Pent Up (27 page)

“Don’t you ever apologize for being sexy. Or smart. Or kind. Not to me, at least. Deal?”

“Yes sir.” And that was that.

No lynch mobs. No catastrophes. No personality transplants. Apparently, they were still just two people who dug each other. He could hang out with Andy without needing to wax his chest or binge-watch Beyoncé concerts.

His anxiety had next to nothing to do with what they were doing, and everything to do with other times and other places: What would the guys back home think? How did gays get treated when they wandered into the wrong parts of Hialeah? When would his brother stop giving him shit?

Someone would find out. Ruben knew that lying and hiding turned everything to poison. Being a drunk had taught him that. As two guys together, they’d catch hell, but New York had to be easier than North Dakota, right? Maybe on the six o’clock news they’d raise some eyebrows. But in the twenty-first century, who cared? People had way bigger alligators to wrestle.

Andy patted his chest playfully.

Ruben squinted, asking a silent question.

“Not a race. Yeah?” Andy shook his head and put a hand in Ruben’s hair, not scratching but a lazy stroke. His eyes closed and he exhaled.

Ruben swallowed, unaccountably nervous.
Don’t ask questions.
“Okay, then.” His hand still covered Andy’s erection protectively.

“I haven’t felt this rested in… fuck. I dunno.” Andy stretched against him and his cock brushed Ruben’s grip to punch the sheet. “You gave me a huge boner.”

“You musta been dreaming.”

Andy nodded. “No kidding.” He stroked the back of Ruben’s head and gripped his neck.

Ruben rolled further onto his side, notching his stiffness into the meaty curve of that perfect ass.

“Two boners, more like.” A grin.

“I watched you. I always watch you.”

Andy tipped his head to look. “Yeah? I love that.” He closed his eyes and smiled at the ceiling. “Sexy fucker. I love you keeping an eye on me.”

“Yeah?”

“You have no idea. Getting caught.” A slow blush washed from his collarbone up to his scalp. “Someone watching me. It….” He took hold of his own erection and squeezed it purple. The lazy vein looked thick as a pencil along its length. “Always has. I can’t explain.”

Ruben nodded, turned on by the feverish sparkle in Andy’s eyes. “Keeping an eye on you is no kinda problem for me, Mr. Bauer. You’re under fucking surveillance now. I don’t know how to stop. Jesus. I don’t wanna know.”

For a moment, Andy shone.

Ruben blinked but the sight remained, as if Andy had begun to glow and the room around him had dimmed.

“You changed everything, y’know.” Andy swallowed. Every part of him fell still except for the pulse in his throat and his erection. His gaze searched the ceiling for something.

“I never been with a guy before.”

“I have. In boarding school a couple times. Once with my college roommate. Not like this.”

A sudden swell of stupid, irrational jealousy swept through Ruben like hot bleach, and he kept his mouth shut. “Ah.”

“Not like us, I said. Not feelings. Not trust.” A sigh. “Not you.”

“Good.” Embarrassing that Andy had read his mind so easily. “You scare me sometimes, but in a good way I think.”

Andy turned his head and pressed a kiss on the seam where Ruben’s arm and chest met. “Gracias, Señor Oso.”

Ruben loved hearing the language on Andy’s lips. “You white boys.” He rolled his eyes.

Andy frowned. “What’s that mean?”

“It means….” What did it mean? He closed his fist around Andy’s morning wood and pressed his own close. “I’m fucking glad to be in your bed, boss. Now I can keep an eye on you properly.”

Andy laughed till Ruben joined in.

Andy sighed. “You wanna go on a date? With me? Out, I mean.”

“We go out all the fucking time.”

“I don’t mean work. I mean—”

Ruben grinned. Because he wasn’t just hired muscle, some jailhouse, boot camp fuck for the kinky rich boy. “You mean courting.”

“Yeah.” Andy ducked his head shyly. “Yeah. Like that.”

“Of course I do. How do you say sexy?” Ruben stroked Andy’s rib. “
Guapo
.”

Andy’s eyes focused. “Stop it. You’re
guapo
. Dark. Thick. Built.”

“Classy, then. Charming.” Ruben kneaded the relaxed muscles gently, milking really great sighs out of Andy. “Dashing.”

“Oh, yeah. Great. Thanks. Fetch a fucking Disney princess.”

“In Spanish. C’mon.” He stroked the flank. “I dunno. Well-bred.” He ran a rough hand over Andy’s flank. “Put together. Stylish. Whatsa Spanish for that?”

Andy thought a moment. “
Pintón
.” He stroked Ruben’s leg. “It’s a little old school. But… yeah. Pintón.”

“Pent-un?”

“
Ón
. On the second syllable. Like “own” but shorter. Pintón.”

“Pinton.” He couldn’t make it sound right.

Andy licked his lower lip. “Hit the second syllable.
Pinto
is slang for convict. Marked. Or dick, if you’re in Brazil.”

“Oh, sorry. You’re not a dick. Or a convict.”

“That’s what they all say.” Andy laughed. “At first.”

Ruben bent to kiss the faint veins in his wrist. “Eres muy pintón, Señor Bauer.”

Andy’s face lit up. “Thanks.” Chest poke. “Quick study.”

“Great teacher.”

Somehow they were stretched out together, half-naked, without Ruben feeling terrified. The banked lust simmering between them felt like a promise or a prayer. He wanted Andy like crazy, but he had nothing to prove and nowhere to run.

Without second-guessing, Ruben reached out to stroke Andy’s face and scalp. “I’d know this color anywhere.”

Andy snorted. “You’re crazy.”

“Ash-brown. What would you call it?”

“I dunno, mousy beige? My mother always says my hair is nothing-colored. Not blond, not brown.”

“Then she didn’t look very hard.” Ruben finger-combed the glossy length away from their faces. “It’s not nothing. It’s not like anything.” He stroked the silk, rubbing the strands between his rough fingers.

Andy arched and flexed and sighed.

“I finally got to touch you.” Ruben petted his forearm fuzz. “I used to be obsessed with this.”

“My arm?”

“This.” Ruben plucked at the springy fluff. “The way it caught the light. And your skin.”

“Because my skin is whiter?” Andy brushed his hand over Ruben’s knuckles.

“Nah. It’s softer or something. Crazy smooth. I can’t explain it. Like the smoothness is under the surface. In the muscle.”

“I think that’s fat you’re talking about, my man. Or sweat.”

Ruben shook his head. “But in certain places it’s close to the surface. Here.” He traced the cool underside of Andy’s forearm and then pressed his lips to it. “Here.” Andy’s ribs. “And here.” The nape of Andy’s neck.

“You’re giving me another boner.”

“Tough.” Ruben dragged his knuckles over the ridge of collarbone, the swell of his upper pec. “I never felt skin like yours. Not ever in my life.”

“Bull.” But Andy held his breath. His voice was respectful and hushed. “I think you may be biased,
Señor‎
Oso.”

“No kidding.”

Andy grinned. His erection lifted from his belly. “Thanks all the same.”

Ruben squeezed it. “See, the softness is
just
inside, out of sight, but so close I can tell it’s hidden there. Whatever you are.” He inhaled behind Andy’s ear: fresh-baked Bauer. “A secret you have to keep.”

“Hey.”

“Besides, isn’t that what sex is? I mean when we aren’t just getting off. Outside and inside get mixed up. All the other stuff gets stuck in there too, not just the meat but ideas, mistakes, feelings. Inside the bottle. Trapped like carbonation.” His calloused fingers tugged arrhythmically at Andy’s hardness. “The fizz.”

“You keep yanking, I’ll show you carbonation.” Andy shifted onto his side, the blue-gray eyes half-lidded as he slid closer to press his firm lips against Ruben’s. If he wanted to play, Ruben could play along.

Ruben snuck his tongue out just enough to taste the inside of Andy’s mouth, then lay back with a satisfied sigh. “No, jerk. It’s between the inside and the outside, but stuck in the middle of both, where they crisscross.” He let go and patted Andy’s stomach, wishing he knew the right words. “So it can’t ever be either. It’s only between. Which is how people hurt each other so much. Never mind. I’m too dumb to explain.”

“You’re not.” Andy sighed. “I know exactly.” He sounded convincing at least.

All the same Ruben recognized the feeling, though he couldn’t give a name to it. That tender point of willing surrender where trespassing was required and crime paid plenty. “Only between.”

Andy shifted and laid his head on Ruben’s chest, sounding horny and drowsy. “If you say so.”

Ruben idly stroked the glossy hair, letting ash-brown silk slip though his rough fingers over and over. “I do.”

“Then I do too.”

CHAPTER THIRTEEN

SEX RELIEVES
tension. Love causes it.

Ruben barely got a wink but didn’t get out of bed, so horny his skin hurt and his penis drilled itself raw under him. He kept expecting Andy to give him permission, but nothing doing. He knew he didn’t have to ask, but he didn’t know how to. Not like that.

Far from it.

Saturday morning, they slept in, mainly because Andy wouldn’t get out of bed and made sure Ruben stayed put.

And so Ruben stayed put, terrified he might miss some sign of permission. He liked the fooling around, but the constant cocktease was turning his balls into molten pulp that hurt every time he moved. Weren’t two guys s’posedta just fuck when they wanted? Wasn’t that part of the gay deal?

When he got up to hit the john, the ache in his nuts made him actively queasy.
The spirit is weak but the flesh is willing.
He wrapped a hand around it and gave a careful squeeze. Too hard to piss, he thumped the head of his dick, once-twice, till the sting lowered him to half-mast.

He flushed and stepped into Andy’s multihead shower, feeling trapped and exposed at the same time. His erection went nowhere in the shower, just bobbed, comical and relentless, while he fought the nausea of not knowing what came next and wishing Andy would magically appear to suck the suffering out of his aching spout… and praying he wouldn’t.

The naked freedom terrified him. Intimacy with Andy felt like walking across a frozen lake. Nowhere to hide, everyone watching, and any second—
crack
—you’d plunge into the churning, choking blackness. The sense of impending doom hung over everything they did together.

He was drunk on it and knew better. He recalled the feeling from his bad old days when he’d guzzle down well drinks, wondering who’d pay the tab, who’d land the first punch, who’d toss him into traffic, who’d call the cops.

With every swallow of sweet poison, the bottle got emptier.
Drink faster.

Ruben got out of the shower to find Andy holding a vinyl garment bag.

“Whatsamatter, Rube?” Andy’s goofy grin snapped him out of the funk he was circling.

Andy wouldn’t tell him where they were going, but he was definitely keyed up for some reason. He’d sent Hope home at two in the afternoon and told Ruben to tux up.

Ruben squinted at him. “The fuck are you up to, Bauer?”

Andy answered with a smile and a slow blink, like that was an answer. “Hurry up.” His dimple exaggerated the filthy undertone.

Ruben unzipped the bag. “Black tie?”

“Fraternity.” Andy squinted at the clothes and then at him, weighing something.

Snort. “We’re going to a frat party?”

Andy laughed. “Sorta. The tuxes are kind of a joke now, but it’s tradition.”

Wobbly headshake. He couldn’t wake up today.

Andy nodded at him appreciatively. “I say frat, but that’s kinda bullshit ’cause it’s coed and nothing like a frat-frat.”

Ruben nodded like that meant something. All he knew about fraternities came from shitty comedies and porn: kegs and jocks and spanking. “So this is your fraternity, like from college.”

“Well, technically it’s a literary society, only that’s a crock. Secret society, ditto. Saint A’s about as secret as a boob job.” Andy scowled. “These days they’re trying to be a secret society like Skull & Bones.”

“Sounds like moneybags bullshit to me.” Ruben pulled on the pants and sat on the bed to pull on socks.

“Pretty much.”

Ruben stopped. “If you can’t stand them, why are we going?”

“Business. I still have three or four big clients through Saint A’s.” Andy dropped his gaze to the floor as if the rug was the most fascinating thing he’d ever seen.

“I have to say this, huh? This seems pretty unsafe, considering two homicidal idiots just broke in. You might recall.” Ruben could hear the plea in his voice and hated it.

Andy didn’t seem to care one way or another. He tossed the garment bag on the mussed bed. “Rube, it’s done. I’m telling you. The whole thing has been a bluff. You scared ’em off, and they’re off screwing with some other sad jerk.”

Ruben sat up and scowled at that. He disagreed, obviously. Then again maybe he was hanging on to the original paranoia. “The fuck can you say that?”

“Look, there’s risk. My whole job is calculating risk, but you’ve changed the board. Everything’s different. All this time they saw me as this evil stick figure they could snap.”

“If the threat is real, fucking deal with it.” He was still unsure just how much Hope knew about Andy’s sideline. He lowered his voice to an urgent whisper. “Don’t lie to yourself. What makes you think these assholes would simply give up? In my experience—”

“In your experience people have balls. These guys don’t. They got nothing. Why are you getting so upset?”

“Andy, they came into your house. They tried to take you.”

“Only they didn’t. Enough, okay?” Andy smiled and bumped shoulders. “
¡Basta ya!
”

“I’m not qualified.” Ruben frowned and gripped Andy’s bicep. “You need to get a team in here. I been saying this from day one.”

Andy didn’t reply. He just looked down at Ruben’s rough fingers until they let go.

“Sorry.”

“No. I appreciate it. But it’s been handled.” And with that Andy dropped the subject so hard it dented the floor.