Undercover Lover

by Peter Styles

  I can put Markus’s huge dick in my mouth but not this tiny piece of toast?

  Shutting his eyes tightly, Jeremiah opened his mouth and put the piece of toast inside. That, in itself, wasn’t horrible at all. It was when he started to chew and the powerful, meaty smell of the liver started to permeate his nostrils from the inside out. Then his tongue touched it, and it was like the time he ate dog food on a dare. Disappointing and slimy and disturbingly gritty.

  Grabbing for a napkin, he brought it up to his mouth and spit out what he’d been chewing.

  Chris leaned back in his chair, laughing helplessly as Rob came up, apparently alerted again by some sixth sense. “How is everything?”

  Wiping tears from his eyes, Chris said, “Oh, absolutely wonderful! We’re really discovering a lot of things about each other.”

  Rob smiled uncertainly and moved away again.

  “I’ll make it up to you if you go out with me again,” Chris said, still smiling at Jeremiah as he downed half of the glass of his sweet wine to get rid of the foul taste in his mouth. “We’ll definitely do pizza. And nothing expensive either. Gas station pizza.”

  “You really know how to woo a guy over.”

  “What else am I supposed to do with my carefree, unstructured days?”

  Jeremiah smiled over at him. “Care to tell me more about that? What exactly does the manager of a real estate company do all day?”

  He instantly regretted being so straightforward. The joviality in Chris’s gaze instantly melted away, leaving a hard wall that couldn’t be penetrated. “I really appreciate your interest but I talk enough business with my secretary. I’d just like to have a good time with you and not think about work.”

  “Fair enough,” Jeremiah said. He should have known it wouldn’t be so easy. After all, he was the only one here with an agenda. “I’m sorry if it seemed like I was prying. I was just curious.”

  “Well, I’m more curious about you.” Chris picked up a square of toast and helped himself to some of the liver mousse, savoring the morsel. “What exactly is contemporary literature?”

  As Jeremiah talked about books and how writing changed to reflect the time, they slowly worked their way through the appetizer. The tartare tasted like sushi, and the other components weren’t bad at all. Although the liver continued to be a terrible adversary only vanquished by a massive effort from Chris.

  Their dinners came, a first course of broth and salad followed by a second of chicken and lamb. Everything was much better now, if a bit rich for Jeremiah, and they settled deeper into their conversation. Jeremiah did most of the talking, urged on by his companion.

  “I’ve never talked so much about myself before.” Their meal was winding down, both of them studying the array of available desserts listed at the bottom of the menu. “I feel like I’m running out of words.”

  “I doubt that.” Chris broke off the conversation long enough to greet their waiter and order the Tavern’s specialty cookie plate for dessert. “There’s a whole lot more to Jeremiah What’s-His-Name than just who he’s been for the past couple years. We’ve already established that. I’d like to know who Jeremiah was, and where he wants to be in the future.”

  What he really wanted was to be married to his soulmate, and to live a happy and uncomplicated life with him. That had been the whole point of this endeavor, but he was now starting to see that it wouldn’t be anywhere near that easy.

  Each cookie was as exquisite as only a cookie could be. Despite the fact that they might be sprinkled with pink Himalayan salt, or infused with blood orange syrup and genuine gold leaf, a cookie was always going to be a cookie. Sweet and indulgent, and best eaten after being drowned in a glass of milk.

  “I could use some of that salt in my life,” Jeremiah laughed. Rob came up to give them their bill, pausing to listen. “I never thought I’d call salt anything but salt, but that was some next-level stuff.”

  Is it possible to get drunk off of one glass of dessert wine?

  “I’m so glad you liked it, sir.” Rob smiled down at him. “It really makes a world of difference, doesn’t it? I hear they make lamps from the crystals now.”

  “A rock lamp?” Jeremiah asked, curiously. He hadn’t ever heard of such a thing, and now he was going to have to read up on it. “That doesn’t seem like it would be very bright.”

  “It isn’t, sir. They’re meant for low-lighting and ambiance, but I’ve heard they also purify the air in a house and help with depression.” Rob took the payment from Chris, who Jeremiah hadn’t even been paying attention to. “I’ll be right back with your card.”

  “You didn’t have to pay!” Jeremiah protested. “I… have money.”

  Chris patted the back of his hand. “You were busy, and I’m terrible at math. It was easier to just pay for both of us instead of trying to figure out who owed what, and what percentage of cookies you ate. Besides, isn’t that what a gentleman would do?”

  “Your secretary must really have her work cut out for her if her boss can’t even do a simple equation.”

  Chris chuckled, standing up and offering Jeremiah his hand. “She’s been with me almost since the start. I’d be lost without her. Shall we go?”

  “Alright,” Jeremiah agreed. He took Chris’s hand and stood, and this time the other man didn’t let go. His hand feeling hot, a strange sensation running up and down his arm, Jeremiah followed Chris out into the street.

  He caught a glimpse of the company car, and the driver reading in the front seat. “There’s my ride.” He caught himself just before pointing. That would have been a dumb move, completely blowing his cover.

  “And there’s mine.” Chris jerked his thumb over his shoulder, gesturing to a car parked at the nearby corner. “I suppose I’ll let you go, but I want to tell you first that I really appreciated you spending time with me tonight. I had more fun with you than I’ve had in months.”

  Jeremiah clutched a little tighter at the other man’s fingers, startled to find heat pricking at the back of his eyes. “I had fun with you too. I really did.”

  “What do you think my chances are of that second date?”

  I shouldn’t do this. He clearly really likes me. It just isn’t fair to do this to him.

  It also wasn’t fair to give up on the one thing he wanted most. And if this was the only way to get it…

  “As long as you feed me pizza, I’ll come.”

  Chris grinned and grabbed his other hand, holding them between their bodies tightly. Then, he leaned down. Jeremiah saw his lips descend and closed his eyes, bracing for it, but the kiss landed on his cheek instead of his lips. It burned him all the same, perhaps even more so because of the sweetness of it all.

  When he opened his eyes again, dizzy and swaying, Chris had already gone.

  I have to tell Markus that he’s wrong.

  Turning away, Jeremiah went to the driver and tried to sift through his thoughts all through the long drive back to the apartment. However, the more he tried to sort them, the messier they became. He gave up out of frustration and barged into the living room, forgetting to be quiet and polite for the first time since he moved in.

  Markus sprang to his feet and hurried toward him. “Well?” he demanded. “Did you find out his secrets?”

  “He… uh… refused to talk business yet.” Jeremiah looked down at his feet. “Listen, Markus, I think you’re wrong about him. He—”

  Markus interrupted him with a firm tap on the nose, a frown on his lips and in his eyes. “Now, now. I’m never wrong. You just need to dig deeper. More dates. Do whatever you think is right.”

  Chris wouldn’t have interrupted.

  “Yeah, okay,” Jeremiah muttered. Somehow, he didn’t think it would be very hard to take that second date, and that was worrying.

  Chapter 9

  He was really starting to come out of his shell there at the end.

  It had been a full four days since their date, and Chris thought he would hear from the other man by
now. He couldn’t help but to worry that he read the situation entirely wrong, but Jeremiah had all but promised they would have a second date. The most he could do was hope the college man was busy with his schoolwork and that was why he didn’t answer his phone. Chris had both called and texted the other, once each, in an attempt to not seem needy.

  “Sir?”

  The word hardly registered. He fiddled with the papers in front of him, frowning down at them. Numbers and letters crawled across the page without any order at all, unfocused and meaningless even though they should have been important to him. He knew they were important. These numbers represented profits and growth, pointing to the future of his company. These forms were his livelihood… and he couldn’t have cared less.

  “Chris!”

  He jerked his head up, hand jumping across the stack of forms. Papers went flying, skittering across the long meeting table and drifting to the floor. His secretary stared at him from where she sat a few chairs away, her eyebrows raised sharply.

  “Chris, are you paying attention? This is very serious.”

  “I’m listening,” he replied. “I was just deep in thought. Go on.”

  “Well, what do you think about the strategy that was just proposed?” another of the team asked. Their voice echoed with fake mockery, poking fun at him because it was quite obvious that he was lying.

  He didn’t really mind though. In fact, he smiled and relaxed a little as the others around the table chuckled at their boss’s behavior. He wasn’t just their boss, however. They were all family, and they knew that he could be a bit spacey at times and it was their job to catch those lapses. Though that didn’t mean they would let it go quietly.

  He was just about to ask to have the strategy repeated for him, when his pocket buzzed. He grabbed for it without thinking, pulling out his phone and standing up in the same motion. “Sorry but I have to answer this. I trust you to come up with the best solution without me and to fill me in when I come back.”

  It was his personal phone that rang, in the right pocket. There was only one person he wanted to hear from right now; one person he had been waiting to speak with for days. His soul told him this caller was exactly who he wanted, and so he didn’t even look at the name before answering.

  “Jeremiah!”

  “Nope,” the caller croaked. “Name’s Christopher. Nice guess though.”

  Chris winced, berating himself for being so stupid. Lesson learned: always check the number first, no matter what. “Sorry, Dad. I thought you were someone else.”

  “Clearly,” his father said, amusement in his rough voice. “Am I interrupting something?”

  “No, no,” Chris reassured him, moving away from the meeting room door and farther off down the hallway to come stand before the windows that overlooked the street. “I was in a meeting but you rescued me.”

  His father let out a soft laugh. “You’ll remember those meetings fondly in a few years when you’re so busy doing meet and greets that you don’t even have time to sit down. What was the topic?”

  “I’m actually not sure, really.”

  “Son, you have to focus. This is the future of your company that we’re talking about, here.”

  Chris snorted. “I am focusing, trust me. I’m focusing on restructuring my life in the near future so that I’m not so overworked all the time.”

  “But if you’re not overworked, you’re not doing it right.”

  “Well…” Chris lowered his voice, making a quick decision about what he was going to say. “I met someone. I’ve been thinking about them, is all.”

  “How serious is it, Son?”

  “Well…” He paused, embarrassed suddenly. “We’ve only been on one date.”

  “Ha! One date? And you’re going to completely rearrange your whole life after one date only? That’s not anything to base anything on. You’ll get in over your head.”

  I shouldn’t have told him. I probably shouldn’t tell anyone this just yet.

  “Is there an actual reason you called to talk, Dad? Or did you just want to make fun of my personal life?”

  His father sighed, suddenly sounding tired. Chris’s heart ached at the sound. “I just got to thinking about the past again, is all.”

  “Dad, you can’t keep doing that. It’s not good for your health, okay? And besides, the past is the past. It’s better buried.”

  Digging up the past, as far as he was concerned, was the path to ruin between them and they had already gone through that once.

  “I know, but I couldn’t help regretting…”

  The old man sounded so weary, so broken. Chris felt his chest tighten in sympathy. “Well, don’t. You don’t have anything to regret anymore. Neither of us does.” He glanced over at the clock. “You have a doctor’s visit in half an hour, don’t you?”

  “I’m already out the door,” his father grunted. “You can’t keep track of your own damn life but you sure seem to have a good handle on mine. I hope I’ll see you again soon, Chris.”

  “Sure. I’ll talk to you later, Dad.”

  He hung up and let out a sigh, shaking his head. Their conversations weren’t normally that rough to get through; that, combined with the fact that his father sounded sicker, made him worry that something else was really going on besides a bad case of regret. Well, he would find time to visit the old man soon. He would do that anyway, and had been for months now, but those were normally for a reason of a different nature. His father would probably appreciate to talk just for the sake of talking.

  Yeah, there was a definite change in his future as far as planning went.

  He was just about to put the phone away and head back into the meeting when it rang right in his hands, startling him so that he almost dropped it. Remembering last time, he looked at the name first.

  Jeremiah.

  All at once, he couldn’t breathe. Anticipation pulsed through his whole body, making his breath quiver in his lungs. Trembling, he slid his thumb across the green mark on the screen and brought the cell up to his ear.

  “Hey, Jeremiah.”

  “Hi,” the quiet voice on the other end of the line replied.

  Silence fell between them, but it wasn’t uncomfortable at all. For some reason, Chris felt that he could spend all night just listening to the sound of the other thinking and breathing. It definitely would be a better fate than hearing his employees and advisors repeating themselves all day. He still wanted to speak, but he wouldn’t rush this.

  Eventually, Jeremiah spoke up again. “I was wondering if you still might want to go out with me again for that second date? It’s okay if you don’t, I mean…”

  “Of course I do,” Chris said, not interrupting but slipping easily into the trailing gap between words. “I would love to! Are you free tonight?”

  He asked the question before even considering if he himself could be free tonight – and the answer was no – but he was still the boss, and there was still quite a lot that he could get away with even if he really shouldn’t push his luck like that.

  “Actually, I have classes until really late tonight so maybe it isn’t the best day.” He sounded disappointed. “I was just thinking about you and I had a few minutes between classes, so…”

  Jeremiah had been thinking about him too? Maybe there was more to this than his dad thought there was. He couldn’t imagine any of his one-night stands thinking about him even for just a few days after their… activities.

  “I was thinking about you too. And, if you don’t mind the idea, I can pick you up on campus and we can head out for a late dinner. The gas stations don’t ever run out of those pizzas, you know.”

  He could hear the gears turning in the other man’s head as he contemplated the situation. In the silence, Chris became aware of a small amount of background chatter and figured that the break period was over now. It was time to make a decision.

  “Well… Are you sure it wouldn’t be troublesome?”

  How does a man use a big word and st
ill sound so cute?

  “Yeah, I’m sure. It would be my pleasure. I remember what school you’re at too.”

  “You do?” Jeremiah sounded as though he couldn’t decide whether to be flattered or creeped out. “Okay, well… I’ll text you when I’ve got like half an hour left or something, okay?”

  “Sure,” Chris replied. He closed his eyes, daring to take the leap. “You know, you can text me whenever you want. If you want.”

  “I’ll think about it. I’ll see you tonight.”

  “See you.”

  A rare creature, that unicorn, and now Chris was going to have another chance at glimpsing it. He hoped it would go even better than the last. But, for now, he had to return to the meeting.

  The looks on everyone’s faces when he arrived back told him that they hadn’t actually been expecting him to return. If he could have walked back out without looking like a fool, he would have.

  Instead, he pulled out his chair and sat down, folded his hands, and leaned forward on his elbows. “Fill me in,” he said.

  And they did.

  And he did his damnedest to follow all of it, even with all the missing pieces. He was the boss. He could do whatever he wanted… and he was a smart enough boss to realize that he actually couldn’t.

  The rest of the day passed slowly. The meeting ended. Clients filtered in and out. Chris met with some of them, but he also took calls and answered all the important emails that had been piling up in just the past few hours. Correspondence would be put on hold for no man.

  He made an effort to ignore the clock. Watching the minutes and hours go by would only worsen the sensation of slow time. He sank into his work, giving it every last bit of his concentration.

  His secretary said he looked intense. “Like an angry swan.”

  “Well, at least I’ll be graceful and beautiful,” he replied, scribbling his signature on the form in front of him. She hummed and left him alone.

  Done with that form, he pulled out the next one. Some had to be printed, and his secretary fetched those for him from the printer beside her desk. His eyes started to ache from staring so much at a computer screen but he ignored it and moved his mouse over to his inbox to refresh and answer the next email.