Wanderlust (Filling Spaces #1) (4 page)

III.

Shea woke for no reason
at all.

He could see nothing in
the heavy darkness and, momentarily disoriented, reached blindly for the lamp
on the nearby nightstand before he remembered that he wasn’t at home. After
that, he simply stilled and listened uncomfortably to the myriad sounds
outside: the chirp of insects, the warble of frogs, strange scratches and
rustlings he couldn’t identify.  
Animals?  Bugs? 
He thought of the
spiders undoubtedly crawling on the bed in the other room and shivered, batting
frantically at a tickle on his cheek until he realized it was a stray hair.

Unnerved, he closed his
eyes tightly shut and tried to focus on the sound of his own breathing.   Sleep
didn’t return as easily as he’d hoped, though, and his muscles tightened with
anxiety as the sounds grew ever louder outside.  With a frustrated sigh, he
opened his eyes again to gaze at the ceiling and pushed away thoughts of crawling
insects and animals scratching at the walls.  He wasn’t used to spending the
night in such an unfamiliar place, found himself lost without the comforts of
his familiar routine: the lamp next to his bed, a book in his lap, that weekly
phone call from his dad and the promise of homework as he hurriedly finished a
muffin in the morning.  The difference between those relaxed, carefree evenings
and the current moment—as a crick in his neck demanded his attention and he
absently rubbed at the ache in hopes it would fade—painfully threw the bitter
truth into sharp relief:

Nothing stays the same
forever.

Shea knew it was true,
as much as his life and plans spoke to the contrary.  Jamie was right
:
he was a picket-fence person with picket-fence plans who never once until now allowed
himself to consider the possibility that life meant
change
,
unfamiliarity, instability.  And yet here he was, cocooned in a too-warm
sleeping bag in a cabin that looked nothing like the childhood vacation home he
remembered, attempting to identify the source of those unnerving sounds
outside, knowing that even when he went home to his lamp and his books and his
bed he wouldn’t receive weekly calls from his father any more.

The thought left Shea
unspeakably sad and his throat tightened painfully.  Instinctively he shifted
in his sleeping bag to seek out Jamie’s prone form in the darkness.  He wanted
the simple comfort of knowing he wasn’t alone, and relief took him as he made
out the barely discernible, shadowy lump nearby. Tentative, unsure of what he
sought, he reached out shyly and carefully to touch Jamie’s dark hair. 
Soft
,
he thought, and felt some of the coiled tension leave his body.  The warmth of Jamie’s
hair under his fingertips, the rise and fall of the other man’s breathing, made
him feel less lonely, somehow, chased away the grief that lurked at the edge of
his thoughts.

“Can’t sleep?”

Jamie’s voice, full
volume and alert, startled Shea; his heart paused for a too-long second before
pounding quick and sharp inside his chest.  He snatched his hand back,
embarrassed.  “I didn’t know you were awake.”

“Hard not to be,” Jamie
replied lazily, “with you rolling around over there.”  He stretched, a lithe
shadow in the dark, and rolled over on his side to face his companion.  To
Shea’s gratitude, he made no comment about the tentative caress.  “Something
bothering you?”

Shea tugged the
sleeping bag up to his chin, a defense against he knew not what.  “No,” he
muttered defensively.  “I just woke up, that’s all.  Heard weird stuff
outside.”

A rustling followed as Jamie
sat up and fumbled for his laptop on the table.  A few clicks later, pale
illumination lightened the heavy darkness of the room and suddenly Shea could
dimly make out the shape of the cabinets, the ancient refrigerator and the table
nearby.  “Nightlight help?” Jamie asked, and grinned. 

“Oh, shut up,” Shea
said wearily, and ran his hands through his hair.  “I’m fine.”  Still, he
glanced about surreptitiously for wayward spiders or small animals and found
himself comforted to see none immediately nearby.  His fear made him feel
foolish, but to his embarrassment he
did
find the glow of the laptop
comforting.  Exhaling heavily, he willed his body to relax as he stretched out
in the sleeping bag.

“I’m cold,” Jamie
complained.  “Unzip.”

Shea blanched.  “Unzip
what
?”
he asked, and then understood—he struggled with the zipper on the sleeping bag
as Jamie laughed quietly at the misunderstanding.  “You volunteered to sleep
over there, you know,” he pointed out as he finally succeeded in getting the
zipper down.  Reluctantly he crawled out of the warm nest and shivered.  “I
told you before I’d—”

Jamie snorted.  “Stay
in there, dumbass. I’m not kicking you out.  We’re going to share.”  And before
Shea could protest—though he realized to his embarrassment he had no
desire
to
protest—Jamie shoved him back into his previous position and then crawled
inside the sleeping bag with him.

Heat.  The delicious
heat of Jamie’s long body pressed against his back.  Shea flushed at the
sensation and tried to remember how to breathe. How long had it been since he’d
shared a bed with anyone?  College, he thought dimly, early college, before bad
breakups and misunderstandings convinced him that maybe he loved too earnestly
and hoped too much. Awkwardly he held himself rigid and tried not to take up
too much space, resting his cheek on his hands and drawing himself as close to
the other side of the sleeping back as he could go. 

“Geez, you’re tense,” Jamie
muttered, and Shea jumped as the other man’s long fingers poked at him
playfully.  “Am I bothering you or something?”

Shea considered the
question.  “No,” he answered truthfully, because
bother
couldn’t accurately
explain the heat on his cheeks or the stir of desire that left him acutely
aware of every inch of Jamie’s long body behind his. 

“Then what?  Still
worried about those noises?” Jamie’s voice, a warm breath of air against Shea’s
ear, left shivers in its wake.  “About the dark?”  His tone fell into a wicked
singsong, playful and teasing.  “About
spiders
?”  He skittered
fingertips over the back of Shea’s neck, a barely-there touch.

Shea smacked at his
hand instinctively; the touch
did
feel spidery.  “
Quit
that,” he
began—but Jamie only obeyed to poke him in the side again, and suddenly the
knot of tension and fear in Shea’s stomach dissolved as the playfulness
devolved into a mock-tussle between the two of them, into light, ticklish
touches and a teasing struggle that ended only when, finally, he fell laughing
onto his back in the sleeping bag and batted Jamie’s hands away.  “Stop,” he
pleaded, breathless.  “Stop, you win.  I’d rather deal with the spiders than
this.”

A faint, surprisingly
genuine smile touched Jamie’s lips. “Feel better?” he asked, and to Shea’s
surprise the words held an undertone of concern. 
Oh
, Shea realized
lamely. 
He’s trying to cheer me up. 
The thought so startled and
touched him that for a moment he didn’t respond and simply gazed up at his
companion and marveled, entranced suddenly by the sharp attentiveness in those defiant
gray eyes, the contrast between that pale skin and that silky dark tumble of
hair.  

“Yes,” Shea whispered. 
He knew that even in this dim illumination his emotions—his gratitude, his
curiosity, his sadness, his desire—must be written all over his face, but he
didn’t bother trying to hide them even as the silence stretched between them
into something pregnant and meaningful that made his breath catch and his heart
beat faster.  Right now he didn’t want to hide
anything. 
Perhaps it was
because of how languid the night felt, with the laptop’s cool, faint light
draping the old cabin in otherworldly shadows and the quiet outside sounds
surrounding them.  Perhaps it was because of Jamie himself, the electric energy
he seemed to carry with him, the constant dare in his gray eyes.  Either way,
Shea welcomed all of it, welcomed how far this felt from his own life, from the
world he remembered and thought he loved. 

He’d never
felt
so
much in his life.

So he wasn’t surprised when
Jamie, those gray eyes softer than normal, leaned down to kiss him.  But he did
surprise himself when he responded immediately and passionately: his lips
parted willingly at the gentle insistence of Jamie’s tongue, and he reached up
instinctively to wrap his arms around the other man’s neck to bring him closer. 
Jamie hummed amusement and appreciation, and though the hands that cupped
Shea’s face were gentle, the bruising kiss was not; the fierce possessiveness as
Jamie claimed his mouth stole Shea’s breath and made his heart pound wildly.   

He couldn’t ever
remember a kiss like this.  The noises outside  that seemed so persistent only
moments ago ceased to exist and the world contracted to the heat of Jamie’s
body pressed against his own, to the overwhelming desperation of the kiss that
didn’t end but instead gentled into softer, deeper kisses that blended into
each other, all innocent hunger and honest desire.  Shea’s hands moved up to
tangle in Jamie’s dark hair as their tongues touched, teasing and slow, as
their unsuccessful attempts to part went astray every time Jamie nipped at his
lower lip and every time Shea leaned up to draw him back down again.

“You’re not as shy as I
thought,” Jamie whispered approvingly against his lips.  The taller man’s
confidence was both alluring and disconcerting; he leaned in for another
lingering kiss as his cool hand slipped under Shea’s shirt and stroked the bare
skin of his back.  “Does it feel good?”

Shea tried to
respond—to say something,
anything
in the affirmative
. 
But every
time his lips parted on a “yes” or “please, more” Jamie silenced him with
another kiss as his seeking hand trailed lightly, idly over the flat planes of
Shea’s back and then around to his chest. 
 
The faint smile on Jamie’s
lips and the predatory desire in those darkened gray eyes told him the touches
were anything but accidental or unplanned, and though Shea fought against the
moans that threatened to spill out he couldn’t hide his body’s response. 
Desperately he broke away from the kiss and turned his head to the side as he
squeezed his eyes shut, afraid his desperate desire showed too plainly on his
face.

Gently Jamie turned his
head back.  “If you like it,” he murmured, “don’t hide it.”  Teasingly he
grazed Shea’s nipple with his fingers, waited for the hitch in Shea’s breath and
the widening of his eyes before he teased the pink bud between forefinger and
thumb.  Shea couldn’t flee from the relentless hunger in that gray gaze.  “How
does it feel?”

“Good,” Shea managed
helplessly.

Jamie responded with a
teasing smile as he pushed the smaller man’s shirt up to expose his bare
chest.  “You’re sensitive,” he remarked, appreciative, and lowered his mouth to
where his fingers had been. The floor was hard under Shea’s head, but he barely
noticed it as he reflexively arched his chest to meet Jamie’s mouth and
tightened his hands in the other man’s mass of dark hair.   His cock, trapped
in his jeans, ached and throbbed at this new wet heat as Jamie sucked one
nipple and then the other, teased hardened pink buds with tongue and fingers.

Overwhelmed by
sensation and still desperate for more, Shea simply moaned, unable to put words
to the need that surged through him at the glide of that wicked tongue across
his skin, the work of that skilled mouth.   “Please,” Shea he managed raggedly,
and arched his hips up in a blind effort to find the friction that would
relieve the ache between his legs.  “
Please
, Jamie.”

He wasn’t entirely sure
what he was asking for.  But Jamie leaned back in response and studied him with
heavy-lidded eyes.  To Shea’s surprise, the other man looked as disheveled as
he felt, his dark hair tousled from Shea’s seeking fingers and his breath quick
and uneven.  But a smile still curved Jamie’s lips as his eyes roved over
Shea’s naked chest to nipples peaked and wet from his ministrations, then down
to the hardness evident even through his jeans.  Soothingly, Jamie stroked
Shea’s heated cheek with the back of his hand, a surprisingly tender gesture
belied by the feral hunger in his eyes.  “‘Please?’” he repeated softly.  “What
is it that you want, hm?”

You
,
Shea thought immediately. 
To be with you. 
But he felt certain that Jamie
would scoff at such a sentiment. The words caught in his throat. 
Another
time,
he promised himself, without wondering why or how he expected to see Jamie
again after tonight. 
Another time.
Snared by that gray gaze and the
passionate hands still stroking his chest,
he sought for better words
that would express this wild and sudden need and eventually settled on simple
honesty. “To feel good,” he replied, embarrassed by the rasp of desire in his
voice, and then amended, “with you.”

The right answer.  Jamie’s
teasing smile softened into something more genuine and he tilted his head as he
trailed lazy fingers down Shea’s chest to the waistband of his jeans.  “How
could I refuse a request like that?” he asked, bemused, and followed the path
of his fingers with wet, hot kisses and the slick slide of his tongue.  Deftly,
even as he took Shea’s nipple between his teeth and tugged, he worked open the
button of Shea’s jeans and unzipped them, then unceremoniously tugged them down
and off along with Shea’s underwear.