DISCLAIMER ==========
This is a work of fiction; any resemblance to persons living or dead is entirely coincidental. The author asserts all legal and moral rights (copyright (c) 2004 - psun@hotmail.com) to this work and you may not copy it or transmit it in any way except in its entirety and with this disclaimer. This story features descriptions of sex between males:
- if such material is prohibited in your jurisdiction, please DO NOT READ ON, - if you're under the legal age to read such material, please DO NOT READ ON, - if you don't like, or are offended by such material, please DO NOT READ ON.
And any comments - brickbats or bouquets, send them over to psun@hotmail.com And if you find that you like what you're reading, visit my page at http://www.geocities.com/savante_2002
The intensity of what he just said had my heart drumming out a reply as I took a big step back. It was either that or fall headlong into his welcoming arms and that was something that I couldn't risk yet. I was already close enough to the edge, just a heady step away from tumbling for him in a very bad way. Before this I'd had several relationships, intimacy with no strings attached that I could manage easily with my career that demanded travelling to a new place every other month. Open, casual relationships that I could walk away lightly from but something told me that this was one man I wouldn't be able to turn away from as easily.
Casual, no-strings sex with a drop-dead gorgeous SEAL was easy enough to rationalize since who could possibly resist that tight, hard body, that sexy, aw-shucks smile, those amazing, vividly blue eyes? But to start a relationship? The demands of his hush-hush career was as great as mine and it would certainly have him dropping everything at a moment's notice to travel deep into hostile territory, facing unknown dangers, possibly never to return. Then there was the whole touchy don't ask, don't tell issue to deal with. Although I certainly wasn't a certified celebrity per se, I still had some amount of exposure as a scion of one of America's prominent dynasties and also a high-profiled physician in some circles to boot.
Noticing my sudden retreat, Michael watched me closely, his wide smile edging into something close to a sneer. "Got you scared, Kincaid?"
The faint sneer in his voice raised my hackles, as he probably intended. Stepping up toe to toe, I tried to stare him down. Unfortunately he had several inches on me. "You don't scare me, cowboy."
Faced with confrontation, he didn't move from his spot but moved forward to meet me. His sleek black shoes bumped against mine and I took a step back. Face-to-face confrontation was a bit more difficult when you had to face six feet of male perfection - and damn, he smelled sinfully good.
Seeing my barely discernible retreat, a faint smile creased his dark, handsome face. "Then why are you taking a step back? Commitment got you scared?"
"I-I am not." The waver in my voice had to be due to hunger, I convinced myself, and not due to the fact that he looked good enough to eat.
The scent of spices and meat wafted into the air, lending an exotic Italian atmosphere to the cosy kitchen in odd variance to the slow twang of the lonesome cowboy coming from the stereo. Keeping a watchful eye over the stove, he sent me a quick, teasing look. "Do you fancy yourself a good liar, doc? Cause you're not."
"It wasn't a step back. It's... it's nothing." I shook my head and turned away as Michael started pottering around the stove. Under his care, the trio of pots bubbled with Italian-Irosh goodness. If it'd been up to me, we'd be dining on Chinese takeaway.
Ladling out some sauce from one of the pots, he tasted it carefully before shifting his glance over at me. There was a warm, teasing glint in his blue eyes. "There's always something when it comes to you, doc."
Preoccupied with his pots, Michael stood with his back was to me and I admired the way the sinuous curve of his strong spine snaked its way down the muscular hillocks made by his powerful back. And that butt, I ran my tongue carefully around my teeth contemplating that sexy ass. It was at the tip of my tongue to blur out all my doubts and reservations about any sort of relationship that we were embarking on but I realized that it was much too soon. Still I confided in him. "Look, there are so many problems. You just..."
Leaving his cooking for the moment, he turned around and held his palm out. "Stop," he ordered calmly. "Do you always look so far into the future?"
"It's difficult not to think when you're sitting in a restaurant at a table for one. Gives you time to think."
Miming a shot to the heart, he playfully winced. "Ouch. Now, that was a slam."
I laughed at his joke. "I didn't mean it that way."
"Oh yes, you did." He eyed me coolly.
Perhaps I did. It was terribly embarassing to say the least, checking my watch time after time and finally realizing that he wasn't going to make it. "The maitre'd came every half hour to find out if monsieur would consider making an order."
"Forgive me, I am a heinous monster not fit to live!" he said contritely.
"Laughing at me again?" I said dryly as I playfully glared at him. His innocent face was the very picture of contrition but I wasn't easily fooled, especially when his vivid blue eyes were literally alight with mischief. "Fancy a knee in your groin, Muldoon?"
Breaking into a low chuckle, he batted aside my hands and trapped me against the wall. "Nah, you won't try that again. I know you like my balls too much for that now."
The man did have a valid point. "You disgusting.."
"You're the one with your mouth on.."
Since he was close enough, I threw him a light punch on his shoulder. The lurid images he painted in my head had even me blushing - and I didn't blush easily. That one unforgettable night in the middle of the desert was indelibly etched in my memory and it didn't take much to make me recall the events with perfect clarity. At one point, I'd been down between his heavy, muscular thighs, tracing the shape of his awe-inspiring, enviably large balls and committing each perfect detail to memory.
Easily, he threw back his head, laughed and easily tugged me into his arms. "Doc, come on."
"I don't know if I can manage this." As he held me close, his wicked hands drew a pattern on my back, running in slow, lazy circles and I shivered.
"Hold on to that thought." His sculpted nose twitched and he pulled away, reaching out for one of the pots. Grabbing one of the pot holders provided by my kitchen designers, the man shifted one of the pots over to the counter. As he lifted the cover of the pot, he took a quick sniff of its contents before answering. "No one's telling you to manage anything. Least of all me."
Sadly, it made me sound like a crazy, managing, anal-retentive megalomaniac and although I had to admit there was some truth to the matter, I certainly didn't want him to come to that damaging conclusion so soon. Such a tight-ass description would have been totally foreign for me years back when I was the drugged-out, boozed-up trust-fund baby. Then it was anonymous sex, GHB and recklessness all around.
Even the thought of the old me had me dizzy. "Look, stud, more than five years ago I might have just leapt into this without thinking, gone into a relationship with you without a second's thought. Drop everything, have wild unbridled, no-holds-barred sex with the hunky sailor. But that's all changed, I've changed! I've settled down, turned conservative, dammit, even turned into what my parents wanted and.. I want commitment. I want..." I realized that I was babbling like an idiot and hastily bit my tongue.
Holding his hands out in surrender, he chuckled softly. "Whoa, doc, that's a pretty tall order." As I remained stoically silent, Michael came forward, still with the dainty, delicately embroidered pot holder held tight in one hand. It was a remarkably domestic look for a hunky, macho SEAL. The amused laughter in his eyes faded away and he spoke seriously, keeping his gaze intent on mine. "Look, I don't have any answers for you, Cam. Not right now."
It was what I'd expected him to say. "I foresee so many complications."
"Well, at the least you do foresee a future for us." Michael tried for a smile, shrugging carelessly. "Look, there are problems in every... God, I can't believe I'm saying this... but yes, there are problems in every relationship. And if we're ever going to have one - and it looks to me as if we are - we'll work through them."
The word relationship had come from him but instead of easing my doubts, it made me even more nervous. As he held out his free hand, I took it in mine and realized that it was a perfect fit. His hands were beautiful, hard, calloused and strong yet still beautiful in its own way. "You sound optimistic."
"Hey, of course all the Muldoons are born optimists!" he remarked with a bright grin, bringing my hand to his soft, sensuous lips and gently pressing a kiss on my fingers. The warmth and pressure of his lips brought to mind something else his expert lips were terribly good at and I flushed. Pleased with my reaction, Michael continued running his lips across my knuckles, watching me intently with those cool blue eyes. "You don't get to live with Patrick Muldoon without turning out to be one. It's all in the food."
Thinking of my own family, I felt the ends of my lips turning up in a reluctant grin. "Well, the Kincaids are all born fatalists. When I get a cough, my mother insists I be admitted in the ICU for bronchopneumonia." Thinking of what my cautious, overly pessimistic brother would do made me smile even wider. A grief-stricken Donovan would no doubt be preparing arrangements for the wake.
Releasing my hands to turn his attention back to the stove, Michael started stirring some spice into one of the pots. It always amazed me that people knew what they were doing with a bunch of spices, meat and vegetables. Even adding pepper while beating omelette seemed a dire mission impossible for me. Satisfied with whatever it was that he was doing, he finally replied, "Fuck, you've gotta be exaggerating."
"You haven't met my mother." I added in a tone of dire warning.
"And when will I?" he said, eyeing me carefully.
The man was sure turning out to be a damned barrel of surprises. Here I was worried about him accepting his newfound homosexuality and now he was talking about meeting my mother? Anyone else would be rubbing their hands with glee to land such a downhome, adorable Montana-cowboy son-in-law but not Madame Kincaid. No, my mother would not only be filled with glee, she'd be over the fucking moon. It wouldn't surprise me if she took out a full page ad in the Washington Times. Her greatest achievement - her darling baby boy finally married. In no time she'd be asking me whether I liked lilies or roses for the commitment ceremony.
So it was with some trepidation that I painfully told him. "We're only on our second date. I really don't want to scare you off."
"That doesn't scare me. Putting obstacles before me only make me more determined to get my way."
"You move fast, Lieutenant Commander."
"Where are the plates?" As I gestured to the lower cabinet, Michael bowed down and retrieved a set of plates and utensils. As he bent over to reveal that firm, bubbled ass - round and hard - I found myself filled with the irresistible urge to plant my lips on the smooth, golden-tanned perfection of his asscheek. Stacking them up, he gingerly placed them down beside me with a teasing smile, his eyes twinkling with humour. "Have to move fast. Gotta keep you unbalanced."
"One smile from you is enough."
"That's good to know." He smiled, one of his patented, blinding 1000-watt smiles that was guaranteed to turn my knees into butter. "And of course, there's my ass that you can't keep your eyes off too."
Caught in the act, I just chuckled. "Hey, it's just there. And so juicy delicious."
Starting to get involved with his dinner, he paused to send me a wicked wink. "Yeah, stop ogling. You're distracting me."
As he started turning off the stove, I moved aside and left the master to his work. Seeing him moving around my kitchen had me weaving a nice, harmless little fantasy of a gorgeous, tanned Italian-Irish hunk living permanently in my life. It had to be relatively harmless since I wasn't going to dwell on it. No, I certainly wasn't. But it was nice imagining his shirts mixed in with mine in the walk-in wardrobe, his shoes beside mine. Mother of God, I was turning out to be like my mother.
As he ladled out some sauce into one of my pristine cream-coloured bowls, he suddenly broke into my reverie. "This counts as our third date, right?"
"I don't count tramping around Kandahar in tattered rags and cuffs avoiding gunfire a date," I pointed out. It was more a struggle to avoid jumping on the shiny, sexy Marine Ken.
"Really?" As he kept his gaze centered on the counter, he looked almost wistful for a moment. "I think it rate's amongst one of the best nights of my life."
"Really?" I stared at him. A barrel of surprises.
Resolutely, Michael turned to me, keeping his eyes even with mine. "You know when I realized that I had to come back to see you? When you stood at the airport in Islamabad, refusing to even acknowledge me." There was a faint twitch of the muscle at the edge of his firm jaw.
Odd how different his interpretation of the events were. I vaguely remembered standing at the airport trying my best not to leap into his arms and dramatically beat my fists against his hard chest, demanding tearfully that he stay. Fortunately for my dignity's sake, I managed to maintain my composure long enough to thank him without hysterics. "Well, you hardly spoke to me, you can hardly expect me to gush and cry over you."
He said calmly and slowly, as if explaining to a simpleton. "Not only am I a simple Montana cowboy, I'm Catholic, I'm Irish-Italian, I'm a Navy SEAL and I just got fucked. I needed time to contemplate."
Put it that way, it did seem something close to a national disaster for MuldoonWorld. I tried to hide a smile but failed.
"Laugh all you want, doc." Eyeing me balefully, Michael flexed his bicep and mimed a punch at me. "It might be common-place to you but it was a helluva eye-opening event for me."
"That night was definitely.. out of the ordinary for me too."
Settling himself against the counter, Michael leaned back and crossed his tanned, well-muscled arms. "I was much too confused to even think straight - not that I could - and I tried my best to stay away from you. Your wicked, wayward influence and all that, you understand, and I guess it worked for some time." Shaking his dark head, he sighed. "Then at the airport when I saw you standing there, so straight and tall, I realized that ..." Pausing for a moment, he thought about his next words and then he broke into a glimmer of a smile. "That my father was right all along. Damn the ornery bastard."
His words didn't make sense to me and I cocked my head to the side, looking at him in puzzlement. "Your father?"
Refusing to explain himself, Michael just smiled easily. "It's nothing. Just that I saw you standing there and I realized that I didn't want to never see you again." Before I could say anything to that, he turned back to the food. "Now try my lasagna and genuflect."
"Can I genuflect first?" I said with a sly smile, licking my lips.
"Who's the disgusting pervert now?" Flicking a quick glance to me, his grin flashed wickedly. "Dinner first, dessert later."