Chapter 9
All the stress, anxiety, and exhaustion that had been accumulating since Ford started his run for Congress and increased exponentially once he was sworn in melted away after twenty minutes of cuddling with Trevor, kissing him, touching him.
“You’re magic,” Ford whispered as he nibbled on Trevor’s lip and licked his tongue.
“Why’s that?”
His mind floating, Ford mumbled, “You make everything seem okay,” before leaning up for more of those drugging kisses.
“It will be.” Trevor’s voice was gravelly. “We’ll make sure of it.”
The ‘we’ swirled around in Ford’s head and he wondered what kind of ‘we’ he and Trevor Moga could become. Before he could think on it too much, Trevor dragged his lips across Ford’s jaw, down his neck, and over to his nipple, stealing his brain function along with his breath.
“Trev,” Ford gasped. “Love when you do that.”
“I know.” Trevor flicked his tongue back and forth over the sensitive skin, making it pebble. “That’s why I do it.” He blew hot air over the nub and then drew it into his mouth, suckling as he reached for the other nipple and pinched it.
“Ungh!” Ford moaned, his entire body shuddering in reaction to Trevor’s ministrations. He clawed at Trevor’s back and dropped his legs open, making more room for Trevor to grind on top of him. “I’m close.”
Trevor moved his mouth to the other nipple and sucked hard as he shifted slightly and lined their cocks up next to each other. “Do you want to come like this?” He thrust his hips down, pressing their dicks between their stomachs and creating delicious friction.
“Uh-huh. This is good.”
“’Kay.” Trevor scooted up until they were face-to-face, curled his arms under Ford’s, and grasped his shoulders from underneath. “You feel incredible,” he whispered into Ford’s mouth as they writhed together.
His eyes rolling back, Ford moaned, “Yeah. So good.”
Early ejaculate dripped from their cocks and they slid faster and harder.
“I’m going to.” Ford clasped Trevor’s backside and yanked him down as he thrust up. “Going to. Going to. Going to.” His breath caught, his muscles froze, and he stared into Trevor’s eyes as pure pleasure washed over him and he shot. “Trev!”
“Yes,” Trevor groaned. “So gorgeous.” He slammed his mouth onto Ford’s, biting and licking and sucking in a messy ferocious kiss as his hips worked furiously. Before long, he arched his back, gasped, and grunted over and over as he spilled his seed between them. “That was so damn good.”
“Yeah,” Ford croaked.
“We’d better not answer the phone for a while. Both of us sound like we’ve been…” A smile breaking over his face, Trevor chuckled. “Doing exactly what we’ve been doing.”
“It’s the middle of the night. We’re probably safe from calls.”
“True.” Trevor buried his face in Ford’s neck and sighed happily. “We should clean up before we get flakey.”
“Give me a minute. I can’t feel my legs yet.”
“Oooh, now I know it was a good one.”
“The embarrassingly loud sounds didn’t tip you off?”
Trevor raised his head. “You are a bit of a screamer. I like that.”
“Never have been before.” Heat climbed up Ford’s neck. “I can’t believe we’re talking about this.”
“Why?” Trevor rolled off him, lay on his side, and propped his head up on one hand. “We just did it. What’s the problem with talking about it?”
Ford shrugged. “I’ve just never talked about this stuff. It’s not exactly dinner conversation, you know?”
“True.” Trevor rubbed his palm across the ejaculate pooled on Ford’s stomach. “Kinda nice though, right? To be free to say anything we want?”
“Yeah.” Gathering his courage and forcing himself to ignore his feelings of shame, Ford said, “When I’m with you, it’s like I’m a different person. A sexy, fun, wild person.”
“I’m not sure either of us is particularly wild, but you’re insanely sexy and I have a lot of fun with you, Ford.”
“I have a lot of fun with you too.” Ford dragged his gaze up and down Trevor’s body. “And you’re very handsome.”
While drawing swirls through the semen on Ford’s skin, Trevor said, “Right when you come, the veins in the sides of your neck throb, your nostrils flare, you part your lips, and your eyes get really wide, like you can’t believe how good it feels.” He took in a shaky breath and gazed into Ford’s eyes. “I’ve never seen anything more erotic.”
“I…” Ford swallowed and then cleared his throat. If he hadn’t just come, that description would have had him hard and ready to go. “I don’t know what to say.”
“You don’t have to say anything.” Trevor slowly raised his hand toward his mouth and licked their seed off his fingers. “I’m just telling you what I see when I look at you.”
Speechless, Ford stared and bit his lips as he panted for air.
“Are you ready to go to sleep?”
Though he was tired, he wanted to spend more time getting to know Trevor. “Not yet. Do you want to talk for a while longer?”
“Sounds good.” Trevor fluffed a pillow and then shoved it under his head. “What do you want to talk about?”
“Doesn’t matter.” Ford snuggled into the bed and pulled the covers up to his shoulders. “I just like talking to you.”
The sides of Trevor’s lips curled up. “Me too.” He skimmed his hand over Ford’s hip and gently caressed him. “Did you have any pets growing up?”
“Always. My parents’ house was like a zoo.”
“Really? Tell me about them.” Trevor scooted closer and slid one leg between both of Ford’s. “I always wanted a pet but we traveled a lot so we couldn’t do it. I remember I once bought those dry sea monkeys in the mail and I was so disappointed when they didn’t grow into actual monkeys.”
“I tried those too.” Ford moved his right calf against Trevor’s leg, enjoying the hair tickling him. “Pets. Let’s see. My mom is a dog person. She had golden labs all her life. She says they do best in pairs so we always had two labs.”
“Those are beautiful dogs.”
“They are.” Ford nodded. “Someday when I’m not living in a studio, I’d like to get one, but with the amount of back and forth I do to Missouri, a cat might make more sense. My father and my sister Kimberly have a soft spot for cats so they left food out on the porch for neighborhood strays and inevitably one or two of them ended up in the house at any given time.”
“The dogs didn’t bother the cats?”
“Nah. I think they know if another animal is part of the family and they don’t hurt them.” He paused, grimaced, and then cleared his throat. “Well, they don’t intentionally hurt them.”
“Ohh, I sense a story there.” Trevor smiled excitedly, his dimples making an appearance. “Let’s hear it.”
“Stories, actually. Plural. And they don’t have happy endings. You sure you want to know?”
“Well, I can’t not know now that you’ve set it up. I’ve seen Pet Sematary. No real life situation can be more horrifying than Stephen King’s imagination, so I should stay relatively unscathed.”
“Relatively being the operative word there.”
“This is sounding more and more ominous. You might have to hold me really close during the night to fend off the nightmares I’m sure to have.”
Tickled at the silly conversation, Ford wound his arm around Trevor’s waist. “Seems only fair seeing as how the nightmares will be my fault.”
“Yes,” Trevor cheered under his breath. “He fell for it.”
Ford chuckled and shook his head. “All right. Nightmare inducing pet stories. Here we go. My mom once found a duckling all alone. No mama duck. She brought it home and we fed it and played with it. The thing was fluffy and adorable and surprisingly friendly. We had an old dog crate and we made it the duck house with a bunch of old towels and blankets and a water dish.”
“So far so good…” Trevor said.
Ford tilted his head to the side and raised his eyebrows. “So like I said, our dogs were friendly. Really friendly. And one day, the duckling was sticking his head out through an opening in the crate as a dog walked by, so he licked it to say hello.”
“Okay?” Trevor said expectantly.
“Turns out a dog tongue is more powerful than a duckling neck.”
“Oh no.”
“Oh yes. Dead duck. At least that one was fast and painless.” Ford paused and looked at Trevor meaningfully. “Not like the hamster.”
“Hamster?”
“Yes. Labs are really active, especially when they’re young. It’s good to give them toys so they don’t get bored and destroy the house.”
“Sure.” Trevor dipped his chin. “That makes sense.”
“We had all sorts of toys for the dogs and one of them was this ball puzzle thing where the dog has to handle it just right to get a treat to fall out. It keeps their attention for a long time and there are different levels to make it harder as the dog learns it.”
“Got it. Like a doggie Rubik’s Cube. Except instead of trying to solve it faster, you can make it harder.”
“Faster?” Ford blinked. “You can solve a Rubik’s Cube?”
Trevor nodded.
“Without prying it apart and then trying to jam it back together?”
“Yes, without that.” Trevor snorted.
“Sometimes I forget how smart you are,” Ford said, awed.
“I’ve managed to wow you more with my mad Rubik’s skills than with the thing I do with my brain to earn money.”
“I’m impressed with that too, but I don’t completely understand it. The Rubik’s Cube, on the other hand, taunted me for years. At one point, I considered solving it by peeling off the stickers and rearranging them.”
“Technically, I wouldn’t say that falls under the definition of solving it.”
“Well, it was the closest I was going to get.”
Trevor kissed Ford’s cheek. “I’ll teach you how to solve a Rubik’s Cube.”
“Really? You remember how.”
“Yes, I remember.” Trevor smiled and kissed him again. “Finish your story. You got the treat puzzle ball for the dog and…”
“Right. So the dog had that game and he really loved it. Fast forward a couple of years, my sister Judy gets a hamster, complete with cage, food, and toys. One of the toys is a ball the hamster goes in so he can run around the house but still be contained.”
“Oh no.”
“Oh yes.”
“Did the dog pry the ball open and eat the”—Trevor scrunched his nose—“treat?”
“No. He was a sweet dog and he never wanted to hurt the hamster. But he saw that ball rolling around and he thought it was a toy so he chased it and batted at it, and by the time one of my parents noticed, it was too late.”
“Too late?”
“Sayonara for the hamster.” Ford sighed. “There weren’t any marks on him and his body looked normal so we think it was a hamster heart attack.”
“A hamster heart attack,” Trevor repeated. “Part of me wants to laugh and part of me is sort of grossed out.”
“Uh-huh. That’s about right.” After several long moments of silence, Ford wriggled and cleared his throat. “So. What do you want to talk about next? Maybe pick something cheerful this time.”
“I thought pets would be a cheerful topic! I didn’t expect all these violent deaths.”
Ford winced. “Fair enough. Sorry about that.”
“With landmines at every corner, there’s really only one way to make sure we go to sleep on a happy note.”
“What’s that?”
“We’ll have to make out,” Trevor said solemnly.
Remembering Trevor’s joke from earlier, Ford said, “Yes! He fell for it.”
“Cute.” Trevor tugged on Ford’s hip until he rolled on top of him. “Very cute.”
“Glad you think so.” Ford gazed down at smoky blue eyes and a happy grin. “Because the feeling is very mutual.”
“Happy birthday, Laura,” Ford said as he kissed his sister’s cheek. “Only one more year to be in your early forties. Live it up while you can.”
Laura rolled her eyes, shook her head, and lightly smacked his shoulder. “You’ll have to wait until I’m turning fifty to make your old jokes, little brother.”
“What jokes?” asked Kimberly as she walked up. “Because I’m older than both of you.”
“Ford called me old,” Laura said.
“I did not!”
“You implied it.”
Ignoring the accusation, Ford said, “Besides, calling someone old is a statement, not a joke.”
“See, you just admitted it!”
“I didn’t admit anything. I’m merely pointing out a fact.”
“What you’re doing is using lawyer logic. I’m getting Craig to stand in for me in this conversation.” Laura flicked her gaze around their parents’ backyard, spotted her husband, and yelled, “Craig!”
“You can’t do that,” Ford said.
“I just did.”
“There’s no stand-ins!” Ford turned from his middle sister to his eldest sister. “Kimberly, tell her there can’t be a stand-in.”
“Ford’s right. Stand-ins aren’t fair,” Kimberly agreed.
“You always take his side.”
“Who always takes whose side?” asked their youngest sister Judy as she approached.
“Kimberly always takes Ford’s side,” said Laura.
“True.” Judy nodded. “What is it about this time?”
“Ford called me old.”
“Ford! We’re at her birthday party. That’s rude. Accurate, but rude.”
Laura glared at Judy.
“The issue isn’t if he called you old, it’s if you can have Craig stand in for you in the argument,” said Kimberly.
“What argument?” Craig said as he walked up. He put his arm around his wife and reached his hand out to Ford. “Welcome home. Sorry you couldn’t make it to the hunting trip last month.”
“Oh, uh, thanks.” Ford shook his hand and hoped the heat on his neck was a sunburn and not a blush. “I, uh, had something come up at the last minute.” Saying the word ‘up’ in reference to his weekend at Trevor’s apartment in early April did nothing to curb the warmth that had spread to his cheeks at the reminder of where he’d been. He pulled his hand away, coughed into his fist, and glanced down. “Did you guys have fun?”
“Yeah. It was good.” Craig looked at Laura meaningfully and her expression sobered. He cleared his throat and then tilted his head to the side and said, “There’s something I want to talk to you about. Do you have a minute?”
“Sure,” Ford said worriedly. Craig and Laura had met in college, when Ford was twelve years old. Twenty-four years being a part of someone’s family meant they were close, but his brother-in-law didn’t usually pull him away from his sisters to have a talk. Ford’s immediate reaction was to worry that Craig had somehow found out what he had been doing and who he had been with when he was supposed to be hunting, but he reminded himself that Craig practiced construction law and rarely left the state. There was no reason for him to know what happened in DC or New York.
Once they were standing in a quiet portion of the yard, Craig said, “Let me cut to the chase. Is something going on with your dad?”
“My dad?” Ford said in surprise. Concerns about his own situation evaporated at the possibility of his father having a problem. “What’s going on?”
“I figured that’s what you’d say.” Craig sighed and dragged his hand through his hair. “I told Laura we shouldn’t get in the middle of this but your mother’s upset so of course Laura—”
“Craig!” Ford snapped. “What’s wrong with my dad?”
“We don’t know. Your mom confided in Laura that he seems off lately, but when she presses him, he says everything is fine.”
Part of that explanation made sense—his mother had always been closest to his sister Laura, so if there was something worrying her, Ford would expect her to talk with Laura. The other part, however, was completely out-of-character because Ford’s parents didn’t keep secrets from one another.
“What does off mean? Like sick?”
“I don’t know.” Craig shrugged. “Laura felt bad about breaking your mom’s trust by telling me about it, but she wanted me to keep an eye on him during the hunting trip to see if I noticed anything.”
“And did you?”
“Yeah.” He nodded. “I think he was moving a little slower, getting tired faster, and kind of distracted, but like I told your sister, I don’t usually watch him that carefully so I may have been imagining it, and even if I wasn’t, your dad is sixty-eight. He’s aging. It happens.” Craig took in a deep breath and let it out. “You see him more than us because you’re in DC. If you haven’t noticed anything, he’s probably fine and your mom’s just imagining things.”
Either that or Ford had been so preoccupied with his selfish worries that he had failed to notice a problem with his father. Guilt swept over him.
“I’ll talk to him and see what’s going on.”
“You can’t tell him your mom said anything. If you do, she’ll know Laura told you.”
“What are we? Twelve? You sound like one of your kids.”
“There’s nothing childish about wanting to keep my wife happy. One day you’ll understand that it’s true what they say.” Craig playfully thumped Ford’s bicep. “Happy wife, happy life.”
The explanation for why that’d never happen was on the tip of Ford’s tongue, but he held himself in check. Laura’s birthday barbeque was not the place for that revelation.
“I can talk to my dad and see if he’s okay without telling him my mom or Laura are worried.” Not that his father would be surprised. His parents had been married for nearly half a century and they’d never stopped worrying about each other’s well-being.
“Laura’ll be happy to hear that.” Craig patted his shoulder. “My work here is done.” Over two decades together and making Laura happy remained his top priority.
Craig wandered back to Laura, who was chatting with Judy and her husband Thom. After twenty years of marriage, which included multiple periods of unemployment and the stress of raising four sons, one of whom had emotional challenges and another who had a learning disability, Judy and Thom still stood close to each other and held hands.
Though Ford had always yearned for the loving, affectionate bonds he saw in his parents’ and sisters’ marriages, he hadn’t considered it possible in his own life. Until now. As Ford watched their interactions, his mind flashed to Trevor.
He didn’t exactly understand what Trevor’s job entailed, but he doubted there was a work-related reason for him not to have stayed in the White House when he had visited DC in March, so Ford suspected he had come to be with him. After the New York trip a month later, they’d kept in close contact thanks to the new phone Trevor had given him and they’d seen each other on a fairly frequent basis, but every day he wasn’t with Trevor was a day he longed for his welcoming smile, tender touch, and sharp mind, and he missed him.