Plans Like Diamond Stars #2
“Yeah.” He’d finished his sandwich and the cantaloupe, and she snagged his empty plate from his fingers as she stood.
“Get some more sleep,” she said softly. “He’ll come in when everybody’s gone or settled.
And then you two can plan to the moon and back.
” Her smile was sweet, nostalgic, remembering, he was sure, the husband who had been killed at war, thousands of miles away, when she’d been a young, heartbroken mother.
“Laure—” He wasn’t sure what he wanted to say, but he felt like if Sal’s pain had been recognized, hers must surely be spoken.
“The planning’s the best part,” she said, her voice not breaking at all. “Although watching the plans come true can be pretty awesome.” She bent and kissed his cheek again, offered Mr. Bumble another whisker rub, and flitted away, and he slid down his stack of pillows and slept some more.
TRUE TO Laure’s promise, he was awakened by Bailey’s quiet entrance.
Shivering, Bailey grabbed a clean T-shirt from the battered dresser that had once been Sal’s, and a clean pair of sleep shorts from the pile on top of the boys’ desk that each one of the boys had carved their initials on as they’d used it.
Seeing him there, amid his family’s history, felt so right that Dean wondered why Bailey Dodge hadn’t been in his life this entire time.
“You awake?” Bailey asked softly.
“Yeah,” Dean said.
“Want to strip to your skivvies and we can cuddle?”
“Sure, but you need to pet your cat. He’s been a neglected love sponge all day.”
Bailey chuckled and slid into bed, pulling the covers to his shoulder in deference to the breeze now blowing in from Dean’s window. Every night in the summer, if it got cool enough, somebody went around the house and opened the windows and turned on the fans before turning off the air conditioner.
Dean loved that feeling of breezes coming from other places, having seen other things, brushing up against his skin. He stood and stripped to his boxers before climbing back into bed and lying to face Bailey, Mr. Bumble between them.
“How’s your head?” Bailey asked softly.
“Much better than this afternoon,” Dean told him truthfully. “I think it was sleeping in my parents’ home. Was everybody okay with me doing that?”
“Oh yeah,” Bailey said, and then told him that Birdie had done the same thing.
“By the way, did you know our fathers have completely refurbished the mother-in-law cottage?” He gave a partial shrug.
“I think my dad is pretty close to negotiating rent on the place so he can move in. It’ll take a trip to Manor with a stop in Fort Stockton for our stuff… .” He grew sober.
“And then you both relocate your lives here, for me,” Dean said, acknowledging what a giant thing this was.
“For me,” Bailey said firmly. “I’ve been farther from my dad than I like for too long.
This is good for both of us. But that’s not the main reason.
I know we’ve said this a couple of times, but it bears repeating.
I love you, Stanford Dean Royal. We probably could have continued on like we were doing for a year before either one of us said it.
But getting thrown out of an airplane and chartering a plane to the desert to bail you out didn’t make me love you more , if that’s what you’re worried about.
It showed me how much I loved you already . ”
Dean felt the words wash over him and knew that after a couple of repeats, they’d be a solid part of his soul, his identity, grounding him in himself as a man who was loved by Bailey Dodge.
He couldn’t wait—but he had a question first.
“You never— nobody ever—explained how you all found us? You had to have been in the air before the plane went down or Marcus….” He didn’t want to say it, but it was true.
Marcus wouldn’t have made it another eight hours, particularly not after sunrise when the plane would have become a convection oven.
“Oh.” Bailey glanced away. “Uhm, your brother Reg. Uhm. How much schooling has he had in computers?”
“Junior college,” Dean said. “He’s got an IT degree, and he does a lot of work from home. It gets him his own apartment, but it’s not… you know. Great.”
“Mm….” And before Dean could ask what that had to do with anything, he added, “I… you know, you should maybe take a gander at the computer setup in your parents’ den. I don’t think a lot of it is legal.”
Dean’s eyes shot open, and he was fully awake and a little alarmed. “Like, legal how ?”
“He… he has trackers on the entire family. Did you know that? Like, you and Marcus too. I think I saw Rory and Anthony in there. So when I told him I was worried….” Even under the covers, Dean could see Bailey’s gesture of rubbing his stomach, and part of him warmed, because he’d seen that gesture before, but most of him was listening.
“He tracked my phone?” Dean’s voice cracked. “Bailey, he’s not supposed to be able to do that!”
“I know!” Bailey hissed, shaking his head. “I mean, it’s a good thing you’re moving back here, because I think this family really needs you.”
“Oh.” It wasn’t a word so much as a sound, but Dean suddenly felt it, the tender place in his heart where his family lived.
He needed them—but he’d always resented that until now.
Until his conversation with Laure, with Bailey, about how much they needed him.
Bailey too. Bailey had lost a lover once.
Dean had almost made him lose another. Dean’s family had saved them both, and it was Dean’s job to return the favor.
It was the only job he’d ever wanted. The reason he and Val had fought so fiercely. Because Dean had always thought he’d known what his family needed.
But now he felt what they needed, much like Val and Laure had, and that was ever so much more important.
His heart rushed in his ears as his life seemed to come together in one moment, in one place, with this one man.
He needed Bailey closer, and while his head was still sore, and he was now keenly aware of his limits, he also knew about his needs. Human contact. Family.
This man.
He burrowed his hands under the covers and over Bailey’s smooth, pool-washed skin, needing to touch him.
Mr. Bumble—who had gotten used to such things in the past—gave a disgruntled meow and flounced off the bed and into his crate on the floor, which had a squishy cat bed inside as well as his favorite catnip mouse.
Bailey hmm ed happily and moved closer, until their bodies were tangled under the sheets and Dean could claim his mouth in a breathless kiss.
“What’re we doing here?” Bailey asked, but not like he was hesitant. Like he was excited about what was to come.
“I haven’t held you in two weeks,” Dean murmured, kissing him again. He pulled back to say, “And now that you know all my secrets, I need to hold you some more.”
Bailey’s laughter was rich against his mouth, and then it faded as Dean let the kiss get hungry, and hungrier. After a breathless moment, Bailey pulled back, stern in the moonlight that washed in through the window.
“You have a concussion,” he said. “No gymnastics, Stanford—”
“Use that sparingly,” Dean cautioned.
“Okay, but you need to listen to me!”
“I am,” Dean said smugly. He lay back, his hands laced behind his head. “No gymnastics. It’s all you. I seduced you when we met. It’s all your turn.”
Bailey’s mouth on his neck, his collarbone, his nipples, was all Dean could have asked for and more. And more. He wasn’t simply being seduced—he was being devoured . While he lay still, his blood rushed under his skin, tingling, until his aching erection thrust forward under his boxers.
Bailey suckled on a nipple while palming his cock, and Dean almost forgot where they were. He barely silenced a groan and was left back against the bed, panting, while Bailey drove him quietly insane.
“I’m going to….” he began the threat, and then Bailey slid his boxers down his hips, leaving him dripping in the cool night breeze, and he forgot what he was going to say.
Bailey’s mouth on his cockhead made him forget everything else.
He began to whisper, thinking he would give instructions—harder, faster, tongue around the head—but Bailey knew what he was doing. He squeezed the base, licked the slit, tongued his tight harp string, then stroked him, slowly, from bottom to top.
Dean let out a harsh breath, no words left, and he realized that Bailey’s position on the bed, on his knees near Dean’s head with his hips out as he ministered to Dean with his mouth, left his own body vulnerable.
Dean began to stroke Bailey’s cock through his briefs, and Bailey’s expert blowjob faltered before Bailey resumed it with renewed vigor.
Dean rolled the briefs down and sucked his own fingers into his mouth before stroking Bailey’s cleft, looking for his sensitive, vulnerable entrance.
Bailey’s moan around Dean’s cock was one of the most erotic sounds he’d ever heard.
And then it was on, almost like a race, but slower, more sensual, tender. It was the dance of lovers who knew each other’s bodies, who made love to care for each other’s hearts.
Dean’s climax rushed him out of nowhere, and he breached Bailey’s backside with two fingers as he spurted into Bailey’s mouth.
Bailey’s cry was muffled, and then he moved his hand from Dean’s cock to his own, stroking hard while Dean penetrated until he let out a mewl, still swallowing Dean’s come.
He collapsed on the bed, dislodging Dean’s fingers and bucking against the sheets, undone from the simplest of lovemaking, and Dean caught his breath.
“This is awkward,” Bailey said eventually, face against Dean’s thigh.
“I’m sure I’ve looked prettier,” Dean agreed, but seriously, he didn’t care.
“How’s your head?” Bailey asked, turning his own slightly, and Dean grimaced, pausing his long stroke of Bailey’s backside, of his flank, of his shoulders, all of which he could reach from this position.
“Aches a little,” he admitted. “But not as much as it would have if you’d let me do what I’d been planning.”
Bailey chuckled and slid off the bed, headed for the small attached bathroom. He came out with a washcloth, and after cleaning them both up a bit and fetching Dean some painkillers, he resumed his place in the bed, but this time with his head on Dean’s bare shoulder so Dean could hold him tight.
“So,” he said, after some shifting and snuggling, some more kissing, and some hands in naughty places before settling down.
“Yeah?” Dean asked softly.
“We’re going to live happy ever after, right? Get an apartment, I’ll get a job, you and Marcus will go be superheroes. I’ll get to play with your family on my time off, my dad will live here and be old with your parents and… and that’s it. Happy ever after.”
Dean thought of all that entailed, of all the changes Bailey was talking about, of all the joy that awaited them.
“Works for me,” he said softly. “Do you mind?”
“Easy,” Bailey murmured. “So easy. Easy as falling out of a plane.”
Easier, Dean thought as they drifted off to sleep. But he really didn’t want Bailey being pushed out of any more planes, so he kept that thought to himself.