Too Stupid to Live(Romancelandia) (5 page)

Reformed rakes make the best husbands
. Sam managed to stop himself from blurting that out.

Jurgen gave him a long, silent look. Then he sighed. “Fine.” He turned and walked away down the hall.

The rest of the party was semi-torturous. Sam was sure he would have to watch Ian going at it with some guy, somewhere. Ian was a flirt, in spite of not laughing and rarely smiling. Guys threw themselves at him.

Probably Ian was better described as a flirt-magnet. He was also a bastard. Toying with Sam, doing subtly sexy things to make him nuts that no one else seemed to notice. Did a normal guy need to lick that many drops of beer off his lower lip? Did a normal guy wait until each droplet hovered on the point of falling, practically begging for someone else’s tongue to suck up said droplet from the bottom of his plump, full lip?

Did normal guys have to scratch their flat, taut bellies, pulling their shirt up with their searching fingers, revealing slivers of skin and clinging hair? When Ian used a pinky fingertip to circle his belly button, not quite dipping in . . . that had to be on purpose, right? Who finger-rimmed their navel at a party
accidentally
?

Only the occasional moments of humor from Nik and Jurgen made the suffering bearable. When Nik wasn’t “cock blocking” Ian, he was throwing Miller at every available guy in the place. Sam couldn’t imagine where Nik had found half these guys. He recognized a fifth of them, maybe less, and he had a hard time believing Jurgen had that many friends. This had to be every gay man in Marlyle County, and then some.

The only guys Nik didn’t throw Miller at were Sam and Ian. “This is worse than my mother introducing me to nice girls at church,” Miller complained to Sam at the keg.

A keg! Nik and Jurgen had gotten a keg for this party. Sam shook his head in some shame. “It’s appalling,” he told Miller, who was pretending to fill his plastic beer cup.

“It sure the hell is,” Miller said. Sam had a feeling they were talking about different things. “I can get my own damn gay life,” Miller muttered. “Someday. Once I get used to being gay.”

“Are you gay?” Sam asked. It seemed appropriate.

“̓’Pears so,” Miller said, as if they were discussing the weather report. Sam had spent enough of last summer on the porch of Nik’s parents’ store to have some experience discussing farm weather.

“Heard it might rain,” Sam returned. The polite reply to any statement about precipitation.

“Heard it might rain men.” Miller winked at him. “Really could use some men.”

Sam looked around at the sea of men. “We’re surrounded by them.”

Miller tilted his head in a gesture Sam had only ever seen country folk make. A sort of sideways, single nod. Body language for conceding a point, but . . . “I think I might prefer the ones that fall outta the sky. Less pressure,” he said.

Miller was cool. Sam would have talked to him more, but Nik showed up with some guy who had a shaved head and two rings through his lower lip that Miller just had to meet.

Sam was relieved that he didn’t just have to meet the guy, too. Not that he had anything against piercings, per se. Though it looked like Miller might, judging by his expression.

Sam looked aside, and there was Jurgen introducing yet another guy to Ian. Jurgen looked serious about not wanting Sam to hook up with his cousin.

Meanwhile, said cousin winked at Sam, then turned to face the newest offering. Ian had his arms crossed over his chest, red plastic beer cup in one hand propped up on the other forearm, showcasing his pecs.

Sam scowled.
Bastard
. Did he think Sam was that easy, that some muscle and a wink would cut it? He snorted and looked away, crossing his own arms over his chest.

Jurgen quirked a knowing brow at Sam.

Sam scowled at Jurgen.
Big, dumb asshole
.

Fuck this
. Sam straightened up and walked out.

The place had cleared out by 3 a.m. Not even a single passed-out drunk littered the floor. Sam couldn’t believe it. If they were having a kegger, couldn’t they at least do it right? Dave had left early, though Sam hadn’t even noticed—Miller had told him as much when Sam had found him hiding in the bathroom.

He was so ready for bed. He didn’t need any more of this humiliation. No more Ian torturing him for his own amusement. Sam wasn’t his type; he’d heard it from the horse’s ass himself.

Nik wasn’t allowing him to go to bed, however, because—in an effort to be the perfect gay couple or something—Nik and Jurgen had bought a place with a hot tub. Which he insisted Sam get into. Fortunately, Sam had been forewarned this might happen, and he’d come prepared.

Sam put on his swim trunks and walked out into the hall, where he ran right into Nik.

Nik stared at him a second. “What are you
wearing
?”

“What? Are they ugly?” Sam looked down at himself. He looked like himself: too tall and too skinny. He dropped his voice. “Do I look that bad?”

“No, and no. What you look is overdressed.”

Sam stared at Nik. Okay, if he was overdressed in a pair of surfer-esque swim trunks, that meant everyone else was wearing . . . “Speedos?” he squeaked.

Nik shook his head and sighed. “Sam, really. What kind of gay men’s housewarming party would it be if we went into the hot tub with clothing on? It would be a sham. I would never live that down.”

Wait. Nude hot-tubbing? With
Ian
? “Wha . . .? Bu . . .”

“What?”

“I mean, I don’t, you know. I’m kinda . . .”

“Are you going to go on about being tired again?”

“No, no.”
Damn
! He should have said yes. “I’m just, I’m . . . I mean what if I, you know. I get . . . you know.” Judging from Nik’s look, he didn’t know. He looked truly puzzled, not that sort of simple-but-good-natured puzzled expression he affected when he was messing with people. “Excited,” Sam finished.

“Excited.”

“Excited.”

Nik tilted his head, studying Sam. “I guess the choice is yours. You can be the only guy in the hot tub with shorts on, or you can be like the rest of us and recite baseball stats in your head to keep from getting hard.”

“Baseball stats? Like what?”

“No idea. It’s just what Jurgen does when he’s trying not to pop too early.”

“See, I didn’t need to know that.”

Nik stepped forward to lay a commiserating hand on Sam’s upper arm. “I know, Sam. I know. Neither did I.”

“Shit. Maybe I’ll just be too tired?” Sam asked hopefully. Again.

Nik frowned. “But then there’ll only be three guys in the hot tub. I need you in there, or I haven’t done my job as a good host. Hosts need an even number of people in the hot tub.”

“That’s at the table, and you’re a modern hostess. You can do this. And what do you mean, ‘only three guys’?”

“Host. Modern hosts don’t care how many people they have at the table. They care about how many people they have in the hot tub.”

“Host. Only three guys?”

Nik blinked at him. “Yeah. Me, Jurgen, and Ian.”

Sam squeaked. A tiny squeak, completely involuntary. “Um, what about Miller?”

Nik rolled his eyes until he almost fell over. “Miller and Ian don’t really get along, and Miller had some weird
reaction
to me introducing him to all those guys.” Nik flapped his hand.

“Like an allergic reaction?”

“I guess. He sure acted like it was giving him hives to be introduced to the finest men I could dig up for him.”

“Where did you find all those guys, anyway?”

“I put a personal ad in the paper.”

Oh, now that definitely called for the silent treatment. Sam raised his brows and eyed him.

Nik lifted his chin in defiance. “It’s good for him. Helps him develop gay social skills.”

“
Gay
social skills? How are those different from regular social skills?”

“They aren’t. That’s the point.”

“I’m so lost.”

“I don’t have time to explain it to you. I have a hot-tubbing to host.” In a nicer tone, Nik added, “If you hurry up, you can get in before anyone else and turn on the bubbles. Then no one will be able to see if you get excited.”

Sam returned to the guest room posthaste to shuck the shorts.

Sam got naked as fast as he could, wrapped a towel somewhat haphazardly around his hips, and found the hot tub blissfully empty when he got there.
Thank God
.

The water was too damn hot, but he forced himself in and turned on the bubbles. Then he looked down. He almost couldn’t see his naked self, except for a pink blob shimmying and shaking in the rapidly moving water. He glanced at his shoulders in the light from the back porch. Yep, they were as white as ever.

Great. That meant that just above his nipples, there would be a demarcation line. Below it, he’d be boiled pink and puffy like a lobster. Above the line he’d look too pale; his natural state. Why couldn’t he have skin like Nik’s? He was just dark enough that you couldn’t see him blush. Even being pale like Jurgen would be better, because he tanned easily. Sam bet he didn’t look like a lobster in the hot tub.

Oh
. What would Ian look like in the hot tub?

Better not to think about it.

But maybe . . . if he imagined what Ian looked like, he’d be better prepared. Sort of like inoculating himself.

That’s a rationalization so you can imagine Ian naked.

Well, yeah . . . but Ian was a bastard and Sam wouldn’t touch his dick even if Ian wanted him to. Yet somehow he was still attracted to him. So he needed to do something, right?

But he’s a
bastard.

Unfortunately, not all of Sam found that unappealing.

Damn
.

He closed his eyes. He was going the inoculation route.

This is a very bad idea.

He thought it might take a minute to get a clear visualization, but of course it didn’t. There was a naked Ian just waiting for him on the backs of his eyelids. Smirking at him and slowly, smugly stroking his semi-hard dick.

See? Bad idea.
Sam opened his eyes.

In real life, a mostly naked Ian was standing there, smirking at him. Sam gasped. Ian added teeth to his grin. Then he reached for the white towel he had wrapped around his waist, like in some kind of porn video. Sam only caught the movement in the bottom of his vision since he couldn’t look away from Ian’s eyes, but he knew exactly what was going on. Ian’s eyes tracked down Sam’s neck and across his shoulders.

Don’t look down. You don’t need any more temptation
.

Sam rarely listened to his inner monologue, anyway.
Oh man
. That chest. Just as forested with hair as before, with the blocky pectoral muscles and the dark caramel treasure trail drawing Sam’s eyes down. While Sam watched, Ian ran a palm across his belly, riffling the hair there. Tracing across a line of muscle with a finger.

“Like what you see, Sam?”

“Shut up,” Sam said. Then, mortified, he looked up into Ian’s face.

Smiling, Ian unwrapped the towel and let it fall.

Sam tried not to look. He really, really tried. Sweartagod.

Ian had low-hangers. Hairy balls that dangled so low they skulked at the tip of Ian’s dick, which wasn’t a small one. Sam nearly squeaked. Then he finally focused on the main event, and he did squeak. Ian was uncut.