Page 22

CHAPTER 21

THE SOUTHEAST NAUTICAL SINGLE

TOMMY

Tommy smoothed his shirt as he and Chuck grabbed their bags from the back seat. He checked his hair in the reflection of his window, fluffing the front up a bit where it flopped down over his forehead.

He’d heard plenty of stories about Rick’s house, but nothing prepared him for the impact of driving through a wrought-iron gate flanked by bronze lion statues and coming face to face with an absolute monstrosity of a house.

From the cobblestone driveway, Tommy could see it had three stories. Towering, white pillars that looked like they were modeled after the Acropolis stretched across the front of the home, and the tall, pristinely clean windows probably each cost more than Tommy’s condo.

“Holy shit, man,” Chuck breathed beside him.

“Yeah,” Tommy replied. He reached a hand out, interlacing his fingers with Chuck’s. When Chuck frowned at their connected hands, Tommy paused. “Is this okay?”

Chuck searched his face for a moment, his blue eyes piercing. Tommy watched his slender throat bob as he swallowed. “It’s good with me if it’s good with you.”

Tommy squeezed Chuck’s hand, and pulled them forward. He couldn’t describe how relieved he was to have Chuck at his side. How much his presence lent Tommy strength as he chased this promotion.

The front door swung open and they were greeted by the sound of loud laughter, as soft music filtered out of the house.

Still holding tightly to Chuck’s hand, Tommy moved through the high-ceilinged foyer, glancing up at the massive crystal chandelier above them. He followed the hum of voices through the living room, which housed enough white couches and chairs to comfortably seat at least thirty people. Floor to ceiling windows and an open French door revealed a wide back patio where everyone was gathered.

Tommy barely registered the glazed blue planters overflowing with flowers or the white pergola that offered dappled shade as he walked through the back door. He didn’t notice anything but the stares and confusion from his colleagues as they looked down at where he held Chuck’s hand.

Chuck’s fingers went slack in his grip, and, rather than let him pull away, Tommy tightened his hold on him.

“Littleton!” Rick’s voice boomed from the crowd. The group parted as Rick walked forward; he was dressed for the holiday, in crisply pleated khaki pants and a royal blue polo shirt. The bright smile on his face tightened as he approached, his eyes darting back and forth between Tommy and Chuck. “Well, this isn’t Courtney,” he said, raising a brow at him.

Tommy was too stunned to do anything but stand there, staring at his boss.

“Must have been a mix-up,” Chuck said from beside him, his voice carrying an edge Tommy wasn’t used to hearing. “I’m Chuck McCormac, and you must be Rick?”

Rick glanced between Tommy and Chuck’s offered hand. When Tommy said nothing, Rick reached out and took Chuck’s hand, giving it a firm shake. “Nice to meet you, Mr. McCormac. Pardon my surprise; Tommy had told us he wasn’t bringing anyone.”

Finally Tommy’s brain decided to come back online. “I changed my mind,” he said, squeezing Chuck’s hand. “Is that going to be a problem?”

Rick waved the question away with a chuckle, and beckoned to an attractive older woman with a manicured blonde bob and lips painted bright red. “Sweetheart, which room did you put Littleton in?”

The woman immediately replied. “The Southeast Nautical single.”

Rick turned back to the men, ignoring the woman who stood next to them. “In that case, I hope you two are good buddies, because your room only has a double bed.” He let out a loud, booming laugh that grated against Tommy’s ears. “We’ve all had to bunk up with a teammate over the years, haven’t we, Littleton?”

Tommy blinked at Rick, at the way the tan skin on his face looked like worn leather, at the discerning glint in his eyes as he looked directly at Tommy.

There was an unspoken challenge there. His boss was giving him an out, a way to brush off whatever Chuck was to him, to claim him as nothing but a buddy who had come along for a fun weekend. But Tommy had no interest in playing that game. He knew what Chuck was to him, and wasn’t going to pretend otherwise.

“Sharing a bed won’t be a problem,” Tommy said, staring right at Rick. “Chuck is here with me because he’s my boyfriend.”

Rick’s thinning brows shot up, but before he could reply, Tommy turned to the woman who still stood beside him, and extended a hand. “We haven’t met,” he said, summoning a genuine smile. “I’m Tommy Littleton, and this is my boyfriend, Chuck McCormac.”

The woman’s smile was kind as she placed her slender hand in his. Her handshake was as soft as her skin. “It’s lovely to meet you both. I’m Marcy, Rick’s wife.”

“Alrighty then,” Rick said. “Let’s let them get a drink and something to eat.” He shot an indecipherable look at Tommy. “Glad you made it, Littleton,” he said, and then turned away to mingle with the other guests.

Tommy rolled his neck, loosening his tight muscles. With a deep breath, he looked over at Chuck. “You okay?”

A tender smile spread on Chuck’s face. His freckles had darkened in the few days they’d spent in the sun, and Tommy was struck by just how attractive he found him. It was hard to believe he’d spent years looking at Chuck’s face and body without feeling anything beyond platonic fondness. Now? Now he couldn’t look at him without his whole body lighting up.

Chuck gently knocked his elbow into Tommy’s side. “I’m good, T. Let’s go get a drink.”

The afternoon passed in a blur of greetings and small talk, and Tommy’s face ached from having to maintain a friendly smile.

All of the big-wigs from Venture Car Rental were there: the risk manager, the company controller, the HR manager, and all of the upper management who oversaw their corporate operations. Tommy always enjoyed catching up with Blake Robertson, the head of the vehicle resale division. Blake had also been a college athlete, and he easily wove Chuck into the conversation when he learned that he was not only an ex-athlete but a collegiate coach as well.

Deanna Taylor, who had been Tommy’s area manager when he was managing his first branch, gave him a huge hug and greeted Chuck with a warm smile and handshake. Deanna had been one of Tommy’s first champions at Venture, and even though she was now heading their corporate HR and he rarely got to see her, he always made sure to thank her for the role she’d played in his career. She’d been the one to put a word in with their general manager at the time and suggest Tommy’s name for an open area manager spot.

Tommy had just opened his second beer when he and Chuck found Deb and her wife sitting away from the group on a bench beside the pristine, rectangular pool.

Deb wore a pair of jeans and a red t-shirt with a nondescript baseball cap, and Mei Lin looked beautiful in a sundress and round sunglasses.

“Deb,” Tommy said, nodding in her direction. “Good to see you again, Mei Lin.” He placed a hand on the small of Chuck’s back. “This is my boyfriend, Chuck.”

Mei Lin stood up and shook Chuck’s hand, but Tommy was watching Deb, who looked at Chuck with an amused smirk on her face. She glanced up at Tommy, shading her eyes from the sun with one of her hands. “You brought a boyfriend, Littleton.”

Tommy rocked back on his heels. “Yep. It’s new.”

“Good for you.” After a moment she added, “I think you almost gave Rick a heart attack.”

Tommy barked out a laugh. “Yeah, I kind of blindsided him with that one.”

“Honestly, it made this whole weekend worth it,” Deb said, taking a sip of whatever was in her glass. “Well, that and kicking your ass.”

“In your dreams, Deb,” he said, but he couldn’t keep the smile from his face.

“For what it’s worth, Littleton, you look happy.” The look she gave him was one he’d never seen from her before. It was understanding—kind, even.

Something had changed between them. He noticed that as the ground shifted under him and he opened himself up to his feelings for Chuck, other changes rippled out into the rest of his life: the way his boss looked at him, and into his relationship with Deb.

Maybe in all of the years they’d worked together, Deb had assumed Tommy was just another homophobic asshole like Rick. He felt a hot wave of shame, realizing he probably hadn’t given her a reason to see him any other way. He’d walked in Rick’s shadow, had laughed along with whatever he’d said, desperate for the man’s approval. He’d coveted Rick’s laughter and hard pats on the back like maybe it would fill the gaping emptiness he’d felt in the wake of his divorce.

Now, as Tommy sat there on the stone terrace of the house he’d only heard about from past colleagues who had gotten promoted at Venture, the reality of the moment felt a hell of a lot different than what he’d imagined in his head.

When he’d thought about being at Rick’s for the Fourth of July, he’d seen himself at the center of it all, holding court and cracking jokes that had everyone around him laughing. He’d been confident and sharp, ready with a quick response as he mingled with the people he wanted to impress.

The people he wanted to respect him. To like him.

But now that Tommy was here, he couldn’t shake the way Rick had looked at him when he’d introduced Chuck as his boyfriend. As if the fact that Tommy had shown up with a man somehow made him a different person.

He thought about Chuck, who had hidden his sexual orientation from the world for years. Fuck , what had that been like for him? It was painful to think about. Now, suddenly, Tommy was on the outside looking in. The surprising thing, though, was that he didn’t mind. He didn’t mind one fucking bit, not if the cost of belonging was hiding the way he felt about Chuck from the world.

“You good?”

Tommy blinked up at Chuck, who stood above him with a hand held to shield his eyes from the bright afternoon sun.

“Yeah,” Tommy said, running his hand up the outside of Chuck’s denim-covered thigh.

* * *

After a formal dinner in the estate’s opulent dining room, the guests dispersed. Many were going back to the patio for another round of drinks, while others were heading to the glass-walled pool house to play poker.

Tommy caught a few confused looks when he excused himself and Chuck from the invitations to join in, but he blamed it on wanting to rest up for the events of the next day.

With their bags in tow, Tommy led the way up the wide staircase, Chuck’s footsteps sure and steady behind him. He followed Marcy’s directions down a long hallway until they reached a door with a small, carved wood anchor hanging from the knob.

Tommy pushed the door open and stepped aside so Chuck could go in ahead of him.

The room was a modest size, the double bed dressed with decorative pillows in varying shades of blue against its dark wood headboard. A desk was tucked into one corner, and finely upholstered wing-back chairs stood on either side of a small table that was topped with an arrangement of blue hydrangeas.

Tommy placed their bags on the bed and then turned to Chuck. “My boss was weird about us, wasn’t he?”

“He was,” Chuck said, his smile apologetic. “I tried to warn you?—”

Tommy shook his head. “Don’t do that. I’m in this, Chuck. I can’t explain why it took me so long, or why it’s happening now, but I know that this is real and it’s worth everything to me. Introducing you to Rick as my boyfriend was the easiest and most honest thing I’ve ever done.”

There was a brief flash of something on Chuck’s face, but before Tommy could ask about it Chuck’s eyes darkened with unmistakable yearning and he crowded Tommy’s body with his own. “Get on the bed, T,” he whispered, his breath brushing against the sensitive skin of Tommy’s ear.

A part of Tommy wanted to pause, to go back to the split second where something that almost looked like devastation had twisted Chuck’s face, but the lure of Chuck’s body and the intoxicating newness of their relationship had him working the buttons of his shirt free.

Chuck was frantic, mouth open and eager as he kissed him, hands tugging his own clothing off before joining Tommy’s hands as they fumbled with his belt. They tumbled back onto the bed, noses bumping and hips brought together by their tangled legs.

It was still so new: the feeling of sliding his hard dick against another throbbing erection, the rasp of stubble against his cheeks, the flat, freckled chest that pressed against him. It was new and different and vibrant , each touch and kiss changing everything he thought he knew about himself and the world.

Today, he’d been reminded that, to many people, what he was experiencing was something to be feared. It was something that changed the way people looked at him, something that meant he was someone completely new.

But he understood now that all of it was bullshit. He’d never been as much himself as he had been since he’d discovered his feelings for Chuck. He’d never been so honest, so sincere. He’d never imagined how it could be to share the deepest, most tender parts of himself with someone else. That it could feel like the deepest friendship and the most electric chemistry collided in one person.

Tonight, Chuck rode him with his head thrown back, exposing his long, freckled neck as he bounced on Tommy’s lap. There was a frantic energy to him, an urgency to his movements like he was racing to the finish line.

But there was no hurry. Tommy grabbed Chuck’s hips firmly enough that his movements stilled, his inner walls clenching around Tommy’s length. Chuck looked down at him, eyes wide and desperate. His cock bobbed, hard and flushed between them.

Gingerly, Tommy trailed his fingers up and over the quivering planes of Chuck’s abdomen. “Slow down,” he murmured, even as his own dick throbbed with arousal where he was fully seated in Chuck’s body. “There’s no hurry. None at all. Just you and me here, yeah? Just you and me.”

Above him, Chuck’s expression softened, his lips parting as his shoulders relaxed. Needing to erase any space between them, Tommy tugged him down into a deep, commanding kiss that he hoped communicated all of the feelings he hadn’t yet figured out how to put into words.

Slowly, they began to move again. Their rhythm was perfectly staggered, Chuck rolling his hips forward just as Tommy drew his back. Chuck’s body gripped him, and based on the vibrant pink that stained Chuck’s freckled cheeks and the steady drip of precum from his hard, untouched cock, whatever Tommy was doing was working.

There was still so much he didn’t know about Chuck, about who he was when he was naked and untethered like this, but fuck he wanted to know everything. He wanted to know how to take him apart one touch at a time, how to make him lose his mind with pleasure, how to make him come so hard his legs were unsteady afterwards. To hold him close in the haze of the afterglow.

He wanted to know the soft, unguarded version of the man he’d known for years as just his friend.

Tommy wanted to know his heart.

“I’m close,” Tommy grunted, fingers digging into Chuck’s hips like maybe it would help him hold off from coming so soon.

Chuck nodded, the movement jerky and sharp, and shifted one of his hands from Tommy’s chest and reached down between them to grasp his dripping cock.

“Fuck,” Tommy breathed as he watched Chuck grip himself. He wanted to look everywhere at once. He wanted to watch Chuck’s cock sliding in and out of his fist. He wanted to watch the long, sinewy muscles of Chuck’s quads flex and stretch as he rose and fell. He wanted to watch his copper lashes fluttering and his swollen lips part every time Tommy’s cock slid over his prostate.

He ended up staring into Chuck’s eyes, and it was with denim-blue filling his vision that Tommy came, thrusting his hips off of the bed as he chased the overwhelming, almost-painful high of his orgasm.

He was still going, cock pulsing when Chuck found his release. His mouth dropped in a silent scream as he shot white streaks over Tommy’s bare torso. It was too much, watching Chuck come apart like that, and Tommy had to clench his jaw as Chuck’s hole tightened around his softening cock.

Chuck slumped over him, his breaths loud and ragged. Reflexively, Tommy ran his fingers through Chuck’s wild curls. Chuck hummed, and Tommy smiled, repeating the motion.

Tommy carefully rolled them over so he hovered above Chuck. Tommy looked down as he slipped from his body, his eyes wide as he watched his cum spill out of Chuck’s soft, pink hole.

“Holy fuck,” Tommy breathed, placing his hands on either side of Chuck’s ass to hold him open. “That’s so hot.”

He heard Chuck huff a quiet laugh.

“I wish I could go again,” Tommy said wistfully, bending over to kiss Chuck’s inner thigh before climbing out of the bed to get them a cloth for cleaning up.

Tommy cleaned them both and then slid into the small bed next to Chuck. “Ready to snuggle?”

Chuck snorted, but scooted so that his longer frame was curled up against Tommy’s front. He looked beautifully rumpled. Exhausted too, but Tommy supposed that was probably a result of the thorough fucking over the past few days. And he hadn’t slept well the night before…shit.

They both needed to get some sleep.

Tommy wasn’t sure what time it was when he woke up, only that it was dark out. He wouldn’t have woken, but the bed was empty beside him. He sat up, glancing around until he found Chuck, sitting in one of the chairs in the corner, his figure barely illuminated by the moonlight coming in through the gauzy curtains.

Tommy rubbed his eyes. “You okay?” he asked. It was too dark to make out the expression on his face.

“I’m fine, T. Go back to bed.”

Good. Chuck was fine. It was that thought and the relief that came with it that had him rolling over and falling right back to sleep.