Out of the Blues (15 page)

“No, I’m not.”

“Me either.” She sighed and we didn’t talk for a long time. Hunter and Kilby found us like that late that night, Harper asleep in my arms and me lost in bitter memories of a life I never asked for.

‘
Me either
,’ I thought when Hunter woke her up and helped her up to their room. I just sat there in the chair wondering where I’d put that whiskey because I could feel him standing behind me.

I ignored him until I knew he was gone. When I knew I was alone, I went out into the dark night and drove myself to the house. I couldn’t sleep with him. I’d rather lock myself in with ghosts than sleep with him, or make love with him, or tell him I loved him. Because I was nothing but a mistake. It was all a mistake. My whole fucking life. One big fucking joke that wasn’t funny. Not anymore.

Chapter Twenty

Kilby and the glaring light of day.

“Have you seen Mace?” Hunter sat down next to me at breakfast. I had on sunglasses and his voice was way too loud.

“Nope, can’t help you.” I swallowed the ibuprofen I’d just popped into my mouth so I wouldn’t kill my brother. “He didn’t come home last night.”

“Home?” My brother gave me a questioning look and I shrugged.

“You know what I mean, fuck, I’m hung over.” I don’t think I was to the puking stage. Not sure I was going to get there. I hadn’t eaten anything yet so that could come later.

“Did you go back to the bar after I took Harper to bed?” Hunter lowered his voice this time.

“Yeah, I thought I’d give him time…I don’t know what’s going on, but no, he never came upstairs. I haven’t seen him.”

Hunter leaned over the table, he didn’t look so hot either. “Harper is pregnant,” he said very softly and then shushed me. “We just found out yesterday and we don’t want anyone to know yet. Okay?”

“So, she was crying on her brother’s shoulder because….?”

He stared at the tablecloth as if he’d never seen it before. The waiter brought my breakfast. After the disaster of the buffet yesterday, I ordered something from the kitchen. Just eggs and bacon and toast and very little of that. I let Hunter brood while I put all of my food on the toast and made a sandwich.

He eyed my breakfast and reached for the bacon slice that escaped the bread. I let him have it because he looked pathetic.

“She doesn’t want children,” he said after a few moments. He looked around at the small gathering of guests as if we were discussing top-secret military raids.

“They make birth control for that.” I pointed out helpfully. He didn’t smile. And I really hadn’t meant for him to think I was kidding.

“We know that. She was on the pill and we used condoms. Or we did until a couple of months ago. But the pill you know.
The Pill
. And here we are and I am afraid she’s going to…I…” He looked like a man about to burst into tears out here in the dining room.

“And you want kids?” We’d never discussed it. We’d never discussed anything, not kids, marriage, nothing. I assumed he wanted what all normal people want. House, wife, career, kids, dog, in whichever order worked for him.

“I don’t know. I never thought about it much. She said she didn’t when we first got serious. She said she couldn’t put a kid through the kind of life she’d had and I never questioned that. I didn’t know she was Doug Foxworth’s daughter until later. I assumed she had like…you did…something like that.”

I sat back in the chair and tried to decide if my stomach was going to reject my breakfast after the first three bites. I took my glasses off and winced at the sunlight coming through the windows. “Mason talks a bit about being passed around so much they didn’t know who was friend and who was foe…my words not his.” I remembered he said something about one of Arden’s men had knocked Harper around. I remembered that Hunter said she spoke very little of her life before college. And Mason was falling apart just being back here. I could make assumptions until the cows came home. “You need to sit down and talk to her. I mean really talk to her. Do you want this baby?”

He looked at me as if I’d lost my mind. “Yes, of course I do.”

“Then you need to tell her. And you need to tell her that the shit her parents did to them isn’t going to be her. She’s not them. She’s not her mother.”

“Yeah. Probably should do that today. The rehearsal and dinner are tonight. Tomorrow we’ll be married. And oh god, I’m getting married tomorrow and we’re going to have a baby and we haven’t even opened the hotel yet and we have no place to raise a baby, we live in a suite upstairs…and holy fuck, Kilbourne, what the fuck have I done?”

I did laugh this time because that was the brother I remembered. Charge in full steam ahead and then when it got thick, panic. I reached out and pulled his ear. “You grew up to be a gorgeous, brilliant man who is going to make a great husband and father. And I’m proud of you.”

He reached for my hand before I could pull it back and held it like it was a life link. “I love you. You know that right? If I never told you, I love the fuck out of you.”

“I return that wholeheartedly.” I let him squeeze my hand. When I was fourteen and coming out to my family, I’d needed him. Now I could return the support he’d given me. “So why are you looking for Mason?”

“Oh.” He looked around as if he was waking up from a dream. “Oh, Gwen and the kids are arriving soon and Harper wanted him to come…” he paused when Doug Foxworth came in one door with a woman who was considerably younger than him, carrying a toddler, while two kids held on to his legs. “Meet them. Too late for that I guess.”

Mason came in another door, he still wore the same clothes from the party last night. His hair wasn’t styled and he wore sunglasses. He looked just about like I felt. I could tell when he caught sight of his father and the happy family he’d never had. His lips went pale and after a moment he plastered on a smile so fake I cringed from across the room.

“She’s young,” I whispered to Hunter before he could rise to go meet his future stepmother-in-law.

“She’s your age. And you’re screwing his oldest son. Isn’t that interesting?” He probably hadn’t meant that like it sounded but I punched him anyway. Just because he deserved it and because I
was
screwing the man’s son and I wanted to go to that son just so he had someone there who understood him.

“What the fuck was that for?”

“Being an ass.”

“Well, it’s true isn’t it?”

I sighed, “Yeah, but never mind, go save Mason. And hey, Hunter, talk to her. Don’t let shit get in the way of that today. Take her off somewhere private and talk. Go for a boat ride or something.”

Hunter gave me a thumbs up and left me to finish my breakfast and luxuriate in my hangover headache. It wasn’t like I had anything else to do. Later I had to drive back to the tailor and try the suit on again. And tonight was the dinner thing and I had nothing to do to keep me busy except watch the Foxworths from across the room. Harper came out of the front near the lobby as Hunter approached the family. Mason just stood there with his hands in his back pockets.

He’d pushed his glasses on top of his head, and looked very tired from this far away. He made small talk and met his younger brothers, all of them were boys, with a look of fear in his eyes. The kids had the same look for him. Well, except for the little one. He dove for Mason, off-balancing the mother and Mason reached out to catch him. He tried to hand him back, but the little guy wasn’t having it, he wanted Mason and he wanted him badly enough to latch on and not let go.

Mason held him gingerly, but the kid seemed unperturbed. He reached for Mason’s glasses and Mason’s hair fell into his face. But the kid was damned adorable, babbling away while wearing Mason’s sunglasses upside down. The small smile that twitched at Mason’s lips was almost real, and my stomach decided now to start doing a crazy dance that left me gasping for air.

I couldn’t handle this. Not really. I left money on the table for the waiter because I seriously didn’t care if this was a completely complimentary meal. That guy had gone out of his way to get me something edible and he’d flirted with me, too. Had to leave him something.

I went upstairs because nothing else to do, but go wallow in sheets that were Mason scented and spunk stained because I was pathetic.

The room had been cleaned while I was out. The sheets were fresh. A new goody basket sat on the foot of the bed. I was seriously thinking about killing my brother when the door opened.

Mason came in and spotted the basket and sighed.

“Are you okay?” I asked him because…well, just fucking because.

“I’m good.” He looked at the basket and back at me as if I had something to do with it.

“Hey, don’t look at me, I didn’t order it. Or the one from yesterday either.” I wanted him to know…what? That I wasn’t going to pressure him.

“I think Harper is playing matchmaker. I don’t know, man, I can’t tell you. She’s…weird even for Harper.” He seemed to want to evade.

“Considering Hunter told me they found out some news yesterday.” I made the assumption that she’d confided in him last night. I hope she had.

He tossed his glasses onto the dresser and pulled his keys and wallet out of his pocket. “She’s devastated,” he said sounding weary. And not just a little bit wary.

“Hunter said as much,” I said, moving into the room to one of the chairs over by the balcony. The sun wasn’t shining as brightly now as it had downstairs. In fact, it looked like rain. “Did you sleep?”

“Not well,” he said from where he stood by the dresser.

“Do you want me to leave so you can?” I would disappear if he wanted me to. I had no place I wanted to go. “Is there a movie theater in town? I could go.”

“Kilby…” he practically growled at me and I stopped talking. “I just…stop, okay…stay…I…probably won’t sleep anyway and there’s not a goddamned thing to do in this piss-ant town. No point in both of us being inconvenienced.”

I didn’t know how to take that. Was I inconveniencing him? “Okay.” I picked up the remote control and turned the television on, hoping for something to watch to pass the time. “It’s Friday. I am never at home to watch TV during the day. Is there anything on you want to watch?”

“Don’t care.” He tugged at his shirt and started to strip. “Watch what you want.” He was down to his briefs when I looked back up.

I found the football channel on cable and left it there while Mason pulled the covers back and fell in. He put a pillow over his head and didn’t move again for nearly half an hour.

I got up and pulled the curtains closed to shut out the light and stripped out of my jeans. I wasn’t going anywhere in the next couple of hours. The fridge in the room was stocked with drinks and there was food just a call away. I had hours to kill and football to catch up on. I watched the game I missed last night on replay. Mason still didn’t move.

I drifted off as the rain hit and my headache came back. I was tired. Fuck, if I was going to sit up for five hours when I hadn’t slept last night from worrying about him while he lay there calmly sleeping like…it wasn’t any of my fucking business and I was an idiot.

I opened the curtains and stood staring out across the rain-soaked lawns to the lake off in the distance. I wondered why I was here. Besides being Hunter’s best man, I mean. I could have come in today and been here in time for the rehearsal, and tomorrow night I would leave and I could be back in my own bed by midnight. I didn’t have to come for most of the week. I sure as hell wouldn’t have had to share this room for more than one night.

I wouldn’t want him. Not like I did. Or do. I wanted him. I wanted to bundle him up in my truck and take him home and take care of him like a stray puppy I found on the roadside.

He was a grown man.

And I was an idiot.

I closed the curtains and left the game on and climbed into the bed beside him. I rolled on to my side facing away from him.

When his arm slid over my waist I turned to face him. He wasn’t awake. He’d rolled into my warmth. The temperature outside seemed to be plunging the room into a cold damp chill. I pulled the cover over us and tucked my face into his collarbone. He sighed, his fingers twitched on my back. I sighed and finally fell asleep.

Chapter Twenty-One

Mason goes down in a blaze of glory.

I think I might have drank too much whiskey last night. I was sober, but damn, I couldn’t move, didn’t want to move really. I was warm and comfortable and my brain wasn’t screaming.

I have no idea what I’d been thinking to drive out to the old house at nearly midnight. I have no idea why I took the whiskey with me. I’d been drinking, yes. I never got drunk.

I wanted so much to get drunk. But that house was full of enough ghosts without me drinking myself into becoming one.

I refused to let my mind wander back to the reason I’d gone to the house in the first place. Well, one of the reasons. I could feel the second reason breathing against my neck.

And didn’t that feel disgustingly wonderful. The room was dark when I managed to peel one eye open. Light filtered in around the edges of the curtains so I knew it wasn’t night yet. I burrowed deeper into the bed. Or tried. I think I burrowed more into a hard chest. His leg slid against mine. His hand clenched at the small of my back. He slept on and I had no idea how to move him off me.

Or if I wanted to.

I was warm. I had rested. My brain had stopped screaming for someone to make it all stop.

My arm was under his head. My other hand was on his hip. He wasn’t the only one involved in this tangle of limbs.

I’d never slept with anyone. Not really. I’d fucked and left or she left. I have no recollection of staying long enough with anyone to actually sleep.

Kilby would be my first official sleep partner.

He grunted in his sleep. The sound and his breath fluttered at the base of my neck. And my whole body trembled.

I had both eyes opened now, I lay in the mostly dark room holding Kilby while he slept. I studied his face, as much of it as I could see at any rate. He looked so much younger when he slept. Maybe because he lost the hard look he tended to wear. The weight of the world seemed to lift from his shoulders.

I ran my hand up his back, softly so as not to wake him and over the shoulder, not that far from my chin. I wanted to dip my head and lick the tattoo that I knew was there. I felt him grow large where his groin and my groin connected, but I didn’t move. Not a single muscle and he didn’t seem to wake up.

And then I was hard.

So fucking hard I couldn’t think about anything except slowly rubbing my hard against his hard. I didn’t. I wanted to.

But I didn’t.

I stroked his back and died with each soft flutter of his hand over mine. He shifted his knee between my legs, his groin pressing harder into mine as he did. “Kilby,” I whispered his name because I was dying and he was killing me…I was going to fucking come in my shorts without doing a damned thing.

I felt his mouth stretch against my neck. Fucker was smiling. He arched his hip under my hand and slowly ground himself into me. I was sweating trying not to roll him onto his back and rub myself until I was replete.

“Oh, fuck, Kilby,” I whispered again. I tried not to dig my fingers into his cotton-covered ass when I tried to move him closer to me.

His knee slid between my thighs, forcing me to lift my leg. I draped it over his hip. Fuck, this was worse. I was so fucking turned on from a sleeping man shifting in my embrace. So fucking worse.

He nuzzled my neck and I threw my head back to give him more neck to nuzzle. His hips rocked into me. Slowly, so fucking slowly. His hand drifted along my spine and into my shorts. I felt my toes curl as his finger pressed against my asshole. I had no idea how good that would feel. “Kilby,” I cried, wanting him to wake up and do more than just tease me.

He laughed into my neck, his other hand sliding beneath me and around me to squeeze my ass cheek. I humped into him because fuck if I cared if he was sleeping or playing at sleep. I was so fucking going to come and he was going to…

“I want you to come in my mouth,” he whispered against my neck and a thrill shot down my spine. I was so fucking close that his voice could very well push me over.

“Fuck, yes,” I said, letting him roll until I was on top of him, straddling his hips. He looked up at me with sleepy eyes and I fucking lost it. I ground myself into his dick, whimpering because there was too much fabric between us. He shoved my shorts down over my hips and I tried to shove his down, but I was clumsy on top of him.

“Get the lube.” I shivered at his request. I wasn’t going to last long enough to get lube into him to fuck him properly. I was going to fucking come in about three more thrusts of his body against mine.

“Where is it?” I remembered a gift basket on the end of the bed. I don’t remember moving it.

“Your side table. You set it there before you crashed.”

I didn’t remember, but there it was, the basket of oils and goodies. I reached for it, grabbing the edge of the basket with my fingertips and nearly knocking it to the floor. I eased up his body to reach it and almost swallowed my tongue when he swallowed my dick. He’d leaned up. I wasn’t going to need any lube.

“Lube.” He held out one hand and shoved my shorts down my leg and I shifted to get my shorts off and to reach the basket. I had the lube open and he had me naked, and I was straddling his chest with my dick deep down his throat and I have no idea how that happened. I held onto the headboard and watched him suck me, my fat dickhead disappearing between his wet lips.

“Oh, fuck me,” I said. “That’s gorgeous. You’re gorgeous.”

He pulled off and licked the tip as he studied me. “Turn around.”

I whimpered again. He smacked my ass and my whimper became a full-fledged groan.

“Now,” he said smacking my ass again. I turned around. He moved under me until I straddled his face and wrapped his arms around my waist pulling me down. I couldn’t move. I held myself over him as he sucked me down his throat. Slowly. So fucking slowly. Taking his time to lick every inch of my dick as he went. When his nose pressed into my balls I collapsed onto his stomach.

“Fuck, oh fuck, oh fuck,” I said, clawing the sheets. I still had no idea what he wanted the lube for.

I heard the click of the lid and felt the dribble of cold down my crack. I buried my face in his belly and waited.

He pulled off my dick and kissed my inner thigh. “Relax, Mason, I’m not going to rape your ass.”

I couldn’t relax. I’d lost the need to come. I was hard as fuck but I was…he rubbed the lube into my ass, stroking me with strong hands, stretching my cheeks apart while he kissed and nibbled my thighs. I was shaking.

“Shh, baby, not going to hurt you.” He touched my asshole then, pressing a fingertip firmly on my opening. That’s all. He didn’t push inside me. He didn’t do anything, but touch me there. “Push my briefs down, please.” I could hear the plea in his voice and I’d forgotten he was just as hard as I was.

I lifted up and noticed his dick trapped in the half-off shorts. He dripped through the fabric, pre-come making the material almost see through. I lifted his dick and pulled the waistband out from beneath and pushed until I had it down to his knees. He pulled one leg up and I helped get him free. I’d stretched over him until his dick bobbed against my mouth.

I licked him. He smelled so good. I couldn’t help myself. I needed to taste him. I licked the trail of his arousal over his belly and along the head, down the shaft making him tremble beneath me like he’d made me tremble.

He wrapped his arms around my thighs, his soft cries muffled by my skin. “Suck me, Kilby.” I needed to be back in his throat. “I’ll…I want to suck you.”

I leaned up and looked through my legs for his permission. He nodded and handed me the bottle of lube. I was about to ask why, but he raised his legs up and hooked his ankles behind my back, exposing his hole to me. I let him draw me into his mouth and closed my eyes at the return of his finger over my asshole.

I dribbled the unscented slick over his balls and watched as it dribbled down over his taint to his pucker. I leaned over and licked the spot before the slick made it there. I wanted to know what he tasted like. His thighs shook around me and he groaned around my dick.

“Oh, you liked that.” I was trying not to come in his mouth. I was trying not to fuck into his throat. I was trying not to wonder what it would feel like if I pressed back against the pressure over my hole.

I licked him again, and fuck he tasted like Kilby. Not ass. Clean. Fuck. I forgot myself, he forgot to suck me. I closed my mouth over that spot and sucked his hole. The gasping sounds he made, made me bold. I licked him, flat tongue, over his hole and up his taint. The lube had no flavor, I licked it into him, pressing my tongue into him when he opened under my tongue.

“Mason.” My name rolled off his tongue as if I was precious to him. I wanted to be precious to him. I wanted to please him, I wanted…him.

I poured more of the lube onto him and pushed one finger into him when his hole flared open under my tongue. I licked him, licked my finger as it slid into him. He clawed at my thighs and cried out my name.

“Suck me, Kilby,” I ordered, grinding my balls into his mouth, he didn’t hesitate. He sucked me deep into his throat and I added a second finger. I licked my way up his taint to suck one of his balls into my mouth, and I finger fucked him, loving the way his ass pulsed around me.

I fucked into his mouth, I gasped as his finger pressed into me. Fuck, that was nice. It made the electricity shooting along my spine sharper. I fucked into that, too. Licking his groin and up his shaft, I wrapped my lips around the head of his dick and sucked him, letting his broad head slip in and out of my lips and over my tongue. I wasn’t ready to take him down my throat. I might not ever be ready for that.

I looked up and saw myself in the mirror on the closet door. His dick between my lips, his legs wrapped high around my back as he fucked himself on my fingers. He hit something inside me, something that sent sparks into my brain and I saw myself come. I saw what he did to me. I couldn’t stop watching what I did to him, my fingers thrusting into him faster, hitting that spot in him that made his dick spurt in my mouth. I came, deep in his throat, crying out around his dick as my eyes rolled. Fuck, I was so fucking turned on. I was so fucking…fucked.

He rolled me off him and lay panting beside me. “Fuck,” he said in a strangled voice. “You’re too fucking good at that.”

“I’m sorry.” I have no idea why I apologized. I had no idea why I was shaking like a fucking virgin.

“Don’t be,” he said, his voice still ragged. He was still hard and I wanted to roll over and take him back into my mouth, maybe do more than just lick the head. “I didn’t want to come yet. You had me about to burst.”

I rolled onto my hip and leaned up on my elbow to study him. He put his hands behind his head and lay on his back, his dick sticking straight up, his chest rising rapidly. “I came. You should let me—”

“In a minute.” He flinched when I ran my fingers along his thigh. He smiled at me, in a lazy fuck me kind of way. And I wanted that smile. I wanted him to…I just wanted.

I crawled onto my knees and sat beside him on the bed, I wanted so much to…I have no idea what I wanted. I just wanted…to know. I needed to know…everything.

“If you want to, Mason, do it, I’m not going to stop you, unless you touch my dick right now and aren’t prepared for me to come in your mouth then—” he stopped talking when I straddled him again. He ran his hands over my thighs and waited for me to make the next move. “Make sure you’re sure, before you go further.”

Could he read me so easily? “I’m sure.” I reached for the small bottle of lube and poured the rest of the liquid over his dick. I leaned forward, over him, I wanted to see his eyes. I wanted to see what I did to him. I slid over him, rubbing my softening dick over his hard, like before, rubbing and sliding over him. I watched his eyes turn dark as he watched me. He traced my lips with his thumb. He squeezed my nipples and I felt it start again, this want I had for him. This need I had for his touch. I wasn’t ready to kiss him. That would come soon.

“Mason,” he whispered my name again in that way he had a few moments before. I trembled under his hands. He slid his hands down to my hips and slowed my rhythm. I let him rock into me. I arched my back and felt the length of him glide between my ass cheeks, and along my taint over my balls. He stroked my dick with one slick hand as I rode his dick.

“Mason,” he said again, alarm in his voice. He held me still. I couldn’t move if I wanted to. I could feel the heat of his dick pressing hard at my hole. He was in me. Not far. Enough to know that one shift in the wrong direction and I’d…know. I’d fucking know. I shifted, arching up enough to allow him room to enter me. “Mason, you don’t have to.”

“Don’t you want me?” I heard my mother in my words. I hated myself. I hated myself because I wanted him so much and I couldn’t stop myself from wanting.

“I want you. I’ve wanted you from the moment I saw you, but Mason,” he gripped my hips hard, hard enough to make me stop, hard enough to bruise. “Don’t do this if it’s not what you want.”

I let him hold me suspended like that, over his body, his dickhead just inside me, my dick dripping and screaming for more. My brain exploded with every single doubt I’d ever had. “Make love to me. Please, Kilby. I need to know. I need it to be you.”