“Now who’s talking…Oh, Jesus…” I forgot what I was going to say as he trailed a tongue from collar to earlobe. Done talking. Couldn’t through the moans anyway. And somehow in the middle of all that, I wrapped my legs around his waist and began rocking into him.
Control was never my issue. Not in bed, not in life. Overthinking was my problem, which was what I was doing as Peter made me realize what I had missed by repressing who I was.
Do I move my hand up or in? Am I supposed to stick my fingers in his ass? He’s on top. Does that make me the woman? What do women do in this situation? They never stuck their finger in my ass, that was for sure.
“Stop thinking,” Peter whispered. How he knew was anyone’s guess. Experience? Or my twitching hand in his pants was more likely.
“I can’t reach,” I laughed. Delightfully, he laughed too. Though both of us shut up as he covered my lips and sought my tongue with his. The smell of cinnamon enveloped my senses, but it couldn’t overpower the tang of sweat. My hand moved up his back, slipping under his shirt then back down again seeking to map out every inch of his damp, warm skin. His breath quickened as did the pace of his hips. He curled his tongue around mine, sucked at it, drove me to slamming my hips against him until our lips were wet from breaking apart with the force of our rubbing.
My fingers twisted and tangled tighter into his hair, then started to cramp, but the pace of his hips wouldn’t allow me to unclench them. I used that hand, instead, for leverage to hold his mouth close. My legs locked him tight to my hips, the friction between was insane, an inferno ready to explode. Until it was overshadowed by the sensations in my groin. Toes curled, hips stuttering, breath held, I came quietly, with a clipped moan and a deep shudder.
It took Peter another few minutes, which time I used to explore his jaw with my mouth and teeth. My hands concentrating on his skin, the pockets of muscles tensing and shifting along my palms. Soft skin, wet from perspiration, rough with stubble—and he even tasted of cinnamon.
When I heard his soft pant against my ear, felt his hips still and his body tense, another shudder ripped through me.
Gay sex, one. Straight sex, zero.
Chapter Twelve
Gay Sex 101 With Professor Peter
Lying under Peter was awkward, but not completely so. My legs cramped, necessitating the return of my feet to the cushion. Other than that, the weight of him against me was comforting, so I stayed relatively motionless. I started another skin-adventure on his back, the pads of my fingers trailing down the shallow channel in the center.
I was still guarded, half expecting the curve of Peter’s lips to bolt after his other fleeting smiles, leaving him with a scowl—or worse. I scanned his face, searching for hints that now he’d scored, Hostility and Apathy would be back up to bat. His mouth held only a serene smile—a vision I would pocket away forever. Just in case.
I continued to study him, committing every freckle to memory. He wasn’t as untouchably beautiful as I once thought. He had an ethereal quality in the pinkness of his skin and the deep blue of his eyes, but still, his nose was a little too pointy, with a tiny ball at the end. His cheeks had a few acne scars; and his top lip, though shaped exquisitely with a dip in the middle, was too thin.
“You’re staring again,” he chided softly, dusting his mouth across mine. I marveled that even that small bit of contact made my heart stop, sputter and speed ahead.
My fingers continuing their journey along his sides, under his shirt, cruising along the curve of his ass. Every inch of him was hard and soft, rough and smooth. I could hardly breathe with the force of want he elicited in me. “I was just thinking you’re not as perfect as I imagined,” I replied.
Instead of being affronted, Peter laughed. That sound also hit me deeply with a burst of warmth. I could see the appeal of drugs. If this stomach-sinking, dizzy, falling-through-space feeling was anything like taking heroin? Sign me up.
“And here I was thinking you were more perfect.”
“That’s the orgasm talking.” I smirked.
“So orgasms give me beer goggles, but they make you start seeing flaws?” His eyebrow moved slowly up.
“Saturday.”
“Today is Tuesday. Does coming also make you muddled?” His smirk was going straight to my groin, not a completely unpleasant feeling—except for the sticky mess soaking through my pants.
“You make me muddled. Saturday was when I started having clearer vision when it came to you.”
“Ah. Because you thought I killed Iss,” he said, starting to get up. I sighed at the loss of his smile and pulled him back down.
“Partly,” I nodded, “Yes. But also because of this.” I reached for his hand braced against the sofa near my ear and blind-felt for the ‘Iss’ tattoo-marred skin.
The center of Peter’s brow creased as he looked at me and cocked his head. “Because Iss tattooed me?”
“I’ve seen the tattoo before,” I said, brushing back the fall of auburn tickling my forehead as he leaned over me. I had to smile when it fell back in place—having yet another reason to touch him tenderly. I didn’t see Peter as accepting gentle gestures, so I was glad for the excuse.
Peter pushed up to his knees and lifted my feet to rest on his lap as he sat down. I was as surprised by the abrupt move as I was by the affectionate contact. He frowned, rubbing the blue ink and resting his wrist against my ankle. “The tattoo,” Peter said, “…Jess?”
“You knew him?” I propped on my elbows, doing the math in my head. Peter would have been ten?
He responded with a shake of his head “I knew of him. It was like last year when Joe told me about Jess and Iss. How did you know Jess?”
“Back up to Iss giving you that tattoo,” I said instead of giving him an answer. Talking about Jess was too painful. I sat up, grimacing as my air conditioning reminded me that my pants had a spreading stain in the crotch.
“Shower first,” Peter said, and I had to grab his wrist to keep him from going.
“No, shower later. Tattoo first.”
He shook my hand free and bit his lip. I wasn’t yet immune to that particular enticement, but I kept my breath quiet as it tripped in my throat.
“Iss and I are counting cash one night. Pretty big night for sales. I took in around twenty grand in three hours dealing at a newly opened club. Those kind of numbers get you noticed. Not that I understood that’s why Iss did it at the time. I was too busy being angry over being made his possession.”
He blew out a breath and unbuttoned his jeans, dropping them to the floor. He was more easy in his nudity than in conversation. I, on the other hand, just went from sated-to-boing between his letting go of his pants and their hitting the floor. This wasn’t the way I wanted to see Peter undress for me—shrugging off his clothes in a puddle next to my sofa. However, I wasn’t going to complain. There was no bad way to see Peter naked.
“Are you paying attention, Detective?” Peter asked, smirking while grabbing my ankles. I had to look up from his crotch to answer—which made responding irrelevant.
“That’s rhetorical,” I said, yanking my shirt over my head while he dragged my pants past my hips. My back smacked against the sofa cushion.
“So, I’m on the bed at his house,” Peter continued, while my brain held up protest signs that read ‘Iss Schmiss’. “Iss comes out of the bathroom with a homemade tattoo gun and says if I don’t give him my hand he’ll knock me out, break my fingers and do the tattoo anyway.” Iss Schmiss, the protester chanted as Peter knelt before me completely naked, lifting my ankles in the air and knee-walking between them.
“You planning on repeating this story in about five minutes?”
“Five minutes? We’ll have to work on your stamina.”
Either I was crazy, or stupid, because I stopped him before he could touch me. If his hands even brushed my skin, my brain would stage a sit-in until I bent over.
When had I started thinking about bending over?
Peter finished hurriedly
, “It is—was— it was Iss’s way of protecting those he thought belonged to him. I just had to show it if I got busted and ask for Detective Joe Dench. That’s how I met Joe.”
Before the last words were out of my mouth, he brushed aside my hand and climbed between my legs, folding my knees to my chest. “Story’s over now. We have to go to the court soon.”
Court? Oh. Cai’s bond was being decided at three. My brain had officially declared itself on strike while my other head took over the thinking.
“Breathe, Austin.” I immediately obeyed the gentle command.
“I don’t need an entire lesson on gay sex in one hour.” I swallowed.
“I’m going to take a lot longer than an hour,” he promised. We had two and some change before he had to be at the courthouse. That was my last recollection before Peter’s cock touched mine and rendered all thought moot.
When the doorbell rang, my head tilted back at the same time as his mouth lifted from my lips. Peter moved to the inside of the sofa while I scooted from under him. As I grabbed my pants, the chime sounded again. “Coming.” I threw Peter’s jeans at him with a look that dared him to say a word.
He chuckled, sliding up one pant leg. We were moving methodically, not hastily, which proved a mistake.
Before either of our pants was waist high, the front door flew open, and in walked my best friend.
Dear God, I’ll Take That Lobotomy Now. Thanks, —Austin
“Ready for the ga—” Dave’s grin fell as his jaw unhinged and then clacked back together, “—me.” In rapid succession he dropped the six pack of beers from his hand, causing me to yell a frantic, “Oh, shit,” while he croaked, “Fuck, I didn’t—” and dropped the pizza box upside-down, both of us turning our backs to each other. “Fuck. Oh, fuck. I’m really sorry, Oz.” Then he started laughing.
“Jesus Christ. Can I just come out to someone in a normal fucking fashion?” I jerked my pants closed while Peter and Dave continued to laugh. It was only luck that I didn’t catch my balls or pubes in my zipper. Knew I shouldn’t have given him a key.
“Sorry,” Dave sputtered, now laughing uproariously while picking up a beer at arms-length. It spewed yellow liquid across my hardwood floors as he headed to the trash. Midway he stopped and blinked. “Pete?”
“Detective Buchanan,” Peter smiled tentatively, buttoning the top of his jeans.
“You know each other? Never mind. Answer in a minute. I’m going to go take a shower. I can’t have a fucking discussion like this.” When Peter started to follow me, I shook my head and nodded to the guest bathroom. I wasn’t going to have Dave thinking about Peter and me showering together.
“Stain on your crotch says you already had a fucking discussion.” Dave chuckled. I froze halfway up the stairs, praying for a natural disaster, before finishing the climb to my bedroom.
My shower would have made lightning look lethargic, as would the speed with which I pulled on jeans and a t-shirt. Foregoing shoes, I jogged back downstairs to find Dave rinsing a towel off in the kitchen sink.
“Thanks for cleaning up the beer,” I said, not even bothering to explain what he witnessed. Dave and I had jacked off together plenty of times. Our friendship didn’t lend itself to embarrassment. Hence his laughing at catching me with another man on my sofa and my being perturbed rather than humiliated.
“Isn’t he like twelve?” Dave nodded to the hallway where the guest bedroom lay.
“Twenty,” I shot back. “How do you know him?”
“Busted his boyfriend a few times.”
“Prick?”
“Prisc.”
“That’s what I meant.”
“No, you didn’t.”
“No, I didn’t,” I agreed.
Dave nodded, stepping over the back of my sofa and sliding down into the comfy seats. I hoped that Peter and I didn’t leave any mess on there. As surreptitiously as possible, I examined the leather.
“I cleaned it off,” Dave said. “A bed too much work for you two?”
He was taking this astonishingly well. “No,” I said carefully. “It was unexpe— Why are we discussing my sex life like it isn’t stunning news?”
“Stunning, is it? At your first ‘fabulous’, I’m outta here.”
“Comes to that, I’ll shoot myself. Don’t worry.” We sat in silence for a few seconds before I added, “Luis told you about the suspension?”
“Nah. Didn’t have to. Word got around.”
“A party just for me? I don’t know what to say, Dave. I’m touched.”
“Del’s an ass. You should have kicked it.”
“To be fair I didn’t threaten to kick his ass so much as to shove my foot deep up in there.”
“Surprised he didn’t report that as sexual harassment.”
I grinned. “Beer?”
“One of yours. The cans I brought will explode.” He crossed his ankles on my coffee table.
From the kitchen I brought two opened bottles of Guinness, handed one to Dave and retook my seat next to him while he flipped channels, settling on a repeat of last night’s baseball game. Far too many of my pay channels were sports related—I even had international sports. Maybe I was overcompensating?
I was trying to stop thinking about Peter’s naked body when Dave stole a spot in my thoughts. “Lemme ask you something, Oz. You tryin’ to destroy your career?”
“Only if I can do so in a blaze of naked gay glory,” I replied sardonically. I wasn’t the least bit defensive. Dave was only looking out for me.
“Fucking a witness, threatening Del in the middle of the station, Oz? If anyone but Luis told me this shit, I’d fucking say they were lying. No way would Austin Glass do anything to risk his chances with the FBI.”
“The FBI is overrated,” I lied.
“Oz, what’s up, man?” We still hadn’t managed even a glance at each other since I sat down. My head fell back, eyes closed while my fingernails stripped the label off my bottle. I didn’t have an answer for him. Thankfully, Peter made his appearance, watching me as he sank into the recliner.
Maybe Peter was the answer. The problem and the answer. The answer without being a solution. Another tick in the inconsistent life of Austin Glass.
He was wearing my sweats and college t-shirt again. The welling of emotion that came from seeing him in my clothes was impossible to explain. Everything I felt for Peter was impossible to explain.
And he had a beer.
“There are two cops here,” I warned, an eyebrow going up at Peter.
“I can fuck you, but not drink your beer?”
Lord, give me strength, and a steady hand for when I shoot him in the face. I stood up and snatched the beer from his hand, setting it down on the coffee table and breathing out as I sat down again. “I did not say you could fuck me and—”
One side of Peter’s lips ticked up. “Way you were bent on that sofa a few min—”
“Say it,” I warned, ‘and I’ll shove my foot up your ass!”
“Kinky,” Peter murmured, not hiding his grin.
Dave took a swig of his drink, still staring at the screen. He hadn’t spared us a glance during that whole argument. “Have you got some sort of foot-in-ass fetish? Del’s ass and now Peter’s.”
“I think it’s just feet. He’s obsessed with me in slippers,” Peter said quietly, tapping something into his phone.
“Christ. I’d choose a lobotomy over being with either one of you right now.” I scrubbed a hand over my face.
“Can I log into my email account on that?” Peter asked, nodding at the laptop. “Darryl sent the accounting records.”
Uh—Help
Having downloaded both sets of records—one set from the computer Luis brought, and one set from Peter’s mail—I began perusing them while Peter and Dave chatted. And by ‘chatted’ I mean that “uh” littered conversation when one person had seen the other naked and was probably doing his utmost to not think about where the other guy’s dick had just been—namel
y in the his best friend’s ass. I could have corrected that assumption, but I was too busy doing the this-isn’t-happening avoidance thing by staring at the computer screen and endeavoring to work.
At least three other detectives were probably slogging through the evidence on this case. Marco and Del were following the trail to their killer, while Luis and I were following it to our missing passport owners. It seemed the week and a half we’d been working on it, this case had tripled in value.
“I heard about your brother, Pete,” Dave said. “How’s he holding up?”
Peter shrugged. I read his intense concentration on the TV as he didn’t want to talk about it. I winced at his flat-eyed stare, identifying it as his prelude to sarcasm. “Great. They locked him up with a guy who lit his parents on fire and watched them scream while they tried to get out of the garage. It’s a great learning experience for Cai, who last month cried for two hours when a bird hit his window and died.”
Dave stared for a beat, took a long gulp of his Guinness and turned to me, “So," he coughed, "you’re gay.”
Three fingers rubbing against my temple didn’t ease the pain that shot through my skull. I jabbed the ‘print’ button and went to retrieve the sheets from my office, not caring if Peter and Dave sat in awkward silence, or killed each other.
When I returned a half hour later with the print outs, Darryl was sitting in my spot, his skinny jeans-clad thigh pressing against Peter’s. What infuriated me most was not that Peter had invited someone to my house, or even that Darryl was sitting in my place. Nor was it that Peter was sitting on the sofa next to Darryl. What enraged me was my reaction to Darryl’s hand casually resting on Peter’s knee: Fury.
The heat of my own anger unbalanced me. It buzzed through my veins like a swarm of hungry red ants. My skin crawled with it. I had no right, no reason, to feel jealousy. I’d known him what, a week? We weren’t boyfriends. We hadn’t even fucked.
“Christ,” I muttered, shoving those feelings deep, deep, deep down into the pockets of my soul. I determined to bury them further down than the memories of Jesse had been.
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