Tipping the Balance (34 page)

“You’re so tight. This is… wow,” Brad breathed. “I’m not going to last long, not like this.”

Brad pulled back experimentally, pushing back in, filling Drew again, making his body hum. Then again, a little further out, a little faster back in. Then again, deeper and deeper as he gained confidence.

“S’okay, I won’t either, now fuck me. You’re in. I won’t break.”

Bracing his hands on either side of Drew’s body, Brad leaned over and started thrusting in and out, all the way up to pubes and back out until the head alone remained in Drew’s ass.

“Harder,” Drew gasped. The fullness was incredible, the slide over his prostate mind-blowing. He felt the heat and light of his climax rising around him as his body sang with pleasure.

Then Brad slammed home, ramming him. “Yeah!” Drew cried as Brad pumped into him hard and fast.

“Gonna fuckin’ fill you up,” Brad grunted, red and sweaty over him.

Reaching awkwardly around Brad’s arm, Drew tried to stroke himself. Brad saw, then shifted his weight to one hand and gingerly took Drew in the other.

“Brad,” Drew panted. “Feels great. You’re amazing.”

Brad’s rhythm faltered as he tried to stroke and fuck Drew at the same time, but he got the tempo back together and made Drew fly.

“Getting close,” Drew panted.

Brad’s breath came harder and harder, matching Drew’s own. “Almost there….”

Then, suddenly, Drew was there, filled with light and life and Brad as spots danced before his eyes. His body rocked as he pumped blast after clenching blast of cum onto his chest.

“Drew!” Brad cried, and just like that, he was done, his rhythm slowing as he rode his own cresting orgasm. “Drew,” he repeated, softly this time as he caught his breath.

Drew ran his hands gently over Brad’s back. Now was the moment of truth. As the lust cleared, would Brad pull out and pull away from him, filled with regret and loathing for them both? Or would he—

Brad leaned forward, into Drew’s arms, and Drew released a breath he didn’t even know he was holding.

“Drew,” Brad murmured, nuzzling his neck, kissing him softly. “That was… amazing.”

Drew held onto Brad, as in the wake of their lovemaking he felt too vulnerable to be alone. To his relief and delight, Brad worked his arms under him and held him tighter, ignoring the cooling, sticky mess between them. “Stay with me tonight?”

“I was hoping you’d ask,” Brad said from where he rested his head on Drew’s shoulder.

“You never have to wait for an invitation,” Drew whispered.

Later, after they’d cleaned up, they cuddled up together, Brad the big spoon and Drew the small one. Drew felt safe and protected and very well fucked.

But one thing tickled at the back of his mind. His boyfriend could barely say the word “gay,” and then there were those weird notions of who was the “man” and who was the “woman.” Yeah, he’d been pretty damned hot for Brad’s cock, but that was some messed up thinking, and it’d have to be addressed one of these days.

Brad
walked through the house, just enjoying the quiet and order. His crew had finished the last of the mopping up the day before, and now it was his turn. With a clipboard, a cleaning cloth, and blue painter’s tape to mark any problems, Brad examined first the updated rooms and then the rooms they hadn’t touched. Drew prided himself on delivering a quality product, and Brad subscribed to that wholeheartedly. Any problems he identified and fixed before the homeowners found them made Renochuck look better.

No curtains blew in the gentle breeze wafting in the opened windows. Emily would only start her installation once Drew and Brad made sure the house was good to go, and in any event, curtains would only have trapped the dust kicked up by construction, and Brad preferred his crews use industrial vacuums to filter the dust instead of curtains. Too bad they couldn’t have waited until the summer heat broke before starting, Brad thought. It was a gorgeous day, not at all like the sweltering oven that had baked the water right out of him when he’d started.

He didn’t even mind working on a stepladder up near the ceiling as he checked the crown molding for scratches and visible nail heads. He looked down around the room and out into the hallway beyond. Such a change from just a few months ago. Everywhere he looked, he felt pride in the work he’d helped complete. He’d found it difficult to appreciate the changes on a day-to-day basis. Each day he worked and worked, and while he or the crew completed each individual project, the job as a complete whole had eluded him until now. It satisfied him in a way that rotting in the sales office never would. Philip might be happy driving a desk for Sundstrom Homes, but this just confirmed to Brad that he needed to work with his hands. He needed to create if not beauty, then at least solid workmanship.

He finished checking the crown molding in one room and moved onto the next “room” on his checklist, the hallway, one that connected the public areas with the bedrooms. He glanced into the room on his left. It was one of the rooms untouched by the renovation. That was where he and Drew had made out on his first day on the job. The room in which Brad had confronted seriously for the first time both that he was physically attracted to Drew and that he had feelings for the other man, despite the fact that he was… a man.

Then, Drew’s five o’clock shadow had skeeved him out. Now, Brad enjoyed an emotional and sexual relationship with Drew. That first time had sent him into a bit of a tailspin—he’d had cum on him. Another man’s cum on him. It should’ve sent him screaming for the hills.

But that was the weirdest thing. Usually he was all about dropping his load and leaving. He’d never been much of a cuddler and rarely felt the need to hang around after the deed was done. But that night? There was nowhere else he wanted to be more that evening than with Drew, and even putting up with Randall’s shit the next day hadn’t taken the shine off it. All it did was make him more determined than ever to get the hell out of his dad’s house.

Brad smiled, thinking about that first amazing night as he continued to check the molding for problems. The first night hasn’t been an issue, really. By the time they’d made it back to Drew’s bedroom, Brad had been so horned up nothing could’ve derailed him. The beers hadn’t hurt, either.

But the second time… that had been the weird one, but in for a penny, in for a dollar. Brad let his body take the lead, and that made both of them very happy indeed. After that? Well, it hadn’t taken Brad very long to get used to a regular outlet other than his hand.

Besides, he was with Drew. However improbably that had come about, Brad had fallen for another man, one who had showed him a world full of masculine beauty. That made working out at the gym a whole lot more interesting, even if all he did was look. One guy was all he could wrap his mind around at a time, and he didn’t think he’d ever grow tired of Drew.

It showed him just how full of possibility the universe was, if he just opened his eyes. Speaking of, Drew was incredibly understanding. This was Brad’s first serious relationship, but he had enough experience to appreciate Drew’s patience and the fact that he didn’t roll his eyes at Brad’s struggles to come to terms with things. He still struggled when he thought of himself as gay or even bi. That was just going to take time.

Brad repositioned the ladder, but halfway back up, his cell phone rang. “Brad Sundstrom.”

“It’s Emily.”

“Hey, Emily! How’s it going?”

“Have you heard from Drew lately? As in the last ten minutes or so?”

Brad laughed at her direct manner. Usually Emily observed the social niceties, but when she was in a hurry, they flew right out the window. “No, why?”

“Because I just got the weirdest call from the city preservation office.”

Brad shook his head. Those words made no sense. “The what?”

Emily made an exasperated noise. “You heard me. I… I think we got the bid, Brad.”

“No way!”

“Way!” Emily said, her voice exaggerated.

“All right, I get it. Not in college anymore.”

“Thank you. Where’s Drew?”

“No idea, but he should be here any moment to do the walkthrough. One of the two of us will call you back ASAP,” Brad said.

“So you admit it?” she said archly.

Two could play at that game, and he had the rep for being as dumb as a block of wood. “Admit what?”

“I don’t have time for this,” she growled and hung up.

Brad tried to resume the quality-control check, but his mind kept jumping around. The bid. He pulled his phone back out and hit Drew’s number on autodial. “Come on, answer, you’ve got that stupid douchetooth—Drew!”

“Hey,” Drew said tersely.

“Listen, I just got a call from Emily—”

“I don’t have time to talk,” Drew interrupted. “I’m on the way to the preservation office. If I hurry, I can make it before they close. Can you call Emily and then get to my house and do something about dinner? Something tells me this is going to be a long night.”

“What about the walkthrough?” Brad objected.

“Are we on schedule?”

“Slightly ahead of,” Brad said. “I think someone pads his schedule slightly when he draws up a bid.”

“Possibly,” Drew said, the sounds of traffic coming through the wireless headset he wore. “We can afford to shove the house off a day. Call Emily—”

“Got it. See you when you get there,” Brad said, ending the call.

He scurried through the house, closing windows and doors. Suddenly he was very busy.

Four
days later, on a rare Sunday morning at home, Brad wandered out to the kitchen early. He usually spent weekend nights with Drew, but most of his dirty laundry was at home, and he needed to make it clean laundry. He planned to get it all done and then spend the afternoon with his boyfriend. Keeping rowers’ hours as he did, it would be easy to run a few loads through the washer and dryer and then get out of there.

Despite the fact that little had changed physically about the Sundstrom house since his mother’s death years before—Randall allowed nothing to change—Brad no longer thought of the house as his home. He had almost enough saved for his own apartment, but even if he were willing to put up with dorm-like accommodations, he didn’t see himself affording the kind of place Drew would set foot in, let alone spend the night. That mattered to him.

To his surprise, Randall and Philip were already awake. Randall sipped at a mug of coffee while Philip stared morosely at a bowl of soggy cereal—Lucky Charms, Brad noted as he glanced over Philip’s shoulder.

Noting his presence in the house that morning, Randall said, “Well, to what do we owe this honor? Did whatever tramp you spent the night with get sick of your snoring?”