Chapter 15

Chapter Fifteen

Something had changed since finding the gemstones Tyler thought as he headed back to camp for dinner. First off, Martin was nowhere to be found, and second, there was no sign of dinner preparation. It was as if Martin had disappeared from the map, and that was unsettling.

“Martin?”

“Over here,” a faint voice called, and relieved, Tyler went in that direction and found Martin lying on the ground under a break in the canopy of trees.

“Is everything okay?”

Martin rolled to his feet, brushing dirt off his jeans. “Why wouldn’t I be okay?”

“I couldn’t see you, and dinner isn’t?—”

“I don’t think I signed up to be the fucking cook,” Martin snapped and then strode past him toward camp.

“I never said you did, but you said you were going to…”

Martin wasn’t listening. He went into his tent and zipped himself in, and there was clearly something very wrong.

Tyler went straight to the tent and knocked on the upright. “Martin, open up.”

Silence.

Seemed as if he just needed his space, so Tyler did what every worried lover did, he sat right outside the tent and waited.

“I’m going to sit here and wait for you to come out. If I can help, then I want to. So you maybe need to come out, Martin, and talk to me.”

Nothing.

“I hope you’re okay, Martin. I mean, I could unzip this tent now and just find out if you’re okay. But I won’t.” Tyler looked at the sky, just as Martin would do. “You can’t see the sky in there,” he mused. “You should come out and see the sky with me and tell me what happened in the space of time I wasn’t here. No? Okay, well, I’ll just sit here and talk.”

He fetched his chair and settled more comfortably, with a bottle of water in hand, by the zipped entrance. Then he did what he did best. He talked.

“Way back in 1879, prospectors found small amounts of gold in this place called Yogo Creek. It was just a small stream, and they didn't find a lot of gold. But in their sieving were all of these bright blue pebbles, but even though they were pretty, they weren’t gold. So the prospectors threw them back into the water. All those blue sapphires, tossed away as if they weren’t worth a thing. Except one day, fifteen years or so later, there was this one guy who sent a small amount of these blue pebbles to a gold assayer, who forwarded them on to Tiffany's in New York?—”

“Banana,” Martin snapped loudly, angrily.

“I can’t hear you,” Tyler lied. “Anyway, this other guy, George Kunz, he was the chief gemologist at Tiffany's, and he realized what they had, and said they were the finest precious gemstones ever found in the United States. Imagine that. All those years of these men looking for riches, and the earth had offered up the largest deposit of sapphires in the western hemisphere, and they just threw them away. Their world could have been a very different place.”

Martin exited his tent with a scowl on his face. “Do you ever shut up?”

Tyler wasted no time, was up out of his seat and between Martin and the tent in an instant. “Talk to me,” he demanded. For a while Martin stared at him stubbornly, and then inch by inch, that mulishness dissipated, and vulnerability took its place. He softened his voice. “Tell me what happened, Martin.”

“I wouldn’t know where to start.”

“Did I say something, or do?—?”

“Everything’s not always about you,” Martin interrupted and then visibly slumped. “Fuck.”

Tyler was at a loss for what to say. He felt as if he knew Martin, and at the same time, how could he really know him at all. To have lived through abuse and then have casual sex on the side of a mountain must be messing with his mind. He was attracted to Martin, they’d been good together, but he could also just be friends if that was what Martin wanted.

Martin pressed a hand to his chest. “I never meant to stay at Crooked Tree. I just wanted to ask Justin a question, but he won’t give me an answer. I should keep running, but what if the very thing I’m trying to get away from is actually inside me all along?”

Tyler waited for Martin to explain more, but that short impassioned snippet of his thought process appeared to be all he was offering.

Martin stepped closer, stared right at Tyler, and then kissed him. Gripped his arms and kissed him hard, demanding entrance, teeth clashing, and his hold tightening. Tyler enjoyed the kiss at first. Martin was hot, turned him on, and the kiss was spectacular until it was less about kissing and more about Martin shoving him back, pushing him to the ground, and kissing him harder. There was no softness in the kiss. It was nothing like they’d had before, and then Tyler tasted the tears. In a smooth move, he levered Martin off him until they lay side by side, Martin panting as if he’d run a race, and Tyler feeling as if they’d somehow moved off course.

“I’m not perfect,” Martin said, his voice was thick with tears.

“No one is.”

“You don’t know everything.”

“Maybe I don’t need to.” He turned his head to glance at Martin, who had tears trickling from his eyes. He rolled onto his side and traced Martin’s face with a finger. “I don’t know what we have, but I know we can kiss way better than just now.” He leaned in, careful not to put any of his weight on Martin, giving him plenty of room to get away, and then he pushed his free hand into Martin’s curls. “I want to kiss you.”

That was all the warning he was giving. He pressed a gentle kiss to Martin’s soft lips before backing away. Then, after a short pause, another. Then another. And finally Martin parted his lips and joined in. The sun was warm on his back, the ground hard, the touch of Martin’s lips hot, and he didn’t argue when Tyler slid a hand up under his top and rubbed his fingers over Martin’s nipples before circling them down to his belly.

Somehow Tyler moved enough so Martin sprawled on top of him, and the kisses became more, clothes were removed, slowly, and finally bare-chested, they lay together, joined at the lips, and with Tyler’s hand returning to Martin’s hair. Martin kissed his way down to Tyler’s throat, resting there a minute, his ear over Tyler’s heart, and then he focused on kissing a trail from nipple to nipple, worrying at them, sucking and pulling until Tyler thought he was going to lose it from that alone. He pushed his hips up, but Martin moved, unbuckled Tyler’s jeans, pulled them down a little, along with his boxers, and then he looked up at Tyler.

“Is this okay?”

“If the question is you sucking me off, then…” He had no more words, because Martin closed his lips around the head of Tyler’s cock and sucked him deep, then licked his way along the length of him. He captured the head again in his mouth. Then his lips slid a few inches down the shaft, his mouth stretched wide around the thickness of the cock. When he repeated the motion, his head moving, his eyes closed, it took everything for Tyler not to come.

With Martin’s hands firm on Tyler’s hip bones, he was immobile, but that didn’t stop him from resting his fingers on Martin’s head, smoothing the curls, and losing himself to sensation.

“So close,” he warned, but Martin didn’t pull off. If anything, he intensified his sucking then released the suction on Tyler’s cock, moved up to kiss him, tugging at a nipple, pinching it, and wrapping his other hand around Tyler’s cock, and fuck, that was game over, and he was done. He arched up, pushed against Martin, shouted his release, the noise lost in the kiss, and when he slumped back to earth, Martin sat back on his heels and opened his buckle, reaching in enough to get his hands on his cock. His eyes were wide open, and he stared down at Tyler, unflinching, as he got himself off. Tyler tried to reach for him, but Martin swatted his hand away.

“Too close,” he warned, leaning down, capturing a kiss, and then stiffening as he reached orgasm. He groaned into the kiss, then fell boneless half on top of Tyler, who pulled him close and held him tight.

“We’re so good together. I’ve never had… not before this…” Martin didn’t know what he was trying to say. A thank you maybe or a hell yes or possibly he was begging for more. “That was hot. You and me, we fit. When we get back, I want to see you again. Can we do that? I’m not always near here, but fuck, you need to stay around here or come with me, and we need to do this a lot. Like a lot. ”

Martin closed his eyes then and rolled off, grabbing a T-shirt and wiping at the mess between them.

“I don’t know what I’m doing or what I even can do.”

“Well, whatever it is, maybe one day we could make love in a bed. I’m not getting any younger.”

Martin sent him a glance that was almost shy.

They redressed, minus the wet T-shirt, and then Tyler extended his hand.

“I have something to show you.”

There was a definite hesitation, but Martin finally took his hand, and Tyler led him to the supplies tent. He released his hold and looked for one container in particular.

“I take this everywhere with me,” he began and opened the small box to show Martin the array of gems and stones inside. “This is my collection.” They weren’t in any kind of order. This wasn’t for display; this was all about memories. He rummaged through them and found what he was looking for. “This is Angel Aura Quartz, and it was a present from my dad the day I came out to him and my mom.” He turned it over in his fingers and then held it up to the light. “Can you see that?”

“It’s a prism.”

“Yeah. Dad went on about its otherworldly properties, but he was big on Lord of the Rings , and he said that it looked as if it was from an ethereal realm. I just let him talk because he and mom had listened to my impassioned coming out speech and told me everything was okay. I think he didn’t know what to say next, so he started talking about crystals. I inherited that from him, I think.”

“Seems that way,” Martin murmured.

Tyler smiled. “And Mom, because you should hear her talk about sixteenth-century poetry. I owed my dad to listen to him rambling on about this particular metal-coated crystal and how people liked to think it held magic, but all I could think was that it was perfect, even though it has cracks and hollows. He let me keep it. I was fourteen, and it comes with me everywhere. And now, you can have it.” He held it out to Martin.

“What? Why?”

“Because it’s been my good luck charm, and I don’t need it anymore, and you do right now.”

“I’m can’t take what your dad?—”

“I’m not arguing, Martin. Take it.” He jiggled his hand a little, and finally Martin picked up the beautiful crystal and held it up to the sunshine, and he smiled. Not a wide grin of happiness but a slight smile of appreciation. “Keep it with you, and it will bring you luck.”

“Surely you don’t really believe that?”

Tyler couldn’t lie. “No, but my dad did, and I think that him feeling that way means it’s special. So now it’s for you, wherever it takes you.”

“If only something this simple could make a real difference to the mess in my head.”

They were interrupted by a loud beep from Tyler’s iPad. “More results are in,” he said, kind of pissed the results happened to arrive right at this freaking minute. “Put the stone in your pocket. Keep it safe.”

“I will,” Martin peered at the stone, and his expression remained skeptical.

Tyler trusted that his dad’s belief in him was always there. He hadn’t needed a stone to know that, but maybe Martin needed a crystal that held rainbows.

Something small might be just enough.