by Parker Foye
After taking a bracing breath, Jim got him moving toward the staircase.
“Listen—” Teddy started.
“Whenever Jamie’s in town, she stays in the guesthouse out back,” Jim said.
Teddy hesitated at the bottom of the stairs, giving Jim a sideways look and tugging his sweatshirt some more. The tinge to his cheeks abated somewhat, but his heart was racing. Jim could hear it.
To a coyote, the sound was mood music. Jim couldn’t have been more excited if Teddy had said, “Catch me if you can.”
“She’s my cousin on my dad’s side. Grandpa West had two sons.”
With his brow furrowed, Teddy started climbing.
Distraction almost always worked for Jim when he had to get people to do what he needed. He’d honed the skill on coyotes, whom Jim found to be some of the hardest creatures to redirect. Only wolves were worse.
At the top of the stairs, Jim pointed Teddy toward the right, and Teddy moved on his own—stiffly.
No matter how much he tugged at his shirt, he couldn’t pull it enough to hide his body’s response to Jim. Jim would have to teach him that he didn’t have to hide it—that he liked it.
His room was all the way down at the end, overlooking the woods.
“You live in this big house all by yourself?” Teddy asked.
“Yep.” Jim didn’t bother turning on the bedroom light. He didn’t need it, and the moon was bright enough that he figured Teddy didn’t either. “New construction. There was no point building a tiny house on a big lot. Would have screwed up the neighbors’ property values or something.” He heeled off his boots while peeling his shirt over his head.
“Um—”
“You don’t mind, do you?” Jim tossed his pancake syrup—scented shirt toward the hamper.
“That depends on what you’re doing.”
“Taking my clothes off. That’s usually what people do before bed.”
“Why am I here?”
“Because you wanted to be, obviously.” Jim gave him a pat on his cute little ass and then stepped into the closet behind him. There was no suave way to take off leather pants that tight. He was still breaking them in. His last pair got ripped up during a fight.
He writhed out of the pants, left them inside out to air and padded into the bedroom butt naked.
Beneath the swath of blond hair that had been slicked back with helmet sweat earlier, Teddy’s eye twitched, and then he closed both eyes.
“Aw.” Jim clucked his tongue and stood before him with his hands on his hips. “Don’t tell me you’re one of those super-religious guys who’s sexually repressed but still talks a lot of shit.”
“No, no, and...yes to the last thing.” As if he’d needed the tiniest of cranes to pull up his lids, Teddy opened his eyes slowly. His gaze tracked down from Jim’s mouth, to his chest and then lower. A quiet whimper sounded in his throat as he pulled his lips between his teeth and blinked.
“Well?” Jim asked.
“Huh?” Teddy looked up, but not at Jim’s eyes—his eyebrows. Jim knew the trick. Submissives in the pack did that all the time and thought he didn’t notice. “You’re naked,” Teddy continued. “Just so you know, I moonlight as an actor, not a prostitute. If that’s why you called me here—”
“Does it really pain you that much to admit you want to go to bed with me?” Jim gestured toward the bulge Teddy’s sweatshirt wasn’t covering. It was growing, as were the spots of red on Teddy’s cheeks.
“I don’t do booty calls with bi-curious assholes, either.”
“You’re assuming I’m just curious.”
“Probably.”
“Hi, Teddy, my eyes are up here.”
Teddy looked up yet again. His cheeks had gone dark, and eyes a bit wide with that kind of “shit, I got caught” panic.
“You know, me and my maid...” Jim shook his head. “We have a pretty antagonistic relationship. She talks shit about me through her phone’s little Bluetooth thingie because she thinks I don’t understand Polish.”
“Do you?”
“Sure. The last name West used to be Wiecek. I don’t speak it much since my granddad died, but I still understand it. As crappy as her attitude is, I don’t want her to quit until I’ve found a replacement. Do me a favor and take off your shoes so she doesn’t have to haul the carpet shampooer up here. She’d end up half-assing that chore, too.”
“Oh.” Perplexed yet again, Teddy looked down at his muddy gray Chucks.
Jim sidled past him as Teddy bent to undo his laces. He sat on the edge of his bed and leaned back onto his forearms. “When you’re done, come here, if you want.”
“You’re getting distracted. You need to tell me what you want from me.”
“I told you. I want you to come here.” Jim waved him over. He spread his legs a bit and pointed to the floor between his feet. “I want you to stand there. Take a closer look and see if there’s anything you like.”
Shifting his weight nervously from one foot to the next, Teddy passed the tip of his tongue across his lips and shoved his hands into his pockets. “I can see the scenery fine from here.” He narrowed his eyes a bit, deepening the creases at the corners. In a moment, he went from twenty years old to thirty, and then somewhere in between as his features relaxed.
He was a mystery in so many ways, and that was one of the reasons Jim couldn’t stop thinking about him.
Jim canted his head. “How old are you, anyway?”
“How old do I look?”
“Young as fuck sometimes. Sometimes not.”
“Casting directors like that.”
“Good for them, but I need to know the number. I prefer for the people I’m with to be...” Jim danced his fingertips down his belly and watched Teddy’s gaze track the movements. Watched his cheeks turn red again and his hands work that sweatshirt bottom once more. “Hard to shock.”
Teddy’s Adam’s apple convulsed as he forced his gaze to Jim’s forehead. “Twenty-seven.”
Jim nodded. A twenty-seven-year-old should be able to know trouble and to decide if he liked it.
Jim knew he was trouble.
“I remember twenty-seven.” He worked his hand over his rigid shaft, pressing the heel of his palm over the slick head. “Cold winter that year. Slept alone a lot. Hate that, don’t you?”
Teddy set his teeth into his lower lip and nodded so slowly that he may not have realized he was even doing it.
Jim wrapped his fingers around his cock and pulled his fist upward, never taking his stare from Teddy. “I don’t kiss and tell unless you want me to.”
“It’s not my reputation I’m worried about.” Teddy rolled his eyes—whether at himself or at Jim, Jim couldn’t tell—but then Teddy started to move, slowly, ploddingly toward the bed.
“You behave as though being around me is a chore,” Jim said.
“It is.” Teddy stopped a foot away and studiously averted his gaze.
That shit again.
Jim nudged Teddy shin with his big toe, and Teddy met Jim’s eyes.
That’s right. Look at me.
“Why’s it a chore?” Jim asked.
“Because I know better.”
“Oh. I’m not sure you do, though.” Jim leaned forward and grabbed Teddy by the sweatshirt pocket. He pulled him closer one gentle jerk at a time until Teddy’s knees touched the edge of the bed. Then he leaned back again to study the man.
Jim never got to see him standing still. Teddy was always moving, always pulling his face into ridiculous contortions. Between his legs—in front of Jim’s twitching cock—Teddy was a statue. Immobile, placid and so beautiful.
Though Teddy’s expression was as neutral as it ever was, thanks to Jim’s enhanced senses, he could discern that the man’s face was lying
. Teddy’s heartbeat was too fast, his breathing a little ragged, his scent spiked with the odor of fear.
“I’m not gonna hurt you,” Jim whispered.
“What do you want, then?”
“Company. That’s all.”
Teddy furrowed his brow again. “Company? But...you had plenty earlier. There were seven of them, including Jamie.”
“Yeah.” He nudged Teddy back a bit so he could stand. “But I didn’t bring any of those other six home, did I?”
Slowly, Teddy shook his head.
“I wanted a different kind of company. You gonna let me have it, or are you gonna make me beg?” He tugged at Teddy’s sweatshirt drawstrings, tightening his fist around the cords. “I’m not a man who begs.”
Chapter Three
Jim was propped up against his headboard with the bedsheets draped over his hips and his fingers twined behind his head. He was obviously waiting on Teddy. Teddy was a natural at sussing people out, but he couldn’t make sense of Jim West. Men like Jim didn’t pay attention to theater geeks...at least not in any ways that ended well.
Teddy stood there at the end of the bed, hands in pockets, shifting his weight and working his big toe through the hole in his sock to feel the scrape of the carpet. He needed the distraction of the burn—to feel an ache someplace that wasn’t his groin. He didn’t know what he wanted or what Jim was inviting.
He grimaced and looked out the window.
Lie.
Teddy knew exactly what he wanted. If he were as bold as he pretended to be at times, he’d take off his clothes and climb onto the bed. He’d collect his tips in trade from Jim’s body. He’d touch every one of those muscles. Arms. Pecs. He’d trace the sculpted diagonals from Jim’s waist down from his hips to his enticingly thick cock. He’d grab it and hold it, and maybe convince himself he could take it, but would probably just want to lick.
What’s he taste like?
He passed his tongue over his dry lips and hooked his thumbs into his belt loops.
“Mattress is new,” Jim said, apropos to nothing. He thumped the space beside him, closest to the window. “I always stay on this side, because I sleep on my belly and dangle my arm over the side.”
“So you can reach a gun, probably.”
Jim smiled.
That wasn’t a denial.
Teddy raked a hand through his gross, greasy hair and sputtered. As if he’d needed more proof the man was dangerous.
“Keep your clothes on if you want. Might get hot, though.”
“I’m already too hot,” Teddy whispered. There was a blaze in him he’d been trying for months to douse with frigid water, but the fix was sitting right in front of him. The fire needed to be fought with fire. Teddy wanted the burn, but not the extinguishing that would follow. He didn’t want to be used up anymore.
He pressed his sweaty palms against the thighs of his jeans and took a moment to gird himself. He scanned the room around him.
Most of time when he found himself in the lair of some man he hadn’t been intimate with before, he’d put his blinders on and tune out all the visual noise around him. That made giving his body up to men who weren’t quite compatible less of a trial. If he didn’t have to look at the knickknacks and images that hinted to their political affiliations, their religions and their poor taste in music, he could keep the encounters filed squarely in the back of his mind in the “just cock” drawer. He’d mastered that in five years.
He didn’t know why he was so desperate for clues to Jim’s deep, dark recesses, except the fact that he’d been quibbling with the man for months and in that time had learned almost nothing about him.
Maybe if I go ahead and get him out of my system.
He wanted to stop the obsession.
He sat on the edge of the bed opposite Jim, and then Jim dragged his fingertips down Teddy’s spine. It didn’t matter that there were two layers of clothing between his hand and Teddy’s skin. His flesh tingled as if he’d been nude and as if fingertips had been lips.
He drew in a breath and let it out. He swallowed and tried to remember what his plan was. “Your...alarm clock is dusty.”
“My maid is lazy.” Jim danced a fingertip along the top of Teddy’s collar, and his spine reflexively bowed.
Jesus.
Jim hooked an arm around Teddy’s waist and moved him backward toward the middle of the bed. He did it as if Teddy weighed nothing, no stops and starts, no jerky tugs. Just one clean, slow pull. Teddy liked that, and hated that he did.
His breaths were shallow, his balls were aching and his body submissively supine, and Jim hadn’t even done any work yet to get him there.
Face burning hot as embers, he notched his fingers into the covers. Teddy swallowed hard. Jim was built differently than Teddy was used to. Taller. Heavier. He had forty pounds, perhaps, on Teddy, and all of it was muscle. He was an Adonis, and Teddy couldn’t bring himself to be jealous, because Jim was offering that body to him.
Why me?
Jim eased farther beneath the covers and propped the side of his head up on his fist. His eyes seemed to glow in the dark, the yellow in the brown curious and prominent. “You gonna get under, or are you gonna lay on top of the covers all night? Or what’s left of the night, rather.”
“You didn’t ask to touch me.” Yet Teddy didn’t move. His brain apparently wasn’t interested in initializing the necessary nervous impulses to get his limbs in motion. Or perhaps he shared some genes with certain prey animals who went catatonic and played dead when frightened.
“I’m sorry.”
“You can’t go around grabbing people and—” Keeping with its trend of being worthless as shit, Teddy’s brain processed Jim’s words on a delay. They were an apology. Those sounds coming out of Jim’s mouth didn’t make sense. “What?”
“I said I’m sorry. You’re right. I didn’t ask. I usually don’t have to.”
Teddy didn’t used to make men ask. He’d let them take, and he no longer trusted that lovers would give anything back. “Look,” he said, closing his eyes against the sight of Jim once more. “I’m flattered you invited me over, but I’m not spending the night.”
“Says who?”
A laugh fell out of Teddy’s mouth before he could catch it. He opened his eyes to see Jim smiling crookedly and with one sable eyebrow pushed up. “I think I just did.”
“Why can’t you? You sat on my bed. I bet in some cultures, that’s basically a wedding.” The hand that wasn’t propping up his face inched across the covers toward Teddy, stopping an inch or two from his waist.
Evidently, the beast could learn, but that rough hand was teasingly close. He’d been fondling himself with it, each tug causing Teddy’s cock to throb in response.
He raised his knee a bit and discreetly freed his erection from the pinch of his jeans.
Jim raised his hand to Teddy’s face, hovering his fingers next to the hair in front of Teddy’s eyes. “May I?”
Curious, Teddy nodded.
Jim pushed back the swoop of hair. It fell again. Once more, he nudged it behind Teddy’s ear and smiled. “Cut it or grow it. That’ll fix the problem.” He traced a finger down Teddy’s neck, tucked it beneath Teddy’s collar and rolled his gaze up to him. He seemed to be waiting for permission, and Teddy gave it with another nod.
Jim fisted the fabric and pulled Teddy down on his side until his head met the pillow.
Teddy’s hips reflexively arched toward him, but Jim withdrew before Teddy’s cock found the torture of friction.
“You’ve gotta be horizontal or else I think you’re going somewhere,” Jim said.
“I am. I’m going home.”
“So soon?” Jim tugged the covers from under Teddy’s reclining body and draped them over him. “You can go home whenever
you want. All you have to do is let me know. I’ll even drive you. Your bike will fit in the back of my truck.”
“Okay.” He didn’t want to be in Jim’s truck. He wanted to be in his bed, and he wanted to know if Jim’s cock would feel as hard as it looked. Wanted to know if he’d be gentle entering Teddy, or if he’d force himself in hard and tell Teddy the pain would feel better in a moment. Teddy wasn’t sure which he wanted more.
Fuck.
“Take me home now,” Teddy’s mouth said, even as his fingertips toyed with the smattering of hair on Jim’s chest. Another rough thing he wanted to feel against his flesh. He craved the slight chafe—the friction—when they were chest-to-chest, cocks touching.
“If you’re sure.” Jim rolled onto his belly and settled his leg over Teddy’s. Putting his face against Teddy’s hair, he tucked his left hand under Teddy’s shoulder. He brushed his lips gently, back and forth, across Teddy’s earlobe, and Teddy sighed with pleasure and shame. He felt like the valedictorian of a class full of gullible suckers, but he didn’t move. Jim’s smile may have been devilish, but his mouth was heaven.
Teddy slipped an arm tentatively to Jim’s naked back and softly applied his palm to the heated flesh there. So taut. Strong.
I can’t believe I’m touching him.
He was in the bed of the handsome jerk who’d been tormenting him for so long, and had his clothes on. He wanted to take them off—wanted to let Jim plunder every inch—but he had principles for a reason. He didn’t trust people for a reason, and that included himself.
“More?” Jim fondled with the bottom of Teddy’s sweatshirt, his intentions clear.
“If you want.”
Jim slid his hand past Teddy’s waistband, and farther, brazenly grasping Teddy’s cock.
His confident grip made Teddy’s air rush out and his hips thrust forward. Teddy loved the texture of the calloused palms and fingers—wanted the friction and pleasurable pain.