There was a naked Marine in his bed.
Skip tried not to think about waking up next to Chad. He tried not to think about going upstairs and climbing back under the blankets with him. He tried not to think about anything. He listened to the washer swish, and the dryer tumble, and the absolute sound of silence in the north woods in the middle of the night.
He loved this time of night, when there was only him awake in the world. His phone didn’t ring. No one came to the door. There was that one time with the bear, but he didn’t count that. The bear hadn’t been trying to sell him anything, or convert him to any god, or convince him to sell his property, or want to lease five acres to grow pot, or whatever the other bears would have tried the moment he came to the door.
The bear had been polite, and left his head attached to his body and had gone on about its business, probably as scared of Skip, as Skip had been of the bear. He loved the silence of the night. During the day, he’d turn on the stereo or the television for company, but at night he left the noisemakers off.
He folded Chad’s load of laundry, and placed them in a basket for him. He’d included his soaked shorts that he’d found on his shower floor, and the clothes he’d left in the guest room in with the first load of his own clothes.
But he’d left a naked twenty-three year-old Marine in his bed. Without studying the tattoo on his side. And that had taken some serious damned willpower.
He picked up his phone and checked the charge. It was late, but not so late that Brian would have gone to bed. He swiped across Brian’s name and hesitated. He had no idea where the husband would be, or what they’d be doing. He closed his phone; he didn’t want to interrupt his son’s happiness. He made a note to find out his new son-in-law’s name. He remembered being introduced. He also remembered thinking that he could ‘hit that’ given the right motivation. He’d gotten out of the house in record time, and couldn’t remember one damned thing about the introduction.
“Hey.” He heard the sleepy rumble of a voice, and turned to find a naked Marine leaning against the wall near his bank of double ovens. The man did wear skin so very well. “What time is it?”
“A little after midnight. I slept out. I didn’t want to wake you.” Skip tried not to look at the man. Tall, sandy-blond hair, cool, blue eyes, abs of steel, a tan line that fascinated the hell out of Skip, and the tattoos. And scars. One was a knife wound, looked like someone tried to gut him, but missed, and the knife slipped along the curve of his hip. He tried not to wonder about the pucker above the other hip that looked suspiciously like a bullet wound. It wasn’t his business. “Your clothes are clean, if you want to put on something.”
Chad followed his gaze to the basket with sleep-filled eyes. He blinked a couple of times and rubbed his nose. Skip tried so hard to keep his gaze on the beautiful face. He failed so very badly. He let his gaze caress the man, and the abs, and the tattoos, and the scars. His golden body pushing every single one of Skip’s buttons. The flaccid penis resting beside his thigh an indication of what it would be fully erect. As if Skip didn’t know. As if he hadn’t put his mouth on it. As if it hadn’t rubbed all over him. “I slept nearly twelve hours?”
“Looks like.” Skip jumped when the timer on the oven went off. He pulled out a pan of pot roast and all the trimmings that he’d been reheating, and set it on the island. “You hungry? I’m about to have breakfast.”
“Pot roast for breakfast,” Chad said, a shy smile spreading across his face. He didn’t make a move for his basket of clothing, and was distracting the hell out of Skip. “That’s new.”
“I wanted something hearty. I didn’t want to cook, and I didn’t want eggs. So I shoved one of Cat’s Sunday dinners in the oven.” He had no idea why he was explaining himself. He never explained himself. If he wanted pot roast at two in the morning, there was no one to care but the oven.
“Feeling better then?” Chad still didn’t move. He still didn’t put on clothes. He just stood there, looking sleepy and gorgeous, as if he was completely unaware of just how Skip’s blood was starting to boil, and… Hang it all. Skip gave up. He took the two long strides that put him right in front of the young man. The ice-blue eyes looking coolly up at him, as if Chad knew exactly what he was about to do. Skip skimmed his fingers over the man’s face, loving the feel of the blond scruff of a beard. He crowded him to the wall, and pressed his body flush against Chad’s. They’d fucked. There was no denying there wasn’t something there.
A smile quirked the corners of Chad’s lips as he gazed sleepily into Skip’s eyes. “I take that as a yes,” Chad whispered as he wrapped his arms around Skip’s waist and tugged him closer. “You look like you’ll live.”
Skip resisted the urge to kiss the insouciance off the man’s face. “You look like I’m not going to make my deadline.”
Chad laughed, the sound was almost self-conscious after the complete disregard of his own nudity. “I’m starving. You could feed me.”
“I could. Or…” Skip closed his mouth over Chad’s lips and coaxed a kiss out of him. Chad’s whole body seemed to melt against him, except the part of him that had, to this point, been uninterested in Skip’s proximity. That part of him pressed heavily into Skip’s thigh, threatening to rise to the occasion. Skip kicked Chad’s feet apart, and traced his hands down the man’s delectable body to cup him between his legs. “Or I could give this some attention.”
Chad made a gurgling noise in his throat that Skip took as permission. He kissed him one more time, teasing Chad’s tongue from his mouth to suck it into his own. He stroked the heated flesh hanging between them until it filled his hand like a silken-covered steel rod. He tried to stop the moan that stuck in his throat. He was supposed to be the one doing the seducing, but that would feel so good inside him.
Chad clenched his fingers into the soft flesh of Skip’s arms, his eyes wide and wild as Skip stroked him. He bit his lip when Skip let him go. Skip leaned in and tugged the lip between his own teeth and sucked it into his mouth.
“Gah,” Chad mumbled, his body shaking as he held perfectly still, and let Skip have his way. There was no going back now. They hadn’t gone as far as they could, but Skip wasn’t going to fight the attraction anymore. He could argue about age differences until he was blue in the face… or he could give the man what he wanted. Skip would get fucked. No hearts would be broken. It was just sex. Sex between two consenting adults. Never mind that one of the adults had changed the other’s diaper one time. Or that one day the roles could be reversed.
“Want to come in my hand or my mouth?” He whispered against Chad’s lips while he jacked Chad, sliding his foreskin over the sensitive head that poured scalding precum. Chad slammed his head against the wall, squeezing Skip’s arms so hard Skip would have bruises tomorrow. He rocked his hips against Skip, thrusting his cock into Skip’s hand. “Tell me what you want Chad. Tell me how to please you.”
“Yessir,” Chad murmured, and Skip’s hold on his fragile sanity dissolved. He shoved his sweats down to free his own dick. He jammed his dick into his hand with Chad’s and squeezed them together. “Oh, god!” Chad cried out, biting his lip again. His eyes wilder now. The ice blue nearly swallowed by the black of his pupils. He pumped his hips, forcing his dick to slide in Skip’s hand.
“That’s it, Chad. Fuck my hand. Feels incredible doesn’t it, your cock sliding inside its sheath. Imagine how it will feel inside me. You’ll feel so good inside me. Fuck me, Chad. That’s my boy. Get it out. Let me hear it.” Skip didn’t give him a chance to say a damned thing. He sucked his bottom lip back into his mouth, and bit him until his muffled groans turned to muffled screams. Heat spilled over Skip’s hand, but Chad didn’t stop fucking his hand. He wrapped his arms around Skip’s shoulders, and tried to pull him closer. Skip wouldn’t let him; he liked the distance between them. He wanted to look into Chad’s eyes, while he drained the man of everything he needed.
“Skip…” Chad shattered, calling Skip’s name until he was hoarse. That’s when Skip let himself go, fucking his hand, feeling his dick sliding inside its sheath, and the half-hard, silken heat of the cock pressed against it. “Skip…” Chad took over the kiss, pulling Skip’s lip into his mouth, releasing it to call Skip’s name. “Come… now. I want to see you come. I want to know I did that to you. I want to know that I made you lose control. I need you to show me what I do to you.” The kid learned too damned fast. His crystal blue eyes sucked the soul out of Skip, and he rose on his toes to shoot his fucking soul between them.
When he was finished, he sank to his knees, and pressed his forehead to Chad’s hipbone. He kissed the bullet wound, and licked their mingled cum from the man’s abs.
* * * * *
Past midnight in the garden of good and evil. Chad kept looking back at the lights in the house as he walked the landscaped grounds. His mind felt clear for the first time in his life. Yet, everything was confusion. The squirrels that resided in his personal attic were silent at least.
Skip’s shadow crossed in front of one of the windows on the lower floor. He sat at a desk and leaned back to stretch. Chad hadn’t asked him what he was doing in the office. It wasn’t his business. He’d helped clean up after the pot roast and the sex. Especially the sex. Pot roast and sex. Would he come out of this with some weird fetish in which the scent of roasting beef would make him horny as all get out?
He watched the moon make its way over the sky, and the stars come out and go away. He wasn’t cold. He’d grabbed his heaviest sweats off the top of his stack of folded clothes after Skip had licked him to another orgasm. He had bite marks on his lip, and the inside of his wrist. No telling what was left over from the shower or what was from the kitchen.
When the heck had his life become all about his dick?
The moment he walked into that tavern carrying his father’s ashes, and met the man’s gaze.
He looked back at the window just as Skip walked across the room in front of it to retrieve a book from a bookcase. He had a phone pressed to his ear, and was talking animatedly while trying to juggle the phone and the book. He smiled, laughing at something the person said on the other end.
The smile that wasn’t for him still sent a bolt of something painful through his chest. He couldn’t catch his breath. His stomach fluttered and flittered. He rubbed his belly, subconsciously wondering if he was coming down with Skip’s flu.
Skip smiled again and came to the window. The phone and the book were nowhere to be seen now. He lifted the sash and leaned out. “It’s almost dawn. Want to get out of here for a while? Work off breakfast?”
Chad looked around at the slightly pinkish tint to the sky. When the hell had it gotten so late… early? His inner clock was off. Seriously off. Along with everything else. He looked back up at Skip who was tugging his sweatshirt off. “What do you have in mind?” He shouted back.
“I have a couple of bikes stored under the back deck. Or a run. You pick. Meet you on the deck in fifteen minutes.”
Skip closed the window before Chad could answer. He didn’t have any bike gear. He did have one pair of running shoes, even though he did most of his running in boots. He climbed the steps to the back deck, and went upstairs to the guest room Skip had assigned him to, and found a pair of cold weather compression pants, and pulled them on under a pair of cotton USMC shorts. He laced up his Nikes, and changed into a long sleeve t-shirt with the same insignia as the shorts. He left his cover and his phone, and grabbed his sunglasses.
Skip, dressed in a pair of tight shorts and a long sleeve compression shirt, met him on the back deck. He grinned at Chad, letting his gaze drift over his body. “You are a walking recruitment poster.”
Chad felt the blush start at his hairline, and creep down his entire body. “I should probably buy some regular clothes.”
“Not going to help, the body is a dead giveaway.” Skip slapped his ass as he tied a bandana around his head, and slipped on a pair of sunglasses. He hadn’t shaved since the morning after the snowstorm. The strawberry-blond fuzz on his chin made him look so much younger than he probably was. “It’s not the clothes, Chad. It’s the way you hold yourself.”
“I’ll try to relax.” He stretched his legs one at a time behind him, then lifted them up onto the rail like Skip was doing.
“God, no. Just… it’s hot. Really hot.” Skip smiled, and that stomach aching, heart-piercing pain was back. “What’s your poison today? Wheels or feet?”
“Feet. I haven’t run in a long time. And I don’t know the trails. I’d rather not kill myself falling over a cliff.” He took the backpack Skip handed him, and strapped it on. He felt the water slosh inside. “How far do you usually go?”
“I thought I’d take it easy today. Maybe ten miles. You up for that?”
Chad could do ten miles in his sleep. “Only if you are, old man.”
“Oh, good, just what I need, some young whippersnapper slowing me down,” Skip said smiling, and the stomach thing happened again, hard enough to suck the breath right out of Chad. “You okay?”
“Yeah.” Chad stood up straight, and brushed off the strange feeling. “Let’s get going. You lead, I’ll keep up. Let me know when you need to take a break.” He wasn’t teasing. “I mean, I’m used to twenty or more-mile humps with sixty pounds on my back. We’d run until we puked, and then run some more. Ten miles are nothing to me.”
“Point taken, Marine. We’ll run until one of us can’t. Then, you can carry me back. How’s that work for you?” Skip slapped him on his shoulder, and took off at a jog down the steep stairs. He checked his watch when he hit the path, and set off into the rising sun. Chad watched his tight ass for a minute before following down the stairs, and into the chill of the early morning.
He’d never run through the woods before. The trail wasn’t some well-beaten path through the suburbs. They climbed steadily, and Chad had to jump over roots to keep from falling. There was wildlife along the way, deer mostly. Skip stopped about five miles in, and held out his arms as he backed up. Chad bumped into him, and grabbed him by the water pack to keep him from falling over. “Bear,” Skip whispered, moving them backward until they came to a fork in the road. “Okay, she didn’t see us. Or didn’t care about us. Maybe she was the one that knocked on my door last year. Dunno. Just don’t want to be eaten today. At least not by a bear.” He winked at Chad, and that gut-punching feeling damn near floored him. Skip left him again, and Chad chased him downhill for another four or five miles, until they came to the end of the trail near the highway.
Skip ran in place on the side, checking his watch. “That’s twelve miles,” he said, looking up at the sun. “The cabin is two miles that way.” He pointed west, and up the hill. “Or six miles that way.” He pointed along the highway. “Goes through town and back up the mountain. What are you up for?”
Chad didn’t need to look at the sun. It was coming up on mid-morning, and he was feeling no pain. “You lead. I’ll follow.”
Skip lifted his glasses to give him a quick once over, and with a lift of his eyebrow, he took off down the road toward town. Chad laughed and followed. He didn’t mind following that ass in skin-tight pants anywhere.