The Foster Family (37 page)

Charlie’s hands, trapped in the binding of fuzzy, white material, rested with slightly curled, relaxed fingers at the small of his back. As Charlie bent to his task, Malcolm admired his spine, rounded, curved between muscled arms and the smooth, strong planes of his back, ending in the round swell of perfect, pale ass. From every angle, the man was a work of nature’s art.

And talented. It wasn’t long before admiring the way he looked while he did what he was doing was much harder than appreciating his actions.

“Charlie….” Malcolm ran a hand over the goose bumps dancing along Charlie’s back. The suction was hard, demanding, and Malcolm scooted forward, changing his angle so he could thrust in counterpoint to Charlie’s action.

How long had it been since he’d really put this much effort and attention into this? He glanced down again in time to catch Charlie flick a look up at him.

God, the man’s heart was in his dark, needy eyes, and Malcolm couldn’t stand it. Couldn’t stand the uncertainty there. “You’re perfect, you know,” Malcolm whispered. “God, you’re so perfect for me.” Charlie’s cheeks hollowed, and an instant later Malcolm’s eyes rolled back and his balls tightened. As Charlie let up on the pressure and began to bob his head in earnest, Malcolm didn’t even have to touch him or guide him. He knew exactly how fast and deep, and with barely any warning, Malcolm was pouring his spend down Charlie’s throat in hard, throbbing bursts.

“Oh, Charlie. Fuuu….”

“Don’t swear,” Charlie muttered dazedly as he lapped at Malcolm. One of his shoulders impacted Malcolm’s thigh, and then his head was resting in Malcolm’s lap. “It’s a rule.”

“Smartass.” Malcolm gazed down on him from somewhere in the stratosphere. “God, that was good, Charlie.”

Something happened then that hadn’t happened in so long it shocked Malcolm back to earth.

Charlie smiled at him, radiant and proud of himself and completely at ease with being bound at his feet and made to serve. As though he’d suddenly been able to slot himself back into a world he’d thought he’d lost.

“Charlie.”

“I love this part,” Charlie said softly. “Love how you look all spacey and dreamy-eyed and I did that.”

“You did that.” Malcolm cupped his cheek and admired the peace on his lover’s face. “God, yeah, you did that, baby.”

For some time, they stayed that way, until Malcolm worried Charlie’s shoulders had to be bothering him, and his knees had to be sore, curled on the floor like that. The carpet didn’t have enough padding for prolonged kneeling.

“Get up,” Malcolm said softly, injecting some control back into the hazy afterglow. “Let’s get those ties off you.”

“So soon?”

Malcolm brushed fingers over Charlie’s face. “Come on, lover. No sense you getting all cramped up before the main event, is there? Besides, I still have work to do, and you have work to find.”

“I do?” Charlie got to his feet with Malcolm’s help and winced when his full weight was on his feet.

“Pins and needles?”

“Yeah, a bit.”

“Here, turn around.” He carefully undid the ties as he spoke. “Yeah, you do. One thing I’ve learned about you over fifteen years is you can’t sit around the house with nothing to do. You’ll get all up in your own head and turn the world inside out, and it’s a lot of work to keep you grounded when that happens.”

“So now you want me to get a job.”

“Sit.” Malcolm pointed to the blanket on the couch. When Charlie was seated, he knelt in front of him.

“Yes. I want you to get a job. I’m telling you to get a job.” He looked up to find Charlie watching him. “You want things more formal, really?” He waited, one of Charlie’s feet cradled in his lap as he massaged the calf.

“God, that feels good.”

“Answer the question. Do you mean it that you want things more formal?”

“Yeah, Mal. I mean it.”

“Okay, then.” Malcolm placed that foot down and picked up the other. “Formally, as your Dom, I’m telling you. You do better when you have an excuse to get out of the house and be on your own for a bit of the day. You took that gallery job to get a foot in the door for your art, and that didn’t work out, but it’s not the only gallery in town.”

“You think I should try to get a job at another one?”

“No. I think you should try to get your work into one of them.”

“Mal—”

“Hear me out. You have books and books full of pictures you took. We can build you a darkroom and you can go back to taking pictures.”

“Subsidized by you?”

“No.” Malcolm placed his other foot on the ground and joined him on the couch. “That’s why you need a job, of course. The darkroom will be a gift. The rest, you pay for as you go.”

“I don’t even know what I could do.”

“Call Lissa. She needs someone. You know plants, and plants like you. Kerry says there’s a lot more than hauling dirt you can do for her, so call her.”

“She’ll nail my ass to the wall before she’ll give me a job.”

“Kerry said he’d call her first.”

“Oh, that’s awesome. You subsidize my darkroom, and he paves the way to some kind of nepotism so I can get a job.”

“Stop being a stubborn ass and listen to me. We have the resources to help you get what you need. As your very long-suffering boyfriend, I know something of what you need. Let me help you get it. Let me be the hero, here. You’ve been doing the heavy lifting in this relationship for years, Charlie. Let me do this.”

“And if I really don’t think it’s a good idea, will you make me do it anyway?”

“Make you?”

“Yeah, Mal. Make me. Tell me to do it. Tell me what happens if I don’t.”

The full import of what Charlie meant when he said he wanted a Dom hit Malcolm then. Rules with consequences, and not just a tap on the bottom or locking him out of the toy chest, but real consequences. As in he’d go out and get a job because he went a little bit crazy without something to occupy his brain, and Malcolm couldn’t, really
couldn’t
keep him grounded if Charlie didn’t have a way to ground himself. Not that it was too much work, but that Malcolm didn’t have the capacity or the kinds of reserves or the stamina to do it alone and maintain his own equilibrium.

“You tell me all your objections to this plan. Real and imagined, and we’ll talk about it, but bottom line….” Malcolm caught his eye, took a breath, and plunged forward. “Bottom line, Charlie, you need a job. You need something that’s yours, that you enjoy, that challenges you, because you are too much for me to take on alone. You aren’t made to be a house boy, and I won’t have you as one. It would make us both crazy.”

Charlie stared hard at him. “So. I get a job or you’ll what? Kick me out? After all this time?”

“A job, or volunteer work, or a studio for your art someplace outside this house, but yeah. Basically, if we go forward, how you say you want to go forward, I won’t bend on this.”

“And you seriously want me to call Lissa first.”

Malcolm let out a breath and shrugged. Kerry made it sound so perfect when he said it. “Work for her, organize her books, revamp her advertising, play in the dirt, and remember what it’s like to be taking pictures and talking to the plants even if all you do is take photos for her website and repot her seedlings at first.”

Charlie sank back onto the couch and stared at Malcolm. “I don’t even know where to start,” he said.

“What do you mean?”

“Part of me is soaring that you really listened to me and… you really mean this.”

“I really mean it.”

“And part of me is terrified, because before, if I screwed up, I got away with it. But you really mean this.”

Malcolm swung a leg over him and perched on his lap, cupped his face in both hands, and turned it up so Charlie had to look into his eyes. “I really, really mean this, Charles. With all my heart. I am not going to set you up to fail, like I was doing before. Not going to throw away fifteen years, baby. If it’s scary now, because all you ever had in the past were vague ideas of what I expected, it won’t be like that. Yes, there are real things at stake now. Your heart. My heart. Everything we’ve built. Our whole lives, but dammit, I mean this. I am going to set us both up to make this work, so tell me your objections, so we can talk about them, so when I do put my foot down, it’s in a place that moves us both into this new thing on solid ground.”

Charlie nodded. “Yes, Sir,” he whispered, voice only just audible. “I will.”

“Good.”

Taking advantage of his position, Malcolm bent and kissed Charlie hard and full and honestly until he had pulled that heartfelt sound out of Charlie that meant he’d stopped thinking, if only for that moment in time, and let himself just be.

When they parted, he smiled softly. “You’ll have to find something in the house to occupy you for a little while. I like you like this. All naked and”—he tapped the cock ring still in place and let the delight shine through—“edgy. I honestly have work to do that has to be done today, but it should only take a couple of hours.”

“Hours?” Charlie groaned. “Mal.”

Malcolm kissed him to silence.

“You can take it. I’ll see you for lunch.”

With that, he got up, found his pants, and went to his office, as much for his own sanity as because he had work to do. It was a huge step they were taking, and it would be a lie to say it didn’t freak him the hell out. But when Charlie looked at him with those eyes, so full of need and hunger and trust, there really was no other thing he could do but accept where the relationship was going and grow balls enough to take it there.

I
HELPED
with the dishes in as much silence as I could foster. Talking would lead to catching up, and that, inevitably, would lead to questions I wasn’t prepared to answer. I wanted to enjoy this stint as the prodigal son just a little while longer, before I shattered their image of me. Maybe I believed that neither of them would judge or shun me for the poor choices, but that didn’t mean they wouldn’t be disappointed, and I wanted to hold off having that happen as long as possible.

“I think I’m going to have a look at the garden after this,” I told them as I placed the last plate in the cupboard and reached for the next-to-last coffee mug.

“Oh, dear,” Nash said, making a face at Grey. “He’s going to be disappointed, isn’t he, kiddo?”

“Why would I be?” I laughed as Grey grabbed hold of Nash’s pouting bottom lip and yanked.

“Ow!” Nash laughed too, though, and pried the chubby little fingers loose. “I’m afraid we’ve sort of let your masterpiece go a bit, Kerry.” Nash glanced at him, and there was real sadness in his eyes. “I know how hard you worked to get it perfect, but—”

“You’ve had other priorities. I get it. Just gives me something to occupy my time while I’m here. No worries.”

“How long do you think you’ll be here?” Nash asked.

“Is there a time limit?”

Nash glanced at David, then back to me. “No. Not at all. Not as far as we’re concerned, but you’re a young man with a life to get back to.”

“A life….” I sighed. “Yeah. Well, as soon as I figure that out, I’ll get back to it, promise.”

I didn’t want to wait and give them a chance to pry into that little nugget, so I made for the back door and the rickety garden shed against the back fence in a hurry.

Thankfully, no one followed me, and I had a chance to dig out some tools and gloves that weren’t too full of cobwebs and have a serious look around.

I’d been young and enthusiastic when I’d planned this space. That would be what any charitable gardener would say looking at it now. But a sixteen- or seventeen-year-old didn’t think five years into the future to what size a plant might be when it matured, or what might happen to something delicate if it was planted beside something aggressive. I’d just gone for what appealed to me at the time, and looking over the place now, I had to shake my head. What the hell had I been thinking?

“So. What do you think?” David asked, coming out onto the porch, a sleepy Grey on his hip.

I held up the trowel in my hand. “I think I’m going to need a bigger shovel.”

David smiled and agreed. “Will we be in the way if we curl up on the hammock and watch from the shade?”

“Nope.” I nodded to the nook between the porch and the house. “I think I’ll start there. Looks like a spot where I might be able to make it look like I’ve done something after a few hours.”

“David!” Nash appeared on the other side of the screen door and held up a bottle of sunscreen.

“I did,” David told him, looking a trifle annoyed.

“Just checking.” He disappeared again and David shook his head.

“He gets overprotective sometimes.”

“Of you? Or Grey?”

“You wait. Give him a day or two, and see how you like it. He hovers.”

I watched David settle on the hammock and arrange himself and Grey in a comfortable curl in the center.

“You know he loved fostering,” I said. “He was really good at it.”

“And he gave it up for me and Grey. Yes, Kerry, I am well aware.”

“Just that he loves you that much, David. He wants you with him a long time.” I turned from the bush I was contemplating to look at the older man. “
I
want you with him a long time. You’re good for him. You soften his edges. He’s mellower now than he ever was when I was here.”