Chapter 35

Scooter was coming down the stairs from his most recent check on Jason, where he might have malingered for longer than he should have, because avoiding work was a thing fourteen-year-old Scooter Stahl was getting damn good at. Halfway down, he heard a noise, unfamiliar, from the alley between the main building and the separate garage, where the trash bins cluttered up the walkway and Scooter’s bike often was left sprawled.

It was a deep, guttural sort of groan, followed by a breathy whisper. “God, Chris…”

Scooter crept the rest of the way down the stairs, a strange, urgent panic pounding in his chest that tightened at his stomach and tingled against his scalp. He pressed up against the wall, listening, hands clenched.

“Yeah, that’s my good boy,” said another voice, this one recognizable. Christian Sharpe, the lawyer. His parents were rich. They owned several of the beach properties, one of which they used a few weeks of the year. The rest of them were rentals, ritzy ones. Everyone knew Christian; he was gorgeous and the girls flocked to him whenever he was on the beach. He and his cronies owned the stretch of the beach with the volleyball nets, owned them by dint of defeating all comers in brutal games that left more than one summer tourist sand-scraped and bloody. And he did it with such a broad, sunny smile that the tourists were happy to be beaten by him.

Scooter slid all the way to the corner and stole a quick peek around.

Christian’s eyes were closed, his hands tight in the hair of the man in front of him. And that was good, because Scooter froze on the spot, unable to move, and if Christian had been any less preoccupied, Scooter would have been spotted immediately.

Christian was pressed against the wall, his head tipped back, baring a delicious and sensual throat, his mouth was open. His pants were around his thighs.

The man in front of him—one of the guys Scooter’d seen on Christian’s volleyball team—was on his knees, head bobbing back and forth with quick, urgent rhythm.

Scooter knew what a blowjob was, theoretically. He certainly had never gotten one, and he didn’t much believe the guys at school who said this or that girl had given them one, either. He didn’t know it looked like that. He didn’t know the person getting one would look…like that. He couldn’t tear his eyes from the scene, Christian’s handsome face twisted into an expression of possessive, smug lust. Scooter couldn’t look away.

His heart was pounding in his chest, and then the blood rushed south. Scooter sprouted wood so hard and so fast it ached. He wanted…wanted. He knew he shouldn’t, that what Christian was doing was—His breath caught in his throat.

Christian, the pride and prince of Sandbridge, was gay

Christian was as gay as Scooter was. He wanted—and did—the same things that Scooter wanted.

Strange, what a suddenly liberating thought that was. Scooter knew he was gay, he knew he favored men, he knew it was wrong, he knew other people had a list of derogatory words for it, that it disgusted them…But it had never before occurred to him that those things came from a place. That they came from a place of knowing other people were gay.

Scooter sucked air, his chest seeming to break steel bands around it that he’d never known were there. Christian’s eyes snapped open at the sound. He looked over his lover’s head, found Scooter peeking at them around the corner. Christian’s brilliant blue eyes were piercing, full of heat and he met Scooter’s gaze without blinking.

He raised one tanned hand to his perfect mouth and pressed a finger across his lips.

Shhhhh.

That was all. Christian wasn’t embarrassed.

He wasn’t ashamed.

Scooter stayed in place, watching, groin aching with need, watching.

Christian stiffened, a soft, whining moan coming from his throat and he shot his load, watching Scooter intently the whole time. The guy on his knees was irrelevant. Christian wanted Scooter

Scooter nodded, slow. Like a promise.

Nine Years Earlier:

Chris held out the gold-linked bracelet, the expression on his face somehow stiff. “I can’t accept this, Winston,” he said. Scooter wished that Chris wouldn’t call him that, but he didn’t object. He’d never objected. Not to Chris.

“I want you to have it,” Scooter said, pressing the box back toward the older man. Not that Scooter was really a man himself, at just barely eighteen, but his whole world, his whole life, was ending. The bracelet, 18k gold and leather, represented most of his savings and Scooter wanted, desperately, to see it against Chris’s skin. To know that some part of Chris thought about him, every day.

They were under Scooter’s favorite tree in Williamsburg, having their uncomfortable discussion sitting in the grass.