“Where do you go in Burlington?” Was it my imagination, or did he put the slightest, negative emphasis on the word Burlington? And then he looked right at me, dark eyes as intent as his body language had been with his lunch. A little shudder went down my spine. If he wanted me to be dessert, and we were staying in, that was so okay with me. Alec quirked a half-smile. “And would you want to go to any of those places with me?”
He seriously wanted to go out somewhere when he could stalk around the table and drag me into my bedroom? Should I be flattered that he wanted to spend non-sexual time with me or annoyed that he didn’t seem to be all that tempted by my nearby bed, with me in it all naked? Something from columns A and B, probably.
“We could…do you want to go down to the lake, maybe? Rent a couple of kayaks? Or we could get some coffee and take a walk along the waterfront?”
“Walk. I’m not much for boats.”
“Oh, do you get seasick? I do too. It’s the worst, especially since my whole family’s into boats in a way you wouldn’t fucking believe. Family business. Middleton Marine, have you heard of it? Or probably not, since you’re not much for boats.”
I clamped my lips shut before I could keep babbling like an idiot. And way to slip in the family business, there, when I liked to think I was above the typical Middleton penchant for mentioning how rich we were every five seconds. Like Alec hadn’t already figured it out from my condo, anyway.
Alec’s hand twitched, a quick fidget with his napkin. “I haven’t heard of it,” he said, leaning back in his chair. That was tension I saw in his posture, but why the hell would there be? Unless he’d caught the unintentional my family’s loaded subtext. “You guys rent boats to tourists or something?”
I shook my head, emphatically. “No, Middleton manufactures custom yachts, mostly, and they have a few for charter that they use basically for advertising. Not your typical tourist stuff. And definitely not us guys, because I stay as far out of the family business as possible. Oh my God do I ever. I don’t have a head for business and I don’t want one, and thank God I have a brother and a sister to make my parents happy.”
He grinned at me, his teeth flashing and his eyes lighting up, and fuck, but the effect was even more devastating in the light of day. “I hear you. If it weren’t for my sister taking one for the team and popping out two perfect grandchildren, I probably wouldn’t be on speaking terms with my parents by now.”
“Did they not like…sorry, that was going to be a really personal question.”
“That I’m gay?” Thank God he apparently had psychic powers. I nodded in relief. I knew better than to assume, either that someone was gay or that he was out. I just…really, really wanted to know. “They don’t care. But they’d be way more in my business if they didn’t have my sister and her kids to obsess over, and then I’d have to stop answering the phone for my own sanity.”
At least his parents called him. I kept that to myself. I’d probably painted myself as pathetic enough already. Poor little rich boy, with parents who didn’t like him that much…yeah, no. So not hot.
Questions, I had to ask more questions instead of whining about my own life. Everyone liked someone who took an interest. “Do you get along with your sister?”
“Most of the time.” He smiled again, and this time it looked a lot less genuine, a polite dismissal to go with his tone, which clearly said he’d finished with the topic. I tried not to let the sting of it show on my own face. “Let’s take that walk, if you’re up for it. New here, remember? You can point out Middleton yachts along the waterfront. Give me the grand tour.”
And I could take a hint, even if it hurt a little. “Sure. I’ll grab my shoes.”
Alec started to pile up the takeout containers, and I left him to it, too flustered to be a good host and tell him I’d take care of it later.
A walk. Coffee. More conversation, and no sex. I could totally handle this, even though now that we’d talked a little, it’d hit me how little of my own life was really worth telling another person about.
7
Alec
Gabe and I got some odd looks as we strolled along the waterfront, coffees in hand, Gabe chatting a mile a minute, almost feverishly, about local landmarks and restaurants and places to go on relaxed Burlington weekends.
“If you look across the water there, you can see Lone Rock Point. It’s actually owned by a church, but it’s a conservation area…” He prattled on, and I listened with one ear while I shot a ferocious scowl at a guy sitting on a bench and giving us the side-eye.
Yeah, I knew we looked a little odd together, pretty, brightly-colored Gabe and dark, scruffy me, with that paranoid law-enforcement vibe I couldn’t ever seem to shake off. In my current clothes, that probably translated more to a general air of stay away. But what did they think, that I’d kidnapped him or something?
Or maybe that I’d taken him out on two dates under false pretenses, and I was using him for an in to his family’s company?
Probably not, but that didn’t change my feeling that my own duplicity stood out all over me, with a big blinking sign saying Asshole.
Gabe bumped his shoulder against mine, smiling up at me. The smile looked a little forced. “Sorry,” he said. “I guess the history of Burlington’s nature conservation efforts isn’t exactly all that fascinating.”
Guilt roiled in my belly. Fuck. Gabe really, really did deserve better than this.
I’d finished my coffee, and I took a quick step to a trash can a few feet away and tossed the empty cup. When I turned back, I took Gabe’s hand and pulled him in, wrapping my fingers around his and giving him a gentle squeeze. His eyes widened, impossibly blue-gray, like they were picking up the colors of the lake.
“I like listening to you,” I said, and it wasn’t even a lie, even though I truly hadn’t been paying much attention to the history of Burlington’s nature conservation efforts. I glanced around. The path we’d been walking stretched out into the distance, with the lake on one side, and a bike path on the other. Trees. People picnicking. The distant sound of laughter, from a couple of families messing around with their kids and playing some kind of game. “Tell me about you instead, though.” I tugged on his hand and started walking again, not letting go. “You didn’t want to go into the family business. So what do you like, if it isn’t boats?”
I already knew, of course. But I hated that I knew. Googling a guy you were going to go out with seemed like good common sense, but running an FBI background check tipped more into…really, creepily invasive. I had a good reason. But that didn’t help one bit with the guilt.
Gabe’s hand felt a little damp in mine, and the tip of his ear turned pink. He wasn’t looking up at me, so I had to crane my neck to see his face. He nibbled on his lip a little before he spoke.
“I’m kind of boring,” he said airily—and not convincingly. His voice wobbled a little. “I did a master’s degree at Moo U, but I decided chemistry wasn’t the career for me after all.”
Why he’d been expelled had been a big question mark for me. While I wanted to believe he wasn’t up to anything shady…well, being kicked out of a chemistry program set off some alarm bells. He could be telling me something else to hide the shadiness. I thought it a lot more likely he was just embarrassed to have fucked up.
“Yeah? Why not?”
“It’s not that interesting.” His hand twitched a little in mine, and I ran my thumb over his knuckles and then took a firmer grip. “I mean, it really isn’t,” he went on in a rush. “I wasn’t focusing on my research. Getting a Ph.D. didn’t work out. That’s all. Hey, do you want some more coffee? I think there’s a café on the other side of the street.”
“I bet you were really good at it.” Holding hands wasn’t terribly intimate, but it seemed like it right then. His pulse throbbed against my skin, and his fingers felt vulnerable in mine. Pushing on a sensitive subject made me feel like such a prick, but I needed more than that, even if it hurt him. “If you car
ed enough to even think about getting a Ph.D., then I’m sure you must’ve been.”
Gabe stopped suddenly, turning to look into my face. The sun had come out at last, and it gilded his eyelashes bronzy-gold. “I wasn’t good enough,” he snapped, jerking his hand out of mine. “Sorry to disappoint you, but I’m not anything special. What you see is what you get, okay?”
The blue tips of his purple hair waved in the breeze, tendrils of it curling around his temples and brushing over his forehead. And his eyes flashed with annoyance and hurt, and his lower lip had gotten a little red from where he’d been biting it, and…I leaned down, unable to resist, and kissed him.
Softly, and quickly, pulling back before he could really react.
I’d kissed him two days before, but that’d been a blur of desire and anger and suspicion.
This felt like a real kiss. I pulled back a couple of inches.
“What I see is pretty fucking great.” His eyes widened. “Believe me. I’m not disappointed.”
I reached out, finding his hand again. His fingers curled around mine, and those pretty lips curled up. Christ. I wanted to kiss him again, and the feeling appeared to be mutual, by the way he’d tilted his head just a tiny bit and leaned in, like he expected it.
His little puffs of breath warmed my chin. His hand trembled. He leaned forward a bit more.
Fuck it. One more kiss. Nothing with tongue, that was where I drew the line.
My mouth covered his, and Gabe let out a sweet little sound, parting his lips and pulling me in. His tongue flickered out to tease at mine, soft and wet.
All of a sudden I had my other arm wrapped around his back and crushing him against my chest, and I had my tongue in his mouth and my thigh shoved between his legs, and his hand had wrapped around the nape of my neck, fingers digging into my hair.
Gabe broke the kiss, pressing his face to my neck and panting out, “Home. Can we go home? Back to my place. Now, before I do something really inappropriate, like blow you.”
My whole body shuddered. That soft, hot mouth around my cock, Gabe looking up at me through those fucking impossible eyelashes, my hands buried in his thick purple hair, holding him steady while I thrust down his throat…
I couldn’t do that, I absolutely couldn’t, but I did let go of his hand so I could bury my fingers in his hair like I’d been fantasizing about and tug his head back for another kiss, using his mouth with my tongue the way I wanted to with my cock, until I was so hard it hurt.
Gabe’s erection dug into my thigh, and he had to be hard enough to hurt too.
And that finally broke the spell, letting me pull back, dazed and breathing hard. He felt so perfect in my arms. Releasing him took me a second, but I managed.
Sort of. Because he didn’t let go, and I had to gently take him by the elbows and detach him.
He looked like I felt: glazed eyes, swollen lips, flushed and rumpled. His shirt had slid down one shoulder, giving me a glimpse of the soft hollow between his collarbone and his arm. I wanted to lick him there, nuzzle in, see if he was ticklish or if he’d moan and rub himself against me like a cat in heat.
“What is it with you and parks?” Gabe demanded, his voice a little slow, a little slurred, like he felt as drunk with arousal as I did.
“You’re the common thread, not the parks,” I managed. Fuck. I shouldn’t have said that, because his eyes lit up, and he licked his lips. “But I—can’t. We can’t. We should—”
Belatedly, I took a look around to see who’d been watching our incredibly public, incredibly R-rated display. Not quite X-rated, thank Christ, but another couple of minutes of rubbing myself off against Gabe’s slim, perfect body would’ve gotten me there.
A couple of cyclists whizzed by on the nearby bike path, and a guy walking his dog passed in the other direction, off the path and strolling across the grass. No one looked particularly scandalized. Cords dangled from the dog walker’s ears. Earbuds. He was in his own world, luckily.
“We should what?”
I looked back at Gabe. He’d propped his fists on his hips and narrowed his eyes at me, which might’ve been more intimidating if not for the purple-and-blue hair, and the loose t-shirt collar, and the cut-off shorts, and the…everything. Gabe wasn’t intimidating at all.
But I quailed anyway. Inwardly, at least.
“We should take a breath,” I said flatly. “And then we should…” I swallowed hard. “Get some more coffee. We should definitely get more coffee.”
I did not want more coffee.
Gabe’s eyes narrowed a fraction more, and he threw me a scowl nearly as good as one of mine. “I don’t want more coffee,” he gritted out.
For a second, I floundered, trying to come up with a workable rebuttal to that entirely reasonable statement.
“We could get a drink instead?”
“Is there some reason why you don’t want to just go home with me and fuck my brains out?”
I wanted to double over with laughter—although my cock’s current full-mast position trapped inside my jeans would’ve made that uncomfortable, if not impossible—or maybe just sink straight through the ground.
What the fuck did I say to that? “We haven’t known each other very long,” I said, aware that my stiff tone made me sound like a prude. And also an idiot, given how hot he was. “Maybe we should go slow.”
Gabe couldn’t have radiated more skepticism if he tried, from the furrow in his brow to the fists still resting on his narrow hips to the tapping of one purple-Chuck-clad foot. “Slow. After you basically mauled me in a park.” I opened my mouth, and one of his hands flew into the air, an accusatory index finger—at least it wasn’t his middle finger—upraised. “Twice,” he added.
“I never said I didn’t want to take you home and—and fuck your brains out,” I said, my voice going so low on those last words I almost couldn’t hear myself. Just saying them had me nearly jumping out of my skin. Acting on them might actually kill me. “But I want to wait.” Oh fuck, that sounded so incredibly lame.
But miraculously, some of Gabe’s tension seemed to ease. His shoulders slumped, and he let out a gusty sigh. “You’re not making excuses, right? Like, you’re not—in a long-distance relationship? Or you have erectile dysfunction, I mean, it’s nothing to be ashamed of—”
Okay, no. So much no. I closed the distance between us and yanked Gabe against my body again, and he cut off with a squeak. “Does this feel like erectile dysfunction to you?” I growled in his ear. I ground my cock against his abdomen to make my point, and he made that sound again, and I got even harder.
Point definitely made.
“No,” he said, “it really doesn’t, okay, I’m sorry, but if you keep doing that—”
I let go of him again, having to consciously force my fingers to unclench. “I’m not in a relationship, either. I told you about my dating history, remember? Did it sound like one of those guys hung around long-term?”
“What you are is a cock-tease,” Gabe said after a second, but a little smile had started curling the corners of his lips, and his eyes had a gleam of mischief in them.
“Not on purpose.” I tried to smile back. Christ, I wanted to be able to smile at him without feeling like a liar. “Hold my hand again? On the way to get more coffee, maybe?”
I held out my hand, and after a moment of hesitation, Gabe slipped his into it. The warmth of his skin paradoxically made goosebumps break out all over my arms. Fuck, I was starting to get why Victorians got so damn excited over a glimpse of ankle. When holding hands was all you could get, it felt far more erotic than it had a right to.
I wrapped my hand around Gabe’s smaller one, and tugged him into a walk again. He bumped me with his shoulder, and when I looked over, he was grinning up at me.
“Buy me some ice cream instead, and we’re even.”
I squeezed his hand. “Deal.”
Even if Gabe licking an ice cream cone might give me a heart attack, it’d be worth it to make him happy—an
d to feel like less of an asshole for a few minutes.
Gabe
Chemistry had been my true love, academically speaking, but erotic performance art had its appeal. Maybe it wouldn’t actually get me laid, but at least the ice cream was helping me get my own back for Alec’s precise assault on the sushi at lunch—and for his making out with me, again, in another park, and then backing off. Again.
He watched, perfectly still, pupils dilated, as I twirled my tongue around the base of the ice cream, right above the cone. I’d have grinned and fist-pumped if my mouth and hand hadn’t been otherwise occupied.
I wished they were occupied with the real thing I’d been mimicking. But hey, this worked too. I loved ice cream.
And oddly, his reluctance to see what my tongue could do to the real thing had bolstered my confidence enough that I could be this flirty and this bold. He wanted to take it slow. Which meant, unfortunately, that flicking the tip of my ice cream cone with my tongue probably wouldn’t incite him to jump me.
But it also meant he wouldn’t accuse me of being a cock-tease myself. It meant I could flirt, and yes, tease, and feel free to…well, just feel free. Not constrained by how self-conscious everything usually made me. Or nervous about what the guy staring at me might expect of me. Or nervous, period.
I could lounge here next to him on this shady bench in the park, our knees brushing as we sat turned slightly toward one another, and fellate my ice cream without a care in the world.
And bonus: the ice cream really was delicious. Everyone always thought I had weird taste, getting one scoop of chocolate with one scoop of the most unusual fruity thing on the menu, but it tasted freaking amazing.
I slurped and licked and thoroughly enjoyed myself while Alec ate his single scoop of mint chip more sedately, and a lot more methodically, in actual bites.
Undercover (Vino and Veritas) Page 7