Bad Influence (13 page)

“Drive. Before we end up in jail again.”

They merged onto the interstate, and the heavy silence in the car, the rush of sound and hum of tires made Silver suddenly so tired he shivered with it.

Zeb cranked off the a/c. The loss of cold air made Silver sleepier. He could just let it go. Take the loser adult-ed classes. Never see Zeb again. It would be easier. But why should anything be easy on Zeb?

It wasn’t until they’d turned onto Quinn’s street that Silver threw it all out there. “I said the stuff about the GED because I needed to review the stuff before the test and thought you could help with the math part.”

“You want me to help you study for it?”

It had been exactly what the fuck Silver had just said. He nodded.

Under the streetlight, Zeb’s smile was soft and real. “Thank you. I’d like to help. Very much.”

When Silver got inside, the house was quiet. He stood in the hall, with the silence beating against his ears. His plan was working, but anger pounded in his blood, rushing to fill that silence in his head. No matter how hard he tried, he couldn’t slip away to watch from a cool distance. He didn’t want to care whether it was good or bad Eli didn’t bother to see if he’d made it back. Or Zeb finally seeming to get how much he’d fucked up that night. And more than anything he didn’t want to give a shit about the last smile on Zeb’s face.

When Silver went in to work lunch the next morning, he found out Travis had quit and Lisa was on forced bed rest until she dropped her baby. He’d been promoted to full-time waitstaff, which meant a hell of a lot more hours and no breaks. His next day off came after working sixty hours in four days. But he had more in his pocket in tips than he’d had after some of his porn work, and only his feet hurt. That Tuesday he woke up, ate and took his pill before crashing again.

Eli shook him awake in the afternoon-hot room to tell him Zeb was there with a freaky large pile of books. Silver couldn’t remember his dreams, but he felt like he was still in one.

“Books?” Silver swung his feet onto the floor and squinted at them. They’d been sore. He wiggled his toes. Better.

“Don’t you have a study date?” Eli said, and everything crashed back to reality.

“Right.” Studying with slash seducing Zeb. Silver pissed and washed up, brushed the fuzz off his teeth, then disgusted himself by spending a good two minutes trying to figure out what to wear. Most of his clothes fell into either a fuck-me or fuck-off category. Nothing middle-of-the-road. He went with a tank top and his one pair of shorts. The fact that it was ninety degrees out should make it less obviously a let’s-fuck and more about the heat.

His bare feet skidded on the wood floor of the dining room when he saw Eli hadn’t been kidding about the size of the book pile. Worse, the pile was made up of thin books. The kind of thing they’d called workbooks in school.

Yeah, maybe he’d get around to taking his GED, but he hadn’t planned to do much actual studying with Zeb.

“We can go into the living room. It’s more comfortable.” Shit. That sounded like a majorly corny come-on.

Zeb’s smile was friendly, but Silver could tell Zeb was in teacher mode. “Comfortable, but hard to get work done.”

The ominous pile of books was in the middle of the table, next to a couple of nectarines. Silver snatched up one and slid into a seat alongside Zeb, right as Eli came in.

“Thanks, Mom.” Silver waved the nectarine.

“Don’t thank me.” Eli held his hands up, palms out.

Zeb murmured, “I thought they’d be a good snack.”

A quick flush in Silver’s cheeks surprised him. As much of a surprise as Zeb remembering nectarines were Silver’s favorite. He bit into it, juice running down his chin. A good one for early season. He started to wipe his mouth on the back of his hand, remembered he was supposed to be seducing a guy, and licked up the juice instead, cleaning off his chin with a thumb he then sucked in the most obscene way he could manage.

“Are you staying for dinner?” Eli asked Zeb. “Quinn’s at the gym, so we probably won’t eat until seven.”

“Um…” Zeb’s eyes were fixed on Silver’s mouth, throat working as he tried to answer Eli. “No.” Zeb looked away with an effort Silver found encouraging. “Thank you, though.”

Eli went into the kitchen and came out with a napkin he handed to Silver, along with an accompanying eye roll. Standing behind Zeb, Eli mouthed,
Study
, at Silver before disappearing again.

Zeb’s gaze shifted everywhere but back at Silver’s face. “I know you specifically mentioned math, but these booklets cover all the parts of the test. I thought we’d start with a pretest and see where you’d need help. I covered pretty much everything when I was teaching in Haiti.” Zeb pulled the top workbook from the pile and opened it.

Silver knew Zeb was all about the good deeds, and he was a dedicated teacher, but really couldn’t imagine him in Haiti. “Did you like it there?”

Zeb paused in consideration, as if the question was as confusing as the uses of the freaking semicolon in the sixth question in the grammar section. He rubbed his shoulder for a minute. “I loved the teaching. I wanted to finish what I’d started.”

“Why didn’t you?”

“I got malaria.”

“But I thought— Didn’t you get shots?”

Zeb nodded. “And we were on a daily dose of a prophylactic, but they ran out for awhile.”

“So, that’s something you always have then, right?”

Zeb tipped his head, brows arched as if he was wondering why Silver would care about that. Yeah, Silver wanted payback, but he’d never have wanted Zeb to get sick. Not with something that lived inside of him forever. “Yes,” Zeb said finally.

“That sucks.” The next few exam questions were easy. All he had to do was think about how someone with a stick up his ass talked and that was the right answer. But the silence was uncomfortable.

“So, how were the guys in Haiti?”

Zeb leaned back in his chair. “Stop stalling.” But his face didn’t match the sternness of his words.

“I’m not. Look.” Silver spun the workbook around so Zeb could see there was only one question left in the first part. After circling the right answer, Silver said, “I answered those, you gonna answer mine?”

“There weren’t any,” Zeb said as he scanned the booklet.

“Not a single male human in Haiti? That’s got to cut down on overpopulation.”

“I wasn’t there for— It wasn’t safe. Their culture is different.”

Silver knew plenty of otherwise-straight guys who’d do gay for pay, or take any hole they could to get off. Guys couldn’t be much different in other countries.

“How long were you there?”

“Twenty months.”

Silver might not be interested in bumping bits with anyone right now. But twenty months was a long time to go without. The next question mattered for his plan, but the way his voice hit a snag on the way out meant it mattered more than he wanted it to. “How ’bout now?”

“Now what?” Zeb set Silver up with the next part of his pretest.

“Are you with someone now, or making up for lost time?”

Zeb rubbed the bridge of his nose. “Jordan, I’m not sure that’s something we should talk about.”

“You said you wanted to be friends again. I’m going to go with a yes for your answer then.” And look. This section was on reading comprehension, otherwise known as reading between the lines. Silver should get a bonus point for already getting one right. What kind of guy would Zeb be dating? Some nerdy guy in glasses with sweater vests, who’d take Zeb out for coffee. As if some guy in a sweater vest could give Zeb the long, hard dicking Silver knew Zeb loved.

“You would be wrong.”

“Huh?” Silver hadn’t written anything down yet.

“In your assumption. I’m not seeing anyone now.”

“Okay.” Damn right, because Mr. Imaginary Sweater Vest didn’t give him what he needed. Silver hid his smile in his nectarine as he went through questions ranging from stupidly easy to brain teaser, but he knew this wouldn’t be a part of the test he was going to have problems with.

“Social studies,” Zeb announced as he flipped open the workbook to the next section.

This was going to be the boring part, the hard part. But it didn’t have to be. Because this wasn’t really about studying for a test, Silver reminded himself. He moved like he was getting closer to the table, but dragged his knee along Zeb’s thigh. Until then, he’d forgotten they were both wearing shorts. Right away, the prickle and tease of hair on Zeb’s leg dragged against Silver’s, making a nice rash of tingling goose bumps pop up. He shifted back, and Zeb answered the pressure, warm calf against his.

Simple pleasure in the touch of skin. It didn’t wake up his cock, didn’t feel like an approach he needed to decide how to respond to. Just there. And nice.

He knew he was getting a lot more questions wrong in this part, and not only so Zeb would have to keep tutoring him. It was too lame to care about. Same with the science part, big words and people’s names attached to theories Silver was supposed to remember after all these years.

When he started on the math part, he asked Zeb to give him a quick refresher on the formulas. A couple of hints on some base-times-height and distance-divided-by-rate and solving-for-x, and the rest of it seemed to bubble up from the back of his head. After the last two parts, it felt good to get stuff right again.

“It’s all coming back to me now.” He pressed against Zeb’s leg, and swear to God he only meant it in a friendly way that time, a thanks-for-the-help way. And there was no double meaning in what he’d said.

But Zeb glanced over, a regretful smile on his lips and a look in his eyes showing he knew what game Silver was playing.

His cheeks burned. He could not be blushing. He had done porn. How the fuck could he be going this red in the face by something as simple as rubbing his calf on Zeb’s?

Zeb’s lashes lowered as he wet a thumb to turn a page in the book he was using. Silver remembered this expression so well. The slightly embarrassed look when Silver got a little affectionate—usually more than a little—in a too-public place. The not-now shake of his head had always been followed by Zeb shooting over a glance that promised all Silver could handle when they were alone. But this time Zeb’s gaze stayed on the workbook, and his leg inched carefully away from Silver’s.

Silver wanted to grab his face, kiss him, force the understanding that this thing between them couldn’t be brushed away with an apology and some tutoring help. He wanted to remind him how it had been, Zeb clinging, his fingers digging in hard anywhere on Silver he could reach, hungry for more. Wanted Zeb to look at him the way he used to, like Silver was sharing something amazing and precious with him. Something Zeb could only find with him.

Silver saw himself kissing a whimper out of Zeb’s throat. Biting out a moan from his jaw. Then he’d turn Zeb around, yank down his pants and bend him over the table. Shove inside him, spit and skin, fuck him right on that smooth polished surface where Eli played host, make the books fly everywhere as Zeb tried to find a way to hold on against the slam of Silver’s cock. And when he was done, he’d let—

“Are you finished?” Zeb asked.

Silver swallowed. No. This wasn’t going to be finished for awhile yet. “Got a few more.” Silver turned to the side to keep the tension in his shorts from becoming obvious. He hurried through the last page and slid it back. Probably could have done better, but his concentration was still busy fucking Zeb into next week.

Zeb flipped through the pretest. “Good. You’ll need some extra practice with science and social studies, but—”

“Homework? Seriously?”

“But,” Zeb went on, “you’re in great shape. You should be ready to take the exam at the August test session.”

August was two months away. Silver couldn’t remember the last time he’d had plans so far ahead. Assuming they didn’t throw his ass in jail, he supposed he could take the test. A little surge of pride reminded him Zeb had said he was in great shape. So school was lame. Didn’t mean Silver didn’t have a brain.

Zeb pulled out a workbook labeled GED Science. “I got you these books for practice, and I’ll come help as often as I can before I leave.”

“Leave? For what?” Silver’s pulse throbbed in his ears, drowning out most of Zeb’s explanation. He was leaving? He’d just moved here.

With the angry rush of sound, Silver only picked up a few words.

“Camp where I met Quinn last summer. Kids with cancer. Plenty of time for review.”

“When?” That one word was all he was sure he could manage to say clearly.

Zeb seemed like he had to force himself to do it, but he met Silver’s gaze steadily. His voice was calm, but at least he didn’t act like it didn’t matter. “A little less than a month. I have to leave on June 20.”

Chapter Nine

God, the workbooks were so fucking boring.

Since Zeb had dropped his bombshell and wandered in his oblivious Zen cloud out the door yesterday, Silver had tried to look at the science book ten times. If there was a time limit for getting Zeb panting and desperate, he’d have to need less actual academic interaction. He’d skimmed to the part about sexual reproduction, but it was mostly about plants, and he didn’t see how he could use that to turn on anyone who wasn’t a florist.