The Scientist and the Supermodel (2 page)

Dimples flashed. “Glad you noticed.”

And amazingly, Jake saw that in the midst of all that perfection, the guy had one tooth that crossed the other in front. It was a charming little joke. Somehow it made him more perfect. “You don’t seriously think that any human on the planet wouldn’t notice, do you?” He peered up into that face. Way up. Over six feet up. Green. Jesus, his eyes were green. “You are fucking beautiful.”

The man looked a little uncomfortable, but he smiled. “Glad you think so. Can I buy you a drink?”

Jake shook his head slowly. It made him dizzy. “I’m rapidly realizing that the one thing I need the least is another drink.”

“Can I sit down?”

Jake gestured expansively. Yeah, he was drunk. “It’s a free bar, or at least damned reasonable.”

The guy winced and then shrugged. “Sorry, I won’t bother you.” He turned to go, and like it had a mind of its own, Jake’s hand shot out and grabbed the guy’s arm. Through the soft material of the long-sleeve T-shirt, Jake could feel hard, lean muscle, just like the powerful strength evident in those long denim-covered legs. The denim lovingly cupped a bulge so impressive it almost made Jake gasp. Shit, when did he start noticing some guy’s package except maybe for comparison purposes? Composing himself was a losing battle, but he tried.

The beautiful man was standing stock-still, just staring at where Jake gripped his biceps. Jake let him go like his T-shirt was on fire. “I’m sorry, man. I didn’t mean to be rude. I just don’t drink very well.”

Very slowly, the handsome stranger placed a hand carefully on Jake’s forearm. Even through his shirt and suit coat, he could feel heat. Then the guy looked straight into Jake’s eyes.

“Would you like to go somewhere else?”

The heat flashed to Jake’s face and groin simultaneously. “Uh, where? Look, I don’t want to give you the wrong impression. I’m not gay or anything.”

The man smiled slightly. “Well, I am, more or less, but I’d be very happy to just talk to you, find out why you look so smart and what you’re doing at a”—he read the badge—“Genetic Medicine Symposium.”

Jake knew he should say no. This guy clearly fell into the category of advanced human relations, and Jake barely had his learner’s permit. But there was no way the refusal would come out of his mouth. “Uh, okay. Where?”

The guy looked around. “Chances are, all the public spaces are full of people who know either you or me. My room is being watched. What about yours?”

Watched
? “Yeah, okay. I’ve got some chairs and a couch and stuff. Room 725.”

“It’s probably best I meet you up there. Is that okay?”

“Uh, okay, yeah.”

The black-haired beauty fished a wad of bills from his pocket and threw them on the bar where Jake was sitting. Even with a generous tip, it was way too much. Jake started to object when the man put up two fingers. “By the way, I get the feeling you don’t know my name is Roan Black.”

“No. I’m Jake. Jake Martin.”

“See you in room 725, Jake.” And he walked away, slipping the sunglasses and cap back in place.

Chapter Two

Okay, he was definitely drunk. And he was even more definitely in huge trouble. What had he done, giving some strange guy his room number? What had he implied by agreeing to invite him in? Jake lurched around his room, grabbing miscellaneous clothes and stuffing them in his suitcase. Maybe if he left his glasses off, the disorder in the room would look better. Drinks? What was in the minibar?
Okay, quit it, Jake; this is not a date
. What had the guy said? He was gay, more or less. What the fuck did that mean? Shit, shit, shit!

There was a soft rap on the door. Jake froze. He wanted to jump out the window. He wanted to run to the door and rip it open. He settled for a slow walk. Using the door to take some of his weight, he opened it a crack.

“What the fuck do you mean you’re gay, more or less?”

Outside the door, the guy, the beautiful guy, burst out laughing. “Can I come in, or should we say you’re too drunk to receive visitors and give it up?”

“Yeah, well.” He opened the door with what he hoped was a swagger. “You can come in, but you gotta answer my question.”

“Okay.” The man walked past him into the room. Jake thought the word “man,” but this guy was probably a year or more younger than Jake, making him early twenties. Jake sensed a combination of experience and insecurity in that beautiful package, but he wasn’t thinking straight enough to know what to make of it.

The guy gave him a sideways glance. He was nearly as tall as Jake’s six feet two. “May I sit down?”

“Sure.” Jake waved him toward the couch, and the guy—had he really said Roan?—walked over and sat. Everything was graceful. Not girl graceful. More like cat graceful, panther graceful. “What kind of name is Roan, anyway?”

Again he got the sideways glance. “Which question shall I answer first?”

“Whatever.” Jake flopped into a chair, legs hanging over the arm. “Sorry, I don’t mean to give you the first degree. It’s the—”

“The alcohol, I know.” The guy grinned. “My name is Roan. Originally, it was Robert Andrew. I needed a cooler name, so I took the first letters of each and created Roan.”

“Why did you need a cooler name? Robert Andrew’s pretty cool.”

“Yeah, well, in my business, names need to be distinctive.”

“What business?”

“I’m a model.” His eyes softened. “Don’t you like my name?”

Jake looked down at his hands. “Yeah, I like your name.”
As well as most everything else about you I can see.

Roan’s voice was soft, almost a whisper. “I said I was gay
more or less
because I occasionally take a fancy to certain women. But basically I prefer men.”

Jake whispered back. “You do?”

“Yeah.”

Jake couldn’t look at him. He leaped to his feet. “Let’s see what’s in the mini.” He tore open the little fridge. “Lots of whiskey.”

“Don’t like it.”

“Some wine.”

“Probably crappy.”

“Beer? Coke?”

“Too fattening.”

Jake looked over his shoulder. “You didn’t seriously just say that, did you?”

The beautiful green eyes gave him a sheepish look. “Girlie, huh?”

“Just a little.”

“Well, see, my stomach has to be really flat when I do swimsuit, and that’s what we’re shooting this week.” He lifted his T-shirt to reveal the flattest, most hard-body set of cobbled abs Jake had ever seen in real life. Of course, this guy wasn’t real life.

Jake gave voice to the thought. “You’re unreal.”

Roan shrugged. “You’re not the first one to say so.”

“Want some mineral water?”

“That’d be great.”

Jake opened two bottles. “So what did you want to talk about?”

Roan reached out for his bottle and took a swig. “Tell me what you do.”

“I’m a genetic researcher.”

“Your name tag said
Dr
. Jake Martin.”

“I’m a PhD, not a doctor of medicine or anything.”

“Sounds pretty fucking impressive to me.”

“It’s great, actually. We investigate new patterns of gene sequencing to help detect certain diseases. Mostly cancer.”

“Wow.”

“Yeah, I work with one of the world’s greatest geneticists. She made me her partner.” Jake puffed his chest just a little, then realized his choice of words. “Her research partner, I mean.”

The green eyes crinkled. “And you’re sure you’re not gay?”

Startled from his still-fuzzy reverie, Jake almost fell out of the chair. “Why, do I look gay? Did you think I was gay? What the fuck?”

Roan extended a hand. “Easy boy, it wasn’t an insult. Consider the source. And no, I assumed when I first saw you that you were straight as a die. Besides, I was only teasing. Tell me more about your work.”

“Don’t want to.” Jeez, was he pouting like a little girl? Must be, because Roan sounded like he was soothing a naughty child.

“So what do you want to tell me about?”

“Nothing. Tell me about you.”

“Okay.” He sipped his mineral water. “I’m a small-town boy from Iowa.”

Jake leaned forward. “You’re shitting me.”

“Nary a shit. Both of my parents are God-fearing, bible-beating people—not-very-successful farmers.”

“Do they look like you?”

“Yeah, everyone asks that.”

“Sorry to be predictable.”

Roan shrugged. “No problem. Well, they’re reasonably attractive, although they work at not showing it—undue temptation and all that shit. But in answer to the question so many have asked, there’s no real explanation for me. As a child, the preacher used to say my appearance was a gift from God. Didn’t take too many years before he started calling it the devil’s work.” He chuckled. “Then an agent saw me, and the rest is, as they say, fashion history.”

“I’m pretty out of the loop, fashionwise.” The guy grinned, and Jake looked down at his conservative gray suit pants he’d spent a month’s salary on so he wouldn’t embarrass Em at the conference. Maybe not so cool? He looked at the model.

“No, you’re great. Just pretty Brooks Brothers, you feel me?”

“Yeah. It’s my business.” He shrugged. “So what do you model?”

“Everything. I do the major designers’ collections on the runway and a lot of photography. I have a men’s fragrance account that’s pretty fun. But mostly I do editorial. That’s high fashion to you.
Vogue
stuff.”

“Jeez. That’s Greek to me.”

“I’m sure I’d last about two seconds in a discussion of your work.”

“Yeah, well…so, when did you know you were gay?” Shit, where had that question come from?

“Pretty far back. But being gay was a tough row to hoe in my town, so I never came out. I used to date girls. My strategy was to get good at eating pussy.”

Jake sat forward a little. “Now you’re really shitting me.”

“Nope. Gay scout’s honor. So few guys liked it or were willing to do it that I became a minilegend. I have this big cock that kind of scared the girls off from fucking me, and as long as I could eat them out, they were happy. So I got this big reputation as a lover. Then I’d sneak off to town and go to the back rooms of gay bars where it was dark and the men could barely see me and—you know, get off.”

“So what does that mean, for a guy with another guy, I mean?”

“Sure you want to know?”

Jake shrugged. Did he? Why couldn’t he stop asking these fucking questions?

“Well, I’m a bottom by preference. You know what that means?”

“Not exactly.” Jake’s head was spinning.

“It means I’m the one receiving. I like to get fucked in the ass, Jake.”

Pictures of a teenage Roan bent over, being fucked in the ass, filled Jake’s head.
That shouldn’t be sexy, should it
? Crap. He didn’t want to ask. He didn’t… “What about the, you know, other thing?”

“Other thing?”

“That guys do, you know.” Jake looked away and pretended he had not just said that. His mouth was out of control.

“You mean suck cock?”

Now he stared at his hands.
Cool, Martin
. “Yeah, I guess so.”

“I like to both give and receive.”

“Oh. It’s not like a bottom thing?”

Roan chuckled. Great, he thought it was funny. “No. Equal opportunity activity.”

That shut him up.

Roan sat back. “Okay, enough about me. Your turn.”

“What do you want to hear? Where I like to stick my cock?” Jake threw himself against the chair back.

Roan grinned. “If you want to. I told you some pretty personal stuff. So tell me something about you nobody else knows.”

Jake turned his head and spoke into the chair cushion. “I guess I could tell you about Tom.”
What the fuck did I just say
? That straightened him up in a hurry.

“Who’s Tom?”

“Nobody. Don’t know why I said that. Must be drunk.” He hauled himself from the chair and paced to the minibar for another bottle.

“Sounds like Tom is someone you want me to know about.”

Shaking his head, Jake sat on the edge of the bed with his water bottle then realized where he was and jumped up. “Naw. He’s just somebody I think about sometimes.”

“And why did you think of him now?”

Jake cleared his throat. “He was gay. Or is gay. I haven’t seen him for a while.”

“And he was your friend?”

Sitting back in the chair, Jake stared at his hands. “Yeah. He was so damn good to me, and I think I took bad advantage of him. I used him like he was nothing, like he wasn’t a kind and good guy who really cared about me.” He jumped up again. “Oh shit, why am I talking about this?”

Roan stood and took Jake’s hand and led him to the couch to sit beside him. “Because I’m a stranger, and I’m gay, and you can’t talk to Tom to say you’re sorry, right?”

Jake let himself be guided onto the couch. “Yeah, I lost track of him. No idea where he is. But I hope he’s happy, ’cause he deserves it.” Jake was shocked to feel tears prickle behind his eyes. “Shit, I’m sorry. I’m still drunk.”

Roan leaned back so he was just a deep, soft voice behind Jake. “Want to tell me about Tom?”

Jake put his face in his hands for a minute. “He sucked my cock.”

There was a beat of time before Roan said, “Why’d he do that?”

Jake looked up sheepishly. “To relax me?”

A soft chuckle. “Now that’s a great line I’m gonna have to try.”

“No, seriously, I was trying to get my dissertation done, and I was freaking out, running out of time, trying to prepare for the orals. I never had time to date, so I wasn’t having any sex. I guess I was moaning about it one day, and Tom was there. He’d been my friend since undergraduate school. I knew he was gay, he knew I was straight, and we just got along. Basically, he offered to suck my cock. Said it would get me off better than my own hand. I was shocked, but he was so cool about it. Said I should try it before I condemned it.”

“So did you?”

“Not right then. But the days passed, and I got more tired and hornier, and I was wearing the skin off my hand. One day I said yes. Tom said I should just close my eyes and pretend it was the head cheerleader sucking me.”

“Another line I’ve got to remember.”

“He undid my pants, and I broke out in a cold sweat. But then he started to suck me. Shit, I gotta admit, it took me about ten seconds to not care that he was a guy. Jeez, could he suck cock. I’ve never had a girl before or since who was so good.”

“For girls it’s a frill; for us it’s a main event. It pays to get good at it. So that’s why you wanted to know about cock sucking?”

“Yeah, I guess.”

“Anyway, so what’s the problem? You enjoyed it; I’m sure he enjoyed it. Nobody got hurt.”

“That time.”

“Oh.”

“Yeah, I got so fucking
relaxed
, I started relying on Tom to get me off. He was always happy to do it. He even made special trips over late at night to help get me to sleep.” Jake pushed his hands into his hair. “I was so fucking self-absorbed, I never stopped to realize that the guy cared about me, maybe even loved me…so he wouldn’t say no to me. Here I was, using this guy that I called my friend”—a soft sigh escaped Jake’s throat—“like he was some kind of whore. And I never said I was sorry.” He swiped at his eyes. “Fuck, I can’t believe I’m sitting here spilling my guts like some barroom drunk.”

Then Jake felt strong hands on his shoulders, breath on the back of his neck. He shivered as Roan’s soft voiced murmured, “Don’t think like that. Yeah, Tom probably did love you… That would be easy to do. But chances are, he loved sucking your cock. To have that kind of intimacy with someone you care about is a sweet thing, even if the one you love doesn’t share your feelings. Wrapping his tongue around that big, beautiful prick would be like heaven…to Tom.” Soft lips caressed Jake’s neck.

Head spinning, Jake said the dumbest thing imaginable. “How do you know it’s big?”

His hand pressed down on the bulging erection in Jake’s lap.

“I can see it, love.”

Oh shit, where did that thing come from
? But that hand felt so good. Fingers wrapped around the bulge, surrounding his throbbing cock in the material of his suit. He wanted it out so badly. He wanted to feel that hand on his bare skin.

Roan’s lips touched his ear. “I said I’d be happy just to talk, Jake, and I will be if you tell me to stop. But your cock seems happy to see me, and I think you could use some serious relaxing.”

Jake shook his head but not enough to push Roan’s lips away. “No. I’m not gay.”

“I never said you were, love. But you liked Tom’s mouth. Maybe I won’t be as good as he was, but then again”—he hummed against Jake’s neck—“maybe I’ll be better.”

“Oh God, you feel so damned good.”

“So do you, love. Just pretend you’re real drunk, and lie back and let me make you happy.”

Roan pushed Jake back on the sofa cushions and had his belt undone, fly down, and briefs and trousers at his knees before the man could even gather the wind to protest. Oh yeah, he’d been right about the big and beautiful. Jake’s cock was really long, almost as long as Roan’s, but not as thick. It had lovely veins and a sleek, flaring pink cap that was wet and glistening with precum. Roan licked his lips. No slow buildup tonight, sports fans, or the sweet straight boy might change his mind.