A Likely Story: A Wayward Ink Publishing Anthology (7 page)

Logan rolled over on top of Jonah and claimed his lips in a gentle kiss. “I suppose we should find out where we are. Might be a bit hard, since we’re both practically in the buff.”

Jonah laughed. “Actually, that might not be a problem. I’m pretty sure that chest we rescued is the one with my spare clothing inside. I’m sure we can find something to fit you too.”

“Come home with me.” Logan hadn’t known what he was going to say until the words tumbled from his lips. Now they were spoken, he realized how much he wanted to keep the other man with him. They may have met under the strangest of circumstances, but perhaps it had been Fate. Kismet. Serendipity.
I’m out of the whale. Now it’s time to come out of the closet.

Jonah regarded Logan steadily, and for a moment Logan was worried he was going to refuse. “We have whales in Australia too, you know. You can still work.”

Jonah gave a wry laugh. “To be honest, I think I’ve had enough of whales… at least for a little while.” He paused. “But, yes, I will come with you.”

The two men stood and walked over to the box to see what they could dress themselves in before making their way into town. Logan’s mind was filled with a thousand thoughts. He wondered where they were; how far he was from home. But mostly he turned his thoughts to the future. A future of him and Jonah. Together. If their first adventure was anything to go by, it was clear they were going to have a whale of a time.

ASTA IDONEA is an alternate pen name of author Nicki J Markus.

Nicki was born in England in 1982, but now lives in Adelaide, South Australia with her husband. She has loved both reading and writing from a young age and is also a keen linguist, having studied several foreign languages.

Nicki launched her writing career in 2011 when she released several short stories with Wicked Nights Publishing. She then had two novellas published with Silver Publishing, prior to the company’s closure.

At present, she has several new projects on the go. As well as branching out into the exciting world of M/M under the pen name Asta Idonea, Nicki is working on the first book in a fantasy-mythology trilogy and hopes to find a publisher for it in 2015.

Nicki currently works as a freelance editor and proofreader, and in her spare time she enjoys completing MOOCs and pursuing other interests, including: reading; music; theatre; cinema; photography; sketching; and cross stitch. She also loves history, folklore and mythology, pen-palling and travel.

Asta Idonea can be found at:

Website:
http://www.nickijmarkus.com

Facebook:
https://www.facebook.com/NickiJMarkus

Twitter:
https://twitter.com/NickiJMarkus

“SHIT! The condom came off.”

Cassidy had the vaguest sensation that this was something he should care about, but with his eyes rolled back in his head and Jax’s gorgeous dick up his ass, fuck if he could put his finger on why. All he knew for sure was that Jax had stopped thrusting, and his butt wasn’t liking that one bit. He’d gone his whole life without Jax inside him, and had spent the last three weeks very mindfully trying to remedy that condition. If the kid thought he was gonna halfway fuck Cassidy for the first time, and then pull out because his dick was too big to keep rubbered, he’d obviously lost his damn mind along with the shitty piece of latex. Cassidy took hold of Jax by his bony hips and guided him back in so there would be no misunderstanding.

“Who cares?” he said. “What, am I gonna get pregnant? Just come in me.”

CASSIDY UEMATSU was the first openly gay Republican of Japanese ancestry to be elected to the Colorado House of Representatives before age thirty-five. All these things were true about him, but until he’d read that description of himself in the free weekly newspaper that covered Denver clubs, trends, and politics, he wouldn’t have thought there was such a specific legislative niche waiting to be filled. He was also of Norwegian ancestry—he didn’t speak Norwegian, but his mom had lived in Oslo until she was a teenager, and growing up he’d understood well enough to know when he was in big trouble—but that hadn’t yet warranted a mention. Presumably, the young gay Norwegians had long since stormed the State house.

Whatever. Cassidy wasn’t afraid to play the diversity game. He knew he ‘looked Japanese’—if one could get past the blond hair and big Norwegian butt—and if he could use that to pull the TV cameras towards legislation he gave a shit about, he didn’t see the harm. When he was growing up, people had always gushed, “y
ou could totally be a model!”
He figured at least this way he was using his looks to shill for something more important than shampoo.

His mountain district was less than two hours from downtown Denver, and he tried to be conscientious, if not about being seen around town, then at least about seeming accessible. His storefront office was right on Grand Avenue, next to the mini golf course, and his cousin-slash-campaign manager Kirk answered the phone and drank beer in the office during the five out of every six weeks that Cassidy “couldn’t get away” from Denver. But really, an excuse to get the hell out of town and plunk down on a cute condo in Capitol Hill had been the main draw of running for Rep. He worked hard to further the interests of his conservative district, even if it was mainly so the people in it would re-elect him and keep giving him a convenient reason not to move back. His brother Wade’s construction company had a reputation for honesty and value, and his mom was the best big-animal vet for three counties. The Uematsu ‘brand’ in Grand County meant a person was gonna get what they paid for, and Cassidy settled into his second term with little anxiety about his third. Grand County would never elect a Democrat to an office higher than crossing guard, and if he kept property taxes low, hotel taxes high, and his sex life to himself, he was set for life, and he knew it.

Republican
was more an expedient political label than any kind of hard-won identity he clung to. He had a conservative voting record because he was from a conservative county and he believed in the notion of representative government, but he did his best to steer clear of culture warrior politics. While not a creative type himself, Cassidy fully embraced the artsy, bohemian vibe of his adopted neighborhood. So named because his job was plopped down right in the middle of it, Capitol Hill was crammed with bookstores, bars, and boys, boys, boys. There was no shortage of drug addicts, drunks, and doorway-dwellers either, but it was a safe enough neighborhood during the day and he could walk to work. He loved it.

He especially loved the café that sprawled across half the block almost dead-center between his condo and the Capitol. He had yet to discover a need that The Road Not Taken couldn’t somehow satisfy, especially now that he’d finally—fuckin’
finally—
hooked up with Jax.

The Road, as everyone called it, had started life in a tiny storefront as the only vegan bakery in town. When the tailor next door went out of business, The Road knocked out a wall and added a coffee counter. When the bar next door to that folded two years later, they applied for a liquor license and knocked out another wall. When the hair salon on the corner pulled up stakes, The Road Not Taken sure enough took the last piece of real estate on the block, tripled the size of their kitchen, added a dining room and a patio, and the largest shrine in the west to all things hipster was complete.

For if there was one thing that a vegan restaurant that roasted its own coffee and put deep-fried pickles in its Bloody Marys attracted like flies, it was hipsters. The art on the walls oozed multi-media angst. The music was mostly old-time country, Loretta Lynn and Johnny Cash remixed with ever so much irony. The bartenders sported second-hand saddle shoes and ostentatious handlebar mustaches, the waitresses wore pedal-pushers and tattoo-highlighting thrift-shop blouses. On hot, sunny days there was invariably a row of laptop dudes at the bar in knit winter hats. But The Road had cold beer, amazing fries, and the best macaroni-and-fake-cheese in town, so Cassidy was rarely the only stiff in a suit to trickle in from the neighboring government offices.

While he’d only ever really dated two guys, both more handsome-haircut and button-down than he was, he’d always had an eye for the renegades. Put another way, the implied mixture of danger and don’t-give-a-fuck in a tattooed, crooked-toothed, smoke-too-much, drink-too-much, cuss-too-much, jailbird-lookin’ hardscrabble bad boy turned his conservative crank. And he’d never seen an ink-smeared, buck-toothed dipshit smoke as much, drink as much, or cuss as much as Buford L. Jackson III. Cassidy figured that was saying something, considering Jax was
at work
most of the time Cassidy spent drooling over him. At least, Cassidy assumed he was a cook. His narrow waist was usually wrapped in what looked like the apron he’d worn for a food fight, and the auburn-splashed mess of his hair was wrangled away from his long, square face in a blue bandana. But for every five minute stretch he spent in the kitchen, he seemed to spend twenty smoking out in the alley or slapping backs and stealing shots at the bar. He had to be at least six-foot-six, although he couldn’t have weighed a buck and a half. Drenched in tattoos from his pencil neck down to his fingertips, he was twenty-two years old at the outside, and smelled like armpit, smoke, whiskey, and grease. And Cassidy wanted an ass-full of Jax so badly he sometimes honest-to-god whimpered when Jax walked by.

He coulda been gay. He coulda been straight. He might have fallen somewhere on that spectrum to which urban youth seemed to have access that Cassidy, growing up in a small mountain town ten years earlier on the gay-rights timeline, had been denied. He didn’t flit about the bar on twinkle toes like some kind of princess, but he was physically affectionate with most of his guy friends, and the couple times he’d set down Cassidy’s food, he’d tossed in a wink. In fact, Cassidy purposely picked a table on the path between the kitchen and the creaky swinging door to the alley whenever possible, and Jax had a smile or a wisecrack almost every time he scampered by. Cassidy definitely had the kid’s attention—whether this was because of the pull of his own charm and good looks or because he gawked at Jax like Jax was the main event at a carnival sideshow wasn’t always clear.

And so he set out to find out. He’d grown up in the mountains where there was fuck-all else to do. Like his brother and all their buddies, he’d lived on cheap beer and cigarettes from the time he was fourteen until he finished college. He hadn’t had so much as a puff in ten years, but Jax never even slowed down when passing by, even when seeming kind of flirty. If it was to be up to Cassidy to make the first move, he’d just have to ball up and do it. He wasn’t gonna get lung cancer if he bummed one smoke.

“I get it,” Jax said, shaking an American Spirit out of its greenish pack with a grin. “You’re one of those ‘quitters’ who just quit
buying.
”

Guilty,
Cassidy let his own smile say. Now that it was May and Denver was having halfway reliable springtime weather, Jax and the rest of the gang of smokers tended to leave the door to the alley wide open. When Cassidy saw Jax light a second butt off the end of his first, Cassidy had ever-so-casually strolled out and hit him up. He hadn’t really thought about where he’d go from there, but for a second—his mom would kill him—it was just nice to get in a couple good drags.

They stood for a spell in companionable silence, Jax tipped against the brick wall, eyes closed, offering his toothy, equine face up to the sun. Cassidy ran his eyes up and down Jax’s louche, slender body and picked a stray flake of tobacco off his tongue. Jax opened his eyes, clocked Cassidy checking him out, and offered a sly smile.

“So, what?” He engaged Cassidy, but closed his eyes again, in case Cassidy wasn’t done looking. “You work around here?”

Cassidy nodded.

Hearing no response, Jax opened one eye.

“I do. I just live up on 13
^th
and Penn, too.” Not that Jax had asked all that, Cassidy realized, but he couldn’t pass up the chance to establish that he was close by. Readily available, even if it was on short notice. …

“Cool.”

Cassidy shrugged.
I guess.
“What about you?”

“Me? I work here,” Jax teased.

“I thought you were here kind of a lot,” Cassidy riposted.

“Yeah, well, they pay me. What’s your excuse?”

Cassidy shrugged again. “Good beer. Food’s so-so.”

Jax raised an eyebrow. “Yeah, well, I hear the cook’s not that great. Seems he’s always out back doling out cigarettes.”

“Lucky for me.”

Here Jax dropped all pretense and deliberately, toes to top, undressed Cassidy with his roiled-sea gray eyes. When they met Cassidy’s espresso browns, he cocked that eyebrow again. “Lucky for
us.
”

Towards the middle of the evening, Cassidy’s memory got a little fuzzy. There was a lot of beer—“You’re right,” Jax teased after six of them, “this
is
good.”—
way
too many cigarettes, and Cassidy didn’t remember whose idea it was to walk home to his place together. But things came back into pretty clear focus right around the point that Jax whipped a shirtless Cassidy’s belt out from around his waist and used it to bind his hands over his head while pushing him back onto the bed.