by Tanya Chris
THE atmosphere in the car was so strained that Mac almost forgot he was driving. He kept waiting for Hailey to say something, more than a little concerned about what it would be. He’d gone into the evening knowing that bringing Hailey was a risk, that Hailey might derail the conversation with unhelpful doses of reality, but he’d behaved perfectly.
Even when provoked, he’d kept his opinions about urban development to himself. He’d been polite, charming, a better foil to Mac’s tendency to be too dry in social situations than Lauren had ever been, playing the companion role perfectly and without appearing to be playing anything, because Hailey genuinely liked talking to people.
He’d oohed over Brianna’s cat pictures and sympathized with Rob’s son’s struggle with choosing which colleges to apply to, supplying some of his own stories about the admission process. If he’d been angry with Mac about Rob’s less-than-charitable attitudes, he hadn’t let anyone know it.
But now they were alone, and Hailey sat dark and broody in the passenger seat.
“Are those people going to be evicted early because of me?”
“Huh? Which people?”
“The people who live at 710 Main Street. Phase II. You said you’re buying the building early.”
“So we can let their leases run out. So we don’t have to kick them out. They’ll get more warning this way, and if their leases expire before renovation is scheduled to begin, we’ll let them stay month-to-month. It’s the best I can do, Hailey.”
“But is it because of me?”
“Because of what you’ve brought to my attention, yes.”
Hailey shrank farther into the corner of car.
“It’s not— Hang on.” Mac pulled the car over and did his best to gather Hailey into his arms across the console. “It doesn’t accelerate the timeline of anyone having to move out, if that’s what you’re thinking. It just means we’ll be able to move everyone out in an orderly, predictable fashion rather than what happened with your building. The transition will be smoother. I think that’s a good thing, don’t you?”
Hailey nodded into his shoulder.
“And that’s because of you.” Mac planted a kiss on the top of his head.
“And you.”
“Yeah, it’s because of us. I know it’s not everything you’d want, but it’s something.”
Hailey drew his head back to look into Mac’s eyes. “Then thank you.”
“Can I take you home?” There was something Mac wanted to do, something they hadn’t done yet. There’d been lots of blowjobs and hand jobs and what was maybe his favorite—rubbing up against each other while they kissed, hands and mouths everywhere until they came all over each other’s bodies.
They saved fucking for the occasional night Hailey spent at Mac’s place, because they had a bigger bed and a shower to clean up in after, but even then, Mac always rolled the condom down Hailey’s dick. He was greedy to be fucked, having just been introduced to the joys of prostate stimulation. He loved everything about it—the zing that ran up his spine when Hailey brushed his prostate, the careful ministrations of Hailey’s fingers opening him up, the bright eyes above him that watched him with an intensity Mac could convince himself was love.
Despite his having more money, more power, more access to the conveniences that made life easy, it always seemed to be Hailey looking after him rather than him looking after Hailey. Hailey feeding him from his own meager food supplies. Hailey giving him a massage at the end of a long day despite having spent more than eight hours on his feet himself. Hailey using his body to bring Mac pleasure and peace.
But fucking someone had always felt pretty good, even when that someone was a random guy he’d picked up, even when things between him and Lauren had gone stale, so he could only imagine how good fucking Hailey would be.
With thoughts of getting into Hailey’s body occupying too much of his mind, Mac ended up at the store despite having intended to detour to his loft. But it was too late by then. Nothing was going to persuade him to spend another twenty minutes in the car when he could have Hailey naked beneath him. Not even a king-size bed and laundry service.
He bullied Hailey through the back door and down onto the futon in a heap that reminded him of their first night together, of how desperately he’d needed to see and touch Hailey’s nakedness. He saw it regularly enough now not to tear at Hailey’s clothes, but the thrill hadn’t died.
That ring puckering his nipple into a tempting treat, the visible press of his ribs, the line of fur trailing downward, those wrists he could never keep his mouth off of. It was a good thing Hailey had worn long sleeves to dinner. The other day he’d caught himself bringing Hailey’s wrist up to his mouth while Hailey and Julia-Louise talked books, as if the habit of nibbling there had become so ingrained he couldn’t stop himself from acting on it.
There was nothing to stop him now, so Mac used his tongue to trace the blue vein that ran down Hailey’s forearm until he reached that delicate spot where hand and arm met. He mouthed there, sucking up Hailey’s flesh to lave his tongue over it.
“You’ve turned that into an erogenous zone.” Hailey rolled onto his side so he could press his cock against Mac’s thigh through the dual layers of their pants. “I never knew I’d like having my wrist chewed on.”
“It’s a vampire thing.” Mac flashed his teeth, then sank them gently, pretending to hunt for a vein.
“Mm, suck my blood. Turn me to the dark side.”
“As if I could. You’re the lightest being I know.” He pushed Hailey over flat on his back again and crawled on top of him to get his shirt the rest of the way off, then took a moment to deal with his own so they could have their bare chests against each other while they made out. He wanted to fuck Hailey, but not desperately enough to fast forward through the rest of the good stuff. He loved the way Hailey’s nipple ring brushed against his own nipple when they ground against each other, stimulating them both.
“You ever think of getting the other one pierced?”
“I think you should get yours pierced.” Hailey tweaked one.
“Maybe. Fuck.” He squirmed against the sensation. “I’m afraid it’d show through my dress shirts.”
“Not if we kept the jewelry discreet. You didn’t know mine was pierced.”
“I hoped.” He dipped his head down to play with the ring with his tongue. Hailey’s turn to moan and squirm now. They should get all four of their nipples pierced with matching jewelry and never leave the bed again.
Without taking his mouth off Hailey’s nipple, he got Hailey’s pants undone and slid a hand inside them to find his leaking cock. He seriously loved the way Hailey got hard the second he touched him. Or even before he touched him. Mac figured his obsession for Hailey was balanced a little by how hot Hailey was for him.
Sure enough, Hailey was hard, eager for Mac’s touch. He thrust into it as his hands roamed over Mac’s shoulders. They could be satisfied like this for a while, each getting to feast on the favorite parts of the other, except that Hailey’s youth meant he also had a quick trigger. Mac wanted to get inside him before he sent him over the edge, so he maneuvered around the small space of the futon until he could work Hailey’s pants all the way off to reveal the pretty panties beneath. Finding out what was beneath Hailey’s pants was one of the highlights of his day, so he took a moment to savor and snuffle before discarding them too.
“I really want to fuck you.”
“Then get to it. Somebody’s been hogging all the turns.”
“Mm, I know.” He grabbed Hailey’s ankles and separated them, lifting them up and back to reveal the roundness of Hailey’s asscheeks and the pink pucker between them.
There really wasn’t enough room to do it comfortably, but he got his head between Hailey’s thighs and pushed his tongue right into him. Hailey gasped, then giggled, then wound both hands through Mac’s hair to tug him closer. Mac obeyed, smooshing his whole face in there to relish Hailey’s hole and the wrinkled, fragrant s
kin beneath his balls. He worked saliva into Hailey with his fingers, stretching him softly as a side effect of eating him alive.
“Shit, do we even have condoms here?”
A foil packet bonked off his head. Mac looked up to find Hailey smirking at him, his hair a tangled mess from the way he’d been tossing his head back and forth.
“How about the lube? And not on my head, please.”
Hailey grabbed the lube while Mac watched, helplessly in love with the good, gorgeous man he was about to fuck. This was it. Whatever defenses he’d had left, they’d be gone after this.
Mac bid them all farewell as he went back to being fascinated by the way Hailey writhed around his fingers and bucked up into his mouth when he fastened it over his cock. God, it was almost too good to stop, but Hailey was probably one hard suck away from popping off. Mac released his cock and blew a cooling breath over it, loving the volley of goose bumps that rose on Hailey’s thigh. He licked every one of them down flat again, warming what he’d chilled as he continued to work Hailey’s prostate.
“Are you going to use that condom?” Hailey asked, a little bossy and a lot wrecked. Mac wasn’t the only one who knew how close Hailey was to losing it.
“Any minute now,” he teased. His cock oozed with precome as he rolled the condom over it, thoroughly excited by the prospect of finally fucking Hailey. He was glad he’d waited, that he hadn’t fucked him the first night or even that night at his condo when he’d completely expected to before Hailey turned the tables on him. It was more special now, not just a random taking.
He guided his dick in patiently, allowing Hailey time to adjust while he enjoyed the sight of the body spread out before him. He traced his hand across the lean abdomen, followed the trail of hair downward to the treasure that was hardly buried, sticking straight out and proud.
“Ready?” His first thrusts were shallow, gentle, following the rhythm his hand set on Hailey’s shaft, but Hailey reached up and grabbed his arms and yanked him down to rut against him, pulling at his ass and thrusting up to meet him. Mac’s hand couldn’t do much more than hang on to Hailey’s cock, trapped as it was between their sweaty torsos, but he didn’t free it. He wanted it there, surrounding Hailey the way Hailey surrounded him.
“Yeah, yeah,” Hailey urged. “Fuck, that’s good. Come on, Greg.”
Shit. Mac might actually come first. He couldn’t. He had to hold off, bring Hailey up with him. But Hailey panting his name in his ear was so good, the silky squeeze around his cock so tight and hot and perfect, the moment so full and ripe. Mac’s balls tightened, then convulsed. His cock pulsed as his hips stilled, and a helpless moan rolled through his chest and out of his mouth.
Beneath him, Hailey arched, and Mac felt the wetness of his release coat his hand. He tightened it, trying to milk Hailey even as Hailey milked him, until they both slumped into laxness. Mac tipped over onto his side and arranged Hailey into spooning formation in front of him. They’d have to schlep out to the bathroom to clean up at some point, but he wanted Hailey against him for now. Hailey was limp enough to make him proud of the work he’d done, even if it’d been a close call there for a minute.
Fooling around in Hailey’s store wasn’t so bad. Having the bed low to the floor meant that if they ran out of space, at least no one fell over the edge, and the floor was clean enough. He knew that now, had long since stopped seeing the place as small or dirty or ugly. It was just their nest.
And like that, he realized he was essentially living there. Sure, he swung by the loft to change after work and shuttled himself back there to shower in the morning, but that only meant he did a whole lot of driving. In between the driving, he lived here.
That was why he’d come here from the restaurant despite having meant to go back to the loft. It was force of habit by now. The store was where he spent time with Hailey, and with Hailey was how he wanted to spend his time.
But he’d never intended to live here. There wasn’t space enough for the two of them, for one thing.
“Move in with me,” he said before he could think better of it.
“Seriously?” Hailey sounded half-asleep and half-amused.
“My place is comfortable.”
“For who, though? I mean, it’s nice, but it’s kind of…. Do you feel comfortable in it?”
He did when Hailey was there. “I want to come home to you.”
“Then you’re going home to the wrong place. I can’t work here and live on the east side. I don’t have a car, remember?”
“I’ll buy you a car.”
“Now you’re just being silly.” Hailey tilted his head up and blew a raspberry against Mac’s cheek. Mac rubbed his face clean, then rolled Hailey onto his back to look at him.
“Why is that silly? I can afford to buy you a car. Whatever you like. A Tesla, right?”
“Definitely not. That’s a pretty ostentatious way to be green. The bus is greener. My bike is greener. And cheaper too. Move in here if you want. It’s your building, after all.”
“There’s no room for me here.” Briefly he considered the idea of appropriating one of the apartments upstairs for their use, but that was ridiculous. They were trying to get people out of the building. He couldn’t move into it himself. Besides which, he didn’t want to live in Ball’s End, to worry about his car at night—which he’d sort of forgotten to keep worrying about, but still—or to give people an address on Main Street in Ballhaven.
“There’s room for you,” Hailey said. “Just not for all your stuff.”
It wasn’t like he had bushels of stuff. He could hardly even remember what was in his loft. Most of it had been put there by the designer.
“What would you spend money on,” he asked Hailey, “if you had it to spend? For yourself, I mean. No giving it all away.” He lowered himself onto Hailey’s chest to await his reply.
Hailey hummed. “Clothes, I guess.”
“Clothes?” He’d seen how sparse Hailey’s wardrobe was firsthand.
“You said if I could afford it. I love clothes. They’re the fastest way to change yourself. You can be any character from any time. And you know I have a lingerie fetish.”
Thanks to Mac, Hailey now had an entire lingerie wardrobe, which included the pale green panties currently lying on his floor. Mac would happily buy Hailey shirts and pants and, hell, dresses, if he wanted them, but where would Hailey put it?
“If you lived with me, you could use the closets in the guest room for your clothes. We could fill them up with anything you liked. You could play dress-up for me every night.”
“Tempting. As is the shower and the laundry facilities. But as long as I have the store, I’m kind of stuck here.” He dropped a kiss on Mac’s head while Mac wished the damned store would blow up already. Or get closed down like it was supposed to. He didn’t want to wait another seven months until the two of them could live together.
“So what’s your indulgence?” Hailey asked. “Since you do have money to spend, what do you spend it on?”
“Nothing, really. The usual bills—mortgage, car, housekeeping, gym membership. I’m definitely not a clothes horse.”
“Please. You have two closets full of clothes.”
“Only because the job requires me to look the part.”
There were Monday through Thursday suits and casual-Friday khakis. There were clothes suitable for going out to dinner and even dressier clothes for galas and opening. There were clothes for sailing on yachts or attending college football games. Somewhere, still, there were hockey uniforms. And then there were the things he wore to Hailey’s—jeans and T-shirts and sweatshirts, nothing fancy, though Hailey always reacted to his torso in a T-shirt as if he were the David.
“Where does the money go, then?”
“Back into the business, mostly. I’m the biggest single investor in my own projects.”
“So then the project makes you money and you put the money into the next project?”
“Pretty much.”
>
“Kind of a pyramid scheme. I mean, not in the fraudulent sense, just in the sense of money begetting money without any foreseeable end or purpose. How do you know when you’re done?”
“I do build things.” He rolled off Hailey, a little put out. Hailey might prefer him to be a philanthropist, but it wasn’t like he was an idle playboy. He’d been raised with a certain work ethic, and he’d never shirked it. Even in his college days, which had been full of parties and fun, he’d never lost sight of his goals, which were to… well….
It was hard to state what his goals were in so many words unless those words were about working hard and making money, which felt less like a goal and more like a treadmill than it used to.
“Sorry.” Hailey shifted over to look him in the eye. “You’re proud of the things you build.”
“Some of them. That building I live in? That was a wreck of an abandoned factory. No one was living there.”
“So why not always go for the empty ones?”
“Because depending on how far gone they are and how much space is available around them, it’s not always economically feasible. I can’t fund these projects myself. It takes way more money than I’ve got floating around.” He was only one man, one man with a sufficient but not limitless bank account. “You know I’m not a billionaire, right? A millionaire, I guess”—it felt funny saying that out loud—“but not… I could show you the bottom line on my net worth.” He grabbed his pants from the floor and rifled through them to find his phone.
“I don’t need to see your net worth. And why do you have that on your phone?”
“My accountant sends me things.”
“Well, I don’t need to see them.”
“I’m just saying there’s only so much I can do.”
“I know.” Hailey kissed him on the nose. “Now put that away and come back here. Before we haul our butts out to the bathroom to clean up, we might as well get dirtier. All that food I ate must’ve given me extra energy.”
Hailey wiggled his eyebrows, and Mac laughed even though he really did worry about how much Hailey ate. And Mac mooching dinner off him a few times a week couldn’t help. As he let Hailey’s mouth take his, he made a note to arrange for a meal delivery service.