by Amy Lane
“Yeah, but it’s real sweet of you offering to protect my virtue. You don’t need to do that. That’s not your job.”
And suddenly Mason could care less about Rudy. “What is my job?” he asked seriously. Because it sounded like Terry had the whole grown-up thing down.
“Take care of my heart, Mason. You’re the only one who can.”
Oh. “It’s what I was born for,” Mason said. “I just didn’t know it until I met you. Now I do.”
“Me too. That’s my job. My real job. First four months were training. Last two months were making sure I wanted the position. I want it. I want it with everything in me. I’m going to make sure you never doubt that. I promise.”
THAT WAS Monday night. Mason got texts on Tuesday during Terry’s lunch hour and a card in the mail Wednesday. Thursday night was another scorcher, so practice was called. Terry was still working anyway, so Mason—with Dane’s help—left a small ice chest in front of his apartment, two half gallons of ice cream sealed inside. When Terry got home two hours later, he said that it wasn’t even soupy—he was very impressed.
“It was the foil and the foam we packed around the outside,” Mason said, pleased. “I just wanted to do something nice for you.”
“Well, I’ve got one more day of being a grown-up—I’m getting a promotion and a raise out of this, so you know, it’s not just me working a bullshit job.”
Mason blinked. “I never thought it was.” Of all the things that were once wrong in Terry’s life, his job had never been on Mason’s complaint list. “You do what makes you happy, Terry. I never wanted you any other way.”
Terry’s reply was muffled in a bite of ice cream, but it sounded like he was happy with that too.
FRIDAY NIGHT there was a break in the heat, and Mason stayed out on the porch, feeling the breeze off the river and ravine revive the air and the growing things around him. Dane and Carpenter were out, but Mason found himself missing companionship. Terry had just gotten home and texted him that he was falling into bed, and that was good.
Maybe someday he’d be like Richie and Skip and would get a dog.
Maybe someday he and Terry would live here together, and they’d get a dog together.
The future beckoned joyfully, and Mason wasn’t going to put money down on anything, but… he could hope.
Tomorrow would be a big day.
HE WAS rusty on the soccer field. Dane dragged him and Carpenter there early to kick the ball around. As the rest of the team got to the field, the warm-up drill sort of built around the three of them.
The rules of the game were to kick the ball to someone not trying to steal it from you. That could change with every pass—so don’t get too complacent, and don’t take your eyes off the ball.
Mason was so invested in the warm-up, in remembering how to hit the ball with the sweet spot on the inside of his foot, in remembering how to fight someone for the ball without using his hands, and just generally orienting himself with all those bodies swarming around, that he forgot to look for Terry.
Until he heard Terry’s voice snapping, “Get out of my way, assholes, he’s mine for a minute.”
That was all the warning he had before Terry came hurtling down the rise to the field and leapt into Mason’s arms.
Mason was a tall guy, built like a tree. Not awesome as a soccer player, but strong and sturdy and able to take Terry’s weight and hold on.
And meet Terry’s kiss head-on.
It was better—so much better—than he imagined.
Terry smelled of bodywash and tasted like coffee and toothpaste, and none of that mattered. It was his body in Mason’s arms, his legs wrapped around Mason’s waist, his breath mingling with Mason’s as they kissed again and again and again.
Mason could have kissed him forever, could have made out with him for hours, standing in the middle of the soccer field, but, unnoticed by anyone on Skip’s team, the other team had arrived.
“Oh God, do we have to?” one of the other guys complained.
“You got a thing against gay?” Skipper asked, voice flinty.
“I’m gay, Skipper—I don’t give a shit. But we’re here to play some fuckin’ soccer!”
“Yeah, that’s fair. Terry, get off him!”
Terry pulled back far enough to laugh, brown eyes bright, Kewpie-doll mouth ripe and swollen with Mason’s kisses. “We’ll finish that when we’re done with the game,” he promised.
Mason smiled besottedly into his eyes, not caring if the world could see.
“I love you, you know that, right?”
Terry hopped down and kissed his cheek. “That’s what I’m talkin’ about,” he said, and then skipped to his position on the field.
The other team gave an “Oh thank God!” moan, and the game was underway.
THEY WON.
Part of it was that—like Richie and Skipper—Mason and Terry had a rhythm. They could read each other’s minds. It was as simple as that.
But Skipper told him that part of it was just that Mason and Dane were there, and they had four guys on the sidelines ready to go in, and everybody got a break. That helped too.
All Mason knew was that rush—one minute he was passing the ball to Terry, and the next minute the ref blew the whistle and they were up by two goals. Mason was engulfed in a big, sweaty hug of guys who were glad to see him—with the added benefit of Terry, right by his side, hugging those guys back too.
The celebration broke up, and Cooper and Menendez asked the logical thing. “Hey—are we gathering at Mason’s house today or Skipper’s?”
“Mason’s!” Dane called out, and just as Mason was wincing, because… because Terry, Dane met his eyes and gestured with his head.
“C’mon,” Terry muttered in his ear. “My place. We can shower and talk and go over later.”
Well, Dane had the keys to the Lexus.
Mason and Terry slipped away together and rode back to Terry’s apartment in his new vehicle, a used Ford Explorer. Mason’s legs fit better, and he approved. As they pulled up to the apartment building, Mason felt something in his chest untwist.
“What?”
They slid out into the heating air, and Mason said, “It was rough, passing this place on the way to my house every day. This last week, it’s been… better.”
Terry grabbed his hand and tugged at him gently. “Come see,” he said, sounding proud.
Throw rugs, framed posters, pillows on the couch. A toaster, magnets on the fridge, a computer desk, wall hangings in the bedroom in brown and red. An apartment that looked like a home, like someone who cared about themselves lived there.
Looked like a grown-up’s apartment.
It was beautiful.
“This is your place?” Mason said, looking at the changes with bright eyes.
“Yeah.” Terry came up behind him, wrapping his arms around Mason’s waist and nuzzling his shoulder. “What do you think?”
“It’s beautiful,” Mason said sincerely. “Someone really amazing must live here.”
Terry chuckled. “You think this is good, you should see the shower.”
“Why?” he asked. “What’s in the shower?”
Terry laughed wickedly. “Me. Naked. It’ll be great. C’mon!”
He ran out of the room, stripping his clothes, and Mason followed him, feeling strangely shy. Terry already had the water on when Mason got to the bathroom—decorated sweetly in seafoam green—and he looked at Mason in surprise as he began to undress with reluctance.
“What’s the matter?” he asked, stepping into Mason’s space. “Don’t you want to?”
Oh God—Mason had never wanted sex more.
“You… you cleaned house and… and decorated and….” Mason looked around. “What if I don’t measure up?” he asked, throat swollen. “You… this is a commitment. You promised. I can’t do this and walk away again.”
“Sh.” Terry cupped Mason’s face in his hands. “C’mon, Mace. We’ll get clean and it’ll be like w
e’re brand-new. I promise.”
Mason nodded and allowed Terry to help him off with his socks and his uniform, rolling the Under Armour tightly down his sweaty thighs.
The water ran down his back, just warm enough not to hurt, and Terry’s hands rubbing his chest, his shoulders, his waist and thighs, all of it helped to ground him, helped to ease that painful feeling of unreality.
That terror still possessed him, the fear that he’d wake up and this would be all gone—he’d be back to missing Terry, and Terry would be asking for another six months, another year, to get his shit together and figure out what his life was.
Terry caught his face then, the water beating down on both of them, and made Mason look him in the eyes.
“I promise,” he said fiercely.
“Jesus, Terry,” he said, feeling it in the pit of his groin. He wouldn’t get over this if it went away again. “You’d better.”
“I promise,” Terry whispered again, pulling Mason in for a kiss. And another. And another. This time they didn’t have to stop.
This time they didn’t.
Terry remembered to turn off the water, but Mason grabbed the towels, wiping them both off roughly while the kiss went on. Terry walked him out the bathroom door into the bedroom, and Mason pulled the comforter down behind him as Terry pushed him into the mattress.
Their bodies, naked, cooling in the air-conditioning, became a real thing, and Terry’s nibbles down Mason’s chest, his pulls on Mason’s nipples, shocked Mason into the here and now and the very real sex they were going to have to consummate their very real relationship.
Terry kept going, mouth headed for Mason’s cock, and Mason grasped the comforter to keep from flailing. Oh! Everything was so sensitized, so open to Terry’s touch. Terry pulled Mason’s cock into his mouth, tongue flirting with the bell, with the slit, with the taut cord of flesh that drove Mason the most insane. Mason pulled both feet up to the bed and braced them against the mattress so he could thrust slowly as Terry squeezed his length.
“Wider,” Terry murmured before torturing him with a lick. “I’m gonna fingerfuck ya, ’kay? Get you ready?”
Mason gasped at what that meant just as Terry was thrusting two lubed fingers into his backside. “Oh wow… you’re gonna… why’re you gonna….”
Terry sucked his cock for a moment while his two fingers penetrated, spread, stretched, and prepared him for what was to come.
“Because,” Terry gasped, pulling his head up to look Mason in the eyes. “Because you’ll believe me when I’m inside you. You’ll believe I’m never letting you go.”
Mason let his knees fall open as Terry positioned himself, hard and dripping already, in the spread of Mason’s thighs.
“You ready?” he asked, pushing just enough.
“Yeah,” Mason whispered, reaching up to stroke his taut stomach. “I’ve been ready for you since before you were born.”
Terry grinned. “You horny little bastard!” And then he thrust in.
Mason groaned long and slow as Terry penetrated, spreading him, pulsing inside his body, and Terry went slow and easy. Mason closed his eyes and thought about the empty space in his heart over the past months, and when he opened his eyes, Terry was gazing at him with such purity, such tenderness, that Mason’s heart healed, right in that minute.
“Love you,” he gasped.
“Love you too,” Terry returned, voice strained. He fell forward and pulled back, slow and gentle, before he thrust forward again.
Mason found he was smiling stupidly into those brown eyes. “Do you really?” he teased. “Do you really love me?”
Terry chuckled, low and evil. “God, yeah.”
“Then fuck me, dammit. Fuck me fucking blind.”
“Booyah!”
Hard and fast and strong—oh dear Lord, Mason had waited his entire life to be fucked like this. Terry pounded inside of him without pause, without fear—hell, without even getting out of breath. And Mason’s climax crested like a tsunami, first sucking all the air out of his body, then prickling along his arms and the back of his neck in warning, and then rolling, big, and bigger, up and up and up, until he was looking into the heavens to see the top. And then…
Whoosh!
In a giant surf crash of nerve-ending explosions, Mason orgasmed, crying out, spurting along his belly from his untouched cock.
He lost his grip on the sheets and flailed, catching Terry’s shoulders and crying out again as an aftershock rocked him—and Terry’s hips started a series of short, quick thrusts that hammered Mason’s sweet spot with every plunge.
“Oh God,” he chanted. “Oh God, oh God, c’mon, Terry, c’mon, c’mon, need to feel you in there, need to feel you inside me, need you to fuckin’ come!”
With a roar and a final, epic thrust, he did, collapsing across Mason’s chest, twitching, still in Mason’s body.
Terry gulped air frantically for a minute, and finally, when his shudders stopped, he asked, “You believe me now?”
Of course Mason did. But he was happy and free, and he could say anything to this man and be forgiven.
“Maybe,” he panted. “Maybe we’ll have to do it one or two more times.”
Four months later
THIS TIME Mason topped, fucking Terry from behind while he collapsed onto one shoulder and yanked frantically at his dick for climax. When they’d both roared to the finish together, Mason piled on top of him, squishing him into the mattress. He kissed the shell of Terry’s ear and breathed softly into it, just to tease.
“You keep doing that,” Terry grunted, “and we’re going to go again before we meet everyone at Skip and Richie’s.”
Now that autumn had arrived, Skip and Richie had taken over hosting duties, which felt right, since it had been Skip’s team to begin with.
“Dane and Carpenter will probably be there already.” Dane and Carpenter, their own romance cruising to an agenda only they understood, were still living at Mason’s house, which Mason didn’t mind. One more year of vet school—Mason would do anything to see his little brother graduate, to have a chance to be happy. They’d go house shopping soon enough. Mason was just hoping the house would still be in the same neighborhood.
“Yeah. We’ll get there. We have to—we made cookies.” Terry grinned over his shoulder, particularly proud of those cookies.
Well, they were decorated, and he’d looked them up in a recipe book. It was a new skill, and he’d been using it a lot, and Mason was proud of him.
“Mmm….” Mason kissed some of the sweat off the back of his neck, moving his shaggy hair as he did so. Terry was going for the same sort of hipster thing that Dane had going on. Mason didn’t mind the look, but he still sort of preferred the Boy Scout thing he’d had going in the summer.
But seriously—not picky.
He had Terry to himself as often as they could meet, and that was about five days a week.
Sleeping alone in his own bed was starting to feel like something fundamentally wrong had happened to his life.
“Hey, Mason,” Terry murmured, rolling to his side.
Mason did the same. “What?” he asked, staring at his lover in wonder. God—he sent Mason flowers. At least once a month. It was such a silly, simple thing, but Mason didn’t take it for granted. A silly, simple thing that meant the world.
“My lease is expiring.”
Mason blinked. That was not where he’d expected this to go. “That’s weird. I thought you’d have a year.”
“Well, I should have, but I asked for six months, and they gave it to me.”
Mason frowned. “Why’d you do that?”
Terry’s smile was all teeth. “’Cause I know this guy with this really big, nice house who could probably build a mother-in-law cottage to fit all my stuff.”
Slow blink. “You want to live on my property?”
“No, I just want to build the cottage with you. I want to live with you in your house, forever. Is that a problem?”
Mas
on felt this bolt of transcendence pierce him then. Joy. Happiness he’d dreamed not of.
“God, no. I can’t wait. Can you move in now? Like right now? Like today?”
“Next month,” Terry said smugly. “Just in time for Thanksgiving.”
“Wow,” Mason murmured. “We’re going to see the years unfold. We’re going to live together. It’s going to be amazing.”
“I reckon,” Terry said. “You think I learned enough this summer to make that work?”
“I think we both did.”
Terry chuckled lowly. “Did we learn enough to have one more quick one before we leave?”
Mason’s chuckle was just as evil. “I think we knew that already.”
“Yeah. Me too. Let’s practice, just in case.”
Practice was good. Mason would practice with him as often as he wanted. You learned more that way.
Yellow
Amy Lane Lite
Lite Contemporary Romance
Through a miserable adolescence and a lonely adulthood, Skipper Keith has dreamed of nothing but family. The closest he gets is the rec league soccer team he coaches after work—and his star player and best friend, Richie Scoggins.
One brisk night in late October, a postpractice convo in Richie’s car turns into a sexual encounter neither of them expected—nor want to forget. Soon Skip and Richie are living for the weekends and their winter league soccer games—and the games they enjoy off the field. Through broken noses, holiday decorating, and the killer flu, they learn more about each other than they ever dreamed possible. Every new discovery takes them further beyond the boundaries of the soccer field and into the infinite possibilities of the best relationship of Skipper’s life.
Skipper can’t dream of a better family than Richie—but Richie’s got real family entanglements he can’t shake off. Skipper needs to convince Richie to stay with him beyond winter ball so the relationship they started on the field might become their happy future in real life!