Conquer the Flames (Langs Down) (16 page)

“But I meant it when I said I don’t do things like this. I’ve never had a relationship like this. Things weren’t great for me before I came to Lang Downs, and while they got better on the station, I never imagined I’d meet someone. I didn’t know about Macklin until after Caine came to the station, and by then, I was resigned to being alone. It’s not all that unusual on a station. But then Caine came, and Neil met Molly, and Kyle and Linda got married, and suddenly I was the only one not with someone. But I still didn’t think I’d find anyone. I’m not wired that way. Except then I met you.”

Thorne refrained from whooping with delight, but he couldn’t stop the smile spreading across his face.

“I don’t think I’ve ever seen you smile like that,” Ian commented. “It looks good on you.”

“I haven’t had a lot of reason to smile in my life,” Thorne said, “but maybe that’s about to change, and you aren’t the only one who doesn’t know what he’s doing. I spent twenty years in the military straight out of high school. My last relationship ended the day I enlisted. It took us some time to realize it, but he went from being my best friend to being my boyfriend to being a total stranger in less than six months, and you’ve already seen how bad things can get for me. I don’t know how to be a civilian.”

“Then I guess we’ll have to figure it out together,” Ian said. “I…. I don’t want to rush anything, okay? We’re still practically strangers in so many ways.”

“Not a lot we can do besides kiss a little while you’re stuck in that bed, anyway,” Thorne replied, “but I’m not a horny kid ruled by his hormones. We can take things as slow as you want. I don’t know a lot, but being on a team of Commandos taught me one thing: building trust takes time, and no relationship can go anywhere without it. Right now, you have no reason to trust me and every reason not to. I hope that will change, and when it does, other things will follow.”

“I do have a reason to trust you,” Ian insisted. “You came after me yesterday when everyone else had abandoned me. Nobody else did. Just you.”

“Don’t agree to anything out of gratitude,” Thorne said immediately.

“I’m not,” Ian replied. “Really, I’m not. I was already thinking about you before all that happened. You can ask Neil if you don’t believe me. Seeing you coming out of the smoke to save me just proved I chose well.”

Neil had already said as much, although he hadn’t specified when Ian had expressed his interest. Still, it was good to have it confirmed.

“So when do you think you’ll go to Wagga Wagga?” Ian asked.

“Not until you’re out of the hospital, for sure,” Thorne said. “The last note I had from Walker said he’d be home by Christmas, but I haven’t been able to check e-mail recently to see if he’s got any updates. I’d like to see him while I’m there. He’s the only one left of my original team.”

“Where are the others?” Ian asked.

Heavy, humid air clogging his nostrils with the scent of death and decay, warning him even before he reached the squad what awaited him.

“Dead.”

Ian flinched at the tone of his voice. Thorne took a deep breath and tried to school his expression to impassivity. He would never feel impassive when he thought about the senseless deaths, but he could project it. Ian didn’t deserve the anger that still burned inside him

“My commander ordered me to evacuate Walker for medical treatment. When I returned to their position, they were all dead. Walker and I were the only ones who survived.”

“How do you even cope with something like that?” Ian asked incredulously. “I can’t begin to imagine how strong you are.”

Thorne didn’t feel strong. He felt miserably weak every time he thought about those deaths or any of the others on his conscience. His hands were stained with blood, and no amount of atonement could change that. He didn’t deserve someone untouched by those horrors, but he was selfish enough not to refuse when life handed it to him.

“You learn to live with it,” Thorne said when he realized Ian was actually waiting for an answer.

Images from his nightmare flashed before his eyes, the bodies lined up execution-style, and he grimaced.

“Or at least not to think about it,” he amended. “I still see them in my nightmares sometimes.”

Ian held out his hand and Thorne moved closer to the bed. Ian coughed a little. “Are you okay?” Thorne asked.

“Yes,” Ian said as he reached for a cup of water. He took a couple of sips. “I can smell the smoke on your clothes.”

“I didn’t think about it until I got here,” Thorne said. “I’ll bring a change of clothes with me tomorrow so I can change before I come in. I don’t want to set back your recovery. Maybe I should sit across the room.”

Ian shook his head. “I can’t kiss you if you’re over there, and I really want to kiss you right now.”

Thorne took his time leaning in to capture Ian’s mouth. Their first kiss had been hard and fast, rife with adrenaline and fear. Thorne didn’t regret it, exactly, since it led to them being here now, but he needed Ian to trust him, and that meant showing he was capable of restraint.

This kiss, though, this kiss had to be perfect, and so Thorne lingered over the barest of contact, their lips hardly touching. He felt Ian’s breath against his beard, little puffs of air with only the slightest hint of a rasp from his smoke exposure. Thorne lifted his hand, intending to cradle Ian’s cheek in his palm, but the memories of his dream were still fresh. He could see the blood staining his hands, and he couldn’t sully Ian with that.

Ian had no such reservations, grabbing Thorne’s hand and pressing it to his cheek, so Thorne gave up questioning what he’d done to deserve such a treasure and went with it, curving his fingers along Ian’s jaw so that the tips barely touched his ear. Ian shivered and leaned closer. Thorne took that as an invitation and increased the pressure of their lips, not asking for more, just brushing their mouths together, lingering, parting for breath, only to linger once more.

Thorne felt the motion of Ian’s shoulder as he lifted his hand up to Thorne’s tangled hair. He’d lost his tie at some point during the day and had given up trying to keep his hair back. Ian didn’t seem to care as he hummed into the kiss. A moment later, his other hand joined the first, carding through the jumbled strands, easing out the knots and massaging Thorne’s scalp.

Thorne groaned softly at the sheer luxury of it: a private room with a closed door, Ian’s mouth soft and pliant beneath his as he leaned into Thorne’s hand, Ian’s hands in his hair, stroking and caressing like he couldn’t imagine being anywhere else. Thorne pulled back for a moment, resting his forehead against Ian’s. Ian opened his eyes and met Thorne’s gaze, and Thorne could have wept for the joy and wonder he saw on Ian’s face. A kiss, a simple, practically chaste kiss, had earned him that look, and he would do whatever it took to keep it.

He nuzzled Ian’s cheek, letting his beard brush against the hint of stubble along Ian’s jaw. Ian sighed and leaned into the contact, so Thorne brushed his lips over Ian’s cheekbone and across the bridge of his nose. Ian’s hair was too short to run his fingers through, but he curved his hand around the back of Ian’s neck, letting the bristle tickle his palm. With his hand that way, his thumb rested right below Ian’s ear. When he stroked that patch of skin, Ian shivered and sighed again.

Thorne couldn’t resist that sound. He needed to swallow it from Ian’s throat, so he kissed him again with parted lips, though he kept his tongue to himself.

Perfect,
he reminded himself.
It has to be perfect.

When he repeated the caress, Ian repeated the sigh, and Thorne thought his heart would burst right then. He had done nothing to deserve Ian’s trust, but Ian seemed to be giving it to him anyway. He inhaled sharply when one of Ian’s hands tugged a little roughly on a tangle in his hair, the smell of hospital disinfectant overridden by the slightly woodsy scent of Ian’s skin. Carley must have brought Ian’s own toiletries from the station, because the hospital soap certainly didn’t smell that good.

Wanting more, he buried his face in the crook of Ian’s neck and simply breathed Ian in.

“Oh,” Ian breathed out, and Thorne wasn’t sure how to interpret the sound. He started to pull back so he could ask, but Ian held him in place. Thorne smiled and nuzzled a little more, making sure his beard caressed Ian’s skin as much as his lips did.

“That shouldn’t feel so good.” Ian’s breathless tone would have brought Thorne to his knees if he hadn’t already been sitting. Ian had implied he didn’t have much experience, but surely someone had taken the time to appreciate him.

If no one had, well, all the more reason for Thorne to make this kiss as perfect as possible. Ian deserved to be cherished. He deserved to be kissed like the treasure he was. If no one had seen that before, it made Thorne the luckiest son of a bitch in New South Wales, because he had Ian now, and he wasn’t letting go.

Ian tugged at his hair until Thorne lifted his head, and this time Ian dove into the kiss with no guidance from Thorne. Thorne returned it but left Ian in control. If he wanted to play for a bit, Thorne wouldn’t complain.

The touch of Ian’s lips was hesitant after the first burst of enthusiasm, like Ian didn’t quite know what to do with Thorne now that he had him there. Thorne didn’t press, content to share lazy kisses while Ian decided what he wanted. If this was as far as he was willing to take things, Thorne would stop there without complaint. He wouldn’t spoil the mood of the moment by asking for more than Ian was willing to give.

Ian didn’t deepen the kiss, but he didn’t stop either, running his fingers through Thorne’s hair and over his beard, tracing the line where the beard stopped and smooth skin began both on his neck and on his cheeks, and generally taking his time exploring Thorne’s face.

The soft, almost teasing caresses were far more potent than any more sexual touch as far as Thorne was concerned. If all he wanted was sex, he could find it in any bar from here to Melbourne, but not one of those encounters would give him even a fraction of the intimacy that came from the tentative brush of Ian’s fingers over his skin.

He set up a rhythm with his thumb, back and forth across the smooth patch of skin behind Ian’s ear. Anything else might disrupt either their continued kisses or Ian’s exploration of his face, but Thorne couldn’t stop touching entirely. He wanted Ian to feel the same blossoming intimacy that had him more overwhelmed than he’d been since he lost his virginity.

He pushed that thought away to focus on Ian again. Memories of Daniel would only spoil the moment.

Finally Ian sat back, looking at Thorne with lust-darkened eyes, and Thorne felt like he’d won the prize to beat all prizes. “I never knew kissing could feel like that,” Ian murmured.

Thorne closed his eyes briefly, humbled and horrified in equal parts by Ian’s words. He had somehow earned Ian’s trust enough to be able to share this moment, and yet the years of emptiness those words represented struck him to the very core. Thorne might not have had a relationship since Daniel, but he hadn’t lived such an isolated life that he didn’t know how good a kiss could feel. “I’m happy to repeat the experience anytime you want.”

Ian grinned at him, quick and bright. “You might regret saying that.”

“Never,” Thorne swore.

“The blokes at the station don’t know about me,” Ian said. “There was never a reason to tell them.”

“Do you really think they’ll have an issue with it?” Thorne asked. “With three other gay couples living openly on the station, why would it make a difference to them?”

“Because I didn’t trust them with it even when it was obvious it wouldn’t make a difference,” Ian said. “Michael wouldn’t tolerate slurs of any kind in his hearing, and we heard a few back then, mostly against Kami rather than about anyone being gay, because no one was open about it. The few times it came up, Michael shut those comments down just as fully as he did the racial ones, but he couldn’t control what he didn’t hear, and while Kami had his defenders in the bunkhouse, nobody said anything about the homophobic slurs.”

“That’s not the case now,” Thorne said. “Neil warned me the first night I arrived.”

Ian laughed, although it didn’t strike Thorne as a happy sound.

“Yes, I’m sure he did. Neil is incredibly loyal. Almost to the point of stupidity.”

“What’s that got to do with anything?” Thorne asked.

“Neil was the worst about the comments when Michael wasn’t around. When he found out about Caine, he was as nasty and cutting to him as he could be. I don’t honestly know why Caine didn’t fire him, except that he was still getting his feet underneath him at the station and so maybe didn’t feel like he had the authority to do that yet,” Ian explained. “And then we had a series of bad storms, and Neil got trapped on the other side of a gully with no way to get anywhere safe and dry. As cold as it got by the time the storms passed, Neil would have died of hypothermia if he hadn’t drowned trying to cross the gully to get home. Caine refused to lose a man, even Neil, and tied a rope around himself so he could ride across the gully to get another rope to Neil and lead him across safely. Neil’s attitude toward Caine did a complete reversal after that, but I was never sure how much that extended beyond Caine.”

“His brother’s gay too, isn’t he?” Thorne asked. He thought he’d got the relationships among the senior jackaroos straight, but he wasn’t completely sure.

“Yes, and the struggle there wasn’t even because Sam was gay, but because Sam ended up falling in love with Jeremy Taylor,” Ian said. “It’s not rational, but the fear of his reaction was still there. Caine saved his life, Sam’s his brother; his loyalty would keep him from turning on them.”

“And you’re his best friend,” Thorne said. “He tore me a new one in the field today when he thought I was taking unnecessary risks.”

“He and Caine have that in common,” Ian said. “He wouldn’t want anyone hurt on his watch.”

“That’s not why he yelled at me,” Thorne said. “He yelled at me because if I got hurt, it would upset you.”

Ian opened this mouth to respond, but no words came out, only a harsh, dry cough. Thorne grabbed the cup of water and pressed it to Ian’s lips, but although he swallowed a few sips, that didn’t settle his cough like it had before. Growing worried, Thorne caught Ian’s chin in a gentle hand. “How can I help?”