Dreamspinner Press Years One & Two Greatest Hits

by J. M. Colail

  “You and Maria just rub each other the wrong way. No need to hide it,” Jack answered her amusedly.

  “Well, I don’t have to like her; I’m not married to her,” she teased, “but I won’t deny it’ll be nice, for both of us, when all this is over again.”

  She was sorting the papers, which were strewn haphazardly across Jack’s desk as usual. “Your calendar is clear for the rest of the day. Would it be okay if I leave a little early tonight? My husband has a doctor’s appointment and he wanted me to be there. Annemarie will be here to fill in for me if you need anything.”

  Jack looked up from what he was signing. “Yeah, sure. In fact I may leave early as well. I don’t get the chance very often.”

  As he returned his gaze to his papers, she smiled at him in a motherly fashion. She knew he wasn’t going home to his wife, but since it was none of her business, she knew better than to tell him she knew. She only wished she could be at the office to cover for him like she had done so many times before.

  “Well, would you like to go over your calendar for tomorrow now or shall we do it in the morning?” she asked after he gave her the signed papers back.

  “Tomorrow’s fine, Gertje. Go on and say hi to Eddy for me.” He shot her a toothy smile and she gave him an appreciative look back as she left his office and closed the door behind her.

  She worried about him. Maria wasn’t stupid, and all this sneaking around was bound to come to his wife’s attention sooner or later.

  JACK HAD called Lucas to arrange to meet a little earlier, but he was still the first one to arrive. Luckily he had his own key to Lucas’s apartment now.

  Lucas burst through the door just a few minutes later and they barely made it to the bedroom as Lucas hastily pulled his clothes off while hungrily attacking Jack’s mouth. When he realized Jack was less eager, he stopped.

  “What’s wrong?”

  Jack gave him an amused smile. “I was going to say we have all the time in the world tonight. Maria won’t be home until around midnight, so we can take it slow.”

  “Are you telling me I’m wearing you out, old man?” Lucas answered teasingly.

  “No, I’m telling you we have time for dinner together, maybe watch a movie….”

  Lucas threw Jack a mock disappointed look.

  “But since you’re practically naked already….” Jack looked teasingly at Lucas, knowing the careful scrutiny would make his young lover nervous, before launching himself at Lucas, wrapping his arms around him and cupping the Brit’s ass with his hands, pulling him closer to his growing bulge. “You can have your way with me first.”

  Lucas didn’t waste any time as he grabbed on to Jack, wrapping his legs around the American’s hips. The two of them fell onto the bed and they both laughed as the basic Ikea creaked under the onslaught.

  “For a moment there I thought we were going to end up on the floor,” Lucas admitted.

  “Well, as long as we don’t crash into the downstairs neighbor’s room, I don’t care where we land.”

  Jack gently brushed the curls away from Lucas’s forehead and the young man stopped chuckling. “God, I love you.”

  Lucas smiled quietly as Jack shifted his weight so he was completely on top of him.

  THE SOUND of a cell phone woke Lucas. He realized the warm body leaving his arms was Jack getting up to answer the phone, and it dawned on him they had fallen asleep, and that he had no idea what time it was.

  They had made love slowly and easily, by now so used to the way their bodies reacted to each other that it was comforting, but by no means dull. Jack treated Lucas to a slow teasing blow job, right up to the point where Lucas thought he wouldn’t be able to take any more, and then left him hanging, to crawl up next to him, asking to be fucked. Lucas could never resist Jack when he was that needy, because Jack never failed to give himself completely to the feeling of being possessed by his lover. And Lucas would do absolutely anything to make the American’s body shake and shudder from the strength of the orgasm he gave him. They stayed close together afterward, enjoying the feel of the shivers and the aftershocks, until their melted bodies succumbed to sleep.

  Jack lay down beside Lucas again, shaking the young man out of his pleasant reverie.

  “Will you marry me?”

  Lucas wrinkled his forehead and smiled. “What are you talking about?”

  Jack looked at Lucas with so much love in his eyes, he knew he could only nod, but he was curious to know what had prompted this sudden question.

  “Gertje just called,” Jack explained. “It’s all over the news. They passed the law, Lucas. All they have to do is publish it and people of the same sex can get married in this country.”

  “Well, even so, I don’t think you can marry me before you divorce Maria.”

  Jack leaned in to tenderly kiss his young lover. “I know, but… it just felt good to ask you, that’s all.”

  “What time is it?” Lucas asked quietly, bringing them all the way back to earth.

  “Time to leave, I’m afraid.”

  JACK ARRIVED home just before eleven, hoping that would give him plenty of time to shower and crawl into bed, before Maria arrived home from her Women’s Club visit to the Ghent Film festival. No such luck, though.

  When he walked in he could see the light was on in the library and that could only mean that Maria had come home before him. For a moment he thought he could get away with quietly making his way upstairs, but realized it would only delay the inevitable, so he walked over to where Maria was sitting underneath a reading lamp with a book.

  “You’re home early.” His voice sounded loud in the quiet room.

  “And you’re late, Mr. Ambassador.”

  Whenever she used that term, her voice was usually soft and teasing, but that wasn’t the case now.

  “Yeah, I got held up.” He tried to stay vague.

  “Meeting?” Maria asked, icy cold.

  “Yes, something like that.” Jack could sense he was treading on thin ice.

  “According to your secretary, you left early today. You should really get your stories straight if you’re going to lie to me, Jack.” She looked up piercing him with her dark eyes.

  “Actually Mrs. Claessens left before me so she wouldn’t know, now would she?” Jack tried.

  “It wasn’t your little adoring fan I talked to, Jack, it was the young girl, Annemarie.”

  Jack wondered for a moment whether he should just tell her, but she looked angry and upset, and the only way they could have a decent conversation would be if she were calm and relaxed. He would just have to play it by ear.

  “She’s just a general secretary; she wouldn’t know my calendar. You’re making a mountain out of a molehill, Maire. I’m tired; I’m going to bed.”

  “Not so fast, buster. You really think you can keep your pathetic little secret from me, don’t you? Don’t be ridiculous.”

  Jack smiled, trying to defuse the situation. “What are you talking about?”

  “I know about you and your… your pretty little boyfriend.” She narrowed her eyes at him as she spat out that last word. “In fact, I’ve known for weeks.”

  Jack raised his eyebrows and gave her a “what are you rambling about” look.

  “I just couldn’t believe you’d really be so stupid to jeopardize our lives this way.”

  Jack knew she wasn’t kidding. They were going to play hardball and Maria always played to win, but he wasn’t about to deny Lucas.

  “I don’t see that much has changed in our lives, Maria.” He said reasonably. “You still go to your American Women’s Club. You’re still organizing the social events of the Embassy. You are still the Ambassador’s wife.”

  He could tell she was regaining her cool.

  “I’ve seen you look at other men, I’ve even wondered….”

  “About what?”

  “About where you’re real interests lay. But I didn’t care.”

  Now she was showing her real colors.


  “Of course you didn’t care. As long as you got what you wanted out of this relationship, right?”

  Maria got up from her chair and leaned on the desk between them. “Because I never thought you’d be prepared to risk everything by screwing around behind my back, Jack. We are a good partnership, what the hell did you think you were doing?”

  Jack sighed, trying to gather his thoughts, trying to gather his courage. What would happen if he just told her he loved Lucas? That he could no longer live without him and that they should quietly get a divorce, so she at least could save face?

  He could tell she was softening a bit, cocking her head to one side like she always did when she was trying to get him to see things her way. “We’ve got all we want here, why are you risking it like this?”

  He couldn’t back down now. “Well, maybe you have all you want….”

  She shrugged and started to look defensive again. “Oh, so I’m not good enough anymore? Is that it? After all I’ve done for your career!”

  “Maria, you know it’s not like that.”

  “That’s all the thanks I get? My wonderful, dependable ambassador husband is screwing around behind my back, and of all the bloody people he could do it with, he chooses to shag a little rent boy from the British embassy.”

  “You don’t know what you’re talking about. He didn’t need to persuade me.” Jack tried to stay calm and pretend he didn’t hear her take a stab at Lucas.

  “I won’t ask what he’s got that I haven’t since that’s bloody obvious, but Christ, Jack - why now? Why him?” She was mellowing again, her tone less angry. Right now, he hated how well they knew each other. He hated the fact that he could read her like a thermometer and he knew that she could do the same with him.

  “I wish I knew, Maire. I wish I knew why. It would make it easier to explain why I’ve kept those feelings at bay for so long, but now I can’t anymore.”

  “No, you wouldn’t know, would you?” Maria spat out, furious at hearing Jack use her nickname during an argument. “If you did, that would mean you were thinking for yourself instead of letting your fucking dick do it for you! You screw up our lives, make me a laughing stock, and you don’t know?” Maria launched herself at Jack and he grabbed her hands, preventing her from hitting him.

  Jack closed his eyes, blindly fending her off, trying to keep himself from lashing out as she had done. He didn’t want to lose control of himself.

  “Maria, it’s…. I love him.” There it was. Jack hadn’t said Lucas’s name, but he knew that she knew who he meant. He couldn’t deny his love for Lucas, not to her. She deserved the truth from him.

  Maria backed off, breathing hard, her hair unraveling from her always neatly tied up bun.

  “Love? Don’t talk to me about love. You just used me, and this is all the thanks I get?”

  Jack inhaled deeply, trying to catch his breath as well. “I used you no more than you used me. My position got you exactly where you wanted to be, Maria.”

  “So what? In time, you’ll find out that your little tramp is just using you too!”

  Time to defend Lucas, since Lucas wasn’t here to do it himself. “Why would he use me, eh? It’s not like he can benefit from this getting out. It’s not as if my contacts will help his career, not like they’ve helped yours, anyway.”

  “Don’t be naïve, Jack. He probably collects Ambassadors like trophies, then moves on to another country, another prime piece of forbidden ass,” she said with this superior, mocking look on her face that Jack had always loathed.

  “He’s not like that, Maire. You don’t know him.”

  “Oh, and you do, after a few weeks of letting your dick do the talking? Tell me another one….” She was seething.

  Jack realized that if he didn’t keep his cool now, they would both end up in the newspapers.

  But Maria wasn’t backing down yet. “I can’t believe you would be this selfish! What has he done to you? If you’d thought of me even once, you wouldn’t have done it at all. You’re a fool, Jack.”

  Jack swallowed. “I did think of you. I wanted you to be able to walk away from this with your head held high.”

  Maria snorted. “Walk away? You can forget that! This stops here and now!”

  “Says who?”

  “Says me, as usual.”

  “You can no longer dictate my life the way you’ve been doing for the past fifteen years, Maria.”

  Maria threw him a disgusted look. “What?”

  “You know what I mean.” Jack wasn’t about to back down now.

  “You mean you’re not going to stop this foolery? Oh, for God’s sake, Jack, wake up!”

  “I can’t do it anymore. I can’t keep up this charade any longer.”

  “My point exactly. Get rid of him.”

  “And what? Return to this lie of a marriage?”

  “Jack, it’s not a lie; we make a good team. Everyone says so….” Maria was turning on the charm again and he so didn’t want this.

  “We’ve been more friends than lovers for years, Maire.”

  She shook her head. “And what’s wrong with that? That’s more than many couples have.”

  “I want more. I need more. Maria… I love him; I can’t push that away.”

  “It’s an affair, Jack, a stupid affair. It can only ruin us if we let it.”

  “I’ve felt more alive with him than I have in the past twenty years.”

  She laughed. “Oh, for Christ’s sake, listen to yourself. You sound like a cheap novel.”

  “Maria, you can move on from this. I’m sure you can have your own career. You have an excellent reputation in the foreign service.”

  “Fuck off, Jack! I don’t want to move on, I want what I have here and now. Don’t you think for one second I’m going to make this easy for you and your little tramp.” She clenched her fists until her knuckles turned white. For a moment he thought she would try and hit him again. “Don’t you realize what this will do to us?”

  “Not if we handle it right, Maria. Lots of people get divorced.”

  “You will ruin everything we’ve worked for. All your successes will be forgotten.”

  Jack tried to appease her by smiling. “No, they won’t, not….”

  “All people will remember is the scandal of the Ambassador and his little British boyfriend.”

  “Not if we handle this carefully.”

  “Carefully? Not bloody likely, if you think he’s getting off scot-free you have another thing coming.”

  “Leave him out of it, Maria!”

  “I’ll make sure the right people at the British Embassy hear about this.”

  “Maria, don’t… don’t drag his life through the mud as well.”

  “And I suppose Lucy knew about this?”

  “You mean Lucy wasn’t the one who told you?”

  “No, it wasn’t. Lucy disappeared without a word. But you have two people covering up for you, your ‘secretary’ and your Secret Service agent—only they should learn to get their stories straight.”

  “Why did you have to drag them into it?”

  “Because they think I’m stupid. They think they can pull the wool over my eyes.”

  “Well, I can assure you, Gertje certainly doesn’t think you’re stupid.”

  “Oh, she can’t see beyond her wonderful ‘Mr. Ambassador.’”

  This wasn’t going anywhere. “Maire, let’s talk about this when we’re both a little calmer, okay?”

  “There’s nothing to talk about. You tell lover boy it’s over and we get back to work. Otherwise neither of you will be welcome in diplomatic circles ever again by the time I’m finished!”

  “Be sensible, Maria. Get out of this gracefully or you won’t have a reputation left either.”

  “Let me know whether you want your little tramp or me. Your reputation is my reputation, you stupid man, and now….” She looked down at her watch. “I’m going to bed… alone. I’ll see you at breakfast.”

  “Don
’t count on it,” Jack couldn’t help saying.

  Chapter Seventeen

  IT WAS way past midnight when Lucas was awakened by the doorbell. There wasn’t a single person he could think of who would have the audacity to buzz him at this hour on a work day, unless the building was on fire or something equally dire. He scrounged around in the dark for a pair of trousers and slipped into them half way between the bedroom and the living room.

  As he opened the door, he covered his eyes with his hand, shielding them from the glare of the hallway lights.

  “Jack, what the….”

  “I told her, Luke.”

  “Well, don’t just stand there. Come in! Did she throw you out?” Lucas was rubbing the sleep out of his eyes, trying to make them focus. “You want some tea?”

  Jack dropped to the couch and waited until Lucas came back with two steaming cups.

  “She was home already when I got there. She said she knew… about us.”

  Lucas, now fully awake, tried to give his lover an understanding look as he sat down next to him on the couch. “Did Lucy tell her?” His voice was barely audible.

  Jack leaned against Lucas, shaking his head as he rested it on the young man’s shoulder. “I asked her for a divorce and she said no.”

  Lucas’s heart leapt at hearing Jack’s confession. He hated to see his lover this sad, but at the same moment, he was almost jumping for joy over the fact that Jack had so clearly chosen him.

  He tried to keep his voice neutral when he spoke. “I’m sure she just needs time to think about it, Jack. Once the night has passed and she realizes she’s truly lost you, she’ll understand it’s better to do this quietly and in some… mutually understanding kind of way. She won’t choose to fight about it and make it a big public spectacle.” He placed his hand gently on Jack’s thigh as Jack curled against him, so he did what his heart urged him to do and wrapped his arms around his lover. They stayed like that for a while, not talking or even looking at each other, just staying close together. Lucas felt Jack relaxing in his arms and started to think he could get used to this. “You can stay here, Jack.”