Chapter 12

Brian

 

The real thing was so much better than the fantasy. Holy crap. Adam practically melted in my arms, and his kiss was firm but not forceful. Exactly the way I loved it. And it was also a million times better than the fantasy because it wasn’t a fantasy—it was really happening. I was sitting on a beach on a beautiful day with the most gorgeous man on the planet in my arms, and if he moaned like that again, I was going to straight up die right here and now.

He drew back and looked in my eyes. My God. I’d always known Adam had amazing brown eyes, but they’d never been as stunning as they were right then.

He was a little out of breath as he said, “If you keep kissing me, we’re going to have to figure out a definition for ‘moving slow.’”

I laughed and realized I was breathless too. “I’m starting to think we’re going to have to play that definition by ear.”

“You’re probably right.” His laugh was so quiet it was almost inaudible. He watched his finger trailing along my jaw. “I, uh, definitely wasn’t expecting this.”

“Yeah. Same.” And I really was rethinking what I meant by moving slow. I was so not a man who jumped into bed on a first date. Hookups weren’t my thing. Never had been. I just wasn’t wired for it. With the way my whole body responded to Adam’s touch—warming all over, goose bumps prickling along every inch of skin, my cock hardening until it was painful in my snug jeans—I was considering making an exception.

A shy grin formed on his lips, and his eyes flicked up to meet mine. “I knew there was a reason I still wanted to see you after the talk show.”

Smoothing his hair, I chuckled. “So we could make out on a beach?”

Adam laughed for real this time. “Well, I mean… I’m not against making out on a beach with you.” He swallowed, and sobered a bit. “I just mean… I had a feeling…”

I nodded. “Me too. I didn’t expect this, but…”

He held my gaze, then moved in for another kiss. He wasn’t the first man I’d ever kissed who had facial hair, so why did the brush of his soft, short beard drive me so crazy? Eh, who cared? It did, and I liked it.

Beside me, tags jingled and Lola huffed. Adam and I separated, both turning to her. Beside her paws she had a stick that was partially chewed, but apparently she’d lost interest in that. Now she had her chin on the sand and was staring up at us, big brown eyes full of Dad, can we go?

“Poor baby.” Adam reached down to pet her. “We’ve been ignoring you, haven’t we?”

“She just wants to get up and move.” I patted her side. “We’re on a beach full of seagulls and sticks, and she probably still wants to run around.”

“Well.” Adam turned to me again. “We can always pick this up later.”

“You don’t mind?”

“I’m not going to bore your dog to death by making her a third wheel.” He squeezed my hand. “We can wait, right?”

Waiting probably wasn’t a bad idea unless we wanted to get arrested—and make the tabloids—for blowing each other on a beach. Which also might be a little weird with my dog sitting here.

“Good idea.” I rose, grimacing as I adjusted myself. Adam did the same, and that did nothing to calm me down. Knowing I’d turned him on was heady as fuck, and I was definitely ready to abandon all pretense of moving slow if it meant turning him on again. Why did we have to do this out here and not somewhere with a bed nearby?

I took Lola’s leash off the branch, and she immediately started bouncing and spinning, yipping with excitement. “Yeah, you would be happy about interrupting.”

Adam laughed as we started walking along the beach again. “Will she be upset if we leave her at the house and go to my hotel room?”

My head snapped toward him. His cheeks colored, and he cleared his throat as he dropped his gaze and slid his hands into his pockets.

“You… are you serious?”

Looking at me through his lashes, he nodded. “I don’t want to ditch your dog, but I’m not against having some time to ourselves either.”

Oh, Lord. Why are we three hours from home right now?

I swallowed. “We don’t have to go to your hotel. You could, um, come to my place.”

Adam searched my eyes. “You want to?”

“Do you?”

He gulped, looking ahead again. Good God, we sounded like a couple of terrified teenagers, not grown men who’d slept with other men before.

I moved the leash to my other hand and stepped around behind Lola so she wasn’t between Adam and me. Then I slipped my free hand into Adam’s. “Relax. I think all this caught us both off-guard, but no pressure, okay?”

He glanced at me, features still tight with uneasiness. “I’m, uh, probably going to have to follow your lead, to be honest.”

“Why?” I ran my thumb along the back of his. “It’s not up to just me, you know?”

“No, it’s not, but I… I just don’t really know what I’m doing.”

I cocked my head. “What do you mean?”

Fresh color bloomed in his cheeks. After a moment, he halted. So did I. Lola hit the end of the leash, stopped, and sat down, and I watched Adam stare at the ground. Finally, he took a deep breath and lifted his gaze.

“I mean,” he said softly, “I’ve never done this before. Any of it.”

“You’ve never…” I blinked. “Are you a virgin?”

Adam flinched and broke eye contact again, cheeks getting even redder. Slowly, he nodded.

“Hey.” I gently cupped his face and lifted his chin so we were looking at each other again. “It’s okay.” I ran my thumb along the edge of his beard. “I’m not judging. I just wasn’t expecting it, that’s all.”

He scowled, eyes flicking away from mine. “Most people do think I’m a slut, so…”

“No, that’s not what I meant,” I said quickly. “I didn’t think you were a slut, but I guess… I mean, I guess I just didn’t think about it.”

He relaxed a little. When our gazes met again, his features softened. “So it’s not weird?”

“It’s unusual.” I shrugged. “But it’s not a bad thing. Just means I want to be careful not to rush you.”

A ghost of a smile appeared on his lips. “Really?”

“Yeah. Experience isn’t a requirement. I promise.”

That seemed to ease the remaining tension, and when he exhaled his shoulders visibly relaxed. With a self-conscious laugh, he said, “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to be so defensive about it. Just… not many people know how to deal with a twenty-eight year-old virgin. And for some reason, everyone’s convinced that since I don’t have a boyfriend, I’m out sucking every dick I can find. If the press ever caught wind of the truth…” He grimaced.

“It’s none of their business.” I brought his hand up and kissed the backs of his fingers. “You didn’t even have to tell me unless you wanted to.”

“I figured you should know so you weren’t expecting me to be like a porn star or something.”

I chuckled. “Dude, I know guys who’ve been around the block a million times and still don’t know what they’re doing, and I’ve been with guys who have no experience at all and knock it out of the park.”

“Oh. Really?”

“Yeah.” I gestured down the beach, and we started walking again, much to my dog’s delight. While she plodded ahead, tail wagging, I continued, “The thing that separates the good from the bad are the ones who are willing to listen. You know, pick up on what their partner wants. Or ask. The others…” I rolled my eyes. “They’re usually the ones who think they know what you’ll like, and really don’t care if you do.”

“Oh.”

“So don’t worry about it.” I rubbed my thumb along his again. “I mean it—there’s no pressure. We don’t have to jump into bed tonight. You don’t have to do anything.”

“What if I want to do everything?”

I looked at him. He looked at me.

Somehow, I found my voice, and whispered, “Do you?”

Adam nodded. “Yeah. I think I do.”

I gulped. He did too. So much for taking things slowly.

And without another word, I tugged on Lola’s leash, and the three of us headed back toward the car.

 

~*~

 

The drive back to the Kingston ferry was mostly quiet. Lola was sound asleep across the backseat, which wasn’t a surprise. Though Adam and I had been eager to get back on the road, neither of us had the heart to disappoint Lola. So, after we’d made it back to the trailhead, we’d stopped to throw her toy and let her splash in the water for a while. Then I’d toweled her off, strapped her in, and driven just a little faster than I usually would toward Kingston. We swung into a Burger King in Port Angeles and got her a hamburger and us a couple of drinks. I wasn’t particularly hungry. Neither was Adam, apparently. Nerves? Probably.

Now we were waiting for the ferry to finish unloading while my dog slept off her food coma in the back.

“How far is your place from here?” Adam asked. I realized then that his knee was bouncing.

“About a half hour across the water.” I slid my hand onto his thigh, stilling his leg. “Then another forty-five minute drive.”

He nodded, staring straight out the windshield at the boat and the line of cars steadily emerging from its car deck.

“We’ll get there,” I said.

“I know.” He flashed me a quick smile that was somehow equal parts devilish and shy. “Maybe we should have waited until we were closer to home to start kissing.”

The thought of those long kisses on the beach had my cock stirring in my pants, and I shifted a little. “Yeah. Maybe. But we’ll be there soon.”

“Good.”

The silence lingered for a moment.

“Can I ask you something?” I asked after a while.

Adam turned to me, brow creased. “Why am I a virgin at my age?”

“Um. Well, I was going to try for something a little more tactful than that, but… yeah.”

He watched the cars again, and took a deep breath. “I didn’t have a chance when I was younger. I had crushes in high school, but I was too scared to let anyone think I was gay.”

“Right, because of your family.” I nodded. “Totally makes sense.”

“And then when I got to California…” Adam sighed, sounding tired. “I was working two jobs and trying to get to auditions in between. I didn’t have time.”

“Or the energy, I would imagine.”

“That too.” He let his head fall back against the seat. “Then once my career started…” He went quiet again, and stayed that way.

All around us, engines were turning over, and I realized there were no more cars coming off the ferry. So, I started the car, and neither of us spoke as I followed the slow line onto the boat. Once we were situated near the back of the lower deck, I shut off the engine again.

We unbuckled our seatbelts but stayed in the car. After another minute or so, Adam spoke again.

“Things got complicated when my career started. When I’m working on a film, that’s all I’m doing. Then there’s reshoots, promo tours, premieres—all of that shit. So I’m traveling a lot.” He chewed his lip, watching something up ahead of us, though his eyes didn’t seem focused. “Then suddenly I did have time. I had bigger breaks between films. I could afford to not be working on back-to-back movies. And I suddenly had a name, and I’d been out since my very first interview, and…” He closed his eyes and released a long breath. “Next thing I knew, I had guys wanting to sleep with Adam Jacobsen. Not with me. With my name. I didn’t want to be somebody’s trophy, and I was also terrified of someone realizing I had no idea what to do in bed, and that getting out to the press.”

“Wow. I never realized how much fame can torpedo your social life.”

Adam laughed bitterly and opened his eyes. “Fame torpedoes pretty much everything. I love my job, but that part… it’s not all it’s cracked up to be.”

“I can’t imagine.” In fact, I was suddenly a bit queasy just talking about being under that much scrutiny from strangers. God help me if someone noticed us right now. With a shudder, I said, “It actually sounds kind of horrifying.”

“Sometimes it is.”

The ferry was pulling away from the dock, and we both gazed out at the water and the passing landscape. The safety brief played over the loudspeakers before falling silent and leaving only the sound of the engines and the water. Behind us, Lola snuffed and fidgeted in her sleep, then sighed and went quiet again.

Adam twisted around to look at her, and he chuckled. “She really does sleep hard, doesn’t she?”

“She can, yeah.” I glanced back at her myself. She was completely flat with her long gangly legs hanging off the seat. I turned to Adam, ready to make some comment about how she’d crashed when she was a puppy, but froze when I realized how close our faces were.

Adam’s eyes flicked to my lips and back.

I leaned in, but hesitated. “You know, if we do this, we’re just going to wind ourselves up.”

“You make it sound like I’m not already wound up.”

Oh God. Oh my fucking God.

I nervously licked my lips, which drew his attention right back to my mouth, and the hunger in his eyes made my spine tingle.

To hell with it.

I reached across the console and curved my hand over his thigh. We both hesitated again, and I glanced self-consciously out the windshield. There were people out and about on the car deck, though they weren’t all that close to my car, and fear almost got the best of me.

But then Adam’s warm hand slid over the top of mine on his leg, and everything around us may as well have disappeared. I ignored my pounding heart and drew him in. It had only been maybe two hours since the last kiss we’d stolen before getting back in the car, but it felt like I hadn’t tasted him in years. What was I going to do after he went back to California? Because Christ this man could kiss. Whatever worries he had about not being good in bed, one thing was for sure—he had this part down to an art form.

I ran my thumb along his inseam, and he shivered. Getting a little braver, I slid my hand a little higher on his leg, and the soft moan against my lips almost did me in. Maybe it was just because this was all new to him, but he was so deliciously responsive.

Abruptly, his hand landed on my wrist, and for a second, I was scared I’d gone too far and he was about to shove me away.

But he didn’t.

He guided my hand higher.

Right to the thick hard-on straining the front of his jeans.

“Oh fuck,” I murmured into his kiss. He responded with a quiet groan, gripping my wrist tighter as I kneaded him through his pants. His beard tickled my chin as my tongue teased his lips apart. God, the minute I got this man alone, I was going to—

Somewhere on the boat, a car door slammed. Then there were voices and footsteps moving past the car, and Adam and I separated. We both glanced out the window as some people walked by, and despite my uneasiness about Adam’s fans scrutinizing us, I couldn’t help but snort at the disapproving look that came from the middle-aged woman in the group.

Still, it was a reminder that we were out in public. I suspected the last thing Adam needed was to get busted in a grope session on a ferry.

Adjusting myself—again—I moved back into my own seat. Adam did the same, cursing softly.

I kept a hand on his thigh, and he put his hand over the top. The look we exchanged said nothing if not we need to get home right the hell now.

Oh yeah, we do.

Because the things I want to do with you would get us arrested in a heartbeat.