Keeping Promise Rock (10 page)

“I’m just saying that he makes you happy,” Jon said quietly when they were situated with the punch. “He makes you happy, and he’s loved you forever….”

“And he put a promising career in the arts on hold to help me out,” Deacon said seriously. “So fine. He wants to, fine. But he needs to still go 64

away to school, because I’m not going to have him kill that dream for a case of hero worship that just ain’t gone away yet.” Jon downed his drink and sighed. “Okay, Deacon. I see what you’re saying. But if you think hero worship is what makes that boy’s eyes shine, then you’re not paying the right kind of attention.” And with that, Deacon’s best friend left to dance with his wife, and Deacon was alone until Crick came up alongside him.

“They were determined to have their two cents, weren’t they?” Deacon rolled his eyes, and Crick, who knew his expressions, laughed heartily. “So, what’d they say?”

Deacon couldn’t make himself say
They want me to fuck you until
you
have
to shut up!
So he just looked at Crick sideways and shrugged.

There must have been something in the look he hadn’t been planning on, though—some heat, some speculation, some sort of “Hey boy, you look damned good in a suit!” —because Crick blushed.

“Really?” he asked softly, and then Deacon blushed.

“They think I’m going to turn into the lonely old cat lady when you finally pull your head out and go off to school,” Deacon muttered, tasting the punch. Too much sugar. With a sigh, he grabbed a bottle of water from the bucket of ice instead.

“When we all know The Pulpit
would become a den of iniquity, featuring all girls all the time, right?” There was an edge to Crick’s voice, an irritation and a jealousy. Crick had never asked him straight on about his sexual preferences; he’d just assumed that since Deacon had loved Amy, they only went one way.

“Or boys,” Deacon said mildly, wondering what had possessed him to say this out loud. “I’m equal opportunity. You know that.” Crick sputtered and started choking on his punch so badly that Deacon turned to him directly and started pounding on his back. “Stupid kid,” he grumbled. “You’d think they started putting fish bones in soda or something.”

“Eleven years,” Crick growled. “Eleven years we’ve known each other, and you think that little tidbit might have slipped out before now!” Deacon’s temper pricked this side of irritated, and he gave Crick a sideways glance that was nearly hunted. “You knew,” he snapped.

Crick snapped back, “I hoped!”

“Mmm,” Deacon grunted, swigging his water in the sudden heat of Crick’s body six inches away from him and throwing out fire like a careless promise. “I wanted you to have a bigger life than me,” he said at last, a little bit of despair in his voice. That want had faded, grown dim and far away, eclipsed by the want that built day by day in Crick’s company. Deacon had seen his body—long, tall, lean, and beautiful. He had stringy muscles, a narrow waist, and that lovely pale brown skin. He’d even seen Crick naked in passing and knew that his cock was long and slender, with a little mushroom of a head, and he was pretty sure there was a birthmark one side, but he hadn’t seen it long enough to be sure.

Deacon wasn’t a saint, and he wasn’t a monk, and his one sexual fantasy for the last two years had been Crick’s body in any imaginable position—usually with Deacon on top and inside of it.

“What do you want now?” Crick asked, suddenly much too close to Deacon’s ear. Deacon closed his eyes, allowed his body to soak up Crick’s smell. He’d used Deacon’s shaving cream and aftershave this morning, but it just didn’t smell the same. On Crick it smelled spicy and exotic, and Deacon tried to open his eyes and concentrate on the dancing—Dire Straits was playing “The Ballad of John and Mary,” one of Deacon’s favorites.

“Same. Thing.” Deacon said it through gritted teeth, because it was damned close to a falsehood.

“You’re lying,” Crick whispered, seeing right through him as he always did. Crick’s long-fingered hand was suddenly on the curve of Deacon’s backside through his slacks, and Deacon tried to risk a glance behind him to see if anyone was looking, but he turned the wrong way and ended up eyeball to chin with Crick instead.

He was still the prettiest goddamned kid Deacon had ever seen, with a lush lower lip and a wicked slash of humor at the sides of his mouth.

Deacon risked a glance up, knowing that Crick’s eyes were still that fathomless shade of brown. Only now they were a man’s eyes and they were filled with a man’s heat, and Deacon had a sudden wish for a horse and an open field, because this here was too much sex and too much emotion for him to deal with gracefully.

“Not entirely,” he whispered helplessly, just inches away from Crick’s full lips.

Crick’s mouth quirked. “You are the stubbornest asshole I have ever met.”

Deacon’s eyes narrowed. “You haven’t met my asshole yet,” he snapped, turning sideways again. “Much less had enough experience to make a comparison.”

He’d meant to drive Crick away, to piss him off, but Crick took a step behind him, and Deacon could feel the kid’s long, slender erection through their clothes and almost saw spots, he was breathing so wrongly.

“Goddammit, Deacon,” Crick muttered, a little bit of desperation in his own voice now. “That sounded something like a promise!” Deacon sighed, some of the heat taken out of him as he looked back on his own words. “This,” he muttered, moving his hands restlessly, “this is why I don’t talk. There is not much I can’t fuck up when I open my mouth.”

“Goddammit
all
to hell,” Crick whined in his ear. “That sounded like a promise too!”

Jon caught Deacon’s eye meaningfully from across the little meadow, and Deacon smiled weakly back. Christ if his resolve wasn’t in tatters around his feet. He turned to Crick miserably, so torn he could barely meet the man’s eyes.

“The only promise I’ve ever made is to never turn you away,” he said after a moment, searching Crick’s eyes for some clue what to do next.

Crick blinked, obviously thinking hard. “You’ve kept that one,” he said softly, his voice so full of hope it hurt.

Deacon shrugged, blushed, and muttered, “I always will,” before turning around and walking away. Jon found him on the other side of Promise Rock, the side in the sun, half an hour later when it was time for pictures and cake eating and garter throwing and what-all.

“What happened?” Jon asked, obviously worried.

“I think I just gave in,” he said, turning his face up to the mild spring sunshine. It wasn’t too mild, though—he was sweating inside his dark wool suit.

“You’re not sure?”

Deacon shrugged. “It’s up to him. He knows I’ll love him whatever.

He wants it to change, it’ll change.”

Jon kicked his foot in its shiny leather shoe. “That’s sort of passive, isn’t it?”

Deacon turned a hunted face to his best friend. “Won’t be if he makes a move. It’s his future we’re fucking with here, Jon. We’re not having a roll in the hay—we’re having a relationship, dammit, and those are hard for someone like Crick to walk away from.” On that note, Deacon turned to walk back around the rock fall towards the shady riverbank. He pretended not to hear Jon when he said,

“And damned impossible for you.”

Promises Broken

DEACON and Crick were on for cleanup. That was part of being the hosts, but they didn’t mind. The day after the wedding it only took two trips to clear out the chairs and the dressings and the stereo equipment, and the third trip was for the AstroTurf.

It was Crick’s idea to go swimming before they left that third time.

He had Deacon drive the truck out while he fed the horses and then rode Comet out to meet him.

He didn’t tell Deacon that he’d packed the truck for a picnic, but Deacon figured it out when he saw the ice chest and the blankets and the backpack full of clothes next to him. He shook his head, amused. What, did the kid think they were going to have a love tryst on that damned rock? Now wouldn’t
that
be comfy.

Still….

Deacon was showering the night before, using the bathroom that
adjoined their two bedrooms, since neither one of them had found the
heart to move in to Parish’s room yet. There he was, clean, wet, wrapped
in a towel, brushing his teeth, when he heard a noise at the door.

“I’ll be out in a sec,” he said absently. The two of them had shared a
house for four years. If Crick had eaten too damned much cake and
needed to blow up the bathroom, he could use the bathroom attached to
Parish’s room. It was only polite.

So he was surprised when the door opened and Crick stuck his head
in curiously.

Deacon frowned at him in the mirror. “What?”
Crick had smiled cheekily. “We haven’t been out to swim this spring.

Want to go tomorrow?”

Deacon shrugged. The water would be cold, but the day would be
warm. If they brought extra towels, he didn’t see why not. “This couldn’t
have waited?”

Crick eyed him up and down, and Deacon looked at his own
reflection to see if there was anything wrong with him. Square jaw, small
nose, compressed mouth: check. Wet brown hair, parted in the middle,
long on top, short on the sides and back: check. Body—well, it was his. He
had a wide chest and a narrow waist, but his bones weren’t as long as his
father’s had been—if he ever got a beer belly, he’d be built like a fire-hydrant, that was for sure.

Deacon turned a bewildered face towards Crick. “I ask again—

what?”

Crick smiled, his eyes at half-mast, his mouth looking like cherry
almond fudge ice cream. “Checking to see if that mark’s still there,” he
said, and Deacon caught sight of the stork-bite next to his nipple and
flushed.

“Yeah, my body ain’t perfect. So what?”
Crick’s smile grew wider and even more decadent. “There are parts
of it I promised myself, that’s all,” he said smugly. “I was just making
sure they’re still where I left them.”
He sashayed off then, leaving Deacon with goose-pimples, a hard-on, and an acute knowledge that resolve only got you so far before human
weakness picked up the fare.

“Yeah,” he called belatedly, trying to come up with something that
didn’t sound lame. “Well, maybe they got plans of their own!”
Crick’s laughter, drifting down the hallway, did nothing to ease his
mind.

Today, jouncing the truck over the rough cattle road on the vacant property next to the irrigation stream, Deacon couldn’t do anything but shake his head. Their normal evening routine of sitting side by side on the couch, reading or watching television, had been entirely too tense for his peace of mind. He’d taken his book to bed early, entirely conscious of Crick’s hand following his ass as he walked away.

The truck jounced one more time, and the blankets fell off to reveal a queen-sized air mattress and a little air compressor, and Deacon found himself laughing in defeat. Okay. So Crick had planned a seduction. If he showed even a whisper of follow-through, Deacon would have him laid out and splayed out, his body open and begging and ready. It would be fun teaching that boy that you couldn’t seduce a predator, you had to just lay down and take his teeth and claws on your flesh.

They made short work of the AstroTurf, and Deacon reached for the backpack for his swim trunks, only to have Crick rip it out of his hand.

“Nope,” he said, his brown eyes as merry as Deacon had ever seen them.

“You can’t have them. No swim trunks for you!”

“I’m not swimming naked,” Deacon growled. A man had his limits.

Crick stood up to his full height and tried to use his shoulders to pressure Deacon into the truck. Deacon lowered his head and glowered, and Crick took two steps back, stopping at Deacon’s triumphant grin.

Deacon raked his eyes up and down over Crick—the boy was shirtless and wearing low-rise jeans, his hipbones guiding the eye appealingly to what lay under the snap.

He looked up and saw that Crick was flushed as he licked his slightly parted lips uncertainly. Deacon looked down and saw that the jeans were a bit tighter than they had been a minute before, and he looked in the middle and saw Crick’s nipples, pebbled and tight from nothing more than Deacon’s eyes on his body.

Deacon swallowed and tried not to get too lost in the moment. Crick had plans. There was an air mattress and a picnic and whatever was in that backpack that Crick didn’t want him to see.

“You get sand in your creases,” Deacon said, his voice low and rough. “I was, um, under the impression that was uncomfortable.” Crick smiled. Crick didn’t know it, because Deacon had never told him, but Deacon had spent nearly half his life working for that smile. With all his burdens and his troubles, the three little sisters he’d never let out of his life, and the step-father who’d sooner beat him than talk to him, Crick’s smile was still as bright as the day. Everything that was hope and kindness was in that smile. There were some drawbacks to it—it was fearless, and since Crick hadn’t yet looked before he leapt, there were times when that smile sent Deacon to his room along with cold shivers and his arms wrapped around his knees. But for the most part, there wasn’t Keeping Promise Rock