Chapter Three
Hugo nibbled at a french fry and stared across the table as Dante devoured a cheeseburger. He had trouble believing he was having lunch with Dante Lucas. For the most part, no one noticed, but here and there, someone gave them a second look or whispered to the people they were with. The happenings of the day before had felt like some kind of dream, right up until he walked into the recording studio. It wasn't that Dante was rich and famous, it was more a personal feeling about himself. He'd never known anyone famous and would never have thought someone like Dante would want to get to know him.
Finally, his companion looked up from his food and pointed to Hugo’s own cheeseburger. A thin, leather bracelet with a small, diamond-studded heart slid along his wrist as he did so. “Not hungry?”
“What?” Hugo sputtered, torn from his reverie. “Oh, yeah, it’s just…” As Dante plopped back in his seat, looking like he was waiting, expectantly, he shook his head and said, “Things were pretty intense back there. Everything going all right with the music?”
Dante's face fell and he put his cheeseburger down like the taste had soured in his mouth. “Hopefully.” At the look of surprise on his friend's face, he nodded. “Yeah, I think this new song will really pull the album together. My manager may not be impressed with it, but I think the record guys are.”
“What’s the title?”
“Unbreakable. It’s about my mom. She gave me this bracelet, you know. She was a lot stronger than me. Raised three kids by herself, sacrificed everything, you know?”
“Yeah, I do,” Hugo admitted, softly. “I grew up like that, too.”
Dante nodded but didn't press him on it. “Enough about that, though. Tell me what you do that involves almost drowning in the Pacific.”
Hugo smiled shyly and his brown eyes lit up. “I’m an oceanographer. I study the biology of the ocean, basically. My area of expertise is really its health. How the ocean’s doing is really important to how the rest of the planet is doing.
Dante took a sip of his water and nodded. “I could see that.” He looked at the water and then sat the glass back down.
“You want to come back to my place?” Hugo asked, excitement filling his voice. As his friend’s eyebrows shot up, though, his mouth dropped and he tried to wave the invitation away. “Oh God…I didn’t mean…to see my projects, I mean, the stuff I’m studying.”
At this point, Dante was laughing so hard, he could barely catch his breath. “It’s okay,” he wheezed. “Not that it sounded any stranger than inviting me over to see your seaweed.” He started laughing again and, this time, Hugo joined him. “Yeah, why not,” he finally said when he had enough breath to answer.
Before long, the two of them were standing around a darkened garage, where pods of seaweed filled fish tanks, with fluorescent lights hanging over them. Scientific equipment of all sorts filled the rest of the space, including some very high-tech and very expensive looking computers.
“Does the Home Owners’ Association know about this?” Dante quipped as he looked around.
“Well, they know I work for a university so they, ah, well, they make an exception for my work,” Hugo answered.
Dante looked back, his face clearly reading, do they now? “So, that’s a no?”
“No, they don’t know about it,” Hugo confessed and shook his head vigorously.
Dante nodded and walked around to the computers, which were hard at work, crunching data. “You said you were testing the mercury levels in the seaweed?”
“Yes,” Hugo answered and quickly made his way over. “These computers are analyzing my last samples.” He pointed out the chemical compounds and conclusions he’d been coming to.
“Have you tested the grasses growing along the shore?” Dante asked.
Hugo looked genuinely surprised. “Because of the—”
“Waves carrying things onto shore, yeah.”
“That was my next line of inquiry. I didn't know you knew anything about science.”
“Actually, I have a BA in ecology.” At the surprised look on Hugo’s face, he smiled sadly and said, “I’ve been playing music all my life, but it didn’t really pay the bills until recently. I needed something else to do part of the time. I worked a lot of years in the forests, for the government, you know. I studied trees, helped fight fires, you name it. How do you think I got this rugged, tanned physique?” He flexed a biceps and chuckled nervously. Then he inched closer to Hugo. He had no idea what he was doing, but somehow, it felt right. To his surprise, Hugo backed away.
“I’m sorry,” Hugo mumbled, a look of confusion crossing his face. “I thought you…I thought you liked women.”
“I do like women.” Dante snickered. “A lot of great people are women.”
“You know what I mean.”
Dante sighed, his smile changing into a tired frown. “It’s all an image, Hugo. I thought you’d realized that by now.”
“Well, yeah, but that’s a pretty big thing to fake,” Hugo replied.
The singer’s head snapped up. With clenched teeth, he seethed, “I never faked anything. The media’s assumed that every female friend I have is either a girlfriend or an ex. They never bothered to ask me.”
Hugo’s hands were shaking, but he kept eye contact and said, “And what would you have said?”
Dante squeezed his eyes shut and let his shoulders sag. “I don’t know, man. I’m not ashamed of who I am,” he added, his voice barely above a whisper. “It’s tough enough in this business, though.” As he stood there, he suddenly felt Hugo’s hands, just tickling the ends of his fingers. He opened his eyes, his lashes wet from the tears he’d held back.
“I’ve had a crush on you for ages,” Hugo admitted.
“That’s not the real me,” Dante murmured, shaking his head.
“I know.” Hugo let his hands slowly creep up the singer’s lithe, tanned arms. The hair there was almost transparent and so soft that it tickled his palms. He kept his gaze on Dante’s face, though, watching as the stiff, nervousness melted from them both. As his hands reached cloth sleeves, he stepped closer. Dante’s blues eyes were inviting, almost pleading, as he leaned in and kissed him. It was soft, just a brush, really, but after a moment, he felt long fingers curling around his neck, pulling him in closer.
After a moment, Dante pushed back and took a shaky breath. “Maybe not the garage,” he suggested.
Hugo looked around. “Yeah, maybe not,” he agreed with a grin. Then he grabbed Dante’s hand and the two of them rushed inside. He led the singer to his bedroom, feeling a bit self-conscious about the mess. “I spend a lot of time working.”
“I can see that,” Dante teased with a smirk.
Hugo’s eyes narrowed, playfully, and he pushed him toward the bed. He watched as Dante's knees buckled at the edge and the singer fell back on his elbows with a laugh. Then he crawled over to him, settling between his legs. “I'm glad you came over,” he murmured.
“Me too.”
There was a moment of exhilarating hesitation as Hugo remembered who he was with. Disbelief swam over him, but then he let himself forget about Dante Lucas, the star, and thought about the man he'd come to know over the last couple of days. He had to admit, the reality was actually much better. With that, he quickly stripped off his shirt. He'd normally be hesitant about that too, but somehow, he knew that this man would accept him, even if he wasn't a supermodel. He playfully tossed the shirt at Dante, who wasn't expecting it and let it land on his face. When he peeked out, Hugo laughed and stretched closer to him.
Slowly, short, pudgy fingers lifted Dante’s t-shirt up his chest. Hugo took in the fit physique and then began to plant soft, wet kisses down the singer’s stomach.
Dante hummed in appreciation and finished slipping the shirt from his shoulders. He gasped as Hugo’s tongue began to swirl around his belly-button and the blood ran to his cock in response. It must have been obvious too because, moments later, his belt was unbuckled and his pants were slowly being unzipped. He felt his quickly hardening cock freed from its constraints and he took a deep breath as Hugo’s hand wrapped around it. He glanced down in time to see the man’s mouth take him in, before throwing his head back against the bed.
Hugo smiled at his reaction and then used the same swirling technique on the head of Dante’s cock. He could feel the singer squirming beneath him, trying to keep control as pleasure began to flood through him. After a few moments, he stopped his torture and took him fully in his mouth. Long fingers crept into his dark curls, pulling here and there, as moans left his lover’s throat. He gently moved down the full shaft, being careful and deliberate in his movements, and then pulled harder on his way back up.
Before long, Dante's hips were moving to Hugo's rhythm, and it felt so good he could barely think. Just when he thought he couldn't take anymore, it all suddenly stopped. He lifted his head, breathing heavily. “What the—”
“We need to find the lube,” Hugo interrupted. “Unless you just want me to finish you off.”
Dante could tell by the bulge in his pants that Hugo was plenty ready to go too. He chuckled breathlessly and nodded. Imagining what was under those pants reinvigorated him and had his cock swelling up to almost painful levels. “Let’s do it,” he enthused.
The lube took longer to find than expected, Hugo explaining that he didn’t do this kind of thing that often.
“Could’ve fooled me,” Dante flirted as he sifted through a box in the hall closet. “Found it!” he celebrated a moment later and held up the half-used tube.
By then, they’d both calmed down a bit and started fresh. They helped each other out of their clothes and went back to the bed. Dante fondled Hugo gently, rubbing his palm along the underside of his cock as Hugo readied a couple of fingers with the lube. Then they leaned back together and kissed until Hugo found Dante’s sweet spot.
Dante threw his head back again and groaned, as his hips rocked up to meet Hugo’s fingers. “God, you’re good at this,” he breathed, which, to his surprise, caused Hugo to giggle. He shook his head against the blanket. “You really are,” he insisted, barely able to talk through his breathlessness. “You better get on with it though. I can’t hold it much longer.”
Hugo slipped his fingers out and lubed up his cock instead. Then he leaned over Dante and kissed him again. Though he was thicker than his fingers, his lover was plenty ready for him and he slid in with ease and a groan from both of them. He felt Dante’s hands, wandering down his back, and he lifted the singer’s legs around his waist. He pushed in further and they both cried out in pleasure.
Their rhythm came quickly, hips bucking and bodies melding together. Dante gripped Hugo's butt to push him deeper and faster, the diamond-studded heart on his bracelet molding an impression into his lover's flesh. It was over in a few minutes, but as they lay there, slick with sweat and catching their breaths, neither could remember the last time they'd enjoyed themselves so much. They held each other close, exploring one another's skin until Dante felt his eyes grow heavy.
He had no idea how long he’d slept, but Dante woke up alone. For a moment, he wasn’t sure where he was, either, but it quickly flooded back. He smiled and stretched his arms across the bed. Thoughts of earlier caused his cock to stir, lightly. He was amazed that he’d be ready to go again so soon. He let the thoughts go, though, when he was suddenly overtaken by the unmistakable smell of something cooking in the kitchen. He sat up and scooped his jeans off the floor, putting them on without bothering with underwear or a shirt. Then he peeked out into the hall and padded his bare feet toward the smell.
He hadn’t seen much of Hugo’s house and, honestly, hadn’t been thinking about anything other than the man jumping his bones when he’d walked through earlier. It wasn’t much bigger than his own beach shack, though, so it didn’t take long to find the kitchen. He leaned against the doorframe and crossed his arms.
“So, you’re one of them?”
Hugo started and nearly dropped the spatula in his hand. He turned around and was momentarily caught off guard by the sight of the half-naked singer. “Um, one of what?”
A corner of Dante’s mouth turned up in a lopsided grin. Hugo was draped in his bathrobe again. “You like to cook after sex,” he answered.
“Oh,” Hugo sighed in relief. “Gotta keep up our strength. We might want to do it again. I hope you like breakfast for dinner.”
“I love breakfast for dinner.”