The Foster Family (8 page)

He shrugged. “You are entitled to say that. My assessment of how safe you are for my Charlie depends on this story. If you don’t want to tell it, don’t. You will still be our gardener. Just not our boy.”

“Oh.” Their boy. When had that card even been put on the table? How had I missed it?

It sucked that Lissa was so right about this. About me. I slouched down into the seat and stared out the window as he drove slowly through the traffic-clogged streets.

Of course I told him—every last detail—and watched his face get darker and darker as the tale unfolded.

“Who would do that to you?”

“If I knew—”

“It had to have been your roommate.”

I shook my head. “No way. You didn’t see him. The guy was nearly in goddamn tears over that thesis paper. He’s royally fucked without it, and he doesn’t need my drama heaped on top of the rest, or worrying about how his rent’s gonna get paid.”

Malcolm glanced at me, face like thunder, and pulled over to the side to the road. “Rule number one. Gardener or boy, enough swearing. If that’s the best vocabulary you can come up with, better you say nothing at all. Am I understood?”

I glared right back at him, but he didn’t even blink. God, his eyes looked like fuckin’—like obsidian shards. He drew his eyebrows down in a sharp twist over them, and I found myself swallowing hard, mouth too dry to speak, so I nodded.

He waited, gaze intense, expression stern.

“Yes, sir,” I managed at last.

He smiled. Fuck me, but he had a brilliant smile. He could have totally rolled me over and fucked me right there, in broad daylight, and I would have gladly let him. I wasn’t normally that slutty, but he did something to the pathways between my brain and my dick that the rest of me couldn’t counter.

“What you need, Kerry…”

Is a goddamned good fuck.
I stared up at him, trapped in his gaze.

“…is an afternoon of good, solid hard work.”

“Oh yeah—wait. What?”

“Your mind’s in the gutter,” Malcolm said with a wicked grin as he settled back square in his seat and consulted his rearview mirror. “You couldn’t be more obvious if you went out and got ‘Fuck Me’ tattooed across your forehead. I’m not saying that will never happen. Just saying you have to earn the privilege. You can start in the backyard.”

He eased the car back into the stream of traffic and kept his gaze on the road from that point on. I wondered if he knew the way he’d been looking at me was enough to give me a raging hard-on that wouldn’t go away. It was going to be an uncomfortable afternoon.

I
NEEDN
’
T
have worried. Between the sun beating down and the number of shrubs that required freeing from their winter burlap prisons, I was plenty uncomfortable with sweat seeping through my shirt and muscles aching from underuse all winter. The erection disappeared around the time I unwrapped the third shrub. It wilted so definitively, I doubted I would get it up again anytime soon.

Malcolm came out a few times to offer water and stand on the porch, arms crossed, watching me. He barely spoke and didn’t offer to help, even while he watched me struggle with stakes hammered so far into the ground it took me throwing my weight against them to get them to move.

He smiled when I finally got a particularly stubborn one uprooted.

“Looks good,” he called. “Another hour and a half or so and dinner will be ready.” He offered a particularly shifty smile. “You can shower inside this time.”

“I don’t have clean clothes.” I plucked at my damp, mud-streaked shirt and pushed my glasses up my nose as they slipped—again—through my sweat.

He shrugged, stuck his hands in his pockets, which showed off an impressive erection, and went back inside.

“Fu-uck.” I leaned on the stake and panted for a few minutes. The man was going to send me completely around the bend. But he’d given me a task and told me I had to earn what I could no longer deny I desperately wanted: that impressive erection buried deep in me. So I went back to work and tried not to think about it. Yeah. Because that was a piece of cake, putting that thought out of my head.

On the plus side, I’d never accomplished so much in a scant hour and a half as I did trying to work hard enough not to spooge in my pants over the fantasy.

I was in the shed, wiping the tools down and putting them away, when I heard a car and peeked out. I could see the drive and watched Charlie get out of a mud-brown Jeep and slump toward the front door. Poor guy looked completely wiped. Malcolm met him halfway, stopped him with a kiss that had Charlie dropping his briefcase and jacket in the gravel and grabbing fists full of Malcolm’s shirt. He closed his eyes and about melted as Malcolm dug hands into his hair and took everything he wanted from that kiss.

“Fucking hell,” I muttered. Watching them was not helping me get over the discomfort in my pants.

Malcolm dragged him toward the door, and Charlie didn’t even protest, leaving his shit behind in the driveway. I did catch the glance Malcolm directed toward the garden shed’s open door and the devilish grin he shot me when he saw me standing there watching.

Charlie still had his eyes closed, reaching for that kiss to be renewed, and he trusted Malcolm to lead him into the house and not trip him up. Malcolm pointed over his lover’s shoulder to his things and gave me a significant look.

There was no doubt I’d just been ordered to clean up after him. I nodded and went back to cleaning the tools and putting them away before going to gather Charlie’s belongings from the drive and taking them around back to the other door. I had an unsettling feeling that, gardener or house boy, I was not welcome to use the front door unless invited. It shouldn’t have been possible to get any harder, and that thought should not have made me so. But it did, and I moaned softly under my breath, sure I was walking like a spastic duck to spare my dick.

The house was quiet. I removed my shoes, hung Charlie’s things in the closet, and peeked under pot lids in the kitchen. It looked like we were having some sort of pasta for dinner if the tomato-and-meat concoction in the pot on the stove was any indicator. It smelled like heaven, and I realized exactly how hungry I was and how long it had been since I’d eaten. My stomach snarled a warning, and I replaced the lid. I was ready for a good meal, but I was also covered in garden dirt.

“Hello?” I called, peering through the doorway to the rest of the place.

“Shower!” Malcolm called from deeper in the house. “Everything you need is on the vanity.”

“Um.” I frowned and glanced around. “Okay?” I wandered down the hall off the kitchen and glanced through half-open doors, looking for the bathroom. I found it one doorway before what I figured had to be the master bedroom at the end of the corridor. That door was partially open too, and I thought that was probably where Malcolm’s voice had come from. I tiptoed toward it and slowed when I heard the low moans coming from inside.

I should have stopped. I should have turned around and gone to the bathroom, closed the door, and minded my own business. I should have. Of course I fucking well didn’t.

Just through the crack of space between the door and the frame, I could see Malcolm standing near the bed in a tank top and trousers, his feet bare. Another few steps showed me Charlie, kneeling in front of him, gazing up at him. He still looked tired but not so wrung out as he had in the driveway. Malcolm stroked a hand through his hair and smiled.

“You want it, don’t you?” he asked.

Charlie nodded, folded his hands in his lap, and continued to watch him in silence.

“You know the rules.”

Another nod as Charlie rose fluidly to his feet. Without a word, he began to strip and fold his clothes neatly and hang them over the back of a chair. He was gorgeous, even performing such a menial task. Wide shoulders, muscled arms, and thick thighs came into view a little at a time. Judging by the look on Malcolm’s face, I was not the only one appreciating the slow reveal.

When he turned from the closet to face Malcolm, Charlie had only his boxer briefs on, and the vision of his round ass made my mouth water.

“All of it,” Malcolm said.

“The boy….”

A slow grin spread over Malcolm’s face as he palmed himself through his pants. “So not my concern right now.” He cupped Charlie’s chin and stroked his thumb over his lips. “Right now,
you
are the boy. Strip.”

Charlie dropped his gaze. “Yes, Sir.”

His ass without the shorts was much better.

“Kneel.” Malcolm’s voice dropped a register, and Charlie obeyed without further hesitation. The hairs on the back of my own neck rose in response to that low, firm tone.

“Now me,” Malcolm ordered.

Charlie silently unzipped his lover’s pants and worked them off his hips, pulled them to the floor, and folded them precisely to lay them on the chair. Then he waited, head bowed.

The tableau burned itself into my brain. Charlie was a beautiful man. And he was hardly demurring at any time, even now. But he was completely subdued under Malcolm’s gaze. Knowing just the little of him I’d observed, I knew this quiet, contained persona had to be a choice.

I imagined myself in his position, and immediate tension corded through the muscles of my shoulders and back. My nerves hummed a warning along my limbs and I took a step back before I even thought to move.

“God, I love you like this,” Malcolm said softly, and his pleased tone cradled the thoughts of flight in my head, stilling the wings fluttering in my chest, and I didn’t leave. “Are you tired?” he asked Charlie.

“Yes, Sir.”

“Too tired to pleasure me?”

Charlie shook his head. “Never, Sir. May I?”

Again, Malcolm lifted his face, a hand under his chin. “You may open your mouth.”

Charlie’s clear blue eyes never wavered from Malcolm’s face as he parted his lips. “Thank you, Sir.” He closed his eyes and dropped his lower jaw.

Malcolm slipped out of his shorts, palmed his dick, and caressed Charlie’s face tenderly as he slid his cock deep into his mouth.

Charlie moaned low in his chest as his jaw worked around Malcolm’s cock. He was apparently good at what he was doing, because Malcolm tipped his head back and tightened his fingers as they slipped into Charlie’s hair. He rocked his hips slow but deep, and soon, Charlie went still, letting Malcolm fuck him, hands lightly clasped behind his back.

“Good God, I love you like this,” Malcolm said again as he picked up speed and force, and Charlie gave in to his every move.

My own cock ached enough that my eyes began to cross as I watched. I wanted to whip it out and stroke myself right along with Malcolm’s rhythm, and even as I got my zipper between my fingers, Malcolm’s head came up. His gaze met mine and he shook his head a tiny fraction.

I froze, heat racing to my face, more blood flooding my dick. I was going to explode in my pants, and I took a step back, hoping to escape, but he shook his head again. His fingers flexed in Charlie’s hair, and he pulled free of his lover’s mouth, turning Charlie’s head.

Charlie allowed the movement, licking his lips as he gazed, eyes slightly glazed, at me.

“Finish your job, boy,” Malcolm said softly, turning Charlie back to face him.

Willingly, Charlie took him into his mouth again and sucked hard.

“That’s it,” Malcolm purred. “Just like that.” He stroked Charlie’s hair and face, letting him do the job his way now. All the while, he stared at me, and without saying a word, refused me the option of getting myself off.

And all he had to do was pin me there with that gaze. Wings of fear and excitement battered at me, like trapped little creatures in my chest incapable of stilling or escaping. I couldn’t breathe, could barely think beyond the confines of one man’s simple, compelling gaze.

It amazed me how unconcerned Charlie seemed to be, letting me watch Malcolm use him like that. How Malcolm could get off while I watched and still be in such consummate control of both of us. But he did, and it was an amazing sight to see him reach climax, see how he tensed and let his release free into Charlie’s mouth.

It was beautiful to watch him cradle Charlie afterward, cupping his head against his hip and stroking his hair. To watch Charlie’s eyes drift closed and a smile of satisfaction curl his lips as he licked away the last of Malcolm’s spunk.

“Go shower, Kerry,” Malcolm said, his voice low and gentle. “Leave the door open.”

I moaned. I couldn’t help it. I wanted to lock the door and jerk off in private, but when I opened my mouth to refuse, Charlie blinked up at me. There was such peace in his expression. He still looked tired, but he also looked so very happy.

I nodded and left them alone to do whatever they did after something that intensely intimate. As much as I wanted to, I didn’t close and lock the door behind me. I didn’t leave it wide open, but I didn’t latch it either.

I managed to get my clothes off and myself into the shower without breaking Malcolm’s injunction against jacking off. I even got soaped up. But the rinsing off defeated me. All the slickness of the soap running down my abs and thighs and the beat of the water on my still-raging cock finally tipped the balance, and I wrapped tight fingers around myself.

The first stroke was heaven. Then the bathroom door hinges creaked, and I didn’t have to turn to know there were eyes on me.

“Go away,” I panted, already knowing the demand was a futile one.

“You watched us,” Charlie pointed out, very gently.

“Turn around,” Malcolm said.

Fuck but that tone of voice was almost impossible to ignore. I squeezed my cock, hard, hoping to kill my erection, but half a day of battling it, watching them fuck like that, and now feeling their gazes crawling all over me…. There was no way.

I groaned and rested my head on the tiles. “Please go away,” I begged.

The door creaked again.

The last thing I expected was tears stinging my eyes, and I blinked, trying to blame it on the shower spray. The shower door slid quietly open and a hand spread over my back.

“Turn around, Kerry,” Charlie whispered.