Room at the Top (26 page)

He ran his hands through their hair, tangled and damp, and down to their shoulders, where the flogger had left their skin hot. Lying still was impossible, but he tried to keep from pushing up, though he knew if he did, a mouth would welcome him.

He glanced down at them and groaned as he saw their busy tongues flickering over him like hummingbirds, darting, dancing touches that brought their mouths together in a kiss now and then. “You two… Have you any idea of what you look like right now?”

He didn’t expect an answer, and he didn’t get one. Austin’s hand curved, cupping Liam’s balls, rolling them deftly before his tongue lapped at them, sending a shiver of lust through Liam. Jay enclosed the head of Liam’s cock in his mouth, his lips closing tightly.

Liam’s heart was pounding, his body tense as he began to surrender—to them, to his climax, to the whole situation. He tightened his fingers in their hair and tugged, bringing Jay’s head back and Austin’s up, so they faced each other with his cock between them, a few inches away from their mouths.

“You want me? Take what you can get.”

He felt his balls draw up and the final, almost painful hardening of his cock a moment before it jerked, spunk jetting out to fall like rain on his stomach. His grip slackened, and Austin and Jay leaned in, Jay’s hand circling the base of his cock, holding it up, as Austin put his mouth close to the head. Spurts of spunk struck his lips and dripped down over his chin, making him look debauched, erotic. Jay leaned in and licked eagerly at the trail of creamy fluid and along Austin’s wet lips, pushing his tongue inside Austin’s mouth as if he couldn’t get enough of the taste.

Austin broke away, turning his head to lap at Liam’s stomach, avid, wanton, shameless in his hunger, and Liam bit down on his lip, then gave in and moaned.

“Enough,” he said a moment later, still riding his high but trying to regain some control over the situation. “Thank you. That was…” He faltered, lost for words that wouldn’t leave him open. They rescued him.

“Thank you, Sir,” Austin whispered, and Jay echoed it, the two of them smiling up at him, utterly relaxed and content.

He smiled back and allowed himself to stroke their hair one more time.

Chapter Fifteen

Jay was asleep; he knew he was. Asleep with Austin beside him in their bed, the stifling heat of the last few days swept away by a thunderstorm that had rolled through the night before. He’d stood at the window with Austin, watching the lightning flash through the ink-dark sky and feeling the thunder shake the world.

And after the storm had passed, leaving a cool rain pattering down, they’d gone to bed, not gone outside.

So why was his face wet, drops splashing down onto it…?

Jay sat up in a room filled with the first hint of dawn. His face and hair were wet. Not damp with sweat or drool, but wet. He glanced up automatically, but it wasn’t light enough for the ceiling to be more than a vague shape above him. A droplet fell from it, striking his eye.

“What the hell? Austin! Wake
up
.”

Austin made a small, grumbling sound and buried his head in the pillow. Jay got out of bed, his brain shocked awake, his body still sluggish. He tripped on the sheet and stumbled, knocking his elbow against the night table. “Fuck!”

“Jay?” Austin sounded more awake now, if irritable. “What’s wrong?”

“The bed is
wet
.” Cradling his arm as the pins and needles hit, Jay jerked his head. “It’s coming from the ceiling.”

“Huh? Oh. A leak? The roof, maybe the storm…” Austin yawned and stretched out his hand, encountering the wet patch. He explored it with his hand, then opened his eyes. “Fuck. It’s
wet
.” He sat up and swung his legs over the side of the bed. “God, what time is it?”

“Don’t know, doesn’t matter.” Jay headed for the door stark naked and now fully awake. Any water coming through their ceiling would’ve passed through the attic on the way. His diorama was up there. Panic spurred him on even as dread of what he might find held him back.

The competition was a week away. If anything had happened to it—

He opened the door and stepped out onto a carpet that squished, soggy with water. “Oh my God. It’s not rainwater. There’s too much of it.” He made his way to the stairs leading up into the attic and found them awash, a small stream of water flowing down them. It was surreal. Water didn’t run down stairs; people did. The stream was heading for the kitchen area through some unevenness in the floor; only some of the water had seeped the other way to their bedroom.

He couldn’t grasp the enormity of it all, but as he climbed the ladderlike stairs and glanced around, he realized that he didn’t have much choice.

The attic was flooded. The water tank in one corner—right next to his worktable—had burst, water spraying out of the crack in a determined way. The table was drenched, water dripping off it, and the floor was covered in puddles, though gravity and ill-fitting floorboards were doing a good job at draining the water. Down to their floor, then to Nicole’s, doing damage as it went.

Right then, though, Jay couldn’t have cared less about soaked carpets or furniture. He needed to see what had happened to his project.

It became clear immediately that the entire diorama was trashed, destroyed, ruined. But Jay didn’t want to believe it and kept touching different parts of it in the hopes he’d find that it wasn’t as badly damaged as he thought. Maybe the left side of the base… No, it was sopping, and his questing fingers did even more damage because the whole thing had gone soft like a cracker that had fallen into the sink. At first glance it seemed fine, looked whole, but as soon as you touched it, it just collapsed.

Okay, so no touching the base. He turned his attention to the rest of the landscape, to the tiny buildings painstakingly crafted from a variety of materials including balsa wood and resin pieces he’d modified, now half washed away. They hadn’t been able to stay in place with the onslaught of the flood, and while a couple of them might be salvageable, it might be as long as a week until he’d know for sure.

“Jay?” Austin came up and joined him, bare feet splashing through the water on the floor. “Oh shit. Okay, hang on, let me see if I can get the water to stop—”

“It doesn’t matter,” Jay said dully, numb in the face of damage he couldn’t possibly repair in the time before the competition. “It’s ruined.”

“We can fix it. I’ll help.” Austin was over on the floor, kneeling next to the place water was pouring out of, mindless of the fact that he was getting soaked. “Damn it, this thing is ancient. Why didn’t I ever look at it before? Bring me that chair. At least we can redirect it. Jay? Never mind, I’ll do it.”

Jay stood there as Austin used the back of the old, ratty sofa chair as a shield, then disappeared back downstairs. He could hear Austin moving around, dragging things, talking on the phone.

“Okay, he wasn’t too happy about being woken up, but Mr. Dalhover is sending some emergency plumber guy over. What can I do now?”

Jay looked at him in despair. Austin was being helpful, sympathetic without gushing, clearly determined to rise to the occasion.

And it didn’t matter, any of it.

“There’s
nothing
you can do.
Nothing
.” Anger with no focus welled up, as destructive as the flood itself. With an inarticulate sound, he swept his hand through his diorama, feeling it cave and crumple. A sharp edge that’d once been part of a bridge, arching up in a stunning, truncated sweep, cut his forearm, but as he watched the work of weeks fly off the table to land with a soft, anticlimactic thud on the wet floor, he really didn’t care.

“Jay!” Austin had tried to catch the diorama as it fell but failed. He raised horrified eyes to Jay’s face. “We could’ve dried it out, maybe salvaged some of it—”

Jay shook his head as Austin spoke, a slow rejection that eventually dried Austin’s words up at the source. “You don’t have a clue. I know you’re trying to be nice, but just…don’t.”

Blood was welling up on his arm from the ragged cut. He ran his finger through it, smearing it across his skin. The cut hurt, but it was a distant pain. The agony of loss filled his vision, leaving no room for any other pain to register. He glanced down. Naked. That was why he was shivering in the warm attic.

“I’m going to get dressed. We need to shut off the water. I think it’s in the basement? And tell the neighbors, wake them up…” His voice trailed off. That sounded like too much work, all of it. What he really wanted to do was crawl back into bed or just walk out the door and leave the mess behind.

“Shit, I didn’t even think of the main water shutoff. I don’t know where it is. I’ll have to go see. You go let Nicole know what’s going on.” Austin went away again, leaving Jay alone in his misery, which was exactly where he deserved to be.

If he’d been asked to imagine the shittiest possible day, he probably wouldn’t have been able to come close to this. Hours went by and felt like days as they dealt with the plumber and the landlord, and with calling in to work. Jay told them he’d try to make it in for the afternoon but that he couldn’t make any promises.

“They don’t want us using the washer and dryer in case the electrical is compromised,” Austin said when Jay wandered into the bedroom. Austin was wadding damp bedding into a trash bag obviously intended to serve as a makeshift laundry hamper.

“Yeah. Mr. Dalhover said we can stay at a hotel and he’ll reimburse us.” Normally Jay would have been stressed at the thought of leaving all his stuff—he was trying not to think about the books that were probably ruined, because that would make him
really
crazy—but right then it was hard to care about that.

“I texted Liam, just so he’d know what we’re dealing with in case Friday’s impossible.” Austin sounded disappointed but resigned. Jay hated when Austin was resigned.

“I’m sorry.” It was inadequate, but it was all he had right then. He wanted to huddle up to Austin, breathe in his familiar scent, and just hold on, but that seemed as selfish as the rest of his behavior.

“For what?” Austin paused, a sheet half-in, half-out of the trash bag, a puzzled look on his face. “Jay?”

“I let you deal with everything. I went to pieces. I was just… Fuck, I was
useless
.” Jay gestured at the chaos. “This is your stuff too, and I’ve been acting like I’m the only one who’s lost anything. I suck, and you’re too nice to even come up to me and tell me to snap out of it.”

Austin dropped the bag and came over to him. Deep down, part of Jay had known he would, and yeah, that was selfish too, interrupting Austin and shamelessly begging for comfort. But it was that or add to the humidity by crying. Jay didn’t think he’d be able to stop if he started.

“You are not useless,” Austin said, his hands cupping Jay’s face so Jay couldn’t look away. “You lost it at first, yeah, but there’s no one on the fucking planet who’d blame you for that, and you were helping Nicole put out buckets ten minutes later.” He brushed his lips against Jay’s, the light kiss thawing the icy shell around Jay. He hadn’t been able to get warm all day, and he kept shivering, his teeth chattering. “You’re dealing with this better than I would, but”—he grimaced, his concern evident—“don’t take this the wrong way, but I’d understand it more if you
did
freak out. You’re drifting around like a ghost. Talk to me. Vent. Scream. I’m here.”

“I know. I know you are, and that makes it worse, because—” Jay shrugged and wrapped his arms around Austin.

“Okay,” Austin said slowly. “I’m pretty sure you didn’t mean that the way it sounded.”

Jay shook his head. “I feel bad. You’re so good to me, and I can’t even appreciate it, I’m so…”

“You’re in shock, I think,” Austin said. “Come on, let’s go in the other room and sit down somewhere dry for a few minutes, figure out our plan of attack.”

“
Your
plan of attack, more like.” Jay let himself be led into the living room, where the couch was more or less dry.

“No, ours. We’re in this together.”

“I don’t get why I can’t function when stuff like this happens,” Jay complained.

Austin sat back on the couch and tugged Jay to lean against him. “You can function. You just need a little time to adjust. That’s normal.”

“But you’re fine. You, you know,
do
stuff. I’m standing around like an idiot.”

“Hey, I had some clothes get wet. You had something you’ve put hundreds of hours into get wrecked. You’re entitled.”

“I can’t even think about it,” he confessed. Austin had offered to clean up the mess Jay’s impulsive act had made, but Jay had shaken his head and done it himself, burying the debris in two bags and leaving them downstairs with the rest of the trash. “It’s like a spider on the wall next to me, and if I look at it, it’s gonna know I can see it and it’ll jump onto me.” The house was old and full of spiders. Jay didn’t mind them—much—but the thought of one on him, crawling over him or skittering fast across the floor, beady eyes on his ankles, gave him the shudders.

“What kind of spider?” Austin held up his finger and thumb an inch apart. “This big? Because I can put them in a cup and help them move house.”

“Big. Huge. Like Shelob.” He’d nagged and cajoled Austin into reading a few of Tolkien’s books, so Austin would know just what he meant.

“Yeah. I can see how it’d seem that way.” Austin didn’t say anything for a while, his fingers stroking Jay’s head. It felt nice and then it just felt like giving in and Jay straightened, forcing himself to sound brisk and efficient.

“So Nicole and Jon have gone to her mom’s, and the guys with the dehumidifiers and fans are going to be here soon. What about us? Where do you want to go?”

“We could go to my mom’s,” Austin said, but there was enough reluctance in his voice that it didn’t sound like an option but a last resort.

Jay couldn’t disagree with that. He liked Austin’s family and was sure a night or two under the same roof with them would be fine, but April and Austin clashed and their interactions tended to be unfun to witness. “I feel bad descending on them,” he said diplomatically. “A hotel would probably be better for everyone, you know?”