Brainy and the Beast (32 page)

Our eyes met. Henry’s rock-hard dick was bumping the seam of my jeans, and the nudging of my balls through the denim was so hot. He alternated with rubbing back and forth and pushing against me. “What?” With a grunt, Henry shifted a little lower, his restrained dick hard along my crease. “I need. Let me—” He began rocking his hips faster, his teeth clenched and his lids lowering to half-mast.

“Come on, Doc. Come on. Do it. Come for me. Let go. Let go.” What possessed me I didn’t know. I just knew I needed him to be vulnerable for me, at least for a little while. He let go of my wrists, flattening his hands against the counter. He pushed upward, and more of his weight rested on my crotch.

Even with his eyes half closed, I could see him watching me, staring hard. Something about how he drilled me with that stare set off fireworks in my belly, and I could no more stop myself from letting him know how I felt than I could keep Rum from being a ball sniffer.

“I… You… It’s…” I took a deep breath. “I love you, you know.” When his eyes flared open and he gazed at me in shock, I nodded, my hair rasping against the laminate. “I do.” It was true. So true.

Henry shuddered over me, hips thrusting hard and fast. He grunted once, then again before freezing in place. He buried his face against my throat as he came, muffling his agonized moans. Between the two of us, I could feel plenty of heated wetness where his hips rested against mine.

My hands were on his back, sliding and smoothing over his shirt, and I mumbled stupid stuff into his ear. Babbling things, mostly.

“Jesus, Mary, and all the saints.” Henry didn’t look all there when he raised his head, and his voice sounded gravelly, nothing like his usual urbane self.

“You okay?” I winced at the inanity of my question.

“Um. I-I don’t think… I’m not sure.” Henry frowned as he pushed upright, head swiveling back and forth, looking around the kitchen—for what, I didn’t know. “Good God. We’re… We shouldn’t be doing this.” Catching sight of my face, he hurriedly added, “Here. We shouldn’t be doing this here.”

“Better.” A huge yawn caught me unaware, and I stretched, arching up into him as I spread my arms over my head. For whatever reason, I felt really good just then, even with wet jeans. “I know.” And suddenly I heard my nephew clomping down the stairs at a good clip. “Shit.” I jackknifed upright, nearly creaming Henry’s nose. “Here comes the herd.” Jumping off the counter, I stepped several feet away from my lover.

He scrambled backward, grabbing his jacket off a chair and yanking it up over his shoulders. When I spotted the wetness on his khakis, I smirked.

He caught me staring at his crotch and huffed a disgusted breath. “Really?”

It occurred to me that Grant had been gone quite a while, which had given me the freedom to go crazy. With Henry. In my own house. “How long does it take to change the sheets on a bed?” I wondered aloud. I shoved fingers through my hair, trying to rake it down, then quickly fastened my jeans. “I can’t believe we just did this here. In the kitchen.” I was back to feeling sheepish.

Henry was blushing, red spots high on his cheeks. Despite fearing my nephew would take one look at us and know exactly what we had been doing, I couldn’t help but think my guy was just gorgeous. His hair was mussed, his eyes were bright, his tie was— “Where’s your tie?”

Frantically patting his collar, Henry searched the area where he stood.

“Hey.” I spotted it on the floor. “No worries. Here it is.”

He snatched it out of my hand just as Grant and Shawn walked in. Grant halted abruptly, eyeing us suspiciously. He sniffed, a peculiar expression on his mug. “Really, dudes?”

“What?” I forced a laugh.

He stepped in front of Shawn, and part of me was proud of the protective way he blocked her view of us. “Uncle Nick.” His glance skittered between Henry and me. Grant sighed as he turned to his girlfriend. “They’re—they’ve been doing…something,” he mumbled. “Jeez. You guys are always going at it.”

The other part of me was embarrassed that my own flesh and blood was calling me to task. The kid was fourteen going on thirty. “Um. Never mind.” Time to turn it back on him. “What the heck took you so long, anyway? What were you doing up there?”

Grant mumbled something as he shrugged and dipped his head forward. That allowed his thick hair to cover his expression.

I shot a glance at Henry, but he was totally not paying attention. I figured he was still freaking that we’d done the nasty on the kitchen counter. “What was that?”

“I said I was cleaning my room.” Grant had an irritated expression, like maybe I should have known that.

“Oh.
Oh
.” It was normally a hell of a mess, so that explained where he’d been for the last twenty minutes.

The body language between the two kids was fun to watch. Grant shifted his weight back and forth, hands sliding into his back pockets, while Shawn hugged herself and had one foot crossed over the other.

Good God
. Not for anything would I go back to being a teenager. Especially since I could barely handle my own love life. “Um. Okay.” I could see Henry getting impatient out of the corner of my eye, and no way did I want him to even think of taking off. “Shawn, you go on upstairs, then. Grant’s room is at the top of the stairs, first door on the right. Bathroom’s just beyond it. Grant, you head on to the den. We’ll see you both in the morning.” I narrowed my eyes at Grant. “And no wandering upstairs during the night, you hear?”

“Uncle Nick!” he groaned.

Shawn giggled. Actually giggled. It was brief and it wasn’t loud, but it was a laugh. Between that and Henry, the night was definitely looking up.

“What about you?”

“Huh?” What was Grant talking about?

“Where are you and, um, Henry going to be?”

Put on the spot, I tugged my upper lip between my teeth. “Well. Um. You know. Upstairs.”

Dr. Love’s head came up quickly, and he stopped fussing with the hem of his jacket. He opened his mouth, but I glared a warning at him not to speak. He seemed to get the message, subsiding and folding his arms over his chest. He did have the cutest little pout, though.

“Uh. Okay.” Grant and Shawn said an awkward good night to each other. Grant ran skeptical eyes over both Henry and me before turning to follow his girlfriend. I looked sideways at him, daring him to say something. I’d never been this overt about it before, but I didn’t care. Not anymore.

My nephew stopped in the doorway. “Are you going to be here in the morning?” He was looking at Henry.

“Yes. He is.” I answered for my man.

“I’m perfectly capable of speaking for myself, Nicholas.” Henry was back to sounding huffy, and I figured it was because he didn’t like almost being caught rubbing off in my kitchen. “And the answer is, we’ll see.” He arched one brow and looked down his nose at me just a touch.

Rolling his eyes, Grant shook his head. “Man, Uncle Nick. I thought I had it bad with Shawn. You got no clue.”

Leaving me standing with my mouth open, Grant sauntered away.

“Punk.” I wanted so badly to stick my tongue out, but Grant was already gone and I didn’t need to confirm for Henry that I was lame. What the hell did that kid know, anyway?

“He’s right, you know. You are clueless.” Now that the kids were gone, Henry was clearly relaxing.

“Huh? What? Why?”

“Do your dogs need to go out?” Henry made a point of scanning the room.

“They’re in the living room, on the couch, the same place they are every night until I go upstairs.” I pointed through the doorway. “Why are you asking if they need to go out?”

“Well, I’m not a dog owner, but I just assumed they’d need to relieve themselves before you closed up the house for the night.” Confident once again, Henry stepped past me, whistling softly.

When even my dogs responded to him obediently, clicking and clacking across the hardwood dining room floor, I shrugged. “Just like their old man.” What was the point in denying it now? I opened the mudroom door and called them. “Come on, boys. Let’s go outside.”

By the time the dogs came back in and I’d wiped the snow off them, Henry was gone from the kitchen. My heart started to beat faster at the thought of him upstairs. In my bedroom.

I paced through the downstairs, turning off the television and checking on Grant. The boy was out cold already, maybe one of the few luxuries of being a teenager. The old chesterfield was plenty long enough for him, and I grinned briefly at the way his gangly body was sprawled over the brown leather.

The den was at the back of the house, facing north, and it could get cold in there on nights like this. I made sure the fireplace flue was closed, then pulled an extra blanket from the chest my mom had given me when I’d left home sixteen years ago. Shaking out the heavy cotton, I tucked it close around him.

It struck me at that moment how much different my life was with him in it. “Different in a good way, not a bad way.” I was sort of glad Grant wasn’t awake to hear me.

I could—and would—still curse my bitch of a sister up one side and down the other, but now I would have honestly said it was for the way she’d treated her own son, not for the way she’d dumped him on me.

“You really are a stupid bitch, Lindsey Shelton.” I whispered the words, then reached down to smooth Grant’s hair away from his face. “You have no idea what you’ve thrown away.”

He might make me crazy; he might frustrate me no end; but he was a good kid, and now I knew it. I really hoped
he
knew I knew it. I motioned to the two mutts. “You boys keep him company.” Rum and Coke obediently jumped up on the sofa, Rum in the crook of Grant’s knees, and Coke settled against Grant’s back.

Both dogs sighed at the same time, and I had to laugh. “Silly boys.”

When I got upstairs, I could hear the shower running as I approached my room.

One of the things I liked best about my house was the large bedroom in the back with the attached bathroom. It had been icing on the cake when I’d bought the place. Finding the small amount of acreage, the halfway-decent house, and the location had amounted to a gold mine. Then to find it already had a master suite—okay, maybe it was a stretch to call it a master suite, but still, it
was
an attached bathroom. And now my lover was in that room, making himself right at home.

I closed and locked the bedroom door, then tossed my shirt and squishy jeans in the direction of the laundry basket. As I headed toward the bathroom, I had to pause and grin like a sap when I saw Henry’s pants and shirt already piled there. I don’t know why, but it was kind of neat having his stuff mixed with mine. “Christ, you’ve got it bad, Nicky.” Even the sight of his staid blue boxers did something for me. He’d been leaving things each time he’d come, and I’d kind of surprised myself by not objecting.

It was quiet up here, and I could hear my heartbeat as I walked. The thud was loud, almost booming in my ears. The echo in my cock matched it; that little guy was bobbing, pointing the way toward Henry, almost as if he knew what waited on the other side of the door.

Condensation had the bathroom mirror fogged, and the room was nice and warm. I shut the door with a click and saw Henry pause a second before going back to scrubbing one arm.

He was clearly visible through the plastic curtain. My eyes feasted on the tasty treat in front of me, and I licked my lips. My breath began coming faster, and I opened and closed my fingers. For some stupid reason, I didn’t know what to do, how to move.

“Are you going to just stand there?”

Henry’s voice was quiet, but I heard it just fine. And it was all the invitation I needed.

“No. Uh, no.”

He scooted forward as I stepped over the curving edge of the claw-foot.

There was actually a good amount of room for the two of us in the monster tub, although not for acrobatics, as we’d learned a few weeks ago. The tub sat away from the wall about a foot, so there was nothing for him to press me against when he was being toppy. Though we had figured out a way to do it with him bent over the far end and me snugged right up behind. I smirked as I recalled that morning. I’d had him moaning and crying out nicely.

The hot water felt good, and I sighed as I moved close. Turning up my face to the spray, I closed my eyes for a second, relaxing. They popped back open when I felt Henry’s finger tracing my cheekbone. He was standing just inches from me.

“Did you mean it?” His blue eyes drilled into mine. Even with the bruising there, he still looked gorgeous to me.

I didn’t bother pretending not to know what he meant. “I did kind of, yeah.”

He eased back, running the yellow loofah over his shoulder. It left a trail of suds along his creamy skin. “Kind of?”

Trying to forget that I now had things like loofahs in my shower, I met his eyes again. “Uh. Well. No. Not kind of.” I reached for the bottle of shower gel. I sniffed at it as I flipped the top open. “What’s this stuff again?”

“It’s lavender and mint. And don’t change the subject.” Henry shifted just enough to rest one long foot on the tub’s edge. My eyes dropped to his dick, and I chewed my lip as he washed the inside of his thigh. His hand made long motions over and around his quad and hammy, then bent over his lower leg.

“I’m-I’m not.” Was there a prettier sight? Anywhere? Especially when he switched legs?

I jerked back instinctively when he snapped his fingers near my face. “Damn it! Why do you do that?”

He exchanged the loofah for a washrag. “Because you frequently get lost in a fog when I’m talking to you.” The cloth nice and soapy, he began lazily washing his cock and balls.

“It’s… I can’t help it.” I forced myself to focus and grabbed the damned yellow sponge. “If you weren’t so fucking hot, I could probably keep my mind on what I’m doing all the time.” I dunked my head under the spray, then scrubbed at my skin.

Henry’s arms snaked around me from behind, yanking me tightly to him. “I’ll take that as a compliment, especially since you
are
as clueless as your nephew called you.” I croaked a complaint, but it was cut off when he squeezed my rib cage. “You are, you know. You play around like we’re both still eighteen and the only thing important is where to put your dick.” He ran the soapy cloth down my belly. “In fact, I do seem to recall you giving me your philosophy of a dating relationship not too long ago. How did you put it once before?”