Grey's Awakening (12 page)

Innocent always leads to intimate.

Grey finally found something, and the tightness banding his middle released. “I’ve been meaning to ask about your rig. You said you’re a truck driver, but I didn’t see your vehicle at your cabin.”

“When I’m not driving, I park it at a garage in town.” Sirus’s answer came as easily as Grey found it difficult to share. “The owner and I worked out a little rental fee for the space. Since I set my own schedule, and I don’t require a whole lot of money to live a life that is comfortable for me, I can sometimes go a month without driving it, if the mood strikes me.” Another lingering look from Sirus had Grey squirming, this time fighting down the sense of being caressed by big, callused hands. “It struck me a couple of weeks ago. Seems to have been nice timing so far.”

Grey adjusted his dick, and cleared his throat.
Stay down
. “It must be nice to allot yourself such big chunks of time to work on your second career.”

Sirus tilted his head. “What?”

“Your art?”

“Oh,” Sirus relaxed back into the armrest, shaking his head, “that’s not a career.

That’s something I do for the joy of it. Giving stuff to Ginny is just for fun. I get a charge out of discovering a new craft or medium, and seeing if I can figure it out. I don’t have any interest in turning it into a job.”

Modest too
. Of course Sirus wouldn’t just be sexy, sharp, and know how to take a fucking like no man Grey had ever met. He had to be humble about his talents too. “You probably could turn your art into a career.”

Shrugging, Sirus said, “If I were so inclined to pursue it, but I’m not. How about you?” He nudged Grey’s hip with his bare foot. “How did you and John decide that pairing people with money to start a business was what you wanted to do with your life?”

“John had the entrance into a circle of people with large amounts of disposable income.” Grey breathed easier; he knew his work inside out and was used to discussing it with people. “John convinced me I was a good enough talker to get just about anybody to part with anything, including money. We were both always good with numbers; we like them. We like the thought of being part of discovering an innovative new business too.

When we were in high school, we took a course together that challenged the students to play the stock market with monopoly money, and we realized with the proper amount of research we had a really good ability to predict what would do well. It seemed to work well when we worked a stock together, where we could talk the pros and cons out with each other. Conversely, we didn’t have as much success when we tried it on our own.”

He chuckled. “We really liked when we did well and beat out every other team, not only in our class, but in the entire school. That was heady, and addictive.” Grey suddenly stopped, stricken.
What the hell was that?
Telling people about playing stocks in high school wasn’t his and John’s standard “about us” company line. Always, whenever asked, they discussed business courses in college, their credentials, their myriad of successes, not that they played stock market in school and caught a fever for making money, even if at the time the money wasn’t real.

Sirus snapped his fingers, the sound cracking through the silent living room. “Grey, you all right?”

Grey shook himself and forced a placid expression to his face. “Yeah, fine. Sorry.”

Get back to the standard company information, Greyson
. “Anyway, going through college, and taking lots of business courses, we saw how damn hard it is to start and succeed as a new business in this country. We figured with the strengths we each brought individually, along with how well we worked as a team, we could fill a niche in the market and do very well for ourselves at the same time. That’s what we did.”

“Must have been nice going into something where you had complete trust in your partner,” Sirus said with gentleness in his voice. “John’s more than a friend and a business associate; he’s like a brother to you, right?”

A picture of John sitting at Grey’s grandmother’s dinner table virtually every night from the moment he, John, and Kelsie met when they were ten years old flashed through Grey’s mind. “You could say that. He was around enough that we considered him family.”

“But in reality it’s just you and Kelsie.” Slate eyes looked straight at Grey, uncomfortably direct. “You don’t have any other siblings, right?”

“Nope.” Hairs on the back of Grey’s neck stood on end, and the disquieting sensation quickly raced down his arms, leaving him chilled. “Listen, I need water after our marathon run and fuck.” He slid his legs off the couch and stood, making only fleeting eye contact. “You want something?”

“Sure,” Sirus murmured. “Thanks.”

Grey circled the couch and grabbed his pants.
Gotta get away for a minute and
breathe
. “Be right back.”

*

Damn it.

Sirus pushed upright and discreetly watched Grey disappear into the kitchen, the man’s back ramrod straight. Sirus told himself not to stare, not to develop an attachment beyond the act of fucking, but he couldn’t shift his focus from the strict lines that ruled Grey’s stance, or stop the ache to know more. A knot grew in Sirus’s belly, filling him with failure. He had given Grey a little bit of information about his family without even thinking twice about doing it when the man asked. Only, when Sirus maneuvered and tried to get something in return, Grey clammed up tighter than an oyster.

The man is not capable of sharing. He has already intimated that; believe him.

Still, something in Sirus’s gut, while watching Grey so closely, said that Grey had been on the cusp of revealing personal information. Perhaps already had. That would explain why he went from being laid back to coiled like a striking snake in almost one blink of his eyes. The man’s guard was slipping a little bit … and that clearly made him uncomfortable.

Sirus couldn’t help wanting to know more about Grey; to figure how to keep him talking each time those instincts kicked in and told him to close his mouth. Sirus watched Grey shut himself down just a moment ago, and it hadn’t been the first time it happened since they began sharing this cabin. Something in Grey’s eyes spoke of secrets and loneliness, and it tugged at Sirus’s heart. This man made Sirus want to work on getting him to open up, to show him there could be trust and companionship with someone other than John and Kelsie; perhaps something as deep and abiding as what John and Kelsie shared together.

Stop it. You’re doing it again. You’re trying to create a relationship and feelings
where they don’t exist. Grey only wants to fuck you for two weeks. He could not have
been clearer about that.

Strictly fucking, that’s what Grey said. Sirus’s head told him to accept those terms, and if he couldn’t, then he needed to walk away right now. Maybe Sirus could accept those words if he didn’t feel the desperation in the way Grey made love, or didn’t witness these intense passing glances and touches that spoke of longing for a deeper connection.

Sirus swore he saw hints of a man living inside Grey who
wanted
to talk about all kinds of things, not just weather, work and sports. Small pieces of that man slipped out every once in a while, Sirus
knew
it. His gut knew it. His head knew it. And his heart knew it too.

He just didn’t know what the hell it would take, or if it was even possible, to coax that
complete
Grey out into the open. Or if he would get smacked right out of this little part of Grey’s world for trying to do it.

Stop it, Sirus; stop it right now. You can’t force someone into a change they aren’t
ready to make on their own. Look at what you hoped for with Paul, and the reality that
slapped you in the face.

Sirus’s heart started pounding like a son of a bitch, and his hands went numb. Danger lay in pushing a regimented man like Grey out of his comfort zone. Potential destruction and total heartache too. Sirus wanted to know more about Grey, but he couldn’t ignore the risk to his own wellbeing either. He’d left himself open to heartbreak before, and he just didn’t know if he would recover from another man stomping on his soul again.

Sirus’s fingers tingled with returning sensation, and his pulse settled too. Just as fast, he jumped as warmth caressed his penis, stirring the shaft with new life.

Blinking, Sirus came back to reality and looked down. His gaze collided with Grey’s.

“You ready for round two?” Grey kneeled between Sirus’s spread legs, his hand wrapped firmly around Sirus’s cock. Sirus peripherally registered the glass of water sitting on the coffee table.

Grey stroked Sirus’s shaft with one full drag, and Sirus’s length shot up to almost full salute. “You feel like you’ll be rock-hard with one good suck,” Grey said. He swirled his tongue around the sensitized rim and pressed a chaste kiss to the equally nerve-rich tip, his eyes lifted to Sirus’s face the entire time. “I want my jaw aching by the time you come again.”

Those hazel eyes of Grey’s, studded with flecks of gold, held Sirus locked in a sensual hold, tying him up in a frightening mixture of needs, wants, and pure desire.

Unable to walk away, no matter the foolish risk, Sirus pushed Grey’s head to his cock and forced the man’s hot mouth down on his length, succumbing to the physical bond between them that neither one of them could deny.

“Come on, son, it’ll be fun.” Grey’s father stood beside the aboveground pool in their backyard, the collected rainwater within frigid and littered with tree branches and dead leaves. Jeremiah Cole’s clothes hung loosely from his tall, lanky body, and his overlong hair brushed past his shoulders in thick, dark strands. “Help your sister in, and splash around to get clean. Here.” Jeremiah tossed a multi-colored beach ball over the width of the water, forcing Grey to jump in order to catch it. “Make it into a game, and you’ll be done before you know it.”

Kelsie stood beside Grey, a brisk autumn breeze lifting her long hair and blowing it in his face. His sister already started to shiver, her nose ran with the beginnings of another cold, and she hadn’t even removed her clothes yet. Grey could see the purple tinge taking over Kelsie’s lips, and noticed the way she clung to her stuffed dog, fearful of getting into the cold water.

Grey looked at his sister and then the water again, and a familiar knot of hatred he couldn’t control churned in his stomach and grew into a ball that felt bigger than the inflated beach one he held.

“Go on then, kids.” Jeremiah smiled at his children as he waded through the dried out, over-tall grass to the backdoor of their house. “Mommy will be out with some towels in just a few minutes.”

“Dad!” Grey called out, his voice striking, sharper than any nine-year-olds’ should be. His father spun, and their stares found each other from across twenty feet. Grey’s heart once again raced, this time charged with a tinge of fear, knowing that his father was a man and thus much bigger than Grey.

“Please,” Grey pleaded, the sting gone from his tone. “Kelsie…” He slipped his sister’s hand in his, absorbing the chill in her fingers. “She’s not feeling too good. Let’s go to a motel and have a hot shower and sleep with a heater running.” They didn’t have any water or electricity in their small home right now. They rarely did. “Just for the night.”

For just a second, Jeremiah’s gaze narrowed, and a real sliver of uncertainty iced its way down Grey’s spine, colder than the water he knew waited for him in their makeshift bathtub. “Don’t tell me how to take care of my family, boy,” his father whispered, pointing his finger in Grey’s direction. “Now get your sister in there and get yourselves clean. I don’t want to hear any more about it.” With a blink of his eyes, Jeremiah was back to his smiling self. “Now have fun! Your mom and I will be out in a bit to check on you.”

Jeremiah disappeared into the house. As Grey stood there staring at the vacated doorway, his insides grew incredibly hot. His skin felt like it would burst into flames, and he wished with every fiber of his being that he could shoot a ball of fire into this awful house where they never had any water or electricity, where they could never have a friend visit, and where they didn’t even eat every single day. Grey wished the home would burn to the ground, or a bulldozer would come in and knock it over, or that the God his mother always talked about would strike a giant bolt of lightning right down on it, or send a tornado crashing through it…

Kelsie went into a fit of coughing and pulled him out of his destructive thoughts. His sister was pale and skinnier than he knew she should be, and he knew from what he’d learned about nutrition in school that how little she ate made her immune system weak.

Grey tried to give her some of his food when he could, but portions were doled out by the size of the person in their house, so he didn’t get a whole lot more than she did most of the time. The way they lived, in a way that sometimes seemed worse than animals, wasn’t right. Grey didn’t even have to go to school to know that much.

Another brisk gust of air swept through their open lot of a backyard, and Kelsie shook and coughed again. Where heat had previously filled Grey’s blood, ice quickly replaced the burn. Grey knew he was smart. Every teacher he ever had told him so. He went to the school library whenever he could and was always reading tons of books. His teacher, Mr. Meacham, said he was so good at his work because he was a thinker and good at solving puzzles.

“Grey,” Kelsie whispered, her hazel eyes wide, “I don’t want to get into the pool.”

She squeezed her dog against her chest. “I’m too cold.”

Looking around, taking stock of what he had available to him, Grey ran across the yard and snagged one of his T-shirts and a ratty quilt off the wash line. “Here, take this.”

He thrust them at Kelsie then raced across the yard to a pile of junk and fished out a big plastic container. It was discolored, but no dirtier than the pool itself. Grey dragged that to his sister’s side, grabbed a smaller bucket, and started filling the plastic tub with the rainwater from the pool. When he’d filled it about halfway, he took the quilt out of Kelsie’s hands. “Okay,” he moved behind her, “use my T-shirt as a washcloth. Just clean up with the water in the little tub. I’ll hold this up,” with two corners of the quilt in his hands, Grey reached his arms up as high and wide as he could, creating a fabric wall, “and you can be private.” Not that they had any neighbors close by, but still, they were nine years old now. “Hopefully you won’t be so cold.”