by Amy Lane
“No,” he said, keeping his voice as neutral as possible. “I’m sorry—just as well you’re there tonight. I’m not feeling much good at anything.”
She tilted her head perceptively. “Jai is out of town, getting him some. You could always go with him.”
Jai stood nearly seven feet tall. A ginormous Russian bear, Jai shaved his head to a sheen, kept his goatee sharp, and had a smile that was… disturbing, at the very least. Ernie bet he could roll down his window and say, “I have a penis to match my foot size,” and have guys diving through his windows. Ernie was just grateful that he did have the gift—he wasn’t sure if he’d be so comfortable around the guy if he hadn’t felt the solid core of… well, not exactly good that emanated from the guy. It was more like solid, no-bullshit dedication. Jai was dedicated to Sonny and therefore dedicated to Ace. He was dedicated to Alba, and therefore, anybody that they were dedicated to, Jai would protect.
Ernie fell into that category, but so far the guy hadn’t been forthcoming about his personal life.
“How do you know he’s going to get laid?” Ernie had to ask.
Alba shrugged. “Last night, when we watched movies. He sat far away from us. Usually he lets me lie on him. I figure he’s just itchy. Needs to get it out of his system.”
Ernie thought about that. “That’s pretty clever,” he said. “But you lay on me instead, and I’m pretty itchy.”
She rolled her eyes. “Yeah, but you got it bad for only one guy. Jai hasn’t found his guy yet.”
Ernie clenched his nether regions and nodded. He needed to start walking or he’d let himself relax and stain his shorts.
“I’m just missing him is all,” he confessed. His body was screaming dance dance dance, but Alba was so damned smart. Ernie wasn’t going to give her any reason to believe tonight’s wander would be different than the others.
Ernie used to go clubbing prelubed. An openmouthed syringe, a little prep in the bathroom, and all the other guy needed was a rubber.
That night, as he’d awakened in long shadows of late afternoon in the winter, his body had tingled like someone was rubbing mental fingers all over his skin, over his nipples, along his thighs, between his crease. He’d startled in the shower, feeling hot breath on his neck.
He’d taken that picture of the desert for Burton and had practically felt the rasp of his fingers as he felt the face of the phone.
He’d decided to go walking early, and before he’d hooked the leash on Duke’s collar, he’d visited the bathroom, wondering how sure his instincts could possibly be.
He didn’t have the syringe—but as he’d shoved fingerfuls of lubricant up his own ass, he’d shivered. God, if this turned out to be nothing more than extreme need and not a premonition of any sort, he was going to have to order himself some adult toys, embarrassment be damned.
His stomach cramped with the hunger for possession.
The last month he’d slept restlessly, dreaming of rough hands on his skin, of the taste of Burton’s tongue in his mouth, of the glory of his come. It was early December, but all Ernie could think of was Burton’s big ol’ Christmas tree right up his chimney.
And if only his need was as simple and as crude as sex.
Six years.
His parents had died six years ago.
That year in the foster system, he’d been adrift, a prisoner in his own detachment, a bit of lint in the wind. The year in the military, he’d been the same lint in a cage of space. Nobody wanted to talk to him. Nobody wanted to touch him.
He’d been dropped in an alien city and forced to protect himself. He’d done it with bodies, with buzz, with just enough drugs to mask the beat-beat-beat of minds on his own.
He didn’t need the bodies or the drugs out here. Ace and Sonny and Jai and Alba were family—they cared about him and gave him a structure and a framework he badly needed. He didn’t crave the clubs or the bodies or the mask of buzzing minds—he had good people around him and the sky at night to keep him grounded.
But… but Burton. Burton had touched him—had known him, had known the real him. Ernie had been new to Burton, but Burton had been a whole vast other planet to Ernie, and now Ernie was going to go out under the velvet black sky of winter and… oh God. Please, let them touch again.
But Alba was looking at him with pity. “Not everybody gets a happy ending,” she said, sounding absurdly old. But then, she’d been working for Ace and Sonny for two years now—maybe you got old fast when your first love really was everything you’ve dreamed of but in love with someone else.
Ernie summoned a smile from sheer hope. “But sometimes you get a happy dream,” he said. Then he gave the lead a little pull, and the dog—who’d curled up at his feet because he was a good dog, yes he was—hopped up and started quivering. Duke adored Ace and Sonny, but his walks in the desert were the highlight of his day.
“Dream happy on your wanders tonight,” Alba said gravely. “I’ll dream some for you too. My uncle was a brujo, you know. Maybe I got the gift too.”
She was pulling his leg, and he grinned. “You don’t need the gift when you’re as smart as you are,” he said, bowing. She laughed, delighted, and waved him on his way.
“You are a terrible flirt, and if you weren’t gay, my mommy wouldn’t let you anywhere near me. Go.”
Ernie nodded and managed to saunter out into the world.
He’d been walking for nearly an hour, the chill of the desert at night making him glad he’d worn jeans and a thick hooded sweatshirt, when he felt his cell phone buzz in his back pocket. He pulled it out and checked, shivering all over again when he saw Burton’s message.
I’m coming for you may not have been written in words, but it was screaming in every character on the screen.
He kept walking west, keeping about twenty feet from the edge of the road. He’d walked this path often enough that there was a worn strip through the brush where he’d trodden, and he knew that snakes and scorpions would be off somewhere else, somewhere warm.
Approaching headlights were few and far between, but Ernie knew the raised chassis of an SUV or a truck, and he suspected Burton would be in something big, something with power. Not that car—zoom. Nope, Mercedes. Not that one—putt-putt-putt. Nope, Toyota. Not the chug-chug-chug old Crown Vic, and not the whiiinnne of the unlikely Tesla. But there, looming from over a mile away, Ernie could see it. He paused, pulling Duke’s leash short, and waited.
The car overshot him, and for a moment his heart fell, his disappointment in his gut instinct almost as acute as his disappointment it wasn’t who he thought it was. Then, about fifty yards down the way, it made an abrupt left, crossed the vacant oncoming lane, and bumped through the desert until it came to a stop at a man-made hill where once somebody had tried to mine something and had left a pit and a hillock instead.
Ernie was running toward the truck before it even came to a stop.
As he ran, Duke excited but silent by his heels, the door opened and Burton got out, left the door open, and stretched his arms up to the sky. Then he leaned against the bed of the truck, smiling, as Ernie ran toward him.
Burton looked relaxed, but he was ready when Ernie leaped into his arms and wrapped his legs around his waist.
Their lips crashed together in a cataclysm of want, and every thought in Ernie’s head shorted out, because oh heavens to fuck me, here he was, he wasn’t a dream, and he was plundering Ernie’s mouth, his neck, his senses, like he had a God-given right to be there.
Duke’s yapping brought Ernie back to his surroundings, and he looked at the little dog in dismay. Then Burton reached into the front seat of the truck and pulled out—
“Is that a hamburger?” Ernie asked breathlessly. “You brought a hamburger to a booty call?”
Burton chuckled. “I got food for all of us. That’s just the plain one I brought for Duke so he’d leave us alone.”
With that, Burton whistled to the little dog and set the burger on a bag on the floorboards. He’
d folded a blanket up on the seat and had a little bowl with water on the floor too, and Ernie hopped out of his arms for a moment and grinned.
“You thought of everything,” he said, surprised.
“There’s even a bedroll in the back,” Burton rasped, unhooking Duke’s leash as he ate and thunking the door shut on his little den. “He’d better not crap in there.”
“He won’t,” Ernie squeaked, seeing Burton’s granite-carved profile in the moonlight and trying to catch his breath.
Burton turned back toward him. “You ready, kid? I am ready to be rough and hard and unmerciful. You got that in you tonight?”
“Bring it on, Cruller,” Ernie told him, his whole body shuddering in relief. Then Burton took his mouth again and relief was the last thing on his mind.
Augh! But Ernie was lost in his kisses, lost in the width of his shoulders, the brawn of his arms. Then Burton shocked him, falling to a crouch in front of Ernie, dragging Ernie’s jeans and shorts with him.
“Oh God,” Ernie breathed. “Burton, what are you—”
Burton licked him, tentatively, and then grinned up into his face. “I been listening to those guys and thinking about this. I kept thinking it was them that made this seem like all I ever wanted, but it wasn’t them. It was you.”
His lips and tongue were still rough, still unskilled, but Ernie didn’t need someone who’d done this a lot. He needed someone who only wanted to do this to Ernie, and that’s what he had before him.
He sucked hard and pulled back, head bobbing while Ernie cupped his shaved skull in his fingertips and held on. Burton’s hands were busy as he worked, and Ernie widened his legs, feeling the lubricant sliding between his cheeks as he did.
Burton’s fingertips hit the slick and he pulled back, surprised.
“I woke up needing you,” Ernie said by way of explanation. “Needing you so bad. I just prayed it was the gift and not my need. And you’re here, and you’re gonna make it okay.”
Burton nodded. “Only me, right?” he asked, his voice threaded with a vulnerability Ernie hadn’t heard before.
Ernie had no way to do this but with his heart on his sleeve. He cupped Burton’s cheeks between his palms and made sure Burton could see him nod. “Only you, Lee. Since I first knew you, it’s been only you. It might not be anyone else again.”
Burton nodded, a fluttery little smile shaping his lips before he pulled Ernie between them again.
Ernie cried out, knees going weak, the buzz that had ridden his skin all night taking him over from the inside, growing, swelling, exploding outward. Orgasm overtook him, and he screamed with it, sobbed with it, and Lee swallowed convulsively, like he was trying to take Ernie into his very soul.
Ernie tugged at his shoulder and he stood, mouth parted slightly, glazed with Ernie’s come, and Ernie kissed him hard and fast and deep, taking everything he hadn’t swallowed, tasting himself in Lee Burton’s mouth like it was wine.
Burton pulled back first and rested his head against Ernie’s. “Do you want to climb in the ba—”
Ernie broke out of his arms just enough to turn around and lean forward.
“Fucking now,” he demanded roughly.
Lee didn’t disappoint him. Ernie didn’t even hear him fumbling for his pants before he felt him, hard and huge at Ernie’s entrance, demanding to be let in.
“Now!” Ernie begged, feeling tears start. He needed. He needed. “I’m empty, dammit. Fill me.”
And he did. Shoving rudely in, no finesse, no skill—just want, naked and raw and real, just the same as Ernie’s, needing Ernie’s heat like Ernie needed the flesh inside him.
Burton popped inside and slid in to the hilt, and Ernie would have screamed Yes! if he’d had any breath at all.
Instead he whimpered.
“More. Please.” And Lee didn’t let him down.
Hard. He’d promised hard. He’d promised hard and rough and unmerciful, and Ernie could accept nothing less. Lee pounded inside him without pause or gentleness, but Ernie had gotten gentleness, had gotten care.
He needed a good hard fucking, needed something bold and vivid imprinted on his body, and Lee Burton was the man to do it.
Harder and faster, Burton grunted half-formed obscenities as he fucked, and Ernie moaned. “Yes! God yes! Yes! Keep going! Keep going! Oh God, please!” while Burton built to a thundering crescendo inside him.
Ernie’s own cock grew hard again, flopped against his thigh uselessly, but Ernie couldn’t reach for it, couldn’t do anything but cushion himself against the bed of the truck with his arms and hold on.
His second orgasm, pulsing through nerve endings, dragged out of him by the pressure inside, took him by complete surprise. He gasped, a quiet little hum next to Burton’s primal scream echoing through the desert.
Burton came, scalding inside of him, while Ernie rested his head against one fist and pounded through his own climax with the other. When Burton finally stopped, collapsing against his back, Ernie could only cling to the side of the truck and try really hard to breathe.
The soft touch of Burton’s lips on the back of his neck brought him to reality again.
“Mm….” He turned, Burton sliding out of him with resistance. Burton moaned softly, and Ernie took his mouth in apology. This kiss was gentle, soothing, their raw hunger for each other a low pulse in the background but not rearing back and screaming for attention.
Not yet.
Burton pulled back and sighed, wrapping his arms around Ernie’s shoulders and pulling him tight against his chest. “Want to see if the dog left us dinner?”
“Sure.”
“We can lie on the bedroll and look at the stars….” Something plaintive in his voice told Ernie he’d suddenly realized this wasn’t a nice restaurant and a fancy hotel.
“That would be beautiful,” Ernie told him, closing his eyes and rubbing his lips along his chin, his jaw, his cheekbones. “There is not a thing in the world I could want more than that.”
“I missed you, Ernie. You’re the voice in my head now, the one that keeps me sane.”
Ernie chuckled, the sound free in his throat. “I was thinking the same thing about you. How weird is that?”
“You’re the damn psychic, man—you tell me!”
They both laughed then—but they kept holding each other, half-naked, shivering in the desert breeze.
FINALLY THEY pulled up their pants and rescued their food—Duke wasn’t looking particularly hungry, but Ernie had cleaned up after him when he’d raided the trash can before and knew he wasn’t to be trusted. They hopped up into the back of the pickup and stretched out on the bedroll, under the sleeping bag. Ernie rested his head on Burton’s arm, and they looked out at the stars. Duke curled up in the corner by their feet, seemingly content to just be and not to be the center of their attention.
They talked.
Ernie had gotten used to finding conversation superfluous with lovers. Really, all he’d wanted was safety from the voices and all they’d wanted was climax, and words were irrelevant.
But Burton had been stuck being somebody else for the past month—Calvin Oscar—and Calvin Oscar had to listen to men give kill orders to innocent people and had to listen to his coworkers bully the weak and get rewarded for it and had to fight racist assholes in the hallway walking back from the bathroom and then just keep on going after he’d won the fight.
Burton needed to be Lee Burton right now. Just for this moment, under the stars, Ernie in his arms.
Lee Burton wanted a cat. He thought Duke was okay and someday wanted a big dog, but also, he’d seen Ernie with his menagerie of cats and enjoyed their company. He missed his family—had, in fact, been planning to go home that Christmas since he’d had nothing hanging over his head, but then Ernie had literally fallen onto his cock, and suddenly his world was complicated again.
When Lee Burton had been in college, his favorite date had been dinner and a movie, even if it seemed average and pedestrian, because he li
ked to hear other people talk about movies and he still got excited when the good guy won.
Lee Burton was genuinely distressed that Ernie had been all alone since he was a teenager. He listened to Ernie’s stories of Ace and Sonny and Jai and Alba avidly, like a favorite TV show or family back home.
“They’re trying to send her to college?” Burton asked.
“Yeah. They’ve got some money they’ve set aside for her, but every time they look, it seems like tuition is going higher. They want her to go somewhere after the local junior college—somewhere with dormitories, far away from Victoriana.”
Burton hmmed. “You’re doing their books?” he asked.
“Yeah.”
“Okay—next time you’re there alone, text me their account numbers. I’ll beef it up a little.”
“You’ll what?” Ernie pushed himself up on his elbow. “How do you—”
Burton had no shame. “It’s how I paid for my little brother’s tuition. We get access to money, Ernie. My major was computer science. A little bit of embezzlement here, a little bit of magic there—”
“But that’s stealing!” Ernie felt like his entire concept of right and wrong had been reversed.
“It’s stealing from criminals,” Burton said with an unrepentant shrug. “I took out three terrorists funded by drug cartels last year. I did it by following the money. By the time I was done, I had every passcode I needed to clean those guys out, and I didn’t.”
Ernie blinked. “You didn’t?”
“I didn’t need to. I took a modest payout into a hidden account and moved on. I’m not in this for the money—but it comes in handy when you’re establishing a cover.”
That made sense. It even explained the truck. “Or helping friends out in need,” he said, things fitting into place again.
Burton nodded and then grinned, his smile gleaming in the night. “Of course, when Ace is racing, I usually bet on him. That has made me a pile of cash right there.”
“He and Sonny talked about it,” Ernie told him soberly. It had, in fact, been a sore point between them. “Sonny’s still scared.”
“Mm.” Burton pulled off his sweatshirt and wadded it up so they could both use it as a pillow. “Get back down here. I’m cold.”