The Bucket List

by Douglas Black

  “The feeling is mutual.”

  “Is it?”

  Kade nodded. “Definitely.”

  “Then what are you doing sitting all the way over there?”

  Chapter Eleven

  Beneath the Stars

  Kade switched sides so he could sit beside Blake. Blake turned, one leg tucked underneath him, and Kade leaned in close. He took another, smaller sip of champagne and looked up at the sky. It was inky black and littered with stars. He could only make out the tops of the trees by a vague sense of their moving in the darkness high above. All around them the forest sounded alive, even over the rumble of the hot tub.

  “Why have these last two nights been so magical?” Kade asked. He wasn’t sure he had ever used the word ‘magical’ in a sentence before.

  “Huh?”

  “The last two nights… They’ve been magical. Is this what you do all the time? What you’re like all the time?”

  “Why?” Blake asked. “Are you tempted to find out?”

  Kade was spared the chance to answer that question when Blake spoke again. This time, he sounded hurt.

  “And anyway, what do you mean ‘the past two nights’? What was wrong with Saturday night?”

  Kade stifled a laugh. “I didn’t mean to dismiss it. Trust me. I really, really don’t want to do that. It’s just that I’m not sure ‘magical’ is entirely the right word to describe Saturday night.”

  “Why not?”

  “Well…it was… I don’t know, really.” Kade took another sip from his mug. “I mean, it was like nothing I’ve ever had before. You are like no one I’ve ever had before, but I wouldn’t say magical. Intense, maybe? Dirty? I don’t know. Maybe I’m wrong, but this is definitely magical. Last night, with the open fire and the water lapping beneath us, tonight with this hot tub and the forest… I mean, hell, if this is your life, I want a piece of it.”

  Kade could have smacked himself in the face with his mug. He scooted away from Blake. He wanted to turn around but he couldn’t. He hadn’t even drunk enough to blame it on the bubbles.

  “Fuck. I’m sorry. That sounded awful. That’s absolutely not what I meant. I didn’t mean it to come out like that. I’m sorry. I like you. I’ve never met anyone like you, and I’m struggling. I don’t know what you saw in me. I don’t even know why I’m here with you now, why you want me. I didn’t know people lived like this in real life.”

  Kade sat in silence, embarrassed by his outburst, listening to the calls of birds and insects in the forest around them and waiting for Blake’s surely offended response. The leaves on the trees rustled as a wind blew down from the mountain behind them.

  Blake broke the silence, unexpectedly, with laughter.

  “Jesus.” Blake grabbed Kade by his shoulder and pulled him back. Champagne slopped over Kade’s hand. “You know, for a guy as good-looking as you, who has a a good job, a beautiful home and all these life experiences, travels and shit that you’ve done, you sure as hell are hard on yourself, aren’t you?”

  “What?”

  “I’ve heard you. The things you say sometimes, like you don’t even really realize you’re saying them. You put yourself down so much, and I don’t understand it. I mean, I do understand it, but I don’t get how those two sides of you coexist. You’ll hurt yourself if you’re always putting yourself down. Trust me. I know how it feels to think you’re not good enough, but given all you’ve done, all you’ve achieved? You shouldn’t be so hard on yourself, so down about who you are. And that’s me saying that—a relative stranger who this time last week didn’t even know you existed.”

  “I don’t… What am I supposed to say to that?”

  Blake wrapped his free arm around Kade and held him tight. Kade closed his eyes and took another sip of champagne. He felt like he was going to choke on it.

  “You don’t have to say anything, but you really should try to break the habit. It’s not healthy. And no, in response to what you said, I don’t do this all the time. Like I told you earlier, I want to impress you because I like you. It’s as simple as that. I liked you from the second I saw wander into that supermarket on Saturday morning, looking like you had the whole world resting on your shoulders.” Blake shrugged and added, “I saw you come in. I watched you. I followed you.

  “I thought you were just another stuffy guy, some suit with no life only in there to find the right type of imported oil for some yuppie recipe you’d found in the weekend supplements. But you were pretty hot, so I followed you. And I’m not even sorry. ’Cause from the second you winked at me, I’ve wanted you. I don’t know if that’s normal. I don’t have a lot to compare it to. Does it happen to other people? I assume so. Do I understand it? A little bit, I guess, but I don’t want to analyze it. I just like you. You make me laugh. You make me feel good. That’s enough, isn’t it?”

  Kade didn’t know. He felt as though he didn’t want to listen to any more. Blake’s words were making him uncomfortable when they should have made him happy. Kade put that down to the fact that he was lying to Blake. That Blake was wrong, and he was less what Blake thought and more like that stiff in a suit Blake had first dismissed him as. He wished he were the person Blake thought he was, but he wasn’t. And he didn’t think he could ever be. He let Blake hold him, stroke him, suck kisses into his neck.

  “There’s something I should probably tell you,” Kade said.

  “Tell me later. Let me make love to you now.”

  Kade blanched.

  “I just wanted to say—” He turned around and faced Blake, but he couldn’t tell Blake the truth. He didn’t want to end the night like that. “I wanted to say that…that I like you too. Even if you didn’t come with hot tubs and log cabins, I would still like you.”

  “I’ll bear that in mind if the generator catches fire tonight. Now, give me your mug and come here.”

  Blake put their mugs on the side of the hot tub, and Kade crawled onto Blake’s lap. He felt Blake still half hard underneath him, and he rubbed against that strength, his shoulders cooling rapidly in the night air but his breath coming out like puffs of steam.

  Blake found Kade’s hips under the water. His hands were smoother now and so warm on Kade’s skin. Blake lifted and moved him so that when Kade sat back down, he was sitting on Blake’s cock. It slid underneath his balls and pressed against his ass, teasing him.

  Kade leaned back, letting Blake and the water take his weight. He felt like he was out of his own body, watching from the treetops as he spread his legs and panted out Blake’s name. He moved himself forward and back onto Blake’s lap. Blake held him tight, and Kade opened his eyes and stared up at the stars. His body was open to Blake’s, to anything Blake wanted to take from him or give him. He looked into Blake’s eyes.

  “I want you,” he said, the words barely above a whisper.

  Blake nodded. “I want you too. Can I have you?”

  That sounded like a big question, like it could be mistaken for being a much more weighted question than Kade assumed Blake had meant it to be. It hung between them heavier than the weight of want pulsing through Kade’s balls and belly. Finally, he nodded. Why the fuck not? He rubbed himself harder against Blake, and Blake bucked up into him.

  Kade closed what little distance remained between them. He tongued over Blake’s strong muscles, teasing the little hairs. He licked away the sweat and the pearls of moisture caused by the steam of the hot tub, then he took Blake’s piercing into his mouth. He sucked hard, and Blake bucked against him in response, sliding his dick up Kade’s ass, so tantalizingly close to slipping inside him. Kade tried to tense, but his heart wasn’t in it. Whatever Blake had to give was fine with him.

  Blake pulled Kade off. His breathing was ragged, like he’d just run the West Highland Way Race in record time. His chest heaved and it looked like he was clenching his stomach muscles, as if her were trying to stem the tide of his desire. Kade pressed his thumb against the piercing. Blake groaned.

  “When did you get
this done? Why did you get this done?”

  Blake looked down, biting his lip while he watched Kade’s thumb stroke over the little blue bar. “I was eighteen. My first boyfriend took me to get it done. I think you can probably guess why.”

  Kade nodded and returned his attention to Blake’s chest, replacing his thumb with his tongue.

  “No-o,” Blake said. The word sounded like it hurt him.

  He lifted Kade and shifted him awkwardly across the hot tub, sliding him down onto the underwater bench on the other side. Kade was vaguely aware of the sound of breaking ceramic as the water in the tub sloshed and spilled over the sides under the force of their moving bodies.

  Blake leaned in for a kiss, the bittersweet taste of champagne coming between them. Then he broke away and scrambled to the other side of the tub, leaning over the edge. Kade was afforded a shot of tight back muscles flexing as Blake reached over. He returned with the bottle of champagne in his hand, and in a few seconds he was clambering up Kade’s body, spreading his legs and straddling Kade’s hard cock, mirroring what Kade had just done to him.

  Blake sat up, raising himself to his full height. He ran his free hand over Kade’s chest and brought the bottle of champagne to his lips. He tilted the bottle, and Kade watched champagne flood Blake’s mouth, spilling over his chin. Blake grinned and leaned in for another kiss, slipping champagne into Kade’s mouth. It felt like the single most erotic thing Kade had experienced, which, given how they had spent the last three days, was certainly saying something. He drank the champagne from Blake’s lips. When Blake pulled back, Kade had a feeling he knew what Blake was going to do.

  Blake poured champagne down Kade’s chest. Kade arched his back, uncertain whether to move forward or pull away from that shock of cold. Blake decided for him when he leaned in and drank the bubbling liquid from Kade’s skin, making him squirm.

  Blake tongued each of Kade’s nipples in turn, pouring more champagne that he then licked from Kade’s chest. He came back up for a brief kiss then put the bottle to Kade’s lips. Kade opened his mouth, and Blake poured champagne in before sucking it out again. He left Kade with the bottle and dropped away from his lap, landing on his knees in the bottom of the hot tub. His head sat up above the water, the hot bubbles lapping at his chin.

  “Lean back for me,” he said. “Spread your legs.”

  Kade did so, still clutching the thick, glass bottle.

  He watched Blake take a deep breath before ducking under the water. Kade expected to feel Blake’s mouth on his cock, but instead he felt Blake probe his most intimate of places. He gasped out into the night air, his grip tightening on the neck of the bottle.

  Blake lapped his tongue against him, and Kade’s body took over. He forced himself to relax, forced himself to open for Blake. Even through the warmth of the hot tub, Kade could feel the familiar heat of Blake’s mouth. Blake pushed harder, flexing and working the tight muscle, trying to gain entry.

  Blake gripped Kade’s thighs so tight that they were sure to bruise. Blake dragged his teeth across his sensitive skin, sucked with his lips and pushed with his tongue, and without really being aware of it and regardless of whether Blake could hear him or not, Kade started groaning out Blake’s name.

  Kade, concentrating on those exquisite, explicit sensations, managed to become increasingly aware of the forest around them. Of the noises. The birds seemed to call louder, the leaves on the trees rustled and crackled faster, as if they responding, trying to drown out the sounds Kade was making.

  All too soon, it was over. Blake broke the surface, breathless and flushed. He gestured for Kade to lean down to him. Kade didn’t think he was going to be capable of moving, but when Blake licked his lips, Kade moved to do that job for him, his belly and groin on fire with want.

  Kade stole one kiss from Blake, but Blake grabbed the bottle of champagne and tipped out a mouthful. He passed the bottle back and shoved Kade onto the bench, forcing him into the same position he had been in.

  Blake ducked back under the water. Blake was between his legs again, picking up where he had left off.

  He gasped when Blake pushed the cold champagne inside him. The hot water took the sensation away in a second, but it had been startling. Now, all that remained was Blake’s tongue, probing him once more, licking him and grazing him again with his teeth.

  Kade wanted to touch his cock but he couldn’t. Since he was gripping the champagne bottle with one hand and clinging to the side of the hot tub for dear life with the other, he didn’t have a hand to spare.

  When Blake pulled away for a second time, he offered Kade’s swollen, aching cock a kiss then he surfaced again, coming back to straddle Kade’s lap. He took a couple of deep breaths, water streaming from his hair and face. Kade wanted to kiss him, but he settled for panting Blake’s name instead.

  “Come on. I need to be inside you again. Is that okay? Is that what you want too?” Blake asked.

  Kade barely had the strength left to nod. Blake, somehow, had some—or at least some coordination. He took the bottle from Kade and dropped it into the water. It bobbed there for a second before tilting onto its side, taking on water and sinking beneath the surface. Kade let Blake pull him out of the hot tub.

  The icy air seemed to burn Kade’s skin, but he didn’t complain when Blake pressed their bodies together in a badly formed hug and dragged him back into the cabin.

  It was warm inside, and Blake led them straight to the bedroom, where he slid Kade between thick blankets and scratchy sheets.

  Through the open bedroom door, the light from the now-roaring fire illuminated them. Blake crawled into bed beside Kade and didn’t let go of him until dawn.

  When they woke up late the next afternoon to a cold cabin and the sun already fading, they ate cold, blackened sausages from the jerry can by the hearth then went straight back to bed.

  Chapter Twelve

  Silent Clowns

  Friday morning saw Kade back in Blake’s crannog, spread out in his bed. Blake was in the kitchen, supposedly cooking breakfast, although it sounded a lot more like he was dismantling the cabinets.

  He was on the phone at the same time, trying to dissuade a stag party from booking a weekend of winter sports over the holiday period. Kade couldn’t blame the man for not wanting to be out on the loch in the snow with a bunch of lads, but he did wonder if Blake being so eager to turn them down was somehow connected to his revelation that his water-sports business hadn’t yet started to turn a profit.

  Hearing Blake talking on the phone made Kade think about his own, which was still buried in his rucksack. Kade reached out of the bed and tugged the bag toward himself with his foot. He scrambled around among the contents—most of which needed washing—and found the phone. Turning it on, he was surprised to find so many missed calls from Niall and less surprised to find a text from Ian asking politely and decidedly unconcernedly if he was alive or if he had been raped and killed the previous Saturday night.

  Kade couldn’t be bothered listening to all his voice mails. He was going to have to block Niall’s number, but then he remembered why he shouldn’t.

  There was still so much they needed to talk about, so much they needed to say and deal with. There was the flat and all the things in it, as well as their joint everyday account and savings accounts, even their plans to go on holiday. They were booked to travel to Ibiza for a fortnight in July. They were either going to have to cancel that and try to claw back some of the money, or one of them was going to have to buy out the other.

  There was just so much to deal with. Judging by the volume of phone calls, Niall was ready to get started, but Kade wasn’t sure if he was. The thought of splitting up all their things, all of the remnants of the life they had shared, and even the thought of seeing Niall when they hadn’t spoken in over a month… Well, Kade just wasn’t sure if he was strong enough to deal with it.

  As he was debating turning the phone off again, it rang. Against his better judgment, Kade answered.r />
  “Oh. Look. The boy wonder has decided he wants to answer his phone after all.”

  Kade looked over to the kitchen at Blake, who had ended his phone call and was now singing along to a song in his head, banging out a drumbeat on a pot and the edge of a frying pan.

  “Hello, Niall. Do you want to try to be civil? I don’t see that you have any reason not to be.”

  “Fuck ‘hello, Niall’ and fuck ‘civil’. Where the hell have you been? I’ve been trying to call you. Do eight years of a fucking relationship not give me the right to expect you to answer when I call?”

  No. Kade knew he should have said it out loud, but he didn’t want to fight. “I was busy,” he said, hoping Niall would leave it there.

  Niall scoffed. “Busy doing what? Reading your newspapers and your books, messing about on your laptop with your spreadsheets and your databases? Come off it. I heard about your sick note. It’s the talk of the bloody office. Pretty pathetic, really, Kade.”

  Kade was trying to keep his voice low so that Blake wouldn’t hear his conversation over the noise he was making in the kitchen. “I was busy, and I am busy. I don’t have time to take this call, and I certainly don’t have time to listen to you speak to me like that.”

  “Busy doing what?” Niall sounded so disbelieving—and so cold.

  “If you must know, I’ve been staying in a log cabin in the mountains with a beautiful man who’s been fucking me senseless every night. Is that what you want to hear? Not that it’s any of your business.”

  Niall laughed. Laughed at him like Kade had just told him a joke with the greatest punch line in the world. In seconds, the bravado Kade had been trying to front fell away.

  The happy place he had been in when he’d woken up vanished with Niall’s laugh, and Kade felt more alone than he had ever felt before. Niall thought he was lying because he couldn’t possibly think it could be true, couldn’t believe that anyone would be interested in him. That was what the voice in his head told him, and Kade knew that voice had to be right. He knew it because, if he thought about it, he supposed he felt the same.