Put a Ring on It (21 page)

“No.” Kieran tried to find a way to explain what he’d figured out on the train ride that night. “Remember how you came up to Boston to visit one time?”

Brett’s eyes were doing a funny thing, like he was trying to look inside his own head. “Yeah.”

Vanessa propped her cheek on a hand to listen.

“We pregamed, then we went out to a gay bar and—”

“All those big Harvard boys wanted into my hot little Filipino ass.” Brett shook it on the stool right as the bartender came up with Kieran’s second drink.

The bartender didn’t bat an eye, but Kieran’s ears got warm. “You are cut off.” He shoved Brett’s fresh drink down toward Vanessa. “You were the one doing the chasing. Some guy, Dustin or something. I said to you, ‘He has a boyfriend.’ And you said, ‘Honey, I don’t see—’”

“A ring on his finger,” Brett and Vanessa finished together.

“So you think Theo will cheat on you?” Vanessa leaned back.

“No. But it’s like—having the ring, a license—”

“Joint tax returns?” Vanessa was taking her CPA exams.

“Yeah. All that makes it something solid.”

“I would think that should be something you feel.” Brett’s tone was sour.

“It’s hard to explain.”

“No, I totally get it.” Vanessa looked at her hands, the large, blunt brown fingers tipped with tropical blue nails that matched the drink. “You feel it. You know it’s true inside. But you want that to be reflected on the outside so everyone sees what you know you feel. So you can see it when you look at yourself.” She glanced down again.

Brett covered her hand with his and gave her a kiss on the cheek.

“Thank you,” Kieran said. “That was perfect. Can I have you follow me around for everyone who asks?”

“I think everybody gets wanting to be seen and understood. Some of us G’s and L’s and B’s and
T’s
just have to do a little more work for it.” Vanessa gave a little laugh. “Well, shit. I did not mean to bring the party down. Drink up, Kieran.”

Kieran looked at his own hands, at Theo’s ring. Tested the words in his head.
My husband.
Yes. It did matter.

If they could just make it through the next fifty hours, they could have those fifty years.

THEO DITCHED
the guys as soon as he could. As much as he loved them, he wasn’t keen to revisit Drunk and Puking Land so soon after his last trip.

Kieran wasn’t in their room.

Theo swallowed back a moment of panic. Kieran wasn’t going to leave the island in the middle of the night.

On the tour today, there was one place Kieran had seemed reluctant to leave. Theo skipped the paths and walked along the beach until he got to the cove where their ceremony was going to be.

Kieran was there, stretched out on his back, staring up at the stars. He didn’t turn as Theo approached, not even when Theo sat next to him.

Apologies for letting himself get dragged off dissolved on his tongue with the taste of the ocean. It was a perfect spot, perfectly them. Restless waves pushing on the solid, waiting shore. He tucked that thought away, saving it for a song.

Kieran kept looking up at the sky. “I’ve never seen the Milky Way before, except at the planetarium. It’s really different live.”

“Lots of things are.” Theo smiled. That was why film and television would never kill off the theater. Audiences would always want that raw energy. There was no substitute.

“Where are the guys?”

“
They
are down at the Barefoot Bar drinking and talking about the past.
I
was more interested in hanging out with my future.”

Kieran rolled onto his side to look at Theo then. He waited for an eye roll, Kieran’s snort of derision at the sappy line. It never came. Kieran’s eyes glittered as he stared steadily at Theo, Kieran’s face unreadable in the dark.

“Are you mad?”

“No. Frustrated.” There was a half smile now. “Your friends are fucking cockblockers.”

“Huh?”

“We were headed for the room.” Kieran pushed up, then leaned on one arm. “It’s been six days. My balls are turning blue.”

“Oh.” With everything else finally settled, Theo hadn’t wanted to risk the one thing that was completely out of his control. “Sorry. There was so much I had to take care of before leaving. I’ve been exhausted.”

Kieran’s eyes looked like they could see right into Theo’s frantically scurrying brain.

“Ten days before
Susan
opened, the guy playing the magician had a heart attack, and you had to recast and rework that whole section. We fucked the whole time. You said the crisis gave you wood.”

“Well, marrying you isn’t a crisis. But I’m pretty sure I’ve got a fix for blue balls.” Theo tugged at Kieran’s wrist to spill him back onto the sand. “Just lie back and watch the stars, baby.” He reached for Kieran’s fly.

Kieran stopped him. “Sex on the beach sounds a lot better than I’m thinking sand in certain places will feel.”

“You won’t feel any sand with your dick down my throat. I promise.” Theo knelt over him.

“No.”

Theo raised his brows. “Since when do you turn down a blow job?”

“Since I don’t want you to just do me, Theo. I want to have sex with you.”

Theo wanted that too. He really did. It had to be wedding stress giving him this psychological thing. As soon as they were married, everything would be back to normal. Right now he just needed to stall. “How is my mouth on you not being with you?”

Kieran shifted away, sitting with his arms folded around one bent knee.

“I’m sorry.” Theo tried another tack. “You know as well as I do that some times are just not optimal for a fuck.”

“Okay, now I’m mad. You’re not dense. Which means you’re deliberately avoiding an answer.”

“You’re mad? You’re the one who attacked me for not answering when you haven’t even asked a goddamned question.”

“Fine. I want to know why we haven’t been having sex.”

“I told you. I’ve been tired from work. I offered to blow you. If you really want to fuck—”

“I didn’t ask for that. I don’t care about how we do it. I want to know why I’m the only one who wants it at all. First you wouldn’t come in me, and now… I haven’t even seen your dick in a week.”

Theo slumped back onto the sand and jerked open his fly, then drew his dick out like he was going to piss and held it out for inspection. “There it is. Happy?”

“Not as happy as it’s starting to look.”

Theo had been so pissed off that for a minute he couldn’t feel anything but the rush of blood everywhere, throbbing in his temples, his neck, and, to his relieved surprise, his cock. Blasphemy or not, he murmured a quick thank-you to Saint Joachim as his hand tightened around the thickening shaft. He stroked it, and the recoil of pleasure hit his spine and flooded him with heat.

Suddenly it wasn’t gradual at all. An insistent need rode him, had him rocking into his fist.

Then Kieran’s hand was there instead. Kieran kissing him, feeding the hunger with his tongue and taste, his sharp angles and weight covering Theo’s body, sinking into him.

He reached for Kieran’s ass, cupping it through his cargo shorts, urging his hips to grind down, give Theo more.

The pressure came with a rasp of sand, but then Kieran’s dick was there too. Satiny hard. Hot.

Theo gasped into Kieran’s mouth.

“Want….”

Faster, rougher, now. Theo slammed his hips up, and Kieran rocked with him, hand still trapped between them, keeping them tightly together, smoothing the friction with precome on their shafts.

Theo couldn’t be there already. Then he was, shaking through an orgasm so sharp he thought he blacked out for a second. The spasms jolted through him, quick but deep, balls emptying onto his shirt and Kieran’s stomach.

When the last shock faded, everything was a sandy, sticky mess. It was uncomfortable as hell, but Kieran was smiling down at him, shifting off.

“I was lying on a towel somewhere,” Kieran muttered.

The thought of ground-in sand coming anywhere near Theo’s junk had him covering himself protectively. Which did not help the sand situation. Kieran stripped off his shirt and wiped at his stomach. His dick stuck out straight, red and wet and still hard.

“Can I suck you now?” Theo ran his tongue over his lips.

Kieran glanced back toward the resort.

“Are you avoiding the question?” Theo grinned, curling up.

Before Kieran could answer, Theo had his lips around the salty, slick head.

“Oh, fuck.”

As hot as making Kieran forget they were on a semipublic beach was, Theo employed everything he’d learned in sixteen years of cocksucking to make sure Kieran didn’t regret it. It only took a few minutes of maintaining a low C before Kieran started choking off moans and Theo’s air at the same time.

Theo swallowed around him, then swallowed again as Kieran came, a bitter flood Theo couldn’t get down fast enough. Yeah, six days was too damned long.

Since his shirt was already a disaster, Theo wiped his mouth on it and sat back. Kieran brushed a hand across his cheek.

“You’re really fucking good at that.”

“I know.” Theo smiled.

“I think I should marry you.”

“Maybe you should.”

Last call

AS THE
bartender made his announcement, Jax made a show of peering at his Rolex. “No way. Wait. Where’s Theo?”

“Gone.”

Jax looked at Gideon blearily. “When?”

Gideon sighed. “Sometime between Dane’s last ‘And Then the Bed Broke’ and your most recent ‘Did I Ever Tell You I Sucked This Famous Guy’s Dick?’.”

Dane laughed and got up. “It’s my round.”

“I’m not staying for this round.” Gideon thought about putting a hand on Dane’s arm to stop him, considered all the implications of that, then shoved the hand in a pocket. He was a lot drunker on his feet than he’d thought he was. Theo must have been pouring his shots into the sand to have made it away so cleanly.

“Yeah, I should probably quit too.” Jax put a hand on his stomach. “Gonna have to hit the resort gym for hours tomorrow morning to work off all these empty calories.”

“Well, I’m not drinking alone.” Dane put his arms around both of them but remained silent as Gideon shrugged him off.

They set off through the sand to the paved path leading back to the guest rooms, tiki torches lighting the way. Only by finding a time machine to send them back to the sixties could Theo have ended up with a more kitschy wedding venue.

“I guess this really is it.” Jax demonstrated his usual ability to state the obvious.

“Did you think we’d really keep riding the Cyclone together and never grow up? I would think you of all people would want to escape the limits of the past rather than be stuck as Brian Anderson from
Family Daze
for the rest of your life.”

“I am deeply touched by your concern. I think he’s mellowing, don’t you?” Jax said.

“He couldn’t mellow on five bowls of Tickle Kush,” Dane said.

At Jax’s confused expression, Gideon grumbled, “It’s pot, Jax.”

“Oh. Is it legal here?”

“Yes,” Dane said at the same time as Gideon said, “No.”

“You need a medical reason to become legally paranoid and stupid in Hawaii,” Gideon clarified.

“Oh. Because maybe Theo—”

Dane slung his arm around Jax again. “If Theo needs anything on his wedding day it will be Xanax, not pot.”

Their rooms were bungalow style, two rooms in each little building. Dane slid the key through the door lock. Based on his coordination, Gideon wondered if he’d been pouring some of his shots into the sand too. Either way it was a waste of a lot of innocent booze.

They’d been so late, they’d dumped their stuff in one room.

Jax grabbed his suit bag and carry-on. “I’ll let you two… whatever it is you still do. I doubt I’ll see anyone before noon, but we can discuss making sure Theo stays kidnapped tomorrow night then.”

He was gone before Gideon’s lubricated brain could sort through all the time permutations in Jax’s sentence.

“I’m surprised he didn’t suggest a threesome.” Dane locked the door.

“In the interest of nostalgia?” Gideon lifted his suitcase onto the stand. Maybe this place had toothbrushes in the bathroom, because right then he was too tired and too drunk to go as far as finding his toiletry bag.

Of course being in the bathroom put him a lot farther away from the potential for bad decisions. He forced himself to nut up and get it done.

“We were really drunk that night.”

“I am nowhere near that drunk. Nor will I ever be again.” Gideon’s hand closed on the case, and he headed for the bathroom.

He scrubbed his teeth, washed out some of the stale tequila taste with the complimentary mouthwash, and then pissed.

He wished he could feign surprise when the mirror on his left revealed Dane standing in the doorway.

“Give you a hand with that?”

“No.”

Mirror Dane’s expression was amused.

Gideon shook himself dry.
And no to you too
, he told his dick, which had never had any sense. It did remember that purr of Dane’s, though. What it promised.

“No matter what you or Jax or Theo may think, not this time. I’m too tired and drunk, and I fully intend to be in worse shape tomorrow. You’ll have to enjoy your freedom to fuck around with some other party.” Gideon turned and stepped toward the doorway.

Dane waited. “That’s a lot of words for a no. Even for a lawyer.”

“Fuck off.”

Dane smiled and stepped aside. “Play it your way.”

Of course Gideon’s brain wouldn’t shut off and just let him pass out. It didn’t matter that he’d been up for twenty-four hours. That he’d drunk a fifth of tequila. That he was too old and too sick of this bullshit with Dane to let it happen again. Despite the fact that a soft pillow top mattress beat the hell out of where they usually found themselves.

And with that thought, Gideon’s dick woke up in earnest. “Fuck it.”

Dane was across the space between their beds in a heartbeat. He didn’t laugh, though, which spared him the shin kick Gideon had been planning to deliver. He kept his back to Dane as his body curled around Gideon’s, familiar as his favorite curse.