Put a Ring on It (22 page)

Dane’s hand skimmed Gideon’s hip. “Why’d you bother to leave your skivs on?”

Because Gideon really had been tired enough to pass out. Because he clung to the incredibly stupid belief that this time would be different. That his body wouldn’t tune in to Dane’s like the only radio station in cow country.

And maybe Santa would finally bring Gideon that pony.

“You want to maybe get to it so I can get some sleep? Don’t need a pickup line.”

“Oh, you are so fucking on, De Luca.” Dane nudged Gideon facedown, dropping a condom and lube bottle on the pillow.

Platinum Wet. For a guy who said he couldn’t commit because he’d get bored, Dane was awfully consistent.

“You were damned sure of yourself.” Gideon dragged the pillow down under his hips.

“Nah. Sure of us.” Dane stretched out on top of him.

His skin, his scent, the rhythm of his hips as he ground his dick against Gideon’s ass, it all slid into Gideon’s body like the key to his fucking soul, and he hated Dane for it. Hated himself.

But Gideon’s dick fucking loved it. It had never had any sense of self-preservation.

“Roll over.”

Gideon rubbed his forehead against the mattress. “Just do it.”

“Come on. We never get a chance to fuck in bed. Want to watch your face.”

Knowing it was futile didn’t stop Gideon from trying to hang on to a last shred of control. “Theo’s nuptials getting you all romantic?”

“Yeah.” Dane’s voice rumbled in Gideon’s ear. That laughing purr that would have been ridiculous from anyone else. “That’s exactly it.”

The thing with a twenty-year-long hookup was you got to know how to push each other’s buttons. Fast. Hard. So when there finally was time for something else, that kind of knowledge was dangerously effective. Dane’s mouth, tongue, and hands could do more to Gideon’s C7 vertebra than some guys could manage on his dick.

Not that Dane had a magic dick. He’d been issued the same basic equipment as any guy, albeit put to more practice than average. But dammit, even experience and knowledge of each other shouldn’t have Gideon humping the pillow after that first press of lips on his skin.

By the time Dane hit L5, Gideon was clawing the edge of the mattress.

“Fuck me. C’mon. Just do it already.”

“Roll over.”

“No.” Stupid, stupid pride. When had it ever won with Dane?

“I’ll get you there.” Dane crouched between Gideon’s legs. Skipping his ass—bastard—Dane tugged Gideon’s sac down and then licked and sucked until Gideon started shuddering and couldn’t stop.

“Please.”

“Not good enough.” Dane’s tongue lapped over Gideon’s balls, then under, a flick of torment on his hole.

What did it matter? Why fight it? When he’d already gutted you and left you for dead, what was there left to hide from him?

But Gideon shoved his ass up and kept his face down.

“Yeah. Make me work.” Dane’s words buzzed against Gideon’s skin.

He thought Dane would keep up the teasing, but he didn’t. He spread Gideon wide for an all-out feast on his ass. Tongue, lips, fingers. Teeth. That sharp edge broke him, the pain driving him out of his mind where nothing mattered. Not pride or safety or sanity.

“Please. Please. Please.”

“Please what?”

“Asshole.” Gideon gritted his teeth. “Please fuck me.”

“You know what to do if you want it.”

Dane lowered his head and licked around the finger holding Gideon open. Soft, then stabbing. Gideon tried to push into more sensation, but Dane pinned him with his shoulders.

Gideon snapped. “Fine.”

Dane laughed as he sat up to let Gideon roll over and rest his ass on the pillow. Kept right on laughing as Gideon threw the condom at him. He stopped when Gideon nailed him in the side of the head with the lube.

“Ow.”

Gideon shrugged. “Let’s go.”

Dane slicked his dick, then the condom over it, and finally Gideon’s ass, working two fingers into him, touching everywhere except where Gideon needed.

And the grin on Dane’s face said he knew it.

“I hate you,” Gideon choked out, even as he lifted his legs to open himself.

“I know.” Dane worked himself in as fast as Gideon’s body would let him. Shoved in deeper.

Gideon wondered sometimes if Dane really did. If he knew how twisted and deep those feelings were. That hate was as much a part of the package as everything else.

Dane pushed Gideon’s thighs up to his chest and drove all the way in, far enough to feed the hole in Gideon’s chest that sometimes felt big enough to suck in the world.

His eyes had drifted shut, but he forced them open, forced himself to see what was on Dane’s face. Pleasure. Yeah, but something else too. A hunger, and something like pain tightening his jaw, hollowing his cheeks.

Dane opened his eyes and stared down, and it was too much. Gideon shut his eyes again so there was nothing but them fucking. Slamming together. Hard and rough. Bruises and scratches. His hand got a grip on Dane’s curls, and he didn’t want to kiss him, didn’t want to move his head, he just wanted to twist and pull.

Gideon lost control of his reactions long before he came, yielding to the mindlessness of being fucked. The pain and the pleasure of it. The complete surrender. And just for an instant, he understood why he let this happen. Why it could only happen with Dane. Because he was the only person he trusted with the all the rage and fear he carried inside. They’d already been so ugly together, what was a little more?

And then he forgot it again in the sweat and grind and that sweet hot burst that washed out everything.

When his brain came back online and his heart rate slowed under one fifty, he found Dane curled around him, half-asleep, hand stroking lazily through the fuzz over Gideon’s breastbone. Dane’s soft wet dick, still wrapped, rested against Gideon’s thigh.

Dane lifted his head enough to show his teeth in a smile. “Did you pass out?”

“No.” He sort of knew what had happened while/after he came. Dane groaning and using a grip on Gideon’s shoulders to leverage him harder onto Dane’s cock. Some
oh shits
and
fucks
mingled in with the panting and moaning. Nothing too loud. At least Gideon’s throat didn’t hurt from a shout.

“Uh-huh.” Dane settled in against Gideon’s chest again.

No. No fucking way was this happening. He could let Dane fuck him, make him beg, make him feel, but this—this he couldn’t, wouldn’t survive.

He slid out from under Dane and headed for the bathroom. After he’d scrubbed himself half raw in the shower, he threw on a T-shirt and clean boxers and grabbed the extra key to Jax’s room.

“Gideon?”

Under the sleepy question, there was a something sharper. If Gideon didn’t know better, he’d think it was concern. “I’m going in with Jax. Tomorrow night too, so if we get Theo pried away from Kieran he’ll be with you.”

“Maybe I’ll finally get him to cave his last night as a bachelor.”

“I don’t think you will.”

“Want to bet on it?” At last, a crack of frustration in Dane’s insouciance.

Gideon wanted to suck it up with a straw.

“No.” He opened the door. “And we aren’t doing this again.”

He let the door swing shut quietly behind him.

THEO TURNED
his cup over in the saucer, chuckling as Kieran’s brows rose dramatically.

“You’re skipping coffee? We had like four hours sleep. And you’ve been talking about the Kona beans like you’re going to write your next musical about them.”

“Don’t need it.” Theo leaned on the little table looking out over the ocean. “What do you say tomorrow, we order breakfast in. And the next day too.”

When they’d be married. They’d made it. After last night, everything was going to be perfect. Watching Kieran lick orange juice off his lips was enough to reassure Theo that things below the waist were returning to normal function. He was going to take that excellent medical advice and let it happen. Again and again.

“Who are you and what have you done with Theo? No coffee? Hiding in the room?”

“Well, I suppose we could go back to the beach.”

Ears reddening, Kieran shook his head, but Theo saw the half smile before Kieran’s head dipped.

Theo’s expression froze as he stared at the group of people in the restaurant doorway. The chill traveled from his face to his hands, spread killing frost to the pulse of warmth in his dick, and ended in a solid block of ice in his feet.

He couldn’t run, even if his feet weren’t stuck. Because they’d seen him.

“
Gamoto
.” The sight dragged the Greek curse from the buried part of his brain.

“Theo?” Kieran’s voice was full of concern, and Theo would have loved to see if the emotion was mirrored on his face, but Theo’s eye muscles were paralyzed like everything else.

It couldn’t have been worse if every ex in Theo’s life had shown up to make it clear what a worthless, selfish, unlovable pile of crap he was.

They moved in a pack, letting Mama come first.

His cousin, Bastien, smirking behind Aunt Tessa. His sister, Aggie, sticking close to help—God, Uncle Spiro made it?—navigate through the tables with his cane. Luke, brat baby brother, faking adulthood enough to not be playing some video game for five minutes.

Theo would have sworn it was impossible, but somehow he met the onslaught on his feet. Kisses and hugs before questions, though the look he shot Aggie was met with a headshake.
I didn’t tell them.

“Dorie, you look tired.” His mother kissed him again, then shook him. “Is that why the invitation to your wedding got lost in the mail?”

“I didn’t think—you said—”

Fine, you’re a fairy. Big surprise. Do we have to talk about it?

“It’s your wedding,” Mama said firmly. “And your father insisted.”

His father’s grip on his arm was full of insistence. Theo had a feeling he was about to get another lecture in respecting his mother, when his father’s sister wrestled him away.

“Aunt Tessa, thank you for coming all this way.”

“Uninvited,” she added with a wink, then pulled him down to mutter in his ear. “The one you’re marrying. Is he a boy-boy or one of those boys who thinks he’s a girl? I’m not judging. I just need to know so I don’t laugh if some big hairy man is in a white dress.”

“No, he’s a boy-boy.” He’d forgotten Kieran was right there. Had they trampled him?

Kieran had stood and edged away from their breakfast table. Out of politeness or a desire to bolt?

Theo straightened his spine and held out a hand toward him. “Kieran, this is my father, Christos Medina, and my mother, Helena Medina.”

An ocean of silence filled the space after that sentence.

Then his mother stepped forward, tapping her chin. “Kieran.” His mother turned the name into three syllables. “Oh, is your family from Hawaii?”

“No, Mrs. Medina. They’re from Brooklyn.”

Before his mother could compliment Kieran on his grasp of English, Theo said, “Kieran’s adopted, Ma.”

“Oh. The Kallases’ girl, Anna, she couldn’t have a baby. They got a little Chinese girl. Smart as a whip, that one.”

“They got me in Korea, Mrs. Medina.”

“Good for you, then.” His mother examined Kieran steadily. “You have a job?”

“Yes, ma’am.”

“He works with computers,” Theo said.

“Maybe you could tell Theo’s brother Luke how to get one.”

“A computer?” Kieran asked.

“A job.” Mama nodded and turned to yank Luke forward.

“This is Lukas. My youngest.”

Luke shoved his phone into his pocket. “Hey.”

“And Theo’s sister, Agnes.”

“Aggie please, Kieran. It’s nice to finally meet you.”

Thank God for Aggie. She stepped forward and hugged Kieran, and that was the end of all the awkward standing around. Mama and Aunt Tessa took over the table, commandeering a chair for Uncle Spiro.

Theo drew in his first deep breath in what felt like an hour. Which cut off when his father clapped him on the back.

“Aggie told us things were all last-minute because of something to do with your work, but there’s a phone right there in your pocket.”

“I’m sorry. But you and Mama made it clear the last time I was home you didn’t want to hear about that part of my life.”

“A lot can change in eight years, Doro.” His father’s hand went behind Theo’s neck, and he ducked his head, expecting a cuff, but his father pulled Theo forward and kissed his forehead. “A lot.”

When his father released him, Kieran was right at his side, eyes tight with focused attention.

“Kieran.” Theo’s father shook his hand. “Is your family here?”

“Yes, sir. Most of them. My brother was delayed due to some weather, but he’s hoping to get out of DC today.”

“Your brother Stephan would have come, but Maria is having the baby soon.”

“Right. Dad, you said Aggie told you why the wedding seems rushed, but who told you I was getting married?”

“Your businessman, Marty? Is that his name? He said it was part of some program for one of your plays. That we had seven plane tickets and four rooms, no charge. We would have paid to come, of course. You only get married once.”

In his father’s world, Theo knew that was still true. Other people might marry and divorce and remarry. But not in the Medina family.

Theo wasn’t going to break that tradition.

“But it was nice of him to make the arrangements. We rode here from the airport with him in the van.”

“Martin’s here?”

“He left us in the lobby to go find someone, but Bastien spotted you and Kieran at the table. Here he comes.”

“Mr. Medina, I thought you were going to wait for me.” Martin’s nasal bray would have let Theo pinpoint him in a full blackout. “You were supposed to be a surprise for Theo.”

When Theo turned, he saw exactly why. Martin in his eyesore of a Hawaiian shirt was impossible to miss, but the real kick was the cameraman in Steadicam vest and the TV producer. The camera light hit Theo’s face for an instant, and then Kieran darted in front of him.

A familiar sensation settled over Theo, familiar but completely out of place. His brain switched into the panoramic perception he got when he was observing a set, able to take in all the details objectively.