Too Stupid to Live(Romancelandia) (38 page)

Sam tightened his arm around Ian again. “He knows you’re gay?”

“I told him when I was about twenty-six, I guess. I’d known since I was nineteen, or at least I knew I was into guys. Dad was so fucking
disappointed
. Stupid thing is, I knew he would be. I went in there expecting it, but it still killed me. You know where I told him?”

Sam shook his head, even though he was pretty sure that was a rhetorical question. He relaxed again into the heat of Ian’s body and laid his palm over Ian’s heart. It was very close to his nipple.

“In his fucking office. He’d been the fire chief for about a year, and I got sick of trying to catch him someplace else. Only other place to catch him was drinking with his buddies. I don’t know if the dude ever slept at home after he became chief. Maybe they had a cot for him at the bar.”

“So he was a drinker, too?” Sam kissed the back of Ian’s neck some more, then gave it a little nibble.

“That started a while after Mom died. It didn’t get bad until I went off to college and he was in that house alone. I’m sure he’s an alcoholic now, but I don’t think it made any difference in my life when I was still at home.”

“He didn’t, like, disown you when he found out you were gay?”

Ian shrugged one shoulder. “No. I’d done what he wanted, I became a firefighter; he just asked me not to be out. And he asked me to be sure.”

“Like . . .?”

“Like, keep dating women. I thought it was more about wanting me to look straight for his buddies and the department. Wasn’t that big a department. There were a couple other gay guys I knew of, but nobody was really out. I was the only one who kept it a total secret.”

“So not even the other gay guys . . .?”

Ian shook his head before Sam finished the question.

“And you kept dating women,” Sam said, pressing harder on Ian’s heart.

Ian nodded. “Or at least I made it look like it.”

Sam squeezed him even tighter, until Ian grunted. “Careful, kiddo,” he said softly. “Those are my internal organs in there.”

Sam laughed and brushed his lips back and forth across Ian’s skin, burying his nose in his hair.
Mmm
, he loved that smell. Sam’s hips snugged themselves up to Ian’s butt without really asking permission, but he didn’t object.

“The thing is, even though I thought he was an asshole, and his opinions weren’t worth stressing out over . . . somehow it sunk in. Not the part where no one would ever love me—he’s obsessed with me having someone to take care of me, whatever that means—but the part where I’d never have a relationship.”

Sam lifted himself up so he could press his cheek on Ian’s ear, arms and leg wrapped around him. Trying to smother him with reassurance without actually cutting off any major arteries or airways. “You are in a relationship, and someone loves you.” And was getting hard for him. Was that inappropriate?

Ian dislodged him, rolling onto his back and looking up at him. Sam kept his body loosely caging Ian’s, trying not to make his dick’s demands too obvious. “That’s what my problem was Thursday,” he said so quietly his voice grated. “I got out of there, you know? I started seeing a therapist after the accident as part of my rehab, but it turned into dealing with all of this stuff. I got out of that job and stopped doing what he wanted me to, and I started coming out. I left the state and I even got my, you know—” Ian’s eyes flicked away a second “—emotional stuff sort of worked out, and then he called and it got fucked up all over in my head. I was so sure, Sam.” He grabbed the back of Sam’s neck, pulling him slightly closer, so all Sam could focus on were Ian’s eyes. “And then for a while after he called, I didn’t know if this was real or I was fooling myself. Like, I lost faith or something. Am I making any sense?”

Sam nodded earnestly. Mostly he was making sense enough to follow, but Sam had one question. “You didn’t know if
we
were real? Us?”

Ian swallowed and nodded. “Yeah.”

“Do you know now?” Sam held his breath. He
thought
he knew the answer, but there was still that sliver of doubt.

“Yeah. We’re real.” Ian pressed harder on the back of Sam’s neck, stretching up to kiss him. “I love you.”

“I love you, too.”

Sam kept kissing him forever, over and over, riding Ian’s thigh and grinding one of his legs between Ian’s. Ian arched up and pushed into Sam to encourage him, knowing what was going to happen. His heart thudded with it, and the muscles in his ass bunched up tight with want. “Maybe we shouldn’t do this, I mean, your head . . .” He trailed off and Sam kissed him again.

“We don’t have to do anything you don’t want to do,” Sam whispered, then came back for more. But they were going to. It wasn’t as if he’d never bottomed before, but doing it for Sam—that was completely different. Terrifying because of how much it meant.

When Sam pulled off his T-shirt and boxers, Ian had to run hands over his chest, his tan skin against Sam’s paleness. Sam loomed over him on extended arms, letting Ian pet him. He thumbed Sam’s nipples and watched him shiver. Then Sam looked into his eyes and Ian dropped his hands, because Sam wanted him
now
.

Sam pulled off the sweats and briefs Ian had slept in, and Ian’s dick bounced up into Sam’s hand like it had been dying for the contact. He smiled, straddled Ian’s thighs, and used his thumb and fingers to drive Ian nuts until he was squirming, pushing his hips up for more. Sam let go of him to hover over his lips again.

“I’m going to fuck you,” he whispered, looking into Ian’s eyes, waiting for a response.

“I know,” Ian whispered back.

“That’s okay?”

He swallowed and reached up to palm the back of Sam’s head. “I want it.”

Even if he hadn’t wanted to, Sam’s smile and then his kiss would have changed his mind. But he ached to feel Sam inside him. When he heard the soft
click
of the lube bottle, he took a deep breath and pulled his legs up, hands behind his knees, opening himself up for Sam.

Sam’s fingers were magic. They did all kinds of amazing things that made Ian writhe and groan and arch up from the bed. Then they stopped, sliding out, and Sam was looming over him again, propped on one shaking arm. “Are you ready?”

“Yes, God, just do it.” He yanked Sam down for a wild, wide-open kiss. “Please,” he added, panting.

Sam smiled at him, and Ian dug his fingers painfully hard into the backs of his knees, yanking his legs farther up when he felt Sam’s cock against his hole. He watched Sam’s face as Sam watched himself push into Ian.

I love that face
.

Then he had Sam inside him and he stopped thinking much at all.

Sam was slow and careful, but Ian wanted it so much that it only took a couple of minutes before Sam’s balls were pressed against Ian’s tailbone, and Ian’s legs were hooked on his arms. They were both shaking, and Ian felt his heart throbbing in the muscles holding Sam’s shaft so tightly inside him.

Finally he arched into it and let Sam have him, encouraged it with his body and the noises Sam drew out of him. Sam’s gray-blue eyes watched Ian’s the whole time. When Ian lost it and came, he was sure it was his first religious experience.
If this is enlightenment, I want more
. Fortunately, Sam had plenty to give and it spread through him, and through Sam too, he thought.

Afterward, Sam kissed his eyes closed, then down his face, placing small kisses all over his lips, then told Ian, “I love you.”

Ian couldn’t speak. He hugged Sam tighter and hoped that was enough to get his message across.

Sam combed fingers through his hair. “I know,” Sam whispered, smiling at him.

Ian took a drink of his beer, leaning against the counter while Sam chopped vegetables. He surveyed the array of ingredients sitting out. “What are you making, chicken stew?”

“Coq au vin,” Sam said absently, seemingly concentrating on cutting his carrots into perfectly cubed icons of vegetable-hood.

So, chicken stew.

Ian stifled a sigh. It wasn’t that he didn’t want Sam to learn how to cook, it was that he didn’t give a damn. He didn’t care if Sam became a gourmet chef, and he’d hoped when he came home tonight, Sam would be doing something Ian could tear his attention away from, like reading or writing or watching TV.

Tearing Sam’s attention away from cooking was rough going. Ian suspected it was because Sam sucked at it, and he wasn’t getting better with practice. The worse he got at cooking, the harder he tried. That part Ian did care about, because he kept having to pretend to like increasingly bad food.

“Why don’t you make it tomorrow, and tonight I’ll take you out for coq au vin instead?” he suggested.

“Coq au vin two nights in a row? Besides, I already chopped the onions,” Sam said, leaning closer to his chopping board, tilting his head to one side then the other, poking at a triangular chunk of carrot with his knife, then frowning at it. “I’m not stopping now. I cried over the onions.”

“Everyone cries when they chop onions.”

“It wasn’t that kind of crying. I cut myself.” Sam held up a hand, showing off a bandaged finger.

This time Ian let the sigh out. He tried again. “What did you do today?”

“I went with Nik to see Miller in rehab.” Sam stood up straight, turning to the sink and pulling celery out of the colander he had it sitting in.

Hell, that was all such a mess. Ian took another swig of his beer. “How’s Miller doing? He better?”

Sam poked at the end of a stalk of celery with a knife, sort of digging at it. “He might be able to go home soon. Well, to Nik and Jurgen’s, I mean.” For a few seconds, Sam actually made direct eye contact with him. Then he went back to his celery. “Until he can be on his own and go back to his place.” He managed to get whatever he was digging for, pulling on one of those strings in the stalk.

God this was becoming a worse and worse time to talk about serious stuff. Well, serious stuff between them. Miller getting ostracized by his family after being beaten half to death for being gay was pretty freaking serious. “His parents still won’t talk to him?”

“No,” Sam said. His second string broke, and he frowned at the celery. “Can we not talk about it right now? I’m trying to concentrate.”

On pulling the veins out of celery?

Well, hell. If Sam was only half paying attention, maybe Ian could get some information out of him. He took a fortifying gulp from his beer, then picked at the bottle’s label and asked, “How long do you have to date someone before you can ask him to move in with you?”

Sam dropped the knife on the counter. Ian looked up to see him frozen and paling.

That got his attention
.

Sam swallowed and turned back to his celery, slowly picking up his knife and staring at it. “How would I know?” he asked.

Ian shrugged. “Well, you lived with Marley, right? So, when did he ask you? Or, I guess you could have asked him,” he added in a mutter. He
hated
that idea.

Sam slowly started shoveling oddly shaped bits of carrot into a bowl. “Um, he never really asked me. There wasn’t any asking at all. I just realized one day he was living there.”

“Yeah? So when did that happen?”

“Um, the second time we hooked up, maybe?” Sam suddenly dropped his handful of vegetables on the cutting board and turned to Ian, wiping his hands on his jeans. Over and over. “Why do you want to know?” He sounded nervous. It was cute.

It helped settle some of Ian’s own nerves, as a bonus. He carefully set his beer bottle on the counter and stepped up to Sam, smoothing back his shaggy hair. “I was wondering if we’d been seeing each other long enough for me to ask you. I mean, to move in here with me.”

Sam opened his mouth, but it just hung there. Ian gave him a few seconds, but nothing came out.

Hell
.

He fisted Sam’s hair, trying to be gentle and not demanding. “If you count the first time we hooked up at Nik and Jurgen’s, we’ve been seeing each other about three months. Almost two and a half if you count from that time on that little linoleum square at your place. That seems like long enough to me,” Ian finished uncertainly. Why wasn’t Sam saying anything?