Take This Man: Gay Romance Stories (12 page)

It had been a hot, sweaty morning. Because he was so muscular and physically imposing, Liam had been assigned the more visible role, lying on a towel beside the family, wearing only a pair of tight bikini briefs. Aidan, dressed in baggy shorts and an extra-large T-shirt, had sat back at a table along the Promenade des Anglais, with his gun in a quick-release holster at his waist.

While Liam swam in the surf with the kids, then sunned beside the wife, Aidan kept a lookout for predators. By the time the family was ready to return to their hotel, he was drenched in sweat and irritated. Liam escorted the clients back to their room, and Aidan returned to their apartment to shower and relax.

Now, naked, he sat back against the pillows and thought of Liam stepping out of the ocean with water cascading down his tanned, muscular arms, legs and chest. His two gold nipple rings glinted in the sunshine, and his hefty dick was outlined against white bikini briefs. It reminded Aidan of the first time he had seen his partner, years before, when Liam had been showering naked in the courtyard behind the Bar Mamounia in Tunis.

Back then, Aidan had watched him with a combination of lust and despair. Such a handsome, sexy guy, with an air of confidence. Aidan, who was on the run from a bad relationship, couldn’t imagine having a chance with such a gorgeous man.

But then, after a wild ride through the Sahara, he and Liam had fallen in love, and Aidan had joined him as a bodyguard. Now, years later, they lived and worked together in Nice.

He reached down to touch his half-hard dick, running his index finger up its length, remembering how Liam had looked that morning, like a Greek god come to life. He closed his eyes and imagined Liam there beside him, how he’d turn to his partner and take one nipple ring between his teeth, and twist.

Liam would shiver and reach for Aidan’s dick. Aidan stroked himself as he imagined that touch. He lay there in the shaft of sunlight gently fingering himself until his dick began to ooze precome.

“Getting started without me?”

Aidan opened his eyes to see Liam silhouetted in the doorway. His partner had an ability, cultivated by years as a U.S. Navy SEAL, to move quietly when he wanted to. It was almost creepy.

“Well, at least I waited for you to get here.” He patted the bed beside him. Their little mixed-breed dog, Hayam, looked up from her place on the floor, then rested her head back down.

“I should take a shower.”

“No, you shouldn’t,” Aidan said. “I love the way you smell when you’ve been out at the beach.”

“Well, if you insist.” Liam pulled off his T-shirt, revealing his narrow waist, awesome six-pack and beefy pecs. The gold nipple rings glinted dully in the light.

Aidan never tired of watching his partner strip. In the five years they had been together, Liam had put on a bit of weight around his hips, and his biceps were not as iron-hard as they’d once been. But even if that amazing body were to fall apart, Aidan knew he would still love the man inside.

Liam kicked off his leather sandals and stepped out of his baggy gray shorts. He usually wore a jockstrap, because he liked the way the cotton fabric cupped and protected his dick and balls, but that morning he’d skipped the jock in favor of the tiny bathing suit. As he skinned the white nylon down over his crotch, his half-hard dick popped out. He pushed the fabric down over his massive thighs and then let the suit fall to the floor.

Grinning, he struck a bodybuilder pose beside the bed—because he knew how much it teased and excited Aidan. As he did, he bounced his dick up and down a couple of times to stiffen it.

“Come here, you,” Aidan said, clambering over the bed until his mouth was level with Liam’s dick. Liam planted his legs firmly on the floor and Aidan reached out to cup Liam’s balls. Then he moved in closer and took the mushroom head of Liam’s beefy dick in his mouth.

Liam was a shower, not a grower; his dick was pretty much the same girth and length hard or soft. And either way, Aidan loved to take it in his mouth. Nestling his nose against Liam’s pubic hair, he smelled the combination of sun, sand, salt water and tanning oil, along with their lavender soap and Liam’s own unique musk.

Liam held his dick in one hand, and Aidan licked the fleshy pink mushroom cap. Then he stuck his tongue into the piss-slit as Liam jerked himself slowly, using Aidan’s saliva as a lubricant. Aidan focused on sucking the head while Liam stroked the shaft. With his other hand, Liam leaned down and slapped Aidan’s butt.

Aidan’s body jerked but he kept on sucking. Liam spanked him, first one cheek then the other, and Aidan rubbed his stiff dick against the bed beneath him. He squirmed and writhed as the heat built up on his asscheeks and in his dick. His pulse accelerated as he felt Liam responding.

He closed his eyes and whimpered as the orgasm built in his gut, and Liam’s body began to shake. Liam shot off in his mouth, one hand wrapped around his dick, the other on Aidan’s head, holding him down. Aidan came onto the comforter, then stayed in place for a moment, savoring the feeling of Liam’s dick in his mouth along with the exquisite pain of his sensitive dick against the cloth beneath him.

Liam took a deep breath and released his hold on Aidan, then stepped back. Aidan rolled onto his back, revealing the sticky mess beneath him. “You sure know how to put the ‘come’ in ‘comforter,’” Liam said, laughing. “Now come on, let’s get in the shower. We can’t be late for this wedding.”

“Not if we’re the best men. You start the water, and I’ll throw the comforter in the wash.”

As Liam walked out of the bedroom, Aidan thought he detected more than the usual swagger in the sway of his partner’s ass, and as much as he enjoyed seeing that ass naked, he was looking forward to seeing it encased in the handsome black tux he’d picked up the day before.

By the time he got to the bathroom Liam was already in the shower, and Aidan opened the glass door and stepped in beside him. It was a tight fit; Liam was six-four, Aidan a couple of inches shorter. Liam had always been brawny, and under his tutelage Aidan’s muscles had grown as well. But the close quarters just made the maneuvering more fun, at least in Aidan’s opinion.

Liam had already soaped himself up, and he pulled Aidan close, wrapping his arms around Aidan’s back and leaning in for a deep kiss. They rubbed their bodies together, the lather transferring between them.

Aidan raised his arms over his head, and Liam rubbed soap into his pits, then lathered up his dick and balls. Aidan turned his back and bent forward a bit, and Liam inserted a soapy finger into Aidan’s ass. He sighed with pleasure as Liam wiggled his finger around inside. “Gotta get you all cleaned up for your tuxedo,” he said into Aidan’s ear.

“Unless the tux has assless chaps with it, I don’t think anyone else will know,” Aidan said.

“I will,” Liam said, leaning down to nibble at Aidan’s earlobe.

Aidan turned back to face him, and they rinsed off in the shower spray. With his former partner, a bossy attorney he’d lived with in Philadelphia for ten years, Aidan could never have had so much fun in the shower. Blake wasn’t a very sexual guy, and their encounters had been limited to mutual hand jobs and the occasional sixty-nine, always in their bed. With Liam, Aidan’s sexual repertoire had expanded, and after five years living and working together, he still had an appetite for Liam’s body that surpassed anything else he felt.

Would that ever change? he wondered, as he and Liam dried themselves with heavy Turkish towels. Would the magnetic attraction he felt for his partner lessen, the frequency of their encounters diminish? Could he ever imagine finding Liam’s face, or the things he said, distasteful, the way he’d grown to dislike Blake in the years before Blake kicked him to the curb?

He hoped not. But there was no time for that kind of speculation; there was a wedding to start.

The wave of liberalization in feelings about gay people sweeping through the United States, from the demise of Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell to the cracks in the Defense of Marriage Act, had mattered little to Aidan and Liam, in their former home in Tunisia and now in Nice. Liam had left the Navy under DADT, and had no interest in returning to active duty. And for the two of them as expats, there was little motivation to marry even if they could.

Their friends Louis and Hassan, however, were in a different situation. Louis, an American by birth, was ostensibly a cultural attaché at the U.S. consulate in Nice, though his unspoken employer was the CIA. His longtime partner Hassan was an architect and Tunisian citizen. The two of them had moved from Tunis to Nice soon after Aidan and Liam had relocated there, when the State Department had loosened its policies on domestic partners.

But they’d still been in a kind of limbo. What if Louis were transferred somewhere else? Would Hassan be able to follow him? Once it became legal for them to marry in France, after a change in the law regarding foreign nationals, Louis had proposed to Hassan, and they had asked Aidan and Liam to be their groomsmen.

It was going to be a small ceremony at a restaurant in the small hilltop town of St. Paul de Vence, followed by another back in Washington DC, to be attended by Louis’s family and his government friends. Then Louis could begin the paperwork to gain Hassan U.S. citizenship, securing their future together.

After they had accepted the invitation to participate in the wedding, Aidan had wondered if Liam would want to consider nuptials of their own. He’d known he was gay almost since puberty, so he’d never envisioned a wedding of his own, and he knew that Liam hadn’t thought of one either. In fact, Liam disdained the concept, believing that gay divorce would soon follow gay marriage, only making work for attorneys.

But Aidan was a romantic, and the idea of pledging his troth to Liam, in front of family and friends, plucked at something inside his heart. As he and Liam put on their tuxedos he wondered if he’d ever be the one up at the altar, with Liam by his side.

Which altar, of course, could be a problem. Aidan had been raised in Reform Judaism, and though he hadn’t been to a synagogue in a long time, he still felt culturally Jewish, lit Hanukkah candles and observed Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur. Liam had been educated by nuns and priests in Catholic schools. Though he wasn’t observant in any way, Aidan knew that religious roots ran deep in his partner, particularly in the formation of his moral compass. So they’d probably have to compromise on a civil ceremony.

“Where are my dress shoes?” Liam asked.

“I had them polished,” Aidan said. Neither of them dressed very formally, spending most of their work time in polo shirts, khaki slacks and deck shoes without socks. “They’re on the floor in the closet.”

He tied his own bow tie in the mirror, then turned to his partner. “You’re going to have to lean down.”

“Why couldn’t we just get clip-on bow ties?” Liam grumbled, as he bowed his head.

“Louis is your best friend,” Aidan said, as his fingers slipped through the intricate process. He’d often tied Blake’s ties; Blake liked the look of hand-tied bows but didn’t have the patience to learn himself. Aidan had taken care of that, along with everything else necessary to make Blake’s life run smoothly—and look where it had gotten him.

“Louis is not my best friend,” Liam muttered, his head down.

“If he’s not, then who is?”

Liam lifted his head as Aidan stepped back. “You are.”

“Fine. Then Louis is the best friend you have you don’t sleep with.” Aidan leaned back from Liam and surveyed his work, then tweaked one end of the bow. “You’re good to go.”

Aidan picked up the box of programs he’d had printed for the ceremony and followed Liam into their building’s garage. Hassan’s French was decent, but sometimes his accent interfered with what he wanted to say, and so Aidan had helped him with the details of the event—choosing the invitations, the restaurant and the menu, writing the program (in English and French), even joining him for a wedding cake tasting. Hassan, who had an impeccable sense of design (though a bit too Le Corbusier-modern for Aidan) had handled the decorations and the wedding outfits.

Liam drove them along the Promenade des Anglais until they turned inland at Cagnes-sur-Mer. It was a gorgeous day in late spring, with a scatter of thin cirrus clouds. Anemone, cowslip and wild jasmine bloomed along the roadside, and a field of lavender stretched toward the horizon. Aidan leaned his head out the window of the Jeep and Liam said, “You’ll mess up your hair.”

“Don’t care,” Aidan said, inhaling the country fragrance deeply.

The hilltop town, with its church tower the highest point, always took away his breath. It was so beautiful, especially with all the trees in full leaf. Liam pulled up into the garage at the entrance to the village, took his ticket and then pulled into a space. As he shut the car off, he reached out and took Aidan’s hand. “Are you happy?”

“For Louis and Hassan? Of course.” He opened the door. “Come on, let’s go.”

The restaurant was up a curved cobblestone street in an ancient two-story stone building, its doorstep so old that it had been smoothed by generations of village feet. There was also a series of stone steps that wound along the side of the building to the second-floor terrace, the railing hung with sweet-smelling honeysuckle vines.

They climbed to the terrace, which had views both toward the ocean and the foothills of the Alpes-Maritimes. The grooms stood beside the wrought-iron railings, their backs to the verdant hillside. Grapevines twined around a trellis above them. Louis, who’d be considered a bear by gay standards, filled out his pearl-gray tuxedo. He’d trimmed his dark beard into a devilish-looking goatee.

Slim-hipped Hassan was smooth-skinned, the color of a very light café crème, in a matching tux that he looked born to wear. After a round of hugs, kisses and handshakes, Louis asked Liam, “You have the rings?”

Liam turned to Aidan. “My PA has them.”

“I don’t care who has them as long as someone does.”

Aidan pulled the two ring boxes from his jacket pocket. He opened the first and checked the inscription, then handed it to Liam. He kept the other for himself.