Page 53 of Takeover
“I don’t have anything to leave behind. You’ve spent nearly two decades building a life in Pittsburgh.” Sam scooped up his underwear and pants. “There’s quite a difference.”
Michael shifted to the edge of the bed and stood. “So I’m nothing, then? This”—he gestured at the bed, the scattered clothing, the crop and the clamps—“isn’t anything?”
Sam reached for his shirt. “That’s not what I said but if it makes you hate me, if it makes you let me go, then yes. It’s nothing. It doesn’t mean anything.” The gravel in Sam’s voice betrayed the lies in his words.
Fuck this shit.It took only a long step to reach Sam. Michael pulled him upright and claimed Sam’s mouth, attacking with lips, tongue, and every hurt in his heart and soul. If talking didn’t work, he’d fall back on what always had.
Sam stiffened every muscle in his body at the first onslaught, but an instant later, he yielded, folding fast and hard. He opened himself to Michael, moaning deep in his throat. Clothes hit the floor and Sam wrapped his arms around Michael, kissing back with a passion and intensity that rivaled Michael’s own. This was real and true, not the words Sam had said.
Michael broke the kiss and Sam grunted his disappointment, his cock hard against Michael’s thigh.
“You can’t tell me you don’t want me,” he said into Sam’s ear.
“If you think I don’t want you, you haven’t been listening.” Sam nipped Michael’s shoulder, then untangled from Michael’s grasp. “You’re everything I’ve ever wanted in a friend. A lover.”
“Then why the hell are we fighting?”
Sam ran a hand through his hair. “I’m not fight— Look, my life isn’t anything I’d wish for another. I go from job to job, city to city. No friends. No home.” He looked around the room. “I don’t know whether to grab my stuff and go or beg you to fuck me until this all vanishes.” A touch of panic entered Sam’s voice.
“What are you running from?” Michael hadn’t seen Sam’s fear before, but should have, given Sam’s need to be removed from the world. His mistake.
Sam’s bark of laughter was too high pitched. “Me.”
Well, yes. “Why?”
Sam stared at him.
“Why?” Michael repeated the word. He removed the distance between them and walked Sam back to the bed. A small push made Sam sit before Michael.
“There’s always another job,” Sam said. “So I go.”
Michael shook his head. “That’s not an answer.”
“You’re not my fucking therapist.”
“No, I’m not.” He curled his palm around Sam’s chin and tilted his head back. “I’m your lover. And your friend, like it or not.”
Sam’s hands bunched up the sheets and his breath hitched. “I’m the closeted gay guy who is too damn afraid that coming out will sink his career. I’m a coward and a hypocrite. I’m everything you hate, Michael.”
Michael let go. Now they were getting somewhere. “Except I don’t hate you.”
Sam looked at his feet. “You should.”
Anger in Sam’s slumped shoulders. If Michael had to guess, Sam aimed his fury inward.
“What happened?”
Sam opened his mouth, then closed it. Slowly, the tension in his body slackened. “I met a guy in grad school. He was out and proud—a lot like me at the time. First week of classes, he was jumped in an alley and had the shit beaten out of him. For being a fag. I never—I didn’t do anything. I should have done something.”
“You saw it happen?”
Sam tensed again. “Yeah. I mean, it was dark, but yeah. I saw it.” Sam shuddered. “I was there.”
The lines of anguish in Sam, the way he stared at the ground, it spoke so much more than Sam’s words—a physical knowledge of the event.
Shit. Oh, shit.Suddenly everything made sense.
“Sam,” Michael spoke the question as neutrally as he could. “That student? Who was he?”
