Ingenue's Choice (11 page)

Keir grasped Patryk’s jutting shaft in his masterful hand, firmly pumped it—once, twice, three times—before Patryk erupted on a hoarse shout.

Keir vibrated above Patryk enthralled in his own climax, flinging back his head and grinding his pelvis against Patryk’s testicles one final time before covering Patryk’s body with his and wrapping his arms around Patryk to gather him close.

Patryk leaned his face against Keir’s muscled chest, the light dusting of hair there tickling his cheek as he listened to the comforting sound of Keir’s heartbeat.

After a long silent moment, Keir pulled out of Patryk and bent his head to lick come off Patryk’s stomach. He lingered so long, teasing Patryk’s navel and cock, Patryk got hard again.

As if Patryk had just completed a job well done, Keir kissed and patted the top of Patryk’s dick like the obedient pet it was, then climbed off the bed.

Patryk suffered an instant of déjà vu and alarm before Keir glanced over his shoulder, winked, and said, “Be right back.”

“Okay.”

“Don’t get into any trouble while I’m gone.”

“Ha, ha.”

Keir went into the bathroom, rich laughter in his wake.

Patryk closed his eyes and listened as Keir turned on the water in the sink, craving this existence for more than just a day, wanting to listen to Keir’s ablutions every day of his life.

Was it wrong to feel this way about someone so fast? But more important, was it wise, especially with his history?

Keir is not Derek.

This time it was his own voice that admonished him and not the smart-aleck Zara.

Was she gone now that he and Keir had consummated their relationship?

Would she be back or was her job done?

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Before Patryk had a chance to dwell on his matchmaking angel, Keir came back into the room, refreshed and semi-erect.

He brought a damp soapy wash cloth over to the bed, gently washing off the come his tongue had missed. “I think I could go the rest of my life just painting your beautiful body and nothing else.”

“So I’m your Muse?”

Keir nodded. “And much more.” He leaned in and kissed Patryk on the mouth, no tongue, just tenderly brushed his lips against Patryk’s.

Despite the chaste contact, Patryk found himself almost hyperventilating from the simple touch, cock throbbing and twitching with need as if he hadn’t come just minutes before.

Keir pulled back and looked at him. “You’re too much, you know that?”

“Not for you. For you, I’m just enough.”

“I know you’re hungry, and I am, too, so let’s take you out of these cuffs and get us something to eat.”

“Keir…”

He looked at Patryk, slightly slanted, almond eyes piercing and all-seeing, and Patryk couldn’t go on, too much of a coward to question Keir’s earlier outburst, afraid of what lay beneath the perfect man.

Keir cupped Patryk’s cheek, stared at him a long time before saying, “I’ll tell you everything you need to know after we eat. Okay?”

Reverting to type and kicking himself for his meekness, Patryk simply nodded his agreement and murmured, “Okay.”

82

Gracie C. McKeever

Zara cradled her chin in her palms and sighed as she sat at the foot of the bed with her knees drawn up toward her chest and supporting her elbows as she watched Patryk and Keir leave the bedroom en route to the kitchen.

She envied the closeness they shared, but especially admired Patryk’s ability to give up control and entrust Keir with his physical and emotional well-being. She admired Patryk’s inherent strength the same way she marveled at the tenderness and brutality that seemed to walk hand in hand in a Dom/sub relationship.

Of course, Patryk and Keir’s encounter only seemed like brutality to her since she didn’t really know all that much
about
Dom/sub relationships and had never been into pain. Being on the other end of a spanking hadn’t really appealed to her before she’d watched her brother take one from Quincy and emerge none the worse for wear. Instead, like Patryk, Zack had seemed ultimately fulfilled, enough so that Zara thought she’d like to experience the feeling firsthand rather than just as a third wheel possessing another’s body.

She wanted the fulfillment Quincy and Zack, and now Keir and Patryk, had and wondered if angels were allowed kinky pleasures in heaven or was that sort of thing totally frowned upon from God’s minions.

Zara winced, tilted her head back and glanced skyward expecting some sort of lecture from Micah about her overactive hormones, but none was forthcoming, at least not yet.

Speaking of which, she wondered now since Patryk and Keir had done the deed whether her job was done.

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She didn’t think there was any way the pair wouldn’t stay together after that intense and intimate session of lovemaking. The air around her was rife with the men’s passion, and no one could convince her that Keir and Patryk had engaged in anything
but
lovemaking and not just had fantastic sex, though there had been that.

So, did this mean Jamaereh and Micah would be calling her back soon?

Any other time, they’d be buzzing in her ear and arguing with each other about how well or not she was doing her job.

Zara glanced skyward again. “Hello, guys. A little guidance would be nice, please.”

“Do you believe your task is completed, child?”

“Well…yeah?”

“Think again, human.”

Keir and Patryk together. Check. Keir and Patryk really liked each other.

Check and double check. Keir and Patryk made explosive love. Triple check.

Hey, they were doing a lot better than she had in all of her past relationships on Earth put together. Of course, there was that niggling little detail of baggage.

“Bingo!”

Zara would have laughed at Jamaereh’s ironic terminology if she hadn’t just remembered Keir’s last words to Patryk before the pair went off to get something to eat.

I’ll tell you everything you need to know…

Eww, that didn’t bode well at all, did it?

“Not at all, child.”

“So, I guess I’m staying for a while longer then?”

“You guessed right, human.”

* * * *

84

Gracie C. McKeever

“He thought I was cheating on him.”

Patryk’s heart lurched at Keir’s murmured confession. He instantly, instinctively stiffened in Keir’s embrace, and just as instantly, Keir tightened his arms around Patryk.

Patryk closed his eyes against the maelstrom of emotion and memories swamping him and took several deep breaths until he thought he could speak without betraying the level of doubt and pain coursing through him. Then he cleared his throat and asked, “He who?”

“Elijah. My lover. He was wrong.”

Each clipped word came at Patryk like a rifle shot, echoing through the cavernous room and making Patryk hold his breath until the last sentence was uttered.

He turned in Keir’s arms as Keir loosened his hold, and searched Keir’s face for a long moment before saying, “Tell me.”

“There’s not much to tell. We were together for a year when he died in a car crash.”

“Okay, you’ve given me a beginning and an end, but there’s a whole lot of middle missing from your story.”

Keir inhaled like a man preparing to blow up a big balloon and exhaled a long sigh as he wiped a hand down his face as if he could wipe away the memory of his lover’s death. “Do you really need to know this?”

“You said you’d tell me everything.”

“I was under the spell of a jade-eyed seducer at the time.” The upward tilt of Keir’s generous mouth was decidedly melancholy when he looked at Patryk.

Patryk looked back, eyes widening when realization suddenly dawned.

“It’s about the paintings I found, isn’t it?”

Keir nodded. “They were the last ones I did before I painted you. That car crash was the only thing I could paint for three years before I met you.”

“Why?”

“I’m not sure. Survivor’s guilt maybe. Or just plain guilt.”

“You said he was wrong. That you didn’t cheat.”

“Still doesn’t mean I wasn’t responsible for what happened to him.”

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“I don’t understand.”

“El always had problems from when we first met, problems I chose to overlook.”

“What kind of problems?” Patryk asked, but the most important questions—was El submissive and did Keir love him—remained locked in his throat, unspoken.

“Depression, addiction…jealousy.”

Patryk couldn’t help wondering if the last was said as a warning until Keir suddenly sat up, took Patryk’s hands in his, and squeezed as if to dispel Patryk’s misgivings.

“You’re nothing like him, Patryk. El had self-esteem issues, was needy and possessive. I was younger, arrogant, not long graduated from college, thought I knew it all and could handle anything. I thought I could handle
him
. But El’s jealousy was self-destructive and a lot stronger than the both of us.

“There were times when I wondered why I even got involved with such a fucked-up and manipulative individual. Then there were those other calm and quiet intervals when El could be the sweetest, most attentive, loving and supportive boyfriend anyone could ever know. I guess you just had to know him, the real him sans the drugs and insecurities, to understand why I tried to make things work.”

Patryk thought he already understood. Keir didn’t seem like the type of guy to quit when the going got tough, wasn’t the kind of guy to leave a relationship at the first sign of trouble. “You were his enabler, and that’s why you blame yourself for his death.”

Keir chuckled. “You sound like my mother. She tried to tell me it wasn’t my fault, too.

“If it was just the crash, I think I could’ve handled it, but it’s the things that led up to and followed the crash that were, actually still are, hard to deal with.”

“Things like what?” Patryk asked and watched Keir’s Adam’s apple bob up and down as he swallowed. His heart clenched with dread at the sight.

Here it comes. Here is when he makes me look at him differently. Here is
when he breaks my heart.

86

Gracie C. McKeever

“I had just gotten an agent a little after El and I met. Tom Curry. Nice man, real dynamo who believed in my talent and my work and knew his business.

He arranged my first exhibition at this well-known gallery in So-Ho.

“From the first meeting, El didn’t like Tom. But then El didn’t like too many men I associated with, especially if they were attractive.”

“And Tom was attractive.”

“I guess. But I didn’t see him that way. He was a business associate, and I was in a relationship with El. I may have been young and arrogant, but I was always monogamous. I tried to explain this to El, but he accused Tom and I of screwing any chance we got no matter how many times I told him Tom and I were just friends. El just didn’t trust me with other men.”

“I’m assuming Tom was gay.”

“As me and you. But I don’t think it would have made a difference. At least it wouldn’t have been the first time El accused me of luring and converting some straight guy with my ‘lethal charm and looks.’”

Patryk flashed to his conversation with Zara in the club bathroom, remembered how she said she’d been in love with a gay man with the impossible hope of converting him. Zara could have told El a thing or two about Keir’s chances of converting a straight guy, lethal charm and looks notwithstanding. “So what made the day of the crash different than any other day?”

“El came into the gallery and caught Tom kissing me.”

Patryk’s stomach flipped then bottomed out. Was the man a pathological liar who couldn’t keep up with all his stories?

He realized his disgust and shock must have showed on his face when Keir shook his head and held tight to Patryk’s hands.

“It’s not what you’re thinking. I told you El was wrong. I didn’t cheat on him.”

“You were kissing—”

“No. I was
being
kissed. There’s a difference.”

“Not to El.”
Not to
me
!

“As messed up as his logic was, I should have listened to him. I would have recognized the signs of Tom’s crush and been able to put a stop to it. But
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when he came onto me the night of the opening, I was shocked. I had no idea he had feelings for me and didn’t know how to react to his advances. I froze.”

“And El walked in while Tom was expressing his feelings.”

Keir closed his eyes for a long moment before opening them to give Patryk a devastated look that reached straight to Patryk’s soul and twisted it. “If you could have seen the look on his face, Patryk.…Christ, I’d give anything for him not to have seen what he saw.”

Patryk knew only too well the betrayal that El must have felt. He had seen his share of kisses between Derek and other men. God, he actually sympathized with El, couldn’t see him as the bad guy no matter how Keir had described him, and he knew Keir didn’t see El as the bad guy either, just “fucked up.” “What happened?” he rasped.

“By the time I realized El was there and had seen the kiss, he had turned and had run out of the gallery to his car. I caught up to him as he was slamming the driver’s side door and power-locking all the others. I pounded on the glass and tried to reason with him, but he just looked at me with his big, hurt eyes before cursing me and driving off.”

“You went after him?”

“I couldn’t, not right then. I had responsibilities. I went back into the gallery, hobnobbed with some patrons for a few minutes, then made some lame excuse to everyone about a family emergency before I left and went after El in my car.

“I only made it a little more than a mile down the highway before I came across the emergency vehicles cordoning off the road where a car had wrapped around a lamppost. The car was totaled, but empty. They had already airlifted El to the nearest trauma center…” Keir choked back a sob and lowered his head.

Patryk squeezed Keir’s hands so hard he thought he would cut off both their circulation. “Tell me, Keir. Get it out, and be free of it.”