Mind (Naughty Wishes #3) (10 page)

When Chris’s dad had walked out on his mom when Chris was nine, it had left Chris with two things. One, a determination that he’d never let anyone he loved down that way, would never abandon them. It had also left him a virulent nest of anger way down deep in his gut, which conveniently filled the hole his dad had left. That trigger could be tripped by the strangest shit, like someone wanting him to lay it all out there, make himself completely vulnerable. Like Geoff’s question had.

Tell me you’ve always wanted me to fuck you. In the dark, in the light, even when we were fucking other girls . . .
The question was far more than what had been on the surface. Geoff had been asking for everything. Or had he?

Chris scowled. The problem was, he had so much feedback coming from so many directions he wasn’t sure how to process it all. He didn’t do much of anything fast. That wasn’t his style. He liked to take his time, get his head wrapped around things. This was like having to stuff a whole meal in his mouth in one bite. Whereas Geoff had a rapier-fast mind that could evaluate and act in a blink.

Or was he just throwing up a smoke screen of bullshit, avoiding the real reasons he hadn’t reacted to Geoff the way Geoff had hoped he would?

“It’s like playing one of those damn game shows.”

Chris looked over to see Geoff silhouetted in his door again. That was how this had started, less than a couple of hours ago. Now, just like with Sam’s actions of a few days ago, things had changed again. Irrevocably.

“That one where you have to risk the winnings you’ve already got to answer the million-dollar question,” Geoff continued. “If you get it wrong, you lose it all; if you get it right, well, you win everything. If you choose not to answer, you get to keep what you already have, no risk.” Geoff shrugged uncomfortably. “I get it, because what we have, that’s already so much to me. But then . . . what you said, I thought you meant you didn’t feel the same way.”

“No, Geoff. Shit no.” Chris realized then Geoff hadn’t separated it out in his mind as he had. “It’s not that at all, man. I love you, plain and simple. I don’t want anyone but Sam or me to be with you, ever. It’s the other stuff I can’t figure out and, because they seem like a package deal with you, it felt like if I said yes to one thing, I was agreeing to all of it.”

As Geoff digested that, his eyes became a little less hooded. “No line item veto.”

“Yeah.” Chris shrugged. “We started as friends, and I never questioned how you and I seemed even closer than a lot of guys were. How I preferred going out on dates together. And, fuck, that night when we were having sex with those two cheerleaders in the same room . . . It felt so close to what I really wanted, but I couldn’t quite get it straight in my mind, so I left it there . . .”

He swallowed as Geoff’s eyes took on a different expression and he stepped closer. “Then there was the night I brought Rhonda Hammond back to our place . . .”

Geoff grinned. “You took her to the movies, but you came back to the house right after to drink beer. She French-kissed both of us. Rhonda was an adventurous girl, God bless her.”

“Yeah.” Chris met his gaze and the smile faded from Geoff’s face. “When we were on the couch, both up against her, for a blink, I let myself think about what it would be like if she wasn’t there.”

“Chris.”

Chris shook his head. He had to get it out, work through it the way he did. Geoff understood. He fell silent, waiting him out, but Chris couldn’t miss the laser focus of his gaze, the taut muscles of his face.

“She was nice, but she didn’t matter. Not like that sounds. I mean, in terms of my being in love with her, or wanting to fall in love with her. It has to matter. Really matter. That’s why it was always hard for me to make it work unless you were in the room. Then Sam came along, and it was like this whole new level . . . I felt, yeah, this is the way it was meant to be all along.” He shook his head. “I’m making no fucking sense.”

“No. Everything you’re saying makes perfect sense. You’re the type of guy who sees something way before any of the rest of us. But you don’t act on it until we catch up. Until someone who matters takes the lead.” Geoff’s gaze burned into him. “Keep going.”

Chris set his jaw. “You came home one night, before we met Sam, and I knew you’d been with another guy. Just a hookup, because you never mentioned him, but that was when I knew. It hit me in the chest like a battering ram. As long as you were with girls, you were still . . . we were still the two of us. And that was okay, though something about it felt off. Until Sam. She put a balance into it I haven’t exactly figured out, but she did.”

Chris took a breath. “You’ve been standing inside me for so long, Geoff, I forget sometimes you’re a separate person. I expected you to understand what I meant, when I couldn’t say what you wanted me to.”

He saw the moment it clicked. Geoff’s spine straightened, and the energy that came off of him was the same kind he’d had when he’d stood in Chris’s door the first time. It made things do a nice somersault in Chris’s belly. But Geoff gave a self-deprecating chuckle and shook his head. “Christ, I’m an idiot. A fucked-up idiot.”

“No, you’re not,” Chris said, sobering. “You’re a guy who was fucked over by his blood family. And I’m a guy who doesn’t believe in promising you more than I can give, so I got wrapped up in that other stuff you might want from me and didn’t think of how it would sound to you.”

“I shouldn’t have been that sensitive.”

“Yeah, but I already know you’re a pussy.”

Geoff shot him the bird and Chris grinned. Geoff took another step closer. “My mother used to have a saying. It doesn’t really mean shit when you apply it to the decisions she’s made in her life, but wisdom out of the mouth of a fool is still wisdom. It’s just harder to believe.”

“What did she say?”

“It’s hardly original.
‘In the end, all that matters is kindness.’
” Geoff’s gaze darkened. “Yeah, I want to torment the two
of you, make you beg for things, leave marks on your skin. And I want to kiss all those marks, take care of you and keep you safe from everything always. But even though that’s only the tip of the iceberg, it doesn’t have to be all or nothing. All I really want to know is that your hearts belong to me.”

Chris swallowed, hard, and Geoff nodded at his expression. “You asked if you were in the group of people I’d trust to . . .” He lifted a shoulder, and the poignancy of it twisted in Chris’s chest, Geoff’s inability to say
top me
.

Geoff cleared his throat, the TV light flickering over his face. “You are. And since the membership of that group is exactly one person, if you weren’t part of it, the group wouldn’t exist.”

Chris stared at him. “Come here.”

Geoff shifted. “Giving me orders?”

“Just shut up and come closer.”

Geoff sauntered across the room. Since he wore only the pajama bottoms, the sensual movement couldn’t help but draw the eye to every fine inch of bare flesh. But that wasn’t Chris’s top priority. Chris reached up, curling his fingers around Geoff’s neck, his thumb rubbing the line of collarbone. “Come here,” he repeated in a murmur.

Geoff bent. When he brought his mouth over Chris’s, this time Chris felt the rightness of it on both sides. He’d never really thought of himself as gay or straight. He was just who he was, with a heart that often felt too big for his chest, because it would hurt when he saw things that didn’t strike him as right. Or things that were perfectly right. Like Sam out in the sunlight, laughing, her hair touched by the heat. Geoff, sitting back on the couch at the end of a long day, one foot propped on the coffee table, a Corona with lime in hand as he and Chris talked about everything and nothing.

Geoff kept the kiss light, yet there was a lingering feel to it that made Chris want to pull him down with him, keep him there. Maybe if he were on the mattress instead of in the hammock, he would have had half a chance of getting him to join him. But Geoff drew back, though he stayed close enough Chris could see the faint quirk on his serious mouth.

“Since you look a breath away from trying to drag me into this hammock for cuddling, I’m headed back to my room before we both embarrass ourselves.”

“You’re only retreating because you know you love a good cuddle,” Chris teased him, but his grip tightened.

“You wore me out. You have a mouth like a damn siphon.” Geoff ducked free, giving the hammock a push to send it rocking. He followed it up with a quick stroke of his fingertips along Chris’s face, though. “Let’s leave it here for tonight. Okay?”

“You all right?”

“Yeah. Just need to think.”

“Yeah.” Though Chris wished Geoff didn’t have to think about it at all, that he could just let it happen. But Geoff was pretty good at seeing the potholes Chris or Sam might miss and planning a route around them. He had to trust in that. “Okay.”

Giving him a steady look, Geoff moved back toward the door.

“I see what you mean about that rear view thing,” Chris added. “Might have been better without the pajama bottoms, though.”

Geoff snorted. “Stop staring at my ass.”

“Yes sir.” Chris offered a one-bird salute again, intending the words as a mocking tease, but when Geoff’s gaze turned back to him, Chris got that odd feeling in his chest again. His smile died away under Geoff’s intent regard.

“Good night, Chris.”

As Geoff’s door shut, Chris moved with the boat-on-the-ocean movement of his hammock, keeping it going. He lifted his hand over his head, tangled his fingers in the rope and sighed. A smile, albeit a tired and wistful one, crossed his features. He understood what Geoff was saying. Time to go to sleep and see what would happen tomorrow.

* * *

Geoff had been serious about working on that project for Sam. After a Hardee’s breakfast that he picked up on his morning run, they set up in the garage, leaving the door up since the day was sunny with lots of blue sky. Chris reflected that it made the darker parts of what had happened last night feel better, and the over-the-top moments feel all the more intense in recollection.

When Geoff had bought the
Build-It-Yourself Bondage
book at Naughty Bits, the item that he and Chris decided they wanted to build was a modified spanking bench. Chris had picked up a long cushion from a weight bench at a secondhand store, and the lumber and hardware they’d ordered had arrived, stacked in Chris’s garden shed so Sam wouldn’t notice it. Since they were both proficient carpenters, they had all they needed to work on it while Sam was on her trip.

“The plans recommend the medium measurements if the piece is for a woman.” Geoff examined the drawing that looked a lot like a picnic bench, though the seat portions were closer to the table part, and the whole thing was shorter, four feet. “If she’s lying on her stomach on the bench portion, these parallel places where she places her bent knees will support her shins.”

“Yeah, but it doesn’t indicate any kind of finishing for the ends, like a rubber foot or cushion.”

Geoff consulted an attachment. “It does mention it, but leaves it open in the plans. One person folded gel shoe inserts over the corners. Comfortable, but I doubt it’s attractive. I’m thinking a smooth plastic fitting, a shoe.”

Chris studied the diagram shoulder to shoulder with him. Neither of them had done more than a quick washup and toothbrushing this morning, so Chris still felt some of the effects of Geoff’s taking him last night. Whereas the slightly sweaty smell on Geoff’s skin from his morning run, a familiar pleasure, made Chris think about how his friend’s dick would still have the scent of his release on it, since Chris had let Geoff’s semen spill over the shaft as he was sucking him off.

They were guys; they couldn’t help thinking about sex all the time. It didn’t mean he had to act on it. But maybe all that waiting he’d told Geoff he’d done had him short on patience now. He’d touched Geoff, tasted him . . . and he wanted more.

He cleared his throat. “We should add the ergonomic modification for people with bad necks. She has that problem with her shoulder.”

“We’ll need to add a restraint piece. Hey, what about this?” Geoff put the drawing down on the workbench and sketched on it. “This protects her neck. The immobilization adds to the psychological impact, but it would also keep her from jerking it out of whack. Plus, in this vertical mode, she’ll be in the perfect position to take a cock right between her pretty lips while the other one of us is fucking her.”

It was so easy for Geoff to say these things, so straightforward. When he turned his head, meeting Chris’s gaze, they were close enough that Chris’s attention was on his mouth—he couldn’t help it. The faint scent of coffee and mint toothpaste was on Geoff’s breath. “Think we can get it done before she gets back?”

“Should. The wood’s already finished, but we can add a coat of stain to make it pretty and sealer to keep it from giving her splinters. The rest is cutting and assembly.”

Chris passed his hand over the bench portion they’d already put together, pressing down on the cushion. The plans called for straps over the ankles, backs of the knees, thighs, waist, shoulders and nape. When they did all that, she’d be helpless. He imagined her pale, quivering body there, her eyes full of the dazed arousal that happened when Geoff pressed that submissive trigger inside her. Her lips would part as he fed his cock between them. Then Geoff’s gaze would meet Chris’s, an unspoken order and encouragement to Chris to grip her delicate buttocks and ease into her pussy. He imagined her moaning over Geoff’s steel flesh.

“So you think she’ll like this,” he said slowly. “Really like it. It’s not more for us than her?”

“It’s for all of us. That’s the way it works. We let her desires lead, and figure out how ours fit with them, and the result
is a hell of a good time for all of us.”

“Yeah.” A good time.

With a searching look, Geoff set the plans aside and shifted a hip onto the bench, picking up his coffee. “How about we take a seat for a minute?” He pointed to the stool across from him.

Chris’s look was quizzical, but he straddled the stool, picking up his own coffee. Geoff swiped at the dark blond hair over his brow, something he did when he was considering how to say something. He didn’t take long.