The Flame (7 page)

If you’re looking for a sign of what was to come,
he thinks
, looks like you just found it.

“Bathroom break,” Shane mutters.

“Shane!” Samantha calls after him, regret stitching her features.

He waves at her to indicate he’s okay, but just this small gesture makes his head spin.

Shane locks himself in the bathroom, grips both sides of the porcelain sink, and tries to get some breath into his lungs.

He’s desperate to blame someone for his current confusion, someone besides Andrew or Cassidy. Or himself. And the only people he can think of are that damned couple, Mike and Sarah Miller.

7

They hadn’t just been clients of his. They’d been his very first clients, and he’d figured their flirtations had just been meant to put him at ease. That’s how nervous he’d been during their first day together, apologizing incessantly whenever his cell phone rang, stumbling over his feet in his rush to open every door.

Relax, kid,
their lingering smiles and gentle squeezes seemed to say.
Pretend like we’re just the cool parents of one of your friends, and not hard-to-please multi-millionaires looking for their perfect New Orleans getaway.

Besides, they’d both seemed super conservative, hardly the type to initiate what came later. Mike Miller was a high-ranking former military man who’d made a bundle off defense contracts; the guy was a man’s man by any generation’s definition, gym built, with a high-and-tight haircut and a handshake so firm it could break a wine glass. So what if he liked to give Shane a little wink whenever his wife wasn’t looking? Some straight guys have goofy ways of ending a sentence—it was better than a thumbs-up, right?

While her husband charged his way into each room with intense focus, Sarah Miller seemed to float in behind him on a cloud of Chanel. She sported a lustrous mane of golden hair and a perfectly even, store-bought tan. Each time they met, she wore low-cut, sleeveless dresses so shiny and well tailored they probably cost as much as Shane’s Jeep. And then there was that husky voice that gave Shane a fluttery feeling in his chest every time she called him
honey
.

Nerves,
he’d told himself.
Don’t read too much into anything. It’s just nerves.

Besides, maybe clients were always touchy-feely when they wanted you to find them the perfect condo. He tried to get another agent at the firm to buy into this explanation, but the woman laughed in his face instead. “Are you high?” she barked. “Most clients treat you like you’re a waiter who screwed up their order five times.”

So he shouldn’t have been all
that
surprised by what happened when he met the Millers to hand over the keys to their new penthouse.

As soon as the gorgeous couple took a few steps across the threshold, a long silence fell. Shane took that as his cue to leave. But when he opened his mouth, he saw Sarah Miller’s gaze roaming the length of his body with undisguised lust.

“What do you say we really close the deal, honey?”

The line sounded lifted from a porn film. And he didn’t think women as classy and elegant as Sarah Miller watched porn films. But he wasn’t going to say that out loud, not in a million years. Which was a good thing because he couldn’t bring himself to say anything at all.

The last time Shane could remember being so aroused he was a teenager and he’d finally worked up the nerve to download a video of two men going at it. Only rarely since then had he felt this same cascade of devastating sensations. The sides of his face felt tingly and numb. A radiant heat spread through his chest. His heart raced so fast he could feel his pulse beating in his ears. And all they were doing was looking at him. Looking at him like they wanted to devour him. Like they wanted to own him—
together
.

“Oh…” It sounded more like a hiccup than an answer, and the couple before him smiled in unison. Then Michael Miller clamped one hand around the back of Shane’s neck and pushed him knees-first to the plush carpet. In stunned disbelief, Shane looked up. Mike gave him a warm, half-smile, and freed his thickening cock from his trousers. And then it was filling Shane’s mouth and throat. Dizzy from the depravity of it all, he couldn’t remember the last time a man had tasted so good, so forbidden.

He had a few gay friends who’d tried threeways with men and women. They’d all told the same story; the minute the woman laid a tender hand on them, bye-bye boner. But that’s not what happened when Sarah Miller ran her fingernails up the back of Shane’s neck as he suckled her husband’s cock. Lightning bolts of pleasure shot up his spine. And after she sank down behind him and carefully unbuttoned his pants, the light scrape of her fingernails as she stroked his shaft felt deliciously exotic.

Then she was on her feet, staring down at him as he slathered her husband’s erection with attention. She looked radiant with desire and power. Was it just lustful gratitude he felt? She had, after all, just given him her husband’s throbbing, perfectly sculpted cock. When he ran his hands gently up her thighs, pushing the hem of her dress upward in the process, he told himself it was just to thank her. But when he saw her glistening, exposed pussy, saw that she hadn’t worn panties in preparation for this very event, his gesture of gratitude turned to unexpected, overpowering hunger.

His first slow, exploratory sweep of his tongue managed to find her clit right at the end. She let out a cry that was as much surprise as bliss—maybe she didn’t expect him to go both ways—then she was grasping the back of his head, guiding him back and forth between her husband’s cock and her throbbing folds.

Eventually they tumbled to the carpet, breathless, and in the minutes that followed Shane was their ravenous, oral plaything, the taste of Mike Miller’s musk blending with the earthy tang of Sarah Miller’s flowing arousal on Shane’s unstoppable tongue.

In the few moments when Shane didn’t leave them gasping for breath, Mike managed to yank his wife’s dress down far enough to free her breasts, sucking feverishly at her nipples while Shane deep-throated his cock. By adding Shane to the mix, the married couple had made their bodies taste and feel new to each other again. When Shane added two fingers to the dance of his tongue across Sarah’s swollen nub, her orgasm shattered her, leaving her growling and clawing at the carpet on either side of her spread legs. Then Mike was on his feet, pulling Shane’s head back as he furiously stroked himself to the edge. Shane fought the desire to open his lips, to take the man’s load into his mouth. But the man was a stranger, and some rules still applied.

And then it was over.

No chitchat. No small talk. Just over.

The married couple dressed as if they’d just been woken up from a nap, both of them practically tripping over themselves to avoid Shane’s eyes whenever he glanced nervously in their direction.

There weren’t a lot of cleanup options; there was no furniture in the place yet, let alone hand towels. But still, the perfunctory manner in which Mike Miller pulled a roll of paper towels from a cabinet and handed it to Shane so he could wipe the man’s cum off his face didn’t feel deliberately degrading with the intent to arouse. It felt simply dismissive.

You’re excused, kid. Sarah and I will now return to normal, heterosexual married programming.

Shane was no stranger to quick, no-strings-attached hookups with other men; he’d fled from all manner of French Quarter apartments at all hours of the night. But to have a kettle of new feelings and desire set to boil by such a sudden, ferocious explosion of lust, and then be cast out immediately afterward—it was more than he could take. And when he finally made it back to his Jeep, after he fastened the seat belt and stuck the keys into the ignition with a trembling hand, he was astonished to find himself blinking back tears. He couldn’t remember the last time he’d cried after sex, but that’s exactly what he was doing as the few spots of Mike Miller’s cum he’d missed started to dry on his face. The Millers had left him as confused and frightened and vulnerable as a deflowered virgin, and here he was, crying alone in his car like some idiot.

But it wasn’t just sex he was crying over. It was something more. An awakening he’d never expected, and at the end of the day, it didn’t have much to do with Mike or Sarah Miller.

It wouldn’t be like that with Cassidy and Andrew. It would be—

But he didn’t finish the sentence.
Wouldn’t
finish the sentence.
Could never in a million goddamn years finish that sentence.
It was impossible. It was insane. If his head and his heart felt this scrambled after a meaningless threeway with some clients, he didn’t want to imagine how crazy he’d be after—

Cassidy pulled her dress back for him, displaying the most secret parts of herself for him, after Andrew took the back of Shane’s head in his grip, giving him permission to taste the cock he’s been given only brief glimpses of over the years. After he tasted both of them, together. And then after, the two of them holding him, not handing him a roll of paper towels. Holding him in their arms like they did that night he called for their help against that druggie he’d just thrown out of his apartment.

He slammed the sides of both fists against the steering wheel, hard enough to make the horn bleat.

At least he’d stopped crying.

And that’s what he does now, weeks later, in the bathroom at Perry’s, slams his fists against both sides of the sink. Only there’s no car horn he blows by mistake this time. Just the porcelain basin, and it’s a lot harder than his Jeep’s steering wheel. But a little physical pain is exactly what he needs to stop him from rifling through his entire sexual history looking for more evidence that he hasn’t always been the man he thought he was.

Then he looks up and sees a golden ghost staring back at him from the mirror.

8

Shane makes a sound like he’s been kicked in the stomach.

When the edge of the toilet slams into the back of his legs, he realizes he jumped backward several feet. Too many things are happening at once for him to make sense of a single one. Threads of gold dust sail out from the four-foot tall mirror as if the glass weren’t there at all, as if the gilt frame bordered a window. Before the ghost vanishes entirely, Shane glimpses its vague, shifting features.

Jonathan Claiborne…

A hallucination, for sure. It has to be! Samantha just mentioned the guy so it sort of makes sense. There was something in his food, Shane thinks. Or maybe the stress of the past few days has triggered some kind of psychotic break.

That’s all well and good, he thinks, but how does he explain the two long fingers of gold now circling the artichoke-shaped light fixture overhead? Suddenly the fixture comes free, as if a giant hand just tugged it gently from the ceiling.

Shane’s hands fly out to catch it before it shatters to the floor. But the intricate glass light fixture doesn’t fall. It floats, descending slowly before it lands softly in his outstretched palms. The scents hit him next, so powerful they distract him from the fact that he’s rising off the floor. Baking bread, lilac: the combination is familiar. He is engorged within seconds, gasping with as much pleasure as fear.

He spins in place, several feet in the air, the large light fixture balanced in his open palms by the same otherworldly force that pulled it free of the ceiling. It hasn’t broken, this precious, intricate piece of glasswork. The prospect of it shattering at his feet was a greater fear than any he’d ever experienced. But it’s being supported now—and
he’s
being supported, too, by golden fingers of thick and fluid light. And the face of a former trick, apparently.

As Shane continues to spin gently in place, he sees something in the light fixture’s glass leaves. It’s them, he realizes. They’re barely recognizable, and he can’t tell if their faces are somehow being projected onto the glass folds or if the images emanate from within. But it’s Cassidy and Andrew.

He’s holding them in his hands. They haven’t fallen. They haven’t broken.

If there’s a message to this impossible supernatural assault—
assault
seems like too strong a word given how gently he’s being handled, but it’s the first one that comes to mind—that must be it. He won’t drop them. He won’t break them. Some force he doesn’t have a name for will support them, encircle them, and enfold them. All three of them.

The light fixture rises from his hands, swiftly but smoothly, as if it’s being drawn upward by an invisible string.

Shane watches it pop back into place as smoothly as a button being snapped. As soon as his feet hit the floor, a wave of pleasure courses through him, so intense and powerful he has only seconds to pull his cock from his jeans before he empties his load onto the concrete floor.

He chokes back a cry he’s sure will bring the entire restaurant outside to a halt if he lets loose. He’s never cum like this in his life, jet after jet, never seen anything like it outside of porn films. And as it shoots from him, the vision he just beheld settles into his consciousness with surprising ease. If it was a ghost, was that its intention, to use pleasure to make Shane teachable and open?

You can have them both.
Hallucination, spell, or haunting, whatever it was, that’s the only meaning he can ascribe to it, to the delicate fixture balanced perfectly in his hands, and the faces of the two people he loves the most reflected in its crystalline folds.
Andrew and Cassidy. You can have them both and nothing will break.

9

CASSIDY

The house is dark, save for the sparkling footprints dotting the foyer’s hardwood floor. Gold flecks swim in each one, waterborne siblings of the luminescent particles that swirled through the candle’s halo as soon as she lit the wick. They have to be Andrew’s footprints, but she’s shouted his name several times and he hasn’t answered.