Take What You Want (5 page)

“
Oh,
shit!” Chase said under his breath. A moment later, Alex was
standing in front of him, grinning.

Chase willed himself to keep
his focus on Alex's face and those amazing green eyes. The strain in
his face to do so must have been evident because Alex tossed his head
back with a throaty chuckle.

“
You
caught me skinny dipping,” Alex said. “Sorry about
that.” He wrapped the towel around his narrow hips and tied it
in a tight knot.

“
No
problem,” Chase said, happy to see Alex had covered himself.
“The pool is there for you to use.”

“
Want
to join me for a beer?” Alex asked.

Chase glanced over his
shoulder at his cottage. “Well, it's late and I should …”

“
Just
one beer,” Alex said, and opened the wooden gate inviting Chase
inside the pool area.

Chase
followed behind Alex, finding it difficult to keep his eyes off
Alex's broad expanse of shoulders and back. The guy obviously kept
himself fit. It made Chase suddenly feel like he should start
hitting the gym again.

Alex
flopped down in a chair at the glass patio table and pulled two beer
bottles out of a small cooler sitting beside his feet. He motioned
to the chair next to him for Chase to sit down and he used a bottle
opener to remove the tops of the bottles and handed one to Chase.
The towel was still tied at his hip but had opened enough at the seam
for Chase to see the entire length of Alex's muscled thigh all the
way to the dark shadowy area of his groin.

Chase
shifted in his seat. This was awkward for him. He never sat around
the pool with the tenants and drank a beer like they were buddies, so
why was he doing it now? He usually went out of his way to avoid the
renters, but this guy … intrigued him.

“
How
long have you lived in the cottage?” Alex asked.

“
About
five years,” Chase said.

Alex nodded and drank from
the bottle.

“
You
a musician or something?” Chase asked.

Alex smiled again. “I
play guitar in a band.”

“
A
band I might know?” Chase asked.

“
Depends
on your taste in music,” Alex said. “Ever hear of Ivory
Tower?”

Chase
nearly choked on his beer. “Holy shit! I thought you were
familiar, but you look different in person than you do on stage and I
wasn't certain. You're …”

“
Zander,”
Alex said with a smile. “That's my stage name. It's short for
Alexander.”

Chase
felt his face flush. He suddenly felt like a star struck groupie.
He loved Ivory Tower, owned all their albums, and tried to see them
in concert whenever they were close enough for him to travel to the
show. Now he was sitting beside the lead guitarist and vocalist –
who just happened to be nearly naked; enjoying a beer with him.

Wait
'til Danni hears about this!

“
I'd
appreciate it if you didn't mention to anyone I'm staying here,”
Alex said. “Last thing I need is a bunch of people hanging out
down by the main gate or hiding in the hedges trying to take pictures
of me skinny dipping in the pool. Know what I mean?”

“
No
need to say that,” Chase said. “All my clients expect –
and receive complete confidentiality. Goes with the job.”

“
Exactly
what is your job?” Alex asked.

“
I
take care of about a dozen properties, like this one, all over the
island” Chase said. “I fix the stuff that breaks, do a
little carpentry, painting; whatever needs to be done, I do it.”

“
Multi-talented,”
Alex said.

“
I
do my best,” Chase said. “Benson wants me to replace a
couple of window sashes on the north side of your house that are
showing signs of a little rot. Now that you're here, he'll probably
want me to wait until Fall.”

“
My
intention is to stay well beyond the Fall, so do what you need to
do,” Alex said. “Don't worry about me. I'm here for
some much needed R&R. My band just came off an eighteen month
world tour. We're all beat up and need some distance from one
another.” Alex looked across the table at Chase and grinned.
“Living side by side for long periods of time with men you're
not sleeping with is never a good thing.”

Men you're not sleeping
with?

Where
the hell was Alex going with that train of thought? And then Chase
remembered reading the tabloid story a year back about Alex –
or Zander, as he is known in the music business, and his runway model
girlfriend being involved in a three-way relationship with another
man. The whole story blew open in the media on the heels of Dagger
Drummond, lead singer for the band Black Ice, being outed in the
press for being gay. It stirred weeks of follow-up stories for
Dagger, Zander and a few others from the music world, but amazingly
both Dagger and Zander rolled with it, seemingly unaffected.

“
Judging
from the look on your face, I'm guessing you read the print articles
on what happened to me last year,” Alex said. “You and a
few million other people.”

“
Yeah,
I think I remember reading something,” Chase said.

“
The
dude I was messing around with was a reporter for Music Spin
magazine,” Alex said. “I should have known better, but
he was too damn cute, and my girlfriend loved him. How could I say
no to that?”

Chase felt his face
beginning to heat. “Your girlfriend knew about him?”

Alex laughed. “Fuck,
yeah,” he said. “She was laying right there with us most
of the time.”

“
I
guess she's not the jealous type,” Chase chuckled.

“
Mia
loved watching us,” Alex said. His hand unconsciously cupped
his groin when he said it. “That's what got her off, but she
didn't appreciate
her
private life becoming front page news, so we broke up.”

“
I'm
sorry to hear that,” Chase said.

“
Everyone
I work with already knew I … played for both teams,”
Alex said. “It was one of those
unspoken
things
,
so it didn't faze me in the least for it to hit the news. No harm
done – to my already disreputable persona.” He laughed
at that and then ended by saying, “I heard there was a boost in
our album sales after the story broke, so I'm okay with it.”

Chase finished his beer and
Alex opened up a second one for him. “You got a girlfriend,
Chase?”

“
Actually,
I'm engaged,” Chase said. “Wedding date is next Summer.”

Alex nodded. “You're
a lucky guy,” he said. “She live here with you?”

“
Normally
she does,” Chase said. “She's away taking classes right
now.”

“
What
does she do?”

“
Pilates
instructor,” Chase said with pride. “She's taking more
classes to keep her license current.”

“
Pilates?
Damn, you
are
a lucky bastard,” Alex winked. “Can she crush walnuts
with her bare thighs?”

“
That,
and then some!” Chase said.

Chase finished his second
beer and declined a third from Alex. Although it was fun listening
to Alex's stories of life on tour with one of the world's most
popular rock bands, it was getting late and Chase was exhausted.

It was almost one o'clock in
the morning by the time he made it back to his cottage. He laid down
on the couch and typed a text message into his phone and sent it to
Danni.

“
Are
you awake?”
his text message asked.

He
waited several long minutes and got no response from Danni. He could
hardly keep his eyes open and decided to go to bed. He'd try calling
her again in the morning, he thought, rolling beneath the cool
sheets, and then his thoughts drifted to Alex. During their
conversation beside the pool, Chase watched as Alex's hand would
occasionally cup his balls through the towel and rub the long length
of what looked like an impressive looking cock resting against his
hip. He wasn't certain if Alex was doing it on purpose or if this
was an unconscious action he was simply doing out of habit. Either
way, Alex's little show had Chase's full attention – then and
now, because twenty minutes after saying good night to Alex, Chase's
cock was still hard.

Chase
kicked the sheet off of his legs and quickly started working his hand
back and forth over his aroused flesh. He tried to imagine Danni
taking his thick heat into her mouth, but then the visual changed to
Alex playing with a hot looking dude from the
other
team
,
while his girlfriend watched them. He wondered what it would be
like; to have someone watching like that. He also wondered what it
might involve, how far it went; if Alex's girlfriend joined them, or
did she simply watch Alex like it was a spectator sport.

The
idea of being watched hardened Chase more. He lifted his head from
the pillow and saw his cock thickening in his hand. His other hand
gripped his ball sac, gently squeezing and loosening, with each
stroke of his hand. Chase was leaking so badly there was no need for
additional lubrication to get him where he wanted to be. Several
fast, twisting strokes on his tip had him ejaculating all over his
stomach and chest.

He lay there in the
darkness, with nothing more than the moonlight streaming in through
the window to reveal the messy evidence of his self-gratification.
He grabbed a few tissues from a box on the bedside table to clean
himself and flopped back against the bed. His chest rose and fell
quickly, as he did his best to regain his normal breathing.

He needed to stop doing this
to himself, he thought. Twice in a matter of hours? What the hell
was wrong with him? He dragged the sheets back up over his legs and
rolled onto his side. He remembered the talk he'd had last week with
Danni about his secret fantasies of being with a man. He was as
heterosexual as a guy could possibly get, so why did he have crazy
sexual thoughts about men? Did all men have such thoughts or was it
just him that was screwed up in the head?

He
was living with the sexiest woman on the island and happy beyond
belief to be marrying her. Wasn't she enough to sate his over-active
libido? Christ! She could make him horny and keep him in that state
for hours on end, yet he still had time to have unrealistic fantasies
about being with a man. He couldn't believe he had told her about
this. She was the first person he'd ever shared that secret about
himself and now he wished he hadn't. Secrets as big and powerful as
this one should remain buried in ones own head, because once it was
out, there was no taking it back and pretending it didn't exist. Now
it was a living, breathing entity in the room with them; the
proverbial elephant that no one wanted to look in the eye, but knew
it would always be there. Lurking. Mocking him. Reminding him he
couldn't have the fantasy – no matter how much he might wish
for it.

How
long had he lived with this? As far back as he could remember;
junior high, maybe. Fantasies led to weird infatuations that some
might call crushes; although Chase would never call it that. It was
his private kink, something never to be brought into the light of
day, and nothing more. Or was it? Was there no way to taste this
forbidden fruit without jeopardizing his otherwise
normal
life? And, what the hell was normal anyway?

Chase slung the step ladder
over his shoulder and hauled it to the north side of the main house
and set it up beneath the window exhibiting the rot in the trim
boards. He climbed up the ladder, straddled the top step, and sat
down. He found the rotted piece the owner had mentioned and then
spotted several other areas that would also need replacement boards,
too. He pulled the tape measure from his belt and started measuring
the board lengths, then jotting the numbers down a pad of paper he
had stored in the back pocket of his jeans.