Abduction (69 page)

The sound of her key in the lock pricked him with a rush of excitement. Like when he was thirteen and the girl he'd had a crush on for the last two years had just walked into the classroom. It was so fucking good to feel that alive, that...exuberant again. It filled him with a different feeling, seeing her mouth widen into that big smile of hers as she turned the corner and caught first sight of him. This smile of hers was new to him—

only in the last couple weeks. Never at the cabin. Never, at first, when he'd come back to her. It gave him hope that she was sure of them, now.

She came right to him, let her hefty book bag settle on the floor against the sofa, and slipped astride his thighs for their reunion embrace. Close. Soft. Tight. And their kiss. Tender. Then ardent. Maybe soon they'd settle into an easier togetherness, not always eager for everything. Maybe in a month or a year they'd only give affectionate little kisses and hugs some days, only make love a couple times a week. This early time, when they needed each other two or three times every day, was precious.

Hot and soft, open and eager, her mouth on his. Inviting him, then taking over, demanding. Aggressive. Gentle, then fierce. Then sweet again. When she broke off the kiss and looked at him, it was like she wanted to read his mind. His heart. Gazing back at her, he left himself open. He loved her. He wanted her. Needed her. Her sweetness.

Her strangeness. Her love of him. The way she wanted him. Her lips, parted to pant, wet from their kiss, already slightly swollen because he'd sucked and bitten them.

He put his mouth to her neck and felt her body flex as he licked her smooth skin, raked his teeth there, nipped the tender lobe of her ear. When he held her away from him he watched her pant, noted how hard just those kisses had made her nipples, and he caught himself smiling.

He caught her hand as it trailed up his arm, kiss it, and set it on her thigh. Then he began lifting up her sweater.

“I want to touch you. And watch you. Focused all on you.” He looked down a moment to watch her skin appear between the hem of her sweater and the waist of her skirt. Then he looked back up to meet her eyes. Raising the sweater up, he slipped it over her head, coaxed the arms she'd raised back down, and sheathed them inside the sweater, behind her back.

“Do you mind?” he asked, only half teasing with the arched eyebrow, the look calculated to fix her in place.

His heart thumped, then sped as her eyes widened with surprise, as her lips parted and her chest rose and fell faster, faster, her breasts swelling against the thin, translucent barrier of her pink bra with each breath.

He touched her over the bra. The shimmery fabric was faintly rough, too rough to be cradling her delicate breasts, he thought. The way her arms were caught behind by the sweater, her breasts were thrust forward, so they seemed to be begging him. God, Dev. Still. She actually blushed as he pulled the top edge of the shimmery pink down below her breasts, baring her creamy flesh, her dark, hard nipples. It was the disparity.

Him clothed and untouched. Her bared and almost bound, vulnerable to his eyes, to his touch.

Her mouth. God, he wanted to kiss. But unkissed, she was more strung out on want and wanton isolation. Lifting the hem of her skirt he bared her thighs, exposed a glimpse of the crotch of her panties. This he pulled aside, then licked the pads of two fingers and stroked her gently.

With a shudder her thighs jerked against his. When he smiled she blushed again.

Cinching an arm around her waist he got the arch he wanted, brought his mouth to her tit, still teasing her cunt with his fingers. He brought her to the edge, had her keening and quivering, then left off, and only sat there watching her expression go from lustful to frustrated to confused. Then embarrassed, realizing he was taunting her. He brought her back, got her groaning, writhing in tiny movements against his fingers. Then abandoned her again. He didn't let her come until she sighed, “please, please,” almost under her breath, and used her own body to rub her cunt against his hand.

“He gets off on it.” Vaughn's voice wasn't condemning. More like intrigued.

“He does, doesn't he?” Devan felt that familiar tug through her sex.

The way Gordon had taken Jeremy in a kiss—sweet, at first, not much different from the little intimacies both couples indulged in with comfortable regularity in one another's company, then deep and hot, and then, when Jeremy tried to break it off, almost violent as Gordon had held Jeremy to that kiss by gentle but definite force, and then had compelled Jeremy to endure an onslaught that could not be mistaken—it was the prelude to a fuck. And after, while Jeremy had blushed crimson, glancing for one sheepish second at Devan and avoiding Vaughn's eyes altogether, Gordon had stood there taking in the whole scene looking, paradoxically, satisfied and ravenous.

For a few seconds Devan had half wondered if Gordon were about to try to fuck Jeremy right there in front of them. But he'd just pressed a kiss to Jeremy's cheek, saying, “Such a shy boy.” Then looking at Devan then settling his mischievous gaze on Vaughn, “But we're all friends here. Aren't we/' And Vaughn had said, “Of course,” with his steady gaze and warm smile.

The next week the boys were over—Devan and Jeremy working away on final final papers—the last of their last term of their undergrad careers, while Vaughn had Gordon down in the studio, geeking out on techie music stuff. When the kids—Gordon's pet designation for Jeremy and Devan—wearied of their writerly endeavors, the foursome rendezvoused in the kitchen where Gordon captained an expedition deep into the liquor cabinet.

Halfway into round two Gordon asked, with a grin he clearly knew was irresistible, “Would I be breaking some kind of horrible guest record if I invited myself into your hot tub?”

“Isn't it dull breaking a record
you
already hold?” Jeremy rebuked, obviously embarrassed for them both.

Vaughn laughed his low, soft laugh. “Who was it who said there are no bad guests, only bad hosts? The hot tub sounds great.”

“That sounds like a great plan. For next time,” Jeremy said to Gordon firmly.

“Oh, stop. I know you're shy, but you're not going to let a little thing like a pair of trunks come between us and the bliss of a soak in the Jacuzzi.” Jeremy flushed and glared at Gordon.

“I do have an extra pair of trunks,” Vaughn offered.

“And what good does that do me?” Devan asked with mock petulance.

“Thankfully, none,” Gordon flashed back, aiming his provoking grin right at her.

Her face almost matched Jeremy's now.

“I'll be brave, if you will,” Vaughn just heard Devan whisper to Jeremy as she gave his arm a quick squeeze. Then, to the group, “I'll grab towels,” and she dashed off.

Vaughn grabbed Devan's drink and the three of them moved to the deck. When Vaughn and Gordon had gotten the cover off the tub, Gordon reprimanded Jeremy playfully, “What do you think you're doing?”

Lilly white but veined with pink indentations carved by the knit of his socks and the architecture of his shoes, Jeremy's bare feet peeked out from under the hem of his navy cords, and he'd already dropped his sweater in a wad on the lounge behind him.

He shrugged and made a “What do you think I'm doing?” face at Gordon.

“What? Devan's going to come back and we're all going to be discreetly cloaked under the water, watching her do a strip tease for us?” Gordon laughed. “Does sound like fun, actually. But not very considerate of her.”

Dev turned up the next second with the towels. Now Jeremy's rush to get his clothes off was forgotten; he fidgeted for a long time with each little thing he took off, tucking his socks away inside his shoes, folding his sweater and t-shirt, inexplicably extricating his belt from the loops of his cords and winding it up and securing it between his shoes so it wouldn't unwind. He kept his eyes down, on himself, and Vaughn wondered if he was avoiding seeing too much of Devan or of him, or if it was their eyes on his body that he was afraid of.

Gordon, on the other hand, wasn't exactly posing, but somehow every move he made seemed like an invitation to look, and Vaughn allowed himself to gaze on the body Gordon was baring so eagerly and self-consciously. His torso so lean that the slight muscle was vividly defined. Pierced navel and nipples—all silver studs. Like his forearms, his upper arms, shoulders and back bore an array of tattoos, not florid and all bleeding into each other in a swirl of skulls and flames; the ink was in a dark, sober palette, the abstract designs were discrete but complemented one another. Like pieces in a gallery exhibit. His cock was semi-hard as he slipped out of jeans, and he was smiling when Vaughn glanced back up to his face. Caught.

Then he followed along as Gordon's gaze shifted over to Dev. Her body looked so soft and smooth and pale after the hard, cut, painted body he'd just been looking at.

Sweet Dev, the way she blushed and smiled and laughed as their eyes turned to her.

But she kept on, reached back to unhook her bra, slipped the straps down her arm and let it fall to the deck, smiling at Vaughn, blushing when she looked back and Gordon—

standing as casually and comfortably in his nudity as if he were hanging out fully dressed in the familiar atmosphere of their living room--was still watching her, blatantly sliding his gaze over her bared breasts, grinning but not turning away when she noticed him staring for so long. But she just kept going, unbuttoning and unzipping her slacks and sliding them down, then stepping out of the little wad they'd made at her feet. That she came back up for her panties in a separate move made Vaughn think she was enjoying it all.

Something at the edge of his vision drew Vaughn's attention to the left just in time to see Jeremy slipping down into the turbulent water. Vaughn shucked off his boxer 634

briefs and stepped down into the tub. Smiling, her eyes fixed on him, Devan descended next, settling beside him.

Gazing down on the others as he circled the long way around, Gordon delivered Jeremy's half-consumed, forgotten cocktail, then slipped down next to him. As he sank down it was as if the water in the tub extinguished some spark in Gordon, now that all four of them were modestly concealed beneath the water. He nuzzled up to Jeremy, whispered something to him, and Jeremy nodded. Gordon whispered again, and Jeremy nodded again, smiling now, and Gordon playfully kissed the other's cheek, his neck, his ear.

When Vaughn slipped his hand under Devan's hair to run the tip of his finger in little circles over the wet skin at the nape of her neck, he was caught off kilter, his body seemed so wired. An urge to pull her hair up, off her nape, to press his mouth to the pale skin there, to bite and lick her tender flesh surged up. But when she looked up at him he just tipped his forehead against hers.

“Sweetheart,” Gordon cooed to Jeremy, “can you even see through your glasses when they're all fogged up like that?”

“Not really,” Jeremy gave a little awkward laugh, “but I don't want to just set them on the ground. They'll get stepped on.”

“Here.” Gordon carefully took them off, and emerged from the Jacuzzi, deposited the glasses on the table a few feet away, and returned to Jeremy's side.

“Thanks.” Jeremy kissed the other's shoulder.

It was sweet, Gordon doing that, since Jeremy was shy. Shy as Dev, maybe more so. And Vaughn smiled to himself, amused at how Devan had followed Gordon's 635

circuit with her eyes. The heat bubbling all around him seemed to be seeping through his skin, settling and roiling low in his body. Disappointing, how all the ice in his drink had melted, but he took a big swallow of the rum-laced juice.

“You're off to New York after graduation, huh Dev?” Gordon asked. Strange, hearing someone else call her that. Except him, no one ever did.

“Mmmm. A little graduation vacation slash apartment scouting expedition.”

“Devan's such a star, NYU's funding her trip. Recruitment,” Jeremy informed Gordon like a proud parent.

“You guys should come,” Vaughn heard himself suggest before he'd known he was going to say it. For a second he regretted it, afraid Devan would be disappointed that he'd undone their first romantic getaway, but when he looked down she was beaming up at him.

“You should,” she tagged on. “The four of us. It'd be fun.”

“Maybe we should,” Gordon mused, looking for Jeremy's opinion in his face.

“You've never been.”

“It does sound better than going back to visit the pastor and his wife,” Jeremy said, referring to his parents back in Newton, North Carolina. “Email me your itinerary, D., and Gordon and I can see if we can work it out with our schedules.” Through his smile, Jeremy sounded a little off, and Vaughn wondered if he still hadn't heard back from any schools.

“So you're making the move, Vaughn?” Gordon asked.

“Time to reinvent myself. I'm working on concocting my new East Coast persona.”

“Maybe Lou Reed meets Deniro.”

“I was thinking more Paul Banks meets Howard Roark meets Henry James.

“Speaking of concoctions,” Gordon said, holding up his empty glass, “I see I'm not the only one ready for the next round.” All glasses were, in fact, provokingly empty.

“Sweetheart,” he sighed, turning to Jeremy, “be a honey and freshen up our drinks.” Jeremy turned still as stone, and made as much reply one could expect from one.

“Please, my darling.” Gordon's tender entreaty was delivered with the quiet calm of an order he had no doubt would be obeyed.

“Let me,” Dev piped, plucking the glass from Gordon's hand before he could protest, then reaching out for the others when she'd mounted to the deck. It was hard not to smile, knowing how shy she really was, seeing how intervening for Jeremy made her bold. Then it was hard not to stare, impossible to ignore the tug through his balls as she padded toward the house, naked, dripping wet, her black hair hanging in streaming ribbons over her pale shoulders and back, her luscious ass flexing and swaying a little.