Guarded Desires (16 page)

Or
did
, considering Liev’s mouth grew wet at the thought of it sliding over his tongue again. Or in his—

“Until Liev came along, my primary concern was looking after you as professionally as I could.” Bethany settled herself into the wicker armchair.

Chris cocked an eyebrow. “And after Liev came along?”

She tented her fingers together and smiled over her unpolished fingernails. “Now my primary concern is making sure you get everything you need.”

Chris narrowed his eyes, even as his hands came to rest on Liev’s calves. “Liev?”

Bethany nodded. Once.

“How did you know Liev was what I needed?”

Liev’s heart thumped a little faster at Chris’s total acceptance of Liev as a necessity in his life.

Bethany’s laugh was soft, relaxed. And yet, in its lilting note there was something…haunted. “I told you earlier. I read bodies. And both of yours were screaming loud and clear you wanted each other.”

Chris’s gaze slid to Liev for a second, a tiny, shy smile pulling at the edges of his lips. If it weren’t for the itching belief Bethany was sharing something important with them, Liev would have leaned forward and kissed him. Bloody hell, he’d never realized how damn sexy a shy smile could be.

“But,” Chris returned his attention to his personal assistant, “I’ve never had…I’ve never…” He pulled a face. “Fuck, you know what I’m saying. I’ve never…for a guy…with a guy before.”

Bethany cocked her eyebrow again. “So?”

Liev wanted to chuckle. He recognized Chris’s confusion. He’d lived it himself when he was thirteen.

“So how did you know I was into Liev?” Chris shifted between Liev’s calves, completely at ease with his nudity. “And why risk your job doing something about it?”

Bethany’s smile was soft. “Because I watched my brother deny his homosexuality for too many years. When he committed suicide three years ago because of the resulting depression, I swore I wouldn’t let anyone I knew and cared for deny that part of themselves again.”

Silence stretched for a long moment. Chris stared at his assistant, unsure what to say. Christ, unsure what to
do
.

How could she say something so fucking significant, so goddamn important with such relaxed calm?

“Bloody hell, love.”

He swung his stare to Liev, the Australian’s muttered response echoing his shock.

Liev frowned at her, his blue eyes serious. “He never came out?”

Bethany shook her head. “Strict parents. Very strict. To be honest, I don’t think I’ve ever heard Mom use the word sex. She calls it ‘naughties’. Neither Adam or I were allowed to date for fear of us being corrupted by the decay of sexual pressure, so you could imagine how they would have reacted to Adam’s sexuality.”

Chris swallowed. A rational part of his mind told him he needed to do something about still being naked.

Quickly scanning the area, he sought out his discarded Speedo. It was nowhere in sight.

“Here you go, Mr. Huntley.”

He jumped at his personal assistant’s calm voice, swinging back to find her holding out a towel, a small smile on her lips.

He took it, his mouth dry.

Liev’s words were only now beginning to sink into his reeling brain.

Came out.

The words had sounded so matter-of-fact on the Australian’s tongue, but as they whispered through Chris’s head now, his heart smashed fast in his chest.

Came out. Coming out.

“Are you going to wrap yourself in that, Mr. Huntley? Or sit there looking petrified?”

The gentle, mocking tone in Bethany’s voice made him scowl.

“Think you might be needing those floaties now, Chris?”

Chris shot Liev a dark frown. “I thought I was the funny guy in the room?”

Liev’s smile was wry. “You are. I’m just the hired muscle. But I’ve been out of the closet for a long time. I didn’t just deflate the floaties, I shredded them.”

Chris’s heart smashed fast into his dry, tight throat. “Come out of a closet? How the fuck do I come out of a closet when I didn’t realized I was
in
one?”

“Is that really what you’re worried about?” Bethany asked.

Chris let out a ragged breath, propelling himself off the sun lounger to wrap the towel around his hips. He walked to the pool’s edge, glaring at the glistening blue water.

“How
does
one in my line of work do that?” he asked without turning. “Come out? More to the point, is that
really
what I want to do? Reveal it all so soon? Jesus, my cock is only just getting dry from its first blowjob from a man. Isn’t it premature to crow about my sexual preference to the masses? Besides all that, I’m heading back to L.A. in a little over twenty-four hours. Come out of the closet? I may not even
need
a closet to hide in when I get home. What if I go back to L.A. and I’m not…what if I don’t…fuck, what if I go back to L.A. and I only want to have sex with women? Like I did
before
I came here?”

He stopped and scraped his hands over his face. His gut churned, the heavy itch on the back of his neck telling him Liev and Bethany were watching him. He swiped at his mouth with a shaky hand. The second he left Liev Reynolds in Sydney he may well go back to the person he was before he arrived here—a heterosexual, money-spinning, award-winning, joke-cracking sex symbol about to shoot into the action-star stratosphere. Attracted to sexy, feminine women.

“No one’s saying you have to come out of anything,” Liev’s deep voice rumbled behind him.

He shot Liev a quick look over his shoulder. The man sat on the sun lounger, black boxer briefs once again hugging his hips and groin. When had he put them back on? Did it matter?

“So what?” Chris asked with a shrug. “We fuck. We exchange phone numbers and I leave? Is that it?”

It was Liev’s turn to shrug. “It makes sense.”

Cold anger shot through Chris. Icy shards of rage sliced at his soul. “It makes sense? Fuck it makes sense.
None
of this makes sense. I rocked up to Australia a guy who fucked women and now I’m a…a…fuck, I don’t even know
what
I am anymore and it’s because of you and you’re okay with never seeing me again? Fuck that. Fuck you.”

Liev’s chuckle surprised him. The man pushed himself from the sun lounger and strode toward him. “You fucking me is exactly what I have in mind, Chris. And me fucking you. In fact, I’d hazard a guess I’ve thought little of anything
but
me fucking you and you fucking me, but here we come back to the need for floaties again. Because after just one blowjob,
you’re
thinking about telling the world, and
I’m
thinking this man can’t wreck his career over just one blowjob.”

The churning knot in Chris’s gut reached for his heart. “It was
more
than just one blowjob, Reynolds.”

The man had the audacity to chuckle again. “Okay, two blowjobs. One a piece.”

Chris narrowed his eyes. “That’s not what I meant. It wasn’t just a blowjob. It was…” He stopped. Swallowed.

Was he just about to say what he thought he was? Before even
trying
to return to his old life?

Sure, he was the first to admit he’d never truly felt fulfilled back then. Honestly, he’d just been going through the motions with a mechanical sense of disconnection for years, but that didn’t mean he
was
ready to go on Letterman and tell the world, did it?

Did it?

He had no fucking clue
what
was going to happen when he returned to La-La Land, but surely he had to try?

Bullshit. You know
exactly
what is going to happen.
Before
you go home. You’re going to ask Liev to go with you. You knew that the moment you took his amazing, beautiful cock in your hands and sank to your knees in front of him.

“What was it, Chris?” Liev’s gaze roamed his face, his nostrils flaring. “Tell me. Before I do the sane thing and walk away, leaving your career inta—”

Chris shut him up with a kiss.

He didn’t hold back. Fuck that. Liev Reynolds had awakened him to an existence he hadn’t imagined possible and now didn’t want to live without. Holding back with this guy was never going to be an option again. He’d lived his life a lie until Liev had entered it. There wasn’t a freaking hope in hell he was letting him walk away, no matter how insane Liev—or the world—considered it.

The world could go fuck itself. The world didn’t have to know. It was none of the world’s business.

This was between Chris and Liev, and Chris wasn’t letting Liev get away. He wasn’t.

He thrust his tongue into Liev’s mouth, stroking the wet well with feverish lashes. Liev returned the kiss with equal ferocity, grabbing Chris’s ass and hauling their hips together. Their cocks rubbed together, the exquisitely painful contact sending a blast of heat through Chris’s core. He groaned, snaring a fistful of hair at Liev’s nape at the same time as he captured one of Liev’s nipples and pinched.

The man bucked, his stiffening shaft grinding harder to Chris’s erection. Christ, he’d never recovered so quickly from an orgasm like he had tonight. That told him something. Told him the man tongue-fucking his mouth, mauling his ass cheeks was not just a sexual partner. Liev was
the
sexual partner. The one Chris was meant to be with. The only one.

More than once, Rowan had mentioned her whole body knew the second she saw Aslin that he was the one. She’d also told Chris—usually with a self-deprecating grimace—she’d spent a stupid amount of time fighting that knowledge, sure she knew better than her heart, her body and her soul. She’d told Chris on the day she’d married the British mountain of muscle that the minute she
stopped
fighting she’d felt like she was finally seeing the world, like she’d been asleep and was now awake. That everything was beautiful in its clarity.

He’d laughed at her and told her he’d always known she was a corny romantic, even if she could break a man’s clavicle with a karate chop.

She’d threatened to break
his
clavicle if he called her corny again, kissed him and told him she hoped one day he found the same clarity.

He’d waved her off, grabbed the closest bridesmaid and spent the rest of the wedding seducing the panties off her—as all good heterosexual, sitcom-star sex symbols are supposed to.

And now here he was, experiencing that moment of clarity Rowie had spoken about with such contented joy.

Clarity. No longer confused. Accepting. No longer fighting against the undeniable.

Fuck, it felt so goddamn right.

He pinched Liev’s nipple again, loving the way the man groaned at the pressure, the way his hips thrust forward. His cock pulsed against Chris’s. He bit at the fleshy fullness of Liev’s bottom lip, sucking the wound better with growing urgency.

Liev dug his fingers harder into Chris’s ass cheeks, a shudder vibrating through his hard body. “Fuck a bloody duck, Huntley,” he growled, his lips sliding over Chris’s parted ones on every word. “I can’t believe I’m ready to blow my load again so soon.”

With a chuckle, Chris scraped his hand down Liev’s torso, shifting just enough to allow his fingers access to the man’s engorged cock. He squeezed it, smearing the moisture beading on its tip with the pad of his thumb. “I can’t believe you thought you were going to walk away from me.”

Liev caught Chris’s bottom lip with a quick nip as he rolled his hips, thrusting his shaft upward in Chris’s snug grip. “It was an empty bluff.”

Chris laughed. He scored a line of kisses along the man’s square jaw, up to his ear before closing his lips over Liev’s earlobe and giving a little suck. “I’m irresistible, just ask
Vanity Fair
.” He flicked his tongue into the shallow well of Liev’s ear. “
People
Magazine
.” He squeezed the throbbing cock in his hand. “Oprah.”

In response to his boast, Liev groaned, his head lolling back. Chris flicked his tongue over the lump of his Adam’s apple.

A raw sound escaped Liev, carnal and thick with intention. It was the only warning Chris got.

Liev spun him around in a blur of air and colours. Strong fingers dug into Chris’s hips with brutal force, holding him motionless for a split second before Liev’s body flattened to Chris’s back. The man’s massive erection filled the shallow crevice between Chris’s ass cheeks, his hands snaring Chris’s cock and balls. Fresh heat blasted through Chris. His heart hammered. His breath caught in his throat. Unable to stop himself, he wriggled his ass, wanting to feel that steely length of flesh closer to his untouched entrance.

Fuck, not just wanting to feel it there. Needing it.

Hot lips pressed to Chris’s ear, Liev’s teeth catching Chris’s earlobe. “You have no clue how much I want to sink my dick balls deep into your arse, Chris.” He choked Chris’s cock in a slow up-and-down stroke, his other hand kneading Chris’s scrotum with steady force. “But I’m not taking your floaties off yet.”

Chris drove his ass harder to Liev’s cock, his chest tight. “Fuck the floaties. I’ll let you do CPR on me after.”

Liev chuckled, the sound sending new blood into Chris’s already aching erection. “I love your bravado, Huntley. And I know the client’s wishes are always meant to be followed, but for now, I’m going to guard your body
my
way.”