Flynn snorted and wiped his hand over his face. “Ask around. I think you’ll find I disappointed plenty of the island girls up there when I was a teenager.”
For a second Nate wondered how he hadn’t heard about that. Then he remembered that when Flynn had been pretending to be into girls, he’d been pretending that his bike was KITT. It was an odd moment. Nate had no idea how Max did it with his parade of guys who hadn’t even been alive whenKnight Riderwas a thing and not just reboot fodder.
In his head he could hear Max’s drawled answer.We don’t do much talking.Maybe that was unfair, but after decades of friendship, his imaginary Max was pretty accurate. Nate supposed it wasn’t his business, any more than what he was doing with Flynn was Max’s.
“How about going with someone you’re not going to disappoint?” Nate asked Flynn. He glanced up at the sky and wrinkled his nose against the rain. “At least we’ll be dry.”
After a heartbeat, Flynn growled in frustration and dragged him back in for a rough, quick clash of mouths.
“Why do I let you talk me into stuff I know is a bad idea?” Flynn grumbled between their wet lips.
“Oh, I know this one,” Nate said. He gave Flynn’s cheek a teasing pat. “It’s because you want in my pants.”
He pulled back, ignoring Flynn’s growl, and circled around the bumper of the car to get in the passenger side. His damp trousers dragged on the pleather as he slid in and pulled his seat belt out. A glance out the driver’s side window showed Flynn shaking his head before he climbed into the jeep.
“If Father Bly drags his arthritic old ass up the hill to roust us,” he grumbled as he put the car in gear, “you get to give him mouth-to-mouth when he has a heart attack.”
Nate laughed. Back when they’d been in school, the Father had been a lot less arthritic and a lot more of a firebrand. His blood-and-thunder sermons about the dangers of premarital sex, delivered car-side to horny teenagers, were legendary.
“Did he really do that?”
“Caught me twice.” Flynn turned the engine over and put the jeep in gear. The heavy growl of it cut across the chatter from the pub like a snarl. “Not sure who was more relieved, me, my girlfriend, or Bly, since I’d just been to confession the week before. Pretty sure he thought fifteen Hail Marys had made me straight.”
“How long did that last?”
The corner of Flynn’s mouth that Nate could see curled up in a slow, lecherous smirk. “Not long.”
Nate shrugged as they pulled away from the curb. His balls ached under silk and expensive denim, and his phone buzzed quietly in his pocket. He didn’t know what he wanted to touch more.
All right. He could, and it was his balls. The phone was still distracting.
“At least it gave you something to talk about on Sundays,” he said.
The low rub of Flynn’s voice, like rough silk on his skin, made Nate shiver. He relaxed back into the hard seat and watched the dark, damp countryside race by through the window. His nerves fizzed under his skin, and his heart stuttered along too fast. He reached over the hand brake and rubbed Flynn’s thigh. The way the heavy muscle tightened under his fingers and the low noise from Flynn’s throat made his stomach clench with anticipation.
Sometimes being with Flynn felt like falling in love, without all the pressure of having to actually do it.
Either that or he was having a heart attack.
ASK Ablow-in where The Castle was and most of them would eventually point out the Granshire. It had turrets and a grand ballroom. There was even a ghost, if you believed the stories.
None of which The Castle had. It didn’t even have a roof. A banker had bought the land to build a summer home, but halfway through construction he’d lost either interest or means. It had most of the external walls and the weather-rotted remains of a fully fitted kitchen, but inside it was all wet plasterboard and half-tiled floors. For a five-year-old, it was a playground, and the fancy black toilet they’d left stored in the middle of the living room made a brilliant throne. For a fifteen-year-old, the huge, curved drive, half pitted tarmac and half gravel, was the perfect place for a bit of privacy—whether they wanted it for sex or to sell drugs and bottles of harsh, unlabeled liquor.
Or it used to be. Tonight it was empty, the stretch of unfinished tarmac free of muddy tire tracks. Maybe it was the time of year or the weather. Maybe kids were buying their drugs online and having them sent through the mail these days.
Nate didn’t really care. He was folded across the hand brake, and the bar dug into his hip as he kissed Flynn. It was hot and rough and kind of funny as Flynn swore around Nate’s tongue at the steering wheel for getting in the way, and Nate got tangled in the loose seat belt.
“Any chance we can give up on this and go find a bed?” Flynn grumbled. He ran a hand over Nate’s shoulder and down to his hip. “Something with better springs at least.” Despite his complaints he hooked his fingers in the waistband of Nate’s trousers and tugged him closer.
With Flynn’s spit on his neck and breath in his mouth, Nate’s earlier hesitation over going back to the lighthouse seemed ridiculous. It wasn’t like leaving Flynn alone would be absolute. It was a small island.
On the other hand….
“You really want to stop?” Nate reached down and palmed the taut ridge of Flynn’s dick through his jeans. The zipper was rough against his fingers as he squeezed hard enough to startle afuckout of Flynn as he lifted his hips into Nate’s touch. His thighs hit the steering wheel, and he ground another curse out through clenched teeth.
“I can’t believe you talked me into this.” He reached down the side of the door and jerked the lever to jolt the seat back. His legs stretched out, and the planes of his body shifted under Nate.
Nate licked the stern curve of Flynn’s mouth. “It didn’t take much.” He trailed his mouth over Flynn’s jaw and down the line of his throat. A hickey wouldn’t show up under the stubble that tickled his lips, but Nate chewed one into his skin anyhow. See how he liked it.
