Forever Promised (17 page)

“God, I needed your sympathy, you snotty Russian bastard,” Kimmy muttered, submitting to his care. “You have anything else to tell me? Do I look fat today? I know I’m all broken out—are my zits ready to pay rent or room and board?”

“The one between your eyes would like a class on Russian poetry, if you are not too busy, yes, that is very considerate of you. Now explain, please. From what I understand, you are upset about something that happens once a month and that you loathe.” All women loathed it. For three days a month Promise House was like emotional Armageddon, and anybody with testicles and sense kept his head down and watched his back. “Why would you be upset that this event arrived?”

Kim took a shuddery breath and leaned forward, contemplating the other pink cupcake with blue icing from the haven of her crossed arms.

“Because there were two lines on the pee-stick test, Mikhail. For three weeks, I
was
pregnant.”

Oh. Mikhail let out a deep breath. “I am sorry, Kimberly.” Carefully he placed his hand between her shoulder blades and started to rub. She relaxed into his touch—they had been dance partners for many years, and part of that was easing the other’s aches and pains. “Why did you not tell anybody?”

“That’s the thing,” she said quietly. “It’s not the first time it’s happened. Lucas and I—we’ve been trying for nearly a year.”

Mikhail widened his eyes. Kimmy, who could ask him if her zits were ready to pay rent, hadn’t
told
him? Hadn’t told
anybody
?

“Why was this such a secret?” he asked, puzzled and hurt. “Why would you not—”

“I haven’t even told Lucas after the first one,” she whispered. “I just told him I wasn’t regular, that’s all.”

And Mikhail heard the crushing loneliness then, of what it must be like to feel so lonely in a place where you were never alone.

“But
why
?” he asked, appalled. “Why would you not tell anyone! Not even
Lucas
? Kimmy!”

Lucas had been so patient. He’d arrived to take Martin home when Martin had run away to meet Jeff and find out if his brother really had been gay. Lucas and Kevin had been best friends—perhaps in the same way Deacon and Jon were best friends. Lucas had taken a job at Promise House, and, lost and adrift after leaving the Marines, he had found himself a quiet home. His courtship of Kimmy had been slow and patient, and Kimmy had, more often than not, been the one to put obstacles in his path. She had damage, the same as Mikhail had when he’d met Shane, and it took somebody truly worthy to deal with that damage, to minimize it, to help it become strength instead of allowing it to define a person.

Lucas—tall, burly, with a country boy’s smile and hair he let down to his shoulders—was almost the anti-Kimmy. He rarely swore, was chivalrous as hell, and now that he was a full-time staff member at Promise House, it was clear the sweetness of his disposition was also ideal when working with the fractured children Shane and Kimmy attempted to make whole.

He looked at Kimmy the same way Shane looked at Mikhail—as though the light from Mikhail’s smile was somewhat blinding. Mikhail was satisfied that finally, after watching Kimmy flounder through bad relationships and bad addictions,
here
was someone who could treat her well.

The fact that Kimmy would not tell her husband of these things was troubling.

“Why?” he asked again, and she had no more makeup to smear when the flood of tears released.

“Because,” she sobbed, “it’s my fault. My fault. Kurt gave me chlamydia, Mickey…
twice
!”

Mikhail actually felt his pulse pound. Kurt was her ex—and the one, Mikhail suspected, who had started Kimmy’s drug use in the first place. She had, perhaps, experimented, but until Kurt, Mikhail had never seen her get stoned every day.

“Twice?” he asked, more than a little appalled. Very clearly Mikhail remembered the first times Shane had ever touched him, and how careful Mikhail had been about protecting the man from his past. God. Mikhail thought seriously about looking Kimmy’s ex-fucker up and ripping his balls off.

“The second time, I didn’t figure it out until rehab. At first we thought it was the detoxing, but it kept hurting and my fever was bad, so they checked me out. I was… I was so fucked up, I thought the last thing I should be worried about was having children. I could hardly take care of myself!” She forgot about the tissue and wiped her face on her palm, and Mikhail tended to her like he would to one of the children. He wiped her eyes and put the tissue in front of her nose to blow, and when she was not quite so gross with fluids in her sadness, he pulled her against his chest. He was wearing a tight T-shirt and plaid shorts today, like any American boy in the summer, so it was okay, the mess she was making on him. He tightened his arms and told himself that was all he was worried about, his pristine ironed white cotton T-shirt.

Sobs shook her body, and he was reminded of how thin she was, how much she dieted to keep herself in shape for dance.

“It is probably nothing,” he said, wanting to believe it. “It is probably just your scrawny ass, that is all. Eat another cupcake, you will gain five pounds as I would, and you will be fine.”

She shook her head against his chest. “I tried that,” she confessed painfully. “I gained ten pounds over Christmas and kept it on for a few months. Remember that?”

Mikhail swallowed painfully. “I remember I thought you were beautiful, looking at Lucas at your wedding, and that you were foolish to worry about the weight with the dress. I remember that you looked very good in the antique color, and that white did not have enough character for you. I do not remember these things the way you do, Kimberly. I am sorry.” Pfaw, the blind man that love had made of him. Kimberly, his friend, his sister—he would not have seen her look any way but beautiful.

She cried harder against his chest, and he grasped for something, anything to tell her. It was Shane, he thought pitifully, Shane who made everything all right. But Kimmy would not go to her brother, just like her brother had not gone to her when he had been in the hospital, recovering from wounds—twice.

“We will call the doctor,” he said, sounding like he was sure. “Benny, she has a doctor for this, and we are on the same insurance for Promise House. He will see you, it will be fine. He will tell you there is a pill, or a shot, or you need to gain twenty pounds, or thirty. He will make it all right. Doctors do.” It was a lie—he knew this. His mother had been a nurse, and Ylena Bayul had seen through the fraudulent hope the doctors had held out from the very beginning, from the moment she was diagnosed. She had seen the chest X-rays; she had read the reports. She knew who survived and who did not, and which side her diagnosis fell on. But Kimberly was sobbing on his chest, and he needed to tell her something, something shiny, to make it better, just for the moment, just for today.

It had been five years since Shane had come into their lives again, five years since he had told his sister he had a family and had told Mikhail he wished so badly to court him. So much had happened in five years—much of it good. But this last, most surprising thing was most unwelcome. Where, Mikhail thought wretchedly, comforting Kimmy on his chest, where had he and Kimmy placed their ever-present armor against heartbreak? They had possessed it, once, had slid it on so easily they were not even aware when others were throwing themselves against it and bleeding. And now, when they had let it chip away so those that they cared for would not be hurt, it was nowhere to be found, and the wounds were as fresh and as red as they had been when both of them had been brand-new and had no sins in the world to stain them.

Crick
:
Thinking
’
bout sneaky
,
but not

D
EACON
’
S
shoulders were pressed into the bed, his hands flailing against the sheets. His ass was arched up off the bed. His still-sore ankle lay flat, but his uninjured one pressed against the mattress as he spread his legs and groaned, thrusting in measured strokes against the inside of Crick’s mouth as Crick squeezed the bottom half of his cock with his good hand.

Crick wanted to get off so bad, he thought he should get a medal for giving this blow job fully clothed.

Deacon wasn’t quite close enough, so Crick looked up and started running his hand over Deacon’s body, the tight, muscled tummy, the lean torso. For fun, he tweaked one of Deacon’s nipples as he swallowed the crown of his cock, and Deacon’s “Whoa!” plus a spurt of something salty in his mouth had Crick pulling back, grabbing the small plastic cup from underneath his hip with his game hand, and tightening those muscles with everything he had while he beat Deacon off like mad.

Deacon’s eyes flew open at the feeling of the cool plastic as it brushed his crown, but that must have stimulated him too, because his head fell back with a “Holy fucking Christ!” and he came solidly, three or four thick, clotty white streams, right into the little plastic specimen cup Benny had brought Crick from the doctor’s office.

Deacon was still shuddering, lying on the bed naked, and closing his eyes hard, then opening them quickly as he tried to get his bearings. Crick sat up on his knees, his own hard-on aching in his jeans, and fumbled in his pocket for the lid to the cup, which he screwed on
tight
so as not to spill any of the captured swimmers.

“What in the hell?” Deacon snapped, sitting up and pulling the sheets over his crotch.

“Nice one, Deacon. The little sheet said I needed twenty milliliters, but I think there’s way more in here.”

“You’re saving my jizz in a….” Realization dawned. “That’s why no sex for the last three days? And the ambush this morning?”

Crick should have blushed, he really should have, but he was just so damned pleased with himself. “You would have put it off otherwise,” he said frankly. “And besides, your ankle hurt too bad before now. It was perfect.”

“Perfect,” Deacon echoed flatly.

“Yeah. The sex thing was because of the ankle—well, until last night—and since, you know, I thought you’d get all self-conscious and pissed off if you knew you
had
to put it off for three days, I figured I’d tell you and then, you know, jump you.”

Deacon narrowed his eyes and focused on Crick’s face in that way he had when Crick had been in high school and had done something particularly dumbassed.

“Did we forget something, Carrick?” he asked with meaning, and Crick smiled dreamily.

“God, you were hot coming out of the shower,” he said, meaning it. He’d had the little cup, and he had walked into the bedroom and locked the door behind him in case Benny got there early, because he’d called her at Drew’s house that morning and promised the specimen in an hour. And then Deacon had hobbled out of the shower, his skin all pink from the heat as he toweled off his hair. His torso veed perfectly down to his hips, which had been cloaked in the towel. And suddenly, Crick didn’t just
want
to touch him, Crick
had
to—it was his
job.

Best. Job.
Ever.

Crick had started with a kiss, palming the back of Deacon’s head and taking over, devouring him with the sort of confidence that their time living together as lovers had given him. Deacon had devoured him right back, and Crick had shown the initiative for once. Deacon, who had been trying to make peace ever since their squabble at the hospital, let him, and… well. Opportunity, right?

Except….

“Yeah,” Crick muttered, looking at the little cup like it had betrayed him when he hadn’t expected it. “Sorry—I forgot to tell you that’s what we were doing.”

Deacon screwed his eyes shut and threw himself back on the pillows with a groan. At that moment there was a knock on the front door. Crick brightened and lunged for the door.

“Stay there!” he ordered. “And
stay naked
!”

“The hell I will!”

Crick turned and glared at him. “I mean it, Deacon. If you get up and get dressed and go out and hobble around and get in everybody’s way, you’ll leave me in here with a hard-on and a full bottle of lube.” The thought made Crick shift and adjust himself. “Either way, I won’t get much work done, but with you there to help, there
might
be food on the table for Sunday dinner.”

Deacon’s jaw dropped, and then his expression went slack and he got a little dreamy as well. He tried to pull himself out of it and get mad again—Crick could tell by the tightening of his eyes and the way his lower lip, which was normally sinfully full anyway, thrust out, but in a second Benny was going to open the door and look for the two of them, so Crick didn’t have time to soothe him.

“Stay there—
please
!” Crick snapped, and then dodged out the door.

“Crick?” Benny was bent over, raiding the refrigerator. “Did you need me to get anything tonight? You said something about fried chicken, which, you know—fat! Do you want some skinless chicken breasts to broil for Deacon and anyone who doesn’t like fried?”