A Limited Engagement Read online

  I said, “I don’t think you used me. I think you fell in love with me.”

  He was silent for a long time. I thought my heart would shatter into pieces like an asteroid waiting for him to say something. In the end all he said was, “And for that --?”

  I stood up, hugging myself against the cold, although between the brandy and the fireplace, the room was warm enough. “And I fell in love with you,” I said. I wanted to sound strong and convincing, but I just sounded pained. “The second morning at the Mansfield, the first time you let me fuck you. I made some stupid joke, and you laughed, and you kissed my nose. I’ve never wanted anyone or anything as much as I want you. I would give anything --”

  He looked away at the fire and a muscle moved in his jaw.

  “And I couldn’t stand there and watch you marry Anne Cassidy. It’s not right. It’s not fair to any of us. Not even to her.”

  He said impatiently, “Anne knows exactly what she wants. And so do I.”

  “Then why are you settling for companionship and respect when you could have all that and love and passion as well?”

  “Because you’re twenty-three years old and queer -- and what the hell does that make me?”

  “Older and queer!”

  He put his head in his hands.

  I stared at him. “Well, that’s that,” I said. “Anyway, you’ll be okay. It’s New York. It’ll be a nine days wonder and then no one will even remember.”

  He looked at me with something close to dislike. “You don’t think so?”

  “Hell, I don’t know.” I rubbed my face. “I’m sorry. Sorry to hurt you, but not sorry to have stopped it.” I added, “If it is stopped.”

  “Oh, it’s stopped.” He sounded sour.

  And that really was that. All at once I was out of ideas -- and energy. I said, “I can’t keep saying I’m sorry. I guess…you know where to find me.”

  I started for the door and he said harshly, “Adam, if you thought you were in love with me, why didn’t you say so?”

  At that, I had to smile. “I did Ross. I said it in every way I knew. If I’d actually said the words, you’d have broken it off. You didn’t want to know.”

  “You think I do now?”

  I shook my head. “No. You’d still prefer to think it was just sex.”

  Ross said slowly, “But you came here anyway. Drove all the way up here on the chance that this is where I would come.”

  “Yeah.”

  “Knowing how I would feel about you after this.”

  I admitted, “I couldn’t stay away.”

  Neither of us said anything. The fire popped sending sparks showering.

  His voice was very low as he said, “I could have hurt you very badly; you know that.”

  “You could have killed me,” I said, “And it wouldn’t have hurt as much as watching you marry someone you don’t love just because it fits your image or whatever the hell it is with you.”

  It wouldn’t hurt as much as watching him marry anyone who wasn’t me.

  “You’re so sure it’s you I love?”

  “I am, yeah.” I said it with a sturdy confidence I was a long way from feeling -- but that’s what acting is all about. “I think that’s why you kept giving into my demands, because you didn’t want to break it off either. I don’t think you’re that afraid of me.”

  “I wasn’t, no.” Astonishingly, there was a thread of humor in his voice. “But then I didn’t fully grasp what you were capable of.”

  To my surprise he held out a hand. I took it, and he drew me down onto the sofa. For a moment he sat there, absently playing with the fingers of my ring hand. My fingers looked thin and brown and callused next to own manicured ones. When I didn’t have a paying acting gig -- which was usually -- I worked as a bicycle messenger for a courier service. Yeah, safe to say eHarmony probably wouldn’t have set us up as the perfect match.

  He said, “Has it occurred to you that if I did love you, you destroyed it with your actions?”

  I swallowed painfully. Nodded.

  “And you still don’t regret it?”

  “Maybe I will.” I met his eyes and tried to smile. “Right now I’m sort of numb.”

  “That’s two of us.” He leaned forward, finding my mouth, kissing me. I slid back into the cushions, surrendering to whatever he wanted. He kissed me softly, and then harder. His mouth bruised mine, a punishing grind of lips and teeth, but I opened to it, opened to him, and almost immediately he gentled. His hands moved under my sweater, pushing it up.

  His touch was warm and sent a tingle spreading beneath my skin. I murmured approval.

  “I have never known anyone like you,” he said.

  “But that’s good, right?”

  He snorted and sat up, but his fingers went to the buttons of his tailored shirt.

  I yanked my sweater up, banging my head on the arm of the sofa as I pulled it over my head, dropped it. I humped up, wriggling out of my jeans.

  Ross was hurrying to undress too, and it was a relief to know that the desire between us remained intact. It was always like this, hungry and hurried -- and then sweet and satisfied. It was…nourishing.

  Because, regardless of what Ross told himself, it wasn’t just sex -- and it hadn’t been for a very long time.

  I kicked my legs free, kicked my jeans away. Ross stood up, unzipped, and stepped out of his trousers. I brushed his long, lightly furred thigh with my hand.

  Naked, he lowered himself to me and I ran my fingers through his hair that was drying in soft silky black strands smelling of rain and firelight. I pressed my face to his throat and licked him, licked at the little pulse beating there. He exhaled a long breath. Relief? Resignation?

  I said, “It wasn’t easy. Just so you know -- it --”

  He pulled back a little. “No. I know. When you opened the door you looked --” He considered it and then said, “Terrified and sick and hopeful all at the same time.”

  “That pretty much sums it up.” I wanted to make a joke of it, but it wasn’t funny.

  Everything that mattered to me was going to be settled in the next few hours. Maybe minutes. I didn’t know if this was a hello fuck or a goodbye fuck. Maybe even Ross didn’t know.

  “I love you so much,” I said, and my voice shook.

  “I know.” He sounded pained. So…goodbye then?

  I kissed the underside of his jaw, and he tipped his face to mine and found my mouth in hot, moist pressure. Something as sweet and simple as kissing: mouths moving against each other, opening to each other, the sweet exchange of breath.

  His tongue slipped into my mouth, a teasing little thrust, and I sucked back. He tasted like Ross with a brandy chaser.

  I kissed him, and he whispered, “You’re fearless, aren’t you? Going to the papers, coming here tonight, opening up to me now. I don’t think I’ve ever known anyone as fearless as you.”

  I moved my head in denial. “I’m scared,” I said. “All the time. I’m just stuck in drive. When it comes to you, I don’t know how to stop or how to reverse.”

  He shook his head a little, his mouth found mine again, nibbling my lower lip, moving his mouth against mine in feathery, teasing brush. I nuzzled him back and his kiss deepened. I liked his weight lowering on me, warm and solid, I liked the roughness of his jaw against my own, I liked his taste and scent, and the feel of his fingers against my cheek -- and the insistent prod of his cock in my belly.

  I put my hands on either side of his face and said, “Can you just tell me if this hello or goodbye? I just want to know, so I can stop…hoping.” The alcohol and exhaustion made it easy to be honest, to accept whatever the truth was going to be. If the answer was no, then in the morning I would deal with it but tonight we were going to make love.

  A little grimly, he said, “What if it’s goodbye? Are you planning to write a book about me next?”

  I shook my head. “If it really is goodbye, I’m all out of ideas.”

  Ross raised one eyebrow
. “No ideas at all?”

  “Other than the obvious: make this a night you won’t forget.”

  His face softened. He said, “There isn’t one night with you that I’ve forgotten. Nor a single day. You must know that much.”

  “I know how it is for me.”

  And then we said nothing for a time, communicating by touch. I thought he does love me, he does -- even if he hasn’t realized it, hasn’t accepted it -- he does -- hissing a little breath of pleasured surprise as he pinched my nipples, making them stand up in tiny buds.

  “You do like that,” he whispered, his mouth tugging into another of those sexy little smiles.

  “I like it when you lick them too,” I whispered, tugging him closer, smoothing my hands over the hard flesh of his back and shoulders. Hard muscle and soft skin -- the musculature of a normal healthy adult man, not a movie star, not an iron man. Our naked bodies rubbed against each other, starting to find that rhythm, my own cock was rock hard and requiring attention, jutting up, nestling against his.

  Ross groaned, and his mouth drifted down my throat and over my shoulder, stopping to lick and kiss, to bite and linger. I groaned and my throat protested squeakily, and he kissed me there too, tenderly.

  “Thank God,” he said. “Thank God, I didn’t…”

  I stopped that with more kisses.

  “I could make you happy,” I told him. “I’d do everything in my power to make you happy.”

  He looked up, surprised. “You do make me happy.”

  “Sometimes.”

  He bent his head; his tongue lapped across one nipple, drawing it firm and upright instantly. I sucked in a sharp breath. Moaned. He liked that. I felt his smile as his mouth ghosted across my chest. I moaned again, and soon the rasp of his tongue wet my other nipple. I pushed against him, loving that feel, loving that lave of tongue on teat. My heart was pounding dizzily in my chest. I worked my hand down through the fissures between our bodies, slipping past his groin, cupping his balls in my palm.

  He grunted, closed his eyes briefly. I caressed him, languidly.

  “What do you want?” he asked.

  Something old, something new, something borrowed, something blue, something to have and to hold from this day forward. I got out, “Will you fuck me? I need it. Need to feel like I belong to you.”

  His bit his lip. “I don’t know if I can walk.”

  I chuckled, squeezed his balls, lightly.

  “Hold on,” he jerked out.

  I did, stroking myself leisurely until he was back. He knelt over me, his cock long and thick and beautiful as it rose out of the dark nest of his groin. He rested his hand against my cheek.

  “You’re beautiful, Adam.”

  “So are you.”

  I started to get up, but he pushed me back, smiling. I looked my inquiry and then whimpered as he knelt and took the head of my shaft into his mouth. Oh my God how I loved this. Was there anyone who didn’t? But especially I loved it from Ross. His elegant, clever mouth doing those unspeakably erotic things to me: his wide and warm and wet hole for me to bury myself in. I began to jerk my hips in response to that slow slide. Sensation shivered through me, stripping my thoughts away, and the trembling started.

  You lovely, lovely boy, Ross said, without saying a word. His tongue and lips said precious, loving things instead.

  I arched my back, crying out.

  He began to suck hard. I groped for him -- needing something to ground me with pleasure taking me that high. My fingers dug into Ross’s broad shoulder, watching through slitted eyes, watching how beautiful he was with his mouth wrapped around my dick. I wanted to tell him so, but the sounds coming out of me were not particularly intelligent. An electrical buzz seemed to crackle up my spine, bright lights flared behind my eyelids, I wondered if I might just short circuit entirely in a kind of sensory overload.

  Ross let me feel his teeth and I whimpered, and then he was sucking again so very softly, sweetly. He varied the pressure, sucking me hard and long. My balls drew tight and I began to come in hot wet spurts, crying out his name.

  And Ross swallowed it. I felt tears start in my eyes, but I blinked them back. It was not like he had never done that before, it just…meant more tonight. He swallowed my cum and licked the head of my cock clean, while I lay there panting and trying not to embarrass myself.

  When I finally lifted my lashes Ross was smiling. He bent his head to mine. His mouth brushed my mouth and I tasted myself on him -- salty and sort of sweet.

  He said, “You’ve gambled everything, haven’t you? What are you hoping for?”

  I answered with a question of my own. “Did you think I might be here when you decided to come to the cabin?”

  A strange expression crossed his face. “It went through my mind. I…didn’t think you really would. I didn’t think you’d have the nerve.”

  It was hard to ask, but I made myself. “Did you…hope I would be here?”

  He seemed to look inside himself. “I think I did.” He added ruefully, “But not necessarily for the reason you hope.”

  “But you did want me?”

  “I always want you. That doesn’t mean…”

  “What?”

  And he said, “It’s easy to be brave when you’re young.”

  “No, it’s not.”

  Maybe he read something in my face because he seemed to draw on something within himself. “No. It’s not always,” he agreed. “And you want me to be as brave as you, don’t you? Idealistic youth expects no less?”

  I nodded. “There is recompense, though.” I slipped from the sofa and got on my hands and knees on the rug before the fireplace. I glanced back and he was already settling on his knees behind me.

  “Recompense.” He sounded amused. “That’s a good old fashioned word.” I heard the unlovely sound of something squirting, followed by the delicate scent of oranges and honey.

  “Orange blossom?” I suggested.

  “Dear God,” he said, and his laugh had a choky sound. Still, his eyes were smoky with desire as his thighs brushed mine, and his finger pushed against my body.

  Always so cautious and gentle with this, although we both knew I had three times his experience. One finger insinuating a long, slender length through that tiny puckered mouth, soothing with oil and honeyed oranges, then two slick fingers.

  “I love this part,” I admitted, pushing back against his hand.

  He pushed the third finger in. Always, always three fingers with Ross. Such a careful circumspect man. I liked the little rituals. I reached out my hand and he squirted oil on my fingers, and I smeared the oil the full length of my cock, stroking myself, enjoying the pull while his silky fingers slid in and out, knowing exactly where and how to touch.

  “Now,” I managed. “Please.”

  “You do have nice manners,” he admitted. “Usually.”

  He withdrew his fingers, positioning himself at the entrance of my body, nudging slowly, slowly inside. He pushed smoothly in past the ring of muscle, joining us, wedding us. I drew back on my knees, resting against Ross’s broad chest and belly. I turned and kissed the side of his throat. He stroked his hand slowly down the length of my torso, stroking my belly.

  I shifted in his lap, Ross’s hips pushing against me. His voice was warm against my ear, “I’ll give you this much, Adam. I do love you. Nothing changes that. Nothing could.”

  Tears blinded me for an instant as we rocked together in gentle lullaby motion, that seesaw of give and take, the balancing act…and that was love, right? That was marriage? For richer for poorer, for better for worse, in sickness and in health, push pull, an irresistible force meeting an immovable object…and somehow finding a way to make it work?

  The heat built like a fever, like joy…

  Ross’s hand stroked my hip as he steadied into that rhythm, and then faster and sweeter, and I thrust back at him trying to take him deeper, further, gasping with each hard stroke, shivering with the sweetness of it, the cycle, the circle
, beginning and the end of us that was hopefully just another beginning.

  I pressed my back and spine against Ross and his fingers laced within mine across my chest, and then he surged up into me and held very still and emptied out all the heat and hunger and heartache.

  Then, another couple of tight jerks, and he was slumping forward and taking me with him in a heavy boneless sprawl on the soft fur of the carpet.

  We lay there panting for a long time, unmoving. Ross lifted my hand to his lips and kissed the palm.