Just about instantly I went from enjoying a secret interlude in a snug cabin on a winter’s night to standing on the edge of someone else’s life. Alex might not have minded using me as his rebound guy, and I certainly hadn’t minded being used, but now he was sad, and that put a huge damper on my having any fun.
But that was old me. New me couldn’t lounge idly by and watch Alex be sad, as if it didn’t have anything to do with me. So I sat up, and pulled the sheet over his shoulders, and grabbed a hunk of blanket and wrapped it around him, as well.
In that low glow, he blinked at me as if surprised. Maybe he was surprised to find me awake and aware, or maybe he’d even forgotten my existence. All I knew was that he lifted the blanket and used his arm to drape both his arm and the blanket around my shoulders. I shivered as I grew a tad warmer, and sighed as I enjoyed that small, small moment of being that close to another human being.
“You okay?” I asked, though I knew his problems as well as if he’d said them out loud.
“Christmas Eve is tomorrow,” he said.
“They might have the road open,” I said, not knowing whether this was true. “And Steamboat’s only an hour from here.”
“That’s right,” he said, ducking his head, like he was trying to find his toes in the half dark. “Which makes it worse somehow. Hell, I could walk there.”
“Not in those shoes, you can’t,” I said, not hiding that I was laughing at him. “And you’d never fit in my boots.” I was a size ten and a half at best, and he was a twelve.
“Doc Martens, right?” he asked.
“Yeah,” I said, half yawning as I nuzzled his warm shoulder. “They’re new. My other ones bit the dust and so Royce and Jonah ordered a pair all the way from Wollaston. And it wasn’t even my birthday.”
“And they are?—?”
He left the question dangling, and I really didn’t want to answer and tell them who they were. That would open a whole can of worms, and while I didn’t mind being totally naked in front of a guy, I really didn’t know how to explain how I hatedbeing a third wheel, but found it nice, sometimes, to be included in Jonah and Royce’s world.
“Wollaston is where they’re made,” I said, ignoring his real question. “Somewhere outside of Northampton. In the original factory or whatever.”
I shrugged and whether it was to dislodge the question or his arm, I really couldn’t say. But I chickened out and turned away when he reached for my face and finally had to lunge out of the bed.
A low growl came from my throat, like I was a wolf in the darkness, but he wasn’t afraid, because he got up, the bedsheet around his shoulders like a cape, and followed me into the living room.
Sad, sad me, with nobody to call my own at Christmas.
“Are you going to sit on the couch buck naked like that?” he asked.
“The cum has dried,” I said, flecking a bit of it from my bare thigh, because, yeah, that’s what I’d been planning to do. Sit there with my legs sprawled like some cave man drawing the last bit of light and warmth from the fire.
“Let’s take a shower and go back to bed.”
I turned to look at him. He was all aglow from the light from the fire, and maybe a bit of the light from the clock on the microwave was dancing blue lights in his hair, but he looked pretty strange. Ethereal, Royce would have said.
“It’s obvious,” he said. “I’m not oblivious. You’re all alone up here.”
“You don’t know that,” I said. I pushed my hair back from my face, suddenly hot. Not because I was standing naked with my back to the still glowing fire, but because he was looking at him. Up and down, trying to figure me out.
“Then tell me who they are, these men who got you boots all the way from England.”
If I was a caveman, he was a saber-toothed tiger on theprowl. Inch by inch, coming closer so carefully, it was like he meant to attack and then devour.
“I’m not sitting on the couch,” I said, holding my hands up as if ten fingers and two palms face out could stop him.
They didn’t. He came up to me and wrapped me in his arms, the bedsheet curling around my shoulders and ankles like bits of friendly cotton ribbon. Then he nuzzled my nose and kissed my cheek and sighed, his smile low and soft.
“Let’s take a shower and go back to bed,” he said, almost whispering.
I love to be loved. I love to be nuzzled and kissed and treated like I’m made of bone china. That’s my big secret.
On the streets, back in Five Points, in Denver, I kicked ass and took down names. I was a whirlwind of trouble and high energy. I wasn’t afraid of anything or anyone. But this, the way he was treating me, was my weakness. It was like he’d figured it out without me saying a single word.
“C’mon,” he said, gently with another kiss, this time very softly on my mouth. “Please?”
