Chapter 2 #2
A rack of T-shirts caught my eye. They were brightly colored and ugly as all fuck, but it was the type of ugly that made me laugh and want one immediately.
I’d always made what my Aunt Ginny called interesting fashion choices.
I preferred to think of them as fun—the more colorful, the better.
And now law school was done, I was looking forward to ditching the boring-as-fuck polos and khakis I’d been wearing for the last few years in an effort to blend in.
On weekends, at least, and as often as I could get away with it.
I took one of the shirts off the rack and held it in front of me. “Want one?” I asked Granger.
He snorted and pulled a face that made it clear how he felt about the idea. “You’re not serious? I wouldn’t be caught dead in that. And neither would you.”
Well, I guessed as often as I could get away with wearing something like this was a big fat zero. Granger was right, of course. Bobby Merritt from Buchanan might wear that shirt, but Robert Merritt would never. I told myself it had only been the beer talking and put the shirt back on the rack.
Granger went out and filled the tank, and when he was done, the guy hauled himself to his feet and said, “Thirteen dollars.”
I pulled out a twenty and handed it over.
The guy took it and pushed the button on the ancient cash register.
Nothing happened. The guy punched the keys again and rattled the drawer.
Nothing continued to happen. He yanked on the drawer harder.
There was a loud clatter and a noise that sounded suspiciously like a piece of broken metal falling into the insides of a cash register.
The guy’s brow furrowed and his lips thinned in annoyance.
“Well, shoot. Looks like this darn thing’s finally given up the ghost.” He scratched his receding hairline and hummed.
“Don’t s’pose you’ve got thirteen dollars even? ”
“Nope.”
We stood there in uncomfortable silence while I wondered if Granger had thirteen dollars. Then I thought about how awkward it would be explaining that he was paying for his own gas after all and decided I wasn’t going to ask.
“Ain’t there anything else you need?” the guy asked hopefully. “Snacks or somethin’?”
I blinked, my beer-soaked brain trying to make sense of his suggestion. We’d stopped at a twenty-four-hour grocery store in Richmond, but I’d buy snacks if it would get me out of here.
I ambled around the store checking out what was on offer, but with all the beer I’d drunk earlier roiling around in my gut, nothing caught my fancy.
I glanced at the T-shirts again but remembered the face Granger had pulled.
In the end I grabbed some random candy bars, two bags of chips, and a couple of Cokes, and when it felt like I was close to the right amount, I gave up and dumped the armload on the counter. “Gimme seven dollars’ worth.”
The guy shoved them in a bag. He hesitated when he got to the end, his brow creasing, and then added a lottery ticket to the bag as well. “That makes it seven,” he said. “Maybe you’ll get lucky.”
I glanced outside and saw Granger leaning against the car, arms folded over his chest and head tilted back in the sunlight, and it occurred to me that I was already lucky. And I was about to get luckier, once we got to the cabin and I got Granger naked.
“Much obliged,” I said with a grin.
I was tempted to ask the guy what he’d do for the next customer who needed change, but it felt like if I pointed out the problem, he might expect me to help solve it, and I had a hot guy waiting for me. So for once in my life, I kept my trap shut and headed outside.
Granger turned off the highway and drove us the rest of the way into town, and I saw that he hadn’t been kidding.
It really was a nothing town. I counted a dozen empty storefronts along the main street, and a couple of stores and a white painted church on a corner, and that was about it.
There wasn’t even a grocery store that I could see.
“Does anyone live here?” I asked. “Or do they just rent the empty buildings out for making B-grade horror movies?”
Granger shrugged. “Uncle John bought the cabin for the lake views, not the shopping.” He shot me a wicked grin. “Besides, we’re not exactly here to take in the sights.”
And there it was, the invitation I’d been waiting for. “Well, I dunno,” I said. “I might have something you’re interested in seeing.”
Granger threw back his head and laughed, the sunlight catching the planes of his face and making him glow. I’d have said he looked like an angel, except Granger Kelley was the devil himself between the sheets.
The cabin was a little ways on the other side of the town.
“It’s not much,” Granger said with the lazy shrug of a guy who had money. And maybe it wasn’t, for someone like him—just a basic little cabin, the exterior a little weathered with age, surrounded by trees. But it was a hell of a lot nicer than the trailer I’d grown up in.
“It’s okay,” I said, and my gaze caught the flash of light on water through the trees as we pulled up. “You do any fishing?”
Granger’s eyes sparkled as he pushed his door open. “Not here for fishing, Bobby.”
And something in my still-drunk brain didn’t like the way he said my name that time.
Usually it sounded like a secret only he knew, but right then it sounded a little like a joke he was making.
Exactly the way that assholes like Nathaniel Bynow-Madsen said Robert.
Except the joke in this case wasn’t me trying to be better than I oughta be, but that I was exactly what I was.
Granger made it halfway to the porch, then turned back, his eyebrows raised and a grin hovering on his lips. “You coming or what?”
I shook off whatever the hell shit was on my liver and got out of the car. “I’d better be,” I said. “Multiple goddamned times.”
“Oh, you can count on that.” Granger laughed and I followed him inside the cabin.
We didn’t even make it to the bedroom before Granger made good on his threat.
There was a couch in the middle of the main room, made out of real leather probably.
It looked warm from the sunlight streaming in the glass doors that led out back to the lakeshore.
Granger stood in front of it with his back to the light, all smirk and clean angles—his shoulders, the hinge of his jaw, the fall of his blond hair.
He was already half undressed by the time I got inside.
His shirt was untucked, his belt open, and he looked at me like he was deciding something.
The exact same way he’d looked at me the first night he’d kissed me, years ago now back at Lassiter.
I didn’t move.
Granger stepped forward and put his hand on my chest, fingers sliding into the spaces between the buttons. Then he tugged on the fabric, just enough to pull me forward. We kissed slowly, his mouth opening against mine as though we had all the time in the world.
My hands went automatically to his waist. Warmth bled through the denim of his designer jeans and into my palms. His hip bones felt sharp under my thumbs.
He made a small sound when I pulled him closer, and I wanted to memorize it—that breath and the way his lashes caught the sunlight when he closed his eyes.
“Take this off,” he said against my mouth.
His or mine? It didn’t fucking matter.
I started with mine, tugging the buttonholes of my shirt over the buttons, fingers too clumsy to work them with the precision a decent shirt deserved.
I shrugged the fabric off, and it fell to the floor somewhere behind me.
Granger curled his fingers around my shoulders, mouth parted slightly.
He bit his lip, color rising in his cheeks.
“Your turn,” I said.
Granger undressed like he was unveiling a work of art. He shrugged his shirt off, and the light caught his ribs and the pale stretch of his flat stomach. His skin was almost luminous, and I reached out and touched his chest, running my fingertips over his nipple.
He kissed me again, harder this time, one hand fisting in my hair. The tug sent a bolt of heat down my spine. I pushed him back toward the couch, and he went until the back of his knees hit the edge, and then he dropped onto the leather.
I stood over him. He looked up at me, his hair falling into his eyes. I could see his cock pressing against his jeans, already hard, and I wanted to put my mouth on him so badly I could taste it.
Granger’s tongue swiped over his bottom lip as he watched me.
I dropped to my knees.
The floor was rough underneath me, the wide planks old and uneven. One of them creaked a little.
I pushed Granger’s belt buckle out of the way and undid the button and zipper of his fly. He lifted his hips so I could pull his jeans and underwear down his thighs. His cock sprang free, already gleaming with moisture at the tip, and I wrapped my hand around it and watched him shudder.
“Like that?”
“Yeah.” His voice was rough. “Just like that, Bobby.”
I took him in my mouth.
It didn’t take much to wreck Granger Kelley.
Never had. The weight of him in my mouth, the heat and the taste, was familiar but never old.
Granger’s hips pushed up, trying to get deeper, but I kept it slow.
I teased stripes up his shaft, then pulled off to pay attention to the soft skin of his balls. He gripped my hair again.
“Bobby!”
I breathed through my nose and sank down, taking him properly inside this time.
I opened my throat, and Granger made a sound like he’d been punched in the gut.
I sucked, hard, and the next series of sounds that escaped him were higher pitched, desperate, and cut off as his thighs tensed under my hands.
I kept moving slowly, building a rhythm. I hollowed my cheeks on the way up and took him deep on the way down. His cock hit the back of my throat and I held it there, swallowing around him. His whole body shuddered.
“Fuck—yes! Right there. Don’t stop—”