Knowing Me, Knowing You

by Renae Kaye

  When he put it like that, it was kind of insulting to him.

  I felt shame, and I’m sure it showed on my face. “I thought you might’ve been using me for… you know… the gay sex? It’s not as easy to come by, and you’d have to trust the guy not to out you.”

  This time there was more amusement in his laughter as he said, “Shane, we must move in completely different circles if you think gay sex is that hard to come by.”

  That was so unfair. “Are you telling me that I’m gay and I struggle to find a date, yet you’re not gay and you can get it freely?”

  To my amazement Ambrose dropped a kiss on the end of my nose, moved away, and left me sitting on the washing machine. “You struggle to get a date, Shane, because you always have your head in your book. You’re oblivious.”

  I scrambled down off the machine and followed him through the kitchen. “I am not.” The empty box of Lean Cuisine was still on the counter. I’d microwaved a meal and forgotten about it. I pressed Reheat.

  “Are too.”

  “Am not, and besides, I don’t want to argue about this. I want to discuss this… thing.” I didn’t know what to call it. Dilemma? Misunderstanding? “You say you’re not using me for sex. Okay. I can see I was mistaken about that. You could probably find someone ten times better than me. So that begs the question, why me?”

  Ambrose flopped back down on the couch and rubbed his face. “You’ve got to stop putting yourself down, Shane. All this ‘why me’ stuff is ridiculous. You’re a good-looking guy.”

  “You’re deflecting again. Answer me one thing straight, Ambrose. Are you gay?”

  This time he sighed and slumped back on the couch to stare at the ceiling. “You asked me this last year, and I’ve been thinking about it since then. I hadn’t really thought about it in terms of gay or bisexual or whatnot. I guess technically I’m bisexual.”

  The microwave beeped behind me, and I rushed to pull it out. “Technically? That doesn’t sound like a rousing agreement.” I removed the tray from the microwave and pulled another from the freezer, which was full of the ready-made meals. They were on special a couple of weeks back, so I stocked up. “I thought working it out was rather easy. If you’re turned on by girls, then you’re straight. If you’re turned on by guys, then you’re gay. If both do it for you, then you’re bi.”

  “It’s the flip side that has me confused, Shane.”

  “What?” I pulled out a knife and fork from the drawer, placed the black plastic tray on a plate so it wouldn’t burn his lap, and carried the meal to Ambrose. “Here. Bon appétit. And good luck.”

  “Good luck?” he asked as he took the meal from me.

  “I read a study recently about bacteria in ready-made meals. So it’s like a kamikaze exercise each time I have one. Will I make it out alive?”

  Ambrose laughed as he stuck his fork into the food and scooped up a mouthful. “The Shane version of walking on the wild side.” He put the food in his mouth and grimaced. “Shit. This tastes as bad as I remember.”

  I ignored him and went back to the kitchen to get drinks. I pulled out some mineral water and two glasses. “Explain the flip side.”

  “Huh?”

  The microwave beeped to tell me my meal was ready as I placed the glasses on the coffee table between the couch and the TV. “You said the flip side of working out your orientation has you confused.”

  “Oh. That.” He leaned forward and took his drink. I was silent as I gathered my meal, allowing him time. “Tell me,” he said abruptly. “When you’re walking down the street and you see a guy who’s hot, you think ‘I’d like to fuck that,’ don’t you?”

  I sat beside him and considered the question. “I guess if he’s within the boundaries of what I consider hot, then yeah. I mean, just because I’m gay, I don’t find every guy I meet attractive. Some are too young, and some are too old to interest me. But if a handsome guy with lots of muscles walks by me, I wonder what he’d be like in bed. But that’s not to mean I don’t like guys who I didn’t think were hot when I first met them. I’ve been on dates where I thought the guy was nice enough, but it’s only after I got to know him that the attraction really started.”

  “So you look at your poster of Alex Rance and feel attraction?”

  I blushed. The poster that didn’t exist? I thought about the games I’d watched when he was playing. “Yeah. Attraction also works the other way. I could meet Rance and find out he’s an arsehole, and the attraction would wane really fast.”

  Ambrose reached for his drink again. “Nah. Alex is a really nice guy, actually. You’d like him.”

  “Okay.” I didn’t consider Rance’s niceness relevant to the conversation, but I did find it funny how Rance was on a first name basis with Ambrose. He really did move in a different world from me. “But even if Alex is a nice guy and super hot, there’s a difference between thinking the guy is attractive and actually going to bed with him. I mean, I can look at a woman and know that logically she’s attractive, but I wouldn’t ever go through with it. Is that what you’re getting at?”

  He sighed and put his finished meal aside. Part of the leanness of Lean Cuisine was that there wasn’t a lot on the plate.

  “No. I’m not talking about that. I’m talking about that I don’t get it.”

  “Get what?”

  “Get attraction. I don’t get the ‘Hi, you’re hot, let’s do it’ stuff. Most of the footballers do it, at least in the early years. Picking up is easy when you’re a football player. I mean I don’t get the wanting to jump each other’s bones.”

  I was confused as all fuck. “You don’t get wanting sex? How can that be? We have sex.”

  Ambrose stared at his hands. “But we’re friends.”

  I stared at him. “Okay. I’m seriously not getting this. I mean, we haven’t really talked about sex with other people, because… well, actually I don’t know why. Perhaps because originally I thought you were straight and you wouldn’t want to hear about sex between two guys. And then, after we slept together, it was a little… indelicate to speak about other encounters. So, this is going to come out really weird but… do you actually have sex with other people? I mean, not just me?”

  Ambrose kind of shrugged with one shoulder, and I thought I could see a flush on his face. “Yeah. Sometimes.”

  “With Kendra?” I pressed. He nodded. “What about Jenna? Stacey? Tori?” He nodded as I named all the women he’d dated that I’d known about over the years. “Okay. Well, what about someone you haven’t been officially dating? Do you have sex with them?”

  He turned those dark eyes on me. “You.” He looked at his hands again. “And another guy who’s one of the support workers at the club. He’s in the closet, but a really nice guy. He’s terrified of coming out. And, well, one of Dan’s friends. He set us up and we kind of dated for a while, but on the down-low.”

  My eyebrows raised. “Dan knows you like guys as well as girls?”

  He looked shocked. “Of course. He knows all about you.”

  Daniel Egan knew about me?

  Daniel Fucking Egan? Former Hawthorn player and one of Ambrose’s best friends, knew about Wallpaper Shane?

  I realized I still had a mouthful of rice and nearly choked. I tried to swallow the ball without chewing it first and ended up choking for real. Ambrose thrust a glass of water under my nose, and I chugged it down thankfully.

  “You okay?” he asked with a worried note in his voice. He took my plate from my lap and placed it on the coffee table.

  I shook my head. I didn’t think I was ever going to be okay again.

  “Do you need more water?”

  I sat back on the lounge and tried to breathe through my nose, figuring the air would bypass my mouth and not draw any more rice grains into my lungs that way.

  “You going to survive at least?” Ambrose leaned over me.

  I tried to smile at his joke. “Maybe.” My voice was croaky and weak.

  “I told you those Le
an Cuisines aren’t any good for you.”

  “Here I thought it was the salmonella that was going to do me in, and instead it was simply choking on the rice.”

  Then the air changed between us. It was like our old relationship was back again, full of happiness and teasing. And with it came sexual awareness.

  Chapter Fourteen

  MY GAZE dropped to his mouth. It really was a nice mouth. Surrounded by the scruffy black beard he was sporting, it made me focus more on the softness of his lips.

  “Shane?” he whispered. I didn’t know what he was asking, I just knew that yes, he could. I nodded.

  His lips descended to mine, and I moaned a little. After months of trying to forget what it was like to kiss him, Ambrose’s taste exploded in my mouth like the sweet nectar of a peach given to a man who’d lived on bread and water.

  I placed my hands on his shoulders and hauled him in closer. Ambrose crawled over me until he pushed me back against the armrest of the couch. I turned my head and accepted the deeper weight of his kiss and wrapped my arms around him so he couldn’t escape my clutches.

  Not that he was trying. One of his hands was at my waist and rested hotly on my abdomen. I could feel it through my clothes. Ambrose sucked hard on my lower lip until the sting made me wince and pull back. Then he licked wetly and kissed me gently. It was something I loved about him. He was strong and capable of hurting me, but never did. His lovemaking was always gentle and caring. He’d ask me what I wanted and if something felt good, always keeping my feelings at the forefront over his.

  The fact that we were friends and also lovers gave us an odd dynamic. Ambrose had always had to give me a hand when it came to physical things. He taught me how to throw a baseball, even though he was two years younger than I was. When we wrestled as teens, he always metered his strength against mine and held back while I gave it my all until I tired, and then he would pin me to the floor or couch or grass, wherever we were.

  That carried over to our lovemaking as well. Ambrose would rarely let go and give me the full force of his strength. I always felt he was holding something back a little, aware I wasn’t as physical as he was.

  Likewise, it was me who’d showed him some finer points of sex. Of course, I did my research on the subject—a lot—and wiped my browsing history after. It was me who was usually the responsible one with the condoms. It was me who suggested that, despite everything the porn movies showed, sex on the kitchen table wasn’t all that comfortable and a bed was nearby.

  But just like we were equals in our friendship, our lovemaking was equal in fervor. I yanked at Ambrose’s jumper, and he sat up and pulled off all his clothes from his top half. I stared.

  “You have a new tattoo,” I remarked. I wondered why I hadn’t noticed it before when I put him in the shower.

  Maybe because you were looking lower?

  Ambrose’s first brush with the needle had been a rather unoriginal, uninspired tribal circle on his left shoulder. It was simply spirals and swirls, and it looked hot, but when I asked him why he got it and did it have meaning, he’d seemed rather unattached.

  His second tattoo was just as unoriginal but had more meaning to him. He’d had the five stars of the Southern Cross inked on his right shoulder blade. He got it to remind himself he was a proud Australian. The Such Is Life in script that had been tattooed across his hip made me roll my eyes when I first saw it.

  “Channeling Ben Cousins, are we?” I’d said.

  One of our Australian legends, bushranger Ned Kelly, had supposedly uttered those famous words just before they hanged him. It was almost a rite of passage for young, drunk Australian men to have it tattooed on their body. Unfortunately one of the most infamous footballers from Western Australia had had it tattooed on his stomach as well… and had also gone on to become a legendary arse, unable to admit he had a problem with drugs despite several stints in jail and numerous arrests.

  The words had been slightly soured by Cousins’s deeds, especially in the football community.

  Now some tattoo artist had modified Ambrose’s circular tribal symbol. I pushed at his shoulder until he sat back and I could see. The swirl now morphed into a snake and twisted across his pectoral muscle. I could see from the stylistic shading that it was an Aboriginal artistic impression of a snake, even if the black, red, and yellow Aboriginal flag hadn’t been worked into the design of the snake’s body. Belatedly I realized it must be an impression of the Rainbow Serpent, the creator of life from the Dreamtime beliefs of the Aboriginal people.

  Was Ambrose becoming aware of his Aboriginal roots?

  “That’s so cool,” I enthused as I placed my hands over the ink and traced it with my fingers. “When did you get that?”

  “February.”

  “The person who designed it did a great job. It looks brilliant.”

  “Thank you.”

  “Why did you get it?”

  He didn’t answer. Instead he pulled me to him until I was straddling his lap. We kissed with rising intensity, and I fell into the abyss. I was an Ambrose-aholic, and I’d just fallen off the wagon.

  I shrugged out of my jacket and opened the buttons on my shirt without losing the feel of his lips against mine. His hands went to my trousers, and he unbuttoned and unzipped me. I was wearing a white undershirt for warmth, and Ambrose groaned against my mouth.

  “Why are you wearing so many damn clothes?”

  I sat back to pull the undershirt off. “Because it’s winter, and it’s cold. That’s what I mean about visitors ringing before they come.”

  That sounded so suggestive, but to my surprise, Ambrose didn’t make a sarcastic remark. He placed his palms on my chest and moved them all around. “I’ve missed this.”

  Despite so many unfinished bits of business between us, I had to admit, “I’ve missed this too.”

  We kissed again, that time softer and with more than only a sexual urge. Ambrose traced the line of my ribs and then made a path down to my butt and cupped me to bring me close. Meanwhile I had found the fuzz on his cheeks with my palms. I ran my hands over his face and then up over his skull and felt the prickle of hair where there used to be curls. It was sexier somehow, and my arousal moved higher.

  I angled my hips and pushed down against the erection I could feel.

  “Shane?” He sucked wetly on my jawline as he whispered to me.

  “Yeah?” I replied breathlessly. Ambrose was fucking sexy.

  “Can you do something for me? It’s really important.” He’d found my neck, and I was arching so he could kiss me there.

  “I’m kinda busy at the moment,” I panted. “Can it wait for later?”

  I reached for his nipples and rubbed them with my thumbs. “No. I really think it needs to be done now.”

  “Does it need to be me who does it?” I was fascinated with his chest. It was hard and rippled with muscles. The tattoo on his chest was also fascinating, and I traced it with my fingers.

  “I would really appreciate your help, and since there’s no one else in the room….”

  Heaving a sigh, I sat up, unfortunately removing myself from where those luscious lips could reach me. “It had better be super important.”

  Ambrose gave me a cute little grin and ducked his chin slightly, pretending meekness. I knew it was fake. Bro-Jak meek? Ha.

  “Can you help me off with my pants?”

  I burst out laughing. “You were right. That’s really important and can’t wait until later.”

  “I usually am. Right, I mean.”

  I made a large scoffing sound and moved off his lap until I stood before him. He pushed down his pants and underwear until they were bunched at his hips and then placed two hands on the couch and pushed up, balancing on his arms and a single foot. I hurried to grasp the material and pull it down. The movement of the clothes freed his cock, and it sprang forward, thick, erect, and proud.

  “Hmm,” I hummed as I surveyed the results of my help. “It appears the side benefits of he
lping are rather generous.”

  Once the material was down to his knees, Ambrose sat again, and I helped him remove his shoes and pull his pants all the way off. What are mates for if not for helping out when you’re unable to do something by yourself?

  “Your turn,” he said with a nod in my direction.

  I screwed up my nose. I hated that part. But Ambrose knew me, inside and out. He heaved a big sigh and threw up his hands.

  “You are not getting fat, Shane. You’re fine as you are. More than fine. And I’m sorry if my fit body is making you feel insecure about your own. What would you like me to do about that? Quit being fit?”

  “Of course not.”

  “Then get your damn clothes off and get over here. How many times do I have to tell you that I don’t need you to be chiseled and ripped?”

  I didn’t know what to do with my hands. I wanted to hide from his gaze, but he was urging me to take off more clothes. In the end I plonked my hands on my hips, simply for something to do with them.

  “I don’t know how you can be around all those footballers day in, day out and then stand to look at something like me.”

  Ambrose dropped his hand to his erection and he began to jerk himself slowly, tempting me and taunting me with one action. “Shane? I’ll let you in on a little secret. I’m around those footballers day in, day out, but which guy is it that I come home every year to visit and hotfoot around to his house?”

  Oh. That would be me. Nondescript Shane.

  I tried to keep from beaming my happiness, but I didn’t succeed.

  “Exactly,” Ambrose said with satisfaction. “Now get your damn pants off and get over here.” He patted his lap in case I didn’t understand the exact place he meant.

  Duh.

  I sat down on the coffee table and undid the laces on my shoes. Then I kicked off the shoes and placed them on the ground where they wouldn’t trip Ambrose, pushed the socks off and stuffed them inside my shoes, and finally stood to take off my pants.