22. Dick Reader
22
DICK READER
Tanner
But there is no McLaren. I’m at Elite Rentals near the airport, and the flummoxed brunette at the luxury and sports car rental agency apologizes for a third time.
“Again, I’m so sorry, Mr. Sloan. There’s been some kind of booking error. Normally this doesn’t happen,” she says, twisting her chunky gold bracelets round and round her wrist. “I can make some calls though. See what the soonest is we can get one.” Her hair is slicked back into a tight bun, and she quickly tugs at it too. “Would that work for you?”
This poor woman is going to send herself into a frenzy. “Honestly, it’s fine,” I reassure her for the third time. “I’ll take whatever you have.”
Sure, I’d have loved a hot, sleek sports car. But you don’t always get what you want.
“Let me just try one more time. We have a sister agency in San Jose,” she says. “I can hopefully get one in an hour.”
But Luke lands in forty-five minutes and I want to be there for him when he walks out of the airport. “That won’t be necessary. Whatever you have is good.”
With a frown, she peers at her screen. “I have an Audi,” she says, like she’s handing me a lukewarm beer.
“That’ll be fine.”
Fifty-five minutes later, I’m parked at arrivals, fiddling with my playlists. Do I want to play my favorites from Outrageous Record, Lettuce Pray, and Stone Zenith, or do I want to play a road trip playlist, with open-highway-type tunes? What will set the friendship mood better? I already texted Luke that I was here, and he replied and let me know that he’d landed, so he should be walking out the door any second.
That’s when I’ll return to the friendship zone.
But there’s a rap on the window and I startle. Luke’s staring at me quizzically, with eyebrows lifted at the car in question.
I shrug, like what can you do as I unlock the passenger door. He gets in, tossing his duffel bag on the backseat.
“Um, hate to break it to you, but this is not a McLaren,” he says as he buckles in.
“It’s not?”
“It’s a silver fucking car, dude,” he says, emphasis on silver, AKA the height of boring.
“Shit. Why didn’t they tell me?” I drop my shades on and pull away from the curb. Maybe the shades will hide this wild beating of my pulse. Because, damn. My friend looks good, all casual hot in shorts and a T-shirt.
“You tricked me,” he says.
“Yes. I tricked you into letting me pick you up at the airport. I tricked you into driving my fake sports car. And I tricked you when you were begging me for a ride to the wedding, you freeloader,” I say, heading toward the airport exit.
“Begging for a ride? Was I really begging, Sloan?”
“Felt that way,” I say, and hell yes. I’m doing it. I’m Mister Zing Zing Zing again.
Once I merge onto the ramp, Luke sets a hand on my leg. “But how does this feel though?”
My lips part, and I breathe out hard. “Pretty good.”
Luke runs his big hand over the hair on my thigh. I’m wearing shorts today. I pat myself virtually on the back for that fashion choice.
“Mmm. I’d have to agree,” he says, then covers my knee.
But that’s entirely distracting. So I bat his hand off me. “Don’t want to get in an accident,” I say.
“Not before Christmas,” he says, low and playful.
Shit. I’m going to have to tell him next week is off. I’m going to have to tell him soon.
But as I drive north out of San Francisco, I can’t bring myself to say a word about my change of heart over our plans for next week. Especially since I return the favor, setting a hand on his knee. Running my hand over the coarse hair there, then on his thigh.
“That feels good, Sloan,” he says as he leans his head back against the seat, like one of his cats, indulging in touch.
“Such a shame we’re not in a McLaren,” I say.
“Yeah, what a bummer,” he says, closing his eyes.
An hour later, we’re slugging along the roads to Lucky Falls, with traffic stop and start. But I don’t mind the clogged roads for once. It’s more time alone with Luke. We’ve been debating if hockey is better than basketball.
“Basketball wins. You can actually see the players,” I point out.
“You perv. I don’t need to see their arms or their hair to appreciate their bloodthirsty moves on the ice,” he says.
“I’m not perving on them. I’m just saying, I like to be able to watch the athleticism of the game.”
He snaps his gaze to me. “Wait. Are you saying football is not athletic? Or fun to watch?” He goes full Edvard Munch’s The Scream , clutching his face. “No! My man doesn’t like football.”
I jerk my gaze to him. Did he just…call me his man?
Holy shit.
My pulse soars to the stratosphere.
When Luke lets go of his face, I expect him to catch his misstep. But he doesn’t. He just cranes his neck to get a better view past the traffic. “Looks like we’re stuck for a while,” he says.
But he doesn’t sound annoyed. He sounds…delighted.
“Yeah, we are,” I say as we idle in the stalled traffic.
When he looks my way, his laughter vanishes. Heat flickers in his green gaze as he sets a hand on my thigh again. “So I can finally do this now?”
A tremor of lust rattles my entire being. “Yeah,” I say, a little strangled.
He runs his hand up and down my thigh, and it feels incredible. All my nerve endings spark and sizzle.
“Don’t stop,” I murmur even as the car in front of us inches ahead a few feet, then a few more.
“I won’t,” he says, his voice husky.
For the next few minutes as we drive slowly, he massages my thigh. Soon, I’m burning up with lust, and I’ve forgotten all the reasons why I wanted to cancel Christmas. I check the GPS, hunting for openings, when I spot one on the screen. A country road up ahead. No one will be cutting through that street since it goes in the opposite direction to the traffic.
When I reach it, I flick on the turn signal, and press the gas.
“Where are you going?”
“Detour,” I say, and five minutes later, after we pass houses with weather vanes and horses, then farms with chicken coops and mini vineyards, we’ve reached the end of a country road.
I cut the engine. The windows are tinted. I grab Luke’s face and haul him in for a hot kiss.
He’s pliant, kissing me back deeply. His mouth is greedy. A hungry man needing the sustenance I’m offering.
I push my hands in his golden-blond strands, savoring the way they feel under my fingers. I’ll miss the way they feel. The way he feels as he kisses me with everything he has.
Every ounce of passion, need and heat.
I’ve never felt so perfectly matched, so thoroughly understood as I do with this guy.
And I don’t care about the rules we set the other night. Or the ones I reset last night.
I just need another hit of my man. He’s not mine. But maybe for a little while on a country road, he can be.
I break the kiss. “Backseat. Get on my lap.”
“Fuck yes,” he says, with his trademark enthusiasm that makes my heart beat too fast.
I unlock the belt, then climb over the console, bumping my hip against the seats.
He’s right there after me, knocking the roof of the car with his head, banging his knee against the drink holder.
Who fucking cares?
Not me. Not him.
In no time, he’s straddling me, his knees on either side of my thighs. He reads my mind or maybe my body as he starts rocking against my erection.
I groan as I grab his face, but I don’t kiss him again. I just look at his lust-crazed eyes, his bruised lips, his eager grin.
This man is mine right now.
And I want him to know it. I glance around one more time, checking the scene. It’s mid-afternoon, and the sun is bright overhead. But we’re all alone behind these windows, and I take a chance. I unzip his shorts.
“Fuck, Tanner,” he says, like a warning.
“Want me to stop?” I desperately hope he says no.
He grabs my hand, presses it firm against his straining cock. “Does it feel like I want you to stop?”
I kiss the corner of his lips and murmur, “No. Feels like you want to fuck my hand.”
He shudders. “You can read my dick perfectly.”
With a laugh, I unzip his shorts the rest of the way, and shove my hand into his boxer briefs, wrapping it around his throbbing length.
“Yes,” he mutters, shuddering out his approval. He grips my right shoulder with one hand, then pushes his shorts and briefs down farther with his other hand, freeing his cock more. He returns his hands to my shoulders, using me as a lever so he can fuck into my grip.
I stroke faster, coming in for a possessive kiss as I do. My head swims with lust, but passion too. His mouth is incredible, soft and lush, and I can’t get enough of him. Of his lips, and his sighs, and his moans. Of his cock, and his need, and his heat.
He rocks into my hand, eagerly fucking my fist. I wrench away for a second to spit into my hand, then I return to him.
“Fuck, baby,” he mutters. “Missed you last night. Missed you the night before too.”
My heart slams harder. “Same here,” I say, working his fine cock with my wrist.
“So much,” he mutters, then lets go of my shoulders, showing off his quickness as he unzips my shorts and frees my dick too.
“God yes. Touch me,” I say, begging unashamedly.
Soon, we’re working each other, spitting into palms, then jerking in tandem. I’m shaking with desire and sweating all over. I’m sure the windows are steaming up, and I’m sure, too, that I just don’t care.
I can’t care about anything but his hand sliding over the head of my dick, squeezing out a drop of pre-come and coating my cock with it.
I’m moaning his name, groaning obscenities, when Luke knocks my hand off his dick.
He pushes his body even closer to mine and angles himself on my lap so our dicks are touching. Another lick of his palm, then he takes us both in his hand, gripping our shafts together, using our pre-come to ease the path.
I stare down at the filthy and beautiful sight. Our hard, hungry cocks in his palm. Him shuttling his fist faster and faster still till my whole body jerks with pleasure, then I’m spilling in his palm. Seconds later, he’s shooting too, his hot release covering his hand and our dicks.
It’s wild and wicked and kind of wonderful too.
I don’t know how I’m going to survive this wedding without the world knowing how this man makes me feel.
But I’m going to have to try.
First though, I reach up for a kiss. A tender, needy one, then I ask, “Is my Audi sexy now?”
“I’ve never been so happy to be wrong about a car,” he says, returning my kiss with a sweet, lingering one of his own that sure makes me feel like his man.
A new desire swirls up in me, but this one’s not sexual. It’s purely emotional, this powerful impulse to ask: Would you change your mind?
More words bubble up inside me. Could you be my guy?
The impulse to ask them is so potent, so strong, that I can feel them on the tip of my tongue, fighting for freedom. I have to kiss him a little longer so I don’t blurt something so risky it might destroy our friendship.
But would it? Would asking for more really ruin what we have?
The answer felt clear a few days ago. Maybe even a few hours ago.
Now, it’s mud.
But I want to be sure. I want to know I can hit this pitch rather than strike out looking. So I insist on more of his mouth, traveling across his lips with mine. Maybe I can find the answer to my unasked question in our kiss. When I’m with Luke like this, after we have frantic, passionate sex, it feels like he’d say yes to me.
It just does.
As I nip on his lips, I’m so close to asking. I’m so tempted to do something…dangerous.
I break the kiss, feeling like I’m on the precipice. But before I can even figure out if I have the guts to go for it, he holds up his hands.
“Look. I have jizz hands,” he says, then does a quick shimmy, like a Broadway dancer.
A laugh bursts from me. I can barely catch my breath. Smiling, like he’s so damn satisfied he made me laugh, he pulls away, grabs a shirt from his bag, and cleans up his hands.
Yeah, the side of the road, trapped in a steamy car, covered in our climax, is not the time to ask a no-relationship dude to change his stripes for me.
I need to think this through. Figure out how daring I can be. And at what cost.
By the time we’re on our way, the cars are moving again and we’re cruising. So’s my mind, turning over possibilities and options. “Well, that’s one way to beat traffic,” I say.
“Traffic wasn’t the only thing we beat.” Luke winks at me.
Friendship and romance? Is it possible?
I sure hope so.
At the small bed-and-breakfast in Lucky Falls, Luke checks in first, then waits for me. But the goateed innkeeper in horn-rimmed glasses peers at the screen the same way the brunette did at the rental car agency.
With I’m going to disappoint you concern.
When the guy looks up to meet my gaze through those glasses, he says, “I’m so sorry. There’s been a booking error, Mr. Sloan. We don’t have a room for you.”
I groan, but then bite back the are you kidding me on my tongue. Don’t want to say that out loud.
“I’ll find another hotel nearby,” I say with forced cheer.
Luke turns to me, his expression casual, friendly. “Just share my room.”
Luke. Me. Our lack of restraint. One bed. And my out-of-control emotions for him.
This has bad idea written all over it.
So I say yes.