Beyond the Footlights, page 17
“Don’t tell me that wasn’t a good time,” Vance said as they were packing up.
At last call, the bar’s bouncers—some of them called in for an extra unexpected shift—had made a casual but effective line of muscle between the lingering bar patrons and the front of the stage. Now, more than an hour later, only the diehards and Elliot remained. Rocky had taken pity on the young man and asked if he would help them tear down, thereby getting him past the ad hoc security team and, incidentally, close enough to flirt with.
It thrilled Kilmer to see Rocky recovered enough from their unsettling first meeting to be flirting with someone. He had to admit, it was nice to see that the someone in question was closer to his own age. He remembered how warm and amenable Elliot had been in his arms, wondered a bit if the two men would be good for each other, but decided it wasn’t his business. They were grown men. They could work it out.
“Hey.” Vance chucked him on the arm. “Hello in there.”
“Huh.” Kilmer grunted and fastened the last clips on his bass case. “What?”
“You had fun up here tonight.”
“Course I did.”
“Good.”
“Stuff it.” Kilmer grinned at him, though. This was one time he didn’t mind Vance being right about something.
“You should do it more often.”
“Maybe I will.” Kilmer glanced to where Tanner was piling guitar cases, amps, and cords backstage near the service door. “We’ll see.”
Not long after, Rocky, Elliot, and a portion of Elliot’s entourage left for Rocky’s place and the promise of late-night BBQ burgers. Vance and Lenny weren’t far behind, headed back to the ranch. Kilmer helped load the last of the equipment into Tanner’s truck, and they stood there, awkward for a moment, until Tanner rolled his eyes and instructed Kilmer to put his bass in the back of the truck and get in.
Kilmer did, then settled into the passenger seat and fastened his belt.
“Yours?” Tanner asked.
“That’s where the dog is.”
Tanner pursed his lips, but only for an instant. “Right.” He put the truck in gear and headed out, navigating the short drive in silence. When he’d parked, they sat in more silence for a few minutes.
“Well?” Kilmer asked. “You coming in?”
Tanner grinned. “That garage of yours lock?”
“It does.”
“Room for my rig in there?”
“Should be. Last time I was in there, only the tools and Jacko’s bike were there.”
“Perfect.” Tanner waited while Kilmer got out, opened the rolling garage door, then flipped on the light.
There, gleaming under the bare bulbs hanging from the rafters, was Jacko’s old truck in all its refinished glory. The motorcycle was gone.
Tanner shut off the truck while Kilmer was still processing what he was seeing. Jacko loved his truck. He babied it. He was about to leave for who knew how long and here it sat. Did he expect Kilmer to look after it until he got back?
The clunk of Tanner’s truck door closing made Kilmer jump and turn slightly to watch his approach. “It’s Jacko’s,” Kilmer said. “I didn’t know it was here.”
“So.” He hooked one thumb into a belt loop and scraped the other hand through his hair, pushing it back from his face. “You want to unload the truck or grab the dog?”
Kilmer bit his lip and looked at Tanner. “Your place,” he said, suddenly eager to be out of there. “Gimme a sec.”
“Sure.” The shallow smile, ill-fitting over the expression of worry, didn’t reach Tanner’s eyes or soften his expression much. “I got food and everything he needs. I’ll wait in the truck.”
“Yeah.” Kilmer closed the garage back up and headed for the house. He was back in the truck, the dog safely between them, a sparsely packed duffel at his feet, in less than five minutes.
“Ready?”
Kilmer nodded as he dug his fingers into the dog’s ruff.
“You okay?”
“Fine.”
Tanner started the engine but didn’t otherwise make a move to leave the spot.
“What?” Kilmer glared at him. He tried to mitigate the tone of his voice, but the dog yowled softly, and he realized he was pulling the poor guy’s hair. He relaxed his grip slightly.
“You seem tense,” Tanner said, voice a mild, really annoying balm over Kilmer’s nerves.
“He loves that truck.”
“As much as he loved the dog?” Tanner ruffed the animal’s nape and his tail thumped once against the back of the seat.
“How the ever-loving fuck should I know? I suppose I didn’t know how he felt about anything.” Tension drew wires of pain tight between Kilmer’s shoulder blades, and he tried to relax. He didn’t want to do this. He didn’t want Jacko popping up in his life over and over. The guy was gone. He wished he would stay that way.
Tanner said nothing. Kilmer could feel him looking at him. He refused to even glance back.
“Buckle up,” Tanner said at last and put the truck in reverse.
Again the ride was silent and short. Tanner lived within walking distance, in a small neatly appointed bungalow with craftsman details and what looked in the dark to be slightly overgrown but riotous garden beds.
They parked in the garage and entered the house through a small vestibule off the kitchen. The dog trotted in behind them and headed straight for a big bed in the corner of the living room, next to a brick fireplace, where he turned in a circle before tucking into a tight ball and setting his head on his paws.
Kilmer had been inside this kind of fifties brick house before, so the mudroom carved from the efficient but no-frills kitchen was a surprisingly modern addition to the traditional interior. Tanner had sacrificed some of the kitchen’s footprint, but it gained him an air lock and a place to keep his dusty, sweaty construction clothes.
The L-shaped kitchen opened to a small eating area, separated from the living room by a round dining table that looked handcrafted, with luxuriously upholstered chairs placed around it.
“This is nice,” Kilmer admitted. It all looked put together and thought-out. Like someone had decorated with a plan in mind and managed to execute that plan.
“Thanks.” Tanner grinned. “It’s actually my parents’ place, but after Dad died… Mom didn’t really want to live here, and she’s got a new guy now. They’re snowbirds for half the year, and RVers the other half. They’re somewhere between Vancouver and Vegas right now, I think. I have an apartment out on the highway, but I don’t stay there much anymore. Don’t like leaving this place sitting empty. I’ve been fixing it up for sale.” He shrugged and glanced around. “It’s coming along, I guess.”
Kilmer ran his palm over the surface of the table. There was a geometric pattern of diamonds and triangles around the outer edge of the table. Kilmer had mistaken it for hand-stained decoration, but closer inspection revealed the design was made from different colors of wood, cut into tiny pieces, and laid in place with painstaking precision.
“Wow.”
Tanner shrugged one shoulder, but a decidedly pink tone invaded the tops of his cheeks above his beard. “Need to keep busy,” he mumbled. “Gives me something to do.”
“It’s beautiful.” Kilmer glanced at him. “You made this?”
“I did.” He touched the edge of the table with a single finger, gazing at it like it represented something much bigger and deeper in his life than a piece of furniture.
“I thought you said you were a handyman.”
“I am.”
“You can do this kind of woodwork and you make a living as a handyman?”
“My father spent his life buried in clouds of sawdust trying to make a living at this sort of thing. He taught me everything he knew, then he died of lung cancer. Never smoked a day in his life. Just inhaled a fuckton of wood dust and died young and destitute.”
“I’m sorry.”
Another one-shouldered shrug. “Is what it is. He taught me a lot. He loved me a lot. He died too young. Shit happens and you move on.” He grabbed a set of keys from a hook on the kitchen wall and headed back to the garage to move his gear from the truck to storage.
Kilmer followed because what else was he going to do?
Together they unloaded the instruments into a row of hand-built cabinets along the wall, which Tanner locked. They fed the dog, made a tray of nachos, then stood watching through the oven window as the cheese bubbled and flowed over the browning chips.
“You miss your folks?” Tanner asked. They were leaning side by side against the counter opposite the oven, each with a beer in hand.
“Dad had his hands full with his cattle and rodeo bulls. Mom ran the business end of things. I was an afterthought. Extra really. If I miss anyone back home, it’s Vance’s mom. She had more heart than my parents together. And his dad. He’s the one taught us both to play. Worked like a dog but always had a half hour at the end of the day to strum out a few tunes. Vance has his voice now. I can hear his dad in him. See him too in the way he sparkles when he looks at Len. His dad was like that with his mom.”
“Are they close?”
“They love him. Don’t really understand him—or me—but then, I don’t know that they ever did. I think they didn’t need to understand him to love him.” Unlike his own family, who hadn’t had a single fuck to give when he told them he was leaving Texas for Canada to follow Vance.
“That’s rare.”
“Yeah. My folks didn’t seem to notice when I spent more time with Van’s family. Mom and Dad have cousins and baby cousins coming out their ears, and every one of them good Christian folk who marry before they fuck and toe a dutifully hetero line.”
“So you’re the black sheep.”
“Was even before I came out to any of them. Always had too many opinions and not enough yessir in me for Daddy’s liking. Momma just… looked through me since I was a wee thing. I was trouble goin’ in and more trouble comin’ out, so I’m told. Took forever for them to conceive in the first place, and then had a hell of a time carrying to term and worse time gettin’ me out. After me there were no more babies for her. She was a pageant queen and wanted more pageant queens to carry on after her.” He grinned. “Don’t think I was quite the kind of queen she had in mind.”
Tanner snickered. “Just goes to show you always have to be damn careful what you wish for.”
“Amen.” The oven timer dinged and Tanner sprang forward to retrieve the tray from its depths. The trivet he set on the table for the hot tray was as intricate as the table, and Kilmer admired it openly.
“You don’t have to praise every single thing—”
“It’s beautiful. I can appreciate, can’t I?”
There went that fleeting, shallow smile across his features. “Sorry.”
“Take a compliment.”
“Thank you.”
“It makes me sure of my chances, I have to admit.”
Tanner cocked his head. “Chances?”
“On gettin’ a pretty living room at the end of all this. No more pressboard furniture for me.”
Tanner grinned. “I can guarantee that. Nothing but trees the way God made ’em.” He ran his own palm over the top of the table. “I’m good at a few things. Building pretty furniture does happen to be one of them.”
Kilmer watched the motion. A shiver ran down his spine. “You’re good with your hands, then?” He stared at the back of Tanner’s hand, sun-brown and square, watched as tapered fingers curled around the edge of the table.
“Care to find out?” Tanner’s eyes, when he looked up, were intense.
“Please.” A tightness at the back of Kilmer’s throat pinched the word to a near whine. He cleared it and lowered his gaze, the habit of four years of training dictating his body language. Frowning, he lifted his head. Tanner was not Jacko. He met Tanner’s gaze steadily. “Yes. Like to test my theory.”
“Which theory might that be?”
That you can hold me down with those fine hands. Just like I need. That you know your way around rope.
Kilmer cleared his throat again. “I—uh.” God. He wanted to look away, wanted to look down, to defer.
Tanner grinned at him, leaned forward so his elbows rested on the table. “Interesting.”
“Shit.” Kilmer pursed his lips too late to stop the whisper escaping. He pushed back from the table, but Tanner moved fast and encompassed his wrist with those long fingers. The meat of his hand was rough with calluses, as were the very tips of his fingers, which he drew across Kilmer’s pulse point.
“Don’t get up.”
Kilmer swallowed hard. He was transfixed as Tanner stood, rounded the table to his side, and pried his knees apart to stand between them.
Kilmer could smell his musk and his sweat over the scent of cooling nachos. His cock twitched. He stared up at Tanner, concentrated on pulling in a breath, and tried to ignore that Tanner’s cock was right there. Practically within licking distance. The breath he pulled in was too shallow, his chest too tight, and he wiggled his ass back in his chair as far as he could. Like the precious few inches could give him more air, more space to breathe.
“Nervous?” Tanner continued to stroke the inside of his wrist, with his thumb now, as he tightened his grip.
The pressure eased something in Kilmer’s chest and he drew in a deeper breath. “I’m fine.”
“Truth.” Tanner’s dark gaze bored into him. “Above all and first, yeah?”
“I—” Kilmer stared up at him, the right words lost to him.
Tanner burrowed fingers in the short strands of Kilmer’s hair to warm his scalp. “Nerves are fine. Faking fine is not.”
Kilmer’s heart tripped. His breath caught. What did he know?
“Do you hear me?” Tanner asked softly, tugging lightly on his hair.
“I hear.”
“Good.” Tanner’s smile was slightly predatory, very sexy, all heat. “Pop my buttons.”
Kilmer needed only one hand to do that, thankfully, as he was more than happy to have the other safely caught in Tanner’s sure grip. His heart thundered, but that was fine. It was a good beat. A fast, steady drive toward something bigger and better than anything he’d had in a very long time.
He maintained eye contact with Tanner as he popped the buttons of his fly one at a time. He could feel the heat of Tanner’s hard cock through the soft cotton of his boxers. He breathed in the heady scent and closed his eyes. His body swayed and he allowed himself to lean closer.
“Eager?” Tanner asked gently, stroking fingers along the back of his scalp. “You want to suck me?”
“I do.” Kilmer licked his lips, then pressed them almost tenderly against the bulge under Tanner’s boxers. “Very much.”
“Good bo—That’s good.” Tanner’s fingers tightened around his wrist almost to the point of pain, then relaxed, though he didn’t let go, for which Kilmer was grateful. “Go ahead.”
Kilmer stared up at him. He’d almost said… what? Had he? What did Kilmer do with that? Acknowledge? Ignore? Panic?
Tanner moved his hand from Kilmer’s hair to his cheek. The calluses seemed to dance along his nerves and he shuddered. “Do it.” Just enough edge. Just enough of an order.
Kilmer’s cock jumped and filled. He blinked.
“Now.”
He got to work freeing Tanner from his underwear. The smell and the taste of Tanner about stopped Kilmer’s heart. His mouth watered, and he nuzzled close enough to lick a small taste from the tip.
“You can do better than that.” Tanner curled fingers around the back of his head again, then pulled him in close. “Suck.”
Kilmer obliged, sliding his lips over Tanner’s cock.
“Oh, yeah. Now that….” Tanner guided him to take more, then held him as he began to slowly pump his hips. “Like that.”
Kilmer hollowed his cheeks and sucked. He didn’t have much control over what he took, but he didn’t need—or want—control. He moaned when Tanner managed enough of a grip in his hair to keep him where he wanted him. He was fine with that. Being kept suited him. Tanner didn’t have to know how much.
“So good at this,” Tanner breathed.
Kilmer glanced up to find Tanner watching him avidly, like every expression that crossed Kilmer’s face mattered. Like Tanner wanted to see those expressions, needed to know what they meant. It was as though knowing Kilmer was into this as much as he was made it better for him.
Kilmer swallowed and pushed his tongue up against the underside of Tanner’s cock. The groan that came from Tanner’s mouth, shaped around Kilmer’s name and accompanied by the reflexive spasm of his fingers against Kilmer’s scalp, made Kilmer’s heart skip and his blood pound. He’d forgotten this feeling of doing it right. Of pleasing his partner and knowing it mattered that it was him doing this. He wasn’t just a handy release.
“So good,” Tanner whispered, thrusting a little faster, a little deeper. “So… fuck…. Kil….” His hips sped up, his hands tightened, and the last of Kilmer’s freedom vanished. He whimpered, caught by the knowledge he was trapped, loving the feeling of it, and knowing nothing bad was going to come of this.
Tanner’s voice turned guttural and he pushed himself deep, forcing his cock into Kilmer’s throat. Kilmer opened as best he could, took the invasion, his own cock pushing hard against his zipper. He wanted to stroke himself, but he was trapped, one hand still caught in Tanner’s grip, the other tangled in the loose fabric of Tanner’s jeans, hanging on for dear life.
“You gonna swallow?” Tanner asked, voice hard and urgent.
Kilmer would have begged if he could.
“Want my come?”
Kilmer groaned. So much.
“Fuck-ing hell.” Tanner grunted and his hands became steel traps, hard and inescapable. His body tensed. His cock throbbed, and then Kilmer’s mouth filled so rapidly he could barely swallow fast enough to take it all. He did his best, helpless in Tanner’s blissed-out grip and hoping he was good enough to please.
20
TANNER HADN’T planned on this. Sex again. After he’d acknowledged, both to himself and to Vance, that it was too soon. That he didn’t want to be a rebound and Kilmer needed more time. But Kilmer had looked at him with such want on his face. He’d become transfixed with something about Tanner’s hands, for crying out loud, and all Tanner had been able to think was that if Kilmer was that fixated, Tanner should do something about it.
