by Vivien Dean
“For what?”
“For everything. Anything.” He felt like he was going to burst out of his skin and smiling now was merely a way to accommodate that. “For giving me hope, even though I know that’s not what this is about.”
Cruz caressed the pulse point in Brody’s wrist for a moment before joining their hands. Silently, he led Brody away from the sink.
Chapter Fifteen
THEY decided on Frasier, because it was funny and escapist and meant not having to raid the DVDs upstairs and risking another run-in with Bella. Though Brody had laughed it off, Cruz didn’t want to put him through her mouthiness again. She hadn’t always been this way, but with her upcoming senior year and the stress of Mariana’s illness, she’d found new ways to test her boundaries. His parents kept saying it was a phase, but even Cece had gotten annoyed with her at supper tonight. Whatever it was, the sooner it passed, the happier everybody was going to be. Cruz wanted his old sister back. This new one was a pain in the ass.
He forgot about Bella and the rest of them with Brody at his side, though. They sat on the floor with their backs against the futon, thighs touching, leaning into each other when they laughed too hard. Cruz threw his arm around Brody’s back early on, ready to withdraw if Brody reacted in any way negatively, but nothing had come except Brody pressing closer, their body heat mingling in fresh, new ways.
Like dinner and the movie before, it was easy. A natural fit. Brody chattered more than Cruz did, but he never asked embarrassing questions about why Cruz didn’t, instead pausing at just the right moments to give Cruz the time to jump in. Those times when they were both silent weren’t awkward either, because they both understood the necessity of retreating into their heads.
What wasn’t so simple was ignoring his body’s responses to Brody’s proximity. Watching television in this environment was the longest personal contact they’d had with each other. Nobody interrupted them. Nobody was sitting behind them, potentially judging them for public affection. Cruz’s body recognized this long before his mind caught up. It heated when Brody’s fingers rested briefly on his thigh. It shivered when they both turned their heads at the same time and Brody’s beard skimmed across Cruz’s cheek. It kept begging Cruz for more, long past the moment Cruz felt he’d reached the limits of propriety.
He was grateful when Frasier ended and the channel switched to a B movie about a too-skinny actress they didn’t recognize out for revenge for her murdered brother. It gave him precious time to regroup as he reached for the remote.
“You’re turning it off?” Brody asked.
Cruz paused. “Do you really want to watch this?”
“It might be fun.”
“It looks stupid.”
“So we make fun of it if it’s that bad. At least we know she’s guaranteed to win in the end.”
And Brody needed to see the good guys beat the bad right now. Cruz didn’t need him to spell it out to know that. “Do you want to turn it into a drinking game?”
A playful gleam appeared in Brody’s eyes. “Are you trying to get me drunk so you can take advantage of me?”
Cruz clasped a hand over his chest in mock offense. “Now would I do something like that?”
“I hope so.”
He burst into laughter at the glib response. “Be right back.”
Neither of his parents drank much, but Cruz found some old schnapps in the back of a cupboard and an unopened bottle of dessert wine somebody had given them as a gift the previous Christmas. When he poked his head into the living room to ask if he could have them, Cece peered over her reading glasses at him.
“I like this one,” she said. “Why are you trying to send him into a diabetic coma?”
“He’s had a really rough week.”
She waved him off. “Don’t blame me if you’re sick in the morning.”
Brody regarded both bottles with good humor, settling for the wine first. The rules were simple. For each garment the actress shed while holding an automatic weapon: one shot. For each time she referenced her dead brother: one shot. For each bad guy with an accent: two shots.
“We’re going to be drunk before it gets to the second act,” Brody said with a laugh.
It wasn’t as bad as that, but by the time she faced off with the rotund mastermind behind the murder, Brody was giggling like a teenage girl because Cruz couldn’t stop making up his own dialogue for the worst of the actors. Brody got more touchy-feely as well, finally collapsing onto Cruz’s lap when the credits started rolling.
He rolled over until his head rested on Cruz’s thighs, the rest of him stretched out perpendicular on the floor. “Do you think ghosts get drunk if their people get drunk?”
The out-of-the-blue question was as silly as anything Cruz had been doing, but he actually knew the answer to this. “Not that I’ve seen.”
“Mine are different, though.”
“No, yours are mean. Too mean to appreciate a good buzz.”
Brody’s smile faded. “I hope Etienne’s friend is okay. She took a few knocks before she went back inside the house.”
“She’s fine,” Cruz assured. “Can we stop talking about ghosts, please? The point here is to be having a good time, not rehashing what we both already know.”
“You know it.” Brody’s lashes ducked as he averted his gaze. “I’m just along for the ride, it feels like.”
“Are you kidding? We wouldn’t have as much info as we do if it wasn’t for you.”
“But I can’t change anything.”
“You’ve already changed things.” Cupping the side of Brody’s face, Cruz guided him until he was looking up again. “Look at us. If you hadn’t opened up about what was going on, I don’t think we’d be here right now.”
“That doesn’t count.”
“Why? Because you can’t measure it and put it on a spreadsheet? Not everything’s that easy.”
Brody rubbed his cheeks against Cruz’s palm, tickling him with the softness of his beard. “You make it look simple. How do you always know the right thing to say? You never even have doubts.”
“Here’s a secret, then.” He lowered his voice to a whisper. “I’m a big faker.”
Brody snorted. “Yeah, right.”
“No, seriously.” Could he tell the whole truth about why he’d taken the job? If he didn’t do it now, what would happen if it came out later? “You don’t know what it’s like being the oldest of so many kids. I’ve always had to be the responsible one. The one in charge. Mom and Dad have always worked, so what choice did they have? But there’s no wiggle room when you’re ten years old, and you have a baby sister who can’t even feed herself and a kid brother who knows all the best ways to get hurt, and you have no idea what you’re doing. You have to just do it. Fake it till you make it.”
“I still find it hard to believe.”
“That doesn’t make it less true,” Cruz insisted. “Take Mariana. When we found out about the cancer, I lost it. I locked myself in my apartment and cried for hours. Didn’t answer my phone. Ignored the door. But I couldn’t let her see any of that. She needed us to be strong. So for her, I was. On the outside.”
“I bet you don’t cry anymore, though.”
“Well, no. Because she’s going to beat it.”
“Are you sure?”
“Of course I’m sure.”
In spite of Cruz’s assertions, Brody remained unperturbed by what he was saying. On top of that, he was still questioning it. “The risk is still there, though. Otherwise you wouldn’t have come running back when she got sick again.”
“Where are you going with this?”
Brody sat up, twisting until he was on his knees next to Cruz. The eyes he leveled at him weren’t quite as unfocused as they’d been when he was lying down, his body not as uncoordinated. When he pressed his hand flat over Cruz’s heart, Cruz realized he’d been playing earlier, exaggerating the effects of the alcohol to lighten their respective moods.
Apparently they were
both charlatans.
“The human brain is an amazing thing,” Brody said. “We’re only just beginning to see the lengths it will take to protect us.”
“This sounds like psychology, not neuroscience.”
“I’m convinced it’s both. There’s no other explanation for the way we adapt. The way we end up being completely unique and still the same.”
He’d been wrong. Brody was babbling. Cruz gave him a wry smile. “I think we’re about done with our drinking game and ready to move on to some coffee.”
But when he started to rise, Brody pushed him back down. “Listen. You feel like a fake, right? Well, we all do. And I’m not discounting how hard it was to put a brave face on for Mariana. But what do you think ‘fake it till you make it’ means? You adapted. You learned. Your beautiful brain took that confidence you put on every day for your sister and made it real. That’s what I’m talking about. That’s what’s so damn sexy about you.”
Compliments were nothing new to Cruz. Men had extolled his virtues for years in order to get into his pants. Boyfriends had called him “cute” or “hot” before drifting away or lapsing into complaints about his split attentions. His intelligence had been an afterthought, while other attributes sometimes didn’t even register. He’d never let it bother him, because he recognized that he did the same thing. He liked smart guys, but he didn’t notice brains first. Hadn’t he fixated on how gorgeous Brody was from the beginning? Finding out he was brilliant too had been a treat later on, and though he couldn’t separate the two now, it had taken him time and that astounding first date.
Brody had viewed him differently from the start. For that, he deserved better.
“I need to tell you something.” Since Brody wasn’t breaking the connection between them, Cruz took advantage of it and grasped his wrist. “I know I asked to not talk about the ghosts, but I have to get this off my chest.” He took a deep breath. Do or die. God, he hated that expression. “Your father’s case was my first.”
The tendons beneath his fingertips tensed, though Brody remained outwardly calm. “What do you mean?”
“I mean, Etienne trained me on what to do for the sweeps. Pretty thoroughly, I might add. But I’d never done it in the real world before you and I did your dad’s house. Etienne was in the hospital when your dad accepted that crazy deal, but it would’ve been a couple months before he could actually do it. He even tried using that as the reason to turn down the job. Loren was the one who was so adamant, and he would’ve gone to somebody else, somebody not nearly as ethical as Etienne, to do it. So Etienne offered me the job. He knew I could use the money to help my parents pay for some of Mariana’s hospital bills. And the only reason I said yes was because he was absolutely convinced there weren’t any ghosts there. Which, in his defense, is actually true.”
“So… are you saying I was right?”
“About the fraud? No. I can show you all the correspondence between them if you want. Etienne made it clear up front that he didn’t believe Loren had a real case.” Cruz paused. “The only part of the truth that got stretched was my work experience.”
“As in, you didn’t have any.”
Cruz cringed at how awful it made him sound, but he had to say, “Right.”
When Brody looked down at their hands, Cruz tried to imagine what was going through his head. What was he seeing? Was it superficial, the contrast of his dark skin against Brody’s light? Or was it deeper, like the tension in both of them as they each tried to keep the other in place? It might’ve been the first time since they’d met that he couldn’t read Brody, and he hated it. Look up, he wanted to beg. Let me see you.
Then he did. And Cruz still wasn’t sure what he’d been thinking.
“Thank you for telling me the truth,” Brody said.
Cruz waited for more, but it didn’t come. “Aren’t you angry?”
“No. Am I disappointed? Yeah, a little. But not angry.”
“Why?”
“Because I saw you that day. I was there for the whole thing. You were thorough, and I know you hate this word, but you were confident too. You knew what you were doing even if it was your first time. I can’t be mad that you were trying to do the best job you knew how. I’m annoyed at my dad for not negotiating a better rate if Etienne thought it wasn’t a real job, but that’s for him and me to work out. That’s got nothing to do with you.”
The sincerity in his eyes was undeniable. “I expected you to hate me,” Cruz admitted.
Brody’s mouth canted. “You’re lucky. If you’d told me before I had the chance to get to know you, I might’ve. But don’t take this as blanket permission to hold back the truth in the future. This was a one-time special deal. Take it or leave it.”
It wasn’t even a debate. “I’ll take it.”
To seal the deal, he leaned in for a kiss, his heart leaping when Brody mirrored the movement. They came together with a parting of lips, the tips of their tongues teasing each other in a flurry of heat before pulling away again.
“I expected us to be at this part of our date a lot sooner than this,” Brody said.
Cruz smiled. “If you hadn’t picked the movie, we would’ve.”
“So it’s my fault we’re only getting around to the good stuff now?”
“You’ve got that wrong.” With a tug, Brody was back on his lap, sitting this time, the way Cruz had longed for but didn’t dare ask. “This whole night has been the good stuff.”
Brody’s intake of breath was audible. When his gaze ducked to Cruz’s mouth, he licked his lips.
Cruz groaned. “You’re killing me here.”
“That makes two of us.”
With the last barriers between them stripped away, their next kiss was hungrier, harder, a sharp testimony to how deep their desires ran. Cruz wrapped his arms around Brody’s back, letting his hands roam and explore to his heart’s content. He wanted to memorize the map of this man’s flesh, learn it every way possible, through touch for now, through other means later on. Nothing had ever felt this imperative. Each second with Brody in his embrace only heightened that desire.
Brody was the one to pull back first. His lips were swollen from the ferocity of their kisses, and his pupils had overpowered any trace of the shadows that usually darkened his eyes. “Can they hear us upstairs?” he whispered.
Cruz grinned. “I wouldn’t suggest screaming out my name, but no, we have enough privacy. Why? Are you into dirty talk and you’re holding back on me?”
“No holding back.” He swallowed. God, even his neck was sexy. Cruz had the sudden urge to lick along the rough edge of his beard, all the way to his ear. “Just determining my parameters.”
“You’re such a scientist,” Cruz said with a laugh, but he meant it with every ounce of affection he felt, and in case Brody didn’t get that from his tone, he proved it with another round of kisses.
They seemed to last forever. Every time he had to break away to catch his breath, Brody started nuzzling the curve of his shoulder, his beard scraping against his heated skin to send shivers rolling down his spine. When it was Brody who needed air, Cruz explored the rest of his face, trailing his lips over Brody’s brow, his temple, down the arch of his cheek.
He discovered Brody’s weakness when his fingers skimmed along Brody’s waist.
With a startled gasp, Brody tore away from Cruz’s mouth and twisted sideways, nearly toppling onto the floor until Cruz grabbed his hips.
Cruz’s eyes widened. “You’re ticklish.”
“Am not.”
“Really?”
When he tried to touch Brody’s waist again, Brody grabbed his wrist to stop him. “Fine. I’m ticklish. Now stop.” Though he thought about trying again, Cruz let his hand slide back down to Brody’s hip. He’d been raised in a house that respected people’s opinions—Bella’s behavior notwithstanding—and he was smart enough to understand that no really did mean no. Brody didn’t like to be tickled? Simple. Cruz wouldn’t tickle him.
&nbs
p; Instead, he shifted his seated position to make it more obvious to Brody that he was hard. He already knew Brody was. All he had to do was glance down to see the proof of that. Very definitive, surprisingly thick proof.
Brody gasped when his weight resettled. He met Cruz’s gaze with a disarming directness that made Cruz very glad he was already on the floor. “Are we taking it that far?” Brody asked.
“Only if you want to.”
Brody’s reply was to grab the hem of the shirt he wore and pull it over his head. He tossed it into Cruz’s face and announced, “Your turn.”
He didn’t waste any time. When they were both bare-chested, Brody ran his hands along Cruz’s shoulders. “You do not just sit at a computer all day.”
“I do,” Cruz countered. “But I swim at the gym three nights a week.”
Few men had been as appreciative as Brody was in the next few minutes. Cruz leaned against the futon to give him full access, his breath catching when Brody followed the line of his hands with the scald of his lips. Brody went from one side to the other, along his collarbone and then down to his navel, sliding off his lap at the last possible minute to nibble along the line of bared skin at the edge of his jeans. He seemed content with his attentions, but the more he touched Cruz, the more Cruz wanted his own turn.
He took it before Brody could go for his fly.
“Here.”
Rising, he pulled Brody to his feet too, until they stood toe to toe. The height difference was still annoying, but time would teach him how best to compensate for that. For now he took pleasure in the fact that he could bat Brody’s hands out of the way and take control of the moment, opening Brody’s pants to shove them down his legs.
“Wait, I need those.” Brody scooped his pants back up and fished out his wallet from the back pocket. When he pulled out a condom, he held it up between them and grinned. “Wanna flip for it?”
“Won’t have to.” He had to cross to the stairs where he’d abandoned his backpack, but it only took a few seconds to rejoin Brody at the futon with his own condom in hand. “You’re not the only one who comes prepared.”