Restoration 01 - Getting It Right (21 page)

Hazel eyes met his. James didn’t answer right away as something tumbled around in his mind. “No. I don’t need it.”

“Good. Are you hungry? I can throw some spaghetti together.”

“That sounds great, thanks. But something first?”

“What?”

James slid across the couch and proceeded to devour his mouth. Lips and tongue and fucking teeth, a possessive kiss that promised more later and then some. Nate submitted to the kiss because damn! Blood thundered in his temples and his cock took fast notice of the fun happening up north. When James let up, Nate was dizzy with want. He reached out, intent on keeping things going, but James, the slick bastard, slid out of reach.

Grinning like the devil, James said, “We’ll need a way to burn off those carbs after dinner.”

Oh hell yes. “Sounds like you’ve got something in mind.”

“Very much so.”

“Does this carb-burning require leaving the house again before sunrise?”

“Fuck no. Not unless you want to give your neighbors a show.”

Nate grinned. “My neighbors still think I’m a straight, hopeless bachelor.”

“And you are definitely not straight.”

“Oh, but I’m still a hopeless bachelor?”

James quirked one eyebrow in a sexy, sexy arch that matched the sly turn of his lips.

“Not at all.”

“What am I then, Dr. Taggert?”

“What you are, Detective Wolf, is mine.”

Nate shivered, the declaration wrapping around his heart and holding tight. “No one else knows that.” The slip of truth surprised them both. Saturday’s intended coming out hadn’t exactly happened, thanks to Nate’s discomfort with the crowded club, and they hadn’t spent any time with their friends since.

“Hey.” James moved closer and slid his hand into Nate’s. Squeezed. “You are not a dirty little secret, okay? I know this is all new to you, but us together is nothing to be ashamed of.”

“I’m not ashamed of us, but we are kind of a secret. Have you told anyone we’re

together?”

James hesitated. “Not outright, no. It’s been a busy week. I’ve barely had time to see all my patients and juggle two calls from my mother, much less chase up Elliott or Boxer and lay this surprise on them.”

“Did you tell your mother?” Nate wasn’t sure why he was all over this right now. Maybe because it was the first real conversation they’d had since Sunday night. Six days since Nate showed up on James’s doorstep after four months and they laid it all on the table.

“Tell her when? In between her fantasies of being followed, or after her crying fits over my sister?” James’s temper was peeking through in his clipped words and furrowed brow.

“It’s a question, Jay.”

“Fine.” James released his hand and leaned away. “Have you told your parents?”

Shit. “Mom called tonight and asked about you.”

“And?”

“I said we’d worked things out and we were good.”

“So you didn’t tell her we spent all weekend sucking each other’s cock?”

“Jesus Christ, James, really? My mother would shit a brick if I came out to her like that.”

“Okay, fine.” James’s expression shifted from annoyed to confused. “So if you haven’t told your parents or, I’m assuming, anyone at work, why are you getting on me about telling people?”

Nate deflated, irritated at himself for making such a big deal out of it. “I don’t know.”

“Yes, you do. What’s wrong?”

“Nothing’s wrong.”

“Bullshit. I know you, babe. You don’t go on the offensive for no reason.”

Nate stood up and strode to the other side of the living room, needing the distance. James knew him too well and he wouldn’t let it go. “I didn’t do it intentionally. I wasn’t trying to start a fight.”

“We aren’t fighting, we’re having a grown-up discussion about something that’s

bothering you. Talk to me.”

He wasn’t sure how to put his feelings into words. He hadn’t even acknowledged he had them until this moment, and James staring at him wasn’t helping. “Everything that happened last weekend is starting to feel like a dream. Like a really awesome dream that happened to someone else and isn’t quite real.”

Something like pain passed across James’s face, so fleeting Nate almost missed it. “Why do you feel like it’s a dream?”

“Because it’s been four days since we’ve done anything besides sleep together and share a few kisses in the morning before you rush off to work.” Nate hated that he sounded like a petulant teenager whose boyfriend wasn’t paying enough attention. “And I know every day can’t be like the weekend, and that you have responsibilities to your patients, and starting next week I’ll be back to work again, so this is probably just me being…”

“Insecure?” James asked.

Nate groaned. “I fucking hate that word.”

“It’s not unusual, though. I mean, we’ve both been sitting on some repressed feelings for a long time, and they exploded all over both of us last weekend. We started out going a hundred miles an hour, and now that we’re back to thirty-five, we have to find our footing again.

Reestablish ourselves in the real world and work our relationship out around it.”

Leave it to James to see it all so clearly. “I suck at relationships.”

“Well, I’ve never been in one before, so we clearly have a lot of work ahead of us. But this right here, Nate? Us talking it out? This is what helps relationships succeed.”

“I don’t want to sound like some whiny, needy girlfriend who can’t be alone for eight hours without freaking out.”

“I don’t see you that way.”

“Maybe I see myself that way.” Nate shoved his hands into his jeans pockets, not liking that they wouldn’t stay still.

James watched him, doing that silent shrink thing he did when assessing a patient. For once, it didn’t irritate Nate because all this talking was actually fucking helping him—more than talking to his own paid therapist ever had.

“How much time did you spend alone while you were recovering?” James asked.

“Hardly any, unless I was sleeping. Someone was always around.” Damn. “So all this insecurity is about the assault.”

“I think it certainly stems from there. You went out alone, and you nearly died. You recovered around your family, always with loved ones close by, and then you came back here and you’re kicking around this house all alone most days. Throw our relationship into the mix, and it’s a huge adjustment.”

“So I’ll be better once I’m back at work?”

“I think you’ll get better once you’re back around people regularly.”

Nate turned that over in his head. “You could be right.”

“Of course I’m right.” James huffed his nails, playing it up. “But feel free to say it again.”

“Fuck you.”

“After dinner, baby.” The wicked gleam in James’s eyes sealed that promise.

Nate’s heart tripped. “What about telling people?”

“If you want to tell people all about what I plan on doing to you after dinner, feel free.”

He’d have knuckled the bastard if he’d been standing closer. “That’s not what I meant, and you know it.”

James closed the distance between them in four long-legged strides. He tilted Nate’s chin so he had to look up. Meet his eyes. Fall into the love burning in those hazel-gray depths. “I know what you meant, babe. I’d scream it from the rooftops if I could. I’d tell the world that you’re mine, but this is a big deal for you. This is your coming out, and you need to do it in the best way for you.”

“What if I don’t know what that is yet?”

“There’s no rush. No time limit.”

“I’m not ashamed of you, or of us.”

“I know that.”

Nate curled his hands around the lapels of James’s jacket, needing the contact. He breathed the man in, absorbing the scents of sweat and aftershave and smoke. The distinctively masculine scent of James that made his blood hum. How had he stayed away from this man for four months without losing his goddamn mind?

Jury’s still out on my mind.

“Can I ask you something?” James said.

“I don’t know, can—”

“May I?”

Nate smiled. “I’ve never been able to stop you.”

“I will never rush you to come out, Nate, but I don’t want to lie, either. If Ell or Boxer or someone notices, and they ask, may I be honest?”

He swallowed hard against a rush of anxiety that threatened to upend his stomach.

Somehow no one had noticed—or at least hadn’t said anything—on Saturday, but the more they hung out with their friends as a couple, the more obvious it was going to get. He couldn’t keep this secret for long, no matter what. He didn’t want to. “Yes. You don’t ever have to lie for me, Jay. I’d never ask you to.”

“Thank you.”

“I honestly don’t mind our friends knowing. It’s work that stresses me out a little bit.”

“Then put it out of your mind for a few weeks.” James sifted his fingers through Nate’s hair, a soothing caress that lifted some of his anxiety. “You need to get settled back into your routine first, get used to being back. Readjust to reality before you upend it again.”

Nate’s hands drifted from the lapels to James’s waist. “When did you get so smart about workplace problems?”

“There’s an app for that.”

“Is there an app for making spaghetti boil itself? Because the longer we stand here, the longer we have to wait to get naked in my bed.”

James was in the kitchen banging pots around long before Nate stopped laughing. And the laughter felt amazing.

James stared at the shadowed bedroom wall long after Nathan settled and fell into a deep sleep, folded up tight against James’s chest. He loved this. Holding Nathan in bed, skin to skin, after fantastic, exhaustive sex. Feeling Nathan relax and go under. Seeing the stress lines around his eyes soften, his always tense shoulder go slack. Despite the beard and scars, this sleeping Nathan reminded him of the spirited young man he’d met his first day of college.

Sleep eluded James, and he didn’t care. On the way over from work, he’d hoped to drink himself stupid in the safety of Nathan’s house, and then fall into a nice little whiskey coma that wouldn’t allow him to dream. The sealed whiskey bottle was still downstairs with his briefcase, that idea stolen away after he’d taken one look at Nathan and his obvious distress.

Coming home to someone who could make him feel hopeful again was a fantasy come

true for James. This wasn’t his home, and he’d been with Nathan for less than a week, but the idea of this being his future loomed in front of him like a mirage. Get too close too fast, and it might disappear.

He’d do anything to make this work.

God, I want a drink.

One shot to settle his jumping nerves. One shot to chase away the memories of his sessions today. The first with Will, the second with Romy. Both of those young men broke his heart, and he should have known better than to schedule them on the same day.

Will wasn’t talking much, but he was filling page after page of a journal with his thoughts, anger and memories of his abuse. Stark descriptions of smells, pain, sweaty men and the sensation of being crushed. He allowed James to read the pages, but he didn’t want to unpack them. Didn’t want to discuss anything he’d written, only his daily routines.

And he was still having trouble with food.

Romy, on the other hand, had opened a metaphorical vein and bled all over James’s office. The story he told, the agony and hatred he exuded, had nearly undone James. He’d been beyond grateful to have Romy’s friend Brendan in the room, hearing the confession of imprisonment, battery and multiple rapes along with him. For being there to support Romy far beyond James’s ability as his therapist. Romy had needed Brendan to hear what he had to say.

James wasn’t certain of their relationship, but he was positive it was more than simple friendship.

Romy was going to need that to get through the next few months. Saying it out loud was only part of the healing process.

Between Will and Romy, he’d needed that drink. He’d told Nathan he didn’t, but he did.

He didn’t want to close his eyes and risk dreaming about gentle young men being ravaged by monsters. He wanted to close his eyes and wake up and have it be a new day, fresh with possibilities, and maybe wake up his boyfriend with a blow job.

His boyfriend with the brand-new security measures installed downstairs. James hadn’t said anything to Nathan, but he’d seen the bars on the front windows and door. During dinner, he’d spotted the shadow of bars on the back windows and door. He wouldn’t have been surprised if Nathan had called a home security company about installing an alarm system.

He despised how thoroughly Nathan’s sense of safety had been shattered.

He pressed a kiss to the side of Nathan’s neck, right below the line of his beard, enjoying the faint scent of sex still clinging to his skin. Nathan didn’t stir.

One drink.

James had a bit of practice extricating himself from a sleeping bedmate’s grasp, and he expertly untangled himself from Nathan without disturbing him. He tucked the blanket up around Nathan’s shoulders, slipped into his boxers and carefully crept downstairs. He’d been over enough to know which spots on the stairs creaked, and he avoided those.

The bottle was where he expected to find it. James pulled it out of the bag with little noise, then carried it into the kitchen. Without turning on a light, he found a glass, broke the seal and poured two fingers of whiskey. The scent of the liquor burned his nostrils and woke up his senses. He hadn’t eaten in a few hours, which would help it go to his head faster, so he could get back to bed. Back to Nathan.

He gulped the whiskey, grateful for the familiar heat that coursed straight to his stomach.

“You need to stop drinking your emotions away.”

James poured two more fingers.

“It’s been you ever since I’ve known you.”

He studied the amber liquid in his glass, hating how right Nathan was and hating himself for indulging while the living embodiment of his conscience was asleep upstairs. Alone. He drank the second double, then capped the bottle. A bit of numbness was creeping into the edges of his mind. The rest would come soon.

After washing, drying and putting away the glass, he stowed the bottle and bits of seal scrap back in the paper bag. On the chair, right where Nathan had left it. Upstairs, he took a piss and gargled with mouthwash in a dark bathroom. He didn’t want to turn on the light. He couldn’t look at himself in the mirror tonight.