Neon Saturday Night (Low Country Lovers Book 2)

by Julia McBryant

  Calhoun begins separating his curls, playing with them. “Your hair’s getting long,” he comments. “I like it this way. I know you’d never grow it but I like it this length.” His cock slides against Audie’s back. Audie tries not to notice but it’s difficult, considering Calhoun’s size. He tries not to think about Calhoun dripping. He loves when Calhoun drips, those little pearls of precum beading up on his slit, demanding to be licked off. Audie stiffens. He has to consciously stop himself from toying with his own cock. That’s what they were fucking arguing about.

  “I know you’re getting hard,” Calhoun says in his ear. “But I know you’re being stubborn. Why don’t we do something easy we know we both like? Then you’ll know I want to do it. Will that help? We’ll get to be close together and cuddle and get off and maybe it’ll help you trust me more.”

  So fucking tempting.

  “Like what?” Audie asks warily.

  “Turn over,” Calhoun says. “Kiss me for a while. We can touch each other until we both really want it, then I’ll jerk us off together. You know we both like that.”

  It sounds really good. “I just don’t know if I want to kiss you,” he says, before he can stop himself. Fuck.

  “Then just turn around, and we’ll cuddle,” Calhoun says.

  Half-reluctantly, Audie turns. Calhoun strokes his cheek while Audie waits, uncertain what to do. “Shhh,” Calhoun says. “You don’t have to do anything you don’t want to. But is this okay?”

  “Yeah,” Audie says. He lifts a hand and messes with the ends of Calhoun’s hair. He trimmed it again, just before he came. For Audie. Calhoun always has his hair trimmed right before he sees Audie. Audie strokes it, rubs it between his fingers, twists it. He lets his fingers drift down to trace the perfect curve of Calhoun’s ear. It seems almost as if they were bent on enjoying every bit of each other, not as if Audie wanted to bolt, and he almost laughs at the absurdity of it. Calhoun looks so serious, brow in a furrow.

  He promised. He should have said what he wanted, not what he thought Audie wanted instead. Especially when Audie asked him directly. He should have told the truth. But he was laughing when he did it. “The music’s better for this,” he had said. He was teasing. He hadn’t hated what he was doing and he had asked Audie to wait, after. He’d spoken up for what he wanted. None of the last twelve hours, Audie realizes with a sudden, horrible jolt, has been Calhoun’s fault. Calhoun’s just served as a bit player in some drama starring Audie.

  Don’t you ever get tired of being the goddamn drama queen?

  Audie twists Calhoun’s hair again. “Why do I do this?” he asks miserably.

  “What?” Calhoun asks.

  “This is stupid,” Audie says. “This is really stupid. I went ballistic over nothing.”

  “No, when you asked me twice what exactly I wanted, I should have told you the answer, not talked in circles.” Calhoun brushes curls off Audie’s forehead.

  “Yeah, but you didn’t hate it what we did. You laughed beforehand and you said it was okay to do what — what we did, then you said what you wanted after. And I got so mad. Why did I get so mad, Calhoun? Why did I stay so mad? I could have just been a little unhappy and brushed it off, cuddled up in bed with you and forgotten about it. Why do I do this to myself?”

  Calhoun plays with his hair some more, then tucks the blankets in tighter. They’re soft and warm. “Because you’re scared. You do this because you get so scared you can’t stop yourself. You just spiral.”

  “Then how do I stop? Calhoun, how do I make it stop?”

  Calhoun shrugs. “I guess you just do it over and over until you learn. I think you just need time, Audie.” Calhoun strokes his face again. Audie closes his eyes. His boyfriend’s hands on him feel so careful and gentle. “When did you first tell me your parents hurt you?”

  “A year ago,” Audie says immediately.

  “And I’m the first person you ever told.”

  Audie nods.

  “How long did that all go on for? Eighteen years and counting?”

  Audie doesn’t look at him.

  “Audie,” Calhoun says, “it might take a little more time for you to learn to trust the way other people do.”

  “I guess.” Audie still doesn’t look at Calhoun.

  “Audie, open your eyes. I can see you.” Calhoun laughs a little. Audie feels a kiss on his forehead. Calhoun strokes his face and his hair, then nestles Audie into him. Audie automatically burrows his head into his Calhoun’s neck, to that good smell of licorice.

  “I want to,” he whispers. “I want to really bad.” Their legs tangle up. “I just don’t quite know —” He sags. “I don’t know.”

  “Hey.” Calhoun nuzzles his cheek. “Hey. Stop. You remember what I said? It’s going to take you more than a few months.”

  “What are we supposed to do until then? Not hook up?” Audie bites the last part off bitterly. “Because I fucking want to do it. I just feel weird about it.”

  “Then let’s stop.” Calhoun sits up. “Here. Get some clothes on and we’ll go down to the beach. Everything’ll be normal, okay? This’ll happen. You just need time. I’ll get you a pair of swim trunks and a rashguard and we can have some breakfast.

  Jax and Henry sit at the table munching some of the cereal they brought. “We have enough provisions for like, this morning,” Henry says. “Then we need stuff.”

  “Jax and I did our part,” Audie says.

  “Oh yeah, the mighty fishermen.”

  “Shut the fuck up, Culliver, you love fish tacos,” Jax says.

  “Let’s go to the beach and then up to Midgett’s to get the stuff we need for lunch,” Audie suggests, naming the tiny grocery store a mile up the road, next to the pier. “Then we can go out for dinner or something.”

  “Depending on what y’all catch,” Henry says.

  “Not eating fucking fish for every goddamn meal, but Whalebone Seafood usually has fresh oysters,” Audie tells him.

  “No shit, Currell,” Henry says. “Daddy used to bring us up here sometimes when he wasn’t working so goddamn hard.” He laughs and says to Jax, “I think it’s the only time he liked me and Wills better than Alexander. Alexander hates to fucking fish.”

  “God, I love oysters,” Calhoun says.

  “We’re getting oysters,” Jax says. “And Alexander isn’t that bad. He came all the way up from Emory to bail our asses out of jail.”

  Calhoun nearly spits out his milk. Calhoun always drinks milk in the morning, like a little kid. “Why were you in jail?”

  “Me, Henry, Wills, and Crispin. Y’know, Wills’s best friend. Boyfriend. Whatever. Drunk and disorderly after the Falcons lost the Superbowl.”

  “Y’all are savage,” Calhoun comments.

  Jax and Audie wear rashguards and sunscreen to the beach; Henry and Calhoun don’t bother. Jax immediately dives into the waves and swims out. “That’s his thing,” Henry sighs. “ADHD out the ass, only thing that calms him down.” He throws down half a beer. “Love that motherfucker, though.”

  “You really, really won’t get in?” Calhoun asks Audie. “Even if we all get in?”

  Audie shakes his head.

  “You won’t get in the ocean?” Henry asks.

  “Shark phobia,” Audie says. “Can’t shake it. I should go up and get my rod.”

  “You see a shark when you were a kid or something?” Henry asks.

  “No,” Audie says. He wishes Henry would shut the fuck up.

  “Then what the fuck? We should throw you in so you get over it.” He laughs.

  Audie looks at Henry, level. He hears his father laughing: swim over to the boat, boy. Water never hurt a fucking soul. Pussy. “I will punch you in the goddamn face and drive home.”

  Henry stops laughing. “I was kidding,” he says. “Sorry, Audie.”

  Audie just nods and stretches out on the towel. Quiet, except for the sound of them swallowing beer and the crashing waves. Audie hates the sour feeling in the morning now,
like a metallic taste you can’t get rid of.

  “Saw two devil rays,” Jax says, emerging from the ocean.

  “How were the dolphins this morning?” Audie asks, glad to break the silence.

  He smiles, a real one that lights his face. “There were babies. They came within thirty feet. You missed out.”

  “Goddammit, Littleton, I fucking told you not to swim after dolphins!” Henry roars. Audie can tell this is an ongoing argument. “The fuck do you think they were doing inshore, playing Flipper? They were chasing fish! The fuck else do you think chases fish?”

  Audie’s eyes go wide. He never thought of that.

  “Nothing’s going to eat me, Henry,” Jax says, drying his hair from slicked back into spiked points. “Calm your tits. I’ll swim with dolphins if I wanna swim with dolphins.” He looks fiercely at Audie and Calhoun. “And don’t you fucking make fun of me for it.”

  “Not me,” Audie says.

  “Wish I’d’ve gone,” Calhoun says. Calhoun’s as strong of a swimmer as Audie, who swims in his own pool whenever it’s over sixty degrees and learned as soon as he could walk. Audie wishes he could bear to go out and swim like Jax. He secretly loves dolphins. They have a language, a social structure. They have names. He wonders if the names mean something to the dolphins, the way a human might be called Hunter or Rose. Audie wonders, most of all, if the dolphins tells stories. Whales sing. Dolphins must have poetry. He wonders what they find beautiful enough to weave into verse, the secret rhythm and rhyme of the sea.

  But Calhoun doesn’t swim. He sits with Audie. They hold hands on a beach walk, ignoring the muttered comments from a few rednecks. Calhoun never strays from Audie’s side: always touching him, kissing his head, playing with his curls. “You two are ridiculous,” comments Henry, who seems to tend more towards wrestling with Jax in the surf while they attempt to dunk each other. “God, could you be gayer?”

  “Who caught your lunch, motherfucker?” Audie asks.

  Jax insists on going to Midgett’s instead of Henry — “He won’t know what the fuck to get,” Jax says — and he and Calhoun leave Audie and Henry alone. “Jax likes you a lot,” Henry comments.

  Audie shrugs. “I like Jax.”

  “He says you’re easy company. You have to read between the lines with that bastard, and he means he doesn’t have to snark out around you. How’d you manage that?”

  Audie shrugs again: an easy answer that says nothing at all. He leans back on his elbows and looks at the ocean. He wishes he weren’t afraid of it. All the way to Africa from here. It seems a fever dream, something you can’t quite believe in, the way you don’t quite believe in Australia, not really, except as an abstract concept on a map: a thing so fantastical you can’t wrap your mind around it, a land so far as to boggle the imagination. The ocean is a flat expanse of secrets, deep down and almost endless, full of dolphin poetry, sea turtles and darting fish, the silent menace of sharks. Nothing you can trust, something mysterious and wild and otherworldly.

  “Did you sleep around a lot, like he did?” Henry asks.

  Audie shakes his head. “Calhoun’s my first boyfriend.”

  “Aw, aren’t you sweet.”

  Audie rolls his eyes. “You’re lucky I can tell you just pretend to be an asshole.” He can tell, sees it in Henry’s eyes the way he looks at Jax, the way he once threatened to beat the shit out of Audie if he broke Calhoun’s heart.

  “Don’t ruin my secrets, Currell.”

  “You love Jax as much as I love Calhoun,” Audie says, flipping it again.

  “Goddammit.” Henry collapses back on his towel. “I love that blond fucker so much. I wish he could trust me more. You talked to him enough to know he’s deep-down hurt. He told me you did, so I know I’m not betraying something. Do you know how much I’ve poured into putting him back together? And he’s still a goddamn mess.” He’s quiet for a while, staring at the sky. “I don’t mind it, though, don’t make that mistake. I love him.”

  “Why not?” Audie asks. “Sounds like a lot of fucking work.”

  “‘Cause I love that bastard. I think I knew right away. I saw him at the big UGA bonfire before the fucking Georgia-Carolina game last year — the one where we kicked your goddamn Gamecock ass — and we talked and I thought, that one. Right there. Him. And I was gone. It’s been him ever since and I don’t care what I have to do.”

  Audie digs his toes into the sand. He loves the feeling of sand between his toes. It reminds him of building castles when he was small. “And you never regret it?”

  Henry stares at the blue, blue sky. “We fight. That doesn’t mean I regret it. And he gets squirrelly or freaks out or whatever but you just hold him through it, you know? It’s all you can do. I love him. I do what I can.” He rolls over and looks at Audie. “Why do I feel we’re not talking about Jax anymore?”

  Audie doesn’t know what to say except to repeat what Jax said last night. “You get sick of being the goddamn drama queen all the time.”

  Henry nods. “Jax says that.” He rolls back. “But Calhoun and I, we don’t mind.” He snorts. “Wills says I have a savior complex and Jax is going to break my fucking heart. You though, you won’t break Calhoun. You love him too much. Jax’s about even odds.”

  Audie and Jax make the fish tacos. Henry and Calhoun can’t cook without setting things on fire. But Calhoun sits thigh to thigh with Audie on the couch while they eat, and after lunch, they go down to take a nap. “Do you want to try?” he asks gently.

  Audie plays with Calhoun’s hair a little bit. It’s so long. They lie in bed, facing each other. Audie’s doesn’t want to kiss him yet. “Maybe?” Audie says. “But you have to do it. I can’t. If you do it then I know you want it.”

  “Okay,” Calhoun says. He moves a little closer and tries to kiss Audie.

  “Uh-uh,” Audie says. “Maybe this isn’t a good idea.”

  “It’s okay,” Calhoun says. “How about I kiss you here?” He leans over and sucks at Audie’s pulse point gently, so he doesn’t leave a mark. It feels good, and Audie presses a little closer. He wraps his arms around Calhoun’s neck. Calhoun moves his arm under Audie’s and strokes his back. They both wear black briefs. Audie loves Calhoun in briefs, and loves wearing them. They hold everything right there. When he thinks about it, he starts to harden. They get a little bit tight, and the pressure feels good. He knows Calhoun can feel him. “That’s it,” Calhoun coaxes. “Can I touch you? I love you in those.” His voice suddenly gets shy. “I’ve always wanted to make you come in them.”

  “Really?” Audie asks, interested.

  “Yeah. That’s so hot.”

  “Do you think I could make you come in yours?”

  “Yeah,” Calhoun’s so shy about it. “Used to do it in high school and I miss it. It turns me on so much. You start to drip in them and I can feel it.”

  “Do it,” Audie says, straining against them. “If you want to so much. Do it.” He rubs against Calhoun, hard chest against hard chest, stomach, cocks, legs woven together. Calhoun palms him suddenly, and Audie moves more onto his back. So good, that big hand on him, massaging and thumbing his head, finding his slit and stroking across it. “Want you to drip for me,” Calhoun says.

  Audie takes a deep breath and touches Calhoun. It immediately turns him on, the stiff cock pushing against thin, tight fabric. He rubs his boyfriend’s cock, lightly runs his fingernails over his balls, earning a moan. Calhoun suddenly flips around and Audie doesn’t know if he’s ready for that; he tenses, but then warm lips clutch his shaft. No tongue; Calhoun doesn’t get him wet; he makes out with Audie’s cock. Audie imitates him, mouthing Calhoun’s head until he starts to drip, when he can’t help but lick up that little wet drop that appears, Calhoun groans around him. Audie runs his lips over Calhoun, up and down his shaft, massaging his head, playing and kissing. He feels Calhoun start to tense; his muscles tauten. Calhoun rubs his lips fast, up and down Audie’s shaft then over his head. Then Audie’s about to, stand
ing on the edge of it, arching his back and cupping Calhoun’s balls when he finally lets go, spraying inside his briefs like a fifteen-year-old. Calhoun loses it just after he does, in his briefs and Audie’s mouth. Audie finally licks him, long strokes meant to make his climax better. Calhoun shudders with them.

  “God, that was as good as I thought it would be,” Calhoun says. “Thank you. I always wanted to do that.”

  Audie laughs a little. “I need a shower.”

  They go one at a time, Audie first. Afterwards, he curls up in bed alone. That had been good, knowing how much Calhoun wanted it, even if it was something he’d never have done. He starts to harden again and plays with himself a little. He gets harder, and it feels good, just being stiff, no real goal to it. Calhoun sees when he comes out of the shower. “Lemme watch?” he asks. “You can watch me if you want. But I don’t know if I’m ready, so lemme watch you.”

  “What?” Audie asks.

  “I wanna watch you get off?” Calhoun asks. “Please?”

  “Does that really do much for you?” Audie asks. “I was just messing around and it’ll take me forever.”

  “Lemme watch, please?” Calhoun asks.

  Audie shrugs. “If you really want to,” he says. But it sort of turns him on, Calhoun watching him. It also feels safe, not touching, Calhoun asking for it. So Audie lays on his back on the far side of the bed, Calhoun next to him, propped on an elbow. Normally Audie would close his eyes but he wants to watch Calhoun’s face. He grabs the lube and slicks himself, then holds his cock the way he likes best, a firm grip at the base of his shaft, slow slide up, rub under his head. He jerks himself a few times, plenty of pressure with a little twist at the end, then stops and plays with his head some. He alternates between the two until he gets really turned on. All the while, Audie scans Calhoun’s face. He stares at Audie’s hand on his cock, then starts to fondle himself. Audie watches him. He mostly plays with his head, then spreads some lube on himself and starts jerking off, but still stays near the top of his shaft, passing all the way over his head every time, running his fingers underneath it.

  He keeps staring at Audie. Audie realizes he really, really likes Calhoun watching. A lot. He jerks himself faster. So does Calhoun, who sits up against the pillows and cups his balls. Then he jerks himself hard and fast in his fist, from the base to the top of his head. It’s so fucking hot. He keeps staring. Audie’s going fast now too, pumping himself, arching up to his hand. He’s going to come hard all over himself. So fucking hot, Calhoun watching him, Audie pumps even faster and lets go, clutching himself as he shudders with it, knowing exactly how to touch himself to make it last. Come spills all over his hand and his belly. Calhoun keeps going, and Audie watches as he tenses then shoots, almost up to his chest, curling up and slowing down as if he wants to milk himself dry.