“Jasper!” A pretty, sixtyish woman wearing a teal nightgown that would’ve been conservative if not for the sheer lace push-up bustier making up the top portion, hurried over to us, her wineglass held high and her Texas-sized graying blonde hair bouncing in time with her breasts. “Sorry, darling, we got started without you.”
He cast me an apologetic, wide-eyed glance before getting lost to her embrace.
The woman’s glass of wine started to overturn as she hugged him, and I slipped it from her grasp just in time.
“Regina. What in the world? You didn’t tell me we were doing… dress up.” Jasper gaped at her as she pulled back from the embrace. “It doesn’t even make sense. There’s nothing about lingerie during the Blowjob Bonanza scene.”
Blowjob Bonanza scene? Surely I’d heard wrong. Jasper had said those words completely straight-faced. Although, he said them in a room filled with women in skimpy lingerie.
She patted Jasper’s cheek affectionately. “I figured we’d improvise a little bit. Plus, Marion Brighton thought it might get her some sales.” She twirled, the teal silk skirt fanning out from her. “And she’s right. I’m definitely buying this to take home to Patrick. He’ll absolutely devour me in it.” She paused midspin and looked at her hand in confusion, then at her feet. “I could’ve sworn I had wine a second ago. I must’ve set it down somewhere.”
“Here you go, Mrs.…” I was typically good with names, and I was certain I remembered Jasper mentioning it, but my brain wasn’t working, not that I could blame it.
She took the glass of wine and looked up at me like I was her savior. “Oh, thank you. And call me Regina, none of that Mrs. crap. You’ll make me feel….” Her eyes grew impossibly wider. “Well, aren’t you a looker?” She grinned wickedly over at Jasper. “You brought a party favor. Although you should have brought him during book three, he kinda looks like Derek in Jumping Jude.”
“Really?” Jasper studied me as if seeing me for the first time. “I think he resembles Teddy more, from book two.”
Regina sipped her wine, cast an annoyed glance as one of the women let out a large belch, and then shook her head. “No. I think Derek. Older, obviously, but utterly delicious.”
I wasn’t sure if I should feel flattered at being called delicious, or insulted that a woman who was probably in her sixties had just referred to me as older. “My actual name is Russell. And I’m simply here as Jasper’s guest.”
At that moment a lanky arm was thrown over my shoulders. “Regina, I told you that Jasper has a bodyguard, remember?” The arm squeezed, copping a feel of my triceps. “And what a body to guard, I must say.”
I looked over and flinched away, bumping into Jasper in the process.
The older man wearing nothing but a lace banana hammock didn’t seem offended by my reaction.
Regina sucked in a breath and then nodded in understanding. “Oh, Robert, of course. I forgot.” She took another sip of wine and then leaned so she could see around me to Jasper. “Only more proof that he’s actually Derek from Jumping Jude.”
“Oh good call!” The older man nodded and stuck out his hand in my direction. “Sorry to miss your entrance. I was in the little boys room. I’m Robert Kelly. I meant to drop by the bookshop all day to welcome you to town, but…” He motioned down with his free hand at the white lace doing a very poor job of covering him. “Marion let me try on different options for this evening, and time simply got away from me.”
I started to shake the man’s hand, and then as I forced my gaze away from the train wreck situation of his crotch, noticed what covered the walls of the small room. Dildos of every shape, color, and size. As I scanned, the other walls offered whips, handcuffs, leather accessories, and items I had absolutely no fathomable idea what they were used for.
Forgetting Regina, Robert, and everything else, I dropped my hand and turned to Jasper. “What the hell is this?”
“Book club, I told you. We’ve been reading the Made Marian series. It’s gay romance. There’s a scene in the book we’re reading, Delivering Dante, that happens during a sex-toy party. They use the dildos to demonstrate how to give a proper blowjob.” He shrugged and sounded as if that statement was supposed to make sense. “I didn’t know about the lingerie aspect.” A flash of embarrassment crossed his face. “I really will be safe here. You don’t have to stay.”
I didn’t want to stay. Not even the tiniest bit. It had been bad enough with the cluster of women in lingerie, but being surrounded by dildos, and hugged by an older, for all intents and purposes, naked man? It was too much. My father’s voice had been banging around in my head all day as I stood stationary in the bookshop. But in that moment, his voice bellowed. All the things he and the other men of my family—all the other things the men in my previous career—said about gays. The jokes they’d tell, the disgust they felt for every one of them. How I knew they’d feel about me. How they’d ended up feeling about me.
The humiliation I saw growing over Jasper’s face cut through it all. Silencing every voice. Up until that moment, though maybe overwhelmed, he’d been having fun. He was clearly surrounded by people he cared about. I was the one who put that look there. I was the one who caused him to feel shame. And I was the one who was supposed to protect him. Up until that point, I had done the shittiest of shitty jobs. Let every feeling I had get in the way. My desire and lust for him… the memories of our past… But I’d be damned if I was going to hurt him. And if that required letting the weird old man in the lace underwear feel-up my arms, so be it.
I gripped his shoulder and waited until his blue gaze lifted. “Nope. I’m staying right here. Honestly, it’s a good lesson. Now I get why you like books. I had no idea they entailed anything like this.”
A smile began to curve his lips. “You don’t have to.”
I wasn’t sure if he was right in that or not. And ultimately, it didn’t matter. I couldn’t take him in my arms like I wanted to, couldn’t hold him all through the night like I had just a few short hours ago, but I could keep him safe, and I could make sure I never put that embarrassed expression on his face again. “I want to. It’ll be fun.”
“You won’t regret it.” Robert patted my shoulder, clearly not minding being caught eavesdropping. “I didn’t start attending Regina’s book club until three years ago. Fifty Shades of Grey changed my life. This will be good for you.” Another pat, one that felt a little bit more like muscle exploration and less like encouragement.
“Here we go!” Perhaps it was a curse my father had placed on me when I came out, or maybe it was just God’s sense of humor, but my declaration was instantly tested as a woman I guessed to be in her mideighties, at the least, joined our crowd. Her thick, jet-black hair combined with her black corset revealed what Elvira would look like when she entered the nursing home. She thrust plastic-wrapped packages into Jasper’s hands and then mine. “As soon as I saw you two come in, I thought I’d pick something special for you.” She motioned back toward the main room. “There’s a dressing room if you’re too shy to change right here. But hurry. The girls and I are getting buzzed enough that we won’t even be able to have an intelligent debate about what exactly Granny and Irene engage in with their hot male neighbors. Especially Martin!” With a twitter, she whirled around and headed back toward the group, a massive butterfly and tribal tattoo forming a tramp stamp over her lower back.
I took it back. I took it all back, every single thing I’d been thinking about Lavender Shores all day. The town was nothing like anywhere else I’d ever been or had probably ever existed. Struggling to tear my attention away from the retreating woman, I looked down at the package in my hand and felt the blood drain from my face. The label displayed a man wearing a thong, its revealing pouch designed to look like a penis. Number one, that made absolutely no sense—why would anyone wear a thong that looked like a penis to cover their penis? And number two, no. Absolutely, fucking no. No, no, no.
Jasper snatched the package out of my hands.
“You do not need to do this.”
I nearly fell over in relief. “Oh God, thank you.” Then as I noticed the sickly green tint over his face, I grew concerned.
He clarified before I could ask. “I, on the other hand, have to play along.”
Five minutes later, face redder than his hair, Jasper burst through the black, gold, and pink beads wearing tiny, high-cut, black briefs bearing a lightning bolt glittering with yellow sequins over his jiggling, substantial bulge. “All right ladies… and Robert, let’s get this Blowjob Bonanza started!”
Every single person in the room hooted and hollered and wolf-whistled and laughed.
He walked around the room, and as he did, revealed a crisscross of dueling wands embroidered on the back, curving over his unbelievably delicious ass. Though his blush increased with every step, his voice didn’t waver. “So, first debate of the evening based on our assigned reading is which of the dildos described in chapter eight would you prefer and why—the Widow Wrecker or the Turgid Love Hammer?”
That particular debate lasted a solid fifteen minutes. The next discussion—though I never quite figured out who Aunt Tilly, Granny, or Irene were, and involved some form of lesbian sex and a bunch of old men—took an entire hour. Through it all, Jasper, who seemed so quiet and reserved, was a ringleader. Entertaining every member of the book club. By the time the meeting was halfway through, Jasper was nearly three glasses of wine in, had lost his blush, and was occasionally casting heated glances my way. I supposed I shouldn’t have been surprised by this other side of him. He’d revealed it in those brief moments in the morning light before I’d panicked. To top it off, though, the more comfortable Jasper became, he somehow grew sexier. Which shouldn’t even have been possible with his nearly naked, lithe, pale muscled body flitting around the room. But there was a confidence, an ease that he displayed surrounded by his book club friends that I hadn’t observed before. It was intoxicating.
In addition to my crash course into the world of gay romance, somewhere between the lingerie, screeches of the women, and Jasper leading the competition on exactly how to give an appropriate blowjob on a dildo, I fell in love.
It was ridiculous. Utterly pointless, and one more example of the cruel twist of fate the world, or God, or whoever, liked to play.
For a little while, I wondered if I might be wrong. I’d never felt the sensation before. Never. So maybe I was mislabeling it. But it was that very fact, along with the dawning horror around it, that made it so I couldn’t deny the truth.
I was falling completely, ridiculously, head over heels in love with Jasper Getty.
Or at least as close to love as anything I’d ever felt.
Seven
Jasper
“Why is the room spinning? You need to make the room stop spinning.” I managed to focus on Russell’s face in the dimly lit room. It wobbled. “You’re spinning. Knock it off.” I swiped at him, but only managed to tip myself off-balance and plop onto the bed.
Russell chuckled, but I was too distracted to be offended.
I patted my duvet. “How did we get to my bedroom?”
Russell knelt, moving much too quickly and causing the room to spin once more. “You mean you don’t remember the long walk down the block? You stopped at some real estate office, knocked on the window, and called it a bad, dirty girl.” With another chuckle, Russell began to take off my shoes. As he did so, one of his hands cupped my calf. I started to groan and then remembered that moment in front of Lavender Realty. “Oh! Right! That’s Regina’s shop, and she is a bad, dirty girl.” I leaned back on the bed, resting on my elbows. “She’s the one who did this to me. She’s why you’re spinning.”
Another chuckle. “That last glass of wine was all yours, sport. Regina’s husband had picked her up probably half an hour before. But if there was anyone else to blame, it would be Robert.” He went to work on my other shoe. And again his hand brushed over my leg.
If he’d just keep doing that, and go up higher while he was at it….
“Not that it wasn’t fun seeing the two of you do a fashion show of all of the lingerie.” He shuddered. “Well, I don’t know if seeing Robert Kelly in a variety of lingerie could be put in the fun category, but still. Although, unless I missed something, that had been your idea as well.”
I sighed in contentment and fell back onto the bed as Russell slipped off my socks. The movement was a mistake as the ceiling began to spin. I pushed myself back to a seated position and closed my eyes, though I hated to cut out Russell’s handsome face. Even if he wasn’t quite as good-looking when his features kept shifting. “Okay, number one. That didn’t happen. All I did was try on the Harry Potter thing… er… underwear, to help lead the discussion about dildo blowjobs.” Wait a minute. That didn’t sound right. “Something’s wrong there. That doesn’t make any sense. But I most definitely did not do a fashion show with Robert. I would never do that.”
He chuckled again. “I can’t disagree with you. A whole lot of things about this evening didn’t make any sense, but I promise you it all happened.
“You keep laughing, you need to stop that. It’s rude. Maybe worse than the lies you’re telling.” I smacked him again, this time making contact on his broad chest. I started to move my hand away but instead smoothed it over his shirt, feeling the swell of his muscles, hearing the scrape of the chest hair beneath the fabric. “That’s nice.” I sighed again, and despite the world refusing to move in the correct way, I felt content.
Russell didn’t laugh then. But his hand closed over mine, his fingers tracing over my skin. Then he took my hand and placed it in my lap. “Okay, lie down. You’ll feel better in the morning. Kinda.” He stood and began fluffing the pillows.
As he pulled back the covers, I repositioned and slid in. The sheets were cool against my bare skin. “Are my jeans on? Feels like my jeans are on.” I attempted to inspect, but a wave of nausea went through me.
“Yeah, sport, your jeans are on.” Russell started to pull the sheet around me, but I batted them away.
“I don’t want my jeans on. I don’t sleep with my jeans on.” I yanked at the button but only managed to snag my nail. “What’s this sport thing you keep calling me? I’m not a football player. And you’re not my dad. He tried to call me that when I was little. Probably hoping he could stop me from becoming such a prissy little queen.”
Russell placed a large hand on my chest, his tone serious. “Don’t say that. You’re not a prissy little queen.”
“There’s nothing wrong with being a prissy little queen.” My stomach rumbled, and I rubbed my hand over it, which only made it worse. “Are my jeans on? I don’t want my jeans on.”
“Fine.” He sighed, hesitated for a moment, and then unbuttoned my jeans. “Raise your hips up and I’ll take them off.”
I managed the action without too much discomfort and relaxed somewhat as my bare legs slid between the sheets. “Underwear. I don’t want underwear.”
He pulled the covers up to my chest. “You can slide those off later if you want.” He stood and peered down. He looked like a giant from my position on the bed. Though the room still moved, he’d at last become stationary.
He was so handsome.
“Get in with me. Please.” Suddenly my eyes stung, though I wasn’t quite sure why. “Hold me again tonight?”
Those massive shoulders of his slumped. “Jasper, I can’t. It’s not a good idea.”
More stinging. “Why?”
He was silent for so long I almost decided I was dreaming. “I’m here to protect you. Not to take advantage.”
Despite the spinning room and the tear I thought was making its way down my cheek, a flash of anger fired through me. “That’s just stupid. We already did stuff last night. And… you fucked me like seventy years ago.” Something was wrong there. I was too angry and emotional to try to figure out what exactly.
Again he was quiet and intense. He reached down, patted my shoulder in a way that made me prepare
to get called sport again. “I’m going to go shower. I’ll look in on you before I go to bed.”
He was halfway across the darkened room when I finally found my voice. “Is it because I’m a prissy little queen and not a ‘sport’? Do you not do prissy little queens? Or only a max of two times, is that it? This prissy little queen has got her max of Russell Wallace?”
I sounded angry. I didn’t want to be angry.
Russell turned slowly. “No. That’s not it. Go to sleep, Jasper. You’ll feel better in the morning.” He sounded hurt.
My eyes stung for a completely different reason. I was being an idiot. I knew it. Just couldn’t seem to make my tongue stop. Couldn’t make the room stop spinning or my head stop pounding. Then he was at the door; he was going to disappear. Maybe he wouldn’t be there when I woke up. “I’m sorry, Russell.”
He glanced back a final time.
“Sorry I picked the wrong book.” That wasn’t what I was sorry for. What was I sorry for? “I’ll get it right the next time.”
“I’m sure you will.” He gave a half smile and stepped out of the bedroom. “Sweet dreams, Jasper.”
I stared at the shut door as best I could from my position, propped up on the pillows. If only I could clear my head, really think. I’d just fucked it up. Maybe it was already fucked up before, but I’d just made it so much worse. I’d meant to give him his space.
But then the book club. All that wine.
My stomach gurgled.
But I wasn’t wrong either. We had fucked already, forever ago and… we’d done a form of fucking the night before. In a lot of ways, we’d done a lot more than fuck the night before. The way he’d held me….
Though the sheets tried to ensnare, I managed to push myself up to a fully seated position in the bed, still staring at the back of the door.
I wasn’t wrong. I might be drunk as a skunk, but I wasn’t wrong. I’d seen the way he looked at me while I led the book club.
The Alcove (Lavender Shores Book 7) Page 9