Anna Martin's Single Dads Box Set: Summer Son - Helix - The Color of Summer

by Anna Martin

  He knew there was some performance coming up and made a mental note of the date to stick it in his phone calendar. Because his sister was a pain in the ass, but she was his twin, and things like dance recitals were important to her.

  James let himself daydream about taking Dylan as his date. Maybe they would be that kind of gay couple, the sort of guys who went to art exhibitions and dance shows and talked about it afterward over a glass of wine.

  Maybe, underneath the tight shirts and biceps and smudges of dirt that always seemed to cover him, Dylan was a sensitive soul who liked chamber music.

  Who knew.

  James was actually excited to find out.

  Chapter 6

  Steve had been watching the clock for the past hour. It wasn’t that he didn’t like his job—he did, a lot—but he’d had a dream that morning that had nudged him into wakefulness with a rock-solid erection.

  It was nice, in a way, to know he was capable of wet dreams at the age of almost forty. Not that he’d managed to orgasm from the dream itself—his hand took care of that while he was still only half-awake.

  On a Thursday morning in March.

  At 11:45 a.m., Steve admitted to himself that he was a weak mortal being and texted Mark.

  You at work?

  The reply came back within minutes.

  Yeah, grading papers. Why?

  Can I come over?

  Yeah. Why?

  Steve considered his answer.

  To say hi.

  In the time it took Mark to reply, Steve packed up his desk, locked his computer, and left a note on his office door that he was taking a long lunch. No one would care.

  Okay. There’s security but tell them you want to see me and they’ll tell you where to go.

  OK. See u in a bit.

  “See you later,” Steve called to his colleagues and ducked out of the building before anyone could ask why he was leaving.

  He jogged to his car, wary of the light rain that was falling, and nervously tapped the steering wheel as he drove over to Forest Heights High. He had no excuse to be on this side of town. Steve took the long route to avoid going past the garage, knowing Dylan was still working and not wanting to explain where he was going if Dylan spotted him driving past.

  The parking lot at the school was almost full. Steve found a spot near the back and followed signs for the office.

  “Hey,” he called, ducking his head to see through the gap in the window. “Anyone around?”

  “Hold on a sec.”

  After a moment, a woman pushed through the swinging door with her hip, her arms full of folders.

  “Hi, sorry, wasn’t expecting anyone.”

  “No problem,” Steve said easily. “I’m Steve Morrell. I’m here to see Mark Henderson. He said you can tell me where to find him.”

  The woman gave Steve a once-over. He’d never been particularly good at sizing women up, or charming them, or generally getting on their good side. If there was a gay stereotype Steve didn’t conform to, it was that. Despite his best efforts, he always seemed to piss women off.

  “Okay. I need to check your ID; then you need to sign in.”

  Steve nodded and pulled his wallet from his pocket. He passed her his driver’s license as she pushed the log book over, and he quickly signed his name.

  “Thank you, Mr. Morrell. Dr. Henderson’s lab is on this floor. You need to turn right when you get through the doors, take the first left, then follow that corridor all the way to the end. The room is the last one on the left.”

  “Right, left, left. Got it. Thank you.”

  “Have a nice day.”

  The school wasn’t that busy, Steve thought as he followed her directions, though passing a window that looked out over the athletic fields eased some of his nerves. Kids swarmed around one field, taking part in some game for gym class, and a group of girls were running around the track. He guessed lunch period hadn’t started yet, or they were in the middle of one. Either way, there weren’t many kids wandering the halls.

  At the end of the hall, Dr. Henderson’s door was open. The man himself wasn’t working at the front of the room, like Steve had expected. Instead he’d stationed himself at one of the student’s desks, piles of paperwork stacked around him.

  Steve had wondered if Mark would wear anything different while he was at work. He’d been dressed pretty formally the last few times Steve had seen him; he seemed to prefer button-down shirts and chinos over T-shirts and jeans. In Steve’s dream, Mark had been wearing a vest and bow tie and wool pants, and those adorable horn-rimmed glasses. With his graying, curling hair and light stubble and his full bottom lip, it was an enchanting fantasy.

  “Knock-knock.”

  Mark looked up sharply, then smiled.

  No vest. Or bow tie, for that matter. Mark was dressed pretty similar to when Steve had met him again at the bar. A white shirt, unbuttoned at the throat, but there was a blue silk tie curled up at the edge of the desk, so Steve guessed he wore one during the day. The navy wool pants were right as he’d expected, though. And Steve thought he might have a thing for Mark’s glasses. Honest-to-God, tortoiseshell, round glasses that made him look both adorable and devastatingly hot.

  “Come on in.”

  Steve firmly shut the door behind himself and tucked his thumbs into his pockets as he walked across the room. It was big for a high school chemistry lab, with wide spaces between each pair of desks. Mark had posters tacked all around the room, some advertising good lab safety protocols, others showing simple equations and chemical elements.

  “Hi.” Steve wondered if it was okay to lean in for a kiss. Mark raised an eyebrow, which Steve took as an invitation, then leaned in to gently brush his lips over the corner of Mark’s mouth.

  Mark had other ideas. He grabbed the back of Steve’s head and turned the kiss hot and dirty, sliding his tongue into Steve’s mouth and licking deep.

  Steve’s knees weakened.

  He almost swooned.

  “Hi,” Mark said as he pulled away.

  Steve made a slightly incoherent noise.

  Mark grinned, smug. “Take a seat. Do you want a drink? I have water.”

  Steve looked around. “Where?”

  “I have a fridge,” he said with a shrug. “I need one for some of the chemicals.”

  “You keep bottled water in the same fridge as chemicals?” Steve asked, raising an eyebrow.

  “I might have a second fridge in my office,” Mark said, clearly suppressing a laugh, “that no one needs to know about.”

  Steve hadn’t spotted the office and immediately went to investigate as Mark rearranged his papers. It was tiny, probably intended to be a broom closet, with no windows and one door that almost didn’t close.

  “Nice,” Steve drawled.

  “Hey, it’s not so bad. The fridge is under the desk,” Mark said, making Steve laugh.

  “When I texted you, I wasn’t expecting you to be free,” Steve said as he pulled up a lab stool.

  “I don’t have any classes until this afternoon. My students are out on a field trip with their English teachers, so I’ve been grading for about an hour.” He glanced over the piles of worksheets. “I think I’ve got a while to go, yet.”

  “You don’t work in your office? Or from home?” Steve asked, propping his chin on his hand.

  “Sometimes I do. It honestly depends on what my kids are doing, though it’s been easier since James got the truck.”

  “Frankie doesn’t drive?”

  Mark shook his head. “She passed her test, and then three days later she got hit by a drunk driver.”

  “Shit.”

  “She was fine, the guy clipped the back of her car and sent it into a spin. She was just really shaken up. Most of the time, she’ll get a ride with me or James now, if she can.”

  Steve nodded and watched as Mark skimmed a worksheet, quickly comparing answers to his master copy and printing neat check marks or X’s next to each one.

 
“Can I help?”

  “I wish,” Mark said ruefully. “Student confidentiality.”

  “Oh. Well, that sounds fair.”

  Mark hummed and flipped over the page. “How’s work?”

  “Not bad.”

  Mark looked up, expression stricken. “I just realized I don’t know what you do. That’s awful.”

  “No, it’s not. I guess I don’t talk about it much either—those confidentiality laws, right?” He grinned. “I work for a legal nonprofit that helps people challenge their medical bills.”

  “You’re a lawyer?”

  “No,” Steve said with a laugh. “I didn’t have the patience… or the inclination to work hard enough to pass the bar. No, I work with the clients, helping them with as much as possible to free the lawyers up for the complicated stuff.”

  “That must be fascinating,” Mark said softly. “And so rewarding.”

  Steve nodded. “I like it. Sometimes it’s like I’ll never learn it all, but most of my time is spent writing letters. You’d be surprised how many settlements can be worked out when the medical billing department gets a letter from me with our company logo at the bottom.”

  “So are all your clients based in California?”

  “Most of them,” Steve said. “Though I do Skype calls to a few clients out of state, especially places where they don’t have a local nonprofit doing the same thing we do.”

  “That makes sense.”

  Steve was impressed at how well Mark was multitasking, working steadily as he listened to Steve talk. Then again, he was a teacher. Maybe they were all that good at doing two things at once.

  “So why did you decide to come over?” Mark asked.

  “Well….”

  Mark looked up, his pen hovering in midair. “Well?”

  “If I tell you, it’ll sound like I made it up.”

  “Now you have to tell me,” Mark said, turning back to his paper. “People don’t say things like that unless they really want to confess.”

  “I had a dream,” Steve said.

  “Uh-huh.”

  “Where you were my high school chemistry teacher.”

  Mark’s lips twitched, maybe fighting a grin, but he didn’t look up. “I see.”

  “And you kept me behind after class….” Steve wondered exactly how much he could get away with. Mark’s classroom didn’t overlook the athletic fields; they were on the other side of the building. And there wasn’t anyone in the other room across the hall. Steve had checked on his way in.

  “And then you fucked me over your desk.”

  Mark choked on a breath. “Jesus, Steve.”

  Steve shrugged. “You asked.”

  “Yeah, I suppose I did. Is that why you came over?”

  “Only to tell you. I thought it would have more impact if I did it in person.”

  Mark laughed, dropping his pen and pushing his fingers up under his glasses to rub at his eyes. “You always manage to have an impact,” Mark muttered. “Did you come over here to fuck me?”

  Steve shrugged casually. “I thought it could be a possibility.”

  “I can’t fuck you on school grounds,” Mark said, his voice so low it was almost a growl. “If we get caught, I’ll get fired and probably banned from ever teaching again.”

  Steve nodded. He got it. “I have my car?”

  Mark glanced at the clock. Then back to Steve. His eyes had that scary-focused look behind his adorable glasses.

  “I have an hour until my next class.”

  “Plenty of time,” Steve said with a smirk.

  Mark was shaking his head as he grabbed his office keys and nudged Steve out of the classroom, then locked the door behind them.

  The halls were fairly quiet; classes were going on behind closed doors. Steve silently unlocked his car, and Mark slid into the passenger side.

  Since they didn’t have a lot of time, Steve drove to the lake that neighbored the school.

  “Shit, are we going where all the kids go parking?”

  “Is that a bad thing? Don’t mess with a classic,” Steve teased.

  The tracks in the mud suggested they weren’t the only ones who’d had the idea to come out here recently. Steve parked near the line of trees, mostly out of sight of the road. Right now there was no one else around, and Steve couldn’t decide if he was grateful for that or not.

  Apparently he had an exhibitionist streak.

  That wasn’t really a revelation.

  Steve killed the engine and unbuckled his seat belt, then looked over at Mark for a long moment.

  “Sex in the car or over the hood of the car?” he asked.

  Mark blushed from the tips of his ears all the way down his neck.

  “Is anyone around?”

  “No,” Steve said with faux confidence. “But if you’re worried about that, we can go farther back off the road.”

  “Okay, do that. Then yeah. Over the hood.”

  Steve didn’t even bother to hide how much that turned him on. He started the car and followed a path deeper into the small forest that surrounded the lake. It only took a few minutes to get to the spot he’d been thinking of. Out here, there was no chance of them being seen.

  When he parked again, Steve leaned over Mark’s lap and pulled open the glove compartment. He’d stashed a bottle of lube and a handful of condoms in a pencil case a while back, precisely for moments like this.

  When he straightened up, Mark caught his chin in strong fingers. For a second Steve stared him down, then leaned in and let Mark assault his mouth in a bruising kiss.

  Steve was too tall to straddle Mark’s lap, or he totally would have done that. Instead he slipped out of the car and walked around to Mark’s side, then let Mark pin him to the passenger door as their kisses grew frantic and desperate.

  “You don’t want this to be sweet,” Mark said, biting at Steve’s ear. “You don’t want me to be nice to you.”

  “No,” Steve gasped.

  “You wanted to have sex in my fucking classroom.” Mark said it like he couldn’t quite believe it.

  “Yeah.”

  “And you really don’t care if someone catches us doing this.”

  “No,” Steve said, because he didn’t.

  He spun Steve around and planted Steve’s hands on the hood of the car. Like this, Steve’s ass was stuck out at the perfect angle for fucking.

  “Stay still,” Mark growled.

  Mark quickly worked Steve’s belt undone and shoved his smart trousers and boxer briefs down to his knees. He worked the slick lube into Steve’s ass with quick, practiced fingers while Steve’s hands clenched against the smooth hood of the car.

  He was breathing hard by the time Mark pulled his fingers away, his ass empty only long enough for Mark to roll on a condom. Then Mark was gripping Steve’s ass and his thick cock was nudging at Steve’s hole.

  Steve couldn’t moan, or curse, or do anything but snatch breaths as Mark worked into him in short, even thrusts. Sex with Mark had been incredible right from the start, and this was no different. Steve kept his arms stretched out in front, his head dropped low, rocking his hips back against Mark’s.

  Steve was so turned on he was pretty sure it wouldn’t take long to get him off. That was good—they didn’t have long. That was another kind of turn-on; knowing that they were outside, that anyone could drive past and see them, that they both had to hurry up and get back to their desks before someone noticed they’d been gone for too long.

  Mark reached forward and grabbed Steve’s shoulder, pulling him up and arching his back. Steve slid a hand down and grabbed his cock, tugging on it in time with Mark’s thrusts.

  Steve came first, shouting out at the empty lake and spilling hard against the side of the car. Mark kept going with hard, bruising thrusts while Steve collapsed back over the hood, feeling worn-out in all the best ways.

  He shuddered again when Mark came inside him, loving the sensation and the warm satisfaction that came with it. Mark laughed br
eathlessly and slapped Steve’s ass the way he liked to do.

  “I have…,” Steve started.

  “I’ve got it.”

  So Mark had found that travel-sized packet of wipes that was stashed in the pencil case. He cleaned Steve up quickly, then wrapped the condom and wipes up in a tissue.

  When Steve straightened up, he still felt like his knees weren’t quite working properly. It had been a while since he’d been fucked like that in the middle of the work day.

  “We need to move,” Mark said in a low voice.

  Steve nodded and turned around, carefully tucking his cock away and doing up his pants. Apart from the flush on Mark’s cheeks, it was barely noticeable at all what he’d been doing, and somehow that was hot too.

  Before they got back into the car, Steve wrapped a hand around the back of Mark’s neck and drew him in for another kiss. He’d expected this to be hot and dirty too, but Mark always had a way of surprising him and instead kissed Steve slowly, sweetly.

  And that, Steve thought, might have been the hottest part of the whole thing.

  “I can’t believe I have to go back to work now,” Mark said as Steve started the engine and slowly edged the car back onto the road. “And teach teenagers. And sound like I know what I’m talking about.”

  Steve laughed. “I’m sure you’ll be fine.”

  “I really want to do that lazy teacher thing where I just put a movie on and make them watch it instead of actually doing real teaching.”

  “I thought you were the one who fucked my brains out,” Steve teased, shifting in his seat. Because he was definitely going to feel that fucking for the rest of the afternoon.

  “Shh,” Mark said, waving Steve’s words away. “No more talking. I need to save my brain power.”

  “Okay.” Steve played along but reached over to tangle his fingers with Mark’s. It felt like the right thing to do.

  Chapter 7

  James had started his job at the movie theater the summer before his senior year. It was actually pretty cushy. He got to see movies right when they were released, they gave away free popcorn on breaks, and everyone snuck soda from the fountains even though they weren’t really supposed to. It was a salty, sugary, semilegal delight.