Double Blind

by Heidi Cullinan

  Mandy took one look at him and lifted her eyebrows into her hairline. “And here I thought I was going to have to warn your boy you can be a little hard to handle.”

  “Oh no. He doesn’t need any warnings.” Randy ran a hand through his hair.

  Mandy laughed. “Need a drink?”

  “Several.”

  “I’ll send Carol over with a Dirty Whiskey for you.” Mandy patted his arm. “On the house.”

  Randy drifted over to the table, where Ethan had already seated himself in Louis’s empty chair. He’d also changed in his video-poker winnings and his bribe and kiss tokens for a modest pile of ten, five, and dollar chips. He smiled when Randy sat beside him, and Randy settled in as comfortably as he could with his dick screaming in his pants.

  “All right, Slick.” Randy’s voice was almost steady. “Let’s see what you’ve got.”

  Chapter Five

  IT ALL CAUGHT up with Ethan when Randy took him to the fountains.

  He’d done well for his first time playing poker—even he had to admit it—and he could tell Randy’s praise of his playing had not been feigned or embellished, because he’d criticized as much as he’d approved.

  “You play too long,” he’d told Ethan as they debriefed in the bar after. “A lot of green players do, but you’re better than most green players, so stop. If your hand is bad you fold. I know, sometimes you fold and then find out you would have had a damn full house. Hell, look at the straight I had. But you have to play the odds, Slick, and you have to play the players. Don’t go chasing fate in a card game, ever.”

  “You let Kevin.”

  Randy shrugged and focused on his beer. “Kevin’s not you.”

  They kept talking as they left the Golden Nugget and hailed a cab to head for the Strip. “Keep your purse in mind. Not a bad start. You made two hundred dollars tonight on top of the money I gave you.”

  Ethan let the smile on his face creep into his voice. “I earned some of what you gave me.”

  Randy’s hand slid across the seat and closed over Ethan’s thigh. “Yeah, but you threw away the big purse, so don’t get too cocky, baby.”

  Remembering the way he’d felt when he realized what Randy had done for Kevin, how it had swelled inside him when they were alone in the hall as he’d confirmed it had been deliberately done, Ethan knew he’d thrown away nothing. But he didn’t tell Randy how it had impressed him, how hard he had fallen in that moment, and as they crawled through the snarl of traffic past the glittering, flashing lights of Vegas that turned it into a single, indistinguishable kaleidoscope, he admitted he had no intention of ever letting Randy know.

  They got out in front of Bellagio, and Ethan saw the fountains.

  He heard the music first—soft, almost ethereal female vocals drifted over an even more effervescent setting of strings, swelling to a crescendo as Ethan stumbled forward, lightheaded and disoriented. He stepped up to the railing as the song intensified again and a spray of water arced up in time to the swell of sound. The pool below glowed, as if there were a bright, blue-white fire within.

  Ethan had a distant memory of the receptionist at his office in Provo telling everyone about how she’d seen the fountains at Bellagio on her honeymoon, saying they were so beautiful she’d cried. He’d written the story off as over-hyped garbage. Now he stood at the rail himself, raw from the day, thrown for so many loops he was almost accustomed to spinning. He watched the water shoot toward the sky as a disembodied soprano soared and a light hit every color of the spectrum at once, and he could not hold himself together anymore.

  Emotion swelled inside him, and he tried to let out his breath to ease the pain inside his chest, but it wasn’t enough. The next thing he knew he clutched the railing so hard his fingers hurt, and he spiraled away, overwhelmed by pain deeper than anything he had dreamed could exist. When he landed again, a steady hand anchored his arm.

  “Hey—hey.” The hand slid up to Ethan’s shoulder and turned him away from the water. “Baby—Ethan, honey—”

  Ethan gave up. He leaned forward against Randy’s forehead. The anchor of those hands, one on each of his shoulders now, gave him strength. He drew courage from the pressure of contact and the musk and whiskey scent of Randy. Ethan let it support and center him, and the pain reduced to a dull ache, a simple pit in his stomach once again, not a hard, killing fire screaming through his veins.

  The words broke out of him in jagged chunks.

  “A car.” He kept his eyes shut. “All I have left is a car. No credit cards. No house. No job. Just the money I won and you gave me in my pocket, and a car in the parking lot of Herod’s.” He fumbled in his pocket, pulling out the keys, his hand shaking as he held them out for Randy. “There’s a gun. Under the driver’s seat.”

  The music swelled again, but Ethan couldn’t hear it because it was drowned out by the screaming sound of an oncoming train inside his own head—and then Randy’s hands caught the sides of his face, shaking as he tipped Ethan’s head back, pressing the keys into his cheek. Ethan opened his eyes enough to see Randy’s face lit by the blue-white light of the fountains, his dark eyes no longer sharp and cunning, just wide with shock and a little bit of fear.

  “Jesus Christ, Slick,” Randy whispered, and then he kissed him.

  The kiss was soft, so soft, and tender, and sweet. It was the sort of kiss which, even an hour ago, Ethan wouldn’t have expected from Randy. It healed Ethan and opened him up too wide all at the same time.

  They broke the kiss, both of them shaking, their noses seeking each other out, nuzzling. Ethan acknowledged how close he had come to never having this moment, that every single breath he took now was one he hadn’t expected to take. He shut his eyes tighter and pressed his hands against the sides of Randy’s neck.

  Randy stroked his face. “So. What now, Slick?”

  “I don’t know,” Ethan confessed. “But I know I don’t want to go to my car.”

  Fingernails curled briefly into Ethan’s cheeks. “You aren’t fucking getting within ten feet of it.” His fingers relaxed. “I’m thinking we’re done with the sightseeing for tonight. You okay with coming to my place?”

  “Please.” Ethan brushed a kiss against Randy’s eyebrow. “And we can—I mean, if you still—”

  “Fuck yes,” Randy said, and Ethan laughed.

  They held hands not just all the way to the cab, but inside as well. Ethan felt slightly awkward, as if they had stumbled into a place beautiful but unfamiliar to both of them even under normal circumstances, let alone to have tumbled there in the span of a single evening. Ethan hoped it would get easier once they were at Randy’s house.

  Then Randy told the cab to pull over again, and they crossed a busy street to another hotel. Ethan looked up to see the word Stratosphere scrawled in neon red against the side of the building, and a tall, needlelike structure rising off to the side.

  It was to this needle Randy dragged him, taking him through the lobby of a hotel not half as beautiful as the Golden Nugget and up an escalator to a ticket counter, pausing only to stop and get Ethan a huge strawberry daiquiri in the most ridiculously tall plastic drink cup and straw combination Ethan had ever seen. Ethan sipped it gratefully as Randy purchased them a pair of tickets and put them in the line for the elevator, and then they were going up, up, up. Ethan’s ears popped as the alcohol soothed the frayed edges of his nerves, and then the doors opened. Randy took his hand again, and they walked out of the round, window-filled room onto an open-air balcony. Las Vegas, in all its hedonistic glory, glittered below.

  They stood there for a long time, soaking it in.

  “I come up here when I feel a little crazy.” Randy paused, then added carefully, “Not that I think you’re crazy.”

  “I’m not sure it’s entirely sane to sell everything you have, drive to Vegas, and spend all your money with plans to put a bullet in your brain when it’s gone.”

  Randy shuddered and squeezed Ethan’s hand. “Don’t even say that.” />
  Ethan’s gaze lingered on the Bellagio fountains when he found them on the Strip. They were huge, even from here. “If it helps, I don’t think I was going to go through with it. When I lost my last five dollars at roulette, I was terrified because I’d realized I didn’t want to end it, but I didn’t know what else I was supposed to do.” He smiled. “Then this idiot came and started betting on me.”

  Randy leaned into him, nudging him with his knee. “Sorry, Slick.”

  This time it was Ethan who squeezed his hand. “Don’t be.”

  They stood in silence again.

  “I’m a little out of my element here,” Randy confessed. “I’m not normally…deep. I’m going to apologize in advance for any fuckups I make in my inexperience.”

  Ethan’s gaze remained on the lights below. It looked like the world’s largest Christmas display, and it was ten times as soothing. “I think I knew I didn’t mean as much to him as he did to me, but I didn’t want to admit it. All the signs were there in the way he arranged his life, in the double standard he had with everyone, but I loved him, and I told myself he might be that way with other people, but he wouldn’t be like that with me. It hurt, a lot, to find out I was wrong.”

  “What the fuck did he do to you, Slick?”

  Ethan shook his head. “Not now.”

  “I wish he were here right now. I’d throw him over this goddamned rail and cheer when he hit the street.”

  Ethan kissed Randy’s temple. The gesture caught Ethan on the edge of his heart, and he held himself there a second, shutting his eyes and taking in a deep draught of Randy. “What the hell are we doing?”

  “Damned if I know.” Randy threaded his fingers into Ethan’s hair, keeping his eyes on the Strip. “But I hope to God we’re fucking.”

  Ethan slid a hand around Randy’s waist. “How about we go to your place and do that now?”

  They hid behind a crowd of Korean tourists, running their hands discreetly over one another as the elevator shot down like a bullet. Back on the street they hailed a cab, where Randy gave the driver an address. He drew Ethan against him and made maddening love to his ear as they slogged through the traffic again, moving deeper and deeper into the city.

  “I’m leaving my truck at Herod’s,” Randy whispered between nibbles. “Don’t want to fuck with it, and I’m probably too drunk to drive anyway.”

  “Sure.” Ethan shut his eyes as Randy’s mouth brushed his neck. He felt himself spinning again, the moment at the fountain but safer, more contained. He let himself hang there, suspended, until the cab pulled into a driveway, and after Randy tossed money at the driver, he led him past a sagging cactus to a front door. Then they were inside, and before the door even closed they were in each other’s arms.

  They stumbled through their kisses down the hallway to a bedroom. Ethan caught glimpses of a sparse but neat living room and a peek at a bathroom before he fell into the mattress of a soft, fragrant bed smelling of fabric softener and Randy Jansen.

  Randy pressed his body to Ethan’s, grinding his hips, and Ethan shut his eyes and opened for him, his mouth, his legs, and his soul.

  They came out of their clothes in a surreal sort of symphony, reminding Ethan of the swell of the Bellagio fountains, the slide of a shirt sleeve perfectly timed with a lingering, open-mouthed kiss. Jeans fell from hips at the exact moment fingers found a nipple and took possession, tugging a gasp out of Ethan’s mouth as the last of his clothes fell away. They pushed and pulled and danced between kisses and touches and disrobing, and then they were skin to skin, mouth to mouth. For one close, precious second, everything was okay.

  “I’m a little afraid,” Randy whispered against Ethan’s collarbone when his mouth began to travel again, “I’m going to wake up in the morning and find out you were no more than a fantastic dream.”

  “I’d better not wake up in Provo.” Ethan arched his back and gasped as Randy took a nipple into his mouth.

  “How do you want it?” Randy nuzzled Ethan until he writhed. “I don’t give a damn how it happens, so long as one of us is in the other somehow.”

  Ethan wanted badly to be inside Randy, wanted to jack Randy’s cock while he took him, but he didn’t think he could gather himself together right now to lead. As Randy’s hand stroked him, as his mouth drifted down, ready to have a taste, Ethan knew what he wanted, and he sat up enough to reach for Randy’s hip, trying to drag it up and over toward him.

  Randy laughed darkly. “Oh, yes, that’s a good compromise.” The perfume of Randy’s cock hit Ethan before he saw the thick, straining shaft rising out of the dark curls, swelling against his foreskin. Ethan closed his hand around it just as Randy took his own cock in hand. Shuddering against the wet wonder of his lover’s mouth, Ethan leaned forward and offered him the same pleasure in kind.

  They lay in the safety of the dark, sucking one another, each taking the other’s cock deep, touching balls and thighs and quivering bellies, giving in to the wild madness of the night and to each other. Ethan let the fountain of emotions rise within him, and he came with a gasp of relief into Randy’s eager mouth before helping him find release, drinking down the salty offering until Randy, too, was spent.

  When they were able, they crawled to the head of the bed, and Ethan settled against the pillow as Randy tugged the blanket over them before taking Ethan into his arms. They held each other close, shutting out everything, grateful for this moment, this night, this strange miracle they had somehow found.

  ETHAN WOKE WITH a heavy head as Randy stroked his hair.

  “I’m going to run out and get some breakfast for us. What can I get you?”

  “Coffee.” Ethan’s stomach gurgled. “Maybe some yogurt and granola too.”

  He felt a kiss against his forehead. “Done. Go to sleep, Slick.”

  Ethan shut his eyes. He did try to sleep, but fifteen minutes after he’d heard the front door close, he lay on his back, staring up at the ceiling.

  He’d slept like the dead all night long without dreaming, his spirit for those hours as blissfully sated as his body. He’d gone to sleep with Randy’s forehead pressed against his own, with their hands and legs and depleted cocks nestled with one another, and he didn’t think he’d so much as moved until Randy nudged him awake to ask what he wanted at the store. It had felt good. It had been good.

  Now that he was awake, however, doubt crept in.

  He wasn’t going to do much moving, that much he decided as soon as he tried to sit. He lay right down again and studied the ceiling. He doubted he’d be able to eat or drink anything Randy brought home. How much had he had to drink? Just those two G&Ts, and then a Diet Pepsi. Oh, yes, and the monster daiquiri. “A fruity, stupid drink,” Randy had called it. It hadn’t been enough to make him too hungover, just enough to unravel him.

  He remembered the press of mouths and bodies, the feel of teeth and tongue against his flesh, and the nausea threatening him subsided, replaced by something much more pleasant.

  Sliding his hand absently over his penis, he teased the erection into half-life as he wondered what he was going to do now. Have breakfast with Randy, and then what? He had nothing but his poker winnings, which wasn’t much at all. He could sell his car, he supposed, for a few thousand dollars. He had no idea what to do with the gun.

  Ethan rolled over and drew the pillow around the sides of his head, wrapping himself inside its cocoon.

  He must have fallen asleep again because the next thing he knew he heard footsteps coming into the room. Ethan panicked and held still, thinking Randy would leave to let him sleep if he kept quiet, and he could put off this most awkward of morning-afters a little longer. The bed sank behind him, but he held fast, willing Randy to go away and give him just ten more minutes to get his head on straight.

  A hand slipped beneath the sheet and up across his back in a caress so gentle it startled him.

  Ethan’s eyes opened as the hand moved down, skimming his hip, sliding over his ass. His cock stirred as the ha
nd, butterfly-soft, curled its way over his pelvis and toward his erection. Ethan’s eyes fell closed again, and he shifted unconsciously toward the touch. Something jumped inside his chest, a loose ball bearing bouncing around, because this wasn’t a touch he associated with Randy, so tender and yet wickedly erotic at once. It unnerved him as much as it aroused him, and he kept still, afraid to turn over and let Randy know how much his tenderness affected him.

  The hand left his cock and slapped his ass.

  “Wake up, lazy,” a cheerful voice called. A voice which absolutely wasn’t Randy’s.

  Ethan’s eyes flew open, and he tossed away the pillow and rolled over in one motion. He looked up into the handsome, youthful face of a sandy-haired man whose smile faded and color drained as he looked down at Ethan.

  “Oh—” The young man faltered, then almost fell off the bed in his haste to get off it.

  Ethan sat up, confused and uncertain. The stranger stumbled for the door, only to be blocked in his escape by another man. This one was as tall as the door and almost as broad, and he caught Ethan’s assailant in one hand while waving at Ethan with the other.

  “Hey, Skeet—” The big man stopped, his bushy blond eyebrows rising up into the mass of his untidy blond hair. “Shit, Sunshine, that ain’t Skeet.”

  “I know.” The younger man buried his face in the larger man’s chest.

  The blond blinked at Ethan, then laughed, a good-natured sound that put Ethan unexpectedly at ease, even before the big man lifted his free hand to his hairline and tipped an imaginary hat.

  “Hey there.” He indicated the empty space beside Ethan. “Randy here?”

  Ethan cleared his throat. “He went out. To get breakfast.”

  “Hope he got extra.” The man grinned. “I’m Mitch, by the way. I’m going to leave you alone now while I go soak my husband’s head in the sink so he doesn’t burn up from blushing. You go ahead and get dressed, and we’ll meet up in the kitchen. Sound good?”

  Ethan nodded, not knowing what else he was supposed to do, and then he watched in a daze as Mitch led the younger man out. The pair of them went down the hall, the younger whispering and the older laughing.