Family Man (29 page)

As they stepped into the elevator, Dylan glanced down at the left arm he had tucked around his torso. “Maybe I’m trying to keep from punching people who won’t leave me the fuck alone.” He let his arm hang loose as they stepped from the elevator and picked up the blue line again.

The waiting room she’d sent them to was small, eight chairs and a few tattered magazines. To Mike’s relief, there was no one else there. Dylan paced the ten feet to the window and back to the door.

“They’ll find us here? They should have given us a pager.”

Mike kept his mouth closed and shrugged. For someone who wanted Mike to disappear, Dylan kept talking to him.

“What?” Dylan snapped.

Mike raised his hands in a placating gesture. He hoped that the older brother would be here soon. Dylan was about to fly into pieces. Mike found a space on the wall that needed holding up while Dylan maintained his three-steps-forward, three-steps-back pacing.

He was about to suggest Dylan take his raw nerves for a walk outside when Dylan picked up the pile of magazines and threw them halfway across the room. “I can’t fucking do this.”

Mike’s ex-boyfriend had claimed Mike had boundary issues, though Carl would have been shocked as hell to see Mike follow Dylan across the hall and into the men’s room. Mike had come a ways since then, and he couldn’t stand back and let Dylan self-destruct.

Dylan was resting his hands on the sink. “Goddamn, what is with you, man?”

The bathroom was single occupancy. Mike locked the door. Either he’d get his face punched in, or he’d get Dylan to ratchet it back enough to make it through the night, but either way, they were better off without the chance of an audience.

At the sound of the click, Dylan’s head snapped up. “You got the wrong idea. Totally.”

Well, that was one way to take off some of the tension. That possibility hadn’t occurred to him until Dylan brought it up. And the way Dylan’s tongue came out to put a shine on his full lips wasn’t doing a lot to get it out of either of their heads. Whatever Dylan was able to admit about himself, Mike hadn’t been wrong earlier. They turned each other’s crank.

Dylan pushed away from the sink, reaching for the door handle. Mike leaned back, the cool satin of the wooden door pressing into his ass and shoulders.

Dylan took a step back. “Do not start this shit.” The hand that had been reaching for the door went to his head, fingers sliding along the grooves between the cornrowed braids on his scalp.

“So get me out of the way. Throw a punch. C’mon. Because you have got to burn some of that off or you won’t be much good to your brother.”

Dylan was on him in a second, his fists wrapped tight in Mike’s T-shirt. Mike tried to relax, to let Dylan shove him out of the way, but Dylan hauled him in closer, and his mouth crashed down onto Mike’s.

Dylan didn’t kiss guys. Even that one time when it had gotten farther than just getting sucked off, he’d only touched the guy’s hips and dick. Kissing Mike wasn’t anything like kissing a girl. It was harder, rougher. Not just the scrape from stubble on Mike’s jaw, but the way Mike didn’t let Dylan’s tongue into his mouth, but dragged it in, hand coming up to grab on to the end of his braids.

There was only one reason Dylan was doing this now. Any sensation beat sitting around with more pieces of his insides being scooped out with every minute of waiting. Not that Dylan had some psychic connection to Dare on that table. If he did, he’d be feeling the pain…where they were working on Dare. In the head, fucking Christ, they were cutting into Dare’s brain.

So Dylan had a reason, but kissing this white boy—man—was still a giant mistake.

Knew it because of the electric rush that went mouth-balls-dick.

The buzz didn’t build slow and nice like when a girl let him feel her up when they were kissing. Blood pumped thick and fast in his dick, an instant ache despite the loose fit of his jeans. His hips tried to rock him closer, to get his hard-on rubbing onto Mike’s. Which was something else he’d always made a point not to do.

Dylan jerked his head back. “I don’t…kiss.” He knew it was stupid even as he said it.

But Mike didn’t laugh or say something sarcastic, though Dylan had that coming. Mike only arched his sandy brows, but the expression in his eyes wasn’t questioning. It was the same cynicism Dylan knew from his own mirror. Mike twitched his lips in a way that might have been a
whatever
shrug as his fingers slid wide, cupping the back of Dylan’s scalp, tingling the edges between his braids.

Fuck it.

Dylan grabbed Mike’s shoulders to pin the smug asshole against the door and kissed him again. Hard. Dylan’s dick kept trying to cross the space between them, no matter what Dylan tried to tell it about limits.

Mike saved him from breaking that rule. His hand shot between them, found Dylan’s dick through his jeans and rubbed him until the tip tingled as juice leaked from the slit. Mike’s tongue was deep in Dylan’s mouth when Mike worked through the fly. His hand burned as it landed on Dylan’s bare skin. With a gasp, he broke off the kiss.

The shock wasn’t about the sudden escalation. That was the number-one thing Dylan liked about sex with guys. No bullshit. Get off. Get gone.

No, it wasn’t shock, but Dylan had never been kissing a guy when that guy went for Dylan’s dick before. That made it tough to breathe, let alone do anything about kissing him back.

Lights, lovers…action!

Came Upon a Midnight Clear

© 2012 Katie Porter

Born to old Virginia money, film producer Kyle Wakefield’s conservative upbringing kept him in the closet. Only once did he venture outside: for a tempestuous teenage affair with Nathan Carnes. When Nathan’s self-destructive streak landed him in prison, Kyle slammed the door on youthful hopes. Despite Hollywood successes, he still hides his true self.

He thought he’d moved on, until his production company hires Nathan and his Second Chances stunt crew to work on the London set of a big-budget action flick. Watching Nathan risk life and limb with fellow ex-cons looking for a fresh start makes it tough for Kyle to keep his desires hidden.

Thirteen years have passed since Nathan’s teenage self-doubt led him to sabotage any chance of a future with Kyle. He’s come a long way since then, but despite their explosive sexual chemistry, Kyle treats their attraction like a deep dark secret.

Their matched Hollywood ambitions and a pain-in-the-ass director make cooperation essential. As the London holiday season casts its spell, the two men find themselves on the verge of falling in love again—even as old secrets and pain keep them shackled. The only hope of unlocking their hearts is a Christmas miracle.

Warning: This book features a snowy London Christmas, sex on a pool table, a hot-and-dirty gay nightclub, and naughty references to candy canes.

Enjoy the following excerpt for
Came Upon a Midnight Clear:

Kyle had wanted to let loose. That tight, pained place in his soul had
needed
it. Seeing Nate again… Remembering how free he’d once felt in the arms of the young man he’d loved…

Kyle was strangling on the precepts that kept his life ordered and successful.

Don’t let it show.

Don’t let anyone know.

And don’t get caught.

That last one was imperative. He hadn’t been a monk for the last ten years, but that meant stray hook-ups in the recesses of various cities. A guy had to protect his sanity. He’d stayed safe, got off, went home. Not exactly a stable emotional basis for accepting his homosexuality. Too much of it was cloaked in shadow and shame.

There, however, in a thumping underground club in the heart of SoHo, he could let it show, and everyone sure as hell knew he was queer.

As for getting caught, that rule didn’t seem to apply when he looked passionately into Nate’s eyes. The Christmas lights, disco balls and strobes didn’t dispel the power of his intent gaze.

“You heard me,” Nate said, so quietly but so near to Kyle’s mouth that the words registered as breath more than sound. “Do it.”

Kyle levered up and hitched his ass on the table, then spread his knees. Tim and his partner—was it Mick?—laughed and watched the show. Kyle. The opening act. The center of attention in a gay nightclub. His heart hammered with excitement and anticipation. He felt a very different sort of release when he and Nate locked eyes.

Kyle was right where he’d always longed to be. Being with Nate made him honest and real. Maybe he wanted to be that kind of person more often.

With a knowing, naughty smile, Nate grabbed one of the Jell-O shots. “You know where this goes, don’t you?”

“Yes.”

“Then show me.”

Hands steady despite his gut-clenching arousal, Kyle stripped his purple V-neck T-shirt—some impulse purchase he’d made, along with the collar, on a drunken, giddy night out with Steph when they’d first gotten to London.

He leaned back on one elbow and hooked a thumb under the waistband of his jeans.

“It goes right here,” he said.

The air thickened between them, all teasing gone.

Nate’s expression was as intense as when he prepared for a big stunt sequence, all focus and calculation. His mouth was serious, but he never compressed his lips. They rested together with a unique, stern beauty, rimmed above and below with a shade of evening stubble. Blunt nose, rough-hewn cheekbones and a brow twisted in concentration. But his eyes… They were large and soulful, searching for something Kyle couldn’t name, couldn’t understand.

Kyle expected derisive words. A smirk. Hell, he half-expected Nate to walk out at any moment, if only to prove a point: that Kyle was gay, closeted and a goddamn hypocrite.

Instead, Nate leaned forward and licked the notch at the juncture of Kyle’s collarbones. “That’s right, college boy. Can you handle it?”

“I’m here waiting.”

That serious expression didn’t abate. “You have no idea what it is to wait.”

Cold skittered over Kyle’s bare chest, despite the hot, grinding sweat of the club. That unease needed to go. He didn’t have the stamina to contemplate dark roads. This was the time for raunchiness, for forgetting old pains and lingering doubts. He shoved Nate’s wrist down his body.

From there, Nate took over. Good. Sometimes the man was a goddamn mule.

Nate slid the conical plastic shot glass down along Kyle’s tensing stomach until it nestled between skin and denim. For a moment he seemed to savor his prize, eyeing Kyle from head to crotch. The attention made Kyle feel worshipped. Stripping half naked, wearing his outrageous collar—the decisions that had made his gut churn in the hotel room were so perfect right now.

Nate glanced at the two men avidly soaking up the show. “Watch and learn, boys.”

With that, he slid his tongue and teeth down Kyle’s chest, past his abs, until Nate’s mouth hovered above the shot glass. Nate dug his blunt fingertips into Kyle’s hips. Holding him. Immobilizing him.

Kyle groaned.

Lowering farther still, Nate sucked on the shot glass. The sight of his sandy-blond hair, tinted with every color of the rainbow, was more than Kyle needed. Fantasies and memories and reality merged into a heady cocktail of
want
. He gripped the hair at Nate’s crown and twisted. Lifted. Nate straightened, his mouth pursed around a mouthful of Jell-O and shaped into a smile of pure sin.

He swallowed.

So did Kyle.

Ah, fuck.

“Damn that was hot,” Tim said almost reverently. His hulking bear of a partner was busy sliding rough hands up and down the smaller man’s heaving chest.

Fingers still tangled in Nate’s hair, Kyle yanked him close for a swift kiss of vodka and strawberry and man. “Again,” he rasped.

Nate was quicker this time. His fingers shook slightly as he reached for another shot. To see how much Kyle visibly affected a man who’d spent three years in prison was almost too much. He was upending the hardest badass he’d ever known. Kyle’s cock was swollen. He wanted to fuck. He wanted this torture to go on forever.

No matter how unsteady, Nate managed to unfasten the top button of Kyle’s jeans and tug down the zipper.

“Turning you on, college boy?”

“
Turned
on. It’s a done deal.”

That made Nate grin, cocky and boyishly lopsided. Kyle’s heart turned over. But then he couldn’t breathe—flat out couldn’t—when Nate tucked the next shot inside the waistband of Kyle’s boxer briefs. The cool, conical plastic nestled right where the head of his cock was contained by that elastic band. Not that it was concealed. The bulge of his erection was unmistakable where it strained against his fly.

To his left, Kyle heard a moan. The bigger guy, Mick, had found his partner’s crotch and was giving it firm, pulsing squeezes. Nate watched them too. All around, the thunder of music created a trance of
here
and
now
.

Kyle’s head jerked backward. So dazed, it was only afterward that he realized Nate had yanked on the collar.

“Like that,” Nate rasped against Kyle’s throat. “They’re getting off watching us. You splayed out like some gay pin-up, chest arched, shoulders brawny. And that monster cock—they can see it, just like I can. Fucking
fantastic
.” He licked along Kyle’s jaw and bit his earlobe, giving the collar another jerk. “But you know what?”