Safe in His Arms (14 page)

Casey smiled. “I think I can do that.”

“Good. Now turn the shower off, and we can get dry.”

B
Y
F
RIDAY
Casey was getting addicted to Lon looking after him. Every night he came home to a hot shower—complete with a hand job—and then a homemade dinner. They would snuggle on the recliner, which was only meant for one person, and watch a little TV before going to bed.

Every night Casey would lie on the mattress face down and offer himself, saying, “Take me, Lon.” But Lon would smile with his refusal and tell Casey that they would get to that later, that Casey was too tired, or that they didn’t have enough time. Casey was beginning to think he’d heard every excuse in the book, but then sleep would pull him under, and the problem would be shelved for twenty-four hours.

Working at the nursery was a hard physical job, but it was by no means mindless. The tasks required for the day would depend on the season, the weather, the customers, and a lot of the time, whatever the boss decided on a whim. The pay wasn’t fantastic, and the working conditions had a lot to be desired since it was summer and they were outside, but Casey found he loved it. Natasha grinned at him on the third day and admitted that her love for plants was the only reason she stayed. Then she found a plastic pot that was destined for the rubbish bin, filled it up with soil, and plonked a straggly, green stick in it.

“This is a maidenhair fern. They like shade, so it’ll be great inside. Water it daily, and see if it’ll grow.” Casey took the pot home with a lot of apprehension and placed it on Lon’s table. The thing was a single stick, and he was sure it would be dead within an hour. But he watered it and admitted that it did make the place look a bit more homey.

Sort of.

If you were blind.

Saturday he was a free man and he was determined to spend every minute he could with Lon. They had the weekend together as well as Monday, before Lon flew back to the mines at some ridiculous hour of the morning on Tuesday. He would only be gone two weeks this time. He would fly back the day before Christmas, as the Christmas/New Year break was the only time the mine completely shut down its twenty-four-hour operations. Lon told him there was maintenance scheduled for the week, and he would not be required.

Two weeks without Lon.

Casey was scared about how he was going to cope. His anxiety and nightmares had been almost nonexistent in the time he’d spent with Lon. Admittedly he’d had many more things to think about—his future, a job, living—but he knew that deep down Lon’s presence calmed the demon in him.

So Saturday he woke at 6:00 a.m., like he’d been doing all week, and looked around Lon’s cramped caravan. He sighed with contentment. Lon was hogging the bed as usual—this time his leg thrown over Casey’s hip—and Casey had once again lost his pillow during the night. It amused him that they could start out the night with a pillow each and approximately half the bed, but by morning Lon would have appropriated the use of both pillows and would be sprawled over the mattress. Casey never woke during these nighttime maneuvers. In the morning he would find himself either squished against the van wall or smothered by Lon, never knowing how he got there.

He turned in Lon’s loose embrace and managed to crawl out from under legs that seemed to weigh a ton. Lon woke and blinked in the morning light coming through the van’s skylight.

“Morning,” he growled and pulled Casey back to him.

Casey had learned not to fight when Lon wanted to move him to a certain location, be it his lap, his chest, or into his arms. Lon always won and fighting the move only gave him bruises. So he found himself pinned against Lon’s wide chest, and he wasn’t complaining at all. Using his hands to guide him, he groped for his favorite toy and found it hard and erect, ready for him.

He peeked up at Lon’s face and saw that Lon had closed his eyes again, a hint of a smile on his stubbly face.

“Lon?”

“Hmm?”

“Will you fuck me this morning?”

“No.”

“Why not?”

“I don’t have the energy.”

Casey sighed in frustration—an excuse he hadn’t heard before. He was getting upset. “No problem. Just roll onto your back and I’ll do it, okay? Did you put the condoms over here?”

Casey reached for the drawer beside the bed. But in the end, Lon won again. He simply put two hands on Casey’s hips and dragged him upward until he could swallow Casey’s erection whole. Casey cried out with pleasure and completely lost his train of thought. All notions of condoms and lube disappeared from his suddenly empty brain. Sometime later he found himself in a sixty-nine position, slurping enthusiastically on Lon’s cock while coming strongly into Lon’s mouth. Lon wasn’t too far behind him, and it was only as Lon moved off the bed that he remembered he hadn’t managed to get Lon to do what he wanted.

“Lon? Do you like me?”

Lon threw a look of extreme surprise his way. “Jesus Christ, Casey. I’ve just swallowed a gallon of your semen, and you want to know if I
like
you?”

When he put it like that it was a little silly. “I just get the feeling that you don’t like me enough to want to have full sex with me.” Internally Casey rolled over in mortification at how much like a whiny little kid he sounded, especially since he’d made the point that he wasn’t a boy.

“Full sex? Jesus, Casey-love. Do you want to give me a heart attack? What we do now is fucking awesome. Anal penetration doesn’t make it
full sex
. Shit. I had a relationship with a guy for over a year and we didn’t have
full sex
once. Mal and I were perfectly happy with blow jobs and hand jobs. It’s not something you have to do in order to be gay, you know.”

Casey swallowed his protests and decided to let it go—for now. He didn’t want to fight when they only had three days left. So he changed the subject. “I’m going to head back to Grandma’s and pick up my towel and bathers. How about you meet me there, and we’ll head to the beach for an early morning swim?”

It was a good plan, and after a bowl of cereal, Casey took off back to his grandmother’s to get changed. The old bird was already up, munching through her muesli as usual.

“Good morning, Grandma,” he greeted her cheerily.

His grandmother clutched at her chest in mock surprise. “Oh, my gosh. The prodigal grandson returns. I can’t believe it. Here I was thinking I was going to have to call the cops and report you missing.”

“Get out of here, Grandma. I’ve written you notes and left them on your bed to tell you that I’m okay, sent you a thousand messages on your phone, and even told you where I am.”

“Two notes, three messages, and a vague ‘I’m staying at Lon’s place’ is all I got. I don’t even know who this Lon guy is.”

He sighed. “I haven’t told you about Lon because that’s personal, Grandma. I don’t ask for details about your sex life.”

“So this Lon is your sex life, is he? You’re having sex with him? Is it just sex, or more than that?”

“Grandma. Please. I’m not giving you details. And of course we’re having sex. We’re fully consenting adults sleeping in the same bed. What did you think we were doing? Playing canasta?”

“So do you like him?”

An involuntary smile spread across his face. “He’s great, Grandma. I really like him. He’s just…. I dunno how to say it. But he fills up all the gaps inside me, you know?”

His grandmother was smiling at him. “Oh, pet. That’s wonderful.”

“He’s wonderful, Grandma. And you can meet him in about two minutes. He’s on his way here, and we’re going down the beach.”

Casey found his boardies and slipped into the bathroom to get changed. His meds were also there, so he found the right ones and swallowed them down. He hated taking them. It made him feel weak and less of a man to have to have them, but he also understood that something inside him had been broken. That place would need time to heal, and he was so much better able to cope with the healing if he was in control of the other stuff.

He found the sun cream, exited the small bathroom, and grabbed a beach bag, only to hear Lon’s deep voice followed by his grandmother greeting someone outside.

“G’day, Mrs. Greening. It’s a beautiful morning, isn’t it?”

“Hello, Taylor. It is a beautiful morning. It looks to be cooling down some, thank goodness. Haven’t seen you ’round for a while. I thought you must’ve been pulling double shifts or something.”

Taylor?
Casey frowned at that one but was cheered by the fact that his grandmother and his boyfriend knew each other and were friends. Now if only Lon knew he
was
a boyfriend. They hadn’t discussed terms or circumstances. He wondered if that should come before or after the full sex discussion.

“Back on Tuesday,” Lon answered.

“So you’ll be away for Christmas, then?”

“Nah. They’ll shut the mine down for Christmas and do some maintenance. If there’s no dirt coming out of the ground, then I’m not needed. So they’ll bring me home Christmas Eve.”

“That’s nice, pet. Are you headed to the beach, then?”

“Yes. I’m just swinging by for Casey, and we’re going to swim for a bit.”

“Casey?”

Casey flinched at the strident tone of his grandmother’s voice. In the space of three seconds, she’d gone from friendly, to shocked and wary. He hurried outside and greeted Lon. “Hey, Lon. I’m ready. I didn’t know you knew my grandmother.”

“Lon?” Casey’s grandmother gasped, going pale. She stumbled back a couple of steps and fell against the outdoor table. “This is Lon? I thought your name was Taylor?”

“Taylor?” Casey repeated in confusion, looking at Lon.

Lon shrugged. “Lon Taylor. To my friends I’m Lon. To everyone else I’m Taylor.”

“Lon?” His grandmother’s tone rose another notch, echoing a little and sure to catch the attention of anyone nearby. Casey’s heart stuttered. “
This
is the Lon you’ve been telling me about?”

Her face went from pale to bright red, the flush moving up from her chest over her features. “Grandma?” Casey questioned urgently.

Without looking at the older man, his grandmother fixed frightened eyes on Casey and shouted hysterically, “Is
this
the guy?”

In his peripheral vision he saw the shock from Lon, who staggered back a step in surprise. “Now, Mrs. Greening….”

She whirled on him and spat out words that both Lon and Casey struggled to understand. “You pervert. You arsehole. You cannot go around doing things like that. It’s wrong and you’re a twisted, perverted soul. I’m going to have you strung up by the authorities. I’m going to carve your balls out of your body and eat them for breakfast. I’m going to shove a red-hot poker up your arse and see how you like it.”

Disbelief was stark on Lon’s face. “Whoa, now, Mrs. Greening. What do you think…?”

But the woman was only getting started. “You pedophile. You lover of little boys. You disgust me!”

“Grandma!”

The irate woman whirled on Lon with a vengeance. “Chemical castration is too good for the likes of you. They should’ve drowned your sort at birth.”

“What?” asked Lon, completely stupefied by this turn of events.

“Don’t give me ‘what’ in that tone. You know exactly how it is. It’s filthy that someone your age is interfering with a boy like him!”

“He’s not….”

Casey’s grandmother took a couple of steps forward and shouted in Lon’s innocent face. “He’s just a teenager. A boy. You should be chasing someone your own age!”

Lon’s face went blank as he took a couple of steps back. Several people from nearby cabins had stepped out to see what the ruckus was about and were avidly watching the drama unfold. Casey could see where this was headed and desperately tried to rein in his grandmother. “Grandma. Stop! Lon has done nothing wrong. I’m old enough, and you—”

She cut him off. “You don’t know what you want, Casey. You’re a little boy and—”

“I’m a man,” he butted in.

“No. You’re a boy.”

“I am not.”

“You’re too young to know what you want, Casey. And perverts like Taylor are going to take advantage of that. He should know better. You’re only eighteen.”

“I’m nearly twenty,” Casey swiftly corrected.

“You’re still a boy” came back the rebuttal.

Casey couldn’t let that one go. “I’m old enough to know what I want, Grandma.”

“Well, if you’re wanting someone like him, then you need to be in therapy again.”

It was one of the most hurtful things she could’ve said to him. Had he just been kidding himself that he was getting his life in order? Was it all a sham? He thought that he had the anxiety mostly under control. He had a job, he had a boyfriend, he had friends, he had a place to stay, and he had plans for the future. Wasn’t that control?

Stupidly tears sprung to his eyes, and he looked around for his anchor. But Lon was angrily striding off down the access road, headed for the beach. Lon was going. His grandmother was shouting at him. They thought he needed a shrink.

It was all too much, and the walls started to close in on him, so he spun around and raced in the opposite direction to escape them.

“Casey!”

He ignored the call and fled to the other end of the park. He ran until he’d reached the boundary, then hunkered down behind the toilet block in the camping area.

Did he need to be locked up in some mental institution? Is that what they were saying? Like those people who saw little green men and wore tinfoil hats? Did he think he was sane while everyone else around him thought he was loopy?

He drew in deep breaths and counted to ten before running through his life. He was taking his medication and he had a shrink. Mick had said that his choices were fine. Mick had said that fortnightly appointments were fine. If he was that bad, wouldn’t Mick want to see him daily? Then there were Ash and Devon. They thought he was fine. Paul had liked him. Natasha had worked and chatted with him all week. All of that meant he was fine, didn’t it?

And Lon….

Shit! Lon!

In a panic, Casey realized that Lon had taken off and was probably thinking terrible thoughts about himself and Casey. He had to reassure him that what they had was real.
Where was Lon?