Don't Read in the Closet volume one (28 page)

The water went
down the wrong pipe and Finnegan almost choked. Tucker had to bang on his back
for a good minute before he finally managed to calm down.

“Did you just
say that watching two men make out was hot?” Finnegan’s voice was still rough
from the near drowning he’d just avoided while standing in his living room.

“What? You
didn’t think so?” Tucker sounded surprised.

“Umm, well,
yeah I guess so. But here’s a news flash for you, TJ, straight guys don’t
usually think watching other guys making out is arousing.”

Tucker
shrugged.

“Who said I was
straight?”

Finnegan’s jaw
dropped.
Umm, the lineup of girl friends over the years?
Figuring that
his friend was just screwing around, Finnegan grasped Tucker’s shirt, glared at
him, and yanked him forward, landing a closed-mouth kiss on wet, plump lips.

"You
kissed me."

The words were
barely audible and the bewildered expression on Tucker’s face was
disconcerting.

"Yeah, I
did."

Now that he’d
done it, Finnegan was a little nervous that he’d crossed some boundary, even if
they had been kidding around.

"I didn't
say you could kiss me."

"True
enough. So you gonna claim I committed a battery?"

"Huh?"
Tucker sounded dazed.

"You know,
a tort resulting from an unwelcome and offensive touching. I know you practice
corporate law, TJ, but how'd you pass the bar without knowing basic
claims?"

He knew he was
babbling, but Finnegan couldn’t help it. It was his body’s instinctive reaction
to stressful situations.

"Finn?"

"Yeah?"

"Stop
being a lawyer for a minute and kiss me again."

So he did. But
this time his hand caressed Tucker’s chest instead of grabbing his shirt, his
eyes closed on their own accord, and his mouth opened as he leaned forward. It
was a real kiss, tongues and moans, groping hands and humping hips, and
irrefutable evidence that even though Tucker Jones had always dated girls, the
man most definitely was not straight.

*****

"Hey."

Finnegan jolted
out of memory lane and snapped his eyes up. His heart immediately started
slamming against his chest. Just seeing Tucker did that to him. The man was
positively stunning in his tailored black suit with a silk polka dot tie.

"Hi."

“Talk to me,
Finn. What’s eating at you?”

He let out a
shaky breath.

"Sometimes
I still worry that you'll decide this isn't worth it."

Finnegan hadn’t
meant to say anything; the words had somehow spilled out all on their own. Oh,
well he never could hide anything from his best friend.

"This?"
Tucker
asked.

"Yeah, you
know. The scowls when we're walking down the street, the tension with your
family, that guy in your office who gives you strange looks.
This."

One side of
Tucker’s mouth slowly went up in a sexy grin.

"Ahh.
This.
Yeah, it sucks, but there's nothing we can do to change them. We just have to
live our lives."

Finnegan
shrugged.

"Sure, I
know. But
this
doesn't have to be
your
life."

Tucker stopped
smiling.

"I see. So
it's somehow different for me, is that it? I can just walk away?"

Those brown
eyes were squinting and the full lips were drawn in tight lines. Okay, so
Tucker was angry. Finnegan knew that, but being angry didn’t change the facts.
Bisexual wasn’t the same thing as gay. Tucker could choose a different life.
But Finnegan couldn’t.

"Come on,
TJ. You know you could. You could date Daisy or Darcy or whatever the hell her
name is. That woman your mother won't stop talking about it. And you could have
a couple of kids, get a house ..."

"Put up a
white picket fence, buy a dildo ..."

Finnegan froze.

"You heard
that?"

The question
was barely a whisper.

"Yeah.”

Damn it.
Finnegan felt like such an ass. Tucker didn’t deserve to be saddled with his
insecurities.

"I'm
sorry."

Tucker
stretched his arm out, reaching his hand to Finnegan.

"Don't be
sorry, but listen to me. A woman with a dildo is never going to replace
you."

Finnegan wanted
to take that hand. Wanted to let Tucker pull him up and hug him and then
everything would feel right again. But he couldn’t.

"How can
you be so sure?"

He hated the
break in his own voice when he asked the question. He looked down at his knees,
feeling embarrassed, but then he had to look back up again. He had to see
Tucker’s face, his eyes,
his
smile. When he met the
adoring gaze aimed his way, his stomach flipped over.

"Because a
dildo won't grow and fill in my hand when I stroke it. Because a dildo won't
taste warm and salty against my tongue when I lick it, or push against my
throat with a firm but giving pressure. Because a dildo won't ever move inside
me and touch just the right spots the way you do.”

Finnegan
couldn’t stay sitting after that. He put his hand in Tucker’s and let
himself
get pulled to his feet and tugged toward Tucker’s
chest. Then he reenacted the kiss that started it all – head tilted up, eyes
closed, hand reaching for Tucker’s chest, and mouth open.

It felt even better
this time. The lust was just as strong, the friendship just as deep, but there
was even more between them now. There was the knowledge of how much Finnegan
liked having his ass caressed while they kissed, how much Tucker liked to have
his tongue sucked, and there was love. Deep abiding love.

“Do you want to
know the biggest problem with a woman with a dildo, Finn?" Tucker asked
breathlessly when they finally broke apart for air.

"What?"

Those long
fingers traced Finnegan’s lips.

"She
wouldn't have your smile that lights up the whole room and seems to see only
me. She wouldn't beat my ass in basketball and talk smack the whole way home.
She wouldn't support my pathetic body on a two mile hike out of a canyon after
I'm dumb enough to climb an unsteady rock to get a picture and end up with a
twisted ankle. She wouldn't know I was actually happy to play the pink bunny in
the second grade spring play.” Tucker’s big hands cupped Finnegan’s cheeks and
their eyes locked together. “The biggest problem with a woman with a dildo is
that she isn't
you."

THE END

Also
from Cardeno C.:

He
Completes Me

Home
Again

Love
at First Sight

Where
He Ends and I Begin

Website:
www.cardenoc.com

E-mail:
[email protected]

Selected by L.C. Chase

Dear Author,

I can't tell you how long I've wanted a story to go along with
this picture. I love the thought that they have been friends forever and just
couldn't resist each other anymore.

[PHOTO: Two shirtless
young men lay on top of each other, the one on top with his pants pushed down
to expose his butt, kissing on a grassy field. A football rests in the grass
next to them.]

I would be forever grateful if you could help me out!!

Sincerely,

Nic

Genre:
contemporary

Tags:
friends-to-lovers, college, football, athletes, first-time

Words:
6,410

OPEN TACKLE

by L.C. Chase

I love you
.

The words bounced around inside Rory’s skull like ping-pong balls
in a wind tunnel.

I love you
.

Did Owen really say that? Like he meant it in a non-brotherly,
non-best-friend, I-want-to-get-naked-with-you way?

Rory kicked off the covers, threw his legs over the edge of the
bed and groaned when he glanced at the clock radio on his night table. Such an
innocuous, inanimate object, yet it begged for his fist, the way it tauntingly
displayed 4:47am in obnoxious digital green. He’d hardly slept more than an
hour in fits and starts since Owen had dropped the L-bomb on him and then run
for the hills.

He rolled out of bed, pulled on a pair of cotton briefs that were
lying on the floor and wandered across the small bedroom to stand in front of
the window. From his third-story apartment, he could see Folsom Stadium,
painted with the first blush of a sunrise kiss. Beyond the main CU-Boulder
campus the infamous Flatirons reached for the heavens in all their glory. It
was five miles from his apartment to the university, but in the clear mile-high
Colorado air it appeared as close as crossing the block.

He could even see the campus dorms. Where he used to live with
Owen.

He exhaled a heavy sigh. The gust of hot, moist breath collided
with the cool glass surface and created a thin fog that clouded his view. He
drew an O in the center with his fingertip and watched it vanish. A secret
message left behind for discovery.

Last night, seven sleepless hours ago, when they’d been
celebrating another game victory at a local sports pub, Owen Harris, his very
best friend, told Rory he loved him. To say Rory had been stunned was an
understatement. He’d fought saying those very words himself for so long now,
dreamed of hearing them tumble off Owen’s enticing tongue to lick the shell of
his ear. When he finally did hear them his brain short-circuited, throat
closed, heart stopped. That the dream had manifested into reality was beyond
surreal.

Especially considering Owen wasn’t even gay.

Or so Rory had believed.

Rory’s mental engine had stuttered and coughed as the ignition
fought to fire. Coherent thought and speech danced just beyond his reach and
left him sitting there, staring at Owen like he was from another planet,
speaking a foreign language. Frozen with the overwhelming desire that what he
was hearing was true, and paralyzed with the fear that he’d had a few too many
tequila shots and imagined his friend’s declaration.

But Owen, always quick to conclusion, took his silence as
rejection.
I’m sorry
, he said as his
beautiful brown eyes began to glitter with moisture.
I am so sorry
, he repeated before he turned and ran from the bar.

When Rory’s motor finally kicked in and spurred him into action,
he raced through the front doors and spilled out onto a near-deserted Pearl
Street. Owen was gone.

I love you
.

Rory braced his hands on either side of the window frame and
leaned his forehead against the glass. Almost twenty years they’d known each
other. Almost twenty years they’d been inseparable. Ever since the cute little
brunet with the big puppy-dog eyes moved in two doors down and they became
instant best friends. They did everything and went everywhere together. They
finished each other’s sentences, and developed that innate ability of silent
communication generally reserved for old married couples.
 

Then puberty hit Rory like a semi-truck, and he started to notice
things about Owen he was pretty sure most boys didn’t notice about other boys.
Things like how long and thick his best friend’s eyelashes were, or the high
cheekbones they fanned. The guileless brown eyes flecked with gold, and the
burning red that shimmered in fine threads through rich tawny hair when the
summer sun fingered Owen's shaggy locks. And long fingers that graced hands
he’d spent far too much time imagining how they’d feel caressing his bare skin.
And for the next four years, Rory walked around in a constant state of arousal.

He so badly wanted to tell Owen what was going on with him, the
feelings raging inside, but he was terrified of losing his best friend. Owen
was his other half. The thought of losing him, losing the friendship they
shared, that effortless connection, was unbearable. That they both played
offense on the high school football team -- a team chock full of
testosterone-overdosed he-men, where Rory Ballard was the star quarterback and
Owen the star wide receiver -- also had the potential to put both their
scholarships at risk.