by Amy Lane
Pat grimaced at him sourly. “That is way too much stuff I don’t like to do,” he said after a moment. “Can we talk about your love life some more?”
“I’m not planning on coming home until after the game Friday,” Ross said bluntly. “But Abner sees Piper at school sometimes, and I thought it would be best not to put that out there.”
The dawning comprehension on Pat’s face made Ross roll his eyes. “Oh my God—here you are, some weirdo Cupid Machiavelli guy, and you forgot that kids talk to each other? The actual fucking hell?”
“I forgot,” Pat muttered. “I’m sorry. It just seems like a stupid thing to keep secret from a kid, and I forgot that Tenner has to. And that’s even stupider. But you’re right. And smart about it. But don’t gloat. It’s so very unattractive.”
Ross grinned lazily and cracked his gum. “Sure, it is.”
“God. Such an asshole. I can’t believe you get laid ever.”
“Heh heh heh heh.”
Pat hurled the ball into his mitt with unnecessary force, and Ross kept returning it with almost languid motions, because playing the arrogant dumb jock was easy.
What was hard was keeping his excitement tamped down. God, he wanted to see Tenner. They’d swapped texts the night before, and while their messages said nothing in particular, they seemed to be saying everything at once.
They said Tenner had once possessed all the confidence in the world, and he was trying to rebuild that, brick by brick. They said this guy who had yielded so sweetly in the dark was going to be a prickly, interesting package when they were in bed, with the lights on, and Ross was taking him apart and putting him back together again.
Or that’s the way Ross kept imagining it. But he got the feeling Tenner was planning on fucking his own pound of flesh, and he didn’t think that was happening. Not that he minded turning over the reins every once in a while, but not this time.
Not when Tenner would sass back and boss back and argue with him every minute of what was promising to be a very awesome weekend in the middle of the week.
If it wasn’t for that niggling fear…. He’s got responsibilities, man. You can’t fuck up his life.
Yeah. That. Ross had to leave in seven and a half weeks. His job was important—and tramping through the charred portion of what had once been lush and thriving rainforest, working on reforestation in spite of hostile governments and stifling temperatures wasn’t going to be a cakewalk. Usually during his funding hiatuses from fieldwork, he’d troll the bar scene to his heart’s content, sometimes pick up a semivacation fling, someone who could tell him goodbye with a fond smile. He tended to do a lot of landscape planning and fundraising for companies that needed a good shove in the right direction, so he interacted with a lot of smart businesspeople who didn’t get their hands dirty and didn’t understand why he loved digging in their backyards. That’s okay—it made him a novel distraction, which meant leaving in a couple of weeks wasn’t a hardship. He loved a short romance. Donna, his last fly-by-night had even told him he left right when his flaws as a boyfriend would have started driving her mad.
He was messy, he was obnoxious, and he tended to be cavalier about things like time and rent and dealing with the everyday trivia that made up the lives of people with roots.
But he was really rocking in bed, and that wasn’t just vanity talking. That was the absolute knowledge that he brought everything to bed that he tried to bring to ordinary life—passion, consideration, a sense of adventure. He didn’t like to leave the bedroom until both parties were drenched in sweat and come and felt like they wouldn’t need sex again for a week.
He sort of made it a point of honor. And that way, when he said goodbye, people were like, “Great, hon, it’s been real, but there are parts of me that need at least six months before we do this again.”
But those people hadn’t had kids. Or a prickly ex-wife. Or so much to lose by giving it their all in bed.
Tenner had those things, and Ross had to continually remind himself of that. He didn’t want to hurt anybody, and blowing through Tenner Gibson’s life like a sexual hurricane could leave wreckage.
But as Ross recognized Tenner’s CR-V pulling into the parking lot, he felt a thrill coursing up and down his spine, splitting off and striking all erogenous zones north and south, east and west.
Maybe a very contained hurricane. Maybe a lightning storm.
People survived lightning all the time, right? It zapped through their system and left them with some fried nerve endings and an incredible story.
And as he watched Tenner’s wiry, compact body swing out of the car and come trotting toward the field, he ignored the common sense part of him, the voice of reason that he employed at work, fighting for funding, or in the field, wrestling to use limited resources in the most efficient way possible—the part that trekked through forests and witnessed the gift that nature was to man and the blight that man was on nature, and mourned that governments couldn’t find a way to worship the fragile ecosystem that bound the world together.
The part of him that chanted repeatedly that yeah, people got hit by lightning all the time and survived to tell the tale.
And the tale was—inevitably—that the lightning changed their lives.
TENNER WAS just as intent during practice as he was during a game. He kept his eye on the ball and the play at all times, and brother, when he snapped his wrist to throw that absurdly large ball, he put enough thunder behind it to take off the receiver’s mitt if they weren’t careful.
Ross spent most of the practice trying to distract him from that.
“Okay, Kelso, I’m hitting to you!” he called to the third baseman. Dirk Kelso rolled his eyes.
“You’ve said that three times. But you keep hitting to Gibson on first!”
“Do I?” Ross asked, throwing the ball up. With a lazy swing he sent it right over Tenner’s head. “I had no idea.”
“You suck!” Tenner snarled, launching himself from his alert semicrouch to run back and field the thing. God, he ran like a jackrabbit on speed. Absolutely focused, he passed his right fielder and damned near climbed the fence to catch the ball before it hit and sank.
“You really fucking do!” Pat complained. “Either hit it to someone else or we’ll make you run the bases and have Kelso bat ‘em out!”
“I suck at it,” Kelso admitted. “But if Ross doesn’t stop messing with Gibson’s head, I’ll do it.”
Tenner trotted back to his base, only slightly out of breath, before he launched the ball at Pat, who was pitching.
“Ouch!” Pat complained. “What did I ever do to you?”
“You brought him!” Tenner snapped. “Jesus, McTierney, pick on someone else!”
Ross cracked his gum and grinned. “Sure,” he said. “Or actually—Vlad, c’mon on in and hit. I’m gonna run bases!”
Dark-haired, sloe-eyed Vlad Kominski nodded and started in from left field just as Ross smacked the ball right at Tenner again—and then raced him to first base.
Tenner had to step out to get it, but when he saw Ross running, he didn’t hesitate to race for the bag.
Ross hadn’t been chasing balls all over creation, and he pumped his legs with manic glee as Tenner tried to radically slow down so he wouldn’t miss the base. He wasn’t going to make it, he wasn’t going to make it, until wait, Tenner slipped in the dust, and they were both going to make it and—
Ross spun wide, leaped over Tenner’s outstretched leg, and tagged the bag from behind.
Tenner turned toward him, ball in hand, and gaped. “You can’t do that!” he panted.
“Who says?”
“You’re out!”
“It’s batting practice. I’m not even in.”
“But… but…,” Tenner flailed, his mitt on one hand, the ball in the other. “What in the hell was that?”
Ross grinned and cracked his gum while Tenner looked for words, and the rest of the team dissolved where they stood.
“You have go
t balls,” Tenner finally managed to say—his first coherent words in about thirty seconds of the team giggling their asses off.
“No, Ten, you’ve got the ball. You should probably throw that in.” Ross batted his big baby blues for effect, and Tenner turned toward Pat so fast, Pat made ready to duck.
“Patrick, I’m going to kill him,” Tenner said with absolute certainty.
“You can’t, Ten-Spot. The wife is sort of attached.”
“She has a son.”
Pat gave him a begging look. “Please? Ross likes baseball. What can I say?”
“Feather pillows and Benadryl. No one would ever know.”
Pat held up his mitt. “Throw the ball, Ten. I’ll run it by Desi, see what she has to say.”
“Can you tell her to wait until it’s time for him to leave anyway?” Vlad asked. “We might win this season!”
“Speak for yourself,” Tenner grumbled, throwing the ball to Pat. “I’m just here to get dicked with.”
“Yeah, you are,” Ross added for Tenner’s ears only, rewarded when Tenner glared at him.
“Being an asshole will not get you into my pants,” Tenner muttered.
“No, but it will put that adorable little flush on your cheeks,” Ross teased, and Tenner’s look of outrage warmed his soul.
The crack of the ball called him back to practice, and Vlad lobbed the ball into center where it was easily caught and fielded.
Tenner gave a huff of exasperation.
“Not going anywhere,” Ross practically sang.
“You realize I had plans for tonight,” Tenner muttered.
“Am I still part of them?” Oh, Ross had no doubts. Tenner’s flush was high on his cheekbones and deep under his neck. They were going to tear each other apart.
“Not if I kick you in the balls for being an ass,” Tenner sang back. “Run!”
Oh, shit! Vlad really got hold of that one! Ross paused just long enough to pat Tenner’s ass like he would any teammate’s and then took off, running the bases with Vlad at his heels.
PRACTICE BROKE up eventually, leaving Ross and Tenner to help Pat pack up the equipment and haul it back to his car.
“Where’s your Tahoe?” Tenner asked. His CR-V was the only other thing left in the parking lot.
“Don’t need it,” Ross said cheerfully. “You pass my work on the way to your work. Hand me that duffel, okay, Pat?”
Pat grabbed Ross’s well-worn Army surplus duffel bag from the third seat in the Odyssey and threw it to Ross without batting an eyelash. “When should I send out a search party?”
“I’ll come home with you Friday night,” Ross said. “We’ve both got games.”
“Mm.” Pat cast a look at Tenner, who was standing near his car, pretending he didn’t notice Ross had pretty much announced his sleepover. “See you tomorrow, Ten.”
“Right.” Tenner gave a sort of noncommittal nod and turned toward his CR-V.
“You should run and get in the passenger side before he takes off without you,” Pat told Ross, shoving his equipment one last time so the hatch would shut.
“Very probably. I’ll call if I need anything.”
“A ride, an ambulance—”
“Advice, takeout. Let’s not get dramatic. I’m pretty sure he likes me.”
They both heard the beep as Tenner unlocked his vehicle and grimaced.
“Run,” Pat said. “Be really sure.”
Ross couldn’t help it—his smile about split his cheeks. But he ran and got to the passenger’s side, letting himself in right as Tenner was starting the car.
“I didn’t say you could come,” Tenner muttered as Ross threw his duffel in the back.
“You didn’t say I couldn’t.”
“Pulling that shit on the field—who told you that was cute?” Oh, he sounded riled as fuck.
“You did, when you didn’t kill me or let me charge you,” Ross told him, watching that flush actually rise to engulf his ears. “If you’d stood still like you were going to take a beating even though it was just practice, I would have known to not fuck around. But you’re competitive as hell. If you’d put your toe on it and leaned back, I would have known you expected some bullshit on the bag.”
Tenner let out a snort, and Ross knew he’d called it. “You are a running bag of bullshit, Ross McTierney, don’t you deceive yourself. If my father had seen that crap when I was in school, he would have burst a blood vessel in his head.”
“That’s no fun,” Ross said, a little sorry and a lot appalled. “My dad never even taught us baseball—he taught us pickle. I was in grade school before I realized baseball had a diamond and an outfield.”
“Mm, that actually sounds fun.”
“You don’t think it’s fun?” Oh no!
“Well, I do now!” Tenner said with a little laugh. “Nothing like not getting to play it for eight years, you know? But when I was in school, baseball was for scholarships, and fucking around was a sin.”
“We’re grown-ups now,” Ross said easily, storing the ache in his heart for a rainy day. “Baseball’s for fun and fucking around is a pleasure.”
Ah! There it was. Tenner’s reluctant grin.
“That’s the plan,” he said primly. “Have you eaten?”
“I’m starving for tube steak.”
And that made him chortle. “I’ve got actual food in the fridge!” he protested when he could breathe. “Like, we can take turns in the shower and eat and relax and….” He blushed. “And see what happens.”
“Sure,” Ross lied. “We’ll see what happens.”
Yeah, Ross could eat. He planned to eat. But first, he planned to make Tenner come, hard, and then there could be showers. Ross was going to wring climaxes out of Tenner Gibson like a washcloth, making him limp with sex and sweat and pleasure.
And after Tenner got up in the morning and stumbled into work, wondering what had hit him, Ross was going to do the same thing when they got home. With one night’s worth of exception, this man hadn’t had sex that satisfied him in more than eight years. Ross was going to make it his personal mission to redress that heinous wrong.
Yup. That was the plan.
Ross gave Tenner his space as he opened the door and made his way into the house, thinking about a surprise kiss and then some slamming sex against the door.
But first they had to not let Joe the cat out, and then, when they were all situated inside, Tenner hit the lights, and Ross got a look into the kitchen and saw that the table had been set for two, and there were flowers on it.
His plan for ravishing Tenner fizzled to a puzzled halt.
The guy had brought flowers. And whatever he had in the fridge, it probably wasn’t mac and cheese and hot dogs.
Ross abruptly changed strategies. Reaching out, he snagged Tenner’s hips and pulled him in so Ross could nibble on the back of his neck. It was tangy with sweat, and Ross actually shuddered as he reminded himself that he’d switched from ravishment to seduction.
“I’ll go shower in the guest room,” he murmured. “You go upstairs. We’ll meet down here.”
Tenner didn’t quite melt—probably for the same reasons Ross was holding back. He’d gone to some lengths to make this special. Ross had to let him.
“Fine. There’s, uh, wine or beer or soda or milk or—”
The sweetness would kill him. He closed his eyes and nuzzled Tenner’s ear. “Go before I ruin all your plans.”
He let go and turned resolutely to the guest room, duffel in hand. God, he’d been right. He was in so over his head.
That didn’t stop him from making an effort. No, he didn’t have silk pajamas, but he figured sleep pants and a T-shirt with a little bit of aftershave would do. He still beat Tenner to the kitchen, and as he pulled the bottle of wine out of the refrigerator—chilled white, his favorite—and poked through the offerings for dinner, he hoped he wouldn’t be too disappointed.
In addition to the regular groceries, and Ten kept a well-stocked fridge, probably
mostly for Piper’s sake, there was a plastic container of steaks marinating and a salad-in-a-bag.
Bingo.
Easy dinner for two guys making a late start. It was like Ross could read his mind.
He preheated the oven and pulled the broiling pan out from under the stove, then poured himself a glass of wine before he got comfortable in Tenner’s kitchen.
He’d gotten the steaks in when it occurred to him Tenner was taking a long damned time.
“Tenner?” he called, coming around the corner. “Uhm, you having second thoughts? It’s only dinner.”
“Coming!” Tenner called back, so quickly Ross had to wonder if he hadn’t been staring in the mirror, asking himself what in the hell he was doing.
Well, that was understandable too.
Because it wasn’t just dinner.
This here had taken preparation and care. Steaks, wine, flowers—the evening had all the hallmarks of a man who hadn’t dated in a while and who wanted to do things right.
“What?” Tenner asked irritably as he trotted down the stairs. “You were expecting a peignoir?”
“I didn’t expect us to be twins,” Ross said, hiding his laugh behind his hand. Plaid sleep pants—the same plaid—and white T-shirt. “I take it Target had a sale?”
“Is there any other place to shop?” Tenner asked sourly. “I mean, I seem to remember spending a lot of disposable income at PacSun and places like that, but then there was Piper and interview suits and—”
“Slacks and a button-down,” Ross finished sympathetically. “Yeah. I do jeans and a button-down, but that’s because I’m a consultant and I can flaunt the bullshit like a rock star.”
Tenner rolled his eyes. “You’d wear jeans if you knew the dress code stated specifically that anyone wearing jeans would be skinned like a fish.”
Ross had to shrug. “Yeah, that’s fair. I mean, when you’re tramping through deforested wastelands and trying to save the world, you don’t really think about the clothes on your back.”
Tenner’s narrowed eyes told him he’d caught the self-important swagger added in there for spice. “You gonna tip your hat, pardnuh? I mean, you can’t be John Wayne of the wasteland if you don’t got a hat to tip.”