Page 105 of Torch Songs

Chris shrugged. “Well, our future boss keeps promising us casseroles. We’ll have to hold him to it.”

Tad laughed and grabbed the takeout for the hotel room, shaking his head.

It was hope.

HOPE HEsorely needed when he got to the room. Guthrie was asleep, his hair falling from its ponytail to cover his face. Tad paused for a moment after he set the takeout on the table andshut the door. In sleep, there was a curious untouched quality to Guthrie Arlo Woodson—as though all the shitty luck and barfights in the world couldn’t dent his indomitable heart. Good karma power, Chris had called it, and Tad could see it now, shining out from the edges, making him bigger than life.

Tad realized that if Guthrie went AWOL foryears, not telling where he was going, simply promising to return, Tad would still take him in; grayer, sadder, but trusting, always trusting, that one day, Guthrie would wander in, clothes ragged, bruises fading, that Guthrie shrug telling him that whatever it was that kept him away for the longest time, it wasn’t enough to keep him awayforever.

“Whatcha looking at, chief?” Guthrie asked, his eyes still closed.

“All of you,” Tad murmured gruffly.

“When you get tired of looking,” Guthrie said, “could you maybe crawl into bed and do that spooning thing you do when you think I’m too banged up for sex?”

“Are you?” Tad asked, smiling, but he was already shucking his sweatshirt and toeing off his boots.

“God, I hope not,” Guthrie said, and Tad chuckled softly. He shoved his jeans down, rested them on the same chair that held his hoodie, and then did as Guthrie asked and climbed in behind him, spanning his hand on Guthrie’s taut stomach under his T-shirt and pressing his own brief-covered groin against Guthrie’s cotton-covered backside.

Guthrie gave a shudder like he was finally getting warm after being cold for a month, and Tad breathed him in.

“Yeah,” Guthrie mumbled. “That’s the stuff.”

Tad could actually feel him drop off to sleep, but he didn’t feel the need to go eat the takeout on the table. Not yet. Not yet. Not yet.

He didn’t even know he was falling asleep until he woke up two hours later, needing to pee.

HE GOTup and came back, and then Guthrie did the same with a grunt, and when he was done, he rolled so they were face-to-face. There was something odd about his expression, something intense and glittering that spoke of a hardness, a shell, and Tad was suddenly aware that those things he’d been worried about were real.

Their kiss started out searing, frantic, starving, almost violent in its need, and their clothes didn’t so much melt away as launch themselves across the room.

Tad was hungry for the taste of him, angry at the separation, and worried—so worried—it gave a tenseness, a jerkiness to his movements that almost scared him. Guthrie had only ever known him as a gentle lover, which was the only kind of lover he’d ever wanted to be. But Guthrie’s need and his own ferocious desire worked like emotional napalm, and suddenly they were both on fire.

Guthrie rolled away from him, and Tad was ready to wrestle him to the ground until he saw that lean, battered body bent over the bed while Guthrie dared him with those glittering eyes.

For the first time, Tad faltered.

“Guthrie?”

“Now,” he growled. “And don’t stop.”

Tad had left his shaving kit on the hotel sink, and he was back with lubricant before the coolness of the oceanside night made itself felt on his skin. It wasn’t until he was sliding slick fingers into Guthrie and soothing his trembling flanks and backside with his free hand that he realized how wrong this was, how terrified and angry his lover was, how this need went beyond sex and into fury.

“Guthrie?” he asked.

“Fuck me!” Guthrie cried, and so help him, Tad’s arousal was amped higher by the demand.

As he placed himself behind Guthrie, smoothing with his hands once again, noting how Guthrie’s ribs were more prominent, his hipbones sharper, Guthrie grabbed a pillow from the bed and shoved it in front of him. Tad shuddered and thrust into him, his entire body shaking as Guthrie screamed, “Yes!”into the pillow.

He started to rock back and forth, and then tolungeas Guthrie’s muffled, guttural sounds vibrated the bed. Faster and faster and harder and harder until Guthrie grabbed another pillow and covered his head with it andhowledwith arousal and rage.

Tad’s bodylovedit, primal and angry and claiming—this washislover, and he’dmissedhim, and somebody hadhurthim, and only Tad’s touch was allowed!

Sweat stung his eyes and his nearly healed wound ached fiercely, and still he poured his strength, his frustration, his anger into Guthrie, and Guthrie—Guthrie took it, thrusting back and muffling his cries of rage in those damned pillows.

Climax rushed him, ungentle and unwelcome, but it wasn’t a call he could refuse.

He cried out and came, hips stuttering in surprise, his fingers digging into Guthrie’s hips as the convulsions took him, and Guthrie let out a groan so low in his body that Tad felt it in his spasming cock.

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