by RJ Scott
“Stop. Okay?”
More silence, and the noise that had been in the background vanished; seemed Kyle had shut himself in somewhere quiet.
“How are you doing?” Kyle asked.
Why the hell did Kyle want to know that?
“Stop writing them, understand?”
Before he could second-guess himself, he ended the call, then stared at his cell with abrupt disbelief of what he’d just done. Stefan would be pissed if he found out; he’d explicitly said that if Gabriel ever contacted anyone at Legacy, he needed to manage what Gabriel said. Stefan knew best, so why had Gabriel even thought it would be a good idea to call?
Because this is my life. Because I have bruises.
An incoming text scared the shit out of him so much that he almost dropped the phone because he’d been so deep in thought.
The message was simple.
Are you free? I want to book you this afternoon. Who was this from? And then another text from the same number. Cameron Stafford. Sorry, forgot to say that.
Gabriel’s first instinct was to say no. He didn’t want to open himself up to seeing Cam in any way, but he knew Stefan would want to comment on this.
He fired off a quick text to Stefan to ask if Cam was a client he wanted Gabriel to see. Stefan answered immediately.
Do it and don’t fuck it up. Leave him wanting more.
Gabriel looked at the time, added on an hour to get himself ready, then texted a time to Cam.
Half of him expected the return text to be a negotiation on something—time, more about money, questions about Gabriel—but all the that came back from Cam was a reminder of the room number.
People walked past his hiding place on their way to wherever they were going. Work, or maybe they were heading up to Klyde Warren Park, but they all had purpose. And he bet none of them had a purpose that included being paid for sex in the afternoon.
He straightened his back, rolled his neck, and pocketed his cell.
Show time.
He knocked on the door and heard Cam on the other side call, “Come in.” He tried the handle, thinking that was some kind of wind-up, but the door opened. He didn’t know what he was expecting to see inside. Some of his clients were already buck naked, some dressed in an approximation of what they considered sexy, but Cam? He was on the floor with Gidget on his stomach and they were fighting over a chew toy. He shouldn’t find it cute, but he did. Gidget was a nice dog, reminded him of the dogs on the ranch when he’d been a kid.
When his mom had still been alive.
Before it had all gone to hell.
Cam rolled up into a standing position and Gidget stood at his side, both of them looking right at Gabriel.
“Hey,” Cam said, and brushed at his chest. His black T-shirt, all kinds of casual, emblazoned with a logo that included a faded rainbow and writing, was covered in dog hair. “How’s that?” he asked, spreading his arms, and Gabriel wasn’t sure what he needed to comment on. Was it the shirt, the dog hair, the muscles of Cam’s arms, or the fact that Cam was fucking gorgeous?
“How’s what?” That seemed like a safe question.
“Did I get all the hair off?”
Gabriel moved closer. “Nope,” he said, and wondered if he should be brushing it away.
Cam laughed at that, and in a smooth move he pulled the T-shirt off and gripped it in one hand. “I need a clean shirt,” he announced.
But Gabriel wasn’t listening, not really. Cam wasn’t built or muscle bound, he was slim, his chest hair the same blond as his hair, his cinnamon nipples slightly erect, probably due to the AC that blasted into the room, counteracting the heat outside. And the hair below his navel disappeared into the band of his loose sweats. Those same sweats hung on his hips, his stomach flat, and in there, hidden away, was something that Gabriel couldn’t forget.
The weight and feel of Cam’s sex was the stuff of his fantasies at the moment. That and the look on the man’s face.
“Is everything okay?” Cam asked a little uncertainly.
“Yeah?”
“Sorry, you’re just super quiet. Hang there a minute.” He walked confidently past the sofa and through a door, coming back a little later pulling a new T-shirt over his head, this a Dallas Cowboys one.
“How do you know what you’re wearing?” Gabriel blurted out before he could stop himself. He should keep his mouth shut. Stefan was right; when Gabriel asked stupid questions, he didn’t just embarrass himself, but Stefan as well.
But Cam didn’t seem fazed by the question.
“I have this system. First off Six describes everything, and then everything in my closet is grouped by type, so you know, button-downs in one place, T-shirts in another, and then there’s this.” He came closer to Gabriel and stopped. “Feel this.”
He held out a hand, and Gabriel took it, allowing himself to be guided to touch a raised profile of bumps in the hem of the T.
“Is that braille?”
“Yep. Tells me this is a Cowboys shirt, and it’s dark blue. Right?”
“Yeah.” All Gabriel could think was that Cam was real close, and that the scent of him was so familiar that Gabriel was actually feeling the low pull of arousal. That hadn’t happened in forever.
Cam stepped back, and Gabriel wanted to follow, but he didn’t.
“Money,” Cam announced, and crossed to a bureau, pulling out an envelope. “Should cover me into the evening.” Then he frowned. “Unless you’re already booked out tonight.”
Gabriel took the envelope and opened it. Always count the money. There was enough there for a midnight finish—a lot of money.
“No, you have me for the rest of the day.”
“Okay then,” Cam said with a grin. “Come on.”
Gabriel was flustered after all these years; faced with that smile, he’d forgotten his job. He needed to negotiate what was happening here, but he’d lost the power of speech. Gidget had given up and padded into the kitchen, and just that small barrier between them was gone now.
“What do you want?” Gabriel asked, professional and to the point.
Cam tilted his head. “As much as we can fit in,” he said. “I need to get you out of my head, and I really need to get off.”
Okay, a transaction like that was one Gabriel could handle. He stepped up into Cam’s space and fisted his T-shirt. His part of this deal was to start things off using what he’d learned about Cam, and the biggest thing was the talking.
“You want me to make you feel good?” he asked.
His voice sounded a little alien to him, like he wasn’t putting all his effort into it, and that single thought made him angry with himself. Frustrated that he couldn’t get into character, he yanked at Cam, then began to push him back, right up against the wall by the bedroom door. Cam let out a soft oomph as he hit the wall but he didn’t yank himself away. Gabriel moved up close, pressing his weight against Cam.
“You shouldn’t have bothered putting your shirt on,” he said, and lifted it up over Cam’s head and tossed it to the floor.
Actually faced with being able to touch Cam properly, he forgot what he needed to do next.
Nipples, belly, lower, cock, done.
But all he wanted was the one thing not many of his clients wanted. Kissing. And right now, all rules about asking permission were forgotten, and he cradled Cam’s face. “I’m going to kiss you until you can’t breathe,” he announced.
“Uh-huh,” Cam murmured and went limp against the wall.
He was so gorgeous, and kissing this man would be worth every minute that Gabriel put into the work. He controlled the kiss, the pressure of the lips, the tongue, and the way he pulled back whenever Cam tried to make any kind of change to the kiss.
Meanwhile his hands moved down Cam’s body, pausing at his nipples and gently caressing them, then harder, until he got the response he wanted, the groan of need in Cam’s throat. At that point he pulled away, recalling how Cam wanted him to talk. He was a professional, and his ultimate goal was
to get Cam off.
“You like that?” he asked, twisting his fingers a little, pulling at the nipple until it extended, moving the position of his hands so that he could concentrate on the teasing while the weight of his wrist and arms held Cam still. The position was awkward, but Cam rested his head against the wall, and his mouth was open, his lips wet from their kissing. He moaned low and deep, and Gabriel twisted that little bit harder, eliciting more moans. He replaced his fingers with his mouth and moved his hands to the band of Cam’s sweats, hooking them and pushing them down.
“I’m going to hold you down and suck you until you’re nearly there. You want me to do that?”
“God,” Cam whimpered.
“Yeah, and then I’ll stop, and I’ll leave you on the edge. You like that?”
Cam reached wildly for Gabriel, for his head, his hair, before resting his hands on Gabriel’s shoulders, clenching and unclenching on the muscles there. Then, refusing to yelp in pain as he slid to his knees, Gabriel was face-to-face with Cam’s underwear, which he eased down smoothly. Cam was a nice size—a mouthful, a handful—and Gabriel’s mouth watered at the thought of getting his lips wrapped around him.
He didn’t wait. There was no talking. He wanted to take Cam over the edge right now, and he rolled on a condom before swallowing him. This wasn’t finesse; this was need and right-fucking-now. Meanwhile, he gripped Cam’s thighs and loved that Cam was trying to buck and couldn’t. Cam’s hands were on Gabriel’s head, and as he came he let out a strangled moan.
Gabriel dealt with the condom, only realizing as he assisted Cam in easing down the wall that he was half hard from sucking him off. That wasn’t right. He didn’t get off on the work he did. It was a job, and him getting aroused in any way was not part of that.
Hell, he couldn’t get aroused.
Only he was half hard, and the sight of Cam breathing heavily, his head back against the wall, his knees drawn up, had Gabriel thinking that somehow he’d lost control.
That scared him
“You close your eyes when you kiss.” He said that to change the subject in his head. I’m getting hard.
“I do?” Cam said, like he hadn’t considered that before. He reached out a hand to touch Gabriel’s face. “Come here,” he said.
Gabriel moved a little closer, his knees killing him. At least with Cam not being able to see, he didn’t have to pretend he wasn’t in pain.
“Can I?” Cam asked, and slid his hand up Gabriel’s arm to his neck and then to his chin.
“Yeah,” Gabriel murmured, and allowed Cam to trace his face.
“You’re taller than me,” Cam said. “I know that because Six told me, but also because when we kissed I had to tilt my head back. You’re slim, but you have muscles in your arms. Do you work out?”
“Pushups and things,” Gabriel said. “I’m not a gym rat.”
Cam smiled at him, that soft, cute smile, and continued his exploration. “You said you have Latino in you. How much?”
Gabriel shrugged, his usual response to that question.
“You need to use your words,” Cam teased.
“A small bit, on my dad’s side maybe.”
Cam’s fingers settled on his lips, tracing the shape of them, then moved up to his nose and across to his cheekbones. “You have a beautiful face,” he murmured.
“Says the guy who can’t see,” Gabriel said without thought. “Sorry,” he added.
“No offense taken,” Cam said, and smiled even wider. “You have this beard going on,” he added, and poked at it before running his fingers through the scruff. “Just at the sides and the chin. That’s in fashion, I guess.”
Gabriel recalled shaving off his thicker beard, leaving some, cutting his long hair short. “Yeah,” he answered.
“I liked the feel of it on my cock,” Cam said, bluntly and still with that infuriating smile.
“Good. I aim to please.” He was trying for teasing, but Cam’s smile slipped a little, and Gabriel needed it back. He wrapped his hand around Cam’s soft cock and leaned in so his mouth was next to his ear. “I like the feel of your cock in my mouth.”
“I’m not sixteen still,” Cam said. “I can’t go again.”
So Gabriel showed him exactly how easy it was to get him hard again, only this time he stretched the time out, used every trick he knew, every dirty word that worked, until Cam was a mess of writhing need lying on the carpet.
“Gabriel, please.”
Gabriel settled between Cam’s legs, pain like knives through his knees, and pushing the pain aside, he spread Cam’s thighs and considered his next move. He lubed his finger and pressed it to Cam’s hole as he licked the tip of his cock. He wasn’t going to ask if that was okay, Cam wouldn’t want to hear uncertainty, and the way he bucked up into Gabriel’s mouth had him thinking he was doing something right. He added more lube, pressed harder, deeper, finding that elusive spot that he knew would send Cam wild. And all the time he was sucking and licking, and when Cam was coming he scrambled to hold on to any part of Gabriel he could reach until he fell back spent.
“You broke me,” Cam mumbled behind the arm that flopped over his face. Then he held out a hand. “Help me up?”
“Hang on,” Gabriel said, then used the wall and the nearby sofa to get to a standing position. His left knee buckled enough to steal his breath, and he closed his eyes, working his way through the pain.
“You okay?” Cam asked from the floor, rolling onto his side and then to his knees. Even in pain, Gabriel could appreciate the view, and then the muscles spasmed again.
“Yeah,” And fuck, how much focus did it take even to form that simple word? He was far from fine. He hadn’t been fine since Hank and Yuri had found him when he’d run and broken both his kneecaps with baseball bats. He was fucking lucky he could walk; pity his job had him on his knees so much. The spasm passed, but by this time Cam was up, pulling his sweats to his hips, so Gabriel wasn’t there to help him stand. He picked up the Cowboys T-shirt and placed it deliberately into Cam’s hand. Cam thanked him quietly and pulled it over his head.
“You like movies?” Cam asked, going into his kitchen and confidently feeling his way around to fill the coffee machine with grounds. Was there anything Cam couldn’t do?
“Some,” Gabriel said. He couldn’t recall the last film he’d seen—some Clint Eastwood boxing film, he thought, with a woman who died? All he remembered was that it had been boring, and sitting still that long had made him hurt all over. Still, the guy he was with had wanted a handjob in the movie theater, and a booking was a booking.
“I have a lot of everything,” Cam said, and gestured to a large cupboard, “Help yourself.”
Gabriel didn’t move at first. He guessed it was impossible to fill the times with just sex, although he wouldn’t mind getting Cam off a hundred times just to see his face.
He opened the door to the treasure trove, and so much color hit him that he blinked. Each DVD had a strip on the outside with more raised bumps, and it seemed like certain movies were grouped together. Flashy hero movies were in one spot, old black-and-white Laurel and Hardy comedies in another. The only group that looked random was ten cases on the top shelf alongside two trophies lying on their sides. He tilted his head to look at them, and they were for junior tennis, with Cam’s name on them, another facet to this man’s personality.
Up on this shelf was The Shawshank Redemption, nestled between The Empire Strikes Back and Guardians of the Galaxy.
“Why are these ones at the top separate?” he asked, and jumped when Cam spoke by his shoulder. He was losing it if Cam could get that close without him realizing.
“My favorite films. Well, at the moment. Pick one of those.”
Gabriel reached in and pulled one out at random, and snorted at the choice. “Armageddon?” he asked. He’d seen it before on TV, but he wouldn’t have expected it to be one of Cam’s top ten films.
“Yeah, it was the last film I really watched,” he said, and
tapped his temples. “I don’t even know why this one sticks out; it was full of clichés, but it stuck with me.”
And now Gabriel felt like shit. He hadn’t even thought about how a blind person watched a movie.
“We don’t have to watch anything,” he said quickly.
Cam handed him a coffee. “We can’t have sex for the next few hours, much as I’d like to.”
“You’re paying me for sex.”
“No, I’m paying you to stay with me on a boring off day. My manager has everything in hand, so it’s just me and Gidget.”
“But—”
“Anyway, I’d like to watch this with someone who isn’t former Special Forces like Six. He spends whole movies telling me that a particular action sequence isn’t feasible, or that a person wouldn’t do this or that in a certain way. He’s a real buzzkill.”
They went to the sofa, Cam pushing the disc into the machine then sitting next to Gabriel.
Gabriel watched him carefully, saw the way he walked with a brush of his calf against the table, knowing when to turn, how to stand, when to sit. There wasn’t much in the way of fumbling, like maybe he’d practiced this a lot. As soon as he sat down, Gidget jumped up next to him.
What about the practicalities of being blind? Who walked Gidget? How did Cam learn a new room, or read people’s reactions? Gabriel had so many questions, and he couldn’t ask any of them.
Asking them would make this whole thing horribly intimate and real.
“Oh, wait.” Cam pushed himself back off the sofa, Gidget padding after him. There was banging in the kitchen, then he walked back with an armful of chips. Gidget had a big chew bone. “Can’t watch Armageddon without snacks,” he announced, and dropped everything on the small table. “Help yourself. Not sure what’s there.”
“You have at least fifteen bags of Lays,” Gabriel said, and counted the rest. “Yep, mostly that.”
“Salt and vinegar. I love those. Pass me some.”
Gabriel placed a bag in his lap. “You need me to open them?”
“Yeah,” Cam said a little sadly. “Could you help me? I always worry I’ll open them upside down and look really stupid.”