29. Brooks

CHAPTER 29

brOOKS

By the time Dylan’s gig was over, he was somewhat less defiant than when he’d tried to get a drink earlier in the night, but he was still sharp around the edges, angry and lost. Tate could see it, and it killed him to stay hands off. I didn’t know what the dynamic of their friendship had been before, but it didn’t take a rocket scientist to tell things had changed. Ten minutes after he’d walked off the stage, Dylan joined our little group, guitar case clutched in his white-knuckled hand. Alex passed him a fresh bottle of water, which Dylan drank without complaint.

For as long as I’d known Alex, his kinks had always been something he kept relatively close to his chest. He played on occasion, but never with the frequency or the interest that I expected from men like Kale and Ford. It wasn’t until Alex and Beamer started to hook up that I understood for the first time the things that the two of them preferred. Alex played rough. Rougher than me and with a far more serious undercurrent of submission than any of us cared to pursue. That wasn’t something that could necessarily come through safely in a club environment, especially with strangers, so watching Alex go through the heartbreak of losing Beamer put the whole thing into clear perspective for me.

Dylan and Tate were chatting about the gig, and I took the opportunity to grab Alex by the arm and pull him aside. He came freely, eyes watching Dylan for any sign of fight. When he was satisfied that the other two weren’t going anywhere, he turned his attention fully to me.

“You’re taking that one seriously, aren’t you?” I asked, resting my shoulder against the wall.

“You asked me to.”

“Only if you wanted,” I reminded him.

He threw a glance at the back of Dylan’s head. “I wanted.”

“Does he?”

Alex answered that with a half-shrug. “He doesn’t not want it. But I don’t think he understands the why of it.”

“Not many people do.”

“Beamer did,” he said.

“Speaking of Beamer.” I cleared my throat, searching Alex’s face for any tells or clues that would betray whatever words were going to be next out of his mouth. “How would you feel if I invited him and Dalton to the farm next weekend?”

Alex could have been a statue, save for the tic in his jaw.

“I don’t think it’s your place to invite people to Ford’s farm,” he finally said.

“It’s Boston’s farm.”

“Same idea.”

“I have permission,” I assured him.

He sucked in a breath. “I don’t think Beamer would want to come across the country to sit on a stranger’s porch and pick corn for a weekend.”

“I think he’d fly around the world to see his friends again.”

“I’m not your keeper, Brooks.” Alex dragged his tongue across the front of his teeth. “You can do whatever you want.”

“I still don’t know the entirety of what happened between the two of you and I don’t want things to be weird. I just thought it would be nice for all of us to be together again.”

“It seems cruel to lock Kale in a house with the men he’s been the most horrible to,” Alex murmured, no doubt thinking about the dramatically offensive way Kale had taken the news about Beamer and Dalton being married, shortly followed by the revelation one of his best friends had been sticking it to his little brother.

“Most of those men are also his closest friends,” I pointed out. “He can’t live in a sex bubble forever with that little prince of his.”

Alex snorted, stare flickering to movement from the place we’d left Tate and Dylan. I looked over to see them both weaving through the thick crowd to the place where the two of us stood near the back wall.

“I’m ready to go,” Dylan announced.

“Hold on,” Alex told him, turning back to me. “If you think it’s a good idea, then I support it.”

“I’m asking you if it’s a good idea.”

“I’ll be fine, Astor.”

I flipped him off. “Don’t first name me to prove a point.”

The corner of Alex’s mouth hitched into a smile, and he took the guitar case out of Dylan’s hand. “I’m a big boy, Brooks . I can handle a weekend with my friends. ”

Tate’s stare shifted to the guitar in Alex’s hand. “Are you coming back to the apartment?” he asked Dylan.

Dylan cracked his knuckles, plastering on as brave of a smile as he could muster in the situation. “I’m going to Alex’s for a bit, but I might be home later.”

I watched Tate’s face as the cogs and the gears clicked into place and understanding washed over him. It was like he’d known there was something happening between his best friend and my best friend, but he didn’t know the what of it.

“I want to spend time with you soon,” he said, brow furrowed. “Just the two of us again.”

“Monday?”

Tate didn’t even bother to look at me for confirmation, which I loved.

“I’ll be home after work.”

Dylan lunged forward, wrapping his arms around Tate in one of the tightest hugs I’d ever seen. Tate seemed startled, stumbling back from the force of it, but he leaned in and returned the embrace with all the force Dylan had delivered. Dylan’s mouth moved, whispering something into Tate’s ear that I couldn’t hear, and Tate nodded furiously before shoving him back, straight into Alex’s tall and strong body. He took my hand, and we watched the two of them go, Dylan’s guitar in one of Alex’s hands, Dylan’s hand in the other, fingers tightly wrapped together.

“I guess I should get going,” Tate finally said, giving his neck a crack from side to side. “It’s a work night and it’s late.”

“Did you take the train?”

“We walked most of it,” he said. “Did you take a cab?”

“Town car,” I said .

A smile pulled at the corners of Tate’s mouth. “Of course you did.”

“Do you want to take a car home with me?”

“I was supposed to stay home tonight,” he reminded me, pressing a finger against the middle of my chest. “Get some clean clothes, see my best friend.”

“You saw your best friend,” I said.

“Barely.” The earlier furrow in his brows was back, deeper than before. Watching Tate’s shift between emotions was giving me whiplash. “Alex stole him.”

“Alex is…” I didn’t have a good answer.

“Helping,” Tate whispered. “Right?”

“Dylan needs support right now, more than what you can give him, I think. That’s no fault of yours.”

“And Alex gives him that?”

“Alex needs support too,” I said. “He’s been sad for a very long time and I think that whatever is going on with him and Dylan is helping to fix that.”

“Are they in a relationship?” he asked.

“I don’t think I’d call it that,” I answered. “At least, not in the way you and I are in a relationship.”

The smile was back, and I was dedicated to making sure it won out over the frown for the rest of the night. I curled my fingers around his wrist and raised it to my mouth, dragging a kiss—with teeth—across the thin skin.

“Take me back to your apartment, Tate.” I kissed the heel of his palm, nipping into the calloused skin just below his thumb.

Tate’s lashes fluttered, and even in the dark of the club, I knew he was blushing.

“I can get my clothes and we can go,” he murmured, leaning into me as I kissed my way to the tip of his thumb.

“I want to sleep in your bed,” I told him.

“It’s small.”

I swirled my tongue around the tip of his pointer finger. “I’m short.”

“I’m glad you didn’t say you were small.” Tate licked his lips, other hand sliding down between us. “Because that would have been a lie.”

“You insatiable little thing,” I teased. “Is sex the only thing you think about?”

“Sex and what comes after.”

Even though Tate had shown me over and over that he was in it with me for real, the mention of aftercare sent a bolt of panic straight down my spine. It wasn’t as sturdy or as pronounced as it used to be, but the connection was still there…not entirely frayed.

“I love the way you take care of me after you make love to me,” he said, pressing our bodies together and sealing his lips against my ear.

That was the first time anyone had ever called the way I liked to fuck making love , and my first thought was to protest the absurdity of it…but it was true. Wasn’t it? Even before I loved Tate, I loved fucking, and…it made sense in a way that I’d never thought of before. No wonder it was always too much for everyone else.

No wonder…

“I love it when you push inside of me again to fill me up a third or fourth time. When I cry because it’s all just so…” His breath against my ear was a wildfire, out of control and all-consuming .

“So what?” I pressed, needing to get him out of a public establishment before we both caught a charge for public indecency.

“I’ve never felt more loved than when I’m with you, Brooks.”

It wasn’t the answer I expected, but it was the answer I needed.

“We’re getting out of here now.” I still had his hand and I turned him toward the door. “And I’m going to fuck you on every surface in your apartment.”

“You’ve seen my apartment. It’s a shoebox,” he said with a laugh. “There’s like two surfaces in the whole place.”

“Then I suppose I’ll have to make them count.”

I wanted to call a car, but by the time I got my phone out of my pocket, Tate was already halfway down the block. Tugging him to a stop at a red light, I flagged down a cab and shoved him into the back. Tate gave his address to the driver and I attacked his neck, sucking a bruise onto his collarbone as the car sped through the intersection. A short five minutes later, we came to a stop. I threw far more cash than necessary at the driver and hauled Tate out of the car.

The stairs to his apartment took an eternity, and I was glad Dylan wasn’t home because as soon as Tate got the deadbolts unlocked, I had him against the wall with his pants around his knees. Pressing my forearm against his shoulders, I ripped my belt off and let my pants fall down to my ankles. I didn’t know my way around his apartment, and I was far too wound up to wait, so I spit on my hand, spread saliva down the length of my cock, and shoved it between the tight squeeze of Tate’s thighs .

“No,” he whined, fighting against me. “I want you inside of me.”

I thrust my hips up, fucking my cock against the underside of his balls with as much force as if I’d been penetrating his hole.

“You’ll get it when I’m ready,” I promised, bracketing my spit-slick hand against his bare hip for better leverage.

More than anything, I wanted to bury myself inside of him, but the need to mark him was an urgent and nearly tangible thing. It was rough and raw in a way that felt out of the norm for me, but Tate moaned into it, reaching down and wrapping his hand around his shaft.

“Hands on the wall, Tate,” I warned, digging my fingers into the curve of his hip until he spread both of his hands flat against the wall. I shoved his chest into the brick, getting harder when the breath pushed out of his lungs from the landing.

“It hurts,” he whimpered, fingers curling around the bricks as I resumed fucking between his thighs.

My own end was within reach, sparkling and close to the periphery, and I knew it hurt Tate to not touch himself. I wanted him to hurt, needed him to endure it for me. I hoped there wasn’t something wrong with me, something cruel and unusual about the way I made love—as he called it—but when Tate’s eyes rolled back as I fucked against him one last time, I knew if anything was wrong with me, he was just as afflicted.

I painted the insides of his legs and the exposed brick wall in his hallway with hot spurts of cum. My dick still leaked when I fisted the back of his hair and dragged him deeper into his apartment, folding him in half over the coffee table and going to my knees between his spread legs.

“You make me believe I can hold onto things that I don’t deserve,” I whispered, rucking up the back of his shirt and spreading his ass apart with greedy fingers. I licked my cum from his thighs and his balls, then speared my tongue into his asshole.

Tate’s entire body lurched forward, knocking an empty beer bottle and a discarded spiral notebook onto the floor. I sucked and ate his asshole until I could get two fingers inside of him and the precum leaking from his cock dripped down to the floor. With his face smashed into the coffee table, he babbled mindlessly, eyes screwed shut and hips bucking.

My entire body was on fire with need for him—with love—but my fingers shook, making it hard to get deeper inside of him. I was grateful he wasn’t looking because the last thing I wanted was for him to see how frantic he made me, how uncontrolled. Tate made me lose my mind, he made me lose myself, and he’d been right earlier.

This thing between us, it was the purest kind of love.

I whispered that into his ear as I notched the head of my cock around his kiss-swollen asshole, and when I pushed my whole length into him, he burst into tears, thanking me over and over as he came all over the floor.