I looked up into the gorgeous face and forgot about vampires, YouTube videos, and how to speak. “Uhhh….”
James grinned down at me and pointed to the vampires in each of my hands. “Doing some Christmas shopping?”
What? I followed his gaze. Oh, right. Toys. Grown men didn’t buy toys for themselves. “Yes. I am.” The lie caught in my throat, making me feel dirty in a similar way that Philip’s comments always brought on. A flash of anger shot through me. I like toys, damn it. “No, actually. Just trying to figure out which vampire I want to add to my collection.”
James’s eyes widened. “You collect vampires?”
“Uhm, yeah, kinda.” Dear Lord, why hadn’t I just lied? What would the harm have been? At least I wouldn’t have looked like a jackass in front of the hottest bear of the century. “And you? You’re doing some shopping?”
He nodded and held out a box set of Breyer horses. “My granddaughter is obsessed with these.” He then gestured to a wooden princess doll. “And my grandson is obsessed with princesses. I’ve never been here before. It’s a pretty great place. A lot better than the toy store at the mall I normally go to. They have some real unusual stuff here.”
He might as well have been speaking a different language. Princess for his grandson? And a granddaughter? As in he had grandchildren? As in the crazy hot man who was the center of an orgy a few days before was a… grandfather? Grandfather?
I forced myself to speak. “Uhm, that’s cool that you’ll get princesses for your grandson. My dad wouldn’t ever get me the toys I asked for. It always had to be Hot Wheels or baseball bats or something. He’d never let me get the fantasy toys or the dolls I asked for. He always said—” I realized I was rambling and shut my mouth. But it popped open again, unfortunately. “You’re a grandfather?”
He laughed. A warm, unselfconscious sound. “Yes. I am. My daughter has two beautiful kids.”
What the…? “And you have a kid too?”
He cocked his head at me. “Yeah. That’s typically how a guy gets to be a grandfather. They have to have a kid first.”
“Right. Of course.” I ran out of words.
The silence went on long enough for it to be noticeable when James motioned toward the toys in my hands again. “So you just get a hankering for vampire figures this time of night?”
I glanced down at the forgotten toys again. “Oh. No. I come here a couple of times a week to do role-playing games and stuff. It’s a lot of fun.” God, this just kept getting worse. Why couldn’t I lie to him? “You should come try it sometime.”
Oh my God. Oh my God. Oh my God. Shut the fuck up! As if a guy like him would ever spend his time with a bunch of role-playing geeks. And imagine if he did show up? I’d be even more distracted than with a bunch of kids screaming for Christmas toys in the background.
One of the clerks called over from the register, saving me. “Brian, buddy. We closed five minutes ago. You and your friend wanna check out?”
“Oh.” I looked from James to the salesclerk. “Oh, he’s not my… I mean… we are just….” Shit. “Sure. Be right there.”
James laughed again. “You’re cute when you’re flustered.”
I dropped the traditional vampire in my left hand. He made a loud crash on the wooden floor. The bastard. “I, ah… what?”
Another laugh and he leaned closer. “I’ll go pay for these, and you decide which one you’re getting. I’ll wait for you outside.” Without another word, he walked toward the register.
I watched him, dumbfounded. By everything. I was cute? He was going to wait for me? For what?
I stared at him until he finished paying and left the store. The clerk looked back over at me. “You okay, Brian?”
“Yeah. Yes.” I looked over at… Pete…. Goodness, I barely remembered his name. “Be right there.” I bent down to pick up the traitorous vampire and put him back. The more conceptual vampire, the one who hadn’t made a spectacle of me, would go home to star on YouTube.
I paid. Though I had no idea if I was charged the correct amount or not. All I could think about was who stood waiting for me outside the doors.
With Pete following so he could lock the door behind me, I stepped out into the cold night air and turned to find James off to the right, leaning against the wall, smiling. “Hey. Got your vampire?”
“Yeah. I did.” Was I supposed to know what to say next? Hopefully not.
James straightened and walked over to me, then stopped within arm’s length. “Sorry if I’m being too forward, but it’s getting late and it’s kinda cold. And considering where you work, I doubt there’s much reason to play coy. I’ve been thinking about you.”
“You have?” Part of me toyed with being offended at the where I work comment, though I couldn’t quite figure how he meant it. However, the “I’ve been thinking about you” seemed a bit more important.
“I have. I’d like to come over to your place, if that’d be okay with you.”
“You wanna come over? To my place?”
He reached out and gripped my forearm and made the fuzzy meaning clear. Unbelievable but clear. “Yeah, your place.”
Christmas miracle! I shuddered at the thought, shocked such words would ever enter my brain. I dared to meet his eyes, and reality came crashing back in. He’d been shopping for his grandkids. He was a grandfather. Which meant there had to be a grandmother. Or… maybe another grandfather?
“Uhm, what about the grandma?”
His brows knitted. “Excuse me?”
Why couldn’t I just go with it? Plenty of married men—married straight men—came into the bathhouse. Whatever. But you never really knew. I couldn’t pretend I didn’t know about James’s grandkids.
“Well, you said you had grandkids. Doesn’t that mean you have a grandmother… er, I mean wife? Don’t you have a wife?”
The confusion left his expression, and he chuckled again. “Oh. That. I’ve not had a wife for about twenty years. I do have an ex-wife. Wonderful woman. My daughter and her family are over at my ex’s house this evening. Which means we could go to my house, but there’s always a chance my daughter might come back home for something.”
“Oh, she doesn’t know about you being gay?”
“She knows.” He squeezed my forearm again. “However, I really don’t want her walking in on anything I plan on doing to you.”
“Things you’re planning on….” His meaning sliced into me, and I stiffened. “Oh. Doing to me.”
“Yeah. Would that be okay? If I did… stuff to you?”
I nodded. Hell yeah. He could do anything he wanted to me. Including making me believe this really might be a Christmas miracle.
“Good.” His smile grew heated. “So, your place okay?”
* * *
James drove his own car and followed me to my apartment. The feelings of Christmas miracles and lust melted away the second I pulled onto Broadway and headed home.
This didn’t happen. Well, sure, hookups happened. But not like this. I’d stay awhile after my shift at the bathhouse and find someone I figured would be desperate enough to settle for me. But they never came to my apartment, nor I theirs. And they never looked like James. I scoffed at the thought. No shit. Who really did look like James? Guys like him were so few and far between they barely existed, and they definitely didn’t look twice at me.
Oh. And my apartment. It was clean. I always kept it clean, but there was no hiding what I was. It was one thing for him to hear about the role-playing games in abstract, but he was about to see firsthand what a dork he’d just followed home. All my action and fantasy figures. My Dungeons and Dragons collectables. My limited-edition Barbies I kept in their boxes. Maybe I could leave the lights off and rush him by the cabinets in the living room. But then there were the cabinets in the bedroom. Well, I could distract him there for sure. He wouldn’t notice.
No. He wouldn’t notice all the toys. I flicked my gaze to the rearview mirror. I wasn’t sure if I hoped he would
still be following me or he’d changed his mind and driven away. He was still there.
He wouldn’t notice the toys. He’d notice me. I suddenly realized he didn’t actually know who he was going home with. He’d seen my face and the rest of me in clothing. I’d seen him naked, not the other way around. I didn’t love my body in clothes, but I hated it out of them. And he was going to see why.
I looked at the rearview again. Still there. Please go away. Please go away. Just keep driving.
I pulled into the parking lot of my apartment complex and noticed a visitor spot actually available for him. Another fucking Christmas fucking miracle. Fuck.
For nearly thirty seconds, I sat in my car, the engine off, and tried to quit sweating. Which only made me sweat more. Even the icy air and drifting snowflakes didn’t help once I finally forced myself to get out of the car.
James’s smile was hesitant as I walked across the parking lot. “Everything okay?”
“Oh yeah. Just… needed to put some stuff away in the glove compartment.”
The look in his eyes and his tone let me know I’d not been convincing. “Have you changed your mind? Do you not want me to come in?”
For a moment relief flooded through me at the thought. He could leave. I could go inside, put away the new vampire, hang out with Angel and Spike, and have my normal life. And I could keep my clothes on.
Disappointment and shame washed the relief away. Was I really going to turn this down? For a guy like me, this was a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity. “No. I mean, yes, I want you to come in.”
He narrowed his eyes.
“I do. Come on, let’s get out of the cold.” As we entered the building and walked toward the elevator, I started to warn him about what he was going to find inside, but then decided to hope he wouldn’t notice. Maybe he wouldn’t. And if he didn’t, maybe I really would start to believe in Christmas miracles.
As the elevator doors closed, James leaned into me, his face close enough I could feel the scratch of his beard against mine. “This okay? You seem nervous.”
I nodded. Barely, but it was all I could manage.
And it seemed all the encouragement he needed. He readjusted his angle and kissed me.
It was pretty inconceivable a guy like James would want to fuck me, but it could happen. I was available when he needed me. An easy lay showed up on his doorstep, or at the toy store, as the case may be. But kiss me? Fucking and kissing were two totally different things. I didn’t have any delusions about there being kissing.
But there he was in all his huge masculine beauty, kissing me. And not the tongue-shoved-down-the-throat, teeth-bashing-together kind. But soft. The kind that made me breathe out a sigh of relief after a moment, a sigh that didn’t make him move away, but press in closer. The kind that made my lips realize what they’d been missing their entire existence. The kind that made me feel like he was actually kissing me. Me, Brian McKay. Like he wanted to be kissing me in that moment. Which was ridiculous. But it’s how it felt.
Then it was over. The elevator chimed, the doors opened to the fifteenth floor, and James pulled back. The corner of his lips turned up in a way I was already getting used to. “You’re a good kisser.”
I was? Had I even kissed back? I’d been too enraptured to even think about kissing back.
He didn’t wait for an answer and took my hand, pulling me into the hallway. “Which way?”
After unlocking the door, I nearly warned him again. Instead I pushed it open, stepped in, and flicked on the lights.
James followed.
After closing and locking the door, I looked up at James and found what I’d expected. Judgment.
“You don’t have a Christmas tree.” He angled his head to see into the other room of my tiny space. “Do you put it up in the bedroom?”
Maybe the expression was more confusion than judgment. I couldn’t tell. And it wasn’t about the toys. I was so thrown off I was honest. “Oh no. No tree. I’m not a fan of Christmas.”
“Really?”
I nodded. A bite of annoyance tinged my tone, though I tried to keep it away. Why was everyone so astounded I didn’t like Christmas? Lots of people didn’t like Christmas, at least if they were honest.
“Yeah, really. Don’t love Christmas.”
“Oh.” He must have noticed my irritation. Of course he did. He wasn’t deaf or stupid.
He looked around the room again. Now I’d get the judgment about the toys. And sure enough, he sucked in a breath and walked toward one of the cabinets, of course the one with the top shelf of Barbies. He didn’t pause at the shelves, but kept going to Angel and Spike’s home by the window.
“Holy shit. I’ve never seen one so big.” His gaze followed the tubes to their highest point, which made him crane his neck upward slightly, revealing a stubble-covered Adam’s apple and thick cords of muscle.
Holy clichéd shit, Batman, I was lusting after the man’s throat, for crying out loud.
James squatted down, hands on his knees, and peered into the main housing portion of the cage, which only shifted my lust from his throat to his ass. “Who’s in here?”
“Angel and Spike.” I crossed the room and knelt down beside the cage. “Want to meet them?”
“You bet!”
I unhinged the door and reached inside, removing the roof of my hamsters’ blue wooden house nestled in the pine chips. Spike blinked up at me, obviously annoyed at being woken up. He gave a tiny yawn as I scooped him up and pulled him out of the cage. With my other hand, I reached back in and picked up Angel, who also gave me a withering stare.
I held them out on open palms toward James. “This is Angel and Spike. They’re teddy bear hamsters. The fluffier one is Spike.”
He chuckled. “He looks a little frazzled. They are crazy cute.” He glanced back at the labyrinth of tubes and compartments. “And they have no idea how good they have it. This is the high-rise of hamster houses.” He held out his hand as he turned to me again. “Can I hold one of them? Maybe Spike. I like how he looks a little crazy.”
None of this could be real. A man like James. In my apartment because he wanted to fuck me. A man like James, who kissed like he did. And he genuinely liked my hamsters. Made no sense.
“Sure.”
I held out my hand next to his and tilted it just enough so Spike would know what I wanted. He stepped from my hand to James’s, who instantly raised him closer to his face for inspection.
“He really does look like a fat little teddy bear. So fucking cute. And Spike. I’d expect that name for a Rottweiler or something. Not a little guy like this.”
“It’s from Buffy. Angel is too.” The words were out before I could stop them.
He looked at me quizzically, and then his eyes widened. “Oh. Buffy the Vampire Slayer, right? My daughter loved that show. I’ve never seen it.”
“Oh, you have to! It’s the best show of all—” I made myself quit talking. The way he was looking at me. All large eyes and a weird expression on his face. “What? Did my geek level just freak you out?”
“You just keep getting cuter, Brian Jeffrey McKay.” He held Spike out to me. “Here, if you don’t mind putting these little guys back. I’d like to focus on their daddy at the moment.”
All thoughts of Buffy and hamsters vanished. “Uhm, sure.” I replaced Spike and Angel. “I’m gonna… hop in the shower. I’ll be quick. Can I get you a beer or something?”
I was relieved when he didn’t press the issue of me taking time to shower. He probably wanted me clean too. “Yeah, a beer would be great. I’ll keep watching your teddy bears. And you’ve got enough collectibles to keep me entertained for a while.”
Collectables. Not toys. That was nice of him.
* * *
Showering was a little surreal. Which I didn’t even realize could be said about a shower. What I was getting clean for, who I was getting clean for…. Was this really my life?
Drying off, I glanced in the mirror. I almost expec
ted to see someone else looking back. I didn’t, unfortunately. It was still me. Fat, pasty, hairy me.
Damn it.
I started to put my clothes back on so I could get James to the dark bedroom before he realized what he’d initiated. Instead, in an act of atypical daring, I wrapped the towel around my waist and stepped out of the bathroom. If he was going to run away, might as well get it over with.
He didn’t look at me as I walked into the room. He was inspecting one of my resin statues. “This mermaid is really unusual. My grandkids would love your place. Spike and Angel, all of these….” His words fell away as he looked over at me. “Wow.” He straightened to his full height. “Uhm, can we forget that I just mentioned my grandkids right now?”
I laughed but stopped abruptly at the sound. I’d not expected to be the one laughing in this situation. “Yeah, let’s ignore that comment.” He wasn’t like any grandfather I’d ever seen.
As he stepped closer, I realized I was sweating again. Already. He made a sound deep in his throat. A mix between a groan and a growl. “Hmmm, Brian, this was a good, good idea.” He reached out and ran a hand over my chest. “I was hoping you’d be hairy.”
His touch was enough to make me start to harden, but not enough to shut off my brain, it seemed. “Are you a chubby chaser or something?” Even if he said yes, I wasn’t going to turn him down. I hated that. But I’d deal with it to be with him for an hour or so.
James flinched and dropped his hand away, making me hate my inability to keep my fucking mouth shut. “No. Not at all. Why would you think that?”
Maybe he was blind. I glanced down at myself, then back at him. “You really have to ask that?”
For a split second, I saw pity in his eyes. I would’ve given anything to run back to the bathroom and throw on my clothes again. The look vanished into lust, I think. Maybe it was forced, maybe it wasn’t.
“Brian, I’m not a chubby chaser, but I like my men to look like men. I want them thick, hairy.” He touched me again, cupping the side of my belly with his left hand, sweeping his right along my beard. “With a face like yours, green eyes like yours, a mouth like yours.” He lowered his head, brushing my lips with his and then only pulling back slightly. He dropped his hand from my belly, gave a light tug at the towel, which fell away, and then wrapped his hand around my now fully erect cock. He groaned again. “And with a fat cock like yours, apparently.” It was obvious he’d used the F-word intentionally. I’d never liked the sound of it until that moment.
Christmas Tales Page 9