Page 48 of Touch of Innocence
TWENTY-THREE
Just outside of town, Gunner pulled the bike onto a side road and rolled down it a little before cutting the engine. There was nothing around, not for miles. Fields which would be filled with cows in the daytime stood silent and empty, and Sam couldn’t even see a house, or a barn, from where they were.
They might as well be completely alone in the world, just Sam and Gunner and the stars bearing silent witness as they marched slowly, twinkling, across a dark blue velvet sky.
For a moment, Gunner just sat there, and then he got off the bike and pulled the helmet from his head. Sam followed, his legs a bit shaky from the vibrations of the motor, but more than that, he had to wonder why Gunner had stopped. Why the other man had decided not to just go into town. Was Sam about to hear some bad news? Had he just messed up too badly, and was Gunner about to tell him that he couldn’t forgive him?
“Gunner?” Sam finally prompted, when he just couldn’t stand the suspense anymore. He balanced his helmet carefully on the bike and then looked plaintively at the other man, trying to beg him without words just to speak to him. To say anything would be better than just having to wait like this.
“There’re two things,” Gunner spoke, his voice that same sweet, seductive low growl that it always had been, his hazel eyes glimmering almost gold as a sharp contrast to the diamond sparkle of the stars above.
“Okay …” Sam drew the word out, turning it into a question, and trying to quell the clench in his stomach which was far too ready to turn into panic at any second. He didn’t know that this was going to be bad, he reminded himself, but with how rocky their relationship had been, it wouldn’t be exactly out of character for what had happened in the last hour to be an uncharacteristic sweet note.
“First, does Mike want me back? What about Isaac and Ben?”
Sam allowed his tense shoulders to relax a little bit, though he was sure there would still be knots in them. But that was a completely reasonable question, and it made sense that Gunner would want to know about that before he made any sort of decision.
“Mike wants you back, yeah, and Ben and Isaac …” Sam trailed off a little as he winced, remembering that highly embarrassing conversation that he’d had with the two men who had essentially raised him. “Gunner and Isaac think I’m an idiot for ever letting you go.” Sam paused once more and then, well, he figured that Gunner decided to hear the words. “And they were right.”
Gunner smirked just a little bit, an expression which once would have infuriated Sam but now, God help him, he actually found it a little bit endearing.
“But they don’t know why you did it,” Gunner noted, and Sam nodded slowly, pretty sure he got where this was going.
“Yeah. It wasn’t my secret to tell. I didn’t tell anyone, and I don’t think Mike did, either.” Mike was a good guy. Discrete. Loyal, once his loyalty had been won.
“Okay. So if I stay, that’s going to have to be dealt with,” Gunner mused, more to himself than to Sam, and that panic threatened to floor through Sam all over again. If Gunner stayed? Was that what he had just said? If?
“Why?” Sam heard his own voice and barely recognized it. It seemed that once he cared, once he fell, he fell hard, and the thought that he could actually lose Gunner had freaked him out, no doubt about it. Things had seemed so promising. “Baby, they don’t need to know. It’s not like it’ll matter. And you already have a job, and …”
Gunner reached out, and the calloused tip of his finger brushed against Sam’s lips, silencing him quite effectively.
“I’m done with hiding.”
Those words were so simple, but Sam knew that they were also a challenge. Was Sam, too, done hiding? Could he truthfully say the same? For a moment, Sam dropped his eyes, both acknowledging the point and also allowing his own thoughts to percolate a little bit through his brain.
The truth was, he couldn’t help but respect Gunner for that decision. Gunner lying to Sam through omission had nearly been enough to ruin their relationship, and no doubt Gunner didn’t want that hanging over his head anymore. But it was terrifying because while he was pretty sure that Ben would be okay with it, he didn’t know about Isaac, who still had some son of the preacher thought processes sometimes.
Slowly, Sam let his lips part, let his teeth graze over the fingertip which still rested against his lips. Gunner gave a soft hiss, and then it was Sam’s turn to smirk. No matter what else was going on, he still had that. He could make Gunner hard for him, could make him make the sexiest noises in the history of the world.
“Okay,” Sam finally whispered. The sound of his own voice seemed to act as a lens, focusing his thoughts until they made some sort of sense. “Okay. Cool. You talk to my family about that, and I …” Sam knew what he was about to do, and he would be lying if he said that there wasn’t still some fear involved. But what there wasn’t was uncertainty. Not anymore. He knew that this was the right thing to do, and when it was the right thing, he’d been taught that fear wasn’t a good enough reason not to do it.
“I won’t hide anymore, either.”
They had both been hiding, and for the first time, Sam realized, they stood before each other, completely bared to each other. Sam would come out, stop trying to hide that he was attracted to men and that he had fallen in love with one. Gunner would stop trying to hide his past.
They came together as though drawn by powerful, irresistible magnets, their lips meeting. It wasn’t exactly gentle, but it was complicated, their first kiss where they had both fully committed to making this work. To not hiding anymore, not from each other and not from anyone else.
When that kiss finally broke, Sam’s lips were tingling. Hell, his whole body was tingling. He could barely breathe, and in a second, he knew that he would pounce on Gunner, right here on this side road in front of God and the stars and the empty fields.
But first, there was something that they needed to have out, one more thing. So Sam rubbed at his lips, ignored his throbbing dick as best he could, and tried, he really did, not to look down at the front of Gunner’s pants. But he failed at that and fought back a groan as he saw how swollen he was, how tight the front of his jeans were, the obvious line of his thick cock stretching it, tenting it out as best it could.
It had to be painful, and Sam knew that because he was in the same situation.
“You said there were two things,” Sam reminded him. Reminded them both, and even took a step back to keep Gunner from reaching for Sam, or Sam for Gunner, or both of them for each other at the same time.
It had been a hell of a long two weeks since they’d last seen each other, and their bodies, as well as their hearts, had obviously not been at all okay with that separation.
“Right.” Gunner made a visible effort and pulled himself together, but Sam was glad to see that it was, at least, an effort. Gunner had his hands clenched into fists, and his eyes seemed to burn almost golden as he gazed at Sam. “So the first thing is that I want to tell your family everything that they need to know about just who they would have living on their property, if they agree. The second thing is, what are you going to do about school?”
