Chapter 9 #4
“Forty-seven, huh? Man.” I wasn’t exactly surprised, but it gave me yet another avenue to tease him.
He pulled back and frowned at me. “What’s that supposed to mean?”
I poured on the mock shock. “Nothing! Nothing at all. It’s just…”
“What?” His hands stilled on my backside. Pity, I was enjoying his ministrations.
“You have more in common with John Wayne than I thought. You are wise, and you age so well.” I leaned forward and licked at his lips, bringing a rumble from his chest. “See, and you even grumble the same as Marlon Brando. So dramatic.” He bit down on the side of my neck, and I squealed, the effect sending shivers through me.
“And you bite like them, oh… oh… mmmm, do you bite fleshy appendages too?”
Neither of us could hold back the laughter at that. I wrapped my arms around his neck and laughed with him until he had to set me down to catch his breath.
“You’re so much trouble, Saucy Neighbor,” he said, as he rested his cheek against my head. “But I’m having the best time with you.”
“Me too. Thank you for bringing me on the tour. I’m fascinated by your collection.” He gave me a skeptical glance, and I pushed on my toes to kiss him. “I’m serious, I love this place. I want to know everything. I could watch them for hours, they’re so interesting.”
I wasn’t sure he believed me, but it was a start. I was being honest. I already had an idea for an art project for one of my future retreats.
“Thank you for humoring an old man,” he said, swinging an arm around my shoulders and guiding me back out of the barn.
“You’re welcome,” I said, but then I dug my fingers into his side and did my best to see if he was ticklish, which he was. Score one for Francis. “And for the record, you’re not old, Kendall. I hope you know I don’t see you like that.”
He kept smiling, but I couldn’t tell if it was genuine.
“It’s okay, Francis. You’ll be here soon enough, and I’ll enjoy listening to you bitch about aches and pains, hair loss—”
“Oh, the men in my family don’t tend to experience hair loss until very late in life, and we tend to live a long time. And I don’t smoke, so that cuts down on health risks that most Cantonese-speaking men have to worry about.” I batted my lashes at him, and he rolled his eyes.
“Fine. You’ll be young forever, and I’ll be ancient.”
“And I’ll love every minute with you.”
That seemed to work, because his lingering annoyance with this direction of conversation seemed to melt away. So I continued.
“I guarantee you’re in better cardiovascular shape than I am, but I take barre classes, so I’ve got really strong thighs. And I’m flexible.”
His jaw dropped the slightest. “Flexible, huh? Good to know. Wait, so you speak Cantonese, not Mandarin?”
“Actually, I speak both, and French, and a little Spanish. Dad insisted Mandarin would be good for business, and Mom and Aunt Judy made sure we knew Cantonese as kids. And French, well… I guess back at my all-boys’ high school, it was the closest to romance as I was going to get.”
“All-boys’ school? That had to be interesting.”
I rolled my eyes. “I was a late bloomer, okay? I didn’t even have any interest in dating until college, and I realized quickly that girls strictly made great friends.
Derek, too. We figured it out about the same time.
We wondered at first if it was because we hadn’t been exposed to girls until too late.
We might have been brainiacs, but we were pretty clueless about everything else. ”
“I was not a late bloomer. I met my wife in high school, joined the Navy right after graduation, and we got married when I finished boot camp. I didn’t pay attention to anyone else, so I didn’t realize I was attracted to men, too, until later. Then it was like, huh, this is interesting.”
We’d reached the broken fence and were lingering, standing in each other’s arms without a care in the world.
“I could talk to you forever,” I said with a sigh. “I still have so many questions.”
“Good. We’ll have to fill in that refractory period.”
I pinched his side, and we laughed together.
“Okay, one more kiss,” he said, “and then it’s off to bed so it can hurry up and be tomorrow.”
“I’m glad I’m not the only one who thinks that way.”
The “one more kiss” lasted another fifteen minutes, and I’d just gotten Kendall’s fly open when we broke apart. He held me by the biceps as he tried to catch his breath.
“I’m going to say good night and let go of you or else I’m done for.”
“I’m going to head right upstairs and into my shower to take care of this,” I said, stepping back and adjusting my painfully hard dick in my pants. “I can’t wait to take you with me tomorrow night.”
He grinned as he fastened his pants. “Good night, Francis.”
“It was a good night.”
We backed away from each other, neither wanting to separate, until I stumbled over my feet.
“Careful, baby. You gotta be able to dance with me tomorrow night.”
“Baby.” I sighed, pressed my hand to my chest and spun around. I belted out the lyrics to “Drunk in Love” until I was upstairs in my shower doing exactly what I told him I’d do.