Motel. Pool. (22 page)

Tag hurried across the room and launched himself onto Jack, clothing and all. The bed bounced and creaked. “Even if I meet a thousand handsome ghosts,
you
will be the most memorable of them all.” Tag kissed Jack’s cheek.

Wiggling pleasantly beneath him, Jack kissed him back. “Thank you. You know, that’s what scares me more than hell or oblivion or whatever’s going to happen to me—being forgotten. If nobody remembers you, it’s like you never even existed. I know I was never anyone big, Tag, but I existed.”

“You
do
exist,” Tag whispered in his ear. “And I’ll tell everyone I meet about you.”

“They’ll think you’re crazy.”

“I don’t care.”

Jack put his hands on Tag’s back, just above the waistband of his jeans. “Buddy will believe you.”

“Great. Buddy and I can become best, uh, buds.” Tag pushed up on his arms so he could look Jack in the eyes. “I’m sorry I brought the subject up. I just wanted you to know, I’ve never felt about anyone the way I feel about you.”

“Not Jason?”

“Jason’s a great guy. He really is. But he didn’t…. Feel this.” Tag rolled off Jack and onto his back, grabbed Jack’s hand, and set it on his own chest.

“Your heartbeat?”

“
You
do that to me, Jacky. Nobody else.” He took a deep breath and let it out. He’d waded in pretty far already—might as well plunge in over his head. “I love you, okay? Never said that to anyone before. Never. Never even knew what those words meant. But now—”

Jack didn’t let him finish the sentence. He tugged at him until they were face-to-face, then pressed their lips together. Jack never tasted of cigarettes or onions or anything else unpleasant. His mouth had a faint tang of chlorine, and that was all. Tag already knew that for the rest of his life, the minute he went near a swimming pool, he’d think of Jack.

“Take off your clothes,” Jack ordered hoarsely. He was breathing quickly. Was that a conscious choice or a reflex, a memory of passion past?

Didn’t matter. Tag quickly shucked his shirt, his shoes, his shorts and briefs, and Jack made a contented noise when their bare bodies pressed back together.

They kissed for a while, slowly and deeply, as if they had all the time in the world. Only when they were both desperate for more did Tag reach for the bottle of lube they’d left on the nightstand. He rolled onto his back with his knees bent and watched with avid interest as Jack slicked a finger and worked it inside him. Felt so goddamn good. Two felt even better, especially when Jack bent over and licked at Tag’s cock and balls, never quite stilling the motion of his hand.

“I love how hot you are,” Jack said. “I love watching you fall apart a little when I do this. It’s the only time you completely relax.”

Except Tag wasn’t feeling relaxed at all. His entire body zinged with energy, every nerve firing and every inch of skin screaming for more. He’d been around schizophrenics who believed the FBI or the CIA or the KGB had implanted wires in their brains to listen to their thoughts. Tag could feel those wires now, but they weren’t spying on him. They were tiny little jumper cables sending delicious shocks to his heart, to his cock.

Groaning urgently, Tag pushed Jack away. He rose onto his knees and smiled at Jack. “Lie back, baby,” he ordered. After Jack obeyed, Tag smoothed a hand covetously over his lover’s body, tracing him from shoulder to thigh. He poured some lube onto his palm and slicked Jack’s cock, leaving Jack gasping and thrusting his hips high.

“Giddyup,” Tag said. Then he climbed aboard.

He hadn’t done this position often. Mostly he’d just bent over and let men plow him, or else he’d bent them and manned the plow. He’d usually bottomed with Jason—it was Tag’s preference—but not like this. Somehow it had seemed easier to passively take the cock up his ass while he was on all fours or folded double on his back.

This was better. As he slowly impaled himself—and oh
fuck
, that was nice—he watched the way the tendons in Jack’s neck tightened and the way he licked his full lips. When Tag was fully seated, his ass settled in the cradle of Jack’s hips, he started a gentle rocking motion, a slight swaying of his pelvis. Jack played with Tag’s cock and balls, then wrapped his long fingers around Tag’s shaft and squeezed just tightly enough. Tag raised himself gradually, centimeter by beautiful centimeter, then lowered himself all at once, making them both cry out.

“If I wasn’t already dead,” Jack panted, “you’d be killing me.”

“Good way to go.”

Judging by the look on Jack’s face, he agreed.

Slow was good. Not just because Tag’s prostate was rubbed with each and every torturous movement, but also because he could concentrate on his lover. He could memorize every sound and every expression Jack made. And he could tell when Jack was getting close; Jack sped the movements of his fist and clutched Tag’s hip with his other hand. One more little thrust and—

“Tag!” Jack yelled.

Tag might have yelled too—he had no idea. Most of his senses temporarily shorted out while his climax rushed through him. When he looked down to see Jack licking his spunk off his fingers, Tag’s dick made a sincere effort to keep on going.

But Tag was suddenly drained, and he collapsed onto Jack’s body.

“Wish I could taste you,” said Jack wistfully.

Tag wished a lot of things, which was new for him, so maybe that was good, in a painful sort of way. But for the moment, at least, he was content in Jack’s arms.

T
AG
DIDN
’
T
need
to have sex as soon as he woke up. He’d never been a morning sex kind of guy. But Jack was naked and beautiful and willing, and neither of them knew if he’d still be around later in the day. So they made out for a while until matters escalated, and this time Jack grabbed the lube and, as he handed it to Tag, asked, “Do me this time?”

Tag sure wasn’t going to say no to an offer like that.

He hadn’t topped for a long time, and never like this. Jack was tight and cool inside, and of course no latex was needed between them. Jack shuddered and gazed up at Tag with wide eyes, making Tag think Jack’s previous lovers hadn’t been especially careful about making it good for him too.

Jack went into the bathroom while Tag showered. He ogled and leered, goosed and groped, and generally acted like a guy who’d gotten really lucky.

Lucky.

Jack also watched Tag empty the pockets of last night’s jeans.

“Forty bucks?” he asked.

“Would have been even less if I’d found a cab last night.” Tag dropped the twenties in the dresser drawer and walked the few steps to the kitchen. He was running low on groceries. He found some lunchmeat and the last of the milk, carried them to the table, and sat down.

Jack sat opposite him. “What happened to the rest of it?”

“Lost it.”

“You lost sixty thousand dollars in one night?”

“Yep.” He took a gulp from the milk carton.

“You don’t seem especially upset about it.”

Tag shrugged.

“Did you make more of those stupid bets?” asked Jack.

“I won when I made the stupid bet. I lost the sixty thou right by the book. Dane just had a better hand than me.”

“I don’t understand.” Jack was handsome even when he frowned. “I know you’re really unhappy—”

“Not at the moment, I’m not.”

“Okay, but you were. So you came to Vegas… why? To throw your money away so you’d have a better excuse to kill yourself?”

“Nobody needs an excuse for that, Jacky.” This was a hard thing to explain, but maybe Jack of all people would understand. “My dad offed himself after Mom died, but he’d come close plenty of times when she was still around. And it wasn’t because his life was shitty, although it was. He could’ve been a billionaire, king of the Midwest, and he’d still have been depressed. It’s brain chemistry. The balance is just off.” He waved his hands near his head in a vague illustration. Then he stuffed his mouth with sliced turkey while Jack thought.

“Is your brain chemistry off, Tag?” Jack finally asked.

Tag sighed. “Yeah. I guess so. I’ve been blaming my heart, ’cause I couldn’t feel it beating. It’s like I was… a shell. Haunted by my own pathetic self. I’ve been in denial a long time, but I think probably some counseling would be a good idea for me.” He rubbed the back of his neck. “Maybe a lot of counseling.”

“But… the gambling…?”

“The gambling is something else.”

Tag stood and began to pace. The room, which had felt like a familiar refuge, now made him feel claustrophobic. It was every damn place he’d escaped since he was a kid. Jack swiveled his head like a tennis spectator as Tag walked back and forth.

“Here’s the thing,” Tag said. “I was born with a genetic heart defect. It was the same thing that killed my brother. It was inoperable. When I was born, the doctors didn’t even want me to leave the hospital, but Mom and Dad had a fit. Their first kid never came home at all and they were determined I would, even if only for a couple of days.” Telling this story, Tag was reminded that his parents cared for him in their own fucked-up way.

“But you’re not dead,” said Jack.

“Not last I checked. I lived for a few days and then I just kept on living. Eventually my parents brought me in for shots or a checkup or something, and the doctors couldn’t believe it. The defect had corrected itself. There had been only one previous recorded case of that happening. ‘That’s a very lucky little boy,’ the docs said.”

“You
were
lucky.” Jack appeared caught up in the story, if slightly mystified as to where it was going.

Tag’s pacing had brought him to the door. He stopped and leaned back against it. “I was lucky. And that’s the thing. Right from the start, I’ve had amazing good luck. Not all the time about everything—if that was the case, I’d have landed with saner parents. But with lots of stuff. When I was three, I fell out the window of our apartment. We were up on the fourth floor. But the back of my shirt got caught by a tree branch one story down, and when the firemen got there, I didn’t even have a scratch. I made the evening news. Not too long after that, a neighbor caught me jamming a screwdriver into an electrical outlet in the building lobby. Turned out that circuit had shorted out a few days earlier and the slumlord who owned the place hadn’t bothered fixing it.”

He pried himself from the door, crossed the room, and sat on the messy bed, which smelled like sex. “My parents did a crappy job supervising me. If I hadn’t been lucky, I’d never have made it to my teens.”

“Well, I’m glad for your luck, then,” Jack said quietly.

“I’m not.”

When Jack frowned, Tag hastily added, “I mean, I’m happy I survived my childhood. But as I got older, something changed. I was still freakishly lucky, but now every time Dame Fortune smiled at me, I spit in her face. I fucked it up.”

“What do you mean?”

This was hard to even think about. Tag had once watched an Albert Brooks movie in which Brooks’s character got hit by a bus. In the afterlife, his fate depended on how he’d handled his life. There was a trial where the guys running the place showed painful clips of every dumb mistake he’d ever made. Now Tag was starring in his own version of that movie.

“When I was in junior high, we lived in this really scary neighborhood. The school was falling apart. But the city built a brand-new shiny school—state-of-the-art—and had a lottery for who could go. I won a seat. And three months later I screwed around in my science class and started a fire. They kicked me back to the shitty school.

“We moved the next year. I found a really caring language arts teacher. She got me into all the honors classes, helped me out when I was stuck. She found me a great scholarship and told me if I kept up the good grades, she’d make sure I got it. Full ride at a great university, right? I flunked out instead.”

“Tag, you—”

“Let me finish. I’ll spare you the gory details. I got all these amazing chances and blew every one of them. Dropped out, got kicked out. I’d score a great job and promptly get myself fired. I stopped and started community college a half-dozen times, Jack. I won a car in a giveaway and crashed it. I found a lottery ticket lying on the street, scratched it off, and won a thousand bucks. And I lost the damn ticket before I could cash it in.”

Jack stood and crossed the room so he could sit beside Tag. “You don’t have to tell me this,” Jack said.

“I sure as hell do. I was even worse with guys than I was with school and money. I’d run into some amazing man, he’d be totally into me, and I’d say exactly the right thing to piss him off or scare him away. Or I’d take off myself, like I did with Jason.”

“You haven’t done that with me.”

“Given time, I bet I would.” And that hurt twice over, because he knew he wouldn’t even get the chance to screw up the best luck of his life.

Jack settled his hand on Tag’s knee and squeezed gently. That was nice.

“So I started thinking of my good luck as more of a curse. I think maybe that happened when I overslept and missed a final exam, which meant I flunked the last class I needed to finally finish my degree.

“When I met Jason, I told myself
this
was the time I’d hold it together. I got a good job at the university. It paid well and it was fun. Rented a nice place. Got sort of serious with Jason. Until he proposed, and then I really lost it. And Jacky, the more things I ruined, the emptier I felt inside.”

“You came here to feel alive?”

Tag snorted. “Even I’m not dumb enough to search for salvation in Vegas. But I thought maybe a road trip would help—which it didn’t. Or maybe seeing nature’s wonders would kick-start me. We know how that worked out.”

“You found me.” Jack’s voice was almost a whisper.

Tag returned the knee squeeze. “I did.”

They sat in silence a while, just touching. But Tag was aware he still hadn’t explained the Vegas part of the story, and that’s what Jack had asked for in the first place. When Tag cleared his throat, it sounded unreasonably loud.

“I had some money in savings when I left Iowa. I… I wasn’t really thinking this thing through, right? But what I planned—even if I didn’t admit it to myself—was to come here and win really big. Push my luck to the absolute limits. Not sixty grand or a hundred twenty grand—I’m talking a million dollars.”