Chapter Eight
Sully
“Is this the same parking space?”
Dean stood beside Sully’s truck, predictably rusty and red and beat-up from years of constant use. He’d been driving it since high school, a hand-me-down from some uncle or another. He didn’t go very far, and not very often, so he’d never seen fit to replace it.
“As what?” Sully murmured, sidling up to him in the soft shadows that caressed Dean’s smooth young face, the privacy of the secluded parking spot making him feel free and frisky in ways the crowded diner hadn’t.
Dean smirked knowingly. The sexy little shit, always paying attention and noticing things and remembering what Sully had said and all. “The same place where you parked so there’d be no one to see you kiss Grady, silly.”
Sully’s stomach did a little flip-flop at the soft, smooth term of endearment.
Silly. Such a perfect, citified word. A cute, sweet, even soft word.
Almost feminine, even. Not like “bro” or “dude,” but .
.. silly. He liked Dean’s softness. His slight stature and roly-poly middle and cute little face and the way the soft blond stubble covering his head shone in the moonlight filtering through the trees above.
“What, do you have a photographic memory or something?”
“Hardly,” Dean demurred, sliding an elbow atop the bed of Sully’s truck just the same. “But I remember details about things that are important to me.”
Sully arched an eyebrow. “I’m? Important? To you?”
Dean glanced down at his shoes, the same grubby sneakers he’d worn into Pappy’s earlier that day.
He was still in the same outfit, as a matter of fact, making Sully wonder if he’d even brought a change of clothes for the next day.
If not, Sully would have to take him shopping or, better yet, shop for him.
Little plaid boxers to sleep his sexy little ass in.
Or maybe not so little, Sully mused silently to himself, just baggy enough to keep sliding off his narrow little hip bones.
Little khaki cargo pants to traipse around Gravel Gulch in, plenty of pockets for note pads and pencils and other studious, college boy knickknacks.
Maybe a few—sized medium, probably—Pappy’s Pub shirts for good measure.
A good reminder, perhaps, that Dean was just a tourist here.
Passing through. A quiet, gentle, soft, sexy diversion and nothing more.
The thought gave him a little thrill where he least expected it and, perhaps, most needed it.
“Of course you’re important,” Dean said reasonably, as if arguing a point during a speech in some Political Science class and not standing, face to face and crotch to crotch with some small-town country boy who had eyes for him.
“I’m staying in your place, for Pete’s sake.
You just bought me dinner. I’m hoping you’ll give me a tour of Gravel Gulch at some point in the near future so, sure, you’re suddenly, actually very important to me. ”
“Very important to you.” Sully moved closer, boots scuffing on the pavement beneath them. “I like the sound of that.”
He was close enough now that Dean had to look up to peer into his eyes.
Sully liked that, too. He liked being on his home turf.
Liked being the older one, the taller one, the bigger one.
He liked being the working man to Dean’s graduate student, picturing his big, calloused hands all over that soft, studious skin, yielding and shivering beneath his touch.
Liked being the aggressive one and, by the sounds of it, the more experienced one as well.
Sully let Dean look up into his eyes for a good, long minute.
It was spring in Pistol Creek, Kentucky.
Warm this time of year. Or, as the dusty old brochures in City Hall said, “sultry.” The kind of weather to put a spring in one’s step, a bee under one’s bonnet and, in Sully’s case, a rattlesnake in his faded old blue jeans.
“So?” Dean asked, voice low and soft to match the gentle spring breeze that caressed his pretty little face the way Sully’s big, hungry fingers literally itched to. “Is it?”
“Is it what?” Sully asked, voice lower still, and deeper by far. He felt it rumble through his chest on the way to his lips, saw Dean’s eyes widen in reply. He liked that, too.
“The same place you parked that night? Last year?”
“Yeah, Dean, it is.”
Dean simply nodded, scrubbing his head stubble absently in the pale moonlight.
His fingers looked long and thin. Delicate, almost. A student’s fingers.
Attached to a city boy’s hand. Nervous and tender and awkward and .
.. sweet. Sully wondered, idly, what those soft fingers might feel like atop his hard, sweaty skin.
“But why?” Dean practically croaked.
“Old habits?” Sully murmured. It wasn’t late.
Hardly past 9:00. But in Clay County, they rolled up the sidewalks practically at 8:00 on the dot.
The Wagon Wheel was already turning off its sign, the parking lot empty and nary a car cruising past as they stood, just around the block from where they’d shared an electric dinner, as secluded as one could be just off Main Street.
“So the Wagon Wheel?” Dean started.
“Is where I take guys, Dean.” Sully was insistent.
He’d already made it clear he was gay. Already made it clear he was single.
Unattached. More than available. And horny as hell, judging from Sully’s dancing trouser snake.
He didn’t want to pressure Dean. Jesus, the poor kid looked like a deer caught in the damn headlights.
But from the way he’d acted at dinner, curious and knowing and quiet and not surprised by Sully’s antics at all, Dean didn’t necessarily seem opposed to the idea of, well, something more. “Guys I want to spend more time with.”
“Yeah,” Dean offered, as if ticking off the last of his excuses. “Guys you want to spend time with ... on a ghost tour, right?”
“Jesus,” Sully snorted, chuckling dryly in the quiet of a cookie cutter country town two over from his own. “I know you’re smarter than that, kid.”
Dean nodded slowly. “I just,” he began, glancing down at his shoes again. “No one’s ever been interested in me before. Not like this. Not the way you talk to me, and what you talk to me about, and how you look at me, Sully. How ... how you’re looking at me right now.”
“I find that hard to believe, Dean.”
“Why would I lie about something that makes me look so utterly pathetic?”
“If that’s true,” Sully countered, stifling a grin at Dean’s budding melodrama. “If that’s the case, then it’s their loss, okay?”
Dean neither shook nor nodded his head. Sully reached out with a trembling hand, gently tucking him under the chin to lift Dean’s head upward so that their eyes could meet. “Their loss. Okay?”
“Okay,” Dean croaked, quivering chin resting gently atop Sully’s big hand, light as a feather and warm as soft butter melting across a stack of fresh, steaming pancakes. “Yes, fine, but ... why? Why me?”
“Why not you?” Sully chuckled, letting his hand drift away lest Dean feel the vague tremors in his fingers. “Have you seen yourself, Dean?”
“Yeah,” Dean blurted, eyes shining in the moonlight. “That’s why I’m asking why a guy like you, a whole ass man, with cowboy boots and a bar and dimples and those big, veiny fingers would be interested in a little putz like me.”
Sully had to laugh. “It’s not funny,” Dean insisted, balling up those little fists at his side and squaring off against Sully indignantly.
“I’m not laughing at you, Dean,” Sully insisted. “I just thought a smart kid like you would know, that’s all.”
“Know what already?” Dean practically begged.
“Know that putzes are all the rage right now,” Sully insisted, inching a little closer.
“Stop teasing,” Dean muttered, even as his back pressed against the truck bed and he found himself no longer able to retreat from Sully’s persistent, if gentle, advances.
“You don’t like it?” Sully murmured, soft and low and urgent.
His boots scraped on the pavement as he inched a little closer.
He didn’t expect an answer and, predictably, Dean didn’t give him one.
“You don’t like me teasing you like this?
You don’t like another man being this close to you?
So close you can feel the heat from my body, the same way I feel the heat from yours?
Tell me to stop, Dean. Tell me to stop and I’ll back the hell up and stay six feet away for as long as you stay in Pistol Creek. ”
Dean glanced up, eyes liquid and lips gently parted.
“I wish I could,” he croaked, almost helplessly, as if betraying his own best intentions.
“I wish I could say I didn’t like it. I wish I could say ‘no’ to you, Sully.
But ever since I walked into your bar today, my whole world’s been turned upside down. Right is wrong and yes is no and—”
Sully kissed him then. Soft and sweet and full, right on the lips.
He heard the surprised gasp before he tasted it, hot on his tongue and fast in his mouth.
Dean was too excited to be a bad kisser, his lips electric and slick, his breath hot and fast, his tongue tentatively dancing along the cusp of Sully’s before he pulled away, licking his lips and glancing down coyly.
“No is yes?” Sully teased, finishing Dean’s thought for him.
Dean merely nodded, gasping, eyes wide and fingers gently clutching Sully’s waist. “Sorry,” he croaked, dragging them away reluctantly and wiping his presumably sweaty palms against the legs of his own jeans. “I didn’t know where to put my hands.”
“You see me complaining?” Sully asked, digging in his pockets for the keys to his truck. Dean watched him warily. “What ... what now?” His voice was hesitant, yet hopeful.
“Now?” Sully jiggled his keys, nodding to the far side of the truck. “Now you get in and I take your ass back home, that’s what.”
“Yeah, but ... then what?”
Sully winked, yanking open his door like a mic drop. “Then? Then I watch you go upstairs and don’t leave until I see the kitchen light go on, that’s what.”
“You’re ... you’re not coming?”
“With you? Up there?” Sully drifted into the truck, leaning over the bench seat to yank the latch and swing open the passenger door. Eventually, Dean slid in, yanking the rusty door shut behind him. “Hell, naw, kid.”
“But you... But we...” Dean was incredulous, waving his arms and nodding as if to point to the side of the truck. Or, in this case, the scene of the crime. “We just kissed.”
“Yeah, kid, we did.” Sully fired up the motor of his old Ford truck, setting the engine to rumbling and rocking as he backed out of the silent side street, heading off down Main Street toward the old Route 9 that would bring them back to Pistol Creek.
“Doesn’t that mean anything to you?” Dean pressed, clinging to his seat belt the same way he had the whole way to dinner.
“Of course it does, silly,” he teased, winking as he glanced over at his passenger. “I’m the one who did it, remember?”
“Not sure if you could tell, but...”
“That was your first?”
“That bad?” Dean hung his head.
Sully steered with his left hand, elbow out the open driver’s side window per usual. Quietly, in the darkened cabin, his right hand reached out to give Dean’s knee a little squeeze. “I’d be lying if I said it wasn’t the best kiss I’ve ever had.”
“Then why are you dropping me off, damn?”
Sully chuckled. “You think I want to?” he groused. “Think I like sitting on these big, fat, overstuffed blue balls of mine? No, fella, I certainly don’t.”
“Then come upstairs and let me do something about them, sheesh.”
Sully gritted his teeth and drove down the empty two-lane road back home. He slid his fingers from Dean’s knee and gripped the wheel with both hands, smiling. “Look, Dean, not to overstep but have you ever been with a guy before?”
“No.” His response was quick and certain.
“Ever been with a girl before?”
“Also no.”
“So then, you’re gonna waste your V-card on some broken down country boy whose hands smell like beer in some flea bag storage apartment?”
“Sounds divine,” Dean beamed, eyes moist and dreamy in the truck cabin as if he was watching his favorite romcom.
Sully snorted. “Okay, then, fine. Give it tonight, Dean. We had some fun. I’m pretty excited, are you?”
Dean glanced down at his lap. “Obviously.”
Sully kept his eyes on the road, lest his already crumbling willpower cave altogether. “Fine, then sleep on it, if you can, and tomorrow? We can maybe take things to the next level.”
“Tomorrow?”
“Yeah, Dean. One quick sleep from now. Tomorrow.”
“What’s the next level in this self-imposed country courtship of yours?” Dean harumphed, crossing his arms over his chest. “A firm handshake? A swift pat on the ass?”
“Keep talking like that,” Sully growled playfully, doing his best imitation of a high school football coach threatening his star player with another ten pushups after practice. “And I’ll make it two days.”
“What? Why? This is bullshit!”
Sully took his eyes off the admittedly empty road and gave Dean a shuddering glare. “You wanna make it three, City Slicker?”