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

  He locked gazes with Taylor and clung, his green eyes burning hotly, like he was trying to sear a path into Taylor’s soul.

  Taylor’s breath caught. “Do you….” Oh hell. His mouth was dry. He swallowed and tried again. “Do you still think it?”

  “No,” Brandon said, eyes steady. “I think you’ll be out of your depth and losing your mind for a week or so, but that’s parenthood. You’ll figure it out.”

  He was so impossibly young, and even with a base tan, his complexion was so fair the flush across his cheeks was blotchily apparent.

  Taylor had to force himself to turn away. “Well, it took me nearly thirty years—good on you for having it done so early.”

  “This isn’t figured out,” Brandon mumbled, but Taylor kept his attention on the vegetables. SpongeBob only lasted so long, and the kids were going to come roaring for food soon enough.

  DINNER was civilized, which surprised Taylor because he remembered horsing around with his brothers at the dinner table and how his mother always tried to calm them down. His dad had told her to lighten up, let boys be boys. He’d seen the family at Channing’s house, but he’d thought that had been grandparent manners.

  Apparently the idea that boys were violent and rude was something not every family embraced. Or at least not Jacob and Nica’s.

  “Dustin, you pass those rolls to Belinda right now.”

  “Da-ad….”

  “She asked you nice, and those are the house rules.”

  Taylor watched with admiration as Jacob and Nica talked to each kid in turn and made sure the kids learned to communicate in whole words and not just grunts. He’d seen the same dynamic when Nica was a kid, but somehow that had just seemed like Nica, Tino, and Elena being good kids.

  It was starting to dawn on him that it was a whole family dynamic he wasn’t used to.

  He and Brandon washed up, standing side by side at the sink, Taylor rinsing, Brandon stacking in the dishwasher. They were quiet the whole time, and Taylor found himself edging away from the heat Brandon’s body threw off. It wasn’t until Brandon’s bicep rubbed against his own that he realized what he was doing and why.

  One contact—that’s all it took. One brush of arm against arm and Taylor’s groin swelled, aching against the confines of his briefs and his shorts.

  Brandon turned his head as though shocked. “Sorry,” he said gruffly. “Didn’t mean to bump you.”

  Then he shifted his eyes to Taylor’s face again, quick and sultry. This time he was standing on Taylor’s right side.

  “No,” Taylor said, his voice gravelly. “Kid….”

  Brandon was around six feet two or three, maybe an inch or so taller than Taylor himself. For a moment they stood face to face, the air between them steaming with promise.

  Brandon leaned in and kissed him.

  A brief brush of breath and tongue, and Taylor gasped just as Brandon was backing away.

  “What in the hell—?”

  Brandon’s eyes went to half-mast, and he licked his lips. “Nice,” he said. “I liked that. We should try that again.”

  “No,” Taylor said again. “Bad idea. So bad.” He threw all his energy into wiping down the sink now that Brandon was setting the controls on the dishwasher. “Bad, bad, bad, bad—you don’t even like me!”

  Dumb. Dumb, dumb, dumb, dumb, dumb. He was not an ingénue.

  “I think you’re hot,” Brandon said confidently. “Does that count?”

  “No!” Oh, this must be what karma felt like—he was paying back for being an arrogant prick who thought all gay ass was his for the taking. “And I’m not hot. I’m….” He flailed with his left hand toward the scars on his face that the kid could see, and the scars on his shoulder, his hip, his thighs, his calf, that the kid couldn’t. “I’m wrecked, and you are way too young for me.”

  Brandon’s flush returned with a vengeance. “You’re not even thirty!”

  “Well, I feel thirty. Hell, I feel forty-five. And you need… young and horny. Not old and wrecked. Go away.”

  Brandon cocked his head. “Go away?”

  Also a dumb thing to say. “I didn’t mean, like, go away. I just meant find somebody your speed.”

  “What is my speed?” Brandon asked like he was humoring Taylor, which was irritating in the extreme.

  “Apparently zero to sexy in the time it takes to wash the dishes!”

  Brandon narrowed his eyes and took a step into Taylor’s space. Taylor backed up, and again, until Brandon was standing toe-to-toe with him while Taylor tried to crawl into the sink ass-first.

  Once again the kid’s green-eyed gaze tried to drill a hole into the depths of Taylor’s soul.

  “Are you saying that didn’t do it for you?” he taunted. “I think we both know that’s a lie.”

  “Kid….” Taylor’s voice came breathily, and he bit his lip as the ache of arousal made him drop the pretext of resistance. “Of course I want….”

  Deliberately, Brandon reached into the almost nonexistent space between them and outlined the shape of Taylor’s erection through his clothing. He spent an extra couple of millennia playing the definite ridge of the bell, teasing until it wept, leaving a damp spot on the front of Taylor’s pants.

  Taylor couldn’t look away, and desire ramped up in his chest, in his groin, tingling in his extremities, until he remembered the hostility this kid had greeted him with and the arrogance of what he was doing now.

  Taylor grabbed his shoulders and whirled him around against the refrigerator, taking his mouth in a punishing kiss.

  His tongue barged in, demanding adult no-bullshit things, and he swept hard, knowing hands down Brandon’s ribs to his hips, shoving underneath the waistband of Brandon’s jeans and kneading the bare, vulnerable skin of Brandon’s ass, spreading his cheeks suggestively and bucking against him until he groaned and broke away.

  As soon as Brandon turned his head, Taylor pulled his hands out of his pants and stepped back, panting, ravaged as much as he’d ravished.

  “Your own speed,” Taylor repeated through clenched teeth. “I’m a long haul on a bumpy road.” He took another step back and tried not to look at how Brandon was staring at him, dazed, rubbing his thumb gently around his bruised and swollen lips. “Nica! Jacob! I’m going to take off. Thanks for dinner!”

  “Thanks for cleaning up,” Jacob called back. “Have Brandon walk you out. See you tomorrow.”

  “Don’t bother,” he told Brandon quietly. With that, he turned without preamble and headed for the front door.

  Brandon caught up with him before the door closed and followed him out into the still-bright summer’s night.

  “This isn’t over,” he said seriously as Taylor tried to look purposeful and not to limp.

  “Sure it’s not. I’m going to pick up some ice cream on my way back to my shitty apartment and watch Marvel action movies and drool.”

  “You’re going to stop for lube and stroke yourself thinking of me,” Brandon snapped back, and Taylor did stumble, catching himself on the driver’s-side door of his Ford before he went down.

  “Jesus, kid.” His hands shook as he fumbled with the key fob. “What a thing to say.”

  Brandon took a step in and closed Taylor’s fingers over the clicker. They both heard the snick and the beep as the door unlocked. “Did you think that kiss was going to scare me off?” he asked, smiling kindly. “Just made me want more. Sorry, Taylor. You can’t scare me away.”

  “You should be very scared.” Sweat stuck the back of Taylor’s shirt to his skin. “And you were right. I don’t belong here at all. Not with this nice family, not with you. I’m sure Nica will be looking for my replacement just as soon as my loan comes through.”

  “You’re her friend. Is that why I haven’t seen you here before? I’ve lived here for two years—I knew Nica went to visit ‘a friend’—but you never came here. Is it because you thought you didn’t belong?”

  Arrogant—but not stupid.

  “I
don’t. Now move, kid. I’ve got to go.”

  “Plants to water?” Brandon mocked softly.

  “Cat to feed. The witch tries to trip me when I walk through the door if I wait too long. Now move!”

  Brandon did, but the touch of his hand sliding down the small of Taylor’s back and drifting off his backside lingered long after Taylor had driven away.

  HE wasn’t lying about the cat.

  One of the first things Nica had given him after he’d lived in his apartment for a month had been Marilyn. The tiny, princessy white kitten was well on her way to growing into a grand duchess, and to practice the role, she was now bitching mightily about Taylor being gone for the night.

  She was the reason he’d crept out of Channing and Tino’s guest bedroom at six o’clock that morning, feeling foolish for getting drunk on butterscotch gelato and beer.

  If he didn’t feed Marilyn at nine o’clock at night, to the click of the second hand, it didn’t matter how much food she had left in her bowl, she would whine at him for at least an hour before planting her fat, furry butt on his chest and poking small holes in the skin of his neck for another hour while he tried to watch TV.

  Not that Taylor had much cause to blow up the schedule.

  Oh, the kid—Taylor just kept thinking of him that way, because to think of him as the man would mean something else entirely—had been damned on target with the reason Taylor had kept away from the whole Robbins family once he’d gotten out of rehab.

  All that niceness. All that functionality. Just highlighted that even the parts of Taylor’s life he’d tried to make normal had fallen apart.

  Brandon apparently thought damage was sexy. As Taylor dumped a can of cheap soft food over a mounded bowl of kibble, he started the nightly stretching regime that let him walk every morning, and begged to differ.

  When Marilyn was settled, still berating him soundly between mouthfuls, he turned on the television to find something action-packed and science-fictiony. He crossed his bad arm in front of his chest, pulling on it gently from the middle of the forearm to increase the stretch. Ouch, ouch, ouch, ouch… ah….

  The release of the tightened muscles rippled through his body, and some of the tension bled out too.

  And now for over his head, the warrior pose, stretch out the chest… ah…. One stretch at a time, he went through the whole regimen, remembering his form, his stance, his breathing. Twenty minutes in the morning, twenty minutes at night, and various stretches in the middle of the day all helped keep Taylor from becoming a gnarled screaming knot of muscle cramps.

  Only when the last muscle released did he allow himself the luxury of sitting on his overstuffed tapestry couch with a glass of milk and some golden Oreos.

  Just in time for a commercial break, of course. He leaned his head back against the couch, closed his eyes for a moment, and tried to force the Oreos to wash away the taste of Brandon.

  He wanted to say sweet, but while sweet was fine in a cookie or butterscotch gelato, it was not usually what Taylor looked for in a lover.

  Taylor liked a little more bite from a kiss. Brandon had that. Like the bite of alcohol in a mojito—some citrus, some mint, and some wow. Absolutely lethal.

  Taylor used to be able to pound mojitos by the gallon. How long could he kiss Brandon—arms like cannon shot, a stomach with the teeth-rattling corrugation of a gold-sifting cradle?

  For a baffling minute when Brandon had first kissed him, before Taylor felt compelled to show him what he was playing with, Taylor had wanted to let that youth and that strength take over.

  He tried to laugh now, even as his body responded.

  Always had to be the top, always had to be the man’s man. For a sugar-sweet moment, someone had kissed him, had come on to him, had tried to tell him that life would all be okay because someone else would be in charge.

  For that brief moment, Taylor wondered. What would it be like to let somebody take care of him? What would it be like to be on the receiving end?

  Not just the sexual position—the emotional one?

  With the drone of car commercials in the background and the unsatisfyingly sweet taste of Oreos permeating his senses, he closed his eyes and wondered what that would be like. If he just let Brandon take over—kiss down his neck, down his chest, down his stomach. For his dream, he conveniently ignored the crosshatching of shrapnel and surgical scarring that marred a body he’d once been so proud of, and concentrated on being touched. Brandon’s hands, callused, rough, demanding, cruising his skin without apology. Brandon’s kisses, bold, a little inexperienced maybe, but given with a whole heart and no fear.

  Those hands, that mouth, servicing his erection, pleasuring his erection, gripping, squeezing, stroking….

  Taylor slid his hand under the waistband of his shorts. Oh yeah. Pressure, stroking—it was his own damned cock, and he knew his own damned spots. Squeeze, stroke, fondle, squeeze, stroke, fondle. He knew his rhythm, knew what exactly it took for him to build the arousal in his own body. A pinch to the nipple, a squeeze to his cock… for a year since he’d been out of the hospital, it had been him and his good right hand—and his slightly maimed left one.

  His stroking continued, and he arched his hips in the air with abandon, forgetting in the moment that he was alone on his frayed couch in his tiny, drafty apartment. Forgetting too that his hands were knowledgeable and familiar. But nothing was as wonderful as someone else’s hands, someone who cared, someone who exulted in bringing pleasure to a lover with every touch.

  In that moment he imagined Brandon’s mouth on him, Brandon’s hands, fumbling perhaps, inexpert but trying. He imagined those knowing green eyes studying his face, waiting to see what he liked, what really turned his key.

  What turned his key was a tongue digging into his slit, and a squeeze at the base, and some tugging on his balls. Some bold action underneath, some playing with his cleft—oh yes, some penetration, not complete, just a little…. But maybe Brandon wouldn’t be satisfied with that. Maybe Brandon would want to penetrate all the way.

  Taylor had never been taken. Not once.

  Would this kid with the probing green eyes and the uncomfortable flush be that brave? Would he lubricate and penetrate and take Taylor with everything he had?

  In the safe place of his imagination, Taylor imagined that, being topped, being cared for. Imagined someone else telling him to relax, it would be okay. Imagined someone making it okay and thrusting into him, stroking him, making his body sing like it hadn’t even before the explosion in the desert had made the simple notes painful.

  Taylor wanted it back, wanted a lover’s touch on his body, wanted more.

  Wanted to open himself up to somebody who wouldn’t hurt him, who would take care of him, who would catch him after he came apart.

  He shoved his shorts and underwear down his thighs and continued to stroke with one hand while he sucked on two of the fingers of the other.

  He whimpered, trying to concentrate on two things at once. His erection was ripe, aching, ready to explode, but his perineum, his pucker, they ached too. They ached with neglect, needing touch, and he pulled his fingers out of his mouth, kicked his shorts off, and splayed his knees. Awkwardly he shoved his fingers into himself while he stroked some more.

  All that stimulation, and it was Brandon’s eyes and his swollen lips and his promise—This isn’t over—that sent Taylor over the edge.

  His body, stretched and loosened, gathered tight like a spring. Oh God, yeah, some more squeezing around the head, some thrusting with the fingers, and….

  Yes!

  He might have shouted the word out loud.

  His body spasmed hard, and he came and came, shooting over his abs, his ribs, his chest. A sob tore from his throat, and another, orgasm cries, and he didn’t bother keeping them quiet in his living room, all alone in front of his television.

  When he was done, he lay panting, trailing his index finger through the mess on his skin.

  The empty quiet o
f his apartment drifted over him.

  Pulling himself off the couch to go wash up proved such an effort that he decided to just set his phone alarm early and go to bed.

  Tomorrow would be spent studying; parenting tips abounded on the internet, and he planned to do some research. He didn’t want to warp Nica’s kids for life. The rest of the week would be helping Nica during her day so when she went to the office on Monday, he’d know what she expected. Sleep would be necessary.

  He wiped down and washed his hands, stripped to his boxers, and slid between the sheets, tired enough that sleeping would be no problem.

  Or it shouldn’t have been.

  Until that vision of Brandon on his knees, servicing Taylor with pleasure, invaded his thoughts again.

  With a groan, Taylor rolled over and tried to let the exhaustion of the day and the soporific of orgasm lull him to sleep.

  It worked and it didn’t.

  He closed his eyes and darkness swept him under, but he still dreamed of Brandon.

  Brandon with the green eyes and the knowing smile, who took him and rode him and made him come…

  And then whispered kind things in his ears afterward, telling sweet lies of home and family and happy ever after.

  He woke up that morning with Marilyn on top of his chest and an emptiness inside.

  He’d seen a happy family, and he’d seen a young man with a future.

  These things were not for him.

  Binocular Vision

  IT took Brandon’s team a day to prep the work site and set up safe zones that would let the kids go into the backyard to play without being at risk from the construction. They’d lucked out in that Jacob and Brandon had poured sturdy concrete paths on either side of the house, and the lot itself was big enough to accommodate guys carrying loads of lumber, as well as some of the machinery necessary to do the job.