Smoky Mountain Dreams (14 page)

While they waited for her to run their credit cards,
Christopher remembered something he’d meant to ask Jesse. “You said you’d known
Lash for a long time. Maybe you can answer a question for me. Why do they call
him Lash?”

Jesse wiped his lips with his napkin and looked around like
he was checking who might be listening, despite the fact that everyone else on
the roof was still seated well away from their corner table.

“When we were just kids he went by his given name—which is
Ashley, by the way.”

“Wow. Did he get flack for that?”

“Nope. He was always kind of scary. But when he was a
teenager he got a reputation amongst the easier girls for…well, how can I put
this politely?”

“Come on. Don’t even bother to try.” Christopher rolled his
eyes a little. They’d sucked each other’s cocks on the floor of a grist mill;
it seemed silly to act like they were precious or something.

“Okay. He apparently goes down on girls with great gusto and
doesn’t let up until they’ve reached the great, creamy heights of pleasure.”

“No way.”

“Yep. That’s what they say. Tongue-Lashing Ash they called
him. And I, being despised and an outcast in high school, what with being an
incredibly obvious fag at that time in my life, hung out with the really easy
girls for the most part since they didn’t really judge. I heard it straight
from the horses’ mouths, so to speak. Not that any of them resembled horses.
Not in the least.”

“Wow. I don’t think I wanted to know that.” And hmm, Jesse
had been an “obvious fag” in high school? How had he ended up married to a
woman?

Jesse laughed and raised his hands, indicating it wasn’t his
fault that Christopher knew it now. “Over time, it just got shortened to Lash.
And the rest is history.”

Christopher swallowed the last of his margarita. “So
apparently he does three things well.”

“Yep. He can sing. He can drink. And he can give an
unbeatable tongue lashing.”

“Just rumor of course.”

“Total hearsay.” Jesse had been chuckling, but at that he
cracked up a little too.

“I’ll never be able to hear someone say his name again
without getting a very different mental picture in my mind now.”

“Hey! You asked!”

Christopher laughed again.

It was only as Christopher opened his front door that
he suddenly realized he was bringing Jesse Birch of Birch’s Biscuits &
Bakeries’ wealth into his Gran’s little four-room cottage, and he was suddenly
very glad he’d cleaned the place thoroughly in hopes of getting laid. It might
be tiny and spare, but it was clean and shiny, and Christopher had nothing to
be ashamed about.

He tossed his keys on the coffee table, and took Jesse’s
coat. When he turned from hanging their jackets on the coat rack, he found
Jesse standing with his hands in his pockets, taking in the room.

“Want the tour?” Christopher asked. “It’s quick. This is the
living room.” He spread his arms to encompass where they were standing, and
then pointed to the adjoining room on the left, separated by a wall with an
opening so wide that it was almost the same space. “That’s the kitchen.”

He motioned toward the indention in the back of the room
that he and his Gran always called “the hall,” though it wasn’t more than one
good step wide and two and a half paces long. He swung one hand a little to the
left. “That back there is the office-slash-laundry room and the way out to the
screened porch.” He pointed at the door in the center of the hall. “Bathroom.”
And then he waved to the right. “Our destination. Also known as the bedroom.”

Jesse stood comfortably in the center of the rug by the
coffee table, nodding his head. “I like it.”

“It’s small, but it’s home.”

“It feels good,” Jesse said. “It feels like the people who’ve
lived here knew how to love each other. It’s nice. Though…right now,” he waved
his hand at shoulder height, palm down. “There’s some loneliness layering over
it. I think that might be you.”

Christopher stared. “Okay, are you a psychic or something?”

Jesse laughed. “No. I just talk about things I shouldn’t.”

Christopher walked into the kitchen and motioned for Jesse
to follow. “Water?”

“No thanks. I’m good.”

“Why shouldn’t you talk about things like that?” Christopher
said, grabbing two bottles of water from the pantry anyway. He turned to find
Jesse bent at the waist, looking over the shelves full of vinyl albums that
Christopher kept in the space between the kitchen and living room.

“Because I don’t even know if I believe it myself.” Jesse
fingered one album’s edge, pulling it gently from the shelf to get a good look
at the cover. “You realize that vinyl was supposed to be killed by CDs? No cell
phone until this week. No CDs. No MP3s, I wager. I can see that you haven’t
bought into any crazy newfangled things. Let me guess, they’re all just a
phase?”

“Ha,” Christopher said. “It’s the twenty-first century. I’m
not a complete Luddite. I’ve got an iPod Touch. My sister gave it to me for
Christmas last year. I do use it for MP3s, actually. And for Grindr.”

Jesse chuckled.

Christopher took some long swallows of water, hoping that he
wouldn’t have to piss once he got hard; that could get uncomfortable. But as it
was, his mouth was dry. He didn’t know if it was nerves or anticipation, but he
took another drink to soothe his tongue.

“When I was a kid,” Jesse said, crouching down and
continuing to browse the vinyl, “my mother used to send me outside at night as
a punishment. I was terrified of the dark, of ghosts and things I couldn’t see,
and if I didn’t eat my dinner or refused to pick up my toys before bed, she’d
put me out back and lock me out there for a while.”

Christopher’s eyes went wide, and he took another sip of
water just to keep from saying something rude about Jesse’s mother.

“I’d sit out there, as still as I could, and just
feel
the air around me. Thinking that any minute I’d be
gobbled up by a bobcat or stolen by a bear or confronted by a ghost. And to
keep calm, I started naming the way the world around me felt, the layers of
sensation and the information available in any space.”

Jesse perused the albums as he talked, his expression intent
on what he was finding in Christopher’s collection. “Then I started doing it
all the time—in school, at church, at my dad’s office. Each place had a flavor
or a scent, like a perfume. My dad’s office in the main factory was paper,
yeast, sugar, flour, cologne, ambition, and a top-note of fear. My mother’s
bedroom seemed thick and smelled of tears, and disappointment, and mold. This
place—” Here he broke off and looked around again with a smile on his face. “Is
all love, and goodness, a lot of cozy laughter. I’m pretty sure there’ve been a
lot of sugar cookies baked in here, and…” he sniffed. “Chili.”

Christopher shook his head in bemusement.

Jesse kept his face turned toward the albums. “And over all
that is a layer of loneliness. And that makes me both love the place, and feel
sad too. Because I think you shouldn’t be lonely.” Jesse met his eyes, and then
quickly looked back at the music he was sorting through.

“Is this like with the jewelry? Every place has a story?”

“Yeah, but buildings talk. Jewelry—it’s full of magic
because it keeps its secrets safe
. And
, here’s the
thing about jewelry—any given piece can change and transform the person wearing
it.”

“You’re kind of nuts,” Christopher said, shaking his head
with a sudden burst of fondness for this man he was getting to know. Jesse kept
surprising him, and he didn’t know if he’d ever get tired of finding out what
Jesse had hidden behind his charming good looks and easy-going attitude.

Who knew he had a thing for dark-haired men going on
matter-of-factly about the secret messages of houses and the magic of jewels?
It was news to him, but there was nothing Jesse had just said that made him
want to back off from what they were here to do. If anything, it just made him
want to do it even more.

“Nuts, huh?” Jesse said.

“But it’s hot anyway.”

“Good, hot is what I was striving for. Anyway, about that
stuff with my mom—for the record, I can’t imagine doing anything like that to
my kids. No need to call CPS on me.” Jesse pulled out an album. “Del McCoury. ‘Loneliness
and Desperation,’” he read softly and then sang a few bars of it. “Love this
one. And it seems apropos given our conversation.”

“I can put it on.”

“Nah,” Jesse put it back in its place on the shelf and
stood. “You could sing it to me, though. Indulge my fantasy of being a star
fucker, Chris.”

“Only if you indulge my fantasy of being a star.”

Jesse grinned. “It’s a deal.”

Christopher sat his water bottle on the counter. He sang
softly as he approached, grabbing handfuls of Jesse’s shirt to jerk it free
from his waistband and belt.

Jesse tilted Christopher’s face up by the chin, swallowed
visibly, and then closed his eyes. “I love your voice. You don’t need to be
Lash Hinkins. Your voice does things to me.”

“Come to my bedroom. I can do even more things to you there.”

C
HRISTOPHER
WAS SLIM, AND SQUIRMED
under Jesse’s hands. His body hair was a darker
gold than the hair on his head, and he was pale and—there was no other word for
it—
pretty
as he moved beneath Jesse on the bed,
gasping with each touch of Jesse’s mouth on his skin, shameless in his hunger.

They’d been almost naked by the time they hit the bedroom,
shirts left on the floor of the living room, where they’d paused to kiss and
grope, and jeans and boxers trapped at their knees when they’d shoved them down
desperately in the small hallway, banging against the wall as they’d thrust
their hips at each other. Their cocks had pushed together, all hard and velvet,
and Christopher’s neck had tasted delicious on Jesse’s tongue, his pulse
beating wildly there, and his hands tight on Jesse’s ass, pulling him in.

Now Christopher was spread naked on the bed, squirming to
try and get his socks off with his toes, while Jesse distracted him with licks
over his tight, small nipples, and bites to the edge of his collarbone.
Christopher held Jesse’s hair in tight fistfuls, moaning as a red mark rose
immediately on his pale skin. Jesse sucked at it, making it bigger. Christopher
twisted under him, and Jesse hunched his own cock against the soft bedspread,
desperate for some friction.

Jesse hadn’t even had time to look around the room—he’d been
absorbed in getting Christopher even more out of his mind with lust. Because
fuck
, the way he was already trembling and spilling out wanton
whimpers when Jesse hadn’t even gotten his mouth on his cock yet was one of the
hottest things Jesse had seen in a long time.

Christopher jerked on his hair, and Jesse went up for
another kiss, wet and deep, both of them breathing like race horses as they
clung and rolled, aligning their bodies so that their cocks rubbed. Jesse could
feel their hearts thundering in their chests.

Jesse reached down and grabbed their cocks, squeezing them
together, and Christopher moaned as Jesse felt slick pre-cum slipping down to
pool where his hand gripped. He didn’t know if it was his or Christopher’s, or
both.

“Condom,” Christopher muttered. “Lube.” He waved his hand to
the left, and Jesse looked up to see a roll of condoms and a bottle of lube on
the bedside table.

Jesse snorted a laugh, and kissed Christopher’s mouth. “Feeling
pretty sure of yourself when you left for our date, weren’t ya?”

Christopher thrust up against Jesse, sucking on his neck,
licking his ear, and then saying, “Yeah. I was. I figured chances were good.”

Jesse almost wanted to tease him a little more about it, but
he couldn’t, because his cock was aching and his balls were heavy and hot, and
he felt like he might cry from greedy need if he couldn’t get inside
Christopher in the next ten minutes. But he wanted his mouth again too.