Keeping Promise Rock (11 page)

much Deacon wouldn’t do, wasn’t much he wouldn’t hazard, to be able to see Crick through life still able to smile like that.

“Swim trunks it will be,” Crick said through the warm, fuzzy glow of stupid that had somehow made shit of Deacon’s resolutions. With a little rummaging, he handed Deacon a pair of trunks Deacon was reasonably sure was Crick’s and not his, but he wasn’t going to press the point. “Now go change and get in—I’ll set up the food and shit.” Deacon rolled his eyes and let his own tight grin slip out. “Boy, you set up shit next to my food, and I’m taking the horse and leaving you to deal with the AstroTurf alone.”

Crick laughed. Deacon smiled and Crick stopped laughing, but Deacon managed to walk away and change before either of them could find out why.

The water was cold, but it was refreshing and they’d both been working hard. By the time Deacon pulled himself out, Crick had set up the air mattress and the blankets and had some sandwiches and sodas in the middle. Deacon was willing to play along. For one thing, he was hungry.

For another, well… it seemed to be Crick’s fantasy. Deacon figured Crick would learn soon enough that he wasn’t a saint or a hero or whatever was going on behind those pretty brown eyes, but the least Deacon could do would be to let Crick have his day.

“Good stuff,” Deacon muttered around a mouthful of barbecue, and Crick preened a little under the praise.

“Made it myself.” He had, too. The house had smelled like barbecue for the last five days. It was one of the few things that Parish had tried to teach Deacon that he’d never taken to. He was glad Crick had the knack of it.

“I’m appreciative.” Deacon finished his sandwich, wiped his mouth, and disposed of his trash in the little grocery bag that they’d wrapped the sandwiches in. Then he stood and rinsed off his hands at the edge of the swimming hole, Crick at his side. When he stood up again, Crick was right there, kissing distance away, his whole heart in his eyes.

“Do you ever want to kiss me, Deacon?” he asked, and Deacon could tell that he’d rehearsed the speech, trying to make it sound sexy and seductive, but what it sounded was uncertain and wanting.

Deacon thought that the second combination was probably the one that did him in for good.

“All the damned time,” he muttered. He brought up his hand and traced the silk of Crick’s collarbone from his shoulder to the center of his chest. The finger kept moving, slowly, down between his pecs to right above his tender, corded stomach. Crick sucked his stomach in, making a little whining sound in the back of his throat, and Deacon smiled up into his eyes. There was still a little bit of barbecue sauce on the corner of Crick’s mouth, and Deacon wiped it off with his thumb.

For that moment, that suspended moment, Deacon thought about giving Crick the lecture again, the one that said that this didn’t mean Crick wasn’t going to school, the one that said “Don’t put all your dreams on hold because of me!” Then Crick’s pink tongue came out and caught Deacon’s thumb, and it was Deacon’s turn to suck air in through his teeth.

Crick sucked that thumb into his mouth and teased it with his tongue, and every coherent word zoomed right out of Deacon’s hyper-aroused brain.

Leaving his thumb where it was until the last moment, he hauled Crick’s mouth down for a kiss.

Oh God. He tasted like barbecue and river water and… and
Crick,
and Deacon couldn’t stop kissing him. Their tongues met and tangled, and Deacon pushed at those narrow shoulders until Crick started to back up the hill. He stepped on the air mattress and caught the hint, sinking down to his bottom, and still Deacon pushed him back relentlessly.

“Do I want to kiss you?” Deacon muttered, kissing down Crick’s jaw line, nipping at his ear, nuzzling the flesh of his throat. “Do I want to kiss you?” More kisses, these on a direct course to Crick’s nipples as Crick made incoherent “ah” noises into the still-shaded air around them.

Deacon moved down to Crick’s tender stomach with its promising trail of brown fur below the navel and started licking the skin there just to feel Crick convulse around him. Crick’s hands struggled for purchase in Deacon’s wet hair, and Deacon slid out of his fingers like an inquisitive, voracious otter and moved downwards. He teased for about a second and a half, sweeping his tongue under the elastic of Crick’s Hawaiian swim trunks before grabbing the waist and dragging them down, leaving Crick completely exposed to the air.

Deacon propped himself up on his elbows and took a moment to appreciate that sweet stretch of flesh. Crick’s body was so long and so lean, such a pretty color of pale brown, with hardly a blemish or a freckle anywhere except his shoulders, which burned almost every year.

Deacon met Crick’s eyes, a limpid, helpless brown, and reached out a rough-callused finger towards his erection, watching as those eyes grew enormous, anticipating, wanting—so hungry Deacon had a moment of doubt that he could feed all that hunger, and then he was so hungry himself, he thought that maybe he could.

Deacon’s finger found that beauty mark, almost lightning-shaped, and he grunted in satisfaction and then again as Crick arched up toward that single touch, begging. But Deacon knew a little something about this from his own hands on his flesh, and he kept up that one finger, stroking the underside of Crick’s cock, investigating the tenderness of testicles and the fur in between, skating playfully across the slickened head and torturously across that delicate, shiver-inducing little stretched cord of flesh that once attached the foreskin.

Crick groaned when he did that, so he did that again.

And again.

Crick started to plead with him, gibbering, begging, “Please, Deacon, please, please, please, pleasepleaseplease,”
and Deacon, who was used to having no words at all when Crick talked all over the place, loved that he didn’t even have words for what he wanted. Deacon didn’t need words to know what Crick wanted, and when a half-spasm of pre-come spurted across Crick’s stomach, Deacon raised his head and engulfed that beautiful, swollen cock with his mouth, taking it as far back into his throat as he possibly could and holding it there as Crick lost control with a strangled “Auuughhhhh.” It was sweet and bitter and thick, and Deacon swallowed and swallowed and swallowed.

Not all of it, though. He couldn’t. When he looked up at Crick to smile wickedly into those brown eyes, he was very aware that Crick’s come was dripping down his chin.

“Now that
that’s
over with,” he panted, “we can take things a little slower.”

Crick pushed up on his elbows and stared at him stupidly. “Slower?” Deacon smiled, and he knew it was a dreamy, devious sort of smile.

“Crick, the things I’ve got planned to do to you… I don’t want to rush them.”

Crick groaned and flopped down backwards. “I thought I was seducing you!”

Deacon popped Crick’s cock into his mouth for a playful clean up and then started investigating the inside of Crick’s thighs with his lips, teeth, and tongue.

“Nope,” he muttered, positioning himself between Crick’s spread thighs. He pushed at Crick’s knees then, and Crick’s body was spread out in front of him. Some of the come had dripped down the crease of Crick’s body and was there, at Crick’s opening, waiting to be played with.

Using that one wicked finger, Deacon obliged.

“Ahh… God… Deacon… I didn’t know you’d done this before.” Crick’s voice cracked as that finger slipped inside him and circled, stretching so gently, Crick could barely feel any resistance.

Deacon pushed himself up to peer at the boy he’d loved forever and make sure this point was clear. “I haven’t,” he said, nodding earnestly. “I don’t have a fucking clue what I’m doing.” He ducked his head then and pushed his tongue where his finger had just been, liking the keening groan Crick made so much that he pushed it even farther.

“Could… have… ah, God, Deacon you’re killing me… fooled me…

fuck!”

Deacon had gone back to using his fingers again, and that was when he found that little walnut-sized swelling right there inside. He rubbed it again, and Crick’s body arched and flailed, and Crick all but sobbed.

Deacon grinned. Good. He had a plan now. Licking carefully, using as much saliva as he could, he coated two fingers and eased them right on in. Crick made a negative sound then, and Deacon pulled out so quickly Crick almost came right there.

“Wait,” he panted, and Deacon did, while Crick reached for the backpack next to the bedding. He rifled desperately for a minute, and Deacon got bored and started drawing the alphabet, right there on Crick’s anus while Crick called him all sorts of horrid names and upped the search as fast as he could.

What he came up with surprised Deacon and delighted him too.

“Cherry lip gloss?” It was Vaseline, actually, the cherry flavored lip balm, and Crick threw two tubes of it at him as Deacon grinned from between his legs.

“I chickened out at the drug store—I was gonna buy lube!” Deacon chuckled and squirted one of the little tubes onto his fingers, sighing a little. “Mmm… it’s warm,” he said before he eased both fingers Keeping Promise Rock

inside of Crick’s body. Crick moaned, and Deacon spread his fingers, scissoring them a little, and Crick screamed but in a good way.

Deacon raised his body up then and kicked down his own trunks, and he moved up so they were chest to chest. Crick reached out a hand and grazed Deacon’s erection—it was as long as Crick’s but fatter, and it was so hard that even Crick’s soft touch made it ache.

“Gaaawwwwddd.” Deacon buried his head in Crick’s midriff and tried to get control of himself. Dammit, he wasn’t a kid to go shooting off with just a touch, and Crick stroked his hair until he knew he wasn’t going to lose it before he was buried inside the love of his goddamned life.

The first touch of his cock to Crick’s asshole made them both stop and tremble for a moment, but Crick was prepped and stretched and ready, and Deacon didn’t have a whole lot of control left. Crick swallowed, leaned up, framed Deacon’s face, and kissed him.

This time, his body poised at the threshold of something irrevocable, Deacon accepted the kiss. It went on and on until Crick’s hands were pushing against Deacon’s back and Deacon’s shoulders were trembling with the terrible state of arousal and want.

“Please, Deacon?” Crick panted. “Please… we need to….” Yeah. Deacon pulled back and placed himself tenderly where he needed to be. There was a little resistance—not much, he’d been too thorough for that—and Crick threw back his head and begged some more.

Oh God. He felt heavenly. Crick’s body wrapped around Deacon’s cock was…. Crick spasmed around him, and Deacon almost came. God, it was perfect. Deacon thrust some more, easing his way in, and Crick pulled his legs as far wide and as far back as he could get them. He closed his eyes and breathed then, shifting, begging for more with every quirk of his hips, and Deacon looked at him in this moment, their first moment of possession, because he never wanted it to end.

But it had to. He had to move, he had to thrust, he had to bury himself deeper and deeper into Carrick Francis’s willing body, and Crick loved it, whimpered for him, begged him, told him it was wonderful.

Deacon’s hips started thrusting harder and harder, and Crick pulled his legs to his chest and howled. His cock spat come again, coating their bellies, making their sweating bodies slicker and stickier, and maybe it was that, or maybe it was the way Crick’s head was thrown back and his body was so open and vulnerable, or maybe it was that he hadn’t had sex in forever and it was just
time
,
dammit, but Deacon’s vision went black, 76

and he groaned and buried himself in the hollow of Crick’s throat and in the haven of Crick’s body and came.

And came and came and came.

Even moments when time stops have to end. Deacon slid out of Crick’s body in a floppy sort of way, and he rolled over to his side, pillowed his head on Crick’s shoulder, and stared bemusedly at the dappled green oak-leaf sky above them like a stained glass canopy. For a few minutes, there was nothing but the sound of their breathing, growing a little less frantic until it was lost in the slight breeze of the afternoon.

“Love you, Deacon.”

“You too, Crick.”

“So,” Crick laughed a little. “Does this mean I can stay?” Deacon frowned and wondered if “stupid” was a lasting condition or if he’d shot all his brains out with his load. “Stay where?”

“With you—you know—no more of this ‘when Crick leaves’

bullshit.”

Deacon frowned harder and moved his hand down under him to sit up. “It ain’t bullshit, Crick. You’ve hated this place your whole life.

You’ll never be happy here unless you go out and see something of the world. That don’t mean….”

Now Crick was standing up and yanking his trunks back up with unnecessary force, and Deacon was wondering what in the hell had just happened that he was not aware of. “Oh, I know what it means. It means I go away to art school and you sit here and wait for me like some sort of goddamned monk or a martyr.”

“I’m not a martyr if I’m happy to be here!” Crick reached over to the rock where he’d laid down all his clothes and starting dressing over his swim trunks with hard, rough movements.

Deacon wondered in sort of a panic when he’d stepped out of happy afterglow and into Crick going off half-cocked. He also wondered if he should start across the swimming hole for the truck to get his pants, because if Crick was going to take off across the field on the horse, he’d want to beat him back to The Pulpit
to have this out.

“Well I’m happy to be here with you!” Crick shouted, throwing on his boots without socks, and Deacon held out his hands, trying to appease this monster argument that had blown out of nowhere.

“Crick, please don’t….”
think I don’t want to be with you.

That was what he was going to say. He knew it was what he was going to say. It was the thing that had been in his heart since Crick had first put art school on hold for him. It seemed like the simplest of ideas, that phrase, the most obvious thing in the world.

Crick looked like Deacon had pulled out a gun and shot him.