Tipping the Balance (26 page)

Actually, Brad realized, feeling more than a little guilty about it, they didn’t go
out
much at all.

Like that night. Brad met Drew at his place. Drew drove them to a restaurant, and now they were heading back to Drew’s house. Other than the act of eating, they hadn’t really gone out. No movies. No more games, not since that first one Randall had grudgingly given him the tickets for, no nothing.

Brad was kind of ashamed to admit it, but he was nervous being seen in public with a gay man. But smart enough to realize it was about him, not Drew. Drew was who he was, and that was one of the things he liked about Drew. Drew didn’t pretend. He was out there, living his life.

Brad was still trying to figure out what his own life was, but he was increasingly aware that he was more like Drew than he was like the friends he’d had at CalPac. But it still made him uncomfortable. He just couldn’t wrap his mind around the “g-word,” not yet, not applied to himself. Drew was gay. Dogs and cats knew Drew was gay.

Brad knew he was gay, or least inclined in that direction. His cock told him that every time he saw Drew. Every time he kissed Drew, it stood at attention as if to salute and say, “Ready for action, sir!”

That was where they were heading. Sex. With a man. With Drew. But Brad just couldn’t, not yet. Not for what it meant.

Brad could already tell that where Drew was concerned, there would be no experimenting. Sex with Drew would change him. He wasn’t ready for that change. Every time he thought about it, he recoiled. He didn’t like all this thinking.

But Drew’d been so patient, never once pushing him. He—

“You’re awfully quiet over there,” Drew said from the driver’s seat. “Everything okay?”

Brad looked over at him and grinned. This man, this suave, handsome, sophisticated man, thought he was worth the time of day. “Yeah, I’m fine. Just thinking.”

“About what?” Drew asked.

“Kissing you,” Brad said, because there was no way he could say any of this to Drew when he could barely articulate it to himself.

They stopped at a light, and Brad leaned over. He gave Drew a quick peck on the cheek. “Mission accomplished!”

Drew shook his head. “You aren’t even remotely done kissing me tonight.”

That made Brad warm all over. “Good,” he said softly.

And before much longer, they’d turned onto Drew’s street and pulled into the garage.

Brad followed Drew closely into the house. After that first afternoon at the reno, after Nick had fled and they’d almost gone too far, he had an idea of what his guy might like. To make up for not being brave enough to do more in public than eat out, he planned to give it to him, at least a little.

As soon as the door into the house shut behind him, Brad grabbed Drew before he could get out of reach.

“Wha—”

Brad shut that off by pressing his mouth over Drew’s. Then he pushed Drew up against the door. He might be new to guys, but he knew how to be dominant. Some things just came naturally.

Drew’s hands came to his back, rubbing him slowly through his shirt. Brad liked that, but he liked the sounds Drew made as he kissed him roughly better. Not quite whimpers, they were needy, wanting sounds.

Brad smiled into the kiss. He’d found one of Drew’s buttons, and the sound of pushing it went right to his own cock. He kissed Drew in a way he’d never let himself before, demanding, greedy, hungry.

He held Drew pinned against the door, kissing along Drew’s jaw, and the stubble that had broken the moment a week ago just made him hotter, each bristle a goad.

When he reached Drew’s neck, Brad yanked the collar of Drew’s shirt open. He kissed until he found the pulse point and then sucked. Hard. “Brad,” Drew whispered.

“Too much? Do you want me to stop?”

“God, no,” Drew gasped.

Drew’s knees started to buckle, but Brad had other ideas. He stood back and turned Drew around, pushing him up against the door. Drew gasped, then moaned, low and needy, thrusting his ass back against Brad’s crotch.

“You like that, huh?” Brad breathed in his ear.

“Uh-huh,” Drew squeaked.

Brad grabbed Drew’s hands and held them over his head with one big paw, leaving Brad’s other hand free to maraud around to Drew’s front, grasping him around his belly, fingers pulling his shirt out of his pants.

When Brad got his free hand up under Drew’s shirt, feeling the skin hot and smooth over his muscled abs, he moaned himself. “Damn, Drew. You feel… damn.”

Then Brad pressed his weight against Drew’s back, harder than granite himself, feeling the slip and slide of his denim-enclosed erection over the back of Drew’s own denim-covered butt. He had to bend his legs a little, but he found his cock fit quite nicely between Drew’s ass cheeks. He shifted back and forth, rubbing across Drew’s backside. The sensation was intense. His head swam from the speed of the lust rising in his blood.

Part of Brad’s mind thought this felt awfully like sex, but he shoved that part out of the way and kept rocking into Drew.

Drew pushed back into him, every bit as into it as Brad. “Please,” Drew breathed.

“Please what?” Brad rasped. He blinked several times and shook his head to clear it. “Tell me what you need.”

Drew didn’t say anything, and then Brad smirked. He’d robbed his guy of the power of speech. He raised his free hand to hold Drew pinned.

On impulse, Brad bit his way down Drew’s neck from behind as Drew leaned his head away for better access, his breath coming in shallow gasps. Where the neck met the shoulder, Brad stopped to suck. To mark. He pulled Drew’s skin into his mouth, rolling it between his teeth, sucking hard.

“Do it,” Drew breathed. “Mark me.”

“Want me to claim you? Show you’re mine?” Brad grunted out.

His efforts would leave a hickey. He wanted there to be a sign on Drew’s neck that he’d been there, even if only he and Drew knew it. But Drew’d see it every time he got dressed for a while.
You’re mine
, he thought, not sure he could say it aloud, not sure if Drew felt the same.
You’re mine and no one else’s
.

As a blissed-out Drew approached dead weight, Brad’s arms reached their limits. He put one arm around Drew’s chest to support him as he backed away. “I’ve got you, don’t worry.”

Drew looked at him, his eyes dilated with desire. “Yes, you do,” he said thickly.

“Couch?” Brad said.

Drew stood up. “Oh, yeah.”

Drew pulled Brad to the long comfy sofa in the family room, the one that seemed to be the scene for all their making out. “Where were we?” Drew said, pushing Brad onto the sofa and then climbing on top of him.

“I think I was making you forget how to talk,” Brad said. “Someone likes being shoved up against a wall.”

“Maybe we can do that again sometime,” Drew said, moving in for a kiss.

Brad met his kiss, and soon Drew’s tongue probed at his mouth, and he opened eagerly. It’d only been a few short minutes, but he longed to taste Drew again. The feeling, the closeness, of the other man started a tingle in his lips that raced south and made him long for more intimate contact.

He needed to feel Drew, not just hold him. He ran his hands under Drew’s shirt, thrilling to the touch of another man’s muscled back. He’d seen the strong lats that tapered to a trim waist; now he traced it with his hands, digging the feel of skin over muscle. The women he’d been with had always lacked this hardness, and the rightness of it blew him away.

Then Brad grew braver. When he ran his hands down Drew’s back, he didn’t stop at the waist. He worked his hands into Drew’s pants to cup that fine, fine ass in his hands. The jock in him knew what it took to get that kind of muscle in the glutes. But the horndog was the one in the driver’s seat just then, and he loved the way it felt to hold an ass cheek in each hand, kneading and grasping. Drew seemed to like it, too, based on the noises he made.

That made it so right, so natural to pull Drew down and into him, to guide his hard cock into his own, their clothes in the way. Each grind stoked him higher and hotter.

Then Drew pulled back, eyes dark with lust.

“What’s wrong?” Brad said.

“You’re not ready for sex with a man, and I’m close. You make me lose control, and I like that, but you’re not ready for it.”

“I’m sorry,” Brad whispered.

“Don’t be.”

“It just seems like such a huge step,” Brad said, cooling and ashamed. He looked into Drew’s eyes, but then his glance darted nervously away. “I’m sorry. I… I don’t know if I can. Right now, I mean.”

“It’s okay,” Drew said. “Really.”

But Brad still felt terrible. “I feel like I’m letting you down, or I’m telling you you’re not good enough or something when I don’t mean that at all. I don’t feel like I’m ready for sex with a man, but I really like the things we do, and I like the way you make me feel.” He looked up at Drew. “Does that make sense?”

Drew nodded. “It’s a big step. You’ve got feelings you never thought you’d have for another man, and you’re doing things you’d never thought you’d do with another man. You’re not giving yourself credit for how far you’ve come and how quickly. We just started going out, what? A month ago?”

“Yeah, but I started noticing how cute and sweet you are this spring when you were coming to all the regattas with Nick,” Brad confessed. “The way you helped with the oars, even though you had no idea how to carry them, and then seeing you waiting for me on the beach at Lake Natoma? That meant a lot to me. So it’s been more than a month, at least for me.”

“Okay, but still. You’re twenty-two, right? In less than a year, you’ve gone from being a heterosexual big lug to rolling around on the sofa with me. I’d say that’s pretty significant.”

“I am not,” Brad said, “a ‘big lug’.”

Drew grinned at him. “I happen to like ‘big lug’. I think it’s hot. I think you’re hot.”

“You think I’m hot?”

“You have no idea,” Drew breathed.

Brad looked sly. “Maybe you could… uh, tell me more about that?”

Drew, still laying on top of Brad, sat up so he was effectively sitting on his crotch, a fact not lost on either of them. “You first caught my eye at that disastrous race early in the spring, what were they called? It was the one that was so stormy and the crew’s nerve broke or something.”

“The WIRAs,” Brad groaned. “The Western Intercollegiate Rowing Association’s spring regatta. I can’t believe you remember that. Not our finest moment as a crew, and not mine as a rower.”

“You puked as soon as the race was over,” Drew said, grinning.

“I can’t believe you remember that,” Brad groaned.

“There was just something about you that morning that caught my attention,” Drew mused. “You were—are—so handsome, so masculine, I wanted to climb you like a tree. Still do.” He held up a hand to head off Brad’s self-recrimination. “When you’re ready. But when you smiled at me? Oh, man.”

“That’s funny,” Brad said. “That was when I first really noticed you too. I didn’t know what it meant, but by the last race of the season, somehow I needed you there. And afterwards? After we eked out that win? I didn’t relax until I saw you standing next to Nick as we came back in. You have no idea,” he said, pulling Drew down to kiss him quickly, “how much that meant to me. In my whole life, no one had ever been there for me.”