Devlin and Garrick

by Cameron Dane

  Devlin Morgan would certainly be at the top of any gay man’s fantasy list, yet at the same time, he didn’t look like he craved that kind of attention. He definitely hadn’t fit in at that techno club, that was for sure. Gradyn didn’t get a vibe that Devlin would fit in at any type of bar or club designed for pick-ups--gay or straight. Something about him said that a simple, basic way of life would suit him like a second layer of skin. When Devlin confirmed over dinner that he was from a small town in Maine and loved it there, Gradyn put a check in the win column for his ability to read a person.

  The cool night air drifted in over the water on the bay and played with Devlin’s hair. Jesus, Gradyn could develop a hard-on just thinking about running his fingers through those dark locks. Shit, why stop there? Gradyn could see himself peeling off every piece of Devlin’s clothing, laying the man out on that cheap motel room comforter, and licking every inch of his body until Gradyn couldn’t stand it anymore and pushed his cock into Devlin Morgan’s tight virgin ass.

  Fuck, Gradyn nearly moaned right at their table, and had to cross his legs.

  He savored another swig of his cranberry juice and admired the view. The night sky and the calm, glassy water of the bay certainly had its beauty in full glory tonight, but Gradyn could not take his eyes off the man sitting across from him. Christ, he’d never been taken with another person in quite this way before, and he wasn’t entirely sure he could blame it on forced celibacy.

  It had been two and a half years since Gradyn’s life last afforded him an opportunity to be with another man, and he was still horny as hell for more of what Devlin had to offer. Gradyn had stayed away from alcohol tonight so that all of his senses remained sharp for when they returned to the motel. He didn’t want to miss a damned bit of the rest of this night by being inebriated in any way. During the course of their meal, Gradyn had noticed Devlin limit himself to one glass of beer and then switch over to drinking water, and Gradyn had to cover his involuntary smile when it happened. Devlin clearly wanted to be just as sober and fully aware the first time Gradyn took him as Gradyn himself wanted to be for that taking. That was a damned good thing for both of them; Gradyn had no interest in having sex with someone who wouldn’t remember the event in the morning.

  Devlin suddenly shifted in his chair. “Denny, you’re looking at me with something in your eyes that’s making me a little nervous.” His voice held a scratchy quality.

  Hunger. The guy had good instincts. And fuck, instinctively choosing to call him Denny rather than Gradyn or GC--particularly in the throes of fucking--had grabbed right at the soul of who Gradyn Connell was when he wasn’t creating characters for his work or picking up dates.

  It struck at the heart of who he was beneath all the labels in his current life.

  “Do I scare you?” Gradyn sometimes forgot he had an intimidating exterior right now.

  Devlin hesitated for a good long minute and studied Gradyn closely enough that the phantom hairs on Gradyn’s shaved neck felt like they stood on end.

  “No, you don’t scare me,” Devlin finally answered. “It’s just reminding me how little experience I have with men.”

  The tension eased out of Gradyn at that. Then he went tight all over again as he pictured what they had just come from doing in this man’s motel room. “You’ve sucked a cock or two before, newbie,” Gradyn stated, watching Devlin closely. “That blowjob did not have the technique or suppressed gag reflex of a first-timer.”

  Twinkle-lights running along the restaurant eaves highlighted the dots of color blooming on Devlin’s cheeks. “Weelllll, I had this friend in college...”

  “Oh yeah?” Gradyn quirked a brow when Devlin didn’t immediately go on. “Maybe I should have gone myself after all.” He stretched out his legs and linked his fingers against his stomach. “Tell me all about him.”

  From their secluded corner, Devlin glanced at the other tables scattered around the terrace and then looked over his shoulder to inside the full restaurant. “Shouldn’t we go?” he asked as his gaze met Gradyn’s again. “We’re finished eating. I don’t want to take up this table and rob our server of the tips he could be making with other diners.”

  Irritation nicked Gradyn for a split second, and then he reminded himself that this man had only known him for roughly four hours. “Let me ask you something, Devlin. Do I strike you as the type of man who doesn’t understand the life of a waiter and wouldn’t care if I shafted him just because I can?”

  Devlin went back to scrutinizing Gradyn with those intense silver eyes of his, and Gradyn found himself holding his breath, knowing it would sting more than it should if Devlin--a man he hadn’t even fucking known existed this morning--could think him capable of treating others like trash.

  “No, I guess not,” Devlin replied. With that answer, Gradyn exhaled his trapped breath. “I get the feeling that you know about real life, and that, no, you’re probably not some rich, clueless asshole.”

  With a bark of laughter that surprised him, Gradyn said, “Definitely not rich, and hopefully not clueless or an asshole.” Sobering just as fast as he’d found himself laughing, Gradyn held Devlin’s stare, and his voice turned thicker than he would have liked witnessed. “I knew I didn’t want to feel rushed with you tonight, so when I got up to use the restroom earlier, I told our waiter I would give him a tip that equaled our bill if he let us relax out here without a lot of disruption. I also told the manager that if he agreed, he could put one of his best bottles of wine on the tab and we would take it with us when we left.” Gradyn curled his hand around his neck and wished like hell he had hair to grab. “Maybe that’s a form of arrogance, I’m not sure, but I knew what I wanted, and all I could do was try not to make it happen at someone else’s expense.”

  A little smile turned up the edge of Devlin’s lips, and something similar lit his eyes. “I like what you did and how you went about it.” Slashes of pink crossed Devlin’s cheeks again, and his voice dropped to almost a whisper. “I like everything I know about you so far.”

  Good Christ, it could be Christmas morning the year he got a dirt bike from Santa all over again and Gradyn wouldn’t feel any giddier than he did right now.

  Fuck. This is bad.

  Gradyn didn’t care. “You’re not bad either, beautiful.” Giving in to the urge that had plagued him since they sat down to eat, Gradyn leaned across the table and scraped his lips across Devlin’s. The man made a needful little noise and took a fast lick at Gradyn’s mouth in return, and an innocent excitement that fueled every suppressed base desire clawed inside Gradyn to get free. Gradyn opened up for another taste. He curled his hand around the back of Devlin’s head and angled him for a deeper plundering. Silky-soft locks filled the spaces between Gradyn’s fingers, and he could fucking practically feel this man’s hair brushing up and down his cock and against his balls, tickling his flesh to the point of coming.

  Son of a mother. Gradyn’s prick swelled to meet that fantasy right where he sat. Pull away, Connell, before you drag him onto this table and fuck him in front of a crowd of hungry diners.

  Biting down another groan due to the twitch in his jeans, Gradyn eased back into his seat and rewound to where they’d lost track of their conversation. Oh, right. “So now that you know you have all the time in the world...” Jesus, what he would give to have a cigarette right now, and to hell with the laws and the fact that he didn’t smoke. “Tell me about your college boyfriend.”

  Devlin’s eyes were bright, his mouth was appropriately swollen, his hands shook, and it took him a full minute to find his voice again. All of that only made Gradyn want to touch and know him even more.

  “Definitely not a boyfriend,” Devlin shared, his voice almost normal again. “Just a friend. His name was Kevin--is Kevin, I should say. He’s alive and kicking and lives in Redemption. We’re actually still friends.”

  “Really?” Gradyn swirled his juice in his glass. “This gets more intriguing by the second.”

  “I wish,
but not really,” Devlin answered, his smile easy. “Kevin and I sort of knew each other in high school but we didn’t hang out or anything. We ended up at our local community college together, sharing a bunch of the same business classes that neither one of us really wanted to be taking.”

  “Gotcha.” Gradyn nodded. “Go on.”

  “So we’re in our second year, and by then we’d become pretty good friends. I had a small apartment; he was still at home so he came to my place most of the time to study or hang out. One night we were half-ass studying, listening to music, watching TV,” Devlin raised an eyebrow Gradyn’s way, “and also knocking back a few beers.”

  “Ah yes.” With his glass in his hand, Gradyn pointed at Devlin. “The old ‘we were drunk and something happened.’ An oldie but a goodie.”

  “Ah yes, indeed, but with a twist.” The smile on Devlin’s face infused his voice with animated passion. “I can’t remember what movie we were watching but it had one hell of a smokin’ love scene. Shit,” Devlin laughed, and it made the shots of silver in his eyes twinkle, “I’m not into chicks, and even I thought it was hot. Anyway, by the end of it I was sweating a little from looking at the actor’s tight ass and insane body, and Kevin was already full-out hard in his shorts. I’m not sure why, because I guess thinking back it might have been kind of weird, but right after that sex scene, we turned and looked at each other.”

  Devlin paused again. He put his elbow on the table and dropped his chin into his hand. His smile shifted to something soft, and Gradyn thought the change happened more for Devlin himself than for Gradyn or even anyone else who might happen to glance their way.

  “Kevin was suddenly about the sexiest guy I’d ever seen in my life,” Devlin shared, that not-so-secret grin still visible. “And when I glanced down, I could fucking see the shape of his erection against his shorts. When I looked back up from gaping at his crotch, he clearly knew I had checked out his junk. He didn’t yell or hit me or run away though. As soon as I processed that something in him might be interested, I threw myself at him. He met me halfway, and then we were kissing, and it was insane. Right away, I grabbed his cock and told him I’d suck him off.”

  Gradyn made himself more comfortable as he stared and just fucking absorbed this man’s personality. Goddamn, he already knew he could listen to Devlin talk for days. “Kevin obviously said yes.”

  “Oh yeah. Enthusiastically.” Devlin abruptly sat upright, his face contrite. “In fairness to him, what twenty-year-old guy with a boner is going to say no to someone offering to give him a blowjob?”

  Gradyn smiled against the rim of his glass. “Apparently not Kevin.”

  “Definitely not Kevin,” Devlin confirmed. “He shoved his shorts down and, holy hell, I got one look at his prick and knew I was right where I was supposed to be.”

  His words got Gradyn sitting up straight. “You’d never had a thought about a guy in that way before?”

  Devlin made a funny face. He combined it with a half-shrug and a so-so motion of his hand. “Yes, I had done,” he said, and went back to playing with his fork and cake. “But at the same time, I don’t know...” He looked as if he struggled to find his words. “Here’s the thing. I had girlfriends through high school and dated a few women my first year of college. I didn’t hate having a girlfriend; I didn’t even dread kissing or touching a woman, it just wasn’t super exciting or interesting to me sexually. I could take it or leave it, and that made it confusing for me.”

  Devlin pushed back in his chair, and Gradyn watched him shift his ankle to his knee and dance his fingers over his glass, plate, and utensils.

  “Keep going, Devlin.” Gradyn reached across the table and stilled the younger man’s nervous fiddling. He locked Devlin to him with his stare and didn’t speak again until he felt the battle leave Devlin’s hands. “You don’t have to be nervous,” he said. “Nothing you’re saying so far is freaking me out.”

  “Did you always know?” Devlin asked. “Were you ever unsure or felt like you needed to experiment with a woman?”

  “I always knew. I’ve never had a girlfriend.” Except as part of my job. “But it’s fine if your experience was different. There’s not a list of criteria you have to check off before you get approval to join the team. You get here how you get here, at least as far as I’m concerned, and that’s cool with me.” He squeezed Devlin’s hand and finally let go. “Tell me the rest.”

  “Okay.” A smile that trembled a little bit, that Gradyn had now seen on this man at least half a dozen times since approaching him at the bar, appeared again. Just like all the other moments, it latched on to a soft place deep in Gradyn’s core and tugged. Hard.

  “Whenever I was with a girlfriend in high school or early college,” Devlin started, “I’d do the lean in to touch her breast, the way I thought I was supposed to do. If she let me touch her, okay, cool, I would feel her breasts. It wasn’t horrible and it didn’t squick me out. I even liked it when she got excited by what I did to her, but it just never worked me up to a place where I had to know more. If I moved in for a touch and she said no, it didn’t faze me. I didn’t feel like I was missing something that I really wanted. But while I had those girlfriends, at various times during high school, there were also these three boys in particular that I found really fascinating, and I wanted to know everything about them.”

  His smile changed the second he mentioned the boys, became something full of light and life, and that told Gradyn as much as Devlin’s story did.

  Devlin went on, fully animated again. “I never thought ‘God, I want to get naked with these guys and do dirty things.’ I just liked being near them in the hallway when I could, and I spent a lot of time trying to get close enough so I could smell them. One in particular--Johnny--he had this barely-there hint of baby powder smell on his skin in the morning when he first got to school, and if I got close enough to smell him before my first period class I would think about it all day.” Devlin closed his eyes for a minute, and his nostrils flared. Then he quickly put his attention back on Gradyn with hardly a blush. “Anyway, if we were in the same group together for some reason, I always wanted to say something he, or one of the other boys, would think was funny. I wanted to make them laugh so they would think I was cool and maybe they would want to get to know me better. I wanted them to want to hang out with me because I so wanted to be in their world. You know?”

  Gradyn nodded. “I’m with you. Keep going.”

  “So I had those kinds of thoughts, but I also had a girlfriend. I liked hanging out with the girls I dated, and I enjoyed kissing them. At the same time, I also had these sort of innocent desires for these boys, and so I wasn’t sure what all of that information together was supposed to mean. That all changed when I kissed Kevin.” Devlin bit his lower lip, and when he blinked and looked at Gradyn, muted heat burned in his eyes. “Feeling his mouth on mine exploded something inside me. I knew that this was how most guys feel when they kiss girls. It was how I should have felt when I was with my old girlfriends, if I were straight. I wanted to tear off Kevin’s clothes and learn every part of him in a way I never had with any of my girlfriends. But mostly, right in that moment, on that couch, I wanted to see and touch Kevin’s cock.

  “There wasn’t anything innocent or confusing about what I wanted when I thought about boys anymore; it switched to something raw and real. I wanted to taste Kevin all over; I wanted to suck his prick, and I wanted to see him shoot all over himself and all over me when he came.” Devlin shook his head as a soft chuckle rumbled through him. “He held his dick out for me, and I went down on him and went to town. It was sloppy as hell and I couldn’t take much of him that night, but he didn’t seem to mind. I did a good enough job to make him come; he shouted as he did it, and I loved it so much I stained my sweats with my own excitement.”

  Gradyn found himself completely caught up in Devlin’s history. “Did Kevin lose his shit when he sobered up and realized what happened?”

  “No, he didn
’t,” Devlin answered. “He fell asleep like a minute later, and I admit I chose to fall asleep right on top of him, snuggled up close, rather than pulling away. I wanted to know what holding another guy felt like; I hadn’t done that with a girl before. I hadn’t even really thought about it, but I wanted to with him. Kevin woke up a few hours later. He did nudge me off him, but he didn’t shove or yell. He wiped the drool off his mouth and asked me if I was gay. I told him I was.” Devlin kept his head up and his eyes on Gradyn, and strength infused his voice and stance. “Nobody had ever asked me that before, but when he did, I didn’t even hesitate. Kevin said that was cool with him, but he wasn’t, and that we weren’t going to end up boyfriends because of what happened.”

  “Did you believe him?”

  “Oh yeah, totally,” Devlin said, without hesitation. “He had this mad hopeless crush on this girl--Emily Hirsh--and I knew it was real because I’d seen the way he looked at her a thousand times when we crossed paths. He wanted her so much; it was visible in every pore of him, you know? She didn’t know he existed, and he was at my place moping one night--about a month after what happened between us--and it happened again. We just started kissing and I ended up giving him another blowjob. He told me again that it couldn’t turn into anything. I told him I didn’t really care, that I just wanted a guy to touch and be near, and that he didn’t even have to reciprocate. He never officially agreed, but over the next two months we probably ended up together like that a dozen times.”

  “Seems a little one-sided.”