by Rachel Kane
He sat on the other bed facing me. “So.”
“I assume you want to talk about what happened in the woods,” I said.
“Hell no, I don’t want to talk about that.”
I didn’t know whether to be relieved or offended. “You don’t? Then what do you want to talk about? And are you drunk? Already?”
He shook his head. “No. I think I sobered up on the cab ride back. At least, I hope I did. Cal and Edgar dragged me to a bar. They told me... Listen, will you put that thing away? Put a pillow or something over it.”
My cock simply would not go down. Even sitting this way, it still made its appearance. I pulled a pillow over. The pressure against my shaft only made me harder. I needed some way to make my hard-on go away, but that was really difficult with Marcus sitting so close to me. His shirt was clinging to him. I had the oddest impression that the scent of cherries was following him, some kind of sweetness. He was going to drive me insane.
“What did Edgar and Cal tell you?” I said, trying to keep my mind off the throbbing of my cock.
“Edgar said that Josh said that Hunter--” He shook his head. “No. Telling it that way won’t work. Simple question, yes or no: Have you been asking people about my past?”
“No, not at all.”
He peered at me, as though not expecting how quickly I’d answered. “You’re sure?”
My memories of last night were a bit hazy, but I said, “I do remember talking to Hunter. I didn’t ask him anything about you.”
“I didn’t come up in conversation?”
“I mean, you came up. I didn’t ask him anything.”
He sighed. “You admitted this morning, before our...our...thing, that you believed all kinds of gossip about me. I’m asking you point-blank, did you discuss that gossip with Hunter?”
I felt like I had to choose my words carefully. I hated that feeling. Earlier I’d felt it because I’d sensed the anger and tension roiling inside him. Now, he didn’t seem angry. Puzzled. Offended. But not angry.
“I have never been interested in getting caught up in gossip,” I said. “Yeah, Hunter was warning me about you. But clearly my reaction to that was...complicated.”
There was so much going on beneath the surface with Marcus. He said, “Warning you. Great. Perfect. So he warns you, then this morning you get all kinds of crazy ideas in your head, and you...do that thing you did, to me.”
“Do you have to phrase it like that? It’s not like I assaulted you. No one’s holding up a doll asking you to point to where I touched you.”
He held up his hand to shush me. “That’s not what I’m talking about.”
“Then I wish you’d get to the point.”
“Look, I’ve already been through this once in my life, where people started talking about me behind my back. It wrecked my life for a while. An ex just couldn’t stop making things up, and everyone believed him. I lost so many friends. I made new ones, and I’ve made a new life for myself, but I’m not interested in watching that replay. So whatever the fuck Hunter told you, forget it. It’s all lies.”
“Like the way Harris was lying? Does anyone tell the truth about you, Marcus?”
I don’t know why I said it. Because I was horny, frustrated, uncertain. Because he’d gotten under my skin, and I wanted to get under his. Because I was tired of hearing him fretting over his reputation. He was a waiter, who cared what anyone thought of him?
That was uncharitable of me. In fact, as I watched his face, I began to feel that same twisted guilt that had struck me earlier today.
“You know what the truth is?” he said. “The truth is, I just walked in on you jacking off, and I know you were thinking about this morning. The truth is, I think some part of you likes me. And that you’re scared of that. No way could I live up to your high standards. I’m not a neurosurgeon or architect or anything great like that.”
Hearing him speak was like a knife cutting into me. It was as though he could hear my own guilty thoughts.
“I told you earlier that you don’t know what it’s like to have to be obedient, when your job depends on it,” he continued. “You clearly don’t know what it’s like to be the fucking topic of conversation, either, after some rich guy gets tired of you. You don’t know what it’s like to fall from a great height--or be pushed.”
Was he talking about Xavier now? My curiosity competed with the knowledge that I was on dangerous ground. My cock throbbed beneath the pillow. I was almost completely naked in front of him, and I wanted him with an urgency I could barely contain. And yet I could feel the hatred flaring inside him, so hot it might have burned my skin.
“I know what it’s like to fall,” I said. I couldn’t say anything else for a minute. I swallowed. “When I found out what a manipulator Harris was, I fell. I thought I had everything. Gorgeous house, gorgeous boyfriend, gorgeous life. And then suddenly I find out that he has been keeping a flame for Owen all this time. It was like my entire life was a trompe l’oeil, just an illusion of depth that somebody had painted on a flat, flat wall.”
“I’d feel more sympathy if you weren’t loaded,” he said. “You didn’t have far to fall, with all that money to catch you. You don’t know what it’s like.”
“Of course I do.”
“You don’t.”
“Dude, I haven’t always been rich. I mean, everyone in town knows I was adopted. I love my folks, but it took a long time for me to get over being their charity kid. I never fit in to my family. I wasn’t blond like them. My mom had this flowing, wavy golden hair. I always wanted hair like hers. I could barely get a brush through mine. But they were so nice to me. Then my brother was born. I learned quick the difference between charity kid and real kid. Real kids have chubby little arms and legs, instead of gangly bony arms like mine. They’re pale and pink and with tiny eyes. The first time I saw him I thought he looked like a baby squirrel. My parents forgot about me, as soon as he was born. I mean, oh, there were still presents and good schools and everything. Everything money could buy. But I’d become a second-class citizen in my own home. Fuck, why am I even telling you this? What do you care? All you care about is whether someone has been gossiping about you.”
“I’m sorry your childhood wasn’t great,” he said. He shook his head. “I don’t want to say that’s not relevant, because that would be an asshole thing to say--”
“Yes, it would.”
“But the fact is, we’re in different situations. Your money isn’t going to go away if someone smears your reputation. But if Hunter starts telling you that I’m some fucking gold-digger, and you mention it to other people--”
“I haven’t. I wouldn’t.”
“You told them I came on to Harris.”
“I thought you did,” I said. “You set me straight on that.”
“Yeah, but you don’t believe me.”
“Why does that matter?” I asked. “Why do you care what I think about you? You hate me, Marcus.”
“You hate me.”
“No, I don’t.”
“You hate-blew me there in the woods.”
I shook my head. “Do we have to talk about that?”
He made a fist. It wasn’t a threatening gesture; it looked more like he was trying to squeeze down everything he was feeling into something small and manageable. “Why is it so fucking hard for you to just promise me you won’t talk about me anymore?”
“It’s not hard. I promise. You will never again be the topic of conversation.”
“You can’t go back on that. You don’t understand. I don’t have a job to go back to. All you rich guys, you run in the same circles. You know every restaurant owner in town. If you smear me--”
There it was again. The absolute pain I had seen in the woods. It wasn’t his reputation he cared about. He was scared his life was going to be destroyed.
I thought of the way Harris had lied to me. I thought of the story that Hunter had told me about Marcus and Xavier. Xavier could easily have lied ab
out Marcus. And the lie would just spread, it would keep going, branching out. It didn’t matter what the truth was, and there wasn’t any way for Marcus to combat it. What was he supposed to do?
“I believe you,” I said.
He looked up at me. “You do?”
I felt gooseflesh over my shoulders. The simple honesty on his face, the searching of his eyes, they pulled me in, and I knew I had to be careful. Neither of us needed a repeat of what happened in the woods. I couldn’t let my emotion sweep me away. Just because he looked hurt didn’t mean I was the one to comfort him.
I shrugged. “You haven’t given me any reason to doubt you, really. You’re right. Harris was a liar. Hunter...I don’t like him. He enjoys seeing people get crushed. I don’t want to be like them.”
After staring at me for what felt like hours, he shook his head. “I don’t understand you at all,” he said, not unkindly. “I mean, I’m glad you believe me, don’t get me wrong. But why didn’t you believe me back when we had the fight?”
“Oh hell, Marcus, I don’t know. When you’re in a relationship with Harris, you believe things. It’s like Stockholm syndrome or something.”
“But you don’t hate me.”
“No, of course not.”
He looked away from me. “Cal and Edgar said...well, nevermind what they said.”
“They said something about me? I guess everybody gets to be the topic of gossip on this trip.”
“It’s so embarrassing,” Marcus said, falling back onto the bed and sighing. His shirt had come up, and I could see the ridges of his belly. When he lay flat like this, the bulge of his soft cock was visible through his shorts. My eyes traveled up his thighs, to where the legs of his shorts opened, leading to shadow.
I rose and went to sit next to him. He did not open his eyes. “What’s embarrassing?” I asked.
“What are we doing? What is all this? The fights, the stuff in the woods, all of it?”
“I mean, did you hate what happened in the woods?”
“It was confusing,” he said. He didn’t react when my fingers touched his knee. It was like I could feel each individual hair move under my fingertips.
“I’m confused too, for what it’s worth,” I said.
I could feel him relax under my touch, as my hand worked further up his thigh.
“You don’t seem confused,” he said.
“Honestly? I have no idea what I’m doing.”
“Do you need instructions?”
My hand had found the bulge in his shorts, and was caressing it through the cloth.
What I did not expect was for him to slowly reach out, and touch me as well. His palm slid across my swimsuit, brushing against my cock, which quickly regained its earlier hardness.
“Thought you hated me,” I said.
“I figure I owe you for this morning,” he said.
I wanted to ask him questions. I wanted to figure out what he was thinking, to track how we had gotten here. But mostly I didn’t want to think at all. His hand was on me, working me so slowly, that all I wanted to do was lie back and close my eyes and feel it.
So I did.
It had been such a rough couple of days, so rough they seemed to stretch back months, as though I’d flown to the island ages ago. But I felt my tension begin to melt under his touch. It was a strange sensation, to feel my shoulders and back loosen, at the same time my cock hardened and my ass and thighs tightened up, to press against his hand, a different kind of tension, anticipation of what he might do.
I felt him turn onto his side, felt the way the bed sunk as he moved, edging us closer together. His hand left me, replaced by his thigh, pushing between my legs, putting pressure against me. I pushed back, pressing my cock against his leg, feeling the warmth of his skin even through the two layers of fabric between us.
When I opened my eyes, I found him moving further, until he was on top of me. Not all the way on top; his muscular thigh was still between my legs, but his strong arms were to either side of me, and he looked down at me. I had never seen this expression on his face before, and did not know what words might describe it. Like he knew this was wrong, it was happening too quickly, and yet he didn’t care. An urgency, a fear, a decision. He slowly brought himself down, until our lips were touching. He smelled of salt, of cherries, of alcohol, strangely sweet and absolutely captivating.
I could feel his hardness press my hip, as he ground against me. I wanted to touch his cock, to grab it, to have it inside me, but battling with that urgency was the desire to let him do what he wanted with me. If he wanted to fuck me, he could fuck me. If he wanted to rub against me, he could do that too. I didn’t care, as long as he was touching me.
He lifted one hand to my face, trailed his fingers down my cheek. Then he kissed where his fingers had been. I would not have expected him to be so soft. Yesterday he had seemed so aggressive, so angry. Maybe I’d been wrong about everything. Maybe I didn’t know him at all.
I did know one thing: How much I wanted him. I lifted my head to meet his lips again, but he had turned his head, so my lips brushed against his stubble, glorying in the roughness of it, as he kissed my neck, my throat, working his way down.
There was such a battle inside me. Feeling his tongue against my nipples, I needed him to fuck me, and knew I couldn’t be happy unless he did. I wanted him to take me, to grab me and pound me. But at the same time, I hadn’t come in so long, and I needed that, too. Just imagining him moving down to suck on my cock, made me so hard it was painful. At the same time, I was so scared. What if I didn’t get a chance to come with him? I knew one wrong word might set off another fight between us; we might be in bed together, but there was still history here, and anything might shut this down.
But I couldn’t think about that for long, not with the things he was doing to me.
It took him ages to work his way down. The tip of his tongue drew a trail down my ribs, down my belly. It was warm at first, then cool as the air touched where he had been. His hair was soft; I ran my fingers through it, shuddering at the feeling of his tongue on me. He traced each ridge of my abs, making the tiniest sounds. When he finally reached the waist of my swimsuit I thought I would go crazy, he was moving so slowly, so carefully, touching everything but my cock.
He got his fingers beneath the waistband and pulled. As my suit came down, it tugged on my cock, pulling it downward; I gritted my teeth at the sensation, because I was rock hard and practically immobile at this point, but the little yanks he was giving to my suit felt so good as the fabric rubbed against my head, that I couldn’t really complain, not at all.
Finally I was free, my suit pulled off. My cock stood before him. My eyes were wide open now, my attention totally focused on what he was going to do next.
The first part of my cock that he kissed, was the underside, right where my shaft meets my balls. Almost like he knew it was one of the most sensitive parts of me. My hands squeezed the sheets on the bed as though to steady myself.
He used his tongue, pushing it against my base, playing off nerves I didn’t even know I had, making me quiver. I cried out at the feeling.
I had to restrain myself. As he began slowly traveling up the underside of my cock, I wanted to come right then. But I wasn’t ready for it to end, not yet. I lay my head back and felt him take me into his mouth.
I could tell he was trying to be gentle. I knew he wanted to go harder, to swallow me down. His lips traveled down my shaft, putting on just enough pressure to tease me, coming up and off, touching the tip of his tongue to my slit. He knew what he was doing. It was driving me crazy. I wanted to shove myself into him, to fuck his mouth. Whenever I would open my eyes and look down, I’d see his massive shoulders and back, amazed at the size of him.
Gentleness could only last for so long. He knew what I needed, and began to suck on me harder, moving down my shaft faster and more forcefully. He wrapped his hand around me, jacking on the base of my shaft, his other hand stroking and squeezing my b
alls as he sucked.
I couldn’t hold back. I wanted it to last, I did. I wanted his mouth on me forever. But my body just couldn’t take one more second of this treatment. My head pushed back, my hips pushed upwards, and I came, thrusting upward into his mouth. He used his hands to keep me going, sucking gently on me until the last shiver of my orgasm had passed.
The room settled into silence. In the wake of my orgasm, I’d found myself quiet and introspective. Marcus moved to lie beside me on the bed, his fingers trailing over my chest. It was as if there were an unspoken agreement between us that we had to stop there. That going even further, right this second, would be too much, more than our fragile detente could bear. I still wanted to be fucked by him. I still wanted to hold him, and be held by him. But we had all that history between us, and we had to be careful.
I didn’t want to be careful. I was in this warm, thoughtful afterglow, and rolled onto my side to look at him.
“So,” I said.
“You’re not going to ruin it by talking about it, are you?” he said.
“Don’t you think we should?”
“One of us will probably just say something wrong and we’ll go back to fighting,” he said.
I edged closer to him. “I had exactly the same thought.”
“I mean, we probably shouldn’t do this.”
“We really shouldn’t,” I said. It was the most logical thought possible, even though emotionally I felt exactly the opposite.
There were clearly things on his mind. Things he wanted to say, but that he thought might be too dangerous. If we stayed here in bed, the awkward silence would grow until one of us said one of these things that must not be said. It had to be prevented.
“Do you want to see the ice?” I said.
12
Marcus: Ice Prince
Of all the bad decisions in my life, blowing Sergio had to be in the top ten. What the hell was I thinking? The minute I’d walked into the room, I knew I was in trouble. Between the ginja and the gossip and finding him naked in the room, it all seemed sort of natural. Until it was over and we both got tense again. I could have used another drink. By the time this vacation was over I was going to need a program.