Page 34 of The Seascape Between Us (The Men of Saltwater Cove #4)

Chapter Twenty-Six

Grey

I was nervous as hell meeting Brody Harris for the first time.

I knew he had been Daniel’s closest friend ever since Ryan passed away, and like some nervous teenager meeting his first boyfriend’s parents and hoping to God they liked him.

Nerves fluttered in my stomach, which made no sense.

Except for a very small group, I generally didn’t give a shit what people thought about me.

But Brody was the closest thing Daniel had to family.

When we got back from the hotel, we found Brody and Jett in the house, waiting for us on the sofa. I’d left the door open in case they arrived before we finished at the hotel.

“Hey,” Daniel said. He had bags of groceries in both hands. We both did. “I’m glad you guys are here. I just need to put this stuff away. Have you met Grey?”

“Nope, which is kind of weird,” the younger man—Jett, I assumed—said brightly.

His hair was a mass of brown curls falling into his face.

He was good-looking and younger than us.

Not shocking, though, since he was one of Alistair’s former roommates.

“I mean, we rented this house from you for a whole year, and we never met you. Thanks for that, by the way—you really saved us after our other place burned down.”

I smirked. “Glad to help.”

“I’m Brody.” He stood up and, at his full height, was a few inches taller than me—even a little taller than Daniel—broad and heavily muscled. His long brown hair fell in messy waves past his shoulders. He held out his hand, and I shook it. “Thanks for letting us stay.”

“Any friend of Daniel’s…”

He nodded, his gaze narrowing while he measured me up, assessing me. Probably trying to decide if I was worthy of his friend. I wanted to be.

“Get comfortable,” Daniel said, setting the groceries on the counter. “I’m just going to get changed, and then we’ll start dinner.”

Despite the easygoing, friendly tone of his voice, I knew it was fake. Even from across the room, I could feel the tension radiating from his frame. His thoughts were on the hotel. If I hadn’t turned up when I did, I wasn’t sure he would have stopped working.

The sight of him, boarding windows while the rain fell in sheets, soaking his clothes until they stuck to him like a second skin, lightning flashing, thunder cracking above him.

He looked like a man possessed. He was lucky he hadn’t been struck by lightning.

Even now, I wondered if he’d been alone, would he have been back at that hotel, facing the elements, sacrificing himself to the hotel like it meant more than him?

My stomach churned sickly at the thought.

“I need to change too,” I said. I’d only been outside a few minutes, but the rain had soaked me through.

I followed Daniel into the bedroom, where he peeled off his wet t-shirt and tossed it into the hamper next to the closet.

“You should shower,” I said. “Warm yourself up.”

He nodded but didn’t look at me. It was as if he was on autopilot, going through the motions but nothing really registering. My apprehension kicked up another notch.

“The hotel will be fine,” I assured him. “It’s been here for sixty years. I bet you this isn’t even the worst storm it’s faced.”

“I hope you’re right.” He swallowed hard, his throat jumping. “Otherwise, everything we did won’t matter. It will have been for nothing.”

“Like I said, we can always start again.” He didn’t answer or look at me, and that apprehension coiled tight in my stomach squeezed. “We’ll be okay.”

“I’m going to jump in the shower. I won’t be long.”

“I’ll start dinner,” I told him.

In the kitchen, I went to work on chicken in a rose sauce over pasta with salad. I wanted to cook dinner quickly. We’d lose power eventually, and from the way the wind rattled the windows, rain pelting hard against the glass, it would be sooner than later.

I started the water boiling and was slicing the chicken when Brody wandered in and leaned against the door frame. “Can I help?”

“I have dinner under control, but you could open the wine. Or there’s beer in the fridge.”

Brody grinned, picked up the corkscrew and opened the bottle of wine on the counter.

“Is he okay?” Brody asked.

I didn’t need him to clarify. There was only one person we were both concerned about. I nodded, even though I wasn’t sure that Daniel was okay. “He’s worried about the hotel. We didn’t get it boarded up the way we’d hoped.”

Brody nodded. He opened his mouth as if he were going to say something else, but Daniel strolled in, freshly showered, and he snapped it shut again. He turned to Daniel. “Wine?”

He poured glasses for Daniel and Jett, too.

The four of us stood in the kitchen chatting while Daniel and I got dinner ready, then settled at the dining room table to eat.

It was nice, even with the storm raging outside.

There were moments where even Daniel seemed to forget what was going on, and his smile looked genuine.

But I could always see the minute he remembered.

The way he tensed. The way he glanced at the front window, as if he thought he could see the hotel from our vantage point—high up on the hill looking over The Square.

The power went out as predicted while Daniel and I cleared the table.

While I finished loading the dishwasher that I wouldn’t be able to turn on, Daniel lit candles in the living room.

From the kitchen, I watched him drift to the front window and peer into the darkness.

Brody stood next to him, reached up and squeezed his shoulder.

“It’s going to be okay.”

Daniel turned away from the window and nodded, but I could tell he didn’t believe him.

“There are board games,” Jett suggested, brightly. “In the closet at the top of the stairs. Monopoly?”

“Sure,” I said, flopping down on the sofa. Daniel sat next to me, and I absently rubbed his back. He leaned closer, and something like relief loosened inside me.

Using the flashlight app on his phone, Jett hurried upstairs and returned with a well-worn box containing the game.

“God,” Brody said, lifting the lid and setting up the board on the coffee table. “This game looks like it’s a hundred years old.” He poured the metal pieces out from the small plastic bag they’d been stored in.

“I’m the race car,” I called before someone else could.

Brody scowled. “I’m always the race car.”

“I’ll be the horse,” Daniel said.

“I want the dog.” Jett snatched the piece from the pile and set it at the start.

“Fine,” I said, with an exaggerated sigh. “You can be the car, but I’m the banker.”

Daniel shook his head, grinning. “No way. Don’t trust him. He Cheats. I’ll be the banker.”

“I never cheated.” I totally cheated whenever we played back when we dated.

Daniel laughed, and the sound warmed me. Maybe he’d put worrying about the hotel aside.

As we got into the game, though, I caught Daniel looking at the window again, and he kept losing track of his turn. In his defense, the wind was howling around the house, moaning through unseen cracks around the windows like a ghost, while the rain fell harder.

The game was going on forever, and I think we were all getting bored. Jett had abandoned his chair and perched himself on the arm of Brody’s chair. He leaned over and pressed his mouth to Brody’s neck, then whispered something in his ear.

A slow grin spread over Brody’s face before he stretched and let out a fake yawn. “It’s getting late. We should probably get to bed.”

“We’ll go to my room. Well, not my room now, but it used to be. So weird.” Jett frowned; something about what he’d said perplexing him. On his third glass of wine, there were probably a lot of things perplexing him.

“You should take up a bottle of water,” Daniel said, probably thinking the same thing.

“Maybe a couple of ibuprofen, too,” Brody agreed. “I think someone’s going to have a headache when he wakes up.”

“I’m fine,” Jett said. “This is nothing. You forget how much I could drink when I was at The Dunes, before you and I got together."

“I didn’t forget.” Brody shook his head. “Let’s get to bed.”

“Bed sounds very good.” Jett wrapped his arms around Brody’s neck.

With two bottles of water in one hand and a bottle of ibuprofen in the other, Brody and Jett made their way up to Jett’s old bedroom.

I leaned back in my chair and drained the last of my wine while Daniel picked up the game. When he finished, he stood and went to the window, arms folded over his chest while he squinted through the rain-streaked glass.

“You can’t see the hotel from here,” I said.

Daniel tensed and brushed his fingers through his hair. “I know. I just want to know if it’s still standing.”

“You’re worrying too much.” I crossed the room until I stood behind him and wrapped my arms around his waist, pressing my lips to his temple.

“Come to bed. You need a distraction, and I am only too happy to provide it.”

In the warm glow of the flickering candlelight, a faint smile pulled at his mouth. “Yeah, let’s go to bed.”

We blew out the rest of the candles and used the app on our phone to guide the way to our bedroom.

Once inside with the door closed, we peeled each other out of our clothes.

In the pitch black, we couldn’t see anything.

Instead, we relied on our other senses. I touched him, letting my fingers explore the warm, smooth skin of his chest, the grooves of his stomach, then leaned down and tasted, trailing my tongue over his hip, groin, sucking at his round balls.

His hands tangled in my hair, a low moan filling the darkness, the sound going straight to my cock, feeding my growing hunger.

I would never get enough of him. No matter how much I touched him, tasted him, worshiped him, I would crave him like a drug until my dying day.

Somehow, we found our way to the bed. I ran my hands over his thighs, crisp hairs tickling my palms. His scent—forest pine, something warm and spicy, and all him—teased my senses. I sucked his cock into my mouth. Heard him whimper, and the taste of his pre-cum on my tongue made me hungry for more.

I started to bob my head, swallowing him down to the back of my throat.

“Fuck,” he groaned as if he was in pain, and his hand in my hair tightened, sending a delicious prickle over my scalp. Then he let me go, abruptly. “Stop. Wait.”

I released him immediately and leaned back, but in the dark, I couldn’t see his expression. “Is everything okay?”

“Everything is good, really good. I just want you up here.”

He shifted me, positioning me over him so my face hovered over his cock, the tip of mine brushing his mouth.

I went back to work on him, sucking him between my lips.

His mouth parted, and he swallowed me down, his throat wrapping around me.

I froze, tensing before I embarrassed myself and ended all of this too quickly.

My focus went to Daniel’s dick while fucking lightly into his mouth until his hands reached up and gripped my ass, his finger digging into my cheeks, and I was lost. I swallowed Daniel as deeply as I could, still fucking his mouth.

He groaned again, his body tensing under me just before the first splash of his cum filled my mouth, and I followed immediately, emptying myself down his throat.

Still shivering with aftershocks, I collapsed on my side next to him while I caught my breath.

“Holy shit,” he whispered. “It’s always so damn good.”

I smiled and righted myself, so we were face-to-face, then kissed him, putting everything I felt for him into it, and he responded, deepening the kiss, letting his tongue sweep into my mouth. When I pulled back, I cupped the side of his face and leaned my forehead against his.

After a few moments, I felt the tension leave his frame and his breathing turn soft and even. He’d drifted off, and no wonder. After today, he was probably exhausted. I pulled the covers up over us and closed my eyes, letting his soft breathing lull me to sleep.

I loved him. There was no other word for it, and I didn’t care if I ever left The Square if it meant I spent the rest of my days sleeping next to the man beside me.