“He’s going to fight you on this, you know.”
Since she allowed Gideon his deception, he did her the courtesy of not asking who she meant.
“I know.”
“Not because he can’t take your help. He takes plenty from you.” She gave a rueful twist to her lips. “But as much as he might want you to fix it, he’s terrified nothing can. And he’ll run from that. From having to face that.”
Gideon knew that was what Dane’s insistence on having the reception had been about, not about saving face. Dane didn’t give a shit what people thought. But a party meant Dane could put off dealing with the fallout of Spencer leaving, put off what that meant for his future. Put off dealing with what threatened his future.
Mama J opened the car door and then turned back to him. “I suppose that’s on me and Theresa, the way we raised him. He had so much energy and curiosity, all of it without malice. We just tried to keep him from hurting himself. Too much open-mindedness without natural consequences.” She shook her head. “I’m sorry, hon—Gideon.”
“Dane is more than capable of making his own decisions without it reflecting on you.”
She looked at him with Dane’s eyes again and put a hand on his arm. “Do you think you can ever forgive him?”
For what? Dane had never owed Gideon anything, never made him a promise. That a nineteen-year-old Gideon had believed there was something special in those two months of dizzy happiness, that an “I love you” had meaning when it sounded just the same in and out of bed, that wasn’t Dane’s fault.
“There’s nothing to forgive,” he said.
She squeezed his arm. “You weren’t the one he asked to marry him.” She slid onto the seat, and he shut the door on her sympathy. If Dane had proposed, Gideon would have told him to ask Spencer anyway.
He waited until her lights were swallowed up by the fog. Maybe he should have driven her, but her hotel was only a mile away.
Time to wrap this up and dispatch the few remaining partiers to their respective designated drivers. Gideon’s next obstacle would be ensuring Dane came back to Gideon’s loft instead of to Queens and the house Dane and Spencer had bought.
As he headed back toward the building, someone lurched out of the mist and grabbed for Gideon’s right shoulder. He easily sidestepped him, then stuck out his arm to keep Dane from falling.
“Hey.” Dane clutched on to Gideon at biceps and belt. “You’re avoiding me.”
The contact was so familiar, and right then so impersonal, it shouldn’t have had any effect on Gideon. But it did. His stupid nerves, already on high alert, flashed a welcoming pleasure.
“You’re drunk.” Gideon shifted the arm he’d used to stop Dane from falling so that it rested around Dane’s waist. To steady him. Just to steady him.
“It’s a party. I’m not driving.” Dane leaned, shifting more responsibility for his balance onto Gideon.
Gideon hitched Dane up with the grip at his waist.
Dane buried his face in Gideon’s neck. “You smell good.”
“You smell like rum.”
“I’m sure I’ve smelled like worse.”
“That you have.”
When they reached the entrance, Gideon propped Dane up against the exterior wall like a bulky piece of baggage in order to open the door.
“Now this could be interesting.” Dane’s voice dipped into an all-too-familiar purr.
“Save it for—” But the usual end to that, Save it for Spencer, was no longer applicable. “—your next victim on the dance floor.”
Dane slung both arms around Gideon’s neck. “Aw, but you’re my favorite victim.”
In vino veritas.
Gideon didn’t peel him off but kept a foot of space between them. “And when was the last time you saw me on a dance floor?”
“Last spring. Theo’s wedding.” Dane’s expression was more calculating than it should have been with the amount of alcohol in his system. “Six and a half months ago. Last time you and I did the horizontal mambo too.” He rocked his hips forward.
“I told you it would be.” Gideon shifted back far enough to avoid the contact.
Dane’s lashes dipped, sparkling with a trace of moisture. “We went eighteen months once.”
“I might not have your eidetic memory, but I do recall that.”
Dane slid his hands down Gideon’s back. It should have been disgusting, a clammy press of his shirt in the mist, but this was Dane. Gideon’s skin prickled with pleasure, like the sudden flush that came from stepping into a steam room.
When Dane’s hands started to wander past Gideon’s waist, he reached back, catching them and dragging them forward.
“August twelfth to February nineteenth,” Dane said softly as he slumped into Gideon.
With Dane’s memory, it was pointless to ascribe any sentiment to him remembering those dates. Gideon might not have had the numbers to hand, but he remembered the time. Dane had been with Spencer for over a year then, forcing Gideon’s realization that the other man wasn’t going anywhere. In Spencer, Dane had found a partner to keep up with his appetites for adventure, sexual and otherwise. Rather than watch Dane choose, Gideon had removed himself from the competition. Then one night Dane had simply climbed into Gideon’s bed, proving once again he’d never be strong enough to resist Dane skin to skin.
They were dressed now. Gideon still had a chance to emerge unscathed.
He shifted Dane’s weight back against the wall, fingers lingering on his shoulders as if they could soak up the memory as easily as Dane’s super sponge brain. Warmth, firm muscle, the bone beneath. The promise in the bare skin of his neck and jaw. The hated tie was long gone, shirt collar open, throat waiting for Gideon’s mouth.
He shut his eyes, unable to force his hands to let go.
In a wish and a curse come true, Dane closed the distance between them. He breathed hot, sweet rum and words across Gideon’s mouth. “I missed you.”
It didn’t matter if Dane meant now or back during those eighteen months. It took everything inside Gideon to keep his jaw shut and lips tight as Dane followed up with a kiss. Every cell in Gideon’s body wanted to surrender, to open his mouth and go where that feeling always took them. But he knew better. In another few minutes, Dane’s magpie attention would land on something else, another distraction. Gideon just had to hold out until then.
Dane gave up on the attempted kiss and dropped back against the wall. The shoulders under Gideon’s palms shrank away.
No, Dane. That wasn’t about you. Just me.
“He said it wasn’t the cancer.” Dane seemed to shrivel into himself, fading into Gideon’s shadow. “That he wasn’t disgusted by me turning into an asexual bag of needy flesh.”
Gideon’s chest seized, hard, sharp. The words had the weight of quotation on them, but whether Dane was quoting himself or Spencer, Gideon couldn’t tell. Damn it. Gideon should still be smashing in that patrician prick’s face.
Gideon rolled his lips inward to control the spurt of anger, and then said, “I defy anyone to make an asexual label stick to you.”
Dane didn’t smile as he patted Gideon’s cheek. “It’s true, though. I do have a mirror or two at home.” Dane brushed away one of the curls plastered to his forehead by the mist. The spiral stuck to his fingers as Dane pulled his hand away and held the strand up to the light.
Gideon didn’t look at the hair or attempt to see where it had come from. He only watched Dane’s eyes. They were as big as the hollow space prying Gideon’s rib cage apart. Empty as a promise. And once more, Gideon’s instincts for self-preservation evaporated under the heat of Dane’s need.
Grabbing Dane’s wrist, Gideon brought the fingers holding the lost curl of wet hair to his lips. Silky, a little spring in the end that even the weight of water couldn’t repress.
“The last thing I need is a pity fuck.” Dane twisted his wrist.
Gideon kept his grip tight, the struggle sending their arms wide of their bodies.
“Good. Because pity is one thing I’ve never felt for you.”
Dane looked at their hands stretched out against the dark sky. He stopped trying to wrest free and twined his fingers with Gideon’s. “Does this mean a fuck’s on the table?”
Gideon might still have been able to walk away if the look in Dane’s eyes matched his light tone. If there was any of his usual confidence in the tilt of his chin, the shape of his brows. Pressing Dane’s hand into the rough, weathered boards, Gideon said, “I don’t feel much like being a substitute for Spencer.”
“And you’ve never been that.” Dane lunged for him.
Despite the dampness, Dane’s lips felt dry. Gideon should have been making sure Dane stayed hydrated while he was pouring all that rum punch down his throat. But then Dane’s mouth shifted opened, and it was him under the sweet bite of rum. His familiar heat and the stroke of his tongue over Gideon’s. The taste went right to his head. Both heads.
Dane’s free hand slid along Gideon’s jaw, fingers teasing, stroking the sensitive skin behind his ear. Dane’s fingers on his skin might as well have been his mouth and tongue, ramping up the need to grind forward, ease some of the ache in Gideon’s dick with a rub and press against Dane’s.
But Gideon held back, clinging to the fraying edge of his control. Always so much in the balance and never worth the cost of surrender. Not even with Dane. As good as they always were together, the cost was too damned high.
But just as he dug in his metaphoric heels, Dane murmured a sigh—a needy, hungry sigh—into Gideon’s mouth, and his grip slipped. Thighs, chest, belly, cock, he flattened Dane into the siding. Greedy, Gideon inhaled him, sucked Dane’s tongue in, and pushed his legs apart with the press of hips.
Nothing mattered now but them getting each other off as fast as possible.
Gideon shoved his hand down to wrap his fingers around Dane’s thick shaft.
“You do more with that tongue than talk, sexy?” The man’s voice came from Gideon’s left, followed by the scatter of pebbles under staggering feet.
“Show me your car, and maybe you’ll find out,” a woman answered.
Drunken heterosexuals on the loose. Amateurs.
But he and Dane were practically under a spotlight, and Gideon didn’t feel like providing any more entertainment.
Dane grabbed Gideon’s head as he tried to step back, fingers pressing into the base of his skull under his clipped-short hair.
“Don’t you dare go soft on me, DeLuca.”
Gideon rocked his hips forward, albeit more gently than he had been. “Does that feel soft to you?”
“You know what I mean. I’m fucking fine. And fine for fucking.” Dane flashed a hollow grin. “Good thing you’re acting all butch, though. Wasn’t sure I had the energy to top. Do me, baby.”
He didn’t fight Dane’s hold. Instead he shifted his weight so it no longer pushed Dane into the wall. “I’m a little over getting arrested for public lewdness. Let’s—”
“The day I can’t fuck outside standing up, you can spread my ashes on the tide. There are queer standards to be met.” Dane slid his hand into Gideon’s and pulled him along the north side of the building.
The Nautilus Beach Club was shaped, unsurprisingly, like a nautilus, from the swirled rooftop pool, to the second-story deck where the chairs had been set up. Dane led them around the base that opened to the parking lot and slipped around the twisted pines and bayberry shrubs.
Christ, Dane was a walking wet dream. He ducked under the deck and wrapped himself around a support post, wiggling his ass at Gideon.
Gideon pressed up behind him and then decided he wanted that nice, fat cock in his mouth instead. He moved around to face Dane, unbuckling his slacks, licking and kissing his neck.
“Um—no blow job.”
Gideon leaned back in surprise. “Why?”
“The chemicals. They say they’re out of my system in seventy-two hours, but I don’t want you to risk it. Plus, it still tastes nasty.”
Gideon had forgotten. Forgotten about the cancer, the chemo, forgotten the threat to Dane’s fucking life in a haze of now now now. A whole new level of selfishness right there. But what he said was, “You can suck your own dick? Man, I have to try yoga.”
“Asshole.” Dane swung back around. “Just fuck me.”
Now it was Gideon’s turn to hesitate.
Dane looked over his shoulder. “Lube packet and condom in my right front pocket. I was hoping to cross in a limo off my bucket list tonight.”
“I’m sure the opportunity will come up some other time.” Gideon slid Dane’s slacks down just enough to bare his ass and dick and then stroked his cock with long, slow pulls.
“Speaking of up?”
“Yes?”
“I haven’t been able to get and keep it there for a bit. So if things go soft, don’t take it personally.”
“Now that’s a fucking challenge, Archer.”
“I was hoping you’d see it that way.”
Gideon worked enough lube out of the little packet to slick Dane’s ass and the condom, but oh shit it was going to be tight like this. Dane gasped with the first press, but his dick stayed long and full in Gideon’s hand.
“C’mon. Get in and get moving before I—”
Gideon shut him up with a deep push. Nothing about this was easy, but God it was good.
“Damn, I missed you,” Dane breathed.
“That’s the lack of sex talking. Don’t seem to be having a problem now.” Gideon rode him fast, thrilling to the idea that Spencer hadn’t been able to get him here. For an instant, he remembered why and then pushed it out of his brain.
Dane shoved Gideon’s hand off and took over, leaving him free to chase his own orgasm.
He spread his legs, gripped Dane’s hips and fucked.
“Yes.” Dane’s moan was louder than the whispering they’d been doing, but Gideon wasn’t going to stop to shush him now. Hopefully if anyone came out on the deck, all they’d hear was the waves.
“Christ, Dane.” Gideon was losing a little volume control himself. And he needed, God, he needed…. He held it back, but he wasn’t going to be able to for much longer.
“Fuck.” Dane grunted, and his ass clamped even tighter around Gideon.
He let himself go, fingers squeezing Dane’s hips hard enough to bruise as the sweet shocks jolted through him. The ocean sighed around them as they came down off the high.
Chapter 6
FUCK, FUCK, fuck.
Dane had needed that. Damn. His legs shook harder than he was willing to admit, and it felt like his balls had unloaded way more than his knowledge of biology said they could. He should have known Gideon would be the cure.
Gideon held him, still rocking gently, an arm locked around Dane’s chest, the other on his hip.
Yeah, he’d needed that. But it hadn’t just been the backup in his balls or the spice of getting it on in a semipublic area that had made that so sweet. Sometimes novelty was overrated. Gideon knew him—they knew each other, what buttons to push and when.
Dane blew out a long exhale and heard the answering rush from Gideon’s lungs that meant he was coming down off the high. Moments like this, Dane knew the feeling, the pattern, in even Gideon’s smallest movement. The smells, sweat and sex, the way his dick moved inside, the taste from the kisses Gideon had managed before he lost himself to the fuck. Even the sound of the waves, his favorite sound in the world, had felt like an echo of their breathing. Everything was them. This moment. This fuck. Damn. He wanted again and again. The familiar wistfulness snuck in like the bad old habit it was. If only.
If only Dane was able to love Gideon the way he wanted, deserved to be loved. But he wasn’t that guy. He didn’t know how to be. One thing he couldn’t do, even if it meant losing Gideon forever, was lie and pretend and fake it.
Though he had to admit, forever didn’t seem as long a stretch of time as it had before. Before Dane got slapped with an expiration date. Yeah, supposing h
e had it in him to give Gideon that kind of love, how could he promise it now?
But they could have this. They’d always have this. For however long always turned out to be.
Dane shook the hair out of his eyes and rocked back against Gideon.
Gideon moved his lips from Dane’s neck to his ear. A few more unsteady breaths and Gideon said, “You managed. Standing up. Outdoors. Evidence suggests we don’t need to reserve a crematorium for you yet.”
The laugh spilled out of Dane. Real. Unforced. It had been too long since he’d done that either. It felt good. Not as good as an orgasm, but then what did?
That was why it had been so easy to tell Gideon about the diagnosis. Why he’d had to tell Gideon before Spencer. No sentimentality. No tears. Gideon could joke about it.
Thank Goddess.
The tightness of Gideon’s hold eased, and Dane released his grip on the deck support post.
“Don’t cancel any reservations.” Dane grinned, though only the darkness could see him. “You know how I hate to wait in line.”
Gideon brushed kisses under Dane’s collar, and if Dane didn’t know Gideon would push him away in disgust at the word, Dane would have called it nuzzling.
His skin tingled everywhere, leaving him lightheaded as his blood tried to pump south for another round.
Right then, Dane needed to see what was on Gideon’s face, so he started to turn, but the sound of steps overhead made Gideon retighten his grip.
“Goddamn it, I’m tired.” The speaker’s voice was familiar: Jax. The steps moved over Dane and Gideon’s heads to the ocean-facing railing.
And then Theo. “Are you and Oz driving back to Queens tonight?”
“Nah. The girls are with his sister, so we got a room for tonight.” Jax made a long sigh and slapped his hands against the railing. “But he’ll probably want to head back at six a.m. tomorrow.”
“Poor baby.” Theo wasn’t remotely sympathetic. “I should think you’re used to early calls.”
“Not on a day off. And trust me, there aren’t any of those with kids in the picture. Not that I don’t love them.”
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