“A hookup? Is that what you think I’m offering?” The amused lift at the corner of his mouth was way sexier than it had any business being.
Sitting up, I grabbed the sunblock from him. “Your turn. Wouldn’t want all that pale skin to burn.” There were freckles covering his shoulders, suggesting what happened when he got too much sun. Aside from those, however, he was so pale I imagined he nearly glowed in the dark. Unfazed, he turned around and let me have his back. “If we’re not talking about hooking up, what are we talking about?”
“At the risk of sounding completely arrogant, let me give you my read on you. You don’t just want sex, you want a scene. You’ve never really played before, at least not beyond a couple one-night stands that got rowdy, and that was unsafe enough to frighten you.” He peered back over his shoulder and smirked. “How am I doing so far?”
“Pfft.” I flapped my sunblock-smeared hand dismissively, grinning back. “Amateur hour. I pretty much told you all of that.”
“True. Somewhere along the way, someone taught you that having your condition meant you could never do or be or have anything but that condition, that it’s always you can’t and never you can. So now you think you can’t really get what you want, which is to forget about your health for a while so you can submit.”
That was way too fucking close to home. Literally. I seized on the one inaccuracy I could find, trying to keep my tone light. My chuckle rang hollow. “Hello, have you met me? I’m really not submissive.”
He waved that off, the muscles of his back moving under my hands with each motion. “Blanket term. Keeping it basic. You’re a masochist, definitely. You might not need to serve, but you do want the freedom of giving over control. Also, what better way to demonstrate that the person you’re with isn’t hung up on your hemophilia than for them to feel comfortable hurting you?”
I swallowed thickly. His insight would have been creepy if not for the fact that it relieved me of the burden of coming up with words for things I couldn’t explain. “Okay. You’re still on track.” My voice was more subdued, and he clearly picked up on that when my hands stopped rubbing sunblock into his skin. He looked back at me again.
He blinked and the offhanded tone fell away, replaced by something far more gentle. Compassionate. “You’re tired of it. So you keep running up to the edge, determined that one of these days you’re just going to say ‘fuck the fallout’ and jump, but you can’t quite do it because you’re neither suicidal nor stupid.” He gave me a soft smile. “So instead you step back and you keep holding on and you only get a fraction of the things you want. Don’t you get it, baby?”
He faced me fully, and I had to duck my head. Otherwise he was going to see that he had me dead to rights. I was covered in goose bumps and my eyes were burning. Just by virtue of his presence and insight, he was giving definition to all my nebulous desires. The yearning that evoked was so strong I ached with it.
“You need someone you can trust. But you can’t trust anyone who doesn’t have the whole picture. Problem is, you also don’t trust anyone enough to let them have the whole picture.” He released a long, wistful sigh, the sort of sound that suggested maybe he’d surprised himself with that outpouring of words, or that he worried he’d said too much.
That compelled me to look back up at him as he licked his lips—nervously, I think.
“So that’s what I’m putting on the table. I can give you that, but only if you’re totally fucking honest with me. No downplaying shit, no holding back. If you want it, you gotta trust me to give it to you and look after you in the process. And in order to do that, I gotta learn everything I can, or neither of us is going to feel safe.”
The whole afternoon might have passed us by while I sat there, staring into his ice-blue eyes and weighing my options. I wanted everything he’d offered so much that I was quivering with it, but—
“That seems like a big order for a vacation fling,” I said at last, picking at my thumbnail with a singular focus. “Maybe we should just start with fucking. See how that works for us?”
“No problem.” His growly drawl brought my attention back up to his face, and he gave me a lazy smile. “I can make you scream without ever leaving a mark.”
My mouth went dry and my brain forgot how to make those things. What were they called?
Oh. Yeah. Words.
It took me a moment to recover. “If I weren’t concerned about sand where sand don’t belong, I’d tell you to take me off into the dunes right now.”
Next thing I knew, I was on my back and he was above me, pinning me to the blanket. “I’m going to hold you to that,” he rumbled before his mouth crashed down on mine.
Robin
When I woke up that morning on my boat, I hadn’t imagined that by late afternoon, I’d have Geoff beneath me, making out on a beach blanket, much less that he’d have already agreed to give me a chance to show him what I had to offer.
I definitely wasn’t in any damn rush to let him up. He tasted good, and his body felt amazing beneath mine. Given the numerous and obvious black marks on his self-esteem, I would have thought he’d be too self-conscious to enjoy himself, but the fact that we weren’t doing anything that people around us weren’t doing far more explicitly no doubt offered reassurance. Or maybe he had a thing for public displays of debauchery. I, personally, might have been more self-conscious not fooling around, with so many others going at it around us.
“God, you feel good,” I muttered, sliding my erection against his. There was a grit of sand between us, but it was worth it. “Your body—Jesus.”
He stilled at that, suggesting that maybe I’d dinged one of those bruises on his ego. Suddenly I was glad we were in Saugatuck, which was geared toward the everyman gays instead of the underwear models you found in a lot of big-city meat markets. Geoff had no reason to worry about how he rated in comparison to everyone around him.
I tried to keep his attention off it by offering him a much more tangible distraction. Each time he got desperate enough to reach for his cock or grind up against me, I backed off, leaving him frustrated and desperate for more.
“The hell are you doing?” he finally growled.
“No way am I giving you a reason to duck out again when it’s time to go back to your room.” I scraped his neck with my teeth without biting. He didn’t flinch. Already he was starting to trust that I knew where to stop. “Or my boat. Or on the hood of the car. Or wherever the first convenient place to bend you over and drill you might be.”
Geoff chuckled breathlessly. “Gotta say, the determined pursuit is good for my ego.”
Excellent. Mission accomplished.
When we couldn’t frot against each other anymore without either coming or going crazy, I rolled off him.
“Start talking before I make a liar of myself,” I panted.
Geoff smirked, reaching up for me. “Not exactly an inducement.”
I evaded his hands and pulled him up to sit with me. “Talk.”
It took him a moment. “So, you came from Connecticut?” he finally asked. I suppressed a smile that this awkward conversational sally was the best he could manage.
“Yeah. Darien. Typical case of using Connecticut as a bedroom community when your family works in New York.”
“Because your parents were art dealers.”
“Exactly.”
“What about your family? Any brothers or sisters?”
I smiled, leaning back on my elbows. The sheen of sweat and sunblock on Geoff’s skin made me want to lick him. “Nope. I am the quintessential rich, spoiled, only child. My mom says by the time I was old enough for them to consider having another one, I’d just worn them out.”
“You were that bad?” He stretched out on his side, curling his arm under his head as a pillow. The sunlight beating down was almost too warm, but at least this early in the summer, the humidity wasn’t bad.
“I’m sure the existence of God is proven by the fact that I survived to hit puberty.”
That made him laugh. “You and me both.”
“You had a lot of problems when you were young?”
“If you listened to my mother, you would have thought so.” He plucked at the blanket. “Mostly she was just overprotective. I couldn’t have had many problems because she pretty much tried to swaddle me in bubble wrap until I hit puberty.”
“No siblings to keep her distracted?”
“Well, yes, but that was part of the issue. Not with Ling, of course—that’s my sister. They adopted her when I was three years old. It was more because, um—” He grimaced, then took a deep breath, like he was bracing himself. “Well, because of my older brother.”
Something about his change in attitude sobered me right up. “He died?”
“Yeah.” I watched him visibly suppress the urge to skirt the truth. “He nearly bled to death at a day old, when he was circumcised.”
“Wow, seriously? That can happen?”
Geoff nodded. “Yeah. It’s one of the ways you can discover a baby has hemophilia right off the bat. But this was 1980, back before anyone knew much about HIV and AIDS, much less considered the possibility of contaminated blood supplies. David passed away not long after they finally came up with a name for what was killing him.”
I swallowed hard and sat up straighter. “Jesus.”
Geoff shook his head impatiently. “Anyway, that’s beside the point. I was saying my mom was overprotective. Which she was. I told you why I stayed in the closet.”
“Yeah, you did.” I tacked a helicopter parent onto the mental image I was building of what he’d been like as a kid. I reached over, combing my fingers through his hair, massaging light circles on his scalp. He closed his eyes and sighed. “What about your dad?”
“Dad . . . I don’t think Dad ever got over David’s death. I mean, he tried, he really did. He went through all the motions, did all the right things, but there was always something detached about him, you know? Like he couldn’t let himself care too much. I think it’s because he was sure he’d lose me too. He didn’t have that problem with Ling.” His eyes grew distant for a long moment before he came back to me. “Anyway. Dad passed on when I was in art school, and Mom died a few months ago, so now there’s just me and Ling. We’ve got a really great relationship. She was younger than me, but for a long time, she was the best friend I had growing up.”
“Not a lot of friends?”
“No.” He bit his lip, something I was learning to read as him stopping himself from speaking.
“What?”
Geoff squirmed. “You mentioned the whole Ryan White thing the other night. Let’s just say I caught some of the fallout from that sort of ignorance too. I mean, we weren’t like the Ray brothers’ family. They didn’t burn our house down or drive us into hiding. But it was the eighties. A lot of people assumed that because I had hemophilia, I was infected—which, statistically, there was a good chance I might have been. I got really lucky.”
“How lucky?” Okay, this was a subject of significant relevance for multiple reasons.
“Well, I was born in eighty-two, and by the time they got HIV out of blood supply in the US in 1985, ninety percent of severe hemophiliacs—which is my kind of hemophilia—had been infected. Seventy-five percent of the total hemo population.”
I blew out an astonished breath. “That many? Holy shit.”
“Yeah.” He smiled wanly. “If my mom’s overprotectiveness accomplished one thing, it was that I didn’t have as many bleeds as most little kids, which might have made the difference. Still, a lot of parents didn’t want their kids around me, and they managed to keep me out of school until junior high. My parents had to sue to let me attend, and then some of the kids reverse-engineered the assumption of HIV infection to an assumption of queerness.” He scoffed. “The logical contortion there is amazing, don’t you think? Because I had hemophilia, I must have HIV, and because I must have HIV, I must be gay. Well. They had two out of three right.”
The way he veered off on that tangent was telling. Something in my chest ached as I imagined what that must have been like, struggling through puberty against a backdrop of bullying for a disease he didn’t have and a sexual orientation he was just coming to understand he did have.
God, no wonder I’d homed in on him from the very start. It was a minor miracle that I wasn’t rolling around on him like he was catnip. His issues were pretty much my kryptonite.
That chain of thought, however, would lead to all sorts of uncomfortable speculations about whether I was falling back into destructive patterns, and I really didn’t want to go there. He was only here for a few days. I could indulge in him without worrying about the long-term significance.
Thankfully, Geoff gave me an out and shifted the conversation.
“So, dude, what’s with all the questions?”
“Sorry.” I ducked my head. “I guess I like trying to figure out what makes people tick. I can’t remember a time when I didn’t do it.”
He shrugged. “I guess I don’t mind. It’s somewhat less morbid than the curiosity I get from a lot of people.”
He said it breezily, like it didn’t really matter. In fact, he’d delivered a lot of his biographical information the same way. But now that I’d seen his art on Jace’s skin, I felt like I’d seen into him well enough to suss out all the little wounds that were buried not all that deep under his prickly shell. A sensitive soul cut by things he’d been too young to understand until indifference crusted over the injuries like scabs.
Jesus. I was waxing poetic. Time to change it up.
I had him on his back with very little maneuvering, tracing my tongue along his collarbone. “Trust me, my interest in you is anything but morbid.”
Not a lot of conversation followed. I stuck to my resolve—barely—and didn’t let us get off. The resulting make-out session was lazy and unpressured.
Weird. How was it that between adolescence and adulthood, people lost sight of the idea that necking doesn’t have to be just a means to an end?
Finally we were interrupted by a thud as Jace dropped onto the blanket beside us, his eyes heavy lidded and his smirk completely self-satisfied.
“If you guys have had enough sun, I’m starving. What are we doing for dinner?”
Geoff
Robin took us to dinner at an amazing Italian restaurant near the marina in Saugatuck. It had a club attached, so we went over, despite the fact that we hadn’t intended to go clubbing. It was a mixed club, not like the one at the Dunes. There were plenty of straight people there, but also enough same-sex couples that we weren’t out of place.
I was glad for the distraction, because after our conversation had gotten so heavy, I wasn’t sure I could find the transition back to the effortless sexual chemistry Robin and I had been enjoying. I was more than ready to take Robin to the resort and let him fuck my brains out, but something had shifted between us. A connection had been made, which put the sexy hookup vibe on strange, unsteady ground. Maybe hanging out and partying for a while would help us get back into the flow.
Robin was in favor of the idea and helpfully pointed out that if we wanted to leave before Jace was ready, Jace had his car still parked there in town. Robin and I could go to the boat or take Robin’s car to the Dunes.
Once we got on the dance floor, it became apparent that if I was having trouble slipping back into the sexy groove, he certainly wasn’t. Robin just wanted to torment me some more. Make me absolutely desperate for him. Which, hello? It was already way too late for that.
The feeling of his body moving against mine—knowing that this time I really was going to go for it, no indecision, no angst—was incredible. Prolonged foreplay. Nerves strung taut and vibrating with anticipation. Hands grasping, hips brushing with deliberate intent to tease. Sweat and the lingering, sweet coconut scent of sunblock. Ice-blue eyes fixed on mine, searching for something.
A low growl next to my ear. “Tell me how you want it.”
I ma
naged a weak laugh. “As soon as possible, that’s how.”
“That’s not what I meant.” He spun me abruptly, pressing his chest to my back and grinding against my ass like he had the first time we danced, without ever missing a beat. “Still want it hard and brutal?”
“Yes.” I hissed as his hand slid across my abdomen, lightly teasing above my groin. “That’s how I want it.”
“Good. Because I want to throw you down and pound you so hard you pass out.”
It was just dirty talk, right? He knew he couldn’t be careless. The nervous voice inside me, the voice that always reminded me to be cautious, to avoid any risk of injury, tried to pipe up. I squelched it without mercy. I was playing with fire and I didn’t fucking care.
“Yes,” I said again, letting my head fall forward, offering him the back of my neck. He nibbled without biting. Perfect.
“Stop it,” he breathed against my ear.
“Stop what?”
“Stop second-guessing if you’re safe with me. You are. I won’t forget the boundaries. Let that shit go. It’s my worry now.”
“I’m trying.”
“Good. Ready to get out of here?”
I paused before answering, because his hands and lips and teeth felt too amazing to interrupt. “Yeah. Just . . . let me find Jace, tell him we’re going.”
“I’ll get the car, meet you outside.”
I searched the crowded dance floor for Jace and finally spotted him, then pulled him aside with an apologetic look at his partner.
“I’m taking Robin back to the Dunes.”
He smirked at me. “You know, his boat’s closer.”
“Yeah, but my factor’s back at the resort if I end up needing it tonight.”
“Ah, right.” Jace nodded slowly. “Okay.”
“Look, he knows, but I just . . .” I grimaced, hating that voice of caution that wouldn’t let me leave without making sure of this. “Whatever you do tonight, bring it back to the cottage, would you?”
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