Sink or Swim Read online

  Staring at that picture now made me wonder if that was still the plan. What choice did I have? Revel in what he gave me until he tossed me aside, or fight for what I wanted? I closed my eyes, not wanting to think about possibly sharing him.

  ####

  I noticed movement next to me, and turned to see Beau staring at me. He looked at the computer screen, at the photo of us that day. He smiled, his sweet, kind smile, and looked back at me.

  “Hey, baby. Did you get any sleep?”

  “No.” I shook my head. “Not really.”

  He leaned over to stroke my cheek. “What’s wrong?”

  “Nothing.”

  “Something’s up. Talk to me, kid.”

  I stared back at him. Every time he called me kid, it reminded me of how different we were. He was the big rescuer, the EMT, the dive master, the one that people could count on. And I was just some stupid kid he had to save. He rescued me the day we met, and now he had gotten me the job at Summer’s Pointe, taking me with him like some pet he couldn’t part with. “Nothing’s wrong. Excuse me.” I headed up the aisle to the bathroom.

  Staring at the mirror, I wondered what exactly I was doing there. I’d given up everything at home to follow Beau to an island in the middle of nowhere. It was too late to change my mind. Maybe I could talk to Mr. Medina once we got settled. That is, if he wasn’t really expecting me to pay off our flights somehow. If Beau wanted his own personal hunting grounds, I didn’t want to be a part of it. It would hurt like hell, but I would let him go before I played lovelorn puppy. I splashed some water on my face and washed my hands. Then I wiped the sink down, straightened out my shorts, and unlocked the door.

  The knob turned and it opened, but before I could move, Beau pushed in, forcing me to take a step back. He closed the door behind himself and locked it. He took my head in both hands and turned me to face him. “Look, I know something’s wrong. Tell me.”

  I could feel the tears burning my eyes, but I wouldn’t let them fall. I took a deep breath. “I don’t know if I can do this, Beau.”

  He stroked my cheek with one thumb. “Do what, baby?”

  “Be your backup plan.”

  “Backup plan? What’s that supposed to mean?”

  “Your backup guy, waiting at home. There just in case you can’t work yourself into someone’s room.”

  He shook his head. “What are you talking about? I don’t want to get into anyone else’s room.”

  “That’s not what you said earlier. Remember Option A, Option B?” It made me angry just to think about his words. I tried to turn away, but the space was so small, I couldn’t go anywhere. He’d trapped me, like he had so many instances before, but I didn’t know if all would turn out as well this time. “You sounded pretty ready to play the field. Like this is going to be some kind of all-you-can-fuck buffet.”

  He stared at me. I didn’t cuss often, so he had to know how angry I was. I didn’t know what he was thinking, but I assumed he was either angry or embarrassed for being caught.

  “Thought you’d have me there to suck your dick when all else failed? Think again. I love you too much to ever be the last choice.” I managed to rip myself away from those big, brown eyes that had been pinning me in place. He stepped up behind me to wrap his arms around me, and I had to closed my eyes and exhale. We always felt so right together, just like this. “Look, that’s not what I want. If it’s what you want, then I’m going to make some arrangements with Mr. Medina when we get there.” I didn’t tell him that I might just end up back in California because the heartbreak of watching him with others would probably kill me.

  “Baby,” he whispered against my neck. I shivered. He knew that spot always got me, and he used it. “That’s not what I want at all.”

  “No? What was that Option A or Option B crap supposed to mean?”

  He reached up to stroke my neck and leaned in to kiss me behind my ear. “It was a joke, baby. I was only kidding.”

  “It wasn’t funny.”

  “I’m sorry, baby. I didn’t mean to scare you.” He spun me back around to face him. “You are the one I want.” He kissed me lightly on the lips. “The only one.”

  “What about all the ‘options’ you’re going to meet on the dive trips? Guys in Speedos slipping you their room keys? You going to be able to resist them?”

  He laughed. “I resist them now.”

  “What?”

  “Oh, come on. You know how many people hit on me. I don’t even notice it anymore. They aren’t you.” He ran a finger down my cheek. “Besides, you’re the one I worry about.”

  “Me?”

  He laughed again and pulled me in for a kiss. His passion began gently, but the kiss quickly deepened, and he licked my bottom lip. I opened my mouth, and he slipped his tongue in and swirled it around mine. I reached around to cup his ass and pull him in closer. We were both panting when he pulled back. He kissed me one more time and turned me back around to face the mirror. Standing behind me, he turned my face to the mirror. “Look at you, baby. You,” he leaned forward to kiss my neck again, “are fucking gorgeous. Those huge blue eyes. You level me every time you look at me.”

  I looked at his reflection over my shoulder. He was staring at me, completely serious. “Beau…”

  “I mean it, baby. You own me. If you want to blow all this off and go home, I’ll go with you. If you want to move to Alaska, I’d go with you. I just have to be where you are. The rest of it doesn’t matter.”

  “Beau, I didn’t mean–”

  “I did. You are all I need. Everything else can be replaced. Jobs, houses, things, it’s all shit without you. It was all shit before you. I don’t want to do this without you.”

  I closed my eyes and leaned back against his chest. He put his arms around me and ran his hands up under my shirt. He kept kissing my neck as he pinched my nipples, rubbing them with his rough fingers.

  “Please forgive me, baby. It was a stupid joke.”

  “Beau, I can’t think with you doing that.” I opened my eyes to stare at him in the mirror, his brown eyes glistened with heavy emotion.

  “Good. I don’t want you thinking. You’ve done enough of that this flight.” His hands wandered down to my waistband, and he started unbuckling my belt.

  “Beau, stop,” I moved to stop him, but he kept kissing my neck, and he let one hand trail down to my cock. He squeezed it, and I pumped my hips against his touch.

  “Ever done it on a plane?”

  “No,” I whispered as I pushed my hips back against his, grinding my ass against his erection.

  “It’s too small to do it in here,” he said, licking my neck. “But maybe we can improvise something.” He went back to work on my belt. I arched my back and wound my arms around the back of his neck. “That’s it, baby. Just hang on to me. I’ll take care of you.”

  He opened the button and unzipped my shorts, and let them drop to my knees. Then he pushed my briefs down. I opened my legs to let him hook the elastic under my balls. He cupped them in one hand as he ran the other up the length of my cock. He pressed his thumb against the slit, spreading my precum around the head. I moaned and pumped my hips against him.

  “You know what I worry about, baby?”

  “No,” I whispered, leaning back and turning my face against his neck. My body was turning into jelly in his hands. He knew just how to touch me.

  He licked my neck and blew on it, making me shiver in his arms. I closed my eyes and gave myself over to him. I felt his stubble as he smiled against my skin. He nibbled along my neck, then sucked hard at the base of it while he worked my cock. He rolled my balls in his fingers, applying on the slightest bit of pressure and twisted his fingers back and forth around the head of my cock.

  “I worry about all the men coming on to you. Your hands, rubbing oil into all that naked skin. Massaging up and down their bodies. You worry about guys in Speedos surrounding me, but what about all the guys getting naked around you. You can’t tell me they don�
��t get hard with you touching them.” He kept stroking my cock and kissing my neck while he talked to me. “How many of them ask for happy endings? Hmm? How many ask for you to touch their cocks like this?”

  “I would never…” He bit the cords of my neck, cutting off any possibility of talking.

  “How many times are you tempted to just jerk a guy off? One guy, tenting the sheet as you lean over, your hard chest rubbing against his as you rub your hands down his torso?” He reached up under my shirt again and tweaked my nipple before sliding that hand down my body, across my hips, over my groin, to cup my balls again. I groaned and melted against him. “Do you ever think about doing it, babe”

  “No.”

  “Never?” He gripped my dick harder and stroked it faster, kissing my neck in little sandpapery caresses, his three-day-old five o’clock shadow making my whole body twitch. I panted when he tugged on my balls. He stroked upward, teasing the head of my cock. “You never think about stroking a long, fat cock while you’re rubbing those men?”

  He pumped his hips against my ass as he squeezed, and ran a palm up my body to cover my mouth as I started moaning and breathing heavily. A groan rumbled through my chest as I came over his fist into the sink. Holding me up, he kissed the side of my face as I slowly regained control of my body. When my breathing slowed, he reached around me and started the water, washing his hands, and wiping my cock down with a damp towel, before drying it and tucking me back into my underwear, and helped me get my shorts back up. Then he rinsed out the sink, toweling away any evidence.

  I turned around and kissed him, slow and tender. When I pulled back, I looked up at him. “I think about jerking you off every time that happens, but I would never touch a client that way.”

  He laughed and hugged me tight. “That’s the reason you come home and attack me some nights.”

  “You figured me out.”

  “It’s okay. I fucking love it when you get all aggressive. It’s hot as shit.” He squeezed me tight before pulling back and cupping my face again. “I really do love you, you know.”

  “I know. And I love you, too.”

  ####

  We headed back to our seats. I was sure that my face was beet-red and that everyone stared at us because somehow they knew that my boyfriend had just inducted me into the mile high club. Most everyone else in first class wore suits or designer clothing. Beau and I looked like the beach bums we were in shorts and T-shirts. The flight attendant pushed around a little alcohol cart as I plunked down into Beau’s window seat to stare out into the endless dark sky wondering just how much this flight had cost.

  “How much do you think it was for these seats?” I whispered to Beau.

  He shrugged and passed me a blanket and a pillow. “You should get some sleep. We have hours to go yet.”

  “Really, I’m curious. How much do you think it was?”

  “Probably a couple thousand dollars for each ticket at least. Don’t worry about it. Medina’s a nice guy.”

  I sighed and huddled under the blanket resting my head on Beau’s shoulder. It would have been a couple thousand dollars for economy class seats on this flight. But first class? Probably at least five thousand dollars each. I’d wished I had thought to check the pricing before we left. The thought of having to repay Medina for the flight in sexual favors made me nauseous. Did people really do that? I guess we weren’t under American laws anymore, so anything could happen, and I’d have little recourse. If I could keep Beau to myself by taking on the responsibility, I would.

  “You’re more tired than you think. You can barely keep your eyes open.” Beau’s prickly face brushed against my forehead, his breath hot on my cheek.

  “Not sleepy,” I mumbled into this shoulder, refusing to let unconsciousness steal him from me.

  “Remember that day we first met?” His hand grasped mine. “The ocean was so blue that day, sky so clear, and then I saw your eyes across the sand and water.”

  I closed my eyes and let his voice lull me into the memory. That morning I’d had a client hit on me, only to be pissed when I wouldn’t reciprocate. He’d even threatened to file a police report against me claiming I’d touched him inappropriately, even though he’d been the one doing the touching. My friends had taken me from the office afterwards, promising to help me relax away the bad day with a trip to the beach.

  Even after an hour in the water, floating and swimming in the warm California sun, I hadn’t been able to brush the dirty feeling I got every time a client asked me to cross the line aside. The bright light just couldn’t seem to reach into my gloom. I found my footing again and glanced at my friends splashing each other in playful banter. A bunch of teenagers tried stunts on their boards some twenty feet away from me, and I felt the weight of someone’s stare.

  When my eyes searched the area fearing my client had followed, the only one I found looking my direction was a hot lifeguard standing at the edge of the water. His eyes met mine in a moment of shared heat. His skin glowed with that beautiful sun-kissed honey tone that meant he spent a lot of time on the beach. Red and green ink decorated his right arm, but I was too far away to make out the image. He was obviously older, strong, and confident. I felt very young for my twenty-one years while he directed that intense gaze my way. His lips moved, arm flying up, but my world went black.

  The world came back to me in an embarrassing and painful wallop. I vaguely remember being rolled onto my side and retching salt water. My head pounded as the sun and every little sound chiseled another opening into my skull.

  “Relax, the ambulance is on its way,” a deep voice told me in a soft tone.

  “Head hurts,” I told the voice.

  “It’s okay. Just stay with me.”

  The clink of metal and the sound of clothes rustling were the only indication that the ambulance had arrived. When they began to lift me, I passed out again from the pain streaking across my brain.

  The next time I’d awoken, I’d been in the hospital. Machines beeping around me, room dark, but flowers decorated a little table by the door. I was pretty loopy and recognized the feeling of Morphine running through my system. My limbs were heavy and kind of weightless all at once like they had that time I’d flipped my motorcycle years before.

  A gentle knock sounded on the door before it opened. A man stepped inside and all I could think was that he must be an angel. If angels wore shorts and tank tops, and who’s to say they didn’t. His dark hair and broad shoulders reminded me of someone, but my head ached with the strain to remember. The bright colors on his right arm brought it all back, the lifeguard.

  “Hey, you’re awake!”

  I blinked at him, not feeling ‘awake’ enough to do anything else.

  “You scared the crap outta me out there. I’ve never lost anyone on my watch. Didn’t want you to be the first.”

  “Sorry,” I grumbled.

  “Ain’t your fault. You didn’t ask to get hit by a surf board.” He shook his head and crossed the room to sit down in the chair beside the bed. “When I pulled you out of the water, you weren’t breathing and had blood leaking from your head. I thought I’d never get the chance to know your name.”

  “Abram,” I told him.

  He smiled. Yeah, he was an angel.

  “Nice to meet you, Abram. I’m Beau.” He reached out and shook my hand. “Maybe when you get out of this place I can take you out properly. Thank you for not dying on my watch.”