Chapter Six

 

“Is there anything you can’t do?” I asked Tate as he laid out breakfast. He had been cooking while I was in the shower and my mouth watered at the scrumptious meal of eggs, bacon and grits with biscuits. I felt better having showered and was now wearing my own clothes since he had hung them to dry overnight. My right leg was propped up on a chair and a handsome masculine face was settling across the table from me. What more could I want?

“I’m sure there’s a thing or two,” he answered and dug into his breakfast.

I followed suit, figuring he didn’t want to talk much as usual. I watched him from beneath my lashes, the way his lips tugged on the tines of the fork. And I remembered the way those same lips had been wrapped around my cock yesterday. I squirmed in my chair and lowered my gaze to my food, as the seat of my shorts got a little too snug. I groaned mentally. I couldn’t walk around with a perpetual hard-on and my ass needed time to recover anyway.

“How’s your ankle?” Tate enquired in the middle of breakfast.

“It doesn’t look as bad anymore,” I replied, deciding that maybe if I opened up a little, then I could get him to talk to me and tell me why he was in these god-forsaken woods all by himself. Not that I wasn’t grateful he was around. I’d have likely walked off a cliff somewhere if he hadn’t followed me down the mountain. Even if we did end up going back up the dreaded mountain.

“You’ll need to stay off it for a couple of days at best,” he advised me. “The last thing you want is to aggravate it or you just might end up in a hospital.”

I groaned. “I’ve to get back to work on Monday.” If I still had a job. I couldn’t imagine still working for Keith after breaking up with him. He was the vindictive sort.

He glanced up at me with a frown. “It’s the middle of the week. Why aren’t you at work in the first place?”

I got the feeling he just narrowly stopped himself saying ‘where you belong.’ “I took a few days of vacation time,” I answered. No need to tell him that Keith had given me the paid time off to go trekking through the woods with him.

“Let me guess,” he stated. “You work in a bank or something? You look to a bit straitlaced.”

I laughed. “That’s the first I’m hearing a gay man being described as straitlaced.”

“I’m talking with other things,” he clarified on a scowl. “You look like the type who wouldn’t leave work a minute before the workday ends. Am I wrong?”

I refused to answer the question. “And you? What are you doing in these mountains pretending the real world doesn’t exist?”

At the anger in his eyes, I immediately knew I had pushed too far. There was so much emotion going on in his eyes. The green depths stared back at me with turbulence.

“Tate, I’m sorry,” I started to apologize but he was already getting to his feet, taking his unfinished breakfast to the counter where he dumped the remains in the trash. “Tate,” I tried to call to him and apologize again but he had already stalked out of the kitchen.

“Shit,” I mumbled, worried that I’d made him upset especially when he had been nothing but kind to me. He had followed me on my trek down the mountain to ensure I didn’t run into any harm and that was even before we had been intimate. He had welcomed me into his home without complaint. He could have insisted I sleep on his floor or the couch in the living room but, I had a space in his bed. He made me breakfast and thought nothing of it and I’d gone and acted insensitively, when I knew very little of his life.

By way of apology, I hobbled over to the kitchen sink and took a few minutes to understand how to get the old-fashioned pump to work. I managed to wash up the dishes without making too much of a mess and wiped down the counters. I packed away the dishes I’d dried and the cutlery and Tate still hadn’t returned home.

I hobbled to the living room where there wasn’t much to do. He had a generator and there was a television set but, I didn’t want to waste his electricity on something so unnecessary. I was surprised when I found a stack of magazines of varying interests, including financial magazines and sports magazines. They were current too. I was reaching for the latest edition of Fortune Magazine when I spotted a copy of James Patterson’s novel Bullseye and reached for it instead.

I settled on the longest couch, reclining with my leg perched on the armrest. I skipped the first page and a picture fell out. Retrieving the picture, my heart started galloping in my chest as I stared at it. The picture consisted of a smiling Tate who looked very different. In the picture, his hair was cut short. He was wearing a jacket suit and looked professional. He had his arm around the shoulder of a beautiful redhead who was gazing at him, her eyes full of love. The look on her face said she had it all. Between them was a little girl who was no more than three.

Turning the back of the picture, I read:

My darling, Tate. Love you forever, Rachel and Kathleen.

“I don’t recall giving you permission to snoop through my things.”

At Tate’s gruff voice, I almost dropped the picture. I stuffed it back into the book and looked at him, trying not to look guilty.

“I-I wasn’t snooping,” I corrected. “I was just trying to find something to do. I love James Patterson’s book and have never read that one before.”

“Don’t touch my stuff without asking.”

I blanched at the vehemence in his tone. “Sure, sorry,” I apologized and pushed myself up into a sitting position. I struggled to my feet and tried to make my way past him. I was hurt by the way he had spoken to me and didn’t particularly want to be with him at this moment.

“Sit,” he instructed me, restraining me by taking hold of my upper arm when I would have passed him.

“I’m just getting out of your way,” I responded and tried to shrug him off.

“I never said I wanted you out of my way, Bry.”

I knew the nickname was a slip of his tongue, especially when I glanced at him questioningly and his complexion had gone ruddy with a flush.

“Then what do you want, Tate?” I asked softly.

I already knew the answer by the look in his eyes.

“You.”

He pulled me up against him and kissed me. I hesitated at first, a little confused by the turbulence of what was happening between us. One second he was mad at me and the next he wanted me. One minute he was walking out on me and the next, he was pulling me towards him.

All thoughts fled my mind when his tongue met mine and I couldn’t resist this contradictory man who in some ways was even worse in mannerism than Keith. He wrapped his arms around me, and grabbed my ass, pressing our fronts together. I gasped for breath in between our passionate kiss as he gyrated against me, his hard cock rubbing over mine in our clothes.

“Tate,” I moaned against his lips, running my hands over his muscles that I loved to feel so much.

“Hmm,” he moaned, biting my bottom lip carnally, before devouring my mouth again. I imagined he enjoyed kissing so much because he was so damn good of it. He almost made me forget what I was about to say.

“We should stop,” I whispered against his lips.

“Why?” he asked, his hands at the front of my shorts, already loosening the button and pulling down the zipper.

“We’re so different,” I answered and even though I was the one complaining about the difference and stopping, I hooked my arm behind his head and kissed him again. He reached into the front of my shorts and retrieved my cock. I moaned into his mouth.

“Right now, I don’t give a fuck about our differences,” he growled at me. “Does it matter, Bryan or does this? What I do to you. You want me to fuck that juicy ass again, don’t you?”

I wasn’t shocked at his crude words. In fact, dirty talk turned me on. I reached between our bodies and helped him out of his jeans, pushing it off his hips. When it was down his thigh, far enough for me to grasp him, I started jerking him in my fist. He did the same to my cock as we continued sucking on each other’s tongue and kissing deeply. In all my life, this was hands-down the best kissing I’d ever enjoyed with a man. And I’d had quite a number too.

Our cocks bumped as we frotted against each other. I cupped his balls and stroked beneath to where his taint was and heard his hiss. He released my cock to grip my ass and squeeze. My ass was full and he obviously enjoyed it, the way he was caressing the twin globes. He dipped a finger through my crack and inserted it into my ass.

“Oh God, Tate,” I moaned, increasing the movement of my hand on his thick length. My mouth watered to have a taste of him which I still hadn’t done.

Changing course, Tate pushed me to sit on the couch and reached for my shorts, to pull them lower about my ankles. He didn’t afford me time to take them off, but knelt before me, grasping my shaft. He leaned forward to lick my lips before he dipped his head and took the head of my cock into his mouth.

I moaned and dug my fingers into his hair, loosening the hairband that had held his hair back in a ponytail. I decided I preferred his hair untamed, hanging about his face. I lost all thought, as he engulfed more of my cock into his mouth, down to the base.

“Oh yes!” I groaned in approval as his tongue stroked while he sucked. A popping sound punctuated the room each time he released my cock. His head bobbed up and down as he sucked harder, pressing his hand below to massage and caress my taint.

“Holy shit!” I cried out, my hips jerking when I climaxed into his mouth. I stiffened, my eyes rolling in the back of my head at the intensity of the climax that racked my body.

Tate sucked my cock into his mouth one final time, cleaning away the evidence of my climax as though it never happened. He released my still hard cock and licked his lips. He moved up my body to kiss me and I could taste my essence on his tongue. I sucked on it and with a groan reached for his cock, to give him the same pleasure he had given me.

He shook his head and smiled against my mouth. “That was for you,” he said softly. “An apology, which I’m not too good at. I didn’t mean to snap at you earlier then storm out the way I did.”

I swallowed and nodded and my heart squeezed painfully in my chest. I had a feeling I was in deep trouble with Tate. I was beginning to like this guy way too much and we were unsuited. I belonged to the corporate world and he belonged here on his mountain.