Driftwood by Harper Fox Page A

lungs.
    â€œSorry,” Thomas mumbled against Flynn’s smile. God, Flynn tasted of sea salt. He was so warm. He reached up and placed a hand on Thomas’s shoulder—an open hand, no restraint, just a palm circling his clavicle, tenderly round and round the protuberant bone, even when its fingers closed, no restraint. And so the choice was Thomas’s, when the hundred reasons why he shouldn’t flickered like sheet-lightning through his mind and he leaned hungrily forward anyway, into Flynn’s taste of sunlight and salt, the evanescent sweetness of the Riesling.
    He moaned, taking hold of the edge of Flynn’s T-shirt. His fingers felt clumsy and damp, but Flynn briefly touched the back of his hand in a gesture of assent and suggestion, his mouth opening under Thomas’s, slow as a sea anemone. Instinct stirred in Thomas, and he shyly let his tongue press inward, feeling the welcoming flutter of Flynn’s before he could recoil at his own daring.
    How long since he had touched human skin not brought to him for diagnosis, healing? How long since he had… Oh God, rhetorical bloody questions. Thomas always knew almost to the minute when he had last had sex. A shudder ran through him. “Flynn… Flynn, no. Stop.”
    Flynn had closed his eyes, as if in concentration. Now he opened them in concern. “You’re pale,” he said. “You all right?”
    â€œYes. No, of course not.” Now that his mouth was off Flynn’s—an inch off, anyway—all he wanted to do was press it back, restore the kiss that had made his heart ache and race. Which, perversely, now he had decided that this was an impossibility, had called up his erection as hot and strong as could be managed in the confines of his cords. God, he ached. He wanted Flynn, wanted to fuck him, be fucked by him—he didn’t much care which. “We can’t,” he said, his voice unsteady with regret. “You’re with someone, and I…I’m screwed up, Flynn, beyond bloody human imagination. Not fit to be with anybody.”
    Flynn sat in silence for almost a minute, watching him. He reached up the pads of his fingers and ran them over Thomas’s brow. Thomas knew that ineradicable marks of pain had gathered there, and hated them. He didn’t mind looking older, but not like that. Flynn didn’t seem to mind them, though—was targeting them with his caress. “I know,” he said, gently. “You’ve told me—some of it, anyway. And it takes a nutter to know one. You must’ve gathered that I’m not renowned for sanity myself.” He pushed his fingers back from Thomas’s temple, into his hair. He smiled. “As for Robert—yeah, you’re right. It’s a mess, and it’s not over. But technically, for tonight at least, he…gave me to you.”

Chapter Five: Turning Tide
    Thomas spared one moment to glance over at Belle, who had appeared in the doorway. She could be unpredictable when people touched him. “Belle, bed,” he ordered her hoarsely, and after giving him one look of benign curiosity, she turned herself around and disappeared into the kitchen’s shadows.
    He was not sure how he had got here. Could not recall any one moment when he had decided to sit up on the sofa, reach round Flynn to grab the back of it and move to straddle him. It wasn’t at all his usual MO. He vaguely remembered being considered a good lover, unless that handful of long-ago acquaintances had been lying to him, and he’d never been afraid to initiate. To shift like this, though, powerful, smooth, and kneel across his lap, the gesture explicit, almost—in Thomas’s small experience of the genre—bloody pornographic.
    Flynn gasped, pupils expanding with excitement once more, their darkness almost drowning the green. This time when Thomas’s hands closed on his T-shirt, he arched his back in an explicit