Bad Company (16 page)

A confused Nate was better than a running-away Nate, so Kellan shrugged and said, “I didn’t say anything,” before dropping a quick kiss on Nate’s lips and putting a hand over Nate’s to turn the knob.

Kellan hadn’t been sure if Eli was still going to be there and was really glad to find the apartment empty.

That didn’t stop Nate from trying to put some distance between them. “Where did he go?”

Right now, Nate’s tiny apartment was the perfect size. Nate had his choice of the bed or the kitchen. Kellan easily cornered him at the counter.

“I was busy sucking your dick, so I don’t know.”

Yin jumped up on the counter and started swatting around a piece of paper.

Nate reached for it, but Kellan beat him to it.

“There’s no name on it,” Kellan pointed out when Nate held out his hand. “But I’ll read it for you. ‘Sorry, guys. I got tired of sticking my fingers in my ears, and I figured Nate would queen out if I jerked off in the apartment. Unless you’re sneaking Viagra, thought you might have to come up for air and might want to celebrate at The Arena. It’s not raining now, but I could probably get Casey to give us a ride back over. You are totally my heroes. Text me. P.S. You really need to change the sheets.’” Kellan looked up. “Queen out?” He had never heard that before, but it kind of fit Nate when he got ranty. “I like that.”

“Don’t get attached.”

“To the expression or—”

“You said before you wanted to go to a club.” Although Nate met Kellan’s gaze, the look still wasn’t there. In fact, he looked more on the verge of a queen out, like something was ready to explode.

“If you want to go.” Kellan kept his voice even, not wanting to get a face full of whatever Nate had bottled up.

“I should. He was trying to be supportive coming over here, and I think he’s kind of counting on it.” Nate slipped around the other end of the counter and grabbed a shirt from the dresser.

“Well, if Eli’s counting on it, we should definitely go.”

Nate spun back. “What does that mean?”

It means I should have kept my mouth shut.
“Nothing.”

“You’re the one he has a crush on now.” Nate yanked the clean shirt over his head.

Kellan had gotten the idea that Eli didn’t exactly run a tight budget on his affections and couldn’t figure out why Nate was acting jealous. “Why are you pissed off at me?”

“I’m not mad at you. I had a shitty day. Then all this happened and now I just want to go out.”

“
All this
being I blew you?” How the hell did this get from maybe more sex and maybe a little I-love-you-Kellan to crap so fast?

“Did you want a
My First Blowjob
T-shirt?”

“Not exactly.” Kellan wanted to put his hands on his head to try to squeeze out the headache anger had stirred up behind his eyes. Instead, he checked to see if his key was in his pocket and then headed out the door. “God, you’re a bitch. See if I do it again.”

Chapter Eighteen

“Wait. C’mon, Kellan.”

Kellan was almost pissed enough about the T-shirt crack to ignore the sound of Nate running after him. He slowed down but didn’t turn around. There’d better be an apology in there somewhere.

“C’mon,” Nate said again.

Kellan kept walking.

“I shouldn’t have taken my bad day out on you.”

Kellan spun around. “Yeah. Your day must have really been tough compared to mine, right?”

Nate jogged and caught up with him as they hit the main street. “Okay. I didn’t have a major scene with my dad, but I thought you were happy about that.”

Kellan grunted a laugh. “I was.”

“I don’t know what you’re expecting from me.”

Kellan stopped walking. “Maybe you could think about someone not you for a second. Maybe you could stop pretending you don’t want it before you shove your dick down my throat. Maybe you could help me while I’m trying to figure this shit out.”

Nate stared at him. People with Friday night plans flowed around them with an occasional glare or a nudge, but Kellan ignored them, ignored the way his pulse was throbbing everywhere under his skin as he waited for Nate.

The stare turned into something else, not that look he’d been waiting for, damn it, but something that gave Kellan’s circulation something to do besides carry around that useless adrenaline. A sexy blink, the slow curve on Nate’s lips, a look that made Kellan think Nate had only been pretending to let Kellan get away before he pounced.

“You were pretty fucking amazing, if that helps.”

Kellan swallowed. He’d never spent much time thinking about another guy’s attractiveness, only judged them based on whether the girls the guy got could have done better. Nate was just…Nate. His best friend. But when Nate’s eyes lit up like that, he wasn’t just Nate anymore.

“Amazing?”

“Oh yeah. C’mon. I’ll spring for a cab. Don’t want you to get worn out.”

There was a line outside the club. Sound poured through the cinderblocks hard enough to make puddles ripple. The entrance was down an alley that stretched along the warehouse-like building. There was enough of a breeze to chase off the heat from the day, but it wasn’t cold. Still, lots of the guys in line were cuddling or hugging, so Kellan put his arms around Nate from behind, hands tucking into Nate’s front pockets.

“What are you doing?”

“Being your boyfriend.” Kellan kissed his ear. “You see, when one guy says fuck you to his homophobic father and a big pile of cash, then gives another guy a blowjob in the apartment that the other guy has invited him to share, they’re boyfriends. Even a former straight guy can figure that out.”

Nate turned around. “Wait. You really mean this? Not because of your dad or because you want to get off?”

“For a smart guy, you’re an idiot, Gray. That’s what I’ve been saying all night. What do you think I came back for?”

Nate’s head tilted and his eyes—

The look broke something inside Kellan and made everything right at the same time. How could one look say so many goddamned things? And Kellan was so fucked because love was a hundred times worse than all the stupid songs could ever try to explain. And when he loved you back, it was too much. Like all of those feelings could never fit. You’d have to spend your life trying to figure out how, but it wouldn’t matter as long as he kept looking at you like that.

Nate grabbed Kellan’s head and kissed him.

Kellan wished their first real kiss could have been something special, something that didn’t happen in an alley with a bunch of other guys standing around laughing and clapping.

“We’re going back right now,” Nate whispered in Kellan’s ear.

“I thought Eli was counting on this.”

“Fuck him. And I’m going to fuck you.”

The idea rippled across Kellan’s skin like a shock of electricity. He wrapped his arms around Nate tighter.

“Hey, faggots. Fucking cocksuckers.” The taunt echoed down the alley.

Kellan looked up. There were only three punks and about fifteen guys waiting to get in. Why didn’t someone say something?

“That’s right.” He turned to face the assholes who were screwing up the best night of his life. “Which would explain why you were sucking me off last night.”

Amid the laughter and cheers, Kellan heard, “You’re fucking dead, faggot.”

Nate wasn’t laughing as he pulled Kellan out of line. “What the hell are you doing?”

“Getting rid of those punks.”

“You’re not playing the ice-cream scene in
Witness
.”

“Huh?”

“This is reality, not some gay Disneyworld you’re vacationing in.”

For someone who didn’t have a TV, Nate was dishing out so much pop culture Kellan was getting ADD. Time to get the focus back on what mattered.

Kellan lowered his voice. “I’m not on a vacation, man. What part of your dick in my mouth isn’t making this clear to you?”

“The part where this is just another role you’re playing. Playboy Kellan, Reality-TV Kellan, Businessman-in-law-to-a-Senator Kellan and now what? Poor-Misunderstood-Gay Kellan, in love with the boy next door. Ding. Another month, time for the next costume change.”

Nate stopped, or maybe he ran out of breath, but Kellan knew what was going on. It was a big fucking deal. And Kellan was scared too, but he wasn’t letting either of them run this time.

“Stop hiding behind all that bullshit, Mr. Advice Column Gray. God, you’re still the same terrified kid I had to teach to stand up for himself.” Kellan leaned back against the building.

Nate had always been smaller, but the way he loomed in close, hands against the bricks on either side of Kellan’s head, made Kellan want to straighten out of his slouch.

“I’m not the one who hid that year. I’m not the one who got so scared by the idea of it he had to act like a homophobic jackass to prove himself to his friends.”

“I should have known you wouldn’t let that go so easily. Nathan Gray, always perfect, never makes a mistake. Until you started getting a little light in the loafers, my dad wanted me to be more like you.”

The spark of anger faded from Nate’s eyes. “Light in the loafers?” The corner of his mouth lifted.

“That’s the way Geoffrey put it.”

“Hey, you guys going to fuck out here or what?” The bouncer leaned over the edge of the stairs. The rest of the line was gone.

Nate turned away.

Kellan grabbed his wrist. “You get that I want to be here, right? That I want to be here with you.”

Nate nodded. “But you’ve got to understand that you don’t wake up one morning and decide—on the basis of one blowjob,” he added as Kellan started to interrupt, “that now you’re gay, end of story.”

They dug out their IDs and Nate paid the cover.

Before they got so far in that the music thudded too loud to talk, Kellan leaned into Nate’s neck. “If you think I woke up one morning with that idea, you haven’t been paying attention.”

The beat pounding up through the soles of Kellan’s feet wasn’t all that different from any other dance club he’d ever been in. He’d always thought of dance clubs as kaleidoscopes with people in them, spilling and regrouping in all different formations to the spin of the bright-colored lights. But inside The Arena, the energy wasn’t fragmented like that. It was the same heat, same want, the same drive making the crowd on the dance floor move like one giant animal.

Eli bounced over to them before they had made it around the dance floor. Kellan suspected that Eli had already made more than a few trips to the bar area, since his usual enthusiasm was bordering on squirrel-on-crack behavior and his words were a little more lilty.

“Boys.” Eli stretched up to give each of them a sloppy kiss. Though Kellan leaned in to meet him halfway, the kiss landed mostly on his chin. “Thank God. I was getting seriously bored.”

“I find that hard to believe.” Nate patted Eli’s ass.

Kellan took another look around. There were a few guys dancing up on speakers, and they weren’t wearing a whole lot.

“It’s a sad, sad truth.” Eli pouted. “I’ve had everyone in here worth doing. You excepted of course, gorgeous.” Eli winked at Kellan. “So, can I borrow your boyfriend for a dance?” Eli looked at Nate, but he was already dragging Kellan away.

“Have fun.” Nate waved.

Eli threaded his way through the shifting motion of the men dancing until he found a spot he liked, right in the middle, where the lights circled and flashed the brightest. Kellan didn’t think he had great moves, but none of the girls he’d danced with had ever laughed. But none of the girls he’d ever danced with moved like Eli. The grace, the sway, the grind was sexy in a way Kellan had never thought about, and there was nothing feminine about any of it.

With the guys all shifting around him and Eli doing most of the dancing, Kellan just let the beat keep his feet and hips in motion.

“Thank you,” Eli leaned in to yell.

“For what?”

“Now everyone’s looking at me.” Eli spun and shimmied his back down Kellan’s front before turning and gripping Kellan’s shoulders to pull him close and get their hips together.

“Eli.”

Eli moved up and down so that when Kellan moved his hips to the beat, their crotches touched.

A flash of heat under his skin was the only warning before Kellan was hard. And shit, so was Eli.

“Eli, man, stop. Off.” Kellan grabbed the guy’s hips and held him away.

“Aw, what’s a little frottage among friends?”

So that’s what dry humping was called. Kellan filed that away.

“C’mon, dude. You’re ripped.” Kellan wrapped his arm around Eli’s shoulders and pulled him out of the middle of the writhing crowd.

“I’m barely two sheets to the wind.”

“Five at least.” The area Kellan found on the second floor was dark and high traffic, but there was a spot with a counter full of abandoned drinks to prop Eli against and a chance to talk without screaming. “What’s wrong?”

“Nothing. I’m happy for you guys, really.”

Nate might think that Eli had switched his attention to Kellan, but it was obvious that Eli was still hung up on Nate.

“Ah. Sorry, man.”

Eli shrugged. “I knew the first time I saw you with him, but today he was upset and he was so sure you weren’t coming back. And Nate’s always right, you know?”

Kellan did know. Or at least, Nate always had to be right and would make the facts fit whatever he’d decided was the truth.

Eli nodded as if he was hearing what Kellan was thinking. “He’s really a good guy, smart, and he cares about stuff, and damn he’s a hell of a fuck—but I don’t have to tell you that.”

There was an idea. Eli was so shitfaced he probably wouldn’t remember most of this conversation. And the fact was, Kellan hated flying blind.

“Actually, I could use a little telling.”

Eli blinked up at him, eyeliner smudged with sweat. “What do you mean?”

“Well, you know how you said Nate’s pretty vocal, like how did you mean? Like he moans a lot or he gets really bossy?”

“Well, I meant bossy, like the toppy, dirty talk but—wait, how come, are you saying you guys aren’t having sex?”

“No.” Because they were, and Kellan didn’t want Eli getting his hopes up.

“So…” Eli’s eyes got comically wide. “You’ve been topping him?” He giggled. “I can’t believe Nate would bottom for anyone.”