SPACE, MAN
Sharon Maria Bidwell
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This e-book contains sexually explicit scenes and adult language and may be considered offensive to some readers. Loose Id® e-books are for sale to adults ONLY, as defined by the laws of the country in which you made your purchase. Please store your files wisely, where they cannot be accessed by under-aged readers.
* * * * *
This book contains explicit sexual content, graphic language, and situations that some readers may find objectionable (homoerotic sex, anal sex).
Space, Man
Sharon Maria Bidwell
This e-book is a work of fiction. While reference might be made to actual historical events or existing locations, the names, characters, places and incidents are either the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.
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Loose Id LLC
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www.loose-id.com
Copyright © April 2007 by Sharon Maria Bidwell
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ISBN 978-1-59632-442-8
Available in Adobe PDF, HTML, MobiPocket, and MS Reader
Printed in the United States of America
Editor: Lorri-Lynne Brown
Cover Artist: April Martinez
Dedication
To the love of my life, always, who helped me more than he realised through the darkest time of my life so far.
And to Brian, my father, with love. He deserved more than life (or death) ever granted him. Dad, you should have been the happy beach bum I know you were at heart.
“I need space, man. I can’t be tied down at my age. There’s waves out there just waiting for me, dude.”
Alex Beaumont was astute enough to question how he had ever dated someone who actually used the word dude. Well, the blond hair and blue eyes had something to do with it, no doubt. He tilted his head a little to one side and watched Bray flounce about the room, grabbing things from hastily opened drawers and stuffing them into a large holdall. Not that the guy’s things required more than the one holdall. All Bray owned was a handful of clothes, his MP3 player, and his surfboard, plus the four-wheel drive to tote them around the country. What kind of a name was Bray, anyway? Not for the first time, Alex gave a passing thought to what this guy’s given name could be. Just what would this man’s parents have called him at birth? He’d asked him about it once and Bray announced it was “Bray, man, just Bray.” Personally, Alex believed it made the man sound like a donkey, and now fate proved the theory. Currently, a right ass flounced about his bedroom.
Alas, it was an extremely delectable and tight ass.
Arse, Alex mentally corrected, seeing as both men were British, but either version of the word fit. Arsehole, now that was a word, and he wasn’t thinking romantically. He’d never liked to use the term derogatorily before, but in this one case he could make an exception.
“It’s not personal, man. We had fun, but I need to move on. For a while, at least. Maybe we can meet up next summer.”
Not once, during this little speech, did Bray look up. Not once did the man look him in the eye. Alex sat, quietly wishing he possessed the courage to stand up and help the guy pack. The trouble was any move on his part would probably be misconstrued. Bray would consider him heartbroken, and he wasn’t. This morning, he had woken up with the realisation that he felt happy. One tiny comment on his part over breakfast swiftly shattered the illusion. All he’d done was mention the fact that it was time he paid his folks a visit, and would Bray like to go with him this weekend or next. Seeing as Alex’s parents lived near the coast and Bray liked the beach, and to surf, he thought his lover would jump at the chance, but no. Apparently, that was too much of a commitment for Bray.
Alex went through the fluctuating emotions in a matter of moments. Disbelief, pain, sadness, anger, disappointment, relief, and finally, he arrived at irritation, where he just wanted the man gone.
Bray looked at his watch. Alex didn’t know why. The timepiece was some kind of surfer’s watch, but Bray looked at it more for affect than to check the time. “We can butt if you want, for old time’s sake, before I go. I can fit it in, if you want.”
Alex blinked. To begin with, neither of them had started out this morning imagining that Bray would be leaving today, and secondly, it took a few seconds for the meaning of those words to sink in. Why Bray referred to sex like that was beyond Alex’s understanding. He always called it ‘to butt’, or ‘butting’, as though they were two rams crashing skulls. As for fitting it in... Alex swallowed, refusing to go where that thought led. He needed to maintain some dignity. Was Bray truly standing in his bedroom, his bag packed, ready to walk out of his life, and asking if he wanted a conciliatory fuck? Apparently so.
“No thanks,” Alex murmured, not trusting himself to say anything else. He just wished he could put more force into his words.
“Fine. Have it your way. It’s your choice.”
Bray’s tone inferred it was also his loss, but Alex let it go at that. Bray, obviously disgruntled, ended with another, “I need my space, man,” and moved to leave. Alex let the young man pick up his bag, toss his key on the bed, and walk out without another word. When he heard the front door slam, he just sat there. Only when his chest grew tight, did he accept that he needed to breathe.
* * * * *
“I will not pick up another one. I will not.” Alex meant to say the words silently, but somehow, they hissed out of his mouth. A woman gave him an understandably funny look in passing. It wasn’t fair that she should hear; the fierce wind should have whipped his words away. Alex caught her eye, gave her a small smile that he could only hope she would take as benign. She looked a little uncertain for a moment, and then smiled back, before walking on. Alex drew in a deep breath, hoping it would calm him. He also closed his eyes for a brief respite. When he opened them again, the vision in white remained.
Alex wasn’t the only one staring. Even in London, the young man would have caught many an eye. Here, in the little seaside resort of Padstow, on the northern coast of Cornwall, he looked like an alien, and by that, Alex didn’t mean foreign national. Ever since the break-up of his last relationship, he’d hesitated to spend much time at his parents’ place during the summer, because he feared bumping into Bray, who he knew would be surfing just a short distance along the coast at Newquay. That was why he was here now. His parents spent the bitter months abroad, he needed a quiet place to work, and, in February, when most Londoners steered clear of the coast, the one thing Padstow offered was peace and quiet. All the shops remained shut at least most of the time due to the lack of tourist trade. The days looked grey and the nights misty. The wind bit with savage, unrelenting teeth. What possessed Alex to come out on a day like this was the search for coffee. Somehow, he’d run out of the holy substance. Now, trudging his way back towards the car that he would use to drive inland a short way and finally hole up in the warmth of his parents’ cottage, a vision waylaid him.
Alex sighed. Another beach bum. Just great. With that shaggy hair bleached white and falling in a thick, tumbling wave over his face, the man could only be a drifter. The white hair was one thing to arrest the attention, but the white, tight outfit, was quite another. It... clung. No wonder the stranger attracted so many o
dd glances.
The young man turned his head left and right, the wind whipping his hair across his face, leaving only the small, somewhat pointed jut of his chin on view. A couple of local folks giggled as they passed, and Alex could hardly blame them. Thankfully, not many were out on a day like this. The small, square harbour contained a few boats bobbing about on the grey seawater, but even they looked lonely and abandoned. The town itself, with its many winding roads, towered up in ever-increasing tiers at his back. These buildings sheltered life -- those sensible enough to stay in on a day such as this. Still, over the last few minutes, the young man attracted enough stares and pointed fingers that it crossed Alex’s mind that someone might call the police. Shaking his head, annoyed with himself for getting involved, Alex sauntered over to him.
“Excuse me, are you lost?” The young man kept his head lowered and mumbled something that the wind carried away. It sounded foreign, and Alex silently cursed. “Do you need help?” he asked more slowly. Even through that mass of hair, Alex could see the man’s face tighten in a frown. He caught a bright flash of colour through the shaggy hair, which made him duplicate the stranger’s puzzled expression. The man’s eyes glinted with an odd tint.
A rumble of thunder shattered the awkward moment. The young man jerked, flinched back so hard that one foot met empty air. The stranger had turned and almost stepped off the edge of the quayside. Alex reached out and grabbed him before he took a tumble into the freezing water.
“Be careful.” He needed to shout to make himself heard. Glancing around revealed that any curious bystanders had left them to weather the approaching storm alone, and hurried on towards shelter. Lightning lit up the sky and the young man cringed. Alex, still holding on to the man’s garment, could feel the storm as though it thrummed through his body. The very air felt electrified with it. The sky darkened just then and the young man looked up, his hair falling back a little, swept by the wind, allowing Alex to see his face more clearly for the first time. He didn’t look entirely English, but Alex couldn’t place his nationality. Maybe he was of mixed parentage. Now, clouds sweeping across the sky caused shadows to chase and play over the earth. The effect made the stranger’s eyes look grey, but Alex was certain that wasn’t the colour that so alarmed him a moment ago.
He tugged on the man’s sleeve, pointing towards the car park. Still frowning, the young man nodded hesitantly, and Alex led him towards the car. He unlocked the doors using the central locking system, got inside, and then blinked in surprise when the stranger remained outside in the now falling rain. Only when he leaned over and opened the door did the young man get in. Still, every movement proved awkward, as though the pale stranger didn’t quite understand what the car was, or why he was getting into it.
He’s just uncertain. You’re a strange man picking him up off the street. What do you expect him to do?
The young man got in and closed the door just in time. The heavens truly opened and the downpour came. Alex wanted to be home and dry. He turned on the heater, clearing the windscreen.
“Where to?” he asked, suppressing a shiver.
Head tilted, looking out of the window, the young man appeared to be more interested in the rain than the question. Alex needed to ask again before he gained the man’s undivided attention. He gasped, turning it into a cough to hide his surprise. Now, receiving such a direct gaze, he could see that the young man’s eyes were decidedly violet. Contact lenses. He was surely wearing coloured contact lenses. Nothing else explained the phenomena.
When the stranger did nothing but stare, frowning at him, Alex slammed his hands against the steering wheel. When he looked up again and saw the stranger’s wide, frightened-looking eyes, guilt instantly infused him. Here he was, wondering what kind of freak he’d picked up, and this young man looked petrified. As much as the situation worried him, it could well worry this young man more.
“It’s fine. You’re quite safe.”
The comment didn’t seem to calm the stranger, only puzzle him. Definitely foreign then, but Alex refused the temptation to shout. He hated people who thought saying a word louder was the equivalent of a translation. He pointed down the road, but decided to keep sign language to a minimum. He tapped the steering wheel and pointed again. “Where to?” he asked. He pointed at one of the buildings. “Where are you staying? Do you live locally?” Alex doubted it, but it was worth asking. “Are you with friends? Family? Holiday? Working around here?” He tried a few words just to see if the young man would respond to one of them, but nothing worked. The white-haired young man continued to exhibit puzzlement and, now, some amusement.
“Gorgeous? Fit? Healthy? Horny?” Alex muttered under his breath, making the singular words into more questions. The other man shivered as way of an answer. The heat must finally be sinking into him. The movement made the curling ends of his hair shake and small droplets of water trickle free. They dripped, and Alex couldn’t help it. His gaze followed the beads of water as they fell, leading his gaze down slender lines to the man’s thighs. For an instant, Alex just stared. When his gaze began to slide up the length of the other man’s leg to more forbidden places, Alex shook himself out of his stupor and tore his gaze away. Staring pointedly through the windscreen, he said, “If you can’t tell me where you want to go, then I’m going to take you home with me. Maybe later you’ll be more talkative.”
What choice did he have? Providing shelter was the humanitarian thing to do. He couldn’t leave him out here alone. Padstow didn’t have any serial killers that Alex knew of, but a chill caught in a storm could be just as deadly. He wasn’t picking up another young man. His intentions were good, innocent, saintly almost, considering the humanitarian thing. Besides, his parents had brought him up to help others. He could let the man stay for a few hours or better still, overnight, and then sort something out in the morning. “Hungry?” This question elicited no more response than the others did at first, but when Alex continued to stare, he finally received a small smile in reply. Still, taking him home was all about being a Samaritan, nothing else. “My place, then?”
Either silence indicated the failure to communicate, or they apparently agreed.
* * * * *
Later, nothing had changed. Alex sat staring, watching the young man eat, though he picked over everything at first, looking at it as though it were some new and strange substance, so that Alex had finally taken to pointing and sounding out more words. When he almost mooed to explain milk, he tried other things. He pointed at objects -- a cup, a plate, knife, spoon, chair, table, cupboard, door, house, cottage, bungalow, building... Once on the construction theme he couldn’t stop. He said every word he could think of that referred to a form of habitat, but the stranger had nowhere to stay or none of the words struck a cord with him.
Swallowing the last morsel, the stranger pushed back his plate and then sat, blinking. When the blinks grew more rapid, until the man’s eyelids began to droop, Alex stifled a sigh. The time wasn’t late, but clearly, whatever had happened to this man had taken its toil. He needed to sleep and as host, Alex needed to sort something out for him. Stupidly, he hadn’t thought that far ahead. The young man seemed harmless enough and, if Alex were in a similar situation, he’d be grateful if someone took care of him. Such charity was a rare thing these days. Maybe the young man would be...
Alex slammed down a shutter on the word grateful, even as it flittered into his head. Plenty of men would take advantage of the situation; he wasn’t one of them, maybe because he was so used to being the one on the receiving end.
He decided to set the pale man up for the night in the little back room, even though it was cold in there. Alex sympathised, but he wasn’t about to put the stranger in his parents’ bed and he didn’t feel comfortable with the idea of sleeping in it either. Nor was he feeling as hospitable as to give up his own bed to some weirdo with white hair, even if said weirdo happened to look angelic. That was above and beyond even his compassionate tendencies.
; The morning of day two was no better. The skies opened and quenched the parched earth until it choked and gargled in the deluge. Alex began to think of his warm and cosy London flat. He might have packed up and driven out of there, but back home the phone would constantly ring, friends would drop round, and he would get no work done. Here, even his odd companion was proving at least to be ‘quiet’ company.
Alex paused, tapping a pen against his upper teeth, staring out of a window so speckled with raindrops that if he tried to focus on any one drop the image broke up into a myriad of colours, his very own personal rainbow. Of the outside world, he could see nothing.
His mind wasn’t on work. He sat thinking about the stranger. When the odd fellow appeared at breakfast that morning, it had looked as though he’d slept in that peculiar outfit of his. The suit fit tightly and appeared to be one piece on closer inspection. Alex couldn’t even begin to guess how you got in and out of it. He suffered some guilt. He’d hoped to drive the young man somewhere today, and get rid of him, make this guy someone else’s problem.
The rain wasn’t letting up, though, and Alex didn’t fancy going out in it. A dog shouldn’t be out in this, so he could hardly chuck the young man out the door. Alex sat and thought about what he’d done. He’d taken a stranger off the street and put him up in the cottage. For all he knew, the man could have tried to kill him in his sleep. Alex hadn’t thought so, though. There was something altogether too innocent about the young man. His very innocence led Alex to pure thoughts. He harboured no hidden agenda, other than to take care of the stranger until the storm passed. If he hadn’t managed to make himself understood by then, well, he’d have to contact the police, even if it turned out the man was an illegal immigrant or something. Alex didn’t want to see the foreigner get into trouble, but he couldn’t just take in strays. This would be his last one. Look where it always got him. Bray was an experience he shouldn’t forget in a hurry. This situation was different, though. This young man didn’t even have any luggage, not unless you counted personal baggage, and. unless they found a way to communicate, Alex might never know if he even had that. He could hardly have left his visitor out there looking lost in the storm.
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