Double Blind (30 page)

Ethan glared at him. “That’s it, you
are
making it up, aren’t you? You’re pulling my leg. You just said that—” But he couldn’t come up with a reason why Randy would say that. Ever.

Randy held up his hands. “Baby, I would not fucking joke about that.”

“But we’ve only known each other two days!” Ethan protested. It came out sounding panicked. “This isn’t
rational!
”

Randy pointed at Mitch and Sam, who were standing with their arms threaded around one another, Sam’s at Mitch’s neck, Mitch’s at Sam’s waist as they nuzzled noses beneath the streetlight. “When they arrived in Vegas two years ago, they had only been together for two nights since Mitch had picked Sam up on a lark in Iowa. Prior to that they’d had one fuck in the alley behind Sam’s aunt and uncle’s pharmacy and one date over Mexican food. It was more accurate to measure their relationship in hours. And they were so far fucking gone by the time they got to me, it was scary. It’s not a rational subject area.”

Ethan had nothing to say to that, so he just gave the driver instructions to “drive them around for a while,” and then he followed the others into a car. This time the music was Lady Gaga’s “Bad Romance,” and Sam was already dancing on his seat as Ethan shut the door.

“We should have gotten a van,” Sam said, lifting his arms and moving his whole upper body to the beat. “Then we could dance while we rode around, like Madonna in the ‘Sorry’ video.”

Randy looked up at the ceiling and grinned. “Come over here, Peaches,” he said, and rose to push the button on the moonroof. And then Sam was laughing and sliding up Randy’s body before they began to dance together, only half their bodies visible as they stood in the narrow square of space. Then abruptly Randy dipped down, his black shirt gaping open as he crouched. “Hey,” he called out. “Crank the music, Old Man.” He braced against Ethan as the car went around the corner, made “up, up, up” motions at Mitch as he turned the system up louder and louder, and then as Ethan thought his eardrums would surely split open, Randy gave the “OK” sign, and started to rise. The car shifted again, though, and he gripped Ethan’s knee to catch himself from falling. He grinned and gave Ethan’s leg a quick feel before sliding to his feet to join Sam in dancing in the desert night.

As he rose, Ethan caught the glint of silver on his finger.

Nick’s ring. Randy was wearing Nick’s ring.

This upset Ethan, actually, more than Randy’s declaration, even though it fit Randy’s personality better. There was no pretending it was some other ring. It was a simple silver circle, but there was a specific thickness and width to it, and there were some simple markings on the band that shimmered when they caught the light. That was Nick’s ring. And Randy had put it on with the rest of his outfit. As a trophy? A taunt? A warning? To himself, or to Ethan?

Randy crouched down again and looked at Ethan. He shouted to be heard over the music. “Where are we headed, Slick?”

“I don’t know,” Ethan admitted, and his eyes fell to Randy’s hand. Yes. Absolutely, that was Nick’s ring.

Randy caught him looking, and then he met Ethan’s gaze, holding it. Ethan waited to see what he would say, what he would do, what excuse he would give. But he didn’t give any, just picked up the phone that called the driver and cupped his hand around the mouthpiece as he shouted some instruction. Then he put the phone back in its cradle, his gaze grazing Ethan once more as he rose and disappeared through the moonroof again. Seconds later his hands reappeared and his leather jacket fell in a heap on the floor, then his hands rose back through the hole, and he began to dance.

It could have been a Vegas attraction, sitting in a limo full of pounding music as Sam and Randy undulated through the moonroof, only their bottom halves visible, their hips swinging and thrusting in time to the beat, their laughter filtering down like echoes from far away.
I want your love. I don’t want to be friends,
Gaga sang, and as the music swelled, Ethan sat back in his seat. He took in the sight that was their asses, their thighs, their legs, Sam’s very slender but still decidedly male, straight and long. He looked at Randy’s too. His leg muscles were just a bit more formed, but when you looked at the pair of them standing there, you realized they were not that dissimilar. Randy had a few inches in height on Sam and more hours on heavy labor and at the gym, but beyond that they were a study in masculine beauty, at this moment from the waist down.

The music was raunchy and strong and proud and perfect, and it set something free inside Ethan, something dark and primal, but something good and pure too. The Ethan who had spent so long managing other people’s money, waiting patiently while his lover lived another life that he did not share with him—that Ethan fell back, fell away, and a new Ethan came forward, an Ethan who had always been there, an Ethan who liked hard sex, liked money, and played with gangsters. An Ethan who liked watching these two men dance before him, dancing, in a way, for him, in the car he had hired with money given to him by the mob, and as the music banged around him, he gave in to it, to all of it.

I’m a free bitch, baby,
Lady Gaga sang, and Ethan smiled in quiet agreement.

He glanced over at Mitch, who was also taking in the sight his husband and his friend made, but as soon as Ethan got a good look at the trucker, he found he was the more absorbing attraction. He hadn’t spoken much to Mitch, but he’d pegged him as a stern, slightly gruff, quiet man of simple pleasures. He didn’t doubt Mitch and Sam did fine in the bedroom, but Ethan hadn’t thought much about it until now. If he’d been asked, he’d have assumed that Mitch was a rather vanilla sort of man, as simple in his sexual tastes as he was everything else. That is, he had, until he saw Mitch’s face and posture. Even in his jeans and cream-colored button-down, he looked like the highest of high rollers, the king of Crabtree’s deck of men, arms extended over the back of his seat, leg kicked up over his knee, his body open and relaxed as he watched Sam and Randy dance. He was enjoying it, and he was enjoying it a lot. If you looked at his face, you could see him planning to enjoy more than just dancing. There was a primal sort of hunger about him, and as Ethan watched, he realized there was much, much more to Mitch than he had first assumed.

“I would rather have taught Sam to drive stick myself,” Mitch said. He said it loudly, because of the music, but he spoke casually, and he kept his eyes on the dancing. But he was speaking to Ethan.

Ethan didn’t know what he was supposed to say to that. But he found he wasn’t afraid, or even uncomfortable, just unsure of what to say. Then he remembered what Crabtree had said.

“Why haven’t you taught him before now, then?” Ethan asked, just as loudly.

Mitch drew a beer he’d rested against his thigh up to his lips and took a swig. Then he grimaced. “Because it didn’t seem like a big deal.”

“He can’t drive while you’re here in Vegas,” Ethan said, “not without knowing how to drive a stick.”

“I would have bought him a car,” Mitch said, but there was a testiness about the way he said it that gave Ethan a strange window into the man, and he realized Randy was right: Poker wasn’t cards. Poker was reading people.

“How many times have you said that—that this time, while you’re here, you’ll buy a car he can drive?” He saw the truth of it in Mitch’s wince. Ethan pushed on, but gently. “He didn’t want a car. He just wanted to know how to drive the truck.”
Like the two of you,
Ethan added silently.

Mitch flattened his lips, but said nothing more, just watched his husband and his friend dance.

Sam dipped down, face flushed and hair windblown, and he was smiling, but when he saw Mitch’s face, he paused. His smile didn’t die, but it changed, his expression soft and sultry at once. It was as if they were speaking a silent language, sliding into the roles of a game that Ethan didn’t understand but was drawn to all the same.

And then Sam kept his eyes on Mitch, reaching back and putting an open, splayed hand on Randy’s hip, his fingers reaching up to curl against Randy’s waistband, his thumb reaching all the way toward the line of Randy’s fly. Randy’s dancing stopped, just for a moment, and then his hand came down and landed on the back of Sam’s hair, his fingers curling into it as his hips began to move again, and he slid Sam’s hand closer to the growing outline of his cock against his jeans. The two gestures, so simple, so natural, were so erotic that they caught Ethan and froze him in place, and he waited for the rest. But nothing else happened, because the music ended, and as the song changed, Sam woke from his trance, turned to Ethan, and froze.

“I’m sorry,” he said, and hurriedly pulled his hand away from Randy.

It all happened so fast, the touch, the withdraw, and Ethan’s reaction, but the thoughts came at him not in a sequence but in clusters, clouds that bloomed in his mind, whole truths and images and choices. He saw that this, whatever this was between the three of them, was more than just friendship. He also saw that it was mostly between Sam and Mitch, that Randy simply played along because it was fun—and because he loved them both, each in their own way, and he loved the two of them as a couple. But Sam had touched Randy far more for Mitch than for Randy. The hint of pleasure he had briefly intended to give his friend and even lover was nothing compared to the show he knew he was giving his spouse, a show he had clearly given before and would be happy to—maybe even needed to give—again. Ethan also saw that Mitch enjoyed this too; a quick glance gave him another cluster of images and information. Mitch really liked watching Sam with another man. Probably some of it was that the man was Randy, but somehow Ethan was pretty sure that a total stranger could fondle Sam or offer himself for fondling, and Mitch would find it just as erotic. Maybe even more so.

And Ethan knew that Randy liked it. He realized, as he watched Randy’s fingers kneading Sam’s hair, that Randy missed it. Ethan thought, knowing Randy, that this was just another way Randy was outside, with them but not of them, loving them and loved by them, but he was not of them, not completely. He was Crabtree’s joker, blending in anywhere, but always a rogue, never belonging, always alone.

Except Randy wasn’t. He was alone, yes, but he didn’t have to be. He wasn’t just happy-go-lucky. He wasn’t a court jester. He just played one. Suddenly Ethan could see, and he wondered how he’d ever let himself be blind to it.

Randy wasn’t a joker. He just pretended to be one. Randy was an ace. Which meant that Randy, too, was alone.

Except with me.

The cloud of information about Ethan himself, about his own decisions, was murkier and harder to put into clear concepts. All Ethan knew was how watching that touch had felt to him, how much he had enjoyed it. And he thought about what Randy had confessed, about his wearing the ring, and then he remembered the way Randy had pushed into Sam’s hand, and the way he’d looked naked and tied down over the bench. The next thing Ethan knew, he was sliding forward on the seat, taking Sam’s hand, and placing it back on Randy.

But he didn’t put it on Randy’s hip; he pressed Sam’s hand very deliberately up against the long, hard shape of Randy’s cock.

For a moment they held like that, frozen in place. Sam was watching Ethan, wide-eyed, but there was lust there, too, and that soft, sultry look that Ethan had seen before. Randy held still, but his hand was kneading gently against Sam’s hair, and Ethan could suddenly see him, standing above, looking out at Las Vegas, watching it go by as his lover and his friend knelt beneath him. He could see Randy’s surprise and confusion warring with desire.

Ethan smiled, then released Sam’s hand. He reached up, freed the button of Randy’s fly, then took Sam’s hand and used it to tug down the zipper. They watched, both of them together, as the dark blue of Randy’s briefs appeared, and then Ethan let go of Sam again to reach up and pull the waistband of Randy’s jeans and then his briefs down. He watched desire pool in Sam’s eyes as Randy’s thick cock came into view, the shaft long, hard, and ready. The smell of it surrounded Ethan, sweat and sex and the lingering scent of his soap. He watched Sam’s lips part, wet, plump, eager, and Ethan kept his eyes on them as he reached up, closed his hand over Randy’s on the back of Sam’s head and pushed Sam forward, kneeling and using his other hand to guide Randy’s penis into the young man’s open mouth.