by Carly Marie
“Dude, you have it bad,” Carl remarked a moment later.
“What?”
He looked down the road where Jeff’s car had just turned the corner and disappeared. “You’ve got stars in your eyes like he’s hung the fucking moon.”
I pushed at his shoulder. “I’m sure you’ve got something better to do than torment me.”
Carl shut the door behind him and turned more serious. “I’m not surprised you figured stuff out with Jeff. There was part of me that kind of hoped it would happen when you moved to town.”
“What?”
He shrugged his shoulders. “Jeff’s a good guy who has always put his family first. You’re a good guy, and you’ve always put your family first. He’s gay, you’re bisexual. From what I’ve heard around town, you are both good-looking men. You’re a good match for one another.”
“I don’t think looks have anything to do with anything. But thanks, I think?”
“Listen, all I’m trying to say, and failing miserably at, is that from where I stand, you two are good together on paper, and from the few seconds I saw of you together, it looks like in real life too.”
Weirdest compliment ever, but I’d take it. “Thank you, Carl.” He left a few minutes later, telling me he needed to get back to his house. He’d only stopped by Mom and Dad’s to say hi on his way back from the grocery store, and they’d roped him in to bringing the boys back.
CHAPTER 19
Jeff
I hated doing office work. I didn’t have to do much of it thanks to Annie, but sometimes there were things that I had to do. It was inevitable. When our parts supplier fucked up an entire delivery Wednesday morning, I ended up being the one dealing with sorting it out. Annie was at a dentist’s appointment in Nashville and I was on hold with my supplier trying to get the shop disaster righted. I couldn’t do anything with parts for a garage in Nashville.
Spinning in the desk chair while on hold had become the best way to kill time. Hopefully, Annie would be back soon and I could hand the phone to her. There were still some cars we could work on while this mess got sorted out. Who the hell drops parts off to a shop that isn’t even open yet?
“You’re going to make yourself sick if you keep that up.” I stopped, only just realizing how dizzy I’d become.
“Carl?” Too dizzy. My eyes weren’t focusing well on him.
He shook his head. “If I have to call my brother to tell him you fell out of your chair after spinning around on it too much, you’ll never hear the end of it.”
I planted my feet on the ground to steady myself but didn’t try to get up. “What’s up, Carl? Did you have an appointment today?” There were currently only one and a half of him, better than the two there’d been when he walked in, but not few enough that I was willing to try walking.
“Can’t I just stop by and say hello?”
“Um, when you just stop by, there’s usually something that’s going to get me in trouble.” I thought back to some of the reasons Carl had just “shown up” at the shop in the past. “Midday drinking because Kathryn and the kids were gone.”
“Valid reason!” he interjected. “Also, that wasn’t the only reason. That was the day you broke up with that guy you’d been with a few months. Annie said you were down.”
“My sister is too nosy for her own good. What about the day you needed me to pull your truck out of the creek bed?”
Carl laughed that time. “Hey, that was also a valid reason. Do you know how much trouble I’d have been in if Kathryn found out that I’d gotten stuck down there?”
“Still don’t know how you managed that.” There was only one of him and I didn’t feel like the room was moving anymore, so I stood up and headed out toward the waiting room. “So what brings you in today?”
Carl propped his hip against the countertop. “Just wanted to see how things are going with Mark.”
Well, this was an interesting line of questioning that I hadn’t expected, though I probably should have. “It’s going well. We’re taking it slow. We had dinner with the kids at my house on Saturday and then we went out Sunday afternoon.”
Carl was quiet for a moment. “That’s good. I’m glad to hear it. Be patient with him. He’s been through a lot.”
“Between his first boyfriend and his ex-wife, I’d say so. I’m not in a hurry to announce what we’re doing. They will find out eventually, but no one has to know anything at this point. Though, I gotta tell you, your brother is a great guy. I love spending time with him. He makes me happy.”
Carl’s entire body language changed and he smiled brightly at my comment, then his lips pursed as he thought of something. “Yeah. His ex-boyfriend was a piece of work, and Nicole ended up not being much better.” Carl chewed his lip between his teeth while he thought. “I’m kind of excited that you two are together.”
“And why is that?”
Carl grinned. “Because then I can see you both at the same time instead of splitting my time up, duh. It’s far more efficient that way.”
I balled up a piece of paper and threw it at his head. “Yes, efficiency. Mr. Practicality over here.”
“Mr. Rusk?” A voice from the phone asked. Right, the parts order.
“I’m here!” I called back, hurrying around the desk.
When I finally hung up, my parts would be delivered within the hour and the random parts at the shop would be gone. At the same time, Annie was walking in through the side door, Carl was gone, and Mark was standing where I’d last seen Carl.
“Hey.” I couldn’t help the smile that spread across my face at seeing him. He’d been showing up at the garage with lunch that week. From the smell coming from the bag, he’d been at Marie’s. I could smell her meatloaf sandwich and my mouth watered.
“Lunch?” He questioned.
I nodded. Annie was settling into her spot, so I motioned toward my seldom-used office. Mark followed me inside, shut the door, and pulled me close, pressing our lips together. “I’ve missed you today.”
I smiled into the kiss. “I’ve missed you too. And your kisses.” I pecked his lips once more before pulling back.
He handed a box over to me. “Meatloaf sandwich. I still don’t know how you can eat that.”
I breathed in the smell of gravy, mashed potatoes, and meatloaf, and sighed. “Marie makes the best.”
“You can’t even pick it up—you have to eat it with a fork and knife.”
“Open-faced sandwich. I don’t know how the salads you eat keep you full for the rest of your shift.”
We focused on our meals long enough to get them mostly eaten before we began to kiss. It started innocently enough when I walked over to where he’d perched himself against my desk, leaning in for a quick kiss on my way back from throwing some trash away.
Mark had other plans and hooked my waist, drawing me between his legs and kissing me firmly. We stayed like that, my fries and the rest of Mark’s salad completely forgotten about as our tongues explored each other’s mouths. Then Mark rolled his hips against me and our kiss broke when my head fell back and I moaned into the office. “Not fair,” I complained as my cock filled in my pants.
Mark’s chuckle was deep as he rolled his hips again, that time catching my moan in his mouth. Even through layers of clothing, I could feel his erection rubbing against mine. The next time he rolled his hips, I rolled mine to meet his movement.
That time, Mark was the one to break our kiss with a curse. “Dammit.” Just as quickly as he’d pulled away, he buried his face in my neck, nipping and sucking the skin at my collarbone. I hissed at each bruise he left on me, then whimpered into his hair as he soothed them with his tongue.
I could hear the garage grow quiet on the other side of the wall, the mechanics leaving for their lunch breaks, but I was too wrapped up in what Mark was doing to care much beyond that. I fumbled with the belt and button of his fitted pants in order to expose his cock. A quick glance down showed it already bright red and leaking.
&n
bsp; My pants were looser, allowing Mark to slip his hand inside and wrap it around my dick. His stroke was confident, firm, but not painful, and my legs wobbled as my orgasm built. “I’m-I-gonna,” I panted, aware that I was going to cum in my pants but lost in the feel of Mark’s hand wrapped around me.
As soon as I started to speak, Mark’s dick pulsed in my hand and sent a volley of cum onto my pants. The feel of Mark coming in my hand, paired with his hand stroking my own dick, had me following him over the edge. “Fuck, yes, fuck. Mark,” I chanted as I came, filling my underwear with hot cum as he coated the outside of my jeans with his own release.
When we finally came down from our blissed-out state, I realized what we’d done. We both had sweat-streaked foreheads and my pants were beyond salvageable. Cum had pooled in my underwear and was already starting to cool, and the outside of my pants were coated in Mark’s cum.
“There’s no way I can go out there like this.” Even after cleaning up with some paper towels, the evidence of what we’d done was still clear.
Mark picked up his bottle of water. “Oops,” he giggled as he poured half of it down the front of my pants.
I yelped at the cold seeping through the fabric, the water making my already wet underwear and jeans cling to my skin even more. “What the fuck?”
“I guess you’re going to have to run home to change before lunch is over.” His wink had my annoyance turning into amusement. Thank fuck for his fast thinking.
Of course, as we headed out of my office past Annie, she began to cackle with laughter.
“I need to run home to get changed,” I told her, my face slightly red with embarrassment.
Mark nodded solemnly. “I accidentally knocked my water bottle over on him.”
Annie snorted. “Is that what they’re calling it these days?”
My face burned red. “Shut up. I’ll be back in fifteen minutes.”
She waved us out of the garage, laughing too hard to speak. By the time I climbed into my truck, cold, wet pants clinging to my skin, Mark was laughing as well. “Sorry about that.” He leaned into the window and gave me a quick peck on the cheek. “I tried to cover it up.”
I waved it off, though my cheeks were still heated. “It’s okay. I appreciate the attempt. I may just need to keep an extra change of pants in my office if we’re going to keep doing stuff like that.”
He waved as I pulled out of the parking lot, but in the rearview mirror, I could see him laughing as I drove down the road to my house.
CHAPTER 20
Mark
Thankfully, the extended weekend off school seemed to get most of the lingering illnesses under control, and the week had been less chaotic than the week before. Less chaotic hadn’t meant that Jeff and I’d had a chance to get together for more than lunches. Between both of our early mornings, work hours, and kids’ schedules, I was learning that spending quality time with him during the weekdays was going to be difficult until we became public with our relationship. After three weeks together, I was starting to feel more confident that our relationship was moving along well. The more I got to know the town, the more I’d accepted that they weren’t going to be incensed by our relationship.
When I’d told Jeff we needed to take it slow, I’d felt like my life was in chaos. Okay, my life had been chaos. But in that chaos, my emotions had become tangled up with my fears, many of which I’d found to be baseless. I’d assumed that small town meant narrow-minded. Narrow-minded meant homophobic. I’d come up against massive amounts of homophobia living in a larger city, so I couldn’t wrap my head around how moving to a small town would be better. But Fairview was different. From rainbow flags on businesses to never hearing a negative thing about sexuality, coming out didn’t seem like a risk to my career or my children.
The true ah-ha moment had come when I’d gone to Marie’s to pick up lunch the day before. Marie had cornered me as I paid the bill. “I tossed some of Jeff’s favorite chips in the bag today. And tell him I’m making banana pudding right now, so he needs to stop by this evening for some.”
My eyebrows flew up in shock, causing Marie to laugh. She might have found it amusing, but I hadn’t told her the extra lunch was for Jeff.
“Doctor, you two may think you’re sneaking around having lunch with one another all the time, but you’re here exactly opposite days. One day you get lunch, the next day he gets lunch. And you always have an order for his favorite food. Same goes for him.” She reached across the counter and patted my hand. “You may be new in town, but I learn what my customers like pretty darn fast.”
“Oh.”
“Besides, whenever you pick up lunch, Annie shows up here for lunch about twenty minutes later. And when he picks up lunch, Trish shows up. It really didn’t take too long to figure out you two have lunch together almost every day.”
I rubbed nervously at the back of my neck. Was I supposed to deny it? Was I supposed to acknowledge that we had been having lunch together almost daily? I was still trying to work it out when she handed me back my change and shooed me along before the food got cold. But not before a warning to remind Jeff about the banana pudding.
Jeff laughed when I told him about the conversation. “You can’t get anything by Marie.”
It was just a matter of time before the town found out, so putting off telling the boys was sounding more and more ridiculous. I was going to need to talk to Jeff about it the next time we had a chance to chat for more than a few minutes. Maybe the next day when we took the kids out to the movies. If we sat farther back in the theater than the kids, there was a chance we could talk about it. Then again, it might end up like the last movie we saw together. While I was up for a repeat at some point, a family movie was not the right time for that to happen.
Friday evening, the boys and I had dinner at Carl and Kathryn’s house. While we were chatting after dinner, Eli had fallen asleep across the guest room bed. With Thomas and her oldest keeping each other entertained, she’d volunteered to let them stay the night. While I liked being able to spend more time with my boys, the opportunity to have a night to myself was too good to turn down. I ran out of the house as fast as my legs could carry me.
Unfortunately, I was heading home to an empty house, and Jeff was forty minutes away at one of Seth’s basketball games, so he wouldn’t be coming by anytime that evening. When I pulled into the driveway, I started making a mental list of things I could do at home while I was alone. I’d gotten so lost in thought I missed the box on the front porch until I kicked it with the toe of my shoe. I yelped in surprise, confused as to what could be inside. The return address didn’t tell me much, a vague reference to a holding company in California. Then I remembered the sex toy order I’d placed weeks earlier. My life had been hectic, and with the delay in shipping, I’d forgotten all about it.
As soon as I remembered what was in the package, my cock took interest and began filling. With the box tucked securely under my arm, I worked on unlocking the door with one hand while trying to adjust myself with the other. I couldn’t seem to find a comfortable position no matter how I moved my dick around. The door swung open faster than I’d intended and I hurried inside, kicking it shut and throwing the deadbolt.
It wasn’t like me to drop items randomly throughout the house, but I did just that as I slipped my coat off and draped it on the back of the couch, then toed each of my shoes off in the living room. I lost my tie somewhere in the kitchen and my shirt got tossed carelessly toward the washing machine as I started a pot of water boiling on the stove, then set to work opening the box.
Inside were a handful of items, and a note apologizing for the cock ring in my order not arriving with the rest of the shipment. Though it assured me that it would be arriving shortly, and I had a coupon for my next purchase for the inconvenience. I laughed at the polite gesture, but focused on the things in front of me that I hadn’t owned in nearly twenty years. The toys—two dildos, one realistic and the other smooth and curved, and a butt plug with
a flared base—looked a lot bigger in real life than the internet had led me to believe. They all claimed to be trainers, so I knew there were far bigger toys out there. When I had purchased my toys in college, I’d gone to a local sex toy shop and picked what looked interesting. Ordering online was different. Not only was the selection much larger, but the sizing didn’t always seem logical. It had taken a lot of reading on each item before I’d ordered them. It had been so long since I’d had anything inside of me that I’d opted for the beginner toys.
When the pot was at a steady boil, I dropped each one into the water and waited, impatiently, for them to be sanitized. Others may have skipped the step, but my medical training wouldn’t allow it. As I stood around my kitchen waiting, my cock getting harder by the minute, I debated about what to do for the five minutes this step would take. The decision was taken from me when my phone buzzed on the counter with a text from Jeff.
This basketball game is taking forever. What are you up to tonight?
I almost swallowed my tongue. He couldn’t possibly know, but it didn’t change the fact that it felt like he did. Why else would he be texting me right now? Well, that was a stupid thought. Jeff and I texted multiple times a day. To the point that I’d had to start charging my phone at lunch time. What would he say if I told him I’d ordered three different anal sex toys and a cock ring? Oh, and don’t forget the toy cleaner and a bottle of silicone lube as well.