Laying a Ghost (13 page)
“You need to forget what you expected. And you need to remember that you’ve gone through a hell of a lot and you’re still tired from traveling.” John took a contemplative sip from his glass and stared at the fire. “Why don’t you go to bed? You’ve pushed yourself about as far as you can go today, what with ghosts, and tripping on rocks, and letting yourself get seduced by strange men. Go to bed. I’ll sleep here, and if you get visited by someone who’s not just looking for a goodnight kiss, yell and I’ll come running.”
“Let’s just sit here for a little while.” Nick took another sip of whiskey and studied John’s profile while the other man was occupied looking into the fire. “You didn’t seduce me,” he said after a minute, watching as John’s face turned toward him. “I wanted it just as much as you did.” Nick smiled a little bit, hoping to lighten the mood. “And you’re not
that
strange.”
“I don’t see how I can seem anything else through your eyes,” John replied. “For all that we have in common.” He looked at Nick. “But I’m hoping you’ll get used to me in time, and after all, it’s just the same for me.” He shook his head sadly, a glint of laughter in his eyes. “I never thought I’d fall so low as to kiss a man who can’t get his lips around a simple ‘Slainte Mhath.’ Even the English tourists say it better than you do.”
Nick flexed his left hand, which was resting on his thigh, and didn’t feel more than a dull ache. That was a relief -- for a minute, on the beach, he’d wondered if he’d broken it again, and the thought of it had sent a surge of panic through him. “I’ll practice,” he promised. “Just not tonight.” He looked over at John again, thinking now that the whiskey was running through him that there were other things he wanted to do tonight and none of them worked with John sleeping on the couch.
“Do it with a dram in your hand and just keep sipping.” John was staring at the small, leaping flames again, his fingers tight around his glass. “Would you have come here if you hadn’t had the accident, do you think? Just out of curiosity?”
“I don’t know.” But Nick could easily imagine having spent the next ten years doing exactly what he’d been doing for the previous ten, after graduation hadn’t brought with it any job he could do, and Matthew had persuaded him to market his abilities, although he’d phrased it differently. A decade spent driving around the country with Matthew, letting Matthew take care of him. There’d been something he’d liked about that, even if he wasn’t happy about having liked it. He missed Matthew; losing him was like losing the use of his hand. Slowly, gradually, the pain of it was fading, but with alarming regularity he’d forget just long enough so that when he was reminded it took his breath away, leaving his chest aching. “Probably not. Maybe for a week or something, just to see the house. But I don’t think we would have stayed.”
John’s gaze came to his face then. “If you’d been here with Matthew I wouldn’t have wanted you to.” His words were blunt to the point of being rude. “God, it would have been hell to meet you and know I could never --” He broke off, looking distressed. “I shouldn’t have said that. You’ll be thinking I’m glad of your loss, and I’m not, I swear it. I’d not wish ill on another, or pain on you.”
Upset because John was, Nick finished his whiskey in one large swallow and moved closer. “I know.” He put his hand on John’s knee. “I understand. Really.”
John glanced down at Nick’s hand and then set his glass aside on the table by the couch, his movements careful. “Aye? It’s more than I do.” He curled his fingers under Nick’s where they rested on his leg and brushed his thumb over the top of Nick’s hand. “And I don’t understand why I can do that, just that, and feel like my bones are melting from the heat of it, either.” He brought Nick’s hand up and studied it. “Looks like just the usual sort of hand,” he murmured, dipping his head and flickering his tongue across Nick’s fingertips before biting down gently on the middle one.
Nick started to get hard instantly, his lips parting as John’s teeth and tongue did incredible, astonishing things to his fingers. He gasped when John bit down on the pad of his ring finger.
It
was
just a usual hand. It was John that was different. Special.
“John,” he whispered. “John, I --” Nick moved, turning and finding John’s mouth with his own, kissing him like someone who had been working outside all day in the hot sun might drink a glass of water, as if John might quench every thirst he’d ever had. He let his left hand fall down into John’s lap, not trying to do much but provide pressure if it was wanted, and focused all his attention on the taste of John’s mouth, on the strength of his lips and the warm, round flavor of the whiskey.
John was holding onto him, holding him close, and all the urgency of the afternoon was there again, waiting to flare up, held at bay only by the fact that kissing John was too good to rush. John’s hands slid up to cup Nick’s face, managing to be gentle even as his tongue swept deep inside Nick’s mouth with an assurance that he hadn’t shown earlier.
It wasn’t one kiss; it was dozens, their mouths clinging and breaking apart only to come together again as they slid down lower on the wide couch. It’d been years since Nick had kissed like this, years since he’d wanted to. It was the way he’d kissed when he was younger, when kissing had been enough to have him on the edge of coming. Doing it now, knowing what was waiting for him when they moved on, lent an edge to it that left him breathless. Or maybe that was from the slow slide of John’s mouth on his and the way John’s hands were finding every place on his neck that made him shiver.
Half lying on top of John now, Nick didn’t care about the awkwardness of their position or the fact that the fire seemed to be dying. He didn’t care that the curtains were opened and someone might easily look in and see the two of them making out on the couch like teenagers. All he cared about was John, and the soft, rumbled sounds of satisfaction that were escaping both of them as they kissed.
Nick slid his hand up underneath John’s shirt and groaned at the feel of smooth skin over hard, wiry muscle. A surge of desire too strong to deny made him slide down away from John’s mouth while simultaneously shoving John’s shirt higher, baring his chest and stomach to Nick’s eager lips.
He took a second to glance up at John, who stared back at him, wordless, the blue of his eyes half-hidden, and then bent his head, dragging his mouth over a nipple and licking at it until it rose to his tongue before moving on from the winter-pale skin of John’s chest down to the spreading line of dark hair striping his flat stomach. He paused sometimes, trying to remember each place where a kiss or a scrape of teeth made John’s breath catch or hiss out in a whimper, but not for long.
Not when he could always see another place he wanted to kiss and taste.
Nick moved lower, pressing kisses to John’s shaft under the layer of denim and smiling when John swore in a low voice and dropped a hand down to stroke his hair encouragingly. He worked at the stubborn button on John’s jeans with clumsy fingers, not paying any attention to the ache in his wrist in his determination to free John’s erection.
“Let me.” John’s hand came down. Nick watched John’s stomach muscles contract as he hooked his thumb inside the waistband of his jeans and flicked the button open a moment later. “Is that what you were trying to do?” John murmured. “Or were you planning to carry on driving me near demented a while longer?”
“That’s what I was trying to do.” Nick pulled back fabric, exposing the head of John’s cock. He inhaled the scent of John, just faintly musky underneath the crisp smell of soap, and drew a shuddering breath. “Wanted to do this before, in the kitchen.” Nick pressed a wet, sucking kiss to the sensitive tip and shivered in sympathy at John’s small cry. “Wanted to take off all your clothes and suck you. Have you come in my mouth, with your hands holding my head still.” He licked, tasting a hint of salt, and felt his own cock twitch.
“You could have had that.” John’s voice was intense as his hand pushed its way roughly, urgently through Nick’s hair to cup his head. “If you’d said, if I’d known that was behind the look in your eyes, I’d have left you with the taste of me in your mouth. So that you’d remember me and we wouldn’t have had to start over tonight, with you looking down at me, so fucking polite, as if you hadn’t come in my hand, on my skin, earlier today.” John shook his head. “Christ, you scared me.”
Nick’s heart skipped a beat, and he moved up along John’s body to kiss him again, feeling John’s cock pressed against his own clothed hip. “I scared you?”
“I thought --” John closed his eyes, screwing up his face in an oddly endearing way, and then opened them and met Nick’s worried look without flinching. “Thought you’d changed your mind. Didn’t want me. And as it was what I’d been telling myself might happen the whole time I was away, it didn’t take much to have me feeling that way.” He shook his head, reaching out to touch Nick’s face briefly. “And it wouldn’t be strange if you did feel like that. You’re still grieving, and I’d wonder if you weren’t.”
Nick kissed John again. “There isn’t any part of me that doesn’t want you.” It was the truth. That part, at least, was simple. Everything else he could think about later, when he didn’t ache from wanting John. “Come upstairs? Come to bed with me.”
“At least this time you didn’t wait to ask me that until I was past caring where we were as long as we were touching.” John glanced down at himself and grinned. “Only just though ...”
They stood and made their way up the stairs, John’s hand warm in Nick’s. The light was still on in the book room, and John glanced inside. The diary was still lying on the floor, open. They paused by the doorway. “I think it was my grandmother’s. Recipes and things. She liked lavender.” Nick’s thoughts seemed disconnected, separate from his body, which was still emphatically insisting it get what it wanted.
“Aye? They grow lots of it on
Nick groaned against John’s lips, more loudly than the physical situation warranted but just right for the erotic pictures and sensations that were going through his head -- the imagined feel of John’s bare skin against his own, the imagined sight of John standing naked and erect before him. He slid his hand inside John’s pants and touched his cock lightly before sliding down onto his knees, working fabric down over John’s narrow hips and nuzzling at his balls, feeling John tense and gasp above him. “I want to taste you,” Nick whispered, looking up at John. “Want to suck you.”
“Do it, then.” John leaned back against the closed door as if he needed its support. “God, will you do it before I’m the one on my knees?”
Nick licked John’s balls, mouthed at them, and then ran his lips up along the shaft until he reached the tip before taking John into his mouth completely, focusing most of his attention on the head as he sucked. When he glanced up, he could see that John’s head had fallen back against the door, his eyes closed, breath harsh. It made Nick want to do more; want to do everything. He wanted John to press him up against the wall from behind and fuck him, and he moaned at the thought even as he sucked harder.
And John’s hands slipped around his head, large, warm hands, work-roughened and strong, holding him still, as if that was all the signal he needed.
“You’ll tell me if you want me to stop.” John pushed away from the door and rubbed his thumbs slowly along Nick’s temples as he waited for Nick to adjust to the change in position. Nick didn’t bother pulling his head away to answer. It hadn’t really been a question anyway.
John began to fuck Nick’s mouth with lazy, slow thrusts that gave Nick time to breathe and swallow, time to swirl his tongue over the small slit in the head of John’s cock, catching each drop of pre-come as it welled up and spilled, time to get used to the difference after years of doing this to another man.
He wasn’t comparing them, because he couldn’t think of anyone but John right then, but Nick found himself automatically doing to John what Matthew would’ve liked and then catching himself and stopping, frustration making him lose the rhythm they’d found, so that it wasn’t entirely unexpected when John made a small, pained sound and stopped because Nick had scraped him too deeply with his teeth for it to be anything like pleasurable.
“Sorry.” Nick pulled back, frustrated and disgusted with himself. “I’m not ... I’m sorry.” He wouldn’t have blamed John for deciding to put a stop to this right then, under the circumstances, and that left him feeling empty and bleak.
John sank down on his knees and put his hands back where they’d been on Nick’s head, holding him in place. John looked concerned rather than annoyed, his gaze traveling over Nick’s face anxiously. “Did I hurt you? I didn’t mean to.” He moved one hand to Nick’s shoulder, kneading it gently, and brushed his fingers across Nick’s lips, barely skimming them. “Or did you stop because you thought you’d hurt me?” John sounded as if he hoped that was the reason.
Because he
really
didn’t want to go into what lay behind his ineptitude, Nick nodded, rewarded by an instant look of relieved comprehension on John’s face.
“It wasn’t that bad -- and you were in the perfect position to kiss it better, you know.” A small grin lightened John’s expression even more.
Nick wished that he was better at this. Not just fucking, because when it came right down to it he didn’t think he was all that bad at that, but the relationship thing. It had never worked with Matthew, and he’d always known that it was his fault. Matthew had wanted it; Nick was the one who’d always held him at arm’s length, keeping him from getting too close.
And this wasn’t the time to explain about any of that, but Nick didn’t have any other words.
“Right,” John said when Nick didn’t respond to his joke. “We’re back to the thinking too much, are we?” He sighed and stood up, dragging his shirt over his head, his words momentarily muffled. “I’m getting in that bed you seem so keen on using.” His shirt landed on the floor close to where Nick was still kneeling, although he’d twisted around to watch John. “And I’m hoping you’ll join me, or I’ll feel obliged to get out and go back to the couch, as I won’t take your own bed from you.” His jeans hit the floor with a louder thud and Nick got a glimpse of him naked -- and still hard -- before John pulled back the covers and got into bed. “And if I’ve taken your side, you’ve only got yourself to blame for it,” he added, giving his pillow an irritable thump before shoving it behind his head.
