The thunderstorm started around three.
The feeble light overhead flickered, went out, and as Austin reached blindly to steady himself in the inky darkness, flared back on while the old house shook in the wake of a long, booming roll of thunder. The bottles rattled musically on their shelves.
“Crap,” Austin muttered. The power was probably going to go for good any minute, and he was going to have to crawl out of the cellar on his hands and knees.
He waited grimly. The lightbulb swung gently back and forth, throwing eerie shadows.
Austin returned to work, and though the house shook and groaned beneath the storm’s onslaught, the power did not go off for more than a few seconds at a time.
Tyrone finally returned around three o’clock carrying a ghetto blaster. He apologized for taking so long to get back. “Womenfolk,” he said with a wink.
Womenfolk? Did people really still say that? Not in Austin’s neck of the woods. Did people still say neck of the woods?
“I noticed you marked some of the bottles,” Austin commented. “Did you have questions about them?”
Tyrone looked startled and guilty. “No.”
He hadn’t denied marking the bottles, Austin noted. Surely he would have if he was up to something?
They resumed work, picking up where Austin had left off. Tyrone’s ghetto blaster pumped out a frenetic song about bombs over Baghdad.
Tyrone said, “I guess I was just fooling around, not paying attention.”
“Hmmm?”
“When I drew in the dust.”
“Oh sure.”
Tyrone was smiling at him, a bright, guileless grin, but Austin couldn’t help thinking that it had taken him a long time to come up with an explanation. In fact, Austin had forgotten about the X’s until then. He began to puzzle uneasily over Tyrone’s earlier questions and interest.
He was guiltily aware that he might be suspicious simply because he knew Tyrone had a criminal past. And that, of course, could explain why Tyrone was still worrying about the X’s. He was probably used to being everyone’s favorite suspect the minute anything remotely suspicious happened.
Around five o’clock they reached a long line of Madeira. Austin’s heart sped up. This might be it. The wine in the Lee bottles was Madeira. His gaze fell on four empty spaces in a row on the rack.
Four. Just like the Lee bottles.
“Something wrong?” Tyrone asked from right behind him.
“This is odd.” Austin glanced back. Tyrone was staring at him with peculiar intensity. Austin pointed out the four empty slots.
Tyrone shrugged. Austin could smell his perspiration and his musky aftershave. Both of them were very strong up this close. Nerves. Tyrone was nervous. Why?
“The Crazy Cashels like wine with their supper. So what?”
A dead leaf crackled under the sole of Austin’s high-tops. No. Not a dead leaf. A brown and dry cherry blossom. He knelt to pick it up. The cherry blossoms were long gone. This had been tracked inside a month or so ago. The papery petals crumbled in his hand.
Tyrone stared at the blossom and then at Austin. Something flickered in his eyes. Austin’s scalp prickled. He rose quickly, telling himself he wasn’t seeing what he thought he was seeing—it was too unbelievable.
They both jumped at footsteps coming down the stairs. Tyrone was suddenly smiling again, showing that big, wide, goofy smile. He winked at Austin.
“You got company.”
Cormac appeared, looking sleepy and smelling of pot. “You can go,” he told Tyrone arrogantly.
Tyrone glanced at Austin, inviting him to share the joke. He drawled, “Yes, suh, Mistah Cashel, suh!” He sauntered past Cormac and up the stairs.
Cormac glared after him. He turned back to Austin and smiled. “I haven’t had a chance to really talk to you.”
“It’s been a busy day.”
Cormac was still smiling. “But you’re working for us, so we get to say when you can take a break.”
“It’s not quite like that.”
Cormac walked toward him, smiling with foolish affection, his eyes slightly unfocused. He held his arms out as though to hug Austin.
“Not this again,” Austin protested, backing up into the wine racks.
“But why not?”
“Because I’m here to work.”
Cormac’s stuck his bottom lip out in a boyish pout, reminding Austin briefly of Ernest, though Ernest didn’t pout much. He was more about world domination. “So what? You can do both, can’t you?”
“I don’t want to do both,” Austin said, losing patience.
Cormac stopped and placed his hands on his hips. “I don’t understand you!” It was obvious that he was telling the simple truth.
“I thought there was no gay in Georgia,” Austin said bitterly.
Cormac blinked his long lashes, looking more confused than ever.
“Look, I like you,” Austin said patiently, “but I’m not in the mood right now. Why don’t we talk about your stories?”
“How can you not be in the mood?” Cormac confided, “I’m always in the mood. Carson’s always in the mood.”
Uh-oh. “That’s nice, but I really have a lot to do. See all these shelves? Let’s talk about your stories, and then I have to get back to work.”
Cormac wrapped his arms around Austin and thrust gently against him. “Just a quickie.”
“Will you knock it off?” Austin freed himself with less patience. “No. Read my lips.”
Cormac stared at Austin’s mouth intensely and then plastered his own to it.
Somewhere in the distance, Austin heard footsteps pounding down the stairs again.
He pinched Cormac’s arm hard, and Cormac broke contact and yowled into his face like a startled cat.
“Sorry to break this up,” Jeff said coldly, “but there’s a tornado warning.”
“There’s always a tornado warning,” Cormac said irritably.
Jeff was staring at Austin as though Austin had crawled out from behind the shelves with the other insects.
Austin stared stonily back. Jeff had one hell of a nerve disapproving of anything he did.
“Why are you here all the time, anyway?” Cormac demanded of Jeff.
Jeff gave him a level look and said nothing.
A few seconds later Auntie Eudie and Carson came trooping downstairs, followed by Faulkner. They carried blankets, pillows, and an assortment of books, flashlights, and candles. Faulkner, freighting a picnic basket, closed the door behind them.
It began to look like they were preparing for a state of siege, seeming to take the tornado warning seriously. That was a surprise. Maybe Ballineen was truly in the twister’s path. That was pretty much the way Austin’s luck was running these days. In fact, at this point, getting blown away by a tornado might be an improvement.
“Isn’t Mr. Cashel coming downstairs?” Austin asked.
“Daddy won’t come down to the cellar,” Carson told him. “He says a true Southern gentleman never acknowledges fear.”
Cormac put in sardonically, “Plus he’d be in more danger trying to negotiate the stairs than he is up there.”
Faulkner switched the CD player on Tyrone’s ghetto blaster to the radio. A newscaster announced, “If you can hear my voice, you are in the tornado-warning area.”
“Tyrone just left here about ten minutes ago,” Austin said.
Faulkner said stiffly, “Tyrone can look after himself.”
“Don’t you worry. We’ll hear him if he bangs on the storm doors,” Auntie Eudie reassured him.
Austin watched them find folding chairs and set them up. Faulkner dug out a cobwebbed kerosene lantern and lit it. They seemed to have it down to a science.
“How long is the tornado warning likely to last?”
“Just depends.” Carson pulled out a deck of cards and began to shuffle them. “Strip poker?” she suggested to Jeff.
Jeff grinned lazily and joined her at the card table.
“Want to play cards, Mr. Gillespie?” Carson inquired.
“I’m going to try to work as long the light holds out.” He added doubtfully, “Will the light hold out?”
“Sure it will,” Jeff said. “Unless we actually get hit by the tornado.” His gaze glittered wickedly in the gloomy light.
Auntie Eudie took out her knitting, and Faulkner fiddled with the dials on the ghetto blaster. Austin continued to work, trying to ignore the flirtatious background conversation between Jeff and Carson. He was unhappily aware that beneath the teasing banter, Jeff was angry—angry with him—and that there was an underlying message for Austin in many of his comments. Even if Austin couldn’t figure out what the message was.
“You want your laptop turned off?” Jeff asked Austin as Carson began to deal cards. “You don’t want to take a chance of it getting zapped or knocked off this table. Your whole life is in there.”
“Just what do you plan on doing on this table, Jefferson?” Carson murmured.
Austin crossed to the table and powered down his laptop, acutely conscious of Jeff—the fine blond hairs on his tanned forearm, the gold-tipped eyelashes concealing his gaze, the hint of men’s fragrance—bergamot, citrus, basil, mint, and something else. Something intrinsically Jeff.
Jeff ignored him. With the lid closed on his laptop, Austin moved back to the safety of the wine racks.
If he looked at the situation dispassionately, it was sort of strange how much…energy and emotion there was between him and Jeff. They had only spent one night together, after all. Yet he had spent a month trying not to think about Jeff and getting angry because Jeff could apparently not think about him—and here Jeff was angry because Austin didn’t want to pick up where they had left off.
Cormac came to join him. “Can I help you?”
“Sure. If you read the labels, I’ll write them down on this pad.”
For a time they worked together, and Austin was able to tune out Jeff and Carson’s chatter.
“What’s so special about wine, anyway?” Cormac asked. “It’s just booze.”
“It’s not just booze,” Austin argued. “From the beginning, wine has possessed symbolic and spiritual significance. It’s a communion between man and nature. It links centuries and generations.”
“How many wines do you taste in a wine tasting?” Carson asked from the table.
“Usually not more than fifty. It’s hard to keep clarity of palate after that.”
“Clarity of anything, I’d say. You must get drunk as a skunk!”
“He doesn’t inhale,” Jeff drawled, and Carson giggled.
“What’s the best wine you ever had?” Cormac asked.
“I can’t really say. It’s not like that. Every wine is different and…mutable.”
Austin fully expected Cormac to guffaw, but he continued to watch him with that intense, scowling expression. “Wine changes all the time. Every day makes a difference in the life of a grape. Once the wine is bottled, it continues to mature. Even after it’s opened, it continues to interact with air and sunlight and glass. Seven different glasses means seven different tastes of wine.”
“So some of these old wines are still good to drink? They wouldn’t just be for collecting?”
“Some of these wines would be great to drink,” Austin told him. “I would love to drink some of these old wines. I had an 1864 Angelica a few years back that was produced during the Civil War, and it was amazing. Very aromatic. It tasted of raisins and walnuts. Very sweet with a long and flavorful finish. One of the best wines I can remember was an 1870 Château Montrose. I don’t know how to explain it. It’s like drinking history.”
“I’d rather create history. That’s what writing is.” Cormac was regarding him with that severe, blazing look that always made Austin uncomfortable.
“Corrie, honey, why don’t you come over here and tell us one of your stories to help while away the time,” Auntie Eudie instructed.
Cormac replaced the bottle he was holding and walked over to sit on the stairs. Without any self-consciousness, he began to recite a story about a boy who set out to build a secret campfire to roast marshmallows and accidentally burned down the family barn.
Listening, Austin remembered that he still needed to talk to Cormac about his stories. He wasn’t sure Cormac was going to like what he had to say, but it needed to be said nonetheless. He glanced around the cellar. Auntie Eudie was smiling contentedly to herself as she knit her fake fox fur. Faulkner had found some sweet potatoes, and he was peeling them. The sharp penknife he used scraped steadily, the small sound lost beneath the static of the radio and the creaking timbers overhead. Faulkner’s rather ascetic face was without expression, but every so often his dark gaze would rest on Cormac.
Austin tried to analyze the complex emotions he read in the old man’s face. There was a gleam of satirical amusement, but there was tolerance too and what appeared to be genuine affection. It seemed strange that Faulkner might truly care for the Cashels. Might be able to find tolerant affection for them, when he seemed to have scant for his own great-nephew. People were confusing and contradictory.
Austin’s gaze roved to Carson, who was now playing solitaire. He liked Carson. She was a kook, but there was something direct and uncomplicated about her. In a weird way he found her more attractive than Cormac, even though Cormac was male. But then for all her flirtatiousness, there was something about Carson that reminded Austin of a playful boy.
He thought about Jeff’s comment that sex was sex. He couldn’t believe Jeff really meant that. Granted, Austin had never been with a woman. Never had any desire that he could recall. Inevitably that reminded him of his father’s charge that he’d chosen to be gay.
That was still too raw to examine closely. Instead he looked around for Jeff. He had finished playing cards, it seemed, and was leaning against the wall, watching Austin.
Meeting Austin’s eyes seemed to be his cue. He pushed away from the wall and joined Austin by the shelves.
“Any sign of those Lee bottles?” He kept his voice low so as to not disturb Cormac’s storytelling.
Austin discovered that he was relieved with a cessation in hostilities. He didn’t really want to fight with Jeff. For one thing, it wasn’t going to solve anything, and it wasn’t going to heal the pain of rejection. So why not accept what Jeff could offer, which was a very casual friendship with benefits?
“Not exactly. I did find something I wanted to show you.” In the excitement of the tornado watch, Austin had briefly forgotten those bizarre moments when he had thought Tyrone might not at all be who he seemed. When Tyrone had seemed almost…dangerous.
He showed Jeff the rack with the four empty cradles and the surrounding bottles of Madeira.
“Not that there’s any rhyme or reason to the way this cellar is organized, but it would make sense to store the Madeiras together. And there’s this.” He pulled what was left of the dried cherry blossom out of his pocket.
Jeff’s brows rose. “I’m deeply flattered you want to share your crushed potato chips with me, but—”
“They’re not potato chips. It’s what’s left of a cherry blossom. When I was here in March, the cherry blossoms were still covering the ground. It’s possible that this gives a reference point for when these four bottles were removed.”
Jeff considered this. He said neutrally, “Maybe. That doesn’t mean the four bottles that were here were the Lee bottles. It doesn’t mean that the four bottles that were here weren’t removed and drunk at dinner one night. The fact that someone tracked a cherry blossom inside isn’t exactly conclusive.”
He took the crumpled blossom from Austin, his fingers warm against Austin’s bare skin. Jeff glanced at the Cashels. “All the same, keep this quiet for now.”
“There’s something else.”
Jeff’s gaze seemed to linger on Austin’s face, but his words were matter-of-fact. “Go on.”
“Tyrone, Faulkner’s nephew, was marking some of the more expensive bottles we inventoried this morning. I was with him when I found this, and for a couple of seconds…”
“What?”
“I’m not sure. I thought he—this is going to sound ridiculous—I thought he was going to hit me. Or maybe…worse.”
Jeff stood motionless. He could have been turned to stone. “That kid’s got a rap sheet longer than US 80—including assault and battery.”
Assault and battery? Maybe he hadn’t imagined the menace in Tyrone’s eyes. Austin asked uneasily, “Was Williams’s death an accident?”
“Hell no.” Jeff’s voice was almost inaudible. “His car was found with the keys in it in the parking lot at Old Plantation House. No way did he walk out here on his own.”
“What was he doing out here at all?”
Jeff smiled wryly. “Personally? I think he was looking for your Lee bottles.”
“But how would he know they were here?”
“Because I think he sold them to old Dermot Cashel in the first place. Henrietta Williams asked me to investigate her husband’s death, and one of the first things I found out was Williams was involved in buying and selling vintage wines—and not, according to some people—always the real deal.”
Wine fraud. It was increasingly rampant. Some experts believed as much as 5 percent of wine sold in secondary markets was counterfeit.
Austin gazed at the towering shelves, the racks of green and amber bottles with their gilded and ornate labels beneath the velvety veil of dust. “Do you have proof of that?”
“Yeah. I do. Now we’re trying to figure out who would have been Williams’s partner in that lucrative sideline.”
“You think this partner killed Williams?”
“It’s one possibility.”
“Could this partner be one of the Cashels?”
“That’s also a possibility.”
Austin’s gaze got caught up in Jeff’s. He couldn’t seem to look away.
“What are you two whispering about over there?” Carson called.
Jeff turned away abruptly. Austin felt a jab of disappointment. But that was how it was always going to be with Jeff—assuming there was anything with Jeff at all—so he needed to get used to it.
“We could open a bottle of wine,” Cormac said, having finished his storytelling stint.
Austin kept his mouth shut, but it wasn’t easy.
Jeff said easily, “I believe Austin would fight to protect this wine to his last breath.”
The others laughed.
“Some things are worth fighting for,” Austin said.
The lights flickered again and went out.
Austin had that tilting sense of disorientation. On the other side of the cellar, he could hear Faulkner soothing the Cashels. Jeff put his hands on Austin’s shoulders, turning him. Austin went with it. Just the feel of Jeff’s hands resting lightly on him sent a blaze of awareness through him, as though his longing for Jeff were something constant, often banked down but always smoldering.
Unerringly, despite the almost complete absence of light, Jeff’s mouth landed on Austin’s. Until that instant Austin hadn’t realized how desperately he had wanted it, wanted to taste Jeff again, wanted his kisses. One of the major erogenous zones, lips; and no wonder, because there was something indescribably satisfying about the soft pressure of a man’s hard mouth moving on his own.
“Austin.” Jeff sounded like he was in pain.
Their mouths lingered dangerously, parted a split second before the faded light winked on.
Jeff was walking back to the card table before Austin had regained his balance.
* * * * *
At nine o’clock the radio announcer cheerfully conveyed the all clear.
“It’s too late to drive back to Madison now,” Auntie Eudie told Austin kindly. “You stay the night, honey. We got plenty of room.”
No way in hell—no way in God’s Little Acre—was he spending the night. Never mind the hours he’d already spent listening to tornado horror stories and histories of the Cashels’ and their friends’ and neighbors’ most gruesome illnesses, and the insanity that was these people’s political opinions. No way could he spend the night under the same roof as Jeff, knowing how Jeff and Carson would be passing the time.
“Thanks so much, but I’ve really got to get back.” Austin clutched his belongings as though he feared they would be forcibly taken from him as he headed for the front door. He could hear the Cashels protesting behind him. “I’ll be back tomorrow first thing,” he called without slowing down.
He opened the door and saw a fantasy landscape of trees bent nearly in half and rain coming down in glinting sheets. A large empty plastic bag for topsoil swooped past like a grubby ghost in the deluge of rain and wind. He wouldn’t have been surprised to see Margaret Hamilton fly by pedaling her bicycle.
“You can’t drive in this,” Carson protested, joining him at the door. “Even if you knew these roads, it would be crazy dangerous. Sleep here tonight. You may as well. Look at it this way: you can get an earlier start tomorrow.”
He shook his head stubbornly, although even he knew she was right. There was no way he was driving anywhere tonight.
“Why, I’m beginning to think you’re afraid of us, Austin,” Carson teased. “Now you come back in here, and I promise I’ll keep the colonel from interrupting your sweet dreams tonight.”
Fifteen minutes later he was in a large room on the second floor, holding a stack of much laundered towels and an extra wool blanket to “help keep the drafts out.”
The room had old-fashioned green-and-blue wallpaper. Two of the windows were missing blinds. There was a rummage sale’s worth of broken antiques, including a shaving stand with a cracked mirror and a small butter churn. Whatever the heck the Cashels did with butter in the bedroom, he did not want to know.
The lock on the bedroom door was broken.
Austin sat on the edge of the bed, sinking about a foot into the swamp of a mattress, and checked his phone messages.
In addition to Ernest’s earlier message, there were four messages from the direct house line in Frederick. It was hard to believe Harrison would be calling. For one thing, he didn’t believe in apologizing; and for another, he would not believe himself in the wrong. Austin pressed to retrieve the messages and got a low-battery warning. And his phone charger was in the rental car.
The windows rattled in a blast of wet wind.
Whatever Ernest or whoever was calling him wanted, it was just going to have to wait till morning.
He put his phone away and spread the extra wool blanket over the bed. He hoped the sheets had been washed in the last decade. He hoped he would not be sharing a bunk with spiders.
There was a tap on the bedroom door.
Jeff stood in the hallway. His face was grim.
“I want to talk to you.”
Austin stepped back, and Jeff entered, closing the door behind him. “I know there are things worth fighting for.” He kept his voice down, but he was angry all the same. “You don’t have the right to stand in judgment.”
“Fine. Agreed. I don’t have the right.” Austin reached for the door handle. “Was that it?”
Jeff’s eyes were dark with emotion. “What is the matter with you?”
“You know what the matter is with me.”
Jeff’s gaze fell. “Naw. Now you’re being… It doesn’t work like this, Austin.”
“I know,” Austin said tersely. “I get it. For you, it was just sex. For me, I don’t know why, but somehow it turned into something different. I don’t know why, but…it did.”
“Naw.” Jeff tried to take him into his arms. “Don’t do this. It doesn’t have to be like this.”
“How does it have to be, Jeff?”
A muscle jerked in Jeff’s jaw. “You’re asking for something I can’t give you.”
“Am I?”
“Yes, you goddamned well are.”
“Jeff, what do you want me to say? I understand it was just sex for you, and I’m not asking for anything—except that you leave me alone so I can get over it.”
“Get over it,” Jeff repeated in amazement. “What are you getting over? You can’t seriously think you’re—”
“Jeff. Will you please leave me a little dignity here? Go away.”
“Austin.” Jeff looked stricken. He pulled Austin closer, and Austin remembered that first shared hug in his hotel room. The comfort of simply being held, of being genuinely cared for. But that was an illusion. Even if Jeff did care for him on some level, no way was he going to acknowledge, let alone act on those feelings. He had made that just as clear as he could.
Jeff was talking, his voice rough and uneven. “I don’t mean to hurt you, sweetheart. I didn’t want this.”
Sweetheart. Well, at least it was an improvement over the honeys they all bestowed indiscriminately on each other. Jeff’s lips brushed his temple. So gentle. Almost cherishingly. Austin closed his eyes. Who was he kidding? Of course he wanted this. Want blazed through his bloodstream like a high fever, something that would either run its course and leave him wrung out and empty, but once more cool and sane—or kill him. Either way, there wasn’t any denying how urgently he wanted Jeff.
One last time.
The door swung open. Jeff dropped Austin like a hot potato.
“What’s going on here?” Cormac demanded, looking from Jeff to Austin.
“Did you ever hear of knocking?” Jeff blustered.
Cormac bristled. “It’s my house.”
“It’s his guest room.” Jeff jerked his head Austin’s way.
“Would you both go away?” Austin requested wearily. “It’s been a really long day.”
Jeff hesitated.
“You heard him,” Cormac said imperiously.
Jeff shook his head, clearly longing to pop Cormac, but in the end he settled for shooting Austin a long, unreadable look before walking out.
“What was he up to?” Cormac asked suspiciously, closing the door behind Jeff.
“Nothing. Look, I wanted to talk to you.” As Cormac brightened, Austin amended quickly, “About your stories.”
“Oh.” Cormac looked watchful.
“They weren’t exactly my kind of thing, to tell you the truth, but I still thought they were really well written and…powerful. So—and here’s the part that you might not like—I asked a friend of mine in publishing to take a look at them.”
Cormac seemed to draw himself up to his full height. His scowl went blacker than ever. “I didn’t give you permission to do that. I don’t care what any damn publisher thinks of my work.”
“I know. I apologize. But my opinion isn’t worth a lot. I thought it would be better to show them to someone who knows books and writing. If Gary had said they were no good, I wouldn’t have said anything, but he thinks they’re excellent. He thinks they’re publishable.”
The rage drained out of Cormac’s face. He said faintly, “He does?”
“He does, yeah. And if you give me permission to let him have your contact information, he’s going to discuss it with you himself.”
“He’s going to publish me?”
“You have to talk to him yourself, but…that’s how it sounds to me.”
Cormac was smiling with an unlikely, startled sweetness. “Really?”
“Really. So I guess I can give him your information?”
“Hell yeah!”
Austin grinned wearily. “Then that’s turned out okay. Thank God.” He swallowed a yawn. “No offense, but I’ve got to get some sleep or I’m going to start hallucinating. In fact, I think I may already be hallucinating.”
A calculating look came over Cormac’s face. “I was just thinking—”
“No. No. No.”
“But you don’t know what I’m going to say.”
“You’re going to say you want to have sex with me.”
Cormac smiled again. “See? You’re thinking it too!”
Austin laughed and held open the door. “Good night, Cormac. Sweet dreams.”
He shut the door and looked for a likely chair to prop beneath the handle, but the room’s only chair was too short. Anyway, who was left? Carson would be occupied with Jeff, and Auntie Eudie was unlikely to be feeling that frisky.
Austin gave it up and climbed into the raised bed, not putting up a fight as the sagging mattress tried to swallow him whole.
He was dozing, dreamily counting wine bottles while ably assisted by the colonel, when the bedroom door opened quickly and shut again.
Austin’s eyes flashed open. He raised his head. Even in the darkness he recognized Jeff, but his nostrils twitched at a second presence. Green-apple shampoo and…Carson.
“Crap.” He sat up as a weight lowered next to his feet. The other side of the lumpy mattress dipped, and a slender, warm someone snuggled next to him. Austin scooted away, reaching for the lamp.
“Surprise!” Carson smiled broadly in the green-gold glow of the Tiffany lamp. Jeff was positioned at the foot of the bed. Austin thought his expression watchful.
“What is the matter with you people?” Austin demanded, and it wasn’t a rhetorical question.
“Awww.” Carson pouted. “Jeff said you needed cheering up, honey.”
“Oh, did he?”
Meeting Austin’s hostile gaze, Jeff said silkily, “Don’t knock it till you’ve tried it.”
“I don’t need to try it to know it’s not for me.”
“What are you afraid of?”
“What are you afraid of?”
“Now don’t be like that, Austin honey,” Carson said, nestling closer still. Her breasts pressed softly against his arm. “Jeff’s trying to do a nice thing for you.”
Austin snorted.
“Don’t you like me?” Carson asked, genuinely curious.
“Yeah, I like you.” He put his arm around her shoulders. “That doesn’t have anything to do with it.”
“Well, it ought to.” She nibbled delicately on his ear; there was no denying the response that shot right to his groin.
Jeff said, “Come on. You can’t tell me you’re not curious.”
No, he couldn’t tell Jeff that. He was curious. Not to experience it himself so much—although there was no question that Harrison’s suggestion that Austin’s sexuality was preference and not orientation was in play—but to see, to understand what Jeff got out of it. Jeff was smiling at him, teasing and affectionate, as though it were no big deal, just a bit of harmless fun. And the terrible part was Austin wanted Jeff badly enough one last time to take him any way he could get him, even if it meant something as outlandish as ménage à trois, or whatever they called it down South.
Jeff continued to smile that killer smile, but Austin thought there was a dangerous glitter in those green eyes.
“What’s the worst that can happen? You might find you like it?” Jeff’s voice went lower, rougher. “I dare you.”
Carson kissed his shoulder, looking from one man to the other.
Jeff held out his hand. After a tense moment, Austin reached to lace fingers and let himself be drawn forward.