Beyond the Footlights, page 11
“Kilmer?” Vance asked, pulling him out of the thought.
He really didn’t think the question needed answering, but he snarled, “You want me to sleep, you don’t want to be sending me back there.”
“Sleep here if you must, but that house needs to get fixed.”
“Why does it matter so much to you?”
“Because it matters to you.”
“You don’t know what matters to me.”
Before Kilmer could move or even register that he should, Vance’s hand flashed out and he slipped a finger under the chain still around his neck. “Don’t I?” He dragged Kilmer closer by the heavy links. The bite at the back of Kilmer’s neck forced him to lean in, too close. A wash of Vance’s warm breath over his face flipped his gut and his palms began to sweat.
Wrapping fingers around Vance’s wrist, Kilmer tried to break his hold, but the steel rigidity of Vance’s grip only made him tremble. It wasn’t that he thought Vance might hurt him. But to suddenly be in his hold, caught….
“Let go.” He ground his teeth and tightened his hold on Vance like that could, in some way, equal out the power he exerted.
“Vance,” Len said softly. His slim fingers curled around Vance’s wrist right next to Kilmer’s, lending a soothing warmth and gentleness to the connection. Kilmer hadn’t even seen him get up. His hand was nearly white against the tan skin of Vance’s arm, but for a moment, Vance stared straight into Kilmer, ignoring his lover.
“Let. Go.” Kilmer squirmed, but there was no way to unlatch Vance’s grip in a nonviolent manner. Vance’s glare was hard enough to make Kilmer want to look away, but he didn’t dare. He wouldn’t submit, and he couldn’t risk not knowing what came next, not seeing it coming. He would never tip the scale into violence either. It was one step too far, and a place even that last night with Jacko hadn’t quite gone. Though he quavered with the effort, he did manage to keep himself otherwise still.
“Vance,” Len said again.
Vance slowly withdrew his gaze from Kilmer, a long, slow pull of all that honed attention off of him so he could turn to look at Len. Kilmer thought he might bleed out all over them. The look Vance turned on his lover was so soft and protective, penetrating, but not with the same invasive suggestion of power and violence.
A knife of anger and hurt sliced through Kilmer.
“You’re right, babe,” Vance said softly, and he let Kilmer go to drape an arm over Len’s shoulders.
There was no universe in which Jacko would have treated an interruption from Kilmer like that, no matter if Kilmer’s intervention was right or wrong. Any show of opposition would have been met with punishment.
“You don’t know what matters to me,” Kilmer said again, in a whisper this time. “You don’t know what I want. What I need.”
“I know you,” Vance countered. His grip on Len was tight, and he looked shaken by his own aggression. “I know you don’t let go of things. What did Jacko say or do to make you put the music down, Kil?”
“What?” The abrupt change in topic left Kilmer spinning.
“I’m going to figure out what he did to you.”
“He didn’t do anything, Van. Leave it alone. Yer crazy enough to take him on this tour, that’s your business, but don’t meddle.”
“I am going to find out what happened,” Vance said. “It’s been going on so long, you don’t even know how to answer the question.”
“And how do you know it didn’t start with somethin’ I did to him?”
“Because I know you.”
Kilmer wondered if his best friend really did know him as well as he thought. He wondered if he even knew himself. Maybe he just wasn’t sub material, no matter what he’d thought all these years. If an experienced Dom like Jacko couldn’t keep him, then maybe he just wasn’t… keepable.
“You never doubted yourself with me, Kil,” Vance said. “You doubted me plenty, but you never doubted yourself. You always knew your own mind and heart. Jacko’s got you so turned around you don’t know yourself anymore, and that ain’t right.”
Okay. So maybe Vance knew a little something about him.
Kilmer sighed. “I’ll get the house done, all right? I can hire someone.”
“Who?”
“I found a contractor. Jacko was playing in a band with him in town but his day job is handyman. Jacko left the damn dog with him so he must be trustworthy. He never even left the mutt with me for more than a few hours. This guy can fix up the house. I don’t have to be there.”
Vance watched him even as he kissed the side of Len’s head and then gently moved his lover away from him. “You’re missing the point entirely, Kil.”
“What point?”
“I want you to fix the house. It needs to be you. You can’t reclaim it if you give the work over to some stranger. It needs to be your time. Your energy. Your effort.”
“All that has to happen is the place has to be made livable—”
“No, what has to happen is that you have to reclaim your space. Your life. Your independence.” Vance gripped him with a hand on either side of his face. “You trusted me once,” he said quietly, staring intently into Kilmer’s eyes.
It was impossible to look away. Kilmer swallowed, but he nodded. “Yeah. I guess.”
“Trust me again.”
Kilmer frowned and managed to spare a glance for Len, who was watching them closely, expectantly. He looked back to Vance, and the intensity of Vance’s brown eyes locked on his dug out a soul-deep memory of what they had once shared. Maybe it hadn’t worked out, but the bones of the relationship, the trust that Vance would never betray, was still there, and he suddenly wondered if he had ever had that with Jacko at all.
“I trust you,” he said. A lump clogged his throat and he had to swallow. It felt like nails going down, even though there was nothing physically there, and it made his eyes prick and water. “I never stopped trusting you.”
Vance smiled and Kilmer heard Len let out a deep sigh.
“Thank God,” Vance whispered, mostly to himself. “Then listen to me and do not argue, because this is not a suggestion from a friend or an idea from your boss, this is me telling you: take the next four days. Work on that house like you work here. Honest work. We’ll be there to help, and you can have your handyman to help too, if you want, but you are going to do this and you are going to have a schedule. Discipline.”
Kilmer swallowed, unable to look away from him. “I don’t need—”
“I’ll meet this contractor, and I’ll be by your side for the next two weeks, figure out what you need while I’m gone, same as I did for Len. You two are goin’ to stay on track. Together.”
Kilmer wanted to tell Vance he didn’t need this. He had never been the kind of sub Len was. He gave his body, sure, and he served his Master, but discipline and schedules were more intense than anything he’d had with Jacko or Vance.
“You don’t own me anymore,” he said, his voice rough and edged with uncertainty, so it cut the thick tension around them to ribbons. “You never did….”
“Trust me.” Vance shook him slightly.
“I don’t—” Kilmer swallowed hard. “I don’t belong to you.” He shot another glance to Len, but Len didn’t look in the least worried about what Vance was doing.
“How many ways do I have to say it, Kil? You always have. You’re my family. Deeper than brothers. I ain’t gonna let you fall, and I ain’t gonna let Len fall. He needs discipline to get through months on his own. You’ll have it too, so he has stability. It’s for him as much as it is for you.”
Kilmer looked to Len again, noting Len’s lower lip caught tight between his teeth. He didn’t look nervous exactly. He had already accepted whatever this was as fact. His Dom had told him how it would be, and he accepted it. He trusted Vance to his core. Had Kilmer ever trusted Jacko like that? He couldn’t remember.
“Okay,” Kilmer said finally. “Okay. Fine. Whatever.”
Vance shook his head but probably decided that was about as much as Kilmer was willing to concede, because he backed off.
“It’s a start,” he said, and patted Kilmer’s shoulder. “Don’t care where you sleep tonight, but Len and I will be at your place at six thirty tomorrow morning.”
“The horses—”
“Will be fine. Patrick has this place under control for a few days. You’ve taught him well. Trust that too. As far as the ranch is concerned, he has your back. They all do.”
Kilmer nodded. “Okay.”
Vance took Len into his arms then and held him close, whispering something Kilmer couldn’t hear. Len blushed deep pink and squirmed, and Kilmer suddenly knew, beyond a doubt, he could not remain in the house knowing what would be going on in the room across the hall. Len might be willing enough to share Vance’s discipline and strength for a little while, but there were limits. And Kilmer knew what lines would never be crossed. He had to give them space, and he didn’t want to lie in bed thinking about what he no longer had.
As he backed out of room, they were still so wrapped up in each other they barely acknowledged his leaving.
13
LIKE HE had the Friday before, Kilmer parked his car in his drive, but this time he didn’t even go inside. He locked up and headed straight to the bar. A wiggle of excitement went through him to see Tanner’s name on the marquee above the doors. Seemed the singer was flying solo again this weekend, but at least Kilmer would get a chance to see him.
He was onstage, but he grinned when he saw Kilmer take the same seat at the end of the bar. He even offered a quick wave between songs. Kilmer acknowledged it with a wave of his near-empty beer bottle, then ordered a second and listened. He let himself get caught up in the raucous crowd and the drinking music this time. When the house music came on, the same group of girls and one guy he vaguely remembered from the week before pulled him onto the dance floor before Tanner was off the stage. He lost himself in that too.
The girls teased and cajoled the young man into flirting with him, and he flirted right back for a while, forgetting to wonder what Tanner might think of him letting the kid paw him. He blocked out how incensed Jacko would have been at seeing anyone he hadn’t preapproved lay a single finger on him.
For the first time in so long he couldn’t even remember the last time, he belonged only to himself. If tonight he wanted to dance with a twink way too young for him, there was no one to tell him no. It was freeing in a way he never anticipated.
Besides, the kid was cute enough, and he so clearly wanted something from Kilmer he was never going to get from his girlfriends. Every song brought them a little closer. Every grin came easier. Every shy glimpse the younger man offered, snatching his bottom lip up under his teeth and blushing, made Kilmer a little hotter. The kid wanted him and had no designs on anything other than a good time. That was definitely something Kilmer could deliver.
When he yanked the younger man in, groin-to-groin for a sensual grind to some not-so-slow, hurtin’ country song, he wasn’t met with any resistance. He would never have guessed they weren’t in the middle of some gay bar in the city, but no one jeered. No one threw anything at them, and Kilmer nebulously realized they weren’t the only same-sex couple on the floor.
Rainbow night at the country dive. Huzzah. He wrapped his hand around the guy’s slim waist and reveled in the press of their bodies, knee to hip. The kid’s heat and enthusiasm were mind-blowing. His hands, clinging to Kilmer’s shoulders, were as strong as Kilmer could have wished, and his hard body indicated he was no stranger to hard work or at least a gym. He might only have a passing acquaintance with a razor, but Kilmer knew the bar staff were vigilant about checking ID, so he would be legal.
The music, the movement, the heat of another body this close was more intoxicating than the beer, so that when the tempo slowed and the kid with it, curling his lanky body in close, Kilmer wrapped an arm around him and swayed with him to the steady, easy cadence.
One verse in, Kilmer found himself humming to the tune, stippling his left fingers against his dance partner’s ribs in a remembered pattern that followed the bass line of the song. He didn’t have to think much about it. Muscle memory kicked in and a deep sense of relief flooded him.
The young man squirmed against him and chuckled. “Hey! That tickles.”
“Really?” Kilmer leaned away to get a look into his companion’s face. “Interesting.”
The young man blinked and swallowed, then impulsively clapped his mouth over Kilmer’s. The kiss was enthusiastic. Not particularly practiced or artful, but sweet just the same. Kilmer couldn’t help but respond.
Then it was over and the young man was blushing furiously, ducking his head to tuck his face against Kilmer’s neck.
“Sorry,” he whispered.
Kilmer ran a hand up his spine and cupped his palm gently around the back of his neck. “Don’t be. That was sweet.”
That earned him a low groan and more nuzzling, as if the kid had decided he was never lifting his face again.
“Don’t be embarrassed,” Kilmer said softly. “I liked it.”
“I’m such a dork!”
Kilmer chuckled. “Yes. You are. An adorable dork.”
He couldn’t stop a heartfelt laugh when the young man’s hands slid down to cup Kilmer’s asscheeks and squeeze. The innocence radiating off the guy was impish and sexy and left Kilmer feeling utterly chaste and protective.
“You’re okay,” he promised, nuzzling back a bit and placing a gentle kiss on the smooth pink-shaded neck. “You’re just fine.” He deliberately wiggled his ass a bit and got a small snort for his troubles.
The song ended soon after that, and the girls surged back in around them, crowding in to insert lithe, soft bodies between the men.
Kilmer allowed the reclamation and unobtrusively eased out of the melee until he was free. He headed for the barstool next to Tanner and signaled Bob for a beer.
“What was that all about?” Tanner asked. There was a stiffness to his voice and in his motions as he sipped from his glass.
Kilmer shrugged. “Dancing. Having a good time.”
“He’s half your age.”
Kilmer accepted the beer from Bob and swigged back a healthy gulp. “So?”
“So since when do you dance with twenty-one-year-old kids?”
Kilmer was seriously tempted to ask how old Rocky was or to volley with “You’d be surprised what I let twentysomething kids do to me,” but something about the glint of Tanner’s eye, the hardness of his expression stopped him. He pulled back from belligerence and offered a real answer instead. “Since tonight I felt like dancing and not sitting around feeling sorry for myself.” He took another long swallow of his beer. “And you’ve known me what? A week? What would you know about it?” He downed the last of the brew, slammed the bottle onto the bar, and swiveled his stool to catch the young man’s eye. He instantly accepted the unspoken invitation to pick up where they had left off. Without looking back to Tanner, he stood. “You don’t know a thing about me.” He left the bar for the twink and accepted his outstretched hand.
Screw Tanner and his disapproval. The kid—Elliot, as his name turned out to be—wanted to dance. He wanted to grope and neck, and Kilmer was willing to oblige. He didn’t always need to be held down and fucked. There was no harm in sharing a little affection with another consenting adult.
The group closed down the bar, dancing until the last strains of music were silenced and Bob threatened to kick them out. Kilmer contemplated luring Elliot from the dance floor to someplace decidedly more private. Unfortunately, between Elliot’s protective female posse bundling him into his jacket and Tanner bulling his way into the conversation, all Kilmer managed was a matchbook case with Elliot’s name and number scribbled on the inside, and then he was gone.
“Thanks,” Kilmer shot at Tanner, his voice dripping with sarcasm.
“You’ll thank me in the morning, trust me,” Tanner replied, completely deadpan.
“You know what?” Kilmer curled a lip. “Fuck you.”
He was standing on the edge of the dance floor, leaning his back against the stage, while Tanner perched on the edge, rolling a patch cable. Tanner dropped the cable and jumped down, all fluid motion as he pinned Kilmer to the stage. He moved in, hips hard against Kilmer’s, bracing a hand on the edge of the stage on either side of him. It was like he hadn’t even heard Kilmer tell him to go fuck himself.
“What is your problem?” Kilmer demanded, pressing a hand to Tanner’s chest. “I said, Fuck. You. I was into that guy.”
Tanner grinned, gaze fixed on Kilmer’s lips. “You weren’t. Not really.” He looked up and his eyes were a smoky deep-brown pool of distraction. His mouth was so close Kilmer could smell the sweetness of pop on his breath. Any alcoholic scent was conspicuously absent.
Kilmer squirmed and pushed ineffectually at Tanner’s shoulders. “What are you doing?”
Tanner’s eyes narrowed to a glare, the look molten at this range. Kilmer’s defenses disintegrated under the stare and he licked his lips. His chest heaved. It was suddenly impossible to drag in enough oxygen.
Tanner leaned close, lips barely brushed over Kilmer’s. “Watched that little pup slobber all over you tonight. I admit.” He licked the shell of Kilmer’s ear. “Glad he’s gone.”
“Yeah?” Kilmer tried to move so he could focus on Tanner’s face, to ask him what he was doing, but the scruff of Tanner’s beard dragged over his neck and he groaned instead.
Tanner moved back. The heat in his eyes as he searched Kilmer’s was intense. He took Kilmer’s chin in a firm grip, moved his gaze to his mouth.
Kilmer had barely licked his lips in invitation when Tanner’s mouth covered his. So unlike Elliot’s eager, sloppy affections, Tanner’s kiss was searing and deep and completely controlled.
Kilmer groaned as he parted his lips for Tanner’s invading tongue. He leaned away, but Tanner splayed a hand over the back of his head and held him fast, delving into him and taking what he wanted. He got every ounce of Kilmer’s attention, and there was no disguising that this one kiss achieved what all of Elliot’s gyrations and groping had not. Kilmer was hard, groaning, rutting against Tanner, and kissing back, greedy for deeper and more.
