to come keep me company, I wouldn’t be remiss to that, either.
But Zach took my words at face value and just said, “Sleep well.”
Upstairs, I didn’t bother getting under the covers, just laid down on the quilt and let my eyes close. Maybe my body was trying to catch up on sleep. When I was focused on something, I had a habit of blocking out everything else around me, including the need for sleep, and lately that thing had been my father’s campaign.
When I next opened my eyes, a soft sound alerted me to Zach’s presence before I saw him crouched in front of the love seat rummaging through his bag. “Hey,” I managed, my voice thick from sleep.
Zach turned on the balls of his feet. “Hey. I was trying not to wake you. I thought I’d go down for a swim.”
“Come lie down with me instead.” The words were out before my brain could catch up to them, though Zach seemed agreeable enough by the way he went to the other side of the bed to lie down on his side facing me.
“You sleep all right?”
I nodded, still a bit groggy. “How long was I out?”
“Just an hour. Your mom and brother are still working on their puzzle.”
“Didn’t want to join them?”
“I tried but they’re way better than I am. I was starting to feel inadequate.”
I rolled on my side toward him, reaching out to tug him forward. Zach came easily, his mouth angling over mine in a sweet, lingering kiss that curled through my body like a petal unfolding.
“I thought you wanted to sleep,” he said, and I felt the puff of his breath and the curve of his smile on his lips.
“I did sleep,” I pointed out. “Now I want…something else.”
“Really,” he drawled, hooking his leg over my thigh to pull us closer, and by the bulge in his shorts, he was just as interested in that something else as me. “And what would that be?”
I put a hand on Zach’s chest then moved it lower to tug at the button of his shorts. “Maybe it’s my turn now.”
Zach raised his eyebrows but didn’t resist when I thumbed his shorts open and slid my hand inside to stroke him. He was thick and quite respectably endowed, enough so that as much as I longed to feel him inside me, I did have a moment’s pause, thinking about the stretch.
But fuck, it would feel good. My ass clenched at the thought.
For now, though, there was something else I wanted.
Nudging Zach onto his back, I straddled his thighs. Zach’s eyes were blown wide, the green flecks swallowed up by dark pupil as he watched me tug his shorts down, arching up so I could get them over his hips and down his thighs. Lips parted, he put his hand on his stomach, bunching up the bottom of his t-shirt to touch bare skin, rubbing his stomach absently while his tongue snaked out to lick his bottom lip.
Entranced by the sight of it, I was tempted to kiss him again. But the prize I was after was closer to hand—Zach’s very full, very hard cock poking up out of curls of dark hair like a gift for me.
I put my hands on his hips and licked a line up the underside of his length all the way to the tip.
“Jesus,” Zach whispered, something like awe in his face when I angled my eyes up to him. I did it again, this time closing my mouth over his fat tip.
Tasting the salt of his pre-come, I swirled my tongue around the underside of the head and listened to the hitch of Zach’s breath to guide me to what he liked.
He raised his hand to my head tentatively, his fingers carding through my hair. I hummed around him. There was no way Zach’s girth was going to fit down my throat, but I took him as deep as
I could, wrapping my hand around the base of him to add some pressure while I reached with my other hand to massage his balls.
“Holy shit, Lane,” Zach strangled out. His hips came up to meet my mouth. “Don’t stop doing that.”
I had no intention of stopping. Never mind the oysters; the sound of Zach’s desperation was aphrodisiac enough.
I tongued his slit like Zach had done to me last night and was rewarded by a moan, then sucked him in earnest, listening to his breathing grow increasingly ragged.
Zach’s voice was urgent when he warned, “I’m going to—”
I swallowed him down as far as I could go and pressed a finger to his taint. A moment later I heard a muffled groan and my mouth was filled with his salty release. I sucked and swallowed it, then licked his softening cock clean.
Zach stared at me with well-fucked eyes as I stretched out at his side and shoved my shorts down so I could get a hand on my cock. I’d nearly come just from bringing him off, and now I was so ready it wouldn’t take long to erupt.
Zach’s eyes trailed down to where my hand was moving over my cock, eyeing me avidly. He licked his lips, and put his hand over mine to increase the pressure, and like that I was done for, coming with a choked-off cry all over our hands.
He gazed wonderingly at me as I wiped my hand on my stomach. “Where have you been hiding all of this?”
I gazed back smugly. “Enjoyed that?”
“Yeah, I fucking did.” He leaned forward to capture my lips, probably tasting himself on them. Then he pulled me in to tuck our bodies together, his knee wedged between my legs and hand resting proprietarily on my hip.
“I’ve been wanting to do that a while,” I admitted.
“Really.” Zach’s grin was far too self-satisfied.
“I’m sure you get that a lot,” I said dryly.
“Not really,” he said, the pad of his thumb rubbing my bottom lip. “Certainly not like that.”
No doubt he was full of it, but I chose to take him at his word. And when he murmured, “You keep blowing my mind, Lane Garrett,” right before we drifted off, I heard and didn’t think too hard about my warm glow.
20
Zach
The fireworks were being shown from the grassy lawn in front of the Maritime Museum back in town. A big band orchestra played as people laid down lawn chairs and picnic blankets, milling and talking while kids ran around yelling in their outdoor voices, the kind of chaos and summer memories I always associated with the Fourth. When we weren’t holidaying on Long Island, we’d watch the fireworks over the river from a friend’s rooftop deck. It didn’t seem to matter where we were, it had always been something to look forward to.
The Garretts had brought two lawn chairs and a blanket that Lane and I spread out. Jessica took one of the lawn chairs and Ethan the other, and I was just as happy to sit cross-legged on the blanket with Lane.
We ate the sandwiches and potato salad Lane’s mom had made, and drank soda and water from the cooler Ethan had lugged from the car. With the sun dipped below the trees and roofline, and a breeze coming off the water, it was downright pleasant.
“I wish your father were here,” Jessica said wistfully. “Zach, what do your parents do? I didn’t get a chance to ask you that at the dinner.”
“My dad’s an attorney,” I said, helping myself to more of the potato salad. There was something about this kind of food that transported me instantly back to summers as a kid, baseball and bike riding in the park, playing cards on the stoop of our house. “No fancy firm or anything, just him. Family law, mostly. My mom stayed home when we were kids, then when we were older, she started doing some photography. Just for fun at first, but now she’s had a couple of showings at some small galleries.”
Jessica looked impressed. “I would love to see her work sometime. I was a teacher until Ethan graduated. Twelfth-grade English. I had to quit when everything else got too crazy, but I do miss it.”
Ethan muttered, “You shouldn’t have had to quit because of Dad.”
“I didn’t,” she said, glancing at him resignedly like this was a familiar argument. “It was the best thing for our family at the time.”
Lane offered me a small smile of apology, but I was used to family arguments between my sisters and my mother, while my dad and I stayed out of things on the sidelines. No argument of theirs had ever lasted more than a day, though.
I took Lane’s hand and squeezed, then kept it in mine, weaving our fingers together. If we were alone, I would have kissed him, maybe dragged him down to the blanket to make out under the darkening sky.
Since we weren’t, I contented myself with stroking the side of Lane’s hand with my thumb. When the sky was dark enough that the first fireworks whistled into the sky, we lay back on the blanket to watch. With Lane’s shoulder warm against mine, it was this innocent magical night reminding me of childhood and years of similar fireworks displays, and to be here with Lane made everything that much more right.
I bumped Lane’s shoulder while colors burst in the sky. “Not bad, Garrett.”
Lane smiled and said simply, “I’m glad you’re here.”
It was one of those days, I thought as the fireworks ended with a bang and we made their way back to the car, that was so perfect it hardly felt real. I wanted to burn it into my memory now so I wouldn’t forget about it later.
When we got back to the house and put away everything, Lane murmured in my ear, “Let’s go for a swim.”
A frisson went through me at the drop in his voice. When we got back downstairs dressed in our swim trunks and carrying towels, Ethan was in the kitchen. He snorted when Lane asked if he wanted to join us. “Hell no, I’m not getting into a pool with you two groping each other.”
I squeezed Lane’s ass and startled what sounded suspiciously like a squeak out of him. “What if we promise to behave ourselves?”
Ethan rolled his eyes. “Right. Have fun.”
Ethan wasn’t wrong; I could barely keep my hands off Lane on our way out to the pool. When we’d jumped in, the moonlit water still warm from the accumulated heat of the day, I swam up to him and kissed his chlorine-scented mouth. “Do you have any idea how crazy you make me?”
Lane’s expression changed to something uncertain and vulnerable, and I wanted with surprising fierceness to swear to the sky that I would never do anything to hurt him or make him doubt me.
“You do,” I murmured, taking his mouth again. “So fucking crazy.”
Lane kissed me back, holding on to my shoulders while I ran hands down his hard body and settled on his hips. We were in a shallower part of the pool, which was lucky because after a minute of having Lane’s tongue in my mouth, I wouldn’t have trusted my legs to keep me afloat.
I pulled him forward until our hard lengths pressed together, then slid my hand down the back of his shorts.
He bucked into me. “Fuck.”
I cupped the perfect thing that was Lane’s ass and slid my thumb in the crease between his cheeks. “Is this all right?”
He released a shaky breath. “What?”
“Me touching you there.”
“Yes.” Lane still sounded breathless. “Zach, please say you’re going to fuck me.”
The words rushed through me in a surge of pleasure and want and a little bit of nerves, because yes, I most definitely wanted to be inside Lane, but I wanted it to be good for him, too. I wanted it to be perfect. And while I was confident enough in bed usually, Lane had a knack for shaking loose all my usual certainties.
I kissed him again to hide just how overwhelmed I was by his trust. How much I wanted this, too. “I don’t think your parents would appreciate us doing it in their pool.”
Lane smiled against my mouth. “Upstairs, then.”
“In a minute,” I said, liking the way the moonlight reflected off the water and threw patterns over Lane’s skin. I kissed the line of his jaw where he’d shaved it smooth, just a light roughness abrading my lips. I smoothed a hand
down his chest and stopped at a nipple, thumbing it and listening to his reaction.
He liked that, by his sharp intake of breath, so I did it again. I teased the nub with the pad of my thumb and felt the jump of his cock through the material of our shorts. I wanted to lay him out like a map and explore every part of him, mark all his erogenous zones and touch them until all he felt was pleasure.
“Zach,” he said shakily. “We need go upstairs. Now.”
“All right,” I said, kissing him again.
We managed to break from each other’s mouths long enough to pull ourselves out of the pool. As we dried off and made our way upstairs silently, tension hummed between us. Once inside the bedroom, Lane hooked his thumbs in the waistband of his swim shorts and pushed them down over his hips until they pooled at his feet. His face was a little flushed and his hair was still wet. His hard cock jutted out like a challenge.
I stared at the sublime sight of Lane fully naked. “Fuck, you’re beautiful,” I said, and he flushed further.
“Your turn,” he said, in a voice gone husky. His eyes dropped to my prominent bulge and his pink tongue came out to lick his top lip in a move that had my cock twitching.
I pushed my swim shorts over my hips slowly, teasing a bit; I bent over at the waist to push them all the way down and heard Lane’s breath catch. Good. I wanted him to feel as much of this overwhelming need as I did.
I stepped out of my shorts and straightened, my cock bobbing in front of me, hard and red and wanting, and it was a moment before Lane pulled his gaze away from it to meet my eyes.
“How do you look this good?”
I smiled at the frank admiration in his eyes, and warmth rushed through me from the appreciation. “Good genes, I guess.”
Lane shook his head. “I guess you hear that a lot.”
“Not really.” I hesitated. “Honestly? Between work and school, I don’t have the most active social life. It’s been a while.”
By the way his eyes darkened, the admission seemed to turn Lane on even more.