Bewitched by Bella's Brother (20 page)

swollen, aching, rampant cock.

Sebastian’s groan echoed—probably beyond the shower.

It probably resounded off the damned ceiling in the living
room, and he hadn’t given a shit because, oh boy oh boy oh
boy oh
shit!
Did that feel fucking wonderful! The texture of the
sponge, the firm grip, the slickness of the soap… all of it….

Sebastian had shivered and moaned, and Asa had worked
the fingers in his backside and the hand around his cock and
he’d moaned some more.

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But Asa—strong, silent, grave Asa—was not as

unaffected as he seemed. His voice cracked breathlessly as
he hissed in Sebastian’s ear.

“Come on, baby… come on and tell me what you want…

say the words, Sebastian… you’re… ah God… you’re so good
with the words….”

It was the crack in Asa’s voice that had done it.

Sebastian wouldn’t have trusted him enough to beg if he
hadn’t thought Asa had wanted Sebastian as much as

Sebastian wanted him.

“Oh please, Asa. Please please please please… fuck me…

oh please… just… just… ahheeeeehhaaaahhhhh….” Asa’s

cock was so thick, the head so broad and flat, and Sebastian
felt the whole smooth, flat, plum-sized head glide tightly
through the ring of his flesh and pop inside his body, until
Sebastian was clenching down on that thick, veiny shaft and
begging some more.

Asa had been happy to oblige. He’d put one hand on the
chrome bar to his side and one hand on Sebastian’s cock,
squeezing, stroking, slicking like silk, and he’d thrown his
hips into it, back and forth, driving, penetrating, slamming into
Sebastian with force and passion, until Sebastian had
screamed against the tile and come, collapsing in a heap of
sobbing breath and euphoria, right into Asa’s arms.

Asa had fucked him until the water had run cold, and
then he’d howled release into Sebastian’s shoulder and
shuddered orgasm into Sebastian’s stretched, sore, happy
ass.

That entire moment, that entire giddy afternoon,

flickered between them, as they sat and stared helplessly at the computer monitor, hungry for each other’s faces.

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Jordan whimpered on his father’s lap, and Asa said, “I

love you.”

“I love you too,” Sebastian answered him, glad to finally get the words out.

Asa smiled his slight smile, and Sebastian both loved

and damned that expression because he wasn’t always sure what it meant. Mostly, he was sure that Asa’s emotions ran far under the surface, and that smile was like the tiny

flashing of a black fin that did no justice at all to the giant beastie underneath the indigo water.

And in a moment, even that tip-of-the-iceberg smile was

gone. Asa said goodnight so he could take Jordan up to bed, and Sebastian flopped his head forward on the table next to the laptop.

Bella appeared, gave him an unimpressed expression

down her perfect nose, and flipped her white-blonde braid over her shoulder. “Why the dead fish impression, baby?”

Sebastian answered her by gaping his mouth open and

shut, because he knew it would make her laugh. She obliged and then looked behind him on her monitor.

“Oh my God—is that our old apartment? Are you sure

you’re not in Davis?”

“Am I getting laid tonight?” he asked sharply, and she

said, “You’d better not be!”

“Then I’m
definitely
not in Davis,” he responded with a scowl. She laughed, in a gratified sort of way, and asked him what was on the menu for tomorrow.

It was easy talking to Bella like this, he thought

wretchedly. This was how they talked. He missed cuddling on the couch with her, but this banter, this back and forth; it was the language that defined them.

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His language with Asa had been punctuated by silences

and defined by touch. Asa had listened under his words and heard his heart. Bella did too—but Asa had been the one to hold that rambling, prattling, word-riddled heart in his hands and gentle it and give it peace.

The thought pestered him when he finished talking with

Bella and folded his laptop up for the night. The most

exciting summer of his life, and it had been all about finding peace. He’d left it for more exciting prospects, supposedly, right? Why was it that all he could think about as he

dangled his feet off his little student cot and gazed

suspiciously into the bathroom, was that his heart was

wailing with chaos and he’d never been so bored with his own breathing?

BELLA had asked him what was on the menu for the next

day, and he’d told her: he was meeting his supervising

professor.

Dr. Schlesinger was a middle-aged, round woman, with

hair that was halfway between brown and gray, crooked

glasses, and the abstracted air of a woman whose mind was never in the same room with her body.

She’d greeted Sebastian enthusiastically, been sorry

that Bella had not been able to accompany him (she’d heard good things about Ms. Bryne), and was curious as to why

Sebastian would have left his family to come pursue this rather thankless branch of study.

“Because I’m nuttier than a rabid squirrel,” he’d said.

He’d been so glum and disgusted with himself that the

professor hadn’t even been able to laugh.

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“Well, sweetie, if you find a cure for squirrel-rabies, let me know. Two ex-husbands and kids who won’t speak to

me--I’m telling you, obsessions are a tough thing to live with.”

Until that moment, she had reminded him a little bit of

Julie. He was absurdly disappointed that she was another sort of person altogether.

So he met his supervising professor, the other grad

students he was teamed with to research, and his general manager at the bookstore (who was yet another tool.

Seriously, was there
any
chance of someone with intelligence and a sense of humor taking that job? Ever?). By the end of the day, he had a firm toehold in his new, temporary life, and although it should have looked like he was climbing the same cliff, it didn’t.

This cliff was colder. It was like comparing the cliffs in Cabo with the cliffs of Puget Sound or Newfoundland. It just wasn’t the same.

As he was eating dinner in a diner (he’d had to get a rec from a fellow grad student), he got a text from Bella.
Guess
what?

Freddie Mercury came back as a zombie and ate Sarah

Palin’s brain.

You wish!

Well don’t you?

I’ll wish for zombies later. Right now I’ve got a line on a
real job.

What’s a real job?

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A docent to a gallery in Grass Valley. I can buy and sell
and, you know, look alluring and wear grown-up clothes and
shit.

You sound excited.

You sound jealous.

Shut up, bitch, I’m eating my chicken Caesar.

The bookstore wasn’t fun without you.

Tell me about it.

I couldn’t just work there and wait for you to come home.

I’m happy for you, sweets, I really am.

It was just proof of one more way time really didn’t stop.

Asa
would
come home and not get his shoulder rub, Jordan
would
start his first day of school, Sebastian
wouldn’t
be there, and he would miss the whole show because rabid

squirrels had been in fashion last September, when he and Bella had first conceived this idea, and now they were just plain nuts.

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HE LIKED to tell himself that he would have come to his senses eventually. He was pretty sure he wouldn’t have been able to go back after Thanksgiving break, at any rate. As it was, the thing that woke him up and showed him what a

complete ass he was being was actually quite small.

Tiny in fact. Microscopic. About the size of a virus.

The
varicella zoster
virus, specifically.

Jordan had eventually settled into his new routine for

“Sebastian time.” He wasn’t happy about it, but he’d learned to take advantage of their half-hour on the computer. He’d started to come equipped with props: the drawings he’d done at school, a story to read to Sebastian, a new bug in his collection. (He’d branched out to lizards now. Asa was

hopeful that by Christmas he’d be all excited about

mammals and they could get a puppy. Jordan had been

afraid a dog would smash the bugs, which was what had

been holding him back during the summer.)

At any rate, between Jordan and the quiet recap of Asa’s day, Sebastian had started looking forward to his phone calls home with some zeal; on this night, he’d left his fellow grad students swilling beer to make his scheduled time.

“Hey, Sebastian—hang out a bit!” Anthony was a skinny

kid, not quite Sebastian’s age, who had developed crush-at-first-sight when they’d been introduced. Poor guy—Sebastian Bewitched by Bella’s Brother |
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wasn’t even sure the kid knew he was gay, but Sebastian

had spotted the symptoms right away. Anthony had dark

hair, dark eyes, and a square, handsome cut to his jaw. For a moment Sebastian toyed with the possibility of cutting all ties with Bella’s family and becoming Spokane’s newest

virgin killer. The idea really held no appeal at all.

“Naw,” he’d said, smiling. “I’ve got a laptop rendezvous with my boyfriend’s kid. Jordan gets upset when I’m late.”

Anthony blinked. “Is Jordan the boyfriend or the kid?”

“The kid. Asa is the boyfriend. Sorry bout the beer—

gotta go!”

And like that he was puttering from the pub to his

crappy apartment, looking forward to this convo like he

hadn’t looked forward to interviewing artisans all day.

(Spokane—in fact, much of the smaller towns in

Washington—was rife with them. They made a nice

background of first-person accounts for his dissertation.) But when he flipped open his laptop and logged in,

Jordan was tired and fractious. “You’re not here,” he kept saying. “And I want to be a lizard. Lizards are cold-blooded, not warm-blooded.”

“But I’m not a lizard, Jordan. I’m warm-blooded.”

“You can’t be warm-blooded!” Jordan sulked. “You don’t

have a heart!”

“Jordan!” Bella said from his side, shocked. “Ohmigod,

baby—that was harsh!”

But Sebastian was more upset by Jordan’s appearance

than by what he’d just said. “Bella-love, do me a favor and touch his forehead, would you? I’ve been playing with the contrast on this thing since he’s been on, and he looks
really
flushed!”

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Bella’s hand came into view, cupping Jordan’s forehead.

“Ouch!” The boy shivered. “Bella, that’s cold.”

“Oh crap. Asa!” Bella looked into the monitor after

calling for her brother. “Sebastian, I’ll get back to you, okay?”

Bella stood up, leaving a miserable Jordan staring at the computer. “I’m sorry, Sebastian.”

“That’s okay, baby—you’re not feeling well.”

Suddenly the kid looked really uncomfortable, his face

screwing into a grimace and his eyes squinching shut, and his entire body shuddering, and….

Oh Christ. Sebastian closed his eyes for the finale, and then closed his laptop. Odds were good Asa was going to

have to buy a new laptop on his end anyway. For all the

spiffy Dad-ways Asa had of cleaning shit up, Sebastian was pretty sure there wasn’t a spray-bottle in the world that would get
that
out of a computer.

An hour later, he got a text from Asa.
Temp of 103. Doc
says dose him up and hang on. Chicken pox is going around
and the vaccine doesn’t always work.

Sebastian cringed. Oh geez—poor J—poor little

goombah. Chicken pox? How badly did that suck? He went

to sleep that night picturing the little guy, sick for two weeks, without Sebastian to make him bugs and make him

laugh. That wasn’t right. Asa was quiet and grave and sweet, but Sebastian could make him smile like no one else, not even Aunt Bella. Jesus. Could this get any worse?

The next day he got a text from Bella.
It’s chicken pox.

Got it from Julie’s kids. Asa’s got it too.

Oh fuck.
That’s worse in grownups!

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No shit. He’s got a fever of 104. Mom’s here. Gotta go.

Chicken pox? The fucking chicken pox? Chicken pox

could kill—grownups, kids… it didn’t matter.

It probably wasn’t fatal. He tried to calm himself down.

It happened, sure—but not that often. This wasn’t
really
life or death, right? They’d recover. They’d get to tell stories, family stories, of the time dad and son came down with the pox and didn’t that suck and Sebastian wouldn’t be the

meanie who was away at college for some dumbshit idea

when the love of his life and the kid he’d never replace died of
varicella zoster
, right?

The thought made him hyperventilate, and when he’d

cleared the black spots from his eyes with the judicious use of oxygen in the lungs, he had a moment of total and