Chapter Six
“You know I don’t gossip, but… he’s in debt to his eyeballs, apparently. Owns nothing. It’s all in hock to some Irish crime lord. I mean, I hate gossip, but if it’s true, we need to know.”
FLYNN WOKEup from a sweaty dream where he had to rescue Nate from an endless granite cliff. He had a hard-on and a sharp feeling of relief that his brain had stuck adult Nate on the cliff. It could have been worse. He peeled the sheet off his damp skin and tossed it off the bed to crumple on the floor. The morning sunlight poured in through the windows and bathed the heavy sprawl of his body from the shoulders down. His dick curved up toward his stomach, a taut rise of hard flesh. A slick of precome shone on the head of it like spit from an eager mouth.
He groaned low in his chest as he recalled a dream fragment in vivid, unrealistic color. The granite was sharp against Flynn’s hands as Nate freed his dick between the jockstrap webbing of the rappelling harness and purred his gratitude for the rescue around a mouthful of proud flesh.
Health and Safety would definitely not approve.
Flynn snorted to himself and reached down to shackle one hand around his dick. He squeezed roughly at the base of it and felt the familiar throb in his balls that balanced on the border between pleasure and frustration. It leached out into surrounding muscle, and a heavy ache pulled tightly in his stomach and thighs.
He dragged his hand up his dick in a slow, smooth motion. The fine skin wrinkled under his grip and slid against the shaft underneath. Pleasure ran darkly and slowly along his nerves, like warm honey. He chewed on his lower lip and shifted on the bed to spread his thighs.
A quick glance at the clock confirmed he needed to get to work soon. The garage wouldn’t open itself. He tilted his head back into the pillows, the line of his neck pulled tight, and stared at the ceiling while he pumped his hand along his dick in brisk, businesslike strokes.
All he needed was the mechanical relief—not to complicate his life by thinking too fucking much about things.
Pleasure and pressure built in his balls and tucked them up tightly against his groin. He lifted his knee and braced his foot against the mattress, and his breath hissed between his teeth in quick, hard bursts, in time with his hand on his dick.
Despite his best intentions, he couldn’t stop his brain from wandering. His surefire, get-off-quickly wank imagery—Brad Pitt, half-remembered porn scenes, that bloke he used to work with who had the ridiculously distracting mouth—kept slipping. Instead he imagined manicured hands that always had faded ink notes scribbled on the palms, narrow, elegant features with a sly, foxy grin, and howsofthe imagined Nate’s expensively cut, glossy curls would be against his thighs.
A guttural noise dragged itself out of Flynn’s chest. He chewed his lower lip and let go of his dick long enough to spit in his palm. The wet slick made it easier to stroke faster and to pretend he wasn’t just touching himself.
He flexed his free hand against the sheets and twisted his fingers in them as he pretended it was a handful of gray and brown curls—the heat of a wet, eager mouth instead of his palm, the satin pressure of a clever tongue against the head of his cock instead of the rough pass of his thumb.
He already knew how soft Nate’s mouth was and that his breath tasted of smoke and traces of mint.
Flynn twisted his hand roughly along his dick, from the base to the head, and swiped his thumb over the tender skin again. He could feel the clench of it down his dick, from the point of contact to the heavy sway of his balls. The dream image of Nate, his mouth wrapped lewdly around Flynn’s hard dick and his hands hooked into the black webbing of the harness, flipped face up in his mind again. Then his body took over, and he didn’t need anything to finish, other than the rough, final jerk of his hand.
Come puddled wet and sticky on his fingers and his stomach and matted in the grizzled hair that ran down to his groin.
Flynn let his hand slide away from his dick. It flopped over the flushed and tingling skin of his hip. He wiped his hand on his thigh and folded his arms behind his head. His body felt like a rag that enjoyed being wrung out.
What the hell.
Until a few nights before, Nate Moffatt was just another of the Granshire’s midtier dogsbodies. A hot one—Flynn had been disinterested, not blind—but not that special. Then he charmed his way through the door, and Flynn’s dick jolted to attention when Nate tried to rent him. Apparently snobby and desperate turned Flynn on.
So, fine. He’d agreed to the stupid plan with half an eye on a no-strings-attached fling. He didn’t sign up for erotic dreams and invasive wank fantasies. None of it was going to end well, and he didn’t intend to make it worse by getting attached.
The alarm went off, and he sighed and rolled out of bed. Gravity promptly reminded him that, no matter what he got up to daydreams, he wasn’t in his twenties anymore and he hadn’t taken good care of himself when he was. Things clicked when he stretched—a snap, crackle and pop of worn joints and sore muscles—and there were aches that he knew from experience would still be there when he rolled back into bed that night.
Sooner or later he was going to have to admit that he was getting too old for the rescue services. He’d been saying that for years, though. Flynn snorted at himself and headed into the bathroom. It was tucked into the curved space behind the bed, where glass bricks and a tiled, sunken floor prevented the bedroom from flooding.
He flicked the water on and stood under the hot, high-pressure stream until the warmth soaked through his skin and down to his bones.
BEFORE WORKhe swung by the lifeguard station to deliver a bacon sandwich and a cup of coffee to Jessie. She was sitting on the stone walkway, her bare feet half-buried in the sand as she watched someone canter a horse up the field. Polarized, pink-lensed sunglasses hid her eyes from view, but there was a clammy undertone to her usually tanned skin.
“Hungover?” he asked.
She held her hands out for the bounty and made grabby gestures with her fingers. Flynn handed them over. She put the wrapped sandwich in her lap and cradled the cup in both hands so she could inhale the smell of hot coffee and caramel.
“No.” Jessie took a drink of the coffee and, apparently revived enough, pushed her glasses up on top of her head. She leaned back, braced her weight on her free arm, and squinted up at him. The corners of her mouth tilted in a satisfied smile. “Damn, I love bridesmaids. There’s always one down to fuck and they’re gone in a week.”
Flynn sat down next to her, leaned forward, and braced his elbows on his knees. The horse danced skittishly in the tide, and its hooves kicked up sprays of sand and water. “One of these days, you’re going to wake up married.”
The answer was a wet raspberry. Jessie swigged back another mouthful of coffee and set it aside as she unwrapped her sandwich. A glob of butter-laced brown sauce escaped the crust and landed on her knee. She swiped it off with her thumb and licked it clean.
“Maybe you should be the one worried about that.” She took a bite of her breakfast and smirked at him around the mouthful of food. “You’re the one dating the wedding planner.”
