Found at the Library (17 page)

Chapter Eleven

A book hangover is a real thing. A book that sucks you in to the point that you can’t let go of the story line long after the last page is turned. But that’s the best type of book because it means that author touched your soul and left a mark. That’s my goal in my writing.

-Observations from Mac

The day after Christmas, Tommy awoke and lay alone in his bed. He couldn’t believe he hadn’t heard a word from Mac in the last two days. For some reason, he thought he would. Had Mac found the present Tommy had left on his doorstep? If nothing else, he’d thought he’d get at least a
thank you
or
fuck off
.

He lay there and gazed up at the ceiling. The store was closed this week between Christmas and New Year’s Day, so he didn’t have a reason to get up. It would be so easy to close his eyes and sleep the week and the hurt away.

He had settled in to do just that when he heard a knock on the door to his loft. The idea that it might be Mac propelled him out of bed. He grabbed a pair of dirty jeans off the floor, slid them on, and rushed to the door.

He opened it to find a sexy man leaning negligently against the door jam, but it wasn’t the sexy man he’d been hoping for. “Stig?” What was Stig Minton doing here?

Stig took a slow meandering look up and down Tommy’s body, lingering at the line of hair that dropped below the waistband of his low-hanging jeans. “Hmm,” he said with his eyebrow arched. “No one said Mac didn’t have good taste in his men.” He met Tommy’s gaze again and winked. “Are you going to invite me in? My balls are freezing off out here.”

“Um, yeah, sure. Sorry. Come on in.” He stood back from the door to let Stig enter. In all his meetings with the gallery owner, he’d never seen Stig in anything besides a custom-fitted suit. Today he wore jeans and a hooded sweatshirt that made him look younger and more like a coed than the powerful scion of the arts community. But that still didn’t explain why he was here.

“Is something wrong at the gallery?” They should be dismantling his show this week and delivering the art to the new owners. Could something have already gone wrong in that process?

Stig waved a hand at him. “Oh, no, everything’s fine. You had an incredible showing and I’m hoping we can do it again next year. But I’m not here to talk business. I’m here as a personal favor, basically an errand boy in this case.” He reached in his pocket and pulled out something small. “I’ve been tasked to deliver this to you with very specific instructions.”

“O-kay.” That didn’t clear a thing up.

Stig smirked. “I can’t hand this over until I have your full agreement. What I’m about to give you is an audio file. You need to promise to listen to it within the next twelve hours. Completely. At that time, I or some other poor schmuck who owes Mac a favor will bring you another one. Two deliveries a day until we’re done. Any questions?”

“About a million of them.”

Stig snorted. “I don’t doubt it, but I don’t have the answers you want. I think that’s where this comes in.” He opened his palm to show Tommy the flash drive. “So do I have your agreement to the rules? Listen to it completely in the next twelve hours. I think it’s only an hour long.”

Tommy nodded, not trusting his voice. What did this mean?

“Okay then.” Stig grabbed Tommy’s hand, held it palm up, and dropped the drive into it. Stig curled Tommy’s fingers up over the hardware. He gave another slow, lust-filled look at Tommy’s bare chest. “If Mac doesn’t manage to sort this out, you should call me. I’m thinking we might have a lot in common.”

Now Tommy snorted. “Mac sent you over here and now you’re going to hit on me? What kind of friend are you?”

Stig shook his head. “Believe me, Mac would expect no less from me. Besides, we’re not friends, not anymore.” Stig turned and left through the door, but his quick exit didn’t disguise the pain in his voice when he had said those words.

Tommy opened his palm. The flash drive was in a plain white plastic case and the number one had been written on it. Hope surged. Please let this mean what he thought it did. He grabbed his laptop off the kitchen counter and inserted the drive as he sat down on the couch.

When he pushed play, Mac’s voice floated out of the speakers, sending goose bumps and prickles of need up Tommy’s spine. But then what Mac was saying began to sink in and Tommy gasped in a breath of air.

“Tommy, two months ago you sent my world into a tailspin, and I did what all writers do. I wrote. For days, I didn’t know what I was doing, what I was writing. These two characters were there on the paper, like you were there that morning of the library book sale. I know I hurt you with this book, and I hate that. So much.” Mac’s voice fractured.

Tommy’s throat swelled at the emotion he could hear in Mac’s voice.

Mac cleared his throat. “I’ve tried to figure out what I can do to fix this, but I don’t think I can until you know their story. You need to understand Rex and Thomas, and then I think you will understand how they aren’t us. They’re simply a reflection of my feelings about us. All those feelings, the love, the confusion, the amazement, and yes, even the fear. It will take a few hours to get the whole story recorded for you. There are ten installments. I want you to hear it all before you call me. That’s all I ask. Listen to it all and then maybe we can talk. If you don’t hate me. Please don’t hate me.” Mac took a shuddering breath on the recording. “Because I don’t hate you, Tommy. Far from it.”

And then the story began with Mac reading his book.

Installment One...

“I want to hear one word when I make you come,” the rough, raspy voice whispered in Rex’s ear. Arousal slithered down Rex’s spine straight to his groin. The stranger’s thick cock breached Rex’s hole and he grunted as the man worked his hard length inside. This burn, this fullness, this complete ownership by the stranger holding his arms captive behind him...this is what he’d been looking for when he’d gone into the bar tonight.

When the man’s groin was fully seated against Rex’s ass, he stilled. The stranger’s chest heaved against Rex’s back. The large cock flexing in his ass, and the glorious leashed power within all those muscles pressed against him pushed his arousal even higher.

“Come on. Move,” Rex urged and tried to swivel his hips, but the man held him too tightly.

He growled against Rex’s ear. “No. This is my show. You will do it my way.” He pulled out almost to the tip and then slammed back into Rex. He then proceeded to fuck him. It was hard. It was dirty. It was everything Rex needed it to be.

Just as Rex balanced on the edge of falling over into orgasm, the stranger stilled again. Rex whimpered in need. Teeth bit his ear to center him. “You’re going to come just like this,” the man growled. “Just from me fucking your ass, and when you do, you’re going to scream my name.”

“What...”Rex moaned as the stranger rolled his hips. “What’s your name?”

“Thomas,” he gasped and then he changed his angle, pummeling Rex’s prostate until Rex did exactly as the man instructed and came, cock untouched, screaming, “Thomas,” for anyone in the bar to hear.

...

Tommy paused the audio, his breath sawing in and out, his raging erection strangling in the tight denim of his jeans. Holy fuck. The words alone were incredibly arousing, but to hear Mac’s voice reading them to him... Fu-uck.

Mac had been turned on when reading this and recording it, too. It was obvious from the growl in his voice as he read. Was he able to find that same pleasure from the words he’d written? Or had he been thinking about how Tommy would react to the audio, to listening about the character Thomas fucking Rex hard and fast?

In fact, Tommy hadn’t fucked Mac. Was this something Mac fantasized about? Tommy’s cock pulsed. He sure as hell did. How much of this was the real Mac and how much of it was fiction? He wasn’t sure. All he knew is that it was hotter than anything he’d ever heard on audio before. He opened the placket of his jeans with a sigh of relief and a moan of heart-pounding desire as his hard cock sprung free from its confines. He stroked it slowly and his eyes rolled back into his head at the pleasure.

Mac said Tommy couldn’t call him until all the audiobooks were done, but he didn’t say anything in the rules about masturbating while listening to them.

***

Exactly twelve hours after Stig delivered the first audiobook installment, he arrived at the door with the second. Tommy opened the door wide and ushered Stig in, feeling a little embarrassed, seeing how the first installment affected him.

“I’m assuming you’re here with another delivery?”

“Yep,” Stig said with a pop of his lips. “Because I have no life except to do Mac’s bidding. It’s pathetic, really.”

Stig glanced away, looking suddenly uncomfortable, and Tommy had a horrifying thought. “Do you know what’s on the drives?”

Something in his tone must have alerted Stig because he frowned at Tommy. “No, but now I’m intrigued especially with how red you’re turning. What naughtiness is Mac up to in this book? Naughty isn’t usually his style.”

“Do you read all of Mac’s work?”

“Yeah, me and all the poor other schmucks out there he’s sucked into his vortex, but I’ve never read anything that would make me blush. Color me fascinated. I think you need to dish.”

“Um, no, I don’t dish.” Tommy pressed his lips together, wondering exactly what this huge change in style meant for what Mac was trying to tell him. “But I would welcome some company. Would you like to come in and have a beer, cup of coffee, or maybe some hot tea?”

“Hmm, you are just a regular gentleman, aren’t you? I’d love some hot tea. Thank you.”

While Tommy made the tea, Stig went and gazed over the darkened store and studio space below. “This is quite the space you have here. I like it. It suits your artistic style.”

“Thanks,” Tommy said, but he frowned. “Unfortunately, I probably need to find someplace else to live, at least temporarily, when Ryder gets out of the hospital. He’s going to need some help, and his place isn’t big enough for both of us.”

“How’s he doing? I’m sorry, I didn’t think to ask before.”

“Better, now. Thanks to you and the gallery, I could move him to a better hospital. He’s safer, and I think that’s showing in his outlook.”

“That’s good, but no thanks owed to me. That was your incredible talent and your generous benefactor.” Stig came over and sat on a barstool at the countertop, and Tommy pushed a cup full of tea in front of him.

“Are you still not going to give me a hint about who that benefactor was?”

“Nope, I can’t if I hope to have his business again. He’s not one that I can afford to anger.”

“I understand.” Tommy hesitated a moment. “How is Mac doing? Has he told you anything about what he hopes to gain by all this?”

Stig shook his head with a sad smile. “Mac and I don’t have that type of relationship. I can tell you how he looks.”

Tommy’s gut twisted, wanting to know something. Did Mac miss him as much as Tommy missed him?

“Of course,” Stig continued, “Mac always looks good, but something’s missing. You know he’s on a deadline, which is always a crazy time for him. He gets obsessed with his writing, but there’s something else this time. First, he’s taking time out to do those.” He gestured to the thumb drive still lying on top of the counter. “Something that pulls him away from his current work in progress is unheard of. But he’s exhausted, and sad, and there’s a spark of life missing from him. Right now, I think that thing he’s missing is you, which is why I’m willing to play errand boy. I like you two. I need to see you succeed so I can hope that maybe there’s a fairy tale ending out there for all of us.”

Stig took one last sip of his tea and then stood. “Thanks for the company, Tommy. It was nice to sit and chat. I don’t do that very often anymore. Now, I’ll probably be back in the morning, so if you want to answer the door nude or in a towel barely draped around your waist, that would be a great start to the week. I’m just saying.” And with a wink, he slipped out the door.

Tommy chuckled in his wake. Stig was one of those that could go from serious to flirty in a second so one never knew when to take him seriously.

He fingered the flash drive Stig had delivered. What did Mac have in store for Rex and Thomas in this installment?

This time the story simply began with Mac’s deep rumbling voice. There was no lead-in as he started on chapter two of the story.

...

Installment Two

Rex looked up from his briefing as two men entered.

“I’m sorry to interrupt, Major Dillon, but you wanted to know the moment Lieutenant. Hawke reported in.”

Good. The new lieutenant was key to making this mission work, since he was their new linguist.

But then the private stepped aside, and Rex looked into the green eyes of the man from the bar. The man who had fucked him so hard he had still felt him in his ass a week later. Rex ran his hand over the ring of bruises on his wrist, hidden by the sleeves of his uniform. Fuck.

Thomas’s stoic expression didn’t change, but his pupils dilated when he saw Rex rub his wrist. If Rex hadn’t been watching for it, he never would have seen the miniscule tell.

“Welcome to the Specter Squad, Lieutenant,” Rex said. “Have a seat for the rest of the briefing, and I’ll catch you up on what you missed after. We head out in six hours.”

...

Chapter Twelve

Spoiler...knowing the end before you get there.

Life doesn’t allow you to have spoilers. That’s good, because sometimes, the surprise ending makes the difficult journey completely worth it.

-Observations from Tommy