Bad Boyfriend (24 page)

Nate stood up and pulled Kellan to his feet. “I love you.”

Kellan grinned. “Yeah, you do.” And they kissed. Long. With tongues. Until Yin took off and Eli was looking for something else to throw at them. All he had left was his phone and that wasn’t happening, so he pulled the blanket over his head.

“It doesn’t matter if I love him anyway,” Eli said under the fuzzy protection from disgustingly happy people. “If he really loved me, he’d have been over here looking for me already.” Like that would happen. Quinn was probably happy to slide back into his old routine.

“Uh, yeah. He would.” Kellan’s voice had that tone in it that usually meant he was blushing.

“What?” Eli pushed the blanket off. Yup. Kellan’s cheeks were red.

“He showed up while I was picking you up,” Nate said.

Eli dug under the couch for his other boot, remembered he didn’t have jeans on and went looking for them. “And?”

“I wouldn’t let him in. Told him you weren’t here.” Kellan shrugged. “You weren’t. Yet.”

Eli got his jeans buttoned and sank back onto the couch. “Probably only his sense of responsibility. Like he’d do for one of his students or for someone in that goddamned family.”

“If a sense of duty leaves a guy looking like he’s just been kicked in the nuts, maybe,” Kellan said.

“Really.” Eli jammed his boots on and pulled out his phone to check for messages before tucking it away again.

“Eli.” Nate stood in front of the door. “You didn’t answer the question. Are you in love with this guy?”

Maybe.
How was Eli supposed to know? “Does it feel like you’re excited but mostly nauseous? And does the thought of never kissing him again because it’s too fucked up make you think dying is a good plan?”

“Love?” Nate asked.

Eli nodded.

“Yeah, it does,” Kellan answered.

“Okay.” Eli took a deep breath. “Then I really wasn’t ever in love with you, Nate.”

“I’m sure he’ll get over it.” Kellan kissed Eli’s cheek.

Quinn dozed off, jerking awake with a start to find himself in the car—at ten in the morning. On a weekday. He vaguely remembered calling in sick for the first time in five years as he was dry swallowing codeine. Eli. He started the car and drove around the block. He’d just thought of one last place to check before appealing for mercy from Nate or Jamie.

He hoped the fact that he found a spot in a garage close to the Inner Harbor was a sign that his instinct was right. Despite the mob of school kids on their way to the aquarium and the people running for work with their coffees, Quinn saw him. Standing straight in front of the railing, dark hair blowing around in the late fall wind. Beautiful. Sexy. Safe. And pray God, his.

If he didn’t think he might startle Eli right over the railing into the bay, Quinn would have run. As it was, he couldn’t stop himself from dragging Eli into a tight hug, face buried in his neck to breathe in his smell, force the imprint of his body onto Quinn’s.

“I am so sorry,” Quinn whispered.

Eli returned the embrace for a second and then shoved him away. “You fucking well ought to be.”

Quinn’s arms felt useless at his sides. He needed to touch Eli again. Make him understand with their bodies, with what had made everything so right between them, what had gotten so fucked up when Quinn tried to force words on to it. “I am. I know I was a little overbearing.”

“You think?” Eli pushed the hair off his face.

“A lot overbearing.”

“An asshole,” Eli challenged.

“Yeah. An asshole.” Quinn felt the corner of his mouth lift in a smile he couldn’t help. Because of Eli. Quinn stared, filling his eyes with proof that maybe it wasn’t too late. Eli wore the same clothes, his eyes a little bleary. One arm was rigid. At the end of it, Eli’s fingers were wrapped so tightly around his phone his knuckles showed white.

“Expecting an important call?” Quinn asked.

Eli glanced at his hand as if he’d forgotten the phone was there. “No.” He held up the phone for a second, staring at it. “I was going to make one. But I couldn’t seem to push the right buttons. Because—”

Eli looked away, and Quinn cupped the hand holding the phone, gently loosening the fingers around the plastic and tucking the phone into Eli’s jacket pocket.

“Yeah?” Quinn waited, but Eli shook his head.

“Come home with me,” Quinn said, hand still gripping Eli’s.

“Why?” Eli met Quinn’s gaze, and Quinn’s body ached from the pain in Eli’s eyes.

“I love you.”

Eli flung Quinn’s hand away. “I let myself be happy. And you hurt me. I let you hurt me.”

Quinn knew better than to expect easy. But he didn’t want easy. He wanted Eli. “I was afraid you’d hurt me first. I want you in my life. And all that bullshit about taking it too fast and Alyssa was because I love you and I was afraid you didn’t love me back.”

“I do. I think.”

“You think?” Quinn froze.

“When I was too scared to call you—scared that it was too fucked up and you didn’t want me—” Eli reached in his pocket to touch his phone, then kept both his hands tucked away, shoulders hunched. “I always thought love would be different. One day I’d see him and just like that, I’d know.”

“I did.” Quinn put his hand on Eli’s face. His skin was cool from the wind, but beneath that sensation was the tingle of electricity under his palm, the sense of rightness from their skin together. “You winked at me in the bar and that was it. Hooked.”

Eli turned his face toward Quinn’s hand then pulled away. “Then how could you let me leave?”

“Let you?”

“You were going to drive me. Fucking drive me out of your life.”

“You wanted to go.”

Eli shook his head and didn’t stop. “If you love me—”

Quinn grabbed him and kissed him, cupping his face to stop the shaking. “I do. Eli, you’re the most amazing man I’ve ever met. And even if you end up breaking my heart, I won’t mind, if I get to have you in my life for awhile.”

“No,” Eli said, but he was kissing Quinn back, arms tight around him. “If you love someone, you stop them from leaving.”

“I didn’t know I was supposed to.”

Eli held the back of Quinn’s head. “Stop me. Every. Single. Time.”

Chapter Seventeen

Eli woke with his tackle all twisted under him. Which had happened for the best possible reason. The man he loved had worn Eli out on his birthday. Eli shifted and then rolled onto his back. As soon as his still-hot, tingling ass made contact with the sheet, he remembered why he’d been sleeping on his belly. Having a hot toppy boyfriend who knew how much you loved getting spanked was a big plus on a birthday, Eli decided. But it definitely left…a mark.

He cracked an eye open to look at the new leather paddle on the nightstand. Quinn’s last birthday present before bed. The double layer of leather not only stung, it left a deeper heat under the skin. Eli loved it.

The computer with the good digital imagery software had been nice too. But as soon as he read the outside of the box, Eli went hunting for the deposit slip showing the check he’d gotten from
Time
and told Quinn to take it back. Quinn cited a restocking fee, his saved-up service pay, and the fact that he occasionally liked to use his own damned laptop when he got home sometimes, so Eli had celebrated his twenty-third birthday with two awesome presents.

His ass rubbing on the sheets as he shifted around was starting to get him hard again. Technically, he had thirty minutes of birthday left. It ought to be worth a blowjob.

Quinn’s eyes opened. “Can’t get comfortable?” He followed it up with an evil grin.

“A little too comfortable.” Eli shoved his dick against Quinn’s hip.

“God, you’re going to kill me, boy.”

Eli’s stomach dropped at the same time that his dick sprang to full hard life. He loved when Quinn used that gruff, growly voice. Loved him. Yeah. How had Quinn put it? Hooked. Eli wouldn’t say he hadn’t looked at other guys since they met, but he hadn’t really wanted to fuck any of them. Even thinking of his favorite celebrity crush tossing him onto the bed didn’t do it for him anymore.

Quinn licked his way down Eli’s chest, then paused to look up. “You know, I don’t think having a hot twenty-three-year-old boyfriend is really going to fly as an excuse when I stumble into work tomorrow with my eyes still closed.”

“They’re just jealous.” Eli tucked a curl of Quinn’s hair around a finger.

Although he left Eli dizzy and panting from coming his brains out, Quinn didn’t go right to sleep after. He lay on top of Eli, stroking a hand down his side.

Eli wondered if he should offer reciprocation, but Quinn’s dick was silky soft against Eli’s thigh. They’d already fucked three times.

“Thanksgiving is next week.” Quinn tightened his hold on Eli before Eli realized he was jerking away.

“No. No fucking way.”

“You don’t have to go,” Quinn said mildly.

“And you do?”

“I want to. Aside from some asshole who shall be nameless, I enjoy it.”

“You go right ahead and enjoy it. I’m going to hang out with Nate and Kellan.”

Eli hadn’t expected him and Quinn to get along perfectly just because they worked things out. Eli knew he tended to take an all-or-nothing approach to things, and Quinn liked to look at all the angles. There was no reason for them to be together every minute, but Eli still felt guilty about abandoning Quinn on a holiday. Not that Eli got sentimental about Thanksgiving. If Eli had a job—a steady one—he’d have been perfectly happy to work every Thanksgiving, but they’d done the photo shoot at the food kitchen last week in order to get it in yesterday’s paper.

Christmas was different. If Quinn still felt the need to play nice with the Laurents, Eli could handle it for Christmas. After all, if Quinn hadn’t needed a date to help him get through the baptism—nope. Eli wasn’t going there.

At least Christmas had the potential for presents and naughtiness with Santa hats and candy canes and filling stockings. Thanksgiving really pushed the whole happy hetero family shit. Nate got bent about the holiday for other reasons, calling it “The Whitewashing of the Genocide of Native Americans,” so Eli figured he could hang there with them and bitch most of the day.

“What?” Nate said when Eli called.

“Why do you think I want something?”

“Because now that you’re happily tucked away with your Navy man, you only ever call when you want something.”

“That’s the first time you haven’t made a crack about his age. You’re losing your touch, Nathan.” Nate had done a piece about gay veterans, and Quinn had steered him to some resources. There appeared to be a truce.

“What do you want, Elijah?”

“What are you doing today?”

“Why?”

“Because it’s Thanksgiving.” Eli waited for the usual rant.

“And? You’ve never given a crap before.”

It sounded like a brush-off. “Do you guys have plans?”

Nate huffed a sigh. “Kind of. Except my plan is with the First National Bank of Candace.”

“Are you always going to call Kellan’s mom that?”

“Since she gave him that car, yes.” When Nate got all superior like that, Eli was so glad things hadn’t worked out for them.

“Aww. He lets you drive it. Wait, why do you have plans with Kellan’s mom?” Eli asked.

“We’re trying to set up a surprise meeting with Kellan and his dad. Just the three of them at a restaurant. We’re hoping no ambulance will be required.”

If Nate had been standing there, Eli would have smacked him. “What the fuck for? Kellan hates his dad.”

“It’s complicated, Eli. He’s still his dad. And…he’s not a total dick.”

Eli sighed. “He gave like a hundred thousand dollars to stop marriage equality in Maryland.”

“Okay, yes, he’s a total dick, but he’s Kellan’s dad. I gotta go. Kellan’s getting out of the shower.” Nate’s voice dropped to a whisper.

“Okay. Hey. After your rendezvous, do you think you could give me a ride somewhere?”

“That should be good for reaching minimum safe distance from fallout.”

“Oh, I see worse things ahead. Better buy yourself a Fleshlight or your wrist will be so bad from jacking off you won’t be able to type.”

Nate’s whispered “
Fuck,”
conjured the image of him pinching the bridge of his nose. Ha. For once Nate hadn’t thought something all the way through.

Even though Nate wouldn’t see it, Eli grinned. “Better you than me.”

Although Eli had slept in, he’d been downstairs in time to see Quinn leave the house wearing one of his less-attractive sweaters and slacks, a dish of yams in brown sugar and butter in one hand. Eli had found a dark plum corduroy blazer in his favorite secondhand shop, so he could at least look dressed up, even if he showed up empty-handed. When he ran outside to meet Nate, Eli knew it was a good thing he hadn’t bothered to make something. Nate straddled his greasy scooter.