Page 24 of Outside the Lines
Then again, Iwasin his car, winding through the woods outside of Bluewater Bay.
He hadn’t spoken since town, since those words that had sent shivers through me. I remembered what Lydia had said at lunch.
I craved Ian breaking me. It had been so long since I’d been on my knees for a guy. Longer since I’d bottomed. Most men I did manage a hookup with figured I was a top.
I wasn’t. Not with men. But people looked at me and Lydia and made assumptions that I was straight and dominant. That I went home and fucked my wife every night. It was tiring having two lives—the one people painted onto me and the one I actually lived.
I wanted Ian to shatter the crappy picture everyone else had of me and remind me who I really was.
“Hey, Si?”
I liked hearing my nickname on Ian’s lips. Especially in the dark. “Yeah?”
“You think that cop knows what we were up to?”
I rolled that around in my head. Phil wasn’t an idiot. Most of the townfolks were smart as whips. You had to be to live out here. “I don’t know. Maybe.” That quip about being more trouble than the local sex shop poked at my brain. I had to wonder if I wasn’t thefirstDerry to blow someone behind the store. “Maybe Lydia’s lost her keys there, too.”
Ian made this strange sound between a laugh and a choke. “How do you . . .”
So many endings to that question. So many questions he could be asking. “I know it’s strange, but there’s room for whatever you want.” Sex. Love. A fling. Something longer. Hell, we’d talked for a long time with Vince, Dexy’s dad, about him moving in back in the day. He was straight, but I’d been friends with Vince. We all still caught a beer together once in a while, and he’d been so pleased when we’d hired Dexy.
Ian was silent, though his fingers tapped on the steering wheel.
“Communication’s important, though. I can’t read minds.” This wasn’t some paranormal romance, but real life.
This time, the sound was a distinct laugh. “Says the man who up and assumed I wouldn’t want him to come home with me after he swallowed my cock and load in a damp alley.” Warm fingers stroked my thigh.
Okay, he had me there. I blew out a breath. “We were nearly caught.”
Ian inched his fingers higher, and I pressed against the seat. His voice was soft and full of depth. “Why do I get the feeling you liked that part?”
He was so good at this, the teasing, the turning on. The sexy talk I failed at. “Maybe.” I did like being watched, but there was more to it than that. I wanted to get caught. I wanted people to know I was queer and poly. Lydia and I had talked about being out, but always came back around to not rocking the boat. We were both worried about the shop. Her career. All of it.
Ian made me want to tip our lives over. But I was gettingwayahead of myself. Two days and a blowjob weren’t enough to build a relationship on, or rearrange my life with Lydia for.
Guess I’d been quiet too long, because the stroking went from sexy to comforting. “Talk to me, Simon.” An edge of command there. I could get used to that.
“It’s complicated.”
“That’s a Facebook status.”
I barked out a laugh. “It’s true, though. My thoughts.” I took his hand in mine. “I don’t always say or do the right things. I’m horrible when it comes to sexy. I always guess wrong about men.” I shrugged, which he probably didn’t see. “Ilikeyou, only I don’t know how to tell you that. Don’t know how to explain my life. Want to try, though.”
He squeezed my hand. “I think I see why Lydia married you.”
That made me warm all over. His words were so something she would have said, and I wouldn’t have understood it from her, either.
He let me go. “We’re nearly there, and I need both hands.”
Stick shifts. Hot, but cockblocking at the same time. We pulled into a driveway and parked by a detached garage next to a large house set not too far off from the road. We were out by one of the fishing piers, and I knew the house wasn’t Ian’s.
“I rent the rooms above the garage.” He parked next to, rather than inside, the garage, and shut off the car. “It’s pretty quiet out here, and the Yazzies leave me be.”
Ah. I knew the Yazzies. They ran a framing store in town. Good people. Usually helped with our small arts festival every year. Queer-friendly too. “Good choice. Nice place.”
“Time to unbuckle,” Ian said. “Ride’s not over yet.”
I wet my lips. Good. I wasn’t nearly done being Ian’s for the night.
