Bad Attitude (12 page)

Too right. Except…had Jamie tasted that smooth chest enough? Run his tongue over those whorls of hair? Under the broad shoulders, Gavin was a slender guy, but he had a nice curve to his ass. And his thighs, yeah, they packed some serious muscle. Jamie’s ass could still testify to the power thrusts from Gavin’s lower body.

As he’d said to Quinn and Eli, Jamie’d had more than one-night stands, but he knew that’s what this was. A party. Fun. Still it seemed weird that he’d never stand close enough to smell leather and evergreen on Gavin’s skin again. Dive into one of those long kisses the guy seemed to like so much. Was so good at.

Jamie squared his shoulders. “I was just getting my clothes. You ready to head out?”

“Sure.” Gavin retrieved his shorts from somewhere out in the hall and led the way back toward the kitchen.

There was a man passed out on the couch and four guys standing around the kitchen island. None of them was Gavin’s brother-in-law, thank God. It shouldn’t have bugged Jamie, no skin off his nose, but it did. Maybe because of what he’d seen go down with Quinn and that closeted asshole he’d been tied to for ten years.

Jamie’s clothes were still piled on the table near the door where he’d left them. The tall blond—Soren, Jamie remembered—raised a coffee mug in greeting. Tommy, wearing a long T-shirt that didn’t cover his bare ass or dick, put down a tall glass full of green sludge and came over to drape his arm across Jamie’s shoulders as he was trying to step into his jeans.

“You guys leaving?” Tommy gave Jamie a squeeze before moving on to kiss Gavin. Really kiss Gavin. Up on tiptoe, tongue and grind and the hands in Gavin’s hair. Tommy stepped back and said in a low voice, “You know we keep a box of new toothbrushes in the bathroom.”

“And your wheatgrass, broccoli, kiwi taste is a great eye-opener?” Gavin swatted Tommy’s ass.

With a laughed “Ooo,” Tommy stuck his ass out farther. Gavin smacked him again, a little harder.

Jamie had paused to run a tongue over his own slightly furry teeth, so he’d barely finished pulling his shirt over his head when he got a chest full of Tommy.

“Protect me.”

“From this?” Jamie shifted Tommy to the side to land two open-palmed blows on the light pink cheeks. “Or this?” Jamie squeezed Tommy’s ass and hauled him into a kiss.

Tommy was laughing too hard to get a good kiss in, and Jamie let him go.

“Oh, I like him,” Tommy said to Gavin. “Bring him around again. Hell…” Tommy looked back at Jamie, “…you don’t ever need an invite. Drop by anytime on your own.” Tommy waved toward the guys leaning on the countertop. “I mean, have you seen his cock?”

Soren, who had, sipped his coffee. The other two looked at Jamie with some interest. So what? He was supposed to just whip it out for display on command?

It occurred to Jamie that this was the kind of thing he’d have labeled his number-one wet dream. Nothing but hot guys and easy sex, without putting up with cover charges or misleading Grindr photos. Not a lasagna pan or a hint of domesticity in sight. And here Jamie was tugging on his boots and jacket in a hurry to get out the door.

Maybe it was a case of being locked in a candy store. Too much sugar could make you sick. Jamie tried to picture Gavin in Quinn’s kitchen and suspected Gavin would feel more comfortable there than Jamie did here.

“Thanks, Tommy.” Jamie nodded. “You ready?” He tipped his head toward Gavin.

“Try not to miss me too desperately.” Gavin stuffed his hands in the pockets of his jacket. None of his friends but Tommy waved as Gavin followed Jamie to the door. Guess even a whole night of fucking and partying didn’t leave Gavin’s buddies in a particularly good mood.

Chapter Nine

Gavin settled back in his seat as Jamie drove his beloved truck off the peninsula. If he had difficulty navigating through the predawn mist back to Holly Neck, Gavin assumed Jamie was perfectly capable of asking for assistance. Some early commuters joined them as they left Edgemere. People with jobs, destinations, agendas. They might be frustrated or bored or full of self-importance, but at least they had somewhere to go.

As they merged onto I-695, many of the cars headed south for the Key Bridge. Gavin wondered if he’d ever be able to stop the hiccup in his diaphragm when he saw the bridge. The tight spasm of pain wasn’t fear, merely a marker, a reminder. Nothing like almost dying to find out how little anything mattered. Then came the guilt when he thought of Beach still in the land between alive and dead, a silent witness to the fact that Gavin’s visits did nothing to mitigate his failure to keep Beach from jumping that night.

As always, there was liquor or other chemical enhancements to numb or wash those feelings away. And for the few minutes of sex, it usually did matter that Gavin was there, and if it didn’t, then he didn’t care as long as it was good.

As they passed the exit sign for the bridge, Gavin felt Jamie’s gaze drift toward him.

“Something on your mind?” Gavin challenged.

“Nah.” Jamie looked at him full for a second, then back at the road. “Man, getting laid doesn’t seem to put you in a very good mood.”

“How do you know? This may be my utterly thrilled expression.” Gavin tipped his head slightly as Jamie glanced over again.

“Yeah. Now that you mention it, I can tell.”

“Would you like me to write a poem in honor of your prowess? A song perhaps?”

“Forget I mentioned it.”

“Forgotten.”

Jamie’s fingers brushed the radio buttons, then landed back on his thigh without cuing up any music. “Is it weird?”

“Your non-sequitur is. Is what weird?”

“Your brother-in-law. Being…whatever.”

“I didn’t expect to see him last night, but it wasn’t a surprise.”

“Is it because of his dad being governor?”

For someone who professed disdain about Gavin’s family and friends, Jamie seemed overly interested.

“I don’t think that’s the whole picture.”

“Does your sister know?”

Taisy. Thinking about her still cut a bit. Only eleven months apart, they’d been inseparable as children, Gavin starring in all her elaborate productions, trading off whatever subject’s homework they were better at doing. Taisy had been the first person Gavin had told he was gay, but that had been before. Before Mom got sick and Taisy went away to school and came home a stranger Gavin didn’t know how to talk to.

He’d made the attempt to tell her about Lee. Before and after the wedding. But she’d shrugged as if the news didn’t matter any more than Gavin did, her focus fixed squarely on her aspiration.

“I’m not privy to the details of their marriage, but she was aware when she went into it. It’s not something I discuss with Lee, either. Do you have siblings?”

“Yeah. Older brother with a wife and kids out in Nevada. Two sisters. Both of ’em married.” Jamie made a tight sound of laughter. “Guess, come to think of it, I don’t much want to know what kind of diddling goes on in their lives either. Just, I couldn’t lie like that.”

“Well, you don’t have to as I understand.”

“Right. Forget it.” Jamie pushed a button, and Jim Morrison growled through flawless speakers.

“‘Crawling King Snake’?” Gavin said after the first bar.

“Yeah.” Jamie’s voice held a touch of surprised approval. “No comment about how they’ve been making music in this century too?”

“The comment would be that I like Morrison’s vocals, but prefer John Lee Hooker’s guitar riffs.”

Jamie shot another glance his way.

“Occasionally I need a break from operas and chamber music.”

Jamie snorted.

“Who doesn’t like The Doors?” Gavin wanted to know.

“Huh? Oh, not so much that. I get a lot of the same old comments about trying music that wasn’t recorded before I was born.”

“Or vehicles that aren’t over fifty and don’t require so much work to maintain? And allow a passenger the ability to exit on a whim?”

Jamie surprised Gavin by reacting with amusement rather than irritation. “I don’t recommend it traveling sixty-five miles per hour. And the current child safety locks can be a bitch in search and rescue.”

Search and rescue. Jamie’s job. For an instant, Gavin pictured a child floating behind a locked door she couldn’t force open. The truck’s handle-free doors no longer felt like an amusing example of Jamie’s control issues but a death trap. “Have you had…that experience a lot, people”—
children
—“trapped?”

“Happens.” Jamie’s pragmatism only confirmed what Gavin knew. You couldn’t do anything about it. Good people or bad, deserving or not, nothing really mattered and you died alone.

“Rescued a dog two days ago,” Jamie said. “Fell in, so the owner says.”

“Would he have called for help if he was trying to drown it?”

“People change their minds.” Although Jamie’s tone remained matter-of-fact and he didn’t look Gavin’s way, the implication was clear.

“I don’t think Beach wanted to kill himself.”

Jamie made a sound in the back of his throat that could have been acceptance or dismissal, and suddenly Gavin was tired of giving a shit what Jamie thought.

“Pretty high standards, there, Officer. Do you always go in looking for a fight?”

“Where the hell did that come from?” In the reflection of headlights on the windshield, Jamie’s stunned expression was easy to read.

“Lee, Beach, Soren, the poor guy with the dog. Hell, everyone in your path. You assume the worst.”

“I don’t judge. Don’t care what they do, as long as it doesn’t fuck with my life.”

“Bullshit.”

Gavin couldn’t be sure, but he thought he saw the corner of Jamie’s mouth twitch in a smile in response to Gavin’s assertion.

“Common sense.” Jamie’s tone held pragmatism. “Assume everyone else is an asshole. It’s better to be surprised if they aren’t than disappointed that they are.”

Gavin sat back. That was pretty close to his own philosophy. He wished they weren’t so close to the house, because he had the feeling he and Jamie could have had a lot more to say. Jamie hadn’t turned on the heat in the truck and it was under sixty outside, but the tingle under Gavin’s skin had more to do with the intensity of the guy next to him, the way Jamie stepped up to a challenge instead of shrugging it off.

“Fact is,” Jamie said, “you can’t count on being rescued from stupidity. So you might as well not risk it.”

Being called stupid changed Gavin’s desire to prolong the conversation. “At the end of the drive here is fine.” Gavin pointed then reached for the door handle. Except there wasn’t one. Control freak.

“I don’t mind taking you to the house.”

“I like the walk.”

Jamie drove in far enough to stop at the gate, then turned down the music. “You have to sneak in?” But there was more laughter in his tone than incredulity.

“No. I simply feel like walking.”

Jamie shut off the truck and leaned across to place his palm on Gavin’s cheek, turning him in to a kiss. Gavin let himself sink into the feeling for a moment, the soft but deepening pressure, the teasing hint of Jamie’s tongue, the heat of his body and the smell of his skin.

As soon as Gavin’s dick started to wake up and think about putting on a show for the security cameras, Gavin pulled free.

Jamie let him go. In the stillness, Gavin could hear the motor in the door whine as the lock and latch released, the door popping open a crack.

“You’re free to go.”

Gavin chuckled at that. “But don’t leave town?”

“Well, actually.” Jamie put a hand to the back of his neck. “I wouldn’t mind getting together again. I’ll call you.”

“Thanks, but I spend enough time with people who barely tolerate my presence. You may have a nice dick and know how to use it, but someone who is surprised to find he doesn’t despise me is not my first choice of company, in bed or out of it. Thanks for the ride.”

Gavin stepped down, strode to the brick gatepost and keyed in the code. But as the gates swung in, he felt Jamie behind him.

Gavin turned around, hemmed in by the gate and Jamie, but could have stepped around him, started on the four-hundred-yard trip up the driveway. A jolt of adrenaline kicked in, but not for flight. He tucked his hands in his pockets and leaned back against the bricks.

“Forget something?”

“Not a thing. In fact, I seem to remember you saying that liking someone wasn’t a requirement for sex.”

Jamie getting out of his truck to chase Gavin was a shock, but the fact that he’d actually been paying attention to what Gavin said left him speechless.

Jamie put his hands on the bricks on either side of Gavin’s shoulders. “In case it escaped your attention, that’s what I’m talking about. Sex. You and me and lots of sex.” Jamie tipped his hips in.

Gavin was not someone who had trouble finding words. He didn’t always say what he was thinking, usually because no one listened. But at that moment, his mind was blank. His dick, on the other hand, thought that Jamie being this close was definitely something to get excited about.

Jamie stepped in. “You might live in some storybook castle, but I didn’t say anything about that kind of happy ending. I want to fuck, you want to fuck. The straights can keep all the rest of the bullshit for their fucked-up fairy tales.”

The way the truck was parked shielded them from the road. There was a possibility that this close to the tower of bricks that anchored the front gate the security camera couldn’t get a good look. And they were still fully dressed.

Jamie’s hand moved between them, and there was no denying that Gavin could definitely handle a third round in less than eight hours. Though he doubted he’d be able to walk after.

“You going to play this game again and leave me hanging?” Gavin managed to get out.

“Feel pretty hung to me.” In the cold mist of the predawn, Jamie’s hand burned through the layer of denim and cotton over Gavin’s cock. The motion stopped, leaving only heat and pressure on that hypersensitive head. The friction he’d need to come was going to hurt after all that action last night, but damn, it would be worth it.

“Flattery will get you—” Gavin’s words broke off in a hissed breath. “Jesus.”

“Sex?”

“Uh.” The fine line between pain and pleasure on his dick was erasing every bit of his vocabulary. “That is a compelling argument.”