EIGHT

 

 

Ken started gloomily at his own reflection in the mirror, tugging at the unyielding, uncomfortable, thick black fabric of the suit jacket. It barely fit over his shoulders, and he didn’t even look like himself anymore.

Sighing, he raised his arms, almost hearing the groan of the strained jacket as he ran his fingers through his dark, shaggy hair, trying to tame it into some sort of semblance of order. His own discontent blue-green eyes stared back at him, as though wondering why Ken was putting himself through this.

He looked good, he supposed, though not really himself, and he turned around and looked over his shoulder to gaze at the view from the back. No, he might as well have been any nameless, faceless man.

When he glanced up at the door, he brightened up immediately and gave a happy grin and a wave. Justin was there, looking as out of place as a surfboard in a fine china shop in his comfortable sweats and t-shirt, but at least he was more suitably dressed for the weather than Ken was.

“Hey,” Justin greeted, giving him a quick little grin that did some odd, unexpected things to Ken’s heart. At that moment, he had the most bizarre urge to demand that Justin do that again, that he smile, which Justin so rarely did. “You look good.”

“I’ll drop dead of heat exhaustion if I take two steps outside in this,” Ken grumbled, trying to hide his own smile at the compliment. When a man like Justin said something like that, it seemed to Ken that he meant it. Justin didn’t mouth polite nothings.

“At least you’ll leave a pretty corpse,” Justin murmured, and Ken flushed, which wasn’t something that he was all that used to doing. Had Justin just said that? Or was the heat getting to Ken already, even in this air-conditioned store?

“I have a few more to try on.” It seemed safer for Ken to ignore the comment, so he did his best, though he couldn’t be sure just what it had meant. Hadn’t he just been thinking that Justin wasn’t the sort of guy who just made casual comments? From most people, Ken could just brush it off, but not as easily from Justin.

Ken stepped away from the mirror and into the large dressing room. A fancy place like this had actual rooms, not just curtained alcoves, with a door that actually closed. As he moved, Ken struggled against the prison of the jacket, trying to tug it off, and Justin stepped in to help him free himself.

“Great, get in here,” Ken invited when Justin looked like he might just stay outside of the door. “We have to talk about the song, right? And you can help me with these damn torture suits.”

It was a good excuse. Maybe. Ken wasn’t sure that he was convincing himself. Part of him got an illicit little thrill out of stripping down, out of the fact that Justin was watching.

“So the song,” Ken chattered, mostly trying to distract himself from Justin’s steely gray eyes, fixed on Ken and not looking exactly disappointed in what they were seeing. Very conscious of his own body in a way that he was not at all used to, Ken drew the pants down off his legs. “I think I’d like it to focus a lot on the unrequited part of it, you know?”

Justin nodded, his face solemn and hard to read as he tugged out a small, worn notebook from his pocket.

“Yeah, okay,” he agreed. “The last two songs were definitely love songs, so it’s probably time for that.” Was there a slight smile on Justin’s lips? How much did he know about what was going on in Ken’s head? Probably more than Ken would like, the guy didn’t miss much.

“Yeah, I mean, I think we’ve all had the experience of having a huge thing for someone, but they’re not going to love you back.” Ken dropped his gaze as he tugged another pair of pants up. These ones didn’t even feel like they were suffocating him, which was a huge improvement. “So maybe the best thing is to move on, even if it’s hard. Even if you sometimes think that you can’t.”

It seemed that Ken’s brain had been working on this while he hadn’t been paying attention. He’d been trying so hard to get some time alone with Aaron, but that was harder than he would have thought. Aaron didn’t tend to stick around much for anything outside of work.

Which didn’t mean that Ken was ready to give up, or did it? In some way, it felt almost right to think of just letting Aaron go. And as the days passed, it was going to be harder and harder to be casual about inviting Aaron to the wedding.

At the very least, he could let go of the idea of doing a duet, something that he hadn’t admitted, except to himself, that he wanted to do. This would be his song, and maybe it would be a sad, pathetic one, but that sort of suited him anyway.

“Yep,” Justin agreed, and Ken found himself searching Justin’s handsome face, trying to figure out what was going on behind it. Ken had asked him the previous night if Justin had a thing for someone and if he knew how Ken felt, and Justin had said that he did.

What was the story there? And then he had the very strange thought, who would be enough of an idiot to give Justin up—this intense, passionate, talented man—if they could have him?

Justin’s eyes met Ken’s, and Ken’s hands stilled, forgetting utterly to finish doing up his pants. It wasn’t like him to be shy, but he almost felt that way as he raised his own hands to his shirt and started to undo it. If the pants had been too small, he should try the shirt, too, right?

Button by button, he undid the dress shirt, the stiff fabric parting. Justin’s eyes darted down to the skin of Ken’s chest as it was revealed, and Ken fought off a soft gasp, a strange surge of heat, as he saw the brilliance which suddenly appeared, making those enigmatic gray eyes almost seem to glow silver.

Who moved first? Ken wasn’t even sure. Maybe they both did since they met in the middle of the dressing room. Something which neither of them had admitted out loud suddenly made itself known, a sort of dam which had been holding back forbidden, impossible feelings bursting as their arms wrapped around each other.

Justin’s body was small, and hot, and tight, and it seemed to fit perfectly against Ken’s. He lowered his head, and Justin raised himself up onto his toes a little, and their lips met for the first time.

There was passion, definitely, heat, the pressure of arousal forming immediately in the pit of his stomach like it had just been waiting to be summoned. But it was more than that, too. It was like something within Ken recognized something in Justin, and Ken had kissed a lot of people, but he’d never had this feeling of knowing before.

Groaning, Ken swiped his tongue over the seam of Justin’s lips, urgently requesting entry, and he got what he wanted. Justin parted his full, soft, lush lips, and their tongues swept out to meet each other, tangling in a complicated dance.

Justin’s sweats were loose, and Ken groaned as he struggled to pull Justin even closer against him, plunging his hands down into them, past the waistband of Justin’s boxers, clutching at the twin firm, ripe globes of Justin’s ass. It was impossible, what they were doing. It would only end badly, but at that moment, it was impossible to care.

As Justin tilted his body forward, Ken pressed, too, and he felt an intriguing hardness, the length of Justin’s cock obviously swollen with need. Ken suddenly shifted his hands and grabbed Justin by the shoulders, using his greater strength and size to trap him against the wall of the dressing room, their mouths joined, connected, not parting for even a second.

There should have been some hesitation, some thought about the lines that they were crossing, the lines which really shouldn’t be crossed. If Ken did have any of those thoughts, though, they were dim and unformed. The kiss swept through his mind, his body, his soul, and all other considerations crumbled into dust.

Justin was making this noise, this gorgeous, sexy little sound somewhere between a soft whine and a whimper, and Ken was pretty sure that would be enough to make him shoot off right in his expensive pants. He didn’t seem to be able to resist. He went back to Justin’s ass, slipping his fingers into the waistband of his pants, and trapped him shamelessly between his own body and the unyielding wall. He couldn’t get enough, touching all of the smooth, bare skin that he could reach.

“Ken,” Justin gasped, and those strong, sure hands tugged Ken’s pants down. Heedless to their cost, Ken kicked them away, then shoved his strong thigh between Justin’s legs, right up against his swollen cock, grinding against him.

What was even happening here? Was he actually making out with this man, the one that he had been so sure could never be interested in a kid like Ken? It seemed impossible that ten minutes ago, at the very most, he had been thinking how bored he was, how he would rather be anywhere else, doing anything else but trying on suits.

Now, that suit was falling off of him, and Ken was anything but bored.

Finally, Ken pulled his hands away from Justin’s gorgeous little ass, instead letting the tips of his fingers close on the hem of Justin’s worn, soft t-shirt. In a second, Ken had it hauled up over Justin’s head, and for the first time he got a really close look at those tattoos that covered the tight, toned, ripped body of this beautiful man.

Justin had always seemed a little bit dangerous to Ken, so quiet and intense, and seeing that ink which covered his lovely body only added to that. This was a man unlike anyone that Ken had ever had in his bed before, the sort of man that Ken really had no idea how to predict.

And it just made him want Justin more. He had tried to hide, even from himself, how badly he had started to want this man, but ever since he’d been trapped in that elevator with him, he had found himself drawn to him. Wanting to know him, and not just his body, either.

Why did this feel so vivid, so real, to Ken. He had always liked sex, touching, kissing, but just the little bit that they were doing already made him crazy, like he had never really, truly experienced any of this before. Like this, with Justin, was the first time, or maybe it should be more accurately said that it was the first time that mattered.

Well, whatever this was, he was in it now. More than that, he intended to push this as far as he could, because who knew when Justin would come to his senses and stop this? Only maybe Justin had no intention of doing anything of the sort, because his hands, strong and sure, were settling on Ken’s cock, the thin cotton layer of his underwear the only thing that was between them.

He could come, just from that. Handjobs had never been that exciting to him but damned if Justin didn’t know what he was doing, know just how to touch Ken to bring out the fire, the heat, the sheer, overwhelming desire.

From the sounds of it, from the way that Justin was leaking through his own underwear as he rubbed against Ken’s bare leg, Justin was having some of the same issues. They were barely doing anything, but it seemed like far more, and Ken groaned into Justin’s mouth as they rocked together, groping, touching, grinding.

Just when Ken was sure that he was going to come, that the pleasure couldn’t be denied for more than a few seconds longer, that was when all hell really broke loose. Ken could feel, from the way that Justin was tensing up and making noises of urgent pleasure against his lips, that he was close, too, and he just needed a moment longer before he’d get to feel Justin come apart completely in his arms …

“Ken! Ken, where are you?”

The voice was familiar and stridently shrill, piercing into his ears and deep into his brain. Why hadn’t he remembered? Why hadn’t he kept it in mind that he had told her where he was going to be?

Even so, it would have been a pretty jump for him to go from her knowing to her showing up. Some things, it seemed, never changed, and her desire to meddle in his life was very definitely one of those things.