Manny Get Your Guy (Dreamspun Desires Book 37) Read online

  Taylor cried out, burying his head against Brandon’s thigh, shoved to the knife-edge once again.

  Oh no—not this time.

  Brandon was so close! Taylor upped the stakes, using his fingers to dip between his thighs, between his cheeks, to play with the tight entrance hidden in the shadows.

  His fingers were wet enough, his aim was true enough—he slid in to the first knuckle, and Brandon cried out, arching, thrusting into Taylor’s mouth, spilling his seed as Taylor drank greedily.

  Oh… oh yes! This was what lovemaking felt like. This was having a lover at his mercy, and—oh God! Yes!—being at a man’s mercy, trusting he wouldn’t shove a knife in your back while he was sucking your cock.

  He didn’t. He just kept sucking, playing, pleasuring, until Taylor buried his face in Brandon’s thigh and cried out. He bit softly, completely vulnerable, completely helpless, as his body turned itself inside out in climax.

  When it was over, he collapsed limply, legs splayed on either side of Brandon’s head. “This is so undignified,” he said when he could talk again.

  Brandon laughed, the sound rusty. “I need you to move. I’m starving.”

  Carefully Taylor put all his weight on his good side and rolled to his back. “I don’t even want to know how that happened in your head.”

  “Well, my balls were empty and so was my stomach?” Brandon sat up, looking puzzled. “Doesn’t that happen to you too?”

  Taylor just chuckled, closing his eyes. “Uh, no. Not even when I was young. But yeah, it’s….” He pushed himself up and squinted at the light. “God, it’s getting late. Sixish?”

  At that moment his phone buzzed in his shorts, and he scrambled to get off the bed. “Tino?”

  “You’re coming to dinner, right? You told Jacob you guys would be home tonight, and we need to plan.”

  “There’s dinner tonight?” Taylor scrolled through his phone. “I had no idea. No, Jacob didn’t mention it.”

  “Well, then, we’ll save you a plate. Can you be here in half an hour?”

  Taylor grunted. “Make it forty-five minutes. We just woke up from a nap and we need to shower.”

  “Together?” Tino asked, but politely, as though simply wondering.

  “Not in my bathroom,” Taylor told him, thinking about the odds of falling through the floor. “But save us a plate.”

  He rang off and set his phone on the charger, then turned to Brandon. “You heard?”

  “Yup. The family hamster wheel—it’s time to get back on.”

  Taylor thought about it and realized that “I sort of miss the kids. Is that weird?”

  Brandon walked naked to where Taylor stood and rubbed his lower lip with a thumb. “No. You love them. It’s family, Taylor. It’s the whole reason I’m leaving in a week, right?”

  Taylor’s heart fell. He’d managed to forget that. “Yup. All my idea. It’s awesome. So glad you’re going.”

  He pulled away from Brandon’s caress and stepped toward the bathroom only to be seized from behind by a behemoth with more muscles than sense. “I hate going,” he whispered, brushing Taylor’s ear with his lips.

  Just like that, their bubble was back.

  “I’m… not excited about it,” he said softly.

  “Well, it’s a good thing we’re having a powwow, then. We’re going to need some help moving you in.”

  Taylor closed his eyes and leaned his head back against Brandon, shamelessly using his strength and vitality because his own body felt stripped of any sort of volition. “You know, we don’t have to—”

  “Stop,” Brandon whispered. “Stop. You promised.”

  Rashly. Uncharacteristically. Wholeheartedly. “I promised,” he conceded.

  “Now go take care of your cat and I’ll shower first.”

  Taylor started to pivot toward the bed, but Brandon didn’t let go. “Let me imagine you naked,” he said with an evil little flick of his tongue in the whorl of Taylor’s ear. Against Taylor’s backside, Brandon’s impressive erection stirred.

  Taylor stepped away and scowled, grabbing his underwear. “Get in the shower,” he ordered gruffly. “We’re late.”

  Brandon stroked him up and down with the power of his gaze. “We are going to have so much fun,” he promised. “You and me—I don’t see ever getting bored.”

  He was trying to promise forever, but Taylor couldn’t do it. Not when he was leaving in five days. “Go,” he said gruffly. “Promises to keep.”

  And he went.

  THEY made it in forty minutes, and Tino’s mom had saved plenty of food for them.

  To Taylor’s surprise, the kids all rushed them as they walked through the patio.

  “Taylor! Mom was sick—we were so worried!” Taylor gave Dustin a one-armed hug and bent to scoop Conroy up, since he seemed to want to cling.

  “Taylor, Dad says you’re going to live at the house and we’ll have you all the time and you’re going to work your ass off!”

  “Belinda!” Jacob trotted over from the pool, where apparently he’d been swimming when all his kids bailed to rush Taylor and Brandon. “You’re not supposed to—”

  “Use Daddy’s words,” Belinda said dutifully. “But Taylor uses it all the time, and apparently he’s got a pain in his.”

  Taylor and Jacob both looked at Belinda, at a loss.

  “You’re a pain in his ass, kid,” Jacob said after a moment, scooping her up and sending her laughing to the pool, where Sammy was still playing with Keenan and Letty. Brandon gave Taylor a look, then bent and scooped up Melly, blew bubbles on her tummy to make her squeal, and ran her to the pool with the others.

  Conroy refused to move, clinging to Taylor’s neck in a way that sent a surge of protectiveness through him: this was his little boy too.

  “So,” Jacob said, looking out at the pool where Brandon and Sammy were doing a hand-clasp exchange and talking. Sammy cast Taylor a veiled, aching look, and Taylor sighed.

  “So,” Taylor answered. “Where’s Nica?”

  “Literally in bed. We left her at home, sleeping, with a Tupperware container of steamed veggies and balsamic vinegar next to her. She’s exhausted.”

  “Well, uh, Brandon talked to you about me moving in over the garage. I can be full-time now.”

  Jacob clapped him on the arm. “You were full-time before. Now you’re family.” He paused and searched Taylor’s face carefully. “You’ll be good to my family, right?”

  Oh God. Taylor felt the flush from his belly to his forehead. “Yeah. I, uh. He’s sort of… irrepressible, isn’t he?”

  Jacob nodded soberly. “He is. And frankly, I’m more worried about you than him. But I still worry.”

  Taylor’s eyes stung, and he gave the toddler in his arms a little squeeze. “You’re a good dad,” he said, voice taut.

  “And you’re a good brother.” Jacob’s sunshine smile—the one that Nica probably fell in love with—lit up his still-bruised face. “Not even Tino could get me into a bar fight. It’s like now I am a man!”

  Conroy’s sweet weight on Taylor’s shoulder almost broke him. “You were a good man—the best—from the very beginning.”

  “You were too,” Jacob told him. “You just needed to see it. I’m glad Brandon let you see.”

  Stacy Robbins called out to them then, before things could get awkward, and they settled down to plan.

  A WEEK later, Taylor was as tired as he’d ever been in his life.

  They’d moved Taylor in after dinner at Tino’s, using Brandon’s truck for the few big pieces and collapsing at one in the morning in Brandon’s sturdy four-poster bed. Taylor tried to sleep the night on the far end, because he didn’t want to get too accustomed to Brandon’s warmth, his weight, his smell, if he was leaving at the end of the week. Brandon rolled over and dragged him until they were spooning, and Taylor pondered with baffled surprise that he’d always assumed he’d be the big spoon.

  Brandon was simply larger than life, and Taylor had fallen eagerly
into his shadow. He was warm here, and safe. Having his shelter taken away was going to hurt.

  In the morning Brandon beat him to the shower and left him to feed a puzzled Marilyn, who had spent the night tucked under Taylor’s chin, disdainful of Brandon’s possessive hand on Taylor’s hip and of Brandon pretty much in general.

  “You have to get used to him,” Taylor told her, stretching as he stood. “I think he’s keeping us.”

  She meowed, head-butting his stomach, and he scratched her behind the ears.

  “Well, maybe when he leaves next week, he’ll….” Taylor couldn’t finish that.

  He was counting on Brandon coming back.

  And that’s when he knew he was in trouble.

  He didn’t have time to dwell on it, though. Brandon emerged from the bedroom in his 501s, pulling his T-shirt over his head, and all thoughts of trouble fled. Taylor and his boyfriend had things to do, a productive life, a family to tend to.

  That morning he was downstairs and in the kitchen an hour before usual, sending Dustin to find Melly’s other shoe—because every single time, dammit—and holding Conroy on his good hip while flipping pancakes with his weak arm and hoping one didn’t end up on the wall.

  “I miss Mom doing this!” Belinda stood in the middle of the kitchen, stomping her foot. “You’re good for driving us around and lunch, but I want her for breakfast.”

  “You can’t have her for breakfast,” Taylor replied absently. “She’d taste awful.”

  Belinda burst into surprised laughter. “That’s not what I meant!”

  “Well, she would,” Brandon said, walking into the kitchen. He’d been making calls while Taylor got breakfast ready, and he stopped and greeted Taylor with a kiss on the cheek before he started setting the table. “Your mom’s not that sweet. It would be like… like dead frogs.”

  “That’s gross, Brandon,” Belinda said, titillated.

  “The dead frogs or the kissing?” Dustin asked, setting Melly’s shoe down in front of her chair. “’Cause Dad kisses Mom all the time, and it’s really disgusting.”

  “They’re gonna make a baby,” Melly said soberly before sticking her finger in her nose, then her mouth.

  “Two boys can’t make babies, Melly.” Belinda looked at Brandon and Taylor with apology in her eyes. “She doesn’t know about the stork yet.”

  “Stork,” Brandon mouthed. “The stork.”

  “There’s no stork,” Dustin told his sister. “You have to watch the puberty video—then you can have babies.”

  “Have you watched the puberty video?” Taylor asked in horror.

  “No.” Dustin’s shoulders sagged and he slumped next to Melly at the table. “I don’t get to see it until the end of the fourth grade. I’ll be ten by then.”

  “You can’t have a baby after you watch the puberty video!” Belinda protested, running two grubby hands through fine brown hair that now stood on end in syrupy spikes. “Brandon will have to build another room! It’ll go on top of the two rooms they’re building now, and the house will go up and up and up, and where will we put the babies?”

  “I’m not a baby!” Conroy wailed, almost shattering Taylor’s good ear. “I’mma big boy!”

  “Course you are,” Taylor soothed, kissing the little boy’s forehead. “You’re a big boy, Brandon’s making rooms to fit all the babies, boys can’t have babies from kissing but they can go through a reputable adoption agency, and somebody has to eat all these pancakes. Who’s on?”

  “Me!”

  “Me!”

  “Me!”

  “Belinda, wash your hands. Dustin, wash Melly’s hands—and your own—and Brandon, please move Conroy’s chair and take off the tray so he can sit at the table with us?”

  Brandon laughed. “Do I get pancakes?”

  Taylor looked at the last bit of mix and grimaced. “No, big boy, you and me are doing granola bars today, and I’m going to the grocery store while the three big kids are at ABC Club.”

  “Why do they call it ABC Club when everybody knows it’s just summer sch—”

  Taylor loved Brandon, but he absolutely had to kick him in the ankle. “Fun,” he said staunchly. “It is summer fun for little boys and girls who ordinarily might forget completely about the fun and games offered to them by the California public school system, and thus begin the school year deprived.”

  “It’s summer school,” Dustin told them flatly, wiping Melly’s hands on a rag. “But we get out by the time it gets hot enough to swim, so that’s okay.”

  Taylor grabbed the plate of pancakes and got a tighter hold on Conroy and swept them both to the table. “Thank God. Brandon, I need you to leave before you say something that’s going to haunt me for the rest of the summer.”

  Brandon guffawed and gave him another buss on the cheek. “Sure. Bye, guys! Be good for Taylor. Bye, Taylor. Love you!”

  And then he was gone out the door to meet his crew in the bright hard rays of the July morning.

  And Taylor was stuck in the kitchen, staring after him. “It’s a gift,” he muttered to himself. “How does he do that?”

  “Do what?” Dustin asked, grabbing a pancake with his bare—and hopefully clean—fingers. “Build the room? ’Cause it’s cool. First they pour concrete, and then they have to use plans, and then they have to make a frame, and—”

  “No, not build the room.” Taylor turned to the table and made sure everybody had a pancake, especially Conroy, who didn’t like syrup or butter, bless his little heart.

  “Then do what? Can I have syrup? And blueberries? And jam?” Belinda was slathering enough butter on her one pancake to stop a horse. Or at least make it slip on the floor.

  “Syrup,” Taylor muttered. “And it doesn’t matter what he’s talking about. How does he say the most disturbing thing in the world without even thinking?”

  “What’d he say?” Belinda asked, not objecting when Taylor started cutting up her pancake.

  “He said Mommy smelled like dead frogs!” Melly blurted. Taylor had almost forgotten that, but he was grateful.

  “Yes, yes he did.” Except the dead frogs part wasn’t what Taylor found so disturbing, and Brandon probably knew it.

  It was the I love you that stuck in Taylor’s chest, lingered, and haunted him for the rest of the day.

  “HERE, Princess. I went shopping, so we’ve got fresh bagels, garlic cream cheese, and deli-sliced turkey with tomatoes and pickles. Please tell me that’s something you can have.” He had no idea where he should stand on the whole “prepared meat” part of the pregnancy diet. On Jacob’s advice, he planned to simmer ten pounds of chicken that night and use it for lunch and dinner for the rest of the week, but since he hadn’t done that yet, he was going to hope deli turkey would be okay.

  “It sounds awesome,” Nica said, setting her laptop aside. She was supposed to be doing nothing but resting and watching television, at least for the first week, but Taylor had a sneaking suspicion she was working on her husband’s business instead of playing Candy Crush. “Thanks, Taylor. How goes things?”

  “Well, kids are at ABC Club, Conroy is down for his nap, whatever magic they’re working outside does not include loud noises, and I have time to eat lunch with my friend.”

  She smiled at him, a rare sweet smile, and pushed her long dark hair out of her eyes. Back in high school, when he’d known she was picking out curtains and writing their names together in her notebook, he’d always thought that if he could like girls, she’d be a good choice. It was the hair, he’d thought back then. Silky and blue-black with enough wave to make it unpredictable. Her brother had the same stuff, just cut short.

  Now he thought it was the cheeks, and the smile, and the way her eyes crinkled up in the corners.

  And the way she’d forgiven him for not being able to love her that way, even when he’d lied.

  “Sit,” she murmured, patting the bed next to her. “I miss grown-ups in here. Jakey’s going to be killing himself for the next two weeks, so I
’ll take you instead.”

  Taylor laughed like he was supposed to. “What’s Jacob doing?”

  “Selling one of the shops,” she said, lifting a shoulder like it was no big deal. “One of his guys has worked for him awhile—he’s trying to get up the capital, and Jacob’s having the place assessed and inventoried so he knows what the guy’s getting and what’s a fair price.”

  “Why? I mean, uhm, why? You guys worked so hard for those businesses!”

  She laughed, her voice richer than he remembered. Maybe it was the living, the husband, the children, the commitment to building a family and keeping the people you loved in your life happy. It gave her a timbre, a substance she hadn’t had when they’d been in high school, or even in college.

  “Because we worked hard for the lives we have,” she said, amused. “Not the businesses. I mean, the businesses were fun, and they earn a good living. But we’ll do more than fine off the income from the two businesses if we invest this money wisely. And we can slow down, have more time with the kids and less time with the office.” She shrugged. “I like the kids. I mean, I didn’t plan on quite so many, but I love the ones I have. I’d like to be here for them more.”

  Taylor propped his foot up on the bedframe, wrapped his arms around his bent leg, and rested his chin on his knee. “You have a good family,” he said thoughtfully. “I hope even when you don’t need a nanny anymore, I can still hang around with them. Your kids are a trip.”

  Nica’s low, throaty laugh reminded him so much of her mother’s. “Yeah. Well, I’ll have five. You and Brandon can come over and babysit anytime.”

  Taylor couldn’t look at her. “You know, it might not always be us together.”

  Nica reached out and touched his shoulder. “C’mon, Tay. Remember when we used to lie on my bed and tell secrets?”

  They’d been in fourth grade, but yeah. He turned around and faced her, and she set her plate down and curled up on her side.

  “Now tell me your secrets,” she said softly, touching his face like he was one of her children. He’d used to think he was so much older than her, so much more sophisticated. He’d had all the sex in the world, and she didn’t know a queer when one bummed a ride to school and snuck a place at the family table.