Austin’s hotel room was softly lit, the polished tabletops glowing, the books and paintings and flower vases lustrous. The bedding had been turned down.
“Uh-oh,” Jeff murmured. “Is it a school night?”
Austin laughed. It had a breathless sound to it. He turned, and Jeff was right behind him, almost stepping on his heels. It was startling, but it made it easy to reach out, each moving to steady the other and somehow winding up in a hug.
Not a clinch. A hug.
It was unanticipated and surprisingly sweet to simply be held in strong arms. No demand, not even a request—just an ordinary hug. Which somehow, in these circumstances, seemed anything but ordinary. Austin could feel Jeff’s heart pounding against his own chest, and he picked up the fragrance of Jeff’s cologne, now diffused with wine and his own light male scent. Jeff smelled warm and alive in the pristine perfection of the hotel room’s recycled air.
He rubbed his smoothly shaven cheek against Austin’s. “Hello,” he murmured.
“Hello,” Austin whispered back.
Jeff’s mouth sought his, and there was an artless misjudging of lips and distances before they were kissing again, sharing breaths, laughing. Austin found both the fumble and the laughter reassuring. He didn’t particularly want to go to bed with a porn star.
The kiss moved from companionable to dizzying in a couple of thudding heartbeats. Jeff’s mouth pressed harder against Austin’s, parting his lips with a delicate tongue, tasting him in a long, fluid kiss. Jeff tasted sweet, structured, and muscular. An earthy Barolo perhaps. Colorful with complex, focused flavors and a long, mellow finish.
“What would you like?” Jeff asked after a bit. “Anything. Just ask.”
“I…” What exactly was on offer? Another of Austin’s preconceptions toppled. He hadn’t expected quite this…generosity.
“Let me suck you off.”
Austin’s breath caught in his throat. “Are you sure?” His voice came out sounding thin and ragged, because if Jeff meant something else—for example, the more likely, I want you to suck me off—the disappointment was going to kill him.
“Hell yeah, I’m sure.” Jeff’s hands went to Austin’s zipper at the same instant Austin’s hands went for his own waistband. Austin laughed again, although it felt slightly hysterical, this mutual desperation to get him out of his clothes. His trousers were down around his ankles in a couple of beats. His briefs followed, once he’d navigated them around the flagpole of his cock. Jeff gave him a gentle push, and he sat down, knees weak, on the foot of the bed. Jeff knelt before him.
“Oh yeah. That’s what I’m talking about,” Jeff said softly, and it seemed touchingly heartfelt.
Austin closed his eyes, sucking in a deep breath at the trails of lightning flashing through his skin as Jeff’s hands closed on his hips, Jeff’s breath warm against his belly.
Austin’s cock was erect and straining; his nerves felt as dangerously exposed as bare wires as Jeff’s fingers moved to stroke his thighs. All his body hair seemed to stand up crackling in a storm of static electricity as Jeff bent, closing his mouth over the sensitive head of Austin’s cock.
The noise—naked and uninhibited—that tore out of Austin’s throat filled him with distant astonishment.
The next sound he uttered was more of a squeak as the hotel-room door jumped beneath a sudden knock. Jeff’s fingers dug into his thighs as he steadied himself, and that wonderful mouth stopped working its magic.
“You expecting someone?” Jeff asked in an urgent undertone.
“No.” Austin expelled a long, rattled breath. “Maybe they’ve got the wrong room?”
They listened tensely.
The knocking began again, this time with more energy.
“Crap.” Austin rose, scrabbling to drag up his pants without doing himself injury. He started for the door on shaky legs. “Hold that thought.”
Jeff didn’t respond. His pose was wary, intent. Austin wondered if he’d run out and hide on the balcony if someone walked into the room. He felt a flicker of sadness. It was a shame because he really liked Jeff, but where could you go from that?
He raked his hair out of his eyes, flipped the security bar over, and dragged the door open.
It took a second for his eyes to adjust after the muted light of the bedroom. Cormac Cashel stood in the brightly lit hallway. He wore black jeans, a black sweatshirt with a skull-and-crossbones logo, and his perpetual scowl.
“Hi,” Austin said, surprised.
“I wanted to see you.”
Austin spared a quick look over his shoulder, but Jeff was standing out of sight behind the corner. “About wha—” The rest of that was lost as Cormac pushed into the room and wrapped his arms around Austin, hugging him tightly.
“I want to be with you tonight,” he panted in Austin’s ear. He smelled of pot and Irish Spring and nervous perspiration.
“Huh?”
“I…want to…be…with…you,” Cormac gasped out as they wrestled. Austin freed his right arm and tried to push him away, but Cormac was strong and agile, and he kept enfolding Austin while trying to cover his mouth with his own.
It seemed to be his night for hugs, but the intent here was clearly different from Jeff’s earlier embrace.
“What are you doing?” Austin demanded, finally wriggling out of that human straitjacket. The question was mostly rhetorical. He could hardly fail to understand what Cormac was doing—or at least attempting to do.
Cormac reached for him again, the hammer hit the wrestling bell, and it was round two. Austin tried to bat Cormac’s clutching hands away as Cormac gulped out, “I feel like a wet seed wild in the hot blind earth.”
“You feel what?”
“Faulkner said that.”
“Faulkner said that?”
“William Faulkner. The greatest American novelist who ever lived.”
Someday this was going to be funny, but all Austin could think about was Jeff standing a few feet away listening to this—and the fact that Cormac must not discover Jeff’s presence in Austin’s room. Not least for the sake of Cormac’s own dignity.
Losing patience, he stiff-armed the younger man, who gave an oof.
“Knock it off!”
Cormac gasped, “You can’t say you don’t feel it too. I knew the minute I saw you. It’s like I’ve known you all my life. You’re exactly how I pictured. Exactly. Well, except for your awful accent.”
Oh great. Another guy who’d spent his formative years pawing through magazines and daydreaming.
“I don’t feel it. I don’t even know you.”
“That’s why I’m here.” Cormac tried to wrap his arms around Austin again, despite Austin’s squirming determination to keep a respectable distance. “We’re going to get to know each other. That’s what I’m aiming for.”
Oh, that’s what he was aiming for. Because it felt like Cormac had trained his sights significantly lower. Austin pushed him back again. “It doesn’t work like that!”
“Well, how does it work?” Cormac was starting to sound irritated too. “I know you’re gay.”
“That doesn’t mean… Look, I’m just not…” Austin tempered the truth at the last instant as it occurred to him how lonely and desperate Cormac must be to brave what he had to know was almost certain rejection. “I’m in a relationship. I can’t do this with you.”
“He wouldn’t have to know.”
“I would know.”
Cormac continued to clutch him, breathing unevenly, but at last his breaths slowed. His hands loosened their grasp. “I don’t understand. The second I saw you, I knew you were the one.”
“I’m sorry.” Austin was sorry. Cormac was so very genuinely puzzled that the feeling wasn’t mutual.
“Are you sure you don’t want to?”
“I’m sure.” Despite the physical evidence to the contrary. That was more about Jeff standing two feet away, his silhouette half-merged in the other shadows, than the friction supplied by wrestling around with Cormac.
“Well, all right, then.” Cormac reluctantly turned away. Austin grabbed the door for him.
“Good-bye,” Cormac said disconsolately.
“Good-bye.”
“Maybe when you come back to catalog the cellar next time?”
“I… Probably not.”
Cormac went out.
Austin closed the door and leaned against it.
Jeff came around the corner. “You okay?” He looked serious—too serious.
Austin said, “Hey, it’s not funny.”
“It was pretty funny from where I was standing.”
Someone pounded on the door.
“Oh shit,” Jeff muttered, drawing back.
Austin waited till Jeff was out of sight before yanking the door open. Cormac was rearranging his T-shirt with one hand and offering a sheaf of papers with the other.
“Will you at least read my stories?”
Austin took the stack of papers automatically. Where exactly had Cormac stored them? Probably better not to think too much about it.
“Uh, yes, if you’d like me to. I don’t write fiction, though.”
“I want you to read them.”
“Okay.”
Crestfallen, Cormac nodded and turned away. Austin closed the door, locked it, set the papers on the table, and moved into Jeff’s obliging arms.
“Let’s try this again,” Jeff said.
Yes. This. These muscular arms, this hard, taut body, that warm, smiling mouth.
Jeff murmured, “Did you put out the DO NOT DISTURB sign?”
“Do you think it’ll do any good?”
Jeff laughed. “Not in this town.”
* * * * *
Velvety, vibrant, voluptuous pulses of pleasure… There was a reason so many of the attributes used in describing wine were sexual. A very good reason. Austin threw his head back on the pillow, gulping for air, shuddering head to toe with the exquisite sensation of Jeff sucking his cock. Once again that crazy, nearly unrecognizable sound tore out of his throat as Jeff’s tongue pressed and lapped where he was most sensitive. Was it something unique to Jeff, or was it just some temporary chemical imbalance? He was sort of hoping for chemical imbalance, because falling for Jeff would be such a foolish thing to do.
Round, rich, red… Lights were flashing behind his eyelids, and nerve shocks of colors were tingling through every fiber in his body. Austin felt like he was lighting up, incandescent and luminous with feeling. So much feeling it didn’t seem possible to contain it in a human shell. Jeff took him deeper still, that incredible hot, wet mouth moving on him, his breath rolling down the sensitive skin of Austin’s inner thighs, and Austin flung his arm across his face to keep himself from yelling. Or to smother the sounds, because there was no corking them completely.
He’d been in a state of partial arousal for most of the evening, and that skillful dredge and drag, the combination of pressure and pull, had every muscle in his body clenching tight, hips jerking as the tight, soft, warm lips brought him so relentlessly, lovingly to the breaking point.
Come the vintage. Where had he heard that phrase? Was it biblical? Was it…?
Austin’s teeth closed on the back of his wrist as the explosion tore through him, flash fire racing, spiraling through the amaranthine harvest.
He swung out into a sparkling blue-black darkness and dropped like a star falling out of the sky.
Seasons later he was aware of Jeff settling beside him, running a lazy, appreciative hand down his torso. Austin wanted to say something, acknowledge what Jeff had done for him, assure him that it truly had been the best he’d ever had, but he was so beautifully relaxed. His cock rested against his thigh, spent, and the rest of his body felt as soft and boneless. He settled for a long, heartfelt sigh.
Jeff stroked his chest again. He smiled faintly, enjoying Austin’s last involuntary shudder of pleasure.
“And I was afraid this was going to be a wasted trip,” Austin mumbled.
“And I was thinking this morning was going to be just another ordinary day.”
This morning Jeff had woken in Carson’s bed. Austin preferred not to think about that.
Jeff lowered his head and licked Austin’s nearer nipple. Austin caught his breath.
“Was that true about having a boyfriend?” Jeff asked after a time.
Austin shook his head. “We broke up three months ago.”
“Yeah? How long were you together?”
Were they really going to talk about Richard? They were.
“Two years.”
“What happened?”
Austin often wondered himself. “It wasn’t anything dramatic. One day I realized I’d be happier on my own.”
“Just like that?”
“No. I hadn’t been happy for a long time, but I hadn’t been unhappy enough to do anything about it.”
“Why were you unhappy?”
“Maybe I expected too much.”
“Like what?” In the moonlight, Jeff’s face was so handsome, so perfect, it resembled a mask.
“It’s hard to explain. The sex was good, and we had a lot in common, so I kept thinking we’d get there eventually.”
“Get where?”
Jeff was beginning to remind Austin of Ernest at his most persistent. He said reluctantly, knowing how sappy he was going to sound, “To…love, I guess.”
Jeff said with genuine astonishment, “You kept thinking you’d fall in love with someone you didn’t love after two years of being together?”
“Well, how long should it take?”
“Five seconds. Give or take a second.” Jeff’s eyes, gleaming in the darkness, seemed to hold Austin’s for what felt like a very long moment.
Austin swallowed hard.
“Was he in love with you?”
“Who?” Austin asked.
“Your boyfriend. The one you kept waiting to fall in love with.”
“Richard. No. I doubt it. He moved in with a guy from his office six weeks after we split up.” He reached for the hand that was lightly caressing him, lifted it to his mouth, and kissed it. “Did I even thank you? Thank you. You’re the nicest thing that’s happened to me in a long time.”
He sensed Jeff’s smile. The hand he held gave his own a friendly squeeze.
“Where’d you learn to do that?”
“College.” Jeff added lazily, “I majored in criminal justice and minored in blowjobs.”
Austin considered this while the moonlight glancing through the balcony grillwork strewed wavering cutouts of vines and leaves across the ceiling. It seemed a pretty crass statement from someone who professed to believe in love at first sight. But maybe the five-second rule was more of a guideline. Maybe it was a line, period.
“How do you do this, Jeff?” he asked at last.
Jeff taunted gently, “You need another demonstration?”
“You know what I mean.”
Silence.
Jeff pulled his hand away and rolled onto his back. “Sex is sex. It’s all good.”
“It’s not, though. We both know that.”
“I don’t know any such thing. And you don’t know anything about me, Austin.”
“I know you’re in the closet, and I know you like sucking cock. It seems to me there’s a conflict there.”
“It seems to me there’s a conflict there,” Jeff mimicked. “The fact is, you don’t know fuck-all about me or my life.”
Austin clamped down on his impatience, his anger. He had no right to be angry. Jeff was right. He didn’t know fuck-all about him or his life, and just because he didn’t understand Jeff didn’t mean Jeff’s feelings weren’t valid. Maybe Jeff did believe that sex was sex and it was all good and it didn’t matter if you spent your life denying yourself everything you most needed and wanted. Who was to say what Jeff most needed and wanted, if not Jeff?
“So you never have sex with men? This is unusual?”
The pause lasted so long he gave up on Jeff answering, but at last Jeff gave a long, weary sigh. “I have sex with men. It’s nothing like this, all right? You don’t want to hear about it. Tonight was… This was something different. Special. One in a million.”
The awful part was Austin felt the same way.
Jeff added quietly, “But part of why it’s special tonight is because we both know this is a one time only.”
Was that true? Was it special only because it was unique? It didn’t seem that way to Austin, but he didn’t have a lot of experience with one-night stands.
He was shocked to hear himself say, “Is it? Because I feel…like there could be something more here. Or is that just me?”
There was a frozen silence.
“Don’t.” Jeff’s voice was tight. All the mockery, all the joking vanished. “Don’t say it. Don’t try to turn this into something it’s not.”
Austin laughed awkwardly, trying to pretend he didn’t feel that slow, hot flush of embarrassment washing over him. “I know. I must be overtired or something. It’s not like I don’t know how this works. That was just… Maybe it’s something in the air.” He shut up, because if he kept talking, he was going to make it worse. He was going to drive Jeff right out of this hotel room. He had already pulled away and was sitting on the edge of the bed, his back to Austin.
Austin thought of and discarded a dozen possible comments. In the end, silence seemed safest.
“Listen.” Jeff’s voice was muffled. He kept his back to Austin. “It’s not just you. But that doesn’t change anything. This isn’t…going anywhere.”
“I know,” Austin said quickly, relieved to back away from it. Appalled at how much he had risked—and without justification.
“If you want me to leave—”
“No. God no. I’m not kidding about being overtired. I’m starting to babble.”
Jeff lay down again and reached for Austin. “You are,” he agreed and covered Austin’s mouth with his own.
If it wasn’t making love, it was certainly a reasonable facsimile, but Austin was not letting himself think in that direction anymore. He told himself that it was simply sex, passionate, beautiful sex, and there was nothing wrong with it. No need for it to be anything more. Jeff was inventive and experienced, but he was sensitive too, attuned to Austin, seeming to anticipate everything Austin desired before Austin was more than half-aware himself.
Austin shivered beneath a delightful assault of kissing, nipping, caressing. Jeff straddled his body, and Austin could just make out the sheen of his pale hair, the gleam of eyes and his smile in the darkness. His palms stroked Austin’s chest, grazing his nipples. That brush of callous hands on sensitive nubs started a restless ache within Austin. He moved uneasily, thrusting up under Jeff.
“We can do that if you want,” Jeff whispered, shocking Austin rigid.
More rigid.
Oh, he wanted it, all right. He wanted a lot more than this, but this felt unsafe enough. Not physically unsafe—they were taking reasonable precautions—but emotionally unsafe. He was off-kilter tonight, knocked off-balance by Jeff’s unpredictable and varied charms.
When he didn’t answer immediately, Jeff shifted, finding Austin’s cock and pressing into it, grinding against him with a deliberate and slow sensuality. Austin’s cock seemed to pulse in time with Jeff’s.
“You like that?”
“Yeah,” Austin said hoarsely.
“Me too.” Jeff’s hips rolled with that lazy, sexy rhythm. He rubbed their cocks together. “I used to dream about doing this with you—to you…” He leaned forward, braced on one muscular arm so he could bend down and kiss Austin’s eyelids…and the bridge of his nose…and the jut of his chin…his mouth…
Austin couldn’t hold back any longer. He began to thrust, rocking his hips in fierce upward motion. Jeff drove back at him. They lost the rhythm, regained it, lost it again, and snapped all restraints, each of them going hell for broke.
Long, fraught minutes passed in a haze.
Jeff went perfectly still. Austin, sweating, trembling, still fighting for his own release, felt the ripples of Jeff’s coming extending further and further out like shining water or shock waves. Hot, sharp-scented release burst against his damp skin.
Groaning, Jeff rolled over, pulling Austin on top of him, and Austin thrust violently between Jeff’s sinewy and accommodating thighs. There it was—Austin was flying, soaring up and up, not caring as his wings began to melt in bursts of salty, singed white, and he plummeted earthward, dimly surprised when he landed safely in the cradle of Jeff’s arms.
He woke to a warm mouth moving on his with gentle insistence.
Smiling, his lips parted in welcome, he reached up to hook an arm around Jeff’s broad shoulders and draw him closer. Jeff’s mouth smiled against his. He tasted…robust, full-bodied. Sleepy and warm and human.
The last twenty-four hours came back in all their astonishing detail. Austin remembered thinking that nothing must be allowed to go wrong with the Cashel appraisal—shortly before everything that could possibly go wrong had gone wrong. It didn’t seem to matter much just now.
He lifted his lashes. Morning. A soft, rosy daylight filtered through the open drapes. Jeff’s eyes looked impossibly green in the vernal luminance. There was a faint gold bristle on his jaw, and his hair was sexily mussed.
“Thank you for last night.” The whispered words were commonplace enough, but Jeff’s expression transformed them into something more.
Or maybe that’s what Austin wanted to see. He said, equally unoriginal, “I had a really nice time.”
“I wish I could stay, but it’s already six o’clock.”
Austin wished Jeff could stay too. If Jeff changed his mind, he’d reschedule his own leaving. He couldn’t say it, though. He’d said far too much the night before. It had to be Jeff’s idea, Jeff’s choice, and Austin already knew that wasn’t going to happen.
Part of why it’s special tonight is because we know this is a one time only.
But for a few sweet heartbeats, it seemed like maybe Jeff would decide to at least postpone his leave-taking.
“You really are something, you know?”
“Naw,” Austin mimicked gently.
Jeff laughed. He rested his hand against the side of Austin’s face as though trying to memorize him in the soft uncertainty of the morning light.
Austin gazed unblinkingly up at him. Stay. Please.
Jeff’s face seemed to close. He drew back, rolled lithely off the bed, and reached for his underwear and khakis.
He dressed quickly, efficiently.
Austin enjoyed the view for a few seconds. There was no point rising until Jeff left. He planned to shower and then dress and then hit the road. He’d grab coffee and breakfast on the way, fill the gas tank at that station on the corner… He forced himself to think only of the day ahead, concentrate on the practicalities of his trip home. He must not—must not—be stupid about this. Indulging in a one-night stand had been stupid enough. Trying to make it into something more than it was would not only be stupid, it would be pathetic.
Interrupting his thoughts, Jeff said suddenly, “If they do send you back this way, you could give me a call.”
Was that supposed to be some grand concession? Judging by the guarded look on Jeff’s face, it was.
Austin said neutrally, “Sure.”
Jeff swiftly buttoned his shirt.
Austin knew it was a mistake, but he couldn’t seem to stop the words. “Do you ever get to DC? Or—”
“No.”
Jeff didn’t look at him. He reached for his wallet, automatically checking its contents.
Austin opened his mouth, then closed it. What was the matter with him? It wasn’t like he couldn’t take a hint. Or like Jeff didn’t understand what he was saying.
He threw back the bedclothes, and the scent of warm linen and recent sex wafted through the room. He walked to the window and gazed down at the park.
He felt Jeff come up behind him even before warm hands fastened on his biceps.
Jeff said huskily, “Austin. I won’t ever forget last night.”
Austin said over the tightness in his throat, “The pleasure was all mine.”
He could feel Jeff’s uncertainty, his hesitation, and it was ridiculous that he found himself unable to make this easy on them both. It was crazy. Crazy to react like this. It wasn’t like he hadn’t understood the rules of engagement. Or hadn’t had them explained to him in words of one syllable.
He hadn’t had enough sleep; that was all. And yesterday had been stressful by anyone’s standards. Naturally, after all that had happened, the evening with Jeff seemed to take on a greater, almost symbolic importance. Once he was home and everything got back to normal, he was going to wonder what the fuck his problem had been.
Maybe he was coming down with the flu or something.
“Are you…?” Jeff stopped. “Austin?”
He could hear the uneasy question in Jeff’s tone, and he nodded tightly to show he was listening. He hoped Jeff didn’t say anything that required a verbal response, because that was going to be hard to pull off without embarrassing them both.
“You take care of yourself, you hear?” Jeff said at last. He dropped one quick, final kiss on Austin’s shoulder and turned away.
Austin was counting the leaves on the tree across the way when he heard the door close.