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It made Marcus remember what Julie had said, when she’d found out Thomas was

gone for good. She’d sat next to Marcus on the edge of her stage that was set up for the evening’s presentation by some as yet unknown playwright.

Marcus didn’t know why he expected something normal, the usual empty

platitudes. He’d even steeled himself for them, but then she looked steadily at him a moment and said, “You fucking dumbass. Why aren’t you going after him, hauling his butt back here? He’s the one for you, Marcus. He was
it
. You’ve got to get him back, okay? Because you’re only going to be half of you without him.”

* * * * *

When they got to the nightclub in Connecticut, Julie was waiting. She went right for Thomas and pulled him down to her for a hug while Marcus went to park the car. “Hi, Thomas,” she said softly, holding him. “It’s so good to see you.”

It twisted Thomas’ heart in his chest, the unqualified acceptance. She pressed her face into his neck. “I’ve missed you. He’s missed you, dammit. So much. Where did you go? Have you told him you missed him?”

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“Yeah.”
In a way.

As if she heard his thought, she held him tighter. “Have you told him
you
missed him? With your mouth? Not just your penis?”

Thomas grinned despite the squeezing pain the words caused. “Aren’t you ever

going to learn tact?”

“Tried that once when I was eight. It didn’t work for me.”

Marcus was coming across the parking lot. Thomas saw a man completely in

control, the Maserati in the background, his mouth firm and sensual, hair loose on his shoulders, body moving with a grace that fairly screamed how good he was at sex.

Julie sighed. “You know, I see him every day, and I still can’t keep from drooling.

He could just walk up and down the street and people would throw money at him all day long just to look at him. Do you think you’d doubt his love if he looked like me?”

“What?” Thomas pulled his attention away to give her a startled look.

“When you love someone, you tell them. Unless you’re afraid they don’t feel the same way. You and Marcus were together, how long, and neither of you ever said it?”

“He did. Recently.” Thomas stopped, pressed his lips together.

“So the problem is you.” Julie’s eyes twinkled, but her mouth remained serious.

“What I’m saying is, what if he looked like me, an ordinary, average-looking person who has bills and a toilet that needs fixing? Who, like most of us, starts each morning thinking, ‘can I get out of bed and do all this without totally fucking up?’

“Who fights with vanity pounds, looks at the gray sneaking into her hair and

thinks, ‘God, I’m only thirty-four.’” She nodded toward Marcus. “He may look like someone who stepped out of the pages of some romance novel, but he’s real, Thomas.

So real that when you put the fantasy and the reality together, you have this fascinating, complex person with a lot of layers, which makes him good at burying the things you don’t want to see.”

“You’ve thought a lot about this.” It made him uncomfortable, to hear an echo of Walter’s observation in her own.

“The two of you matter. A lot of us don’t get the chance at what you have.”

Thomas looked away. “Your toilet needs fixing?”

Making a face at him, she pinched his arm hard enough to make him wince and

shoot her a narrow glance. “Yeah, Mr. Avoid-the-Issue. That one crossing the parking lot is useless when it comes to plumbing. But I let him tinker with it awhile just to watch him bend over and wear a T-shirt.” She pushed away from him as Marcus made it to the curb.

“I can’t believe you wasted one of your hugs on this riffraff. Are you trying to convince him to feel sorry for you and come fix your toilet?”

“Well, since your firm ass isn’t getting him to stay, I figured maybe the offer of being up to his elbows in sewage would.”

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Thomas noticed she softened the words by putting her arms around Marcus and

giving him an equally generous hug. It tugged at his heart painfully again, the reminder of the life he’d left when he left Marcus. He’d spent over a year in North Carolina convincing himself he’d never fit in New York, that there’d been a lot of moments he’d been homesick. Yet with one hug, Julie had reminded him he’d also found a place there.

Pushing those thoughts away, Thomas followed Julie’s gesture toward a woman

approaching from a separate part of the parking lot. She wore a simple black cocktail dress, more suited for a country club than the nightclub scene, and her brown hair was pulled back from a too-thin face. She hesitated as she was passed by two fairly demonstrative couples. The men were joking and making passes at each other. At her nervous glance, one of them called out, “You lost your way to your bridge club, sweetie?”

“Ellen.” Julie waved her over and linked their arms. “Ellen, Marcus and Thomas.

M&T, Ellen. Let’s go dance our asses off. And since I’ve got a lot of ass,” she wiggled it for emphasis, “that’s going to be a lot of dancing.”

“Julie, are you sure? That man who just passed me, he wasn’t being very nice…”

“He was just being catty,” Marcus assured her. “If he bothers you again, Thomas will bitch-slap him and send him home crying.”

Ellen managed a small smile. Julie hugged her shoulders, giving both men a

significant glance. “C’mon, sweetie. Let’s go have some fun.”

* * * * *

The club was noisy and festive. It didn’t have the glitzy polish of a New York City club, but the men there were in high spirits, intending to dance, drink, have a good time and find some action. Julie led the way through the crowd, hauling Ellen by the hand.

Anticipating the open-mouthed stares that usually attended Marcus’ entrance into such a place, Thomas nevertheless didn’t realize he’d tensed up until he felt a hand settle around his waist, a firm palm over the curve of one buttock. Marcus’ other hand latched into Thomas’ shirtfront to haul him in for a firm, open-mouthed kiss that was hot, possessive. His fingers caressed Thomas’ nipple, his thigh pressing firmly against his groin.

“Mine,” he murmured in his ear. “Got it?”

As he started to ease back, giving Thomas an even look, the fist of tension was replaced by something just as fierce, but a lot more welcome. Before he could think too much about it, Thomas clamped his hands on Marcus’ hips and brought him back

against his body to return the favor, plundering Marcus’ lips, lashing him with his tongue.

“Same goes,” he muttered against Marcus’ mouth, even as he slid his hand between them, boldly cupping his lover’s stiffening erection in the discreet press of their thighs, 140

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covered by the crush of people around them and the darkness of the club, the flashing lights.

When he drew back, Marcus’ eyes were blazing green. “Christ,” Marcus swore

softly as Thomas’ fingers slid away. “You’re going to pay for that.”

“I hope so, Master.” Thomas gave him a quick grin, slipping away as Julie bounced back between them. She seized Marcus’ hand as the DJ ripped open a fast tune.

“My God, a trip back to the eighties. Paula Abdul. I was so afraid it would be that hip-hop mess.”

“You can hip-hop. I’ve seen you.” Marcus forced himself to tear his eyes away from Thomas’ broad shoulders flanking Ellen as he guided her toward the dance floor.

“Yeah, but I’ve never been able to do it with a straight face.” Julie shouted in his ear to be heard as they got closer to the speakers blasting the music. “Not since I realized hip-hop in fast forward can look like someone who needs to go to the bathroom

hopping up and down, grabbing their crotch.”

Laughing, Marcus grabbed her by the waist and swung her onto the floor. “We’ll

see if we can’t get him to do some Ricky Martin after this. Something sultry.”

“Oh God.” She rolled her eyes. “If you go all Antonio Banderas on me, I will wet my panties.”

Thomas found Ellen a good dancer. The trick was getting her to relax, so he kept it easy, stayed attentive, worked through a few steps with her. It was hard not to get distracted watching Marcus laugh, twirl Julie out and back into him again. He held her up against his body in a couple
Dirty Dancing
moves to tease and flirt, but of course Thomas didn’t do the same to Ellen. Not only was she too uptight for that yet, his body’s reaction to watching Marcus would make it downright embarrassing.

That kiss was still making his lips tingle. Paula Abdul was denying that it was her man’s wealth or looks that got her going, that it was just something indefinable about the way he loved her. Though he’d never be such a geek as to own up to the idea that an eighties dance song was speaking straight to his soul, it didn’t change the fact that Thomas felt as if she was delivering the gospel down from the mountain, packaged in a sultry rocking beat.

Marcus
was
beautiful, he
was
rich. Hell, he was the prince of anyone’s fairy tale. But it was deeper than that. Julie had caught it as well.
Good at burying the things he doesn’t
want you to see…

Somewhere behind the impossible green of Marcus’ eyes, the truth lay. It was closer to the surface in these three days than it had been during their almost two years together. Possessiveness. Violence. Flashes of sorrow and an almost desperate hunger.

I love you.

Did he? Was that what Thomas’ own burning ache was, like his soul was being

scalded every time he thought of being without Marcus? He’d stopped painting at home, like an addict going cold turkey, because it was that feeling that made him paint 141

Joey W. Hill

himself into a near fatal frenzy. As if by losing himself in his art, Thomas could be pulled into the canvas and become it, never again to emerge into the desolation of a life that couldn’t include Marcus.

Emerging into that reality after an intense art session was as stark and cold as being born, leaving his soul naked, shivering, defenseless. So sensitive to light and sound, his mother’s innocuous call to come to dinner made him want to pummel something

organic with his fists until it was a mass of blood and bone.

Julie called out to Ellen, got her to laugh at their antics. Thomas pulled her up close and spoke into her ear so she could hear him over the noise. “Let’s show them how it’s done. All you have to do is trust me.” He winked at her, making her flush, and spun her into a fast turn, a modified ballroom step that he turned into a dip and then pulled her up before she could get worried and stiffen up.

Dancing was the first thing he’d ever done that shocked the hell out of Marcus, who assumed that no Southern boy with his background would dare to be a good dancer.

But his mother and sister loved to dance, and his father wouldn’t. His mother had taught him all her favorites before he was ten, and he and Rory would take turns impressing her with moves they incorporated into it, acrobatic feats, using Celeste as their test victim.

Rory gave it up when he joined sports and the other boys called him a fag, the ones Thomas pointed out sat on the sidelines at school dances while he and Rory got to turn, twist and gyrate with any girl they wanted to ask.

Back then, he’d covered any doubts about his behavior with comments like that.

His intimidating physique that could lay out anyone who got into his face about it didn’t hurt, either. However, the basic plain fact was he loved to dance. Dancing with or near Marcus…it didn’t get better than that. Marcus’ grace at dancing was

unpracticed, powerful and unselfconscious.

But Thomas had a few moves of his own. He gave Marcus a challenging wink now

and went straight into a full pull-through, making Ellen shriek as he took them into the bebop era to the cranked up Stray Cats tune. Bless the eighties for its unapologetic ebullience, tinged with the naïvety of a teenage virgin trying to appear worldly. By the nineties all that was over, of course.

“Want to try something even better?” he shouted at Ellen. She nodded, smiling,

flushed with the exertion. He realized now she was a very pretty forty-something. She had a few appealing lines, more gray in her long brunette hair than he would have expected. But she had lively green eyes that, when sparkling with nervous laughter, made the shadows and sadness markedly evident in her face less so.

He transitioned into a two-step with the switch to a song from the
Urban Cowboy
soundtrack, catching his hand gently on the back of her neck as he turned them, holding her hand at his waist and adding some fancy heel-toeing that had Julie hooting and other dancers calling out encouragement.

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“Oh, it’s on now,” Marcus called back. When the next song started, a sultry Latin number, he launched into the tango.

Thomas couldn’t hold a candle to him on Latin moves, and Marcus knew it well

enough that it could be called cheating. But watching Marcus dance Latin, who the hell could possibly care? Marcus was just so easily sensual…

When he pulled off those decidedly macho sequences, his expression going all

serious and stern, moving around Julie, to all appearances holding her bound to his will, Thomas couldn’t even think about dancing. Marcus finished with a quick throw that brought her up against him and slid her down to a resting place on his thigh, his hand low on the small of her back.

Ellen was chuckling. She rose onto her toes and spoke into his ear breathlessly. “I think we’re going to have to surrender on that one.”

She didn’t know the half of it. Trying to take his mind off the desire to get Marcus alone somewhere and rape him, Thomas gave her a mischievous grin. “How about a

nice, slow shag then?”

A giggle escaped her at the double entendre. She put her hand to her mouth,

embarrassed, but he caught her fingers and whirled her into another dance.

* * * * *

A half hour later, Julie collapsed in a booth and accepted the rum and Coke Marcus brought her. He sat down next to her, knee bumping hers companionably. “Wow,” she said. “I haven’t danced like that in forever. And look at them—still going. Oh Lord, the
Macarena
. If they burst into
YMCA
, I’ll have to go back out there.”