Chapter 5
“What in the hell was that about?” Nik asked when he found Sam hiding in his bedroom. He shut the door and walked over to his dresser.
“He was watching me,” Sam explained.
“Who was watching you?” Nik asked, digging through a drawer.
The Highlander. “That guy. Jurgen’s cousin, Ian.”
Nik looked up, his mouth forming a perfect “o” of surprise. “That’s a good thing, right?” he asked slowly. He pulled a royal blue shirt out of the drawer, not looking at it but at Sam.
“I don’t knoooow.” That was close to a wail. Sam tried to bring it down a notch. “I don’t think I’m his type.”
“Type, schmype.” Nik flapped a hand at him. “He was watching you.” Nik started paying attention to unbuttoning his wine-soaked shirt.
Sam swallowed and took a calming breath. “I might have been ogling him. A little. He might have noticed.”
“Every guy here is ogling him,” Nik said, disgruntled.
Understandable: he was used to people ogling his boyfriend.
It was a point of pride with him, even if he wouldn’t admit it.
No matter how much Sam pushed him to. “You’re just one of the herd.
” Nik looked disgustedly at the dirty shirt now in his hand, then threw it toward the bathroom door.
Sam watched it sail past a stripper pole he’d just noticed.
Don’t ask. “You guys put in a stripper pole?” D’oh!
Nik smiled, sighing dreamily. “Yeah.” He gazed affectionately at the shiny brass pole, then shook his head and refocused on Sam. “So, what about Ian?”
Another calming breath. “Do you remember when I told you about, um, the guy I asked out?”
“Your future husband?” Nik’s eyes got big. So had his voice. He stopped in the middle of pulling on his new shirt.
“Be quiet! I didn’t mean that husband thing. I was drunk.”
“Yes you did. So, what you aren’t saying is . . .” Nik raised a brow, looking delighted. Slowly buttoning his new shirt.
Sam started a sort of horrified nodding. “It was Ian.” Nik nodded in unison with him, but in a far less horrified way.
“So maybe, if you watched him back . . .” Nik waggled his brows. It was completely out of character for him.
Sam stared a few seconds before blurting, “He was checking me out. I think.”
There was that “o” of surprise again. “What did you do?” Nik asked excitedly.
“I bumped into you and spilled wine down your front.”
Nik looked at him.
Sam looked at Nik.
“I guess you could have been smoother,” Nik finally said, looking far less delighted. He finished buttoning his shirt and planted his hands on his hips. Thinking.
“I guess I could have.”
“Okay. Don’t worry. I’m going to help you.” Nik whirled around and marched out of the room with purpose.
Oh no.
“I’m really not sure this is a situation that can be helped,” Sam called after him, already knowing it was pointless.
Nik’s idea of helping Sam turned out to be butting in on any conversation Ian had with any gay single guy at the party. Especially Dave Blaylock. Nik still had a few issues with Dave having dated Jurgen, even though he laughed and pretended otherwise whenever Sam brought it up.
Nik got on Dave like a hawk on a mouse. A very small hawk on a very big mouse. A mouse completely unconcerned with any size disparity.
Ian and Dave were sitting on the couch, nursing beers and talking.
Sam lurked near a doorway, holding up the wall and looking nonchalant (he doubted), studiously not watching them out of the corner of his eye.
He noted with satisfaction that Ian hadn’t smiled at Dave once.
Or laughed. Sam had made Ian smile and laugh when they’d first met.
It didn’t really matter that Ian had been smiling and laughing at him rather than with him, right?
Sam’s thoughts were interrupted when Nik insisted on sitting between Dave and Ian. He started chattering, his simpleton smile on his face. Sam watched Nik a minute, and then his eyes drifted back to Ian.
Ian was watching him. Smiling a slight, sort of smug smile.
This is your chance. Smile back.
Sam felt his face flush red, then he looked at the floor and slunk out of the room. God he was suave, wasn’t he? He hid in the little hall between the living room and the bedrooms, right off the kitchen. It was deserted for now, but party sounds surrounded him.
“Where’s Nik?” Jurgen’s voice behind him startled Sam into almost jumping.
He whirled to face Jurgen, instead. “Talking to the guests.”
Jurgen narrowed his eyes slightly. “Is he talking to Ian again?”
Was Jurgen jealous? It didn’t seem possible, but why else would he care? Sam nodded, trying to figure it out.
“Why is he trying to cock block Ian?” Jurgen’s voice was low and compelling.
Sam had sudden sympathy for suspects Jurgen might question. But . . . cock block? Really? “I don’t know?” It was kind of true. He didn’t know why Nik was bothering.
Jurgen crossed his arms over his chest. “Sam, stay away from Ian.”
“What?” Like Sam should stay upwind of him, or something more along the lines of “don’t let him stick his dick in you”?
“He’s not your type. He’s a manwhore. He’s more likely to fuck you than date you. You deserve better than that.”
“Uh . . .” Wait, wasn’t Jurgen Ian’s cousin? “I do? I mean, I know, but it’s kinda weird—”
“He’s not ‘relationship material.’”
“He’s my future husband.” Did I say that out loud? Sam clapped a belated hand over his mouth.
Jurgen stared at him a minute before dropping his forehead into his palm, growling to himself and massaging his temples. “Ian’s no one’s future husband.” Jurgen pulled his head up wearily. “He’s got . . . the fuck are those ‘issues’ again? Nik’s always going on about them.”
Sam dropped his hand from his mouth. “Commitment issues?” Nik had issues with commitment issues.
Jurgen snapped his fingers. “Commitment issues. He’d use you, Sam. He’ll force himself to find some suitable woman and start producing children any year now, and he’ll still be fucking guys on the side.”
Sam gaped. “Seriously?”
Jurgen rolled his eyes. “Probably not,” he admitted, then made a face like he’d licked a toad. “But he might. I’ve seen him try to do it before. And if he does, you don’t want to be his convenient fuck on the side.”
Reformed rakes make the best husbands. Sam managed to stop himself from blurting that out.
Jurgen gave him a long, silent look. Then he sighed. “Fine.” He turned and walked away down the hall.
The rest of the party was semi-torturous. Sam was sure he would have to watch Ian going at it with some guy, somewhere. Ian was a flirt, in spite of not laughing and rarely smiling. Guys threw themselves at him.
Probably Ian was better described as a flirt-magnet.
He was also a bastard. Toying with Sam, doing subtly sexy things to make him nuts that no one else seemed to notice.
Did a normal guy need to lick that many drops of beer off his lower lip?
Did a normal guy wait until each droplet hovered on the point of falling, practically begging for someone else’s tongue to suck up said droplet from the bottom of his plump, full lip?
Did normal guys have to scratch their flat, taut bellies, pulling their shirt up with their searching fingers, revealing slivers of skin and clinging hair?
When Ian used a pinky fingertip to circle his belly button, not quite dipping in .
. . that had to be on purpose, right? Who finger-rimmed their navel at a party accidentally?
Only the occasional moments of humor from Nik and Jurgen made the suffering bearable.
When Nik wasn’t “cock blocking” Ian, he was throwing Miller at every available guy in the place.
Sam couldn’t imagine where Nik had found half these guys.
He recognized a fifth of them, maybe less, and he had a hard time believing Jurgen had that many friends.
This had to be every gay man in Marlyle County, and then some.
The only guys Nik didn’t throw Miller at were Sam and Ian. “This is worse than my mother introducing me to nice girls at church,” Miller complained to Sam at the keg.
A keg! Nik and Jurgen had gotten a keg for this party. Sam shook his head in some shame. “It’s appalling,” he told Miller, who was pretending to fill his plastic beer cup.
“It sure the hell is,” Miller said. Sam had a feeling they were talking about different things. “I can get my own damn gay life,” Miller muttered. “Someday. Once I get used to being gay.”
“Are you gay?” Sam asked. It seemed appropriate.
“’Pears so,” Miller said, as if they were discussing the weather report. Sam had spent enough of last summer on the porch of Nik’s parents’ store to have some experience discussing farm weather.
“Heard it might rain,” Sam returned. The polite reply to any statement about precipitation.
“Heard it might rain men.” Miller winked at him. “Really could use some men.”
Sam looked around at the sea of men. “We’re surrounded by them.”
Miller tilted his head in a gesture Sam had only ever seen country folk make. A sort of sideways, single nod. Body language for conceding a point, but . . . “I think I might prefer the ones that fall outta the sky. Less pressure,” he said.
Miller was cool. Sam would have talked to him more, but Nik showed up with some guy who had a shaved head and two rings through his lower lip that Miller just had to meet.
Sam was relieved that he didn’t just have to meet the guy, too. Not that he had anything against piercings, per se. Though it looked like Miller might, judging by his expression.
Sam looked aside, and there was Jurgen introducing yet another guy to Ian. Jurgen looked serious about not wanting Sam to hook up with his cousin.
Meanwhile, said cousin winked at Sam, then turned to face the newest offering. Ian had his arms crossed over his chest, red plastic beer cup in one hand propped up on the other forearm, showcasing his pecs.
Sam scowled. Bastard. Did he think Sam was that easy, that some muscle and a wink would cut it? He snorted and looked away, crossing his own arms over his chest.
Jurgen quirked a knowing brow at Sam.
Sam scowled at Jurgen. Big, dumb asshole.
Fuck this. Sam straightened up and walked out.
The place had cleared out by 3 a.m. Not even a single passed-out drunk littered the floor.
Sam couldn’t believe it. If they were having a kegger, couldn’t they at least do it right?
Dave had left early, though Sam hadn’t even noticed—Miller had told him as much when Sam had found him hiding in the bathroom.
He was so ready for bed. He didn’t need any more of this humiliation. No more Ian torturing him for his own amusement. Sam wasn’t his type; he’d heard it from the horse’s ass himself.
Nik wasn’t allowing him to go to bed, however, because—in an effort to be the perfect gay couple or something—Nik and Jurgen had bought a place with a hot tub. Which he insisted Sam get into. Fortunately, Sam had been forewarned this might happen, and he’d come prepared.
Sam put on his swim trunks and walked out into the hall, where he ran right into Nik.
Nik stared at him a second. “What are you wearing?”
“What? Are they ugly?” Sam looked down at himself. He looked like himself: too tall and too skinny. He dropped his voice. “Do I look that bad?”
“No, and no. What you look is overdressed.”
Sam stared at Nik. Okay, if he was overdressed in a pair of surfer-esque swim trunks, that meant everyone else was wearing . . . “Speedos?” he squeaked.
Nik shook his head and sighed. “Sam, really. What kind of gay men’s housewarming party would it be if we went into the hot tub with clothing on? It would be a sham. I would never live that down.”
Wait. Nude hot-tubbing? With Ian? “Wha . . .? Bu . . .”
“What?”
“I mean, I don’t, you know. I’m kinda . . .”
“Are you going to go on about being tired again?”
“No, no.” Damn! He should have said yes.
“I’m just, I’m . . . I mean what if I, you know.
I get . . . you know.” Judging from Nik’s look, he didn’t know.
He looked truly puzzled, not that sort of simple-but-good-natured puzzled expression he affected when he was messing with people. “Excited,” Sam finished.
“Excited.”
“Excited.”
Nik tilted his head, studying Sam. “I guess the choice is yours. You can be the only guy in the hot tub with shorts on, or you can be like the rest of us and recite baseball stats in your head to keep from getting hard.”
“Baseball stats? Like what?”
“No idea. It’s just what Jurgen does when he’s trying not to pop too early.”
“See, I didn’t need to know that.”
Nik stepped forward to lay a commiserating hand on Sam’s upper arm. “I know, Sam. I know. Neither did I.”
“Shit. Maybe I’ll just be too tired?” Sam asked hopefully. Again.
Nik frowned. “But then there’ll only be three guys in the hot tub. I need you in there, or I haven’t done my job as a good host. Hosts need an even number of people in the hot tub.”
“That’s at the table, and you’re a modern hostess. You can do this. And what do you mean, ‘only three guys’?”
“Host. Modern hosts don’t care how many people they have at the table. They care about how many people they have in the hot tub.”
“Host. Only three guys?”
Nik blinked at him. “Yeah. Me, Jurgen, and Ian.”
Sam squeaked. A tiny squeak, completely involuntary. “Um, what about Miller?”
Nik rolled his eyes until he almost fell over. “Miller and Ian don’t really get along, and Miller had some weird reaction to me introducing him to all those guys.” Nik flapped his hand.
“Like an allergic reaction?”
“I guess. He sure acted like it was giving him hives to be introduced to the finest men I could dig up for him.”
“Where did you find all those guys, anyway?”
“I put a personal ad in the paper.”
Oh, now that definitely called for the silent treatment. Sam raised his brows and eyed him.
Nik lifted his chin in defiance. “It’s good for him. Helps him develop gay social skills.”
“Gay social skills? How are those different from regular social skills?”
“They aren’t. That’s the point.”
“I’m so lost.”
“I don’t have time to explain it to you. I have a hot-tubbing to host.” In a nicer tone, Nik added, “If you hurry up, you can get in before anyone else and turn on the bubbles. Then no one will be able to see if you get excited.”
Sam returned to the guest room posthaste to shuck the shorts.