Chapter 30
The Brandt household was an experience unlike any other. Raised voices were not uncommon, yet no one was angry. They laughed, they teased, and no one was safe. Not the youngest, May, or the patriarch, Ben. Not even me, as a guest.
After I changed into a casual pair of slacks and a sweater, Asher and I joined the family for meatball subs and homemade french fries. They made jokes about my clothes, and Lila, with the sincerest voice, asked if I was a movie star.
No one brought up social standings or scandals.
Laughter happened so often from one person or another, or several, it was near constant.
Even from me. Asher’s entire family had this ability to pull a smile from me, apparently.
I’d never allowed myself to find happiness like this before, never thought it possible.
Asher had opened this door, not only the closet door, but another one, one that reminded me to live.
After dinner, we helped Patty finish costumes for a duck hunt tradition.
Something like flag football, but they did it dressed as ducks for the hunting season currently underway in the state.
We stayed in the living room with Asher’s parents, Nathan, and Stacia while we chatted and finished minor sewing tasks.
Patty and Ben weren’t much older than me.
A fact I tried very hard to forget. Patty shared stories about Asher when he was a kid and then more when their family grew overnight.
Asher never got embarrassed when his mother shared the silly things he did.
He laughed along with everyone as if the stories were about someone else.
The comfort they had around each other reminded me of what I shared with Mary and Paul. Before tonight, I wouldn’t have said I was close with my siblings, but I was, in fact. We had this bond between us, mostly due to how we were raised and by whom, but it was a bond I shouldn’t take for granted.
Near midnight, the chores were done, and the boisterous conversation was exchanged for yawns. We said our good nights and headed upstairs. Surprisingly, Asher and I were staying in his room together. We were adults, but I’d wrongfully assumed his parents might not have seen it that way.
We changed into pajamas Asher insisted on since we would no doubt be woken in the morning by May.
I didn’t mind. But when we were under the covers and his delectable body was next to mine, I couldn’t stop my hands from seeking his skin.
I pushed his cotton pants to his thighs and slotted our erections together for a few strokes before rolling him to his back.
“Luke,” Asher whispered as I kissed down his throat and palmed his bare ass.
“Can you stay quiet?” I asked.
“Maybe?”
“Guess we’ll find out.”
In his childhood room, the same bed he’d probably masturbated in a hundred times or more, I kissed down his torso while stroking the backs of his thighs to tease him. God, I loved touching him, breathing him, tasting him.
When I reached his dick, I kissed the damp tip, then licked and probed his slit. Asher whimpered, then slammed a pillow over his face.
I didn’t go slowly or playfully. I sucked him down, pulled on his balls, and worked a wet finger inside him. Asher came surprisingly quickly and quietly.
Asher’s hard frame and thin curves had my hands burning to sculpt every line.
His natural musk, the cool fragrance of deodorant, and the faint cookie scent of his hair made me hungry for more.
The way he shivered when I tasted him, the little moans he fed my ego, and the way his chest heaved in time with my rapid pulse drove me wild.
I hugged his hips, grinning like a fool as he absently toyed with my hair.
“Let me suck you,” he whispered, having removed the pillow at some point.
“You don’t have to.” I was as hard as a steel pike, and my dick jerked to let me know he completely disagreed.
“Do you have any idea how many times I jerked off in this bed with only wild fantasies to get me going? Thirteen-year-old me would come on the spot if he knew one day I’d have a fuck-hot man in this bed with me.”
“How can I say no to that?”
“I need to do this like you wouldn’t believe,” he begged, then demanded, “Get up here, like the good boy you are.”
With a last kiss to his soft cock, I climbed over him, leaning heavily on his headboard, and fed him my dick.
I was so turned on by everything. Being sneaky in his room, the thrill of the blow job I’d just given him, and the deepening of the Asher-shaped indent on my soul had me wanting to come nearly as quickly as he had.
Asher let me fuck his mouth and tease his throat.
He squeezed my legs and hips, then moved to grip my ass cheeks tightly.
When his fingers strayed to my crease, I hummed in encouragement, replaying the times he’d fucked me, tunneled deep, had me crying out his name, and begging for more, harder, faster, deeper.
Fuck!
I shot off like a cannon at the first swipe of his fingertip, barely restraining a shout of euphoria. Asher sucked me and swallowed until I forced myself to move off him for my sanity’s sake. We adjusted our pajamas and settled in bed, him in my arms, holding each other until we fell asleep.
Just as he’d said, May woke us early the next morning with a whispered, “Bubba?”
We’d moved in the night. I was on my back with Asher’s butt smushed against my hip and his face toward the edge of the bed.
“We’re up, May,” Asher mumbled.
“Momma said you’ve got ten minutes.” She slammed the door on the way out, and if I hadn’t already been awake, I would be now.
“I smell coffee,” Asher hummed.
I chuckled and turned to spoon his back.
“Nooo, now I can’t leave.”
“Not even for coffee?” I asked and kissed the back of his neck.
“Hmm. Tough call.”
I bit his shoulder lightly and hugged him. “Come on. I don’t want your family thinking me a dirty old man by holding you prisoner in this bed.”
Asher’s hair stuck out in all directions when he sat up. He grinned, eyes barely open. “They like you. I don’t think they think of you as anything but mine.”
I kissed his nose. “Good.”
Everyone was still in their pajamas for breakfast. Patty made biscuits, and Ben made chocolate gravy. I nearly went into a sugar coma.
Afterward was the understated joy of learning how five kids and four adults shared two bathrooms. Of the whole experience, that I could’ve done without. There was no lounging under the hot spray to fully wake up. No, showers were perfunctory and efficient.
When we rejoined the family downstairs, there were a few more faces.
“Look who decided to join us,” Patty said, waving to a slew of people meandering around the house, here for the duck hunt.
One of the new faces was Jamie. Thin like Asher, he was slightly shorter. His ice-blue eyes were captivating and gave his edgy style a gorgeous charm he would never be able to overshadow, no matter how much black he buried himself in.
Another addition was the dangerous-looking young man standing behind Jamie, who had to be his stepbrother.
Asher didn’t talk much about Michael, but what he had said made it clear he was the type only an idiot would mess with.
Having now seen him, I agreed. His hair was a light brown that nearly matched his golden eyes.
He had a bulldog scowl that wasn’t necessarily unattractive on him.
Mistrust and rage simmered in his narrowed eyes, forcing everyone to keep their distance.
Everyone but Asher.
“Hey,” Asher cheered and came in for a hug.
Michael flinched, even though the gesture wasn’t for him but for Jamie. Jesus, these two were intense.
“Hey.” Jamie returned the hug but eyed me over Asher’s shoulder. “Reckon you’re Luke.”
I nodded, staying where I was. For one thing, Michael probably wouldn’t let a virtual stranger near Jamie, but for another, Jamie’s tone implied I ranked pretty low on his list of brewing friendships. “I am, and it’s nice to meet you. Asher speaks of you often.”
Jamie cocked his head.
“Isn’t Luke so well-mannered,” Patty said as she came in and sat a tray of cookies on the coffee table between the four of us. “These were made by me.” Patty winked. “We feed May’s cookies to the dog,” she whispered and made a gesture that locked her lips and tossed the key before leaving us.
When only the four us remained in the room, Jamie moved his head to the other side. “So what’s your deal, man? You fuckin’ him around or what? Is this a phase for you? Get the nineteen-year-old dick out of your system before marryin’ some whore?”
I glanced at Asher, who grimaced.
“Sorry. I might have vented to them about your parents,” Asher said.
This, maybe not this blatant, was what I’d expected from Asher’s family. Why else would a man my age, a wealthy professional, be sniffing around Asher? He was basically my version of the trophy girlfriend.
Shockingly, it was Michael who came to my defense before I could. He reached around Jamie’s shoulder, locked a vise of a grip on his jaw, and tilted his stepbrother’s head back.
“What did I tell you about runnin’ that mouth? What Asher does is his business. You ain’t stickin’ your nose into his gay shit.”
Okay, what? I cleared my throat, readying to respond with … God only knew, but Asher circled my wrist in a tight hold, and I remained silent.
“Daddy ain’t around, so get off my case.” Jamie wiggled and twisted and got nowhere for his efforts.
“You two,” Patty said as she brought in yet another tray of cookies, and perhaps purposefully breaking the tension with it too.
After that very awkward introduction, I met Sylvia, one of Patty’s sisters, and her four kids, Asher’s cousins, and Ben’s sister and brother with their spouses and kids. More cousins. I had no hope of remembering their names as the introductions were so brief and interrupted by screaming children.
Honestly, how was a person supposed to know what was screaming due to an emergency and screaming for the hell of it?
Someone mentioned more family would’ve stopped by for the duck hunt, but not all of them had vacation time after New Year’s. Understandable, but good grief. Asher’s family was huge.
The day was a riot of activity and noise.
I gave up trying to figure out anything and let Asher sweep me along with the tide.
A monstrosity of a sweater—knitted by Granny Someone-I-Couldn’t-Remember—was handed to me at some point as snickers were hidden behind clearing throats.
If I wasn’t going to play in the dunk hunt, I had to wear the sweater.
Their way of getting everyone involved, so they said.
Sure enough, those not in duck costumes had one version or another of the ugly sweater.
The color could only be described as shit brown with a very colorful duck on the front.
I assumed it was meant to represent a mallard, but the feather placement was rather precarious, leaving one long feather jutting from between its legs like an erect cock.
Asher snorted when he saw me in it, then fell over sideways, laughing so hard he farted, which made everyone laugh even harder.
Ah, the things we did for love.
After their game was a small break before dinner, which was much earlier in the day than I was accustomed to. Asher explained that was so everyone would be hungry for the ten different desserts later.
No exaggeration.
Patty and Sylvia laughed through stories about their siblings. Apparently, they were two of seven total. The basis of Asher’s many cousins. He had some on his father’s side as well, and from Ben too.
The food was amazing, everyone was super nice, and it wasn’t until they had left that it hit me.
Not once had anyone made a single remark about Asher and me as a couple.
Except for Jamie, but that hadn’t been from a place of bigotry but of concern for his friend.
Though harsh, I understood his reasoning.
Just as Asher had said, no one cared. I had dialed back my need to keep my hands on him at all times, but we had touched.
He’d hugged me often, and I’d accepted them with open arms. I’d kissed his neck and stolen smiles and never thought about hiding from anyone.
Upon reflection, it had been freeing, but so effortless, I hadn’t noticed at the time.
That night, we lay in bed, the house finally quiet, which seemed unusual given the madhouse it had been all day. Asher curled into my side, his hand under my T-shirt drawing designs on my skin with his fingertips.
“Michael isn’t a homophobe,” he said into the silence.
“Hmm?”
“Jamie’s brother, uh, stepbrother. I hope he didn’t offend you.”
I sighed. “I wasn’t offended. It was an odd exchange, though.”
“He says shit like that to protect him, I think. Jamie’s never explained it, and it sounds weird, but it’s like that tough love, I guess.”
I turned and hugged Asher to my chest. “They’re both lucky to have an understanding friend in you.”
“Yeah. Maybe. I wish I could help Jamie more.”
“If it’s how you say, I think he’s got the best protector already.”
“True. I bet Michael would fight the devil himself if he looked at Jamie the wrong way.”
I smiled, too worn-out from the day to laugh, and fell asleep imagining this as my reality.
Being out and living life as I had today, without a single care for what others thought of my sexuality or life choices.
Immersing myself in lighthearted banter, a loving family, and distancing myself from my own cold and aloof one.
I wanted this.
A home where smiles were as plentiful as the noise, where love was as palpable as the lived-in furniture. Asher and his family didn’t only welcome people here; they wanted them here.
Could this life be mine?
Was it okay to want it?