Halfway Down (The Boys of Horseshoe Lake Book 1) Read online

  “Morning,” he whispered at me before nuzzling my sack with his nose, inhaling deeply like couldn’t get enough of my scent.

  “Morning,” I whispered back, blinking sleep away, in awe of the sight of him knelt between my legs, his shoulder length locks tickling my thighs as he dipped his head and sucked one of my balls into his mouth. He tongued it gently before releasing it and turning his ministrations to the other one.

  Alex’s lips almost felt foreign as he pressed them to my hardened shaft trailing kisses as soft as butterflies down my entire length. He hadn’t done this in so long, my body had forgotten his touch; the way it felt when he slid his throat around my length and how it seemed like he could spend hours suckling at just the tip of it, and I knew I wouldn’t last long. I was about to warn of that when he pulled me into his mouth, sucking hard at the darkened head, his tongue lapping at the slit slow and languid, like he had all the time in the world to taste whatever I was giving him.

  I threw the covers back, needing my hands free yet wanting to watch every moment of this. He laughed, a genuine sound burbling around my cock, and released me from his mouth, his hand stroking my length nice and slow, building me up like he loved to do. Alex was always a patient lover, sometimes far too patient for my liking, but the tease of it was like coming home again. I had missed Alex playing and teasing and tasting, using my body like a playground for his own needs and wants while also giving me back whatever he took tenfold. I felt tears prickling behind my eyes and quickly blinked them away, I didn’t want him to think he was hurting me even though the ache in my heart was real.

  He grinned at me then, his icy blue eyes twinkling in the morning light streaming in through the slats in the curtains and then lowered his head, pulling me back, back, back into his mouth until the head of my cock rested against his soft palate. I groaned loudly, my body urging me to pump my hips, to force myself in and out of the glorious wet warmth surrounding me, but I resisted, trusting Alex to do what he wanted with my body. He slowly pulled off me, then dove right back down, his head bobbing as he fluttered his tongue up and down my length, driving my senses wild. I reached out and gathered his hair in my hand, gripping it like a ponytail while he smiled up at me around my cock, nodding like that was exactly what he wanted from me.

  “Alex,” I moaned. “So good, baby. Oh my God.”

  He hummed a happy sound, increasing his speed, taking me as deep as he could, his hand cradling the base of my shaft and stroking in time with his talented mouth. Noises, raw and animalistic, rolled from my throat and I couldn’t hold back my urge any longer. My hips pumped up, meeting him with every thrust and his free hand reached up and gripped mine where it lay beside me, squeezing my fingers tight like he desperately needed that connection.

  “Close,” I whispered, feeling my balls draw up tight, the orgasm coiling inside my belly like a snake ready to strike.

  Alex hummed again then sucked hard and I tightened my grip on his hair, crying out my release, feeling it spurt from me in waves that crested and crashed into that sweet warm mouth surrounding me. Alex pulled back, fluttering his tongue around my tip again, collecting every last drop of me, swallowing everything I could give him as I softened slowly.

  When he released me from his mouth, he crawled back up the length of my body and pressed a kiss to my pec, tucking himself into my side and snuggling close, his head on my chest. “I love you, okay?” he said, his fingertips tracing patterns in the whorls of hair covering my pecs.

  “I love you too,” I responded, my heart full and my body exhausted. I trailed my hand down his frame, grazing over the tattoo that had appeared almost overnight on his skin, the constellation I didn’t understand the only mark on his pale flesh. I’d asked about it once, but he’d brushed the question away like it was nothing, so I hadn’t pressed too hard to find the meaning. He’d tell me in time, when he was ready for the conversation. I trailed my hand further down, cupping his softness and wishing I could return his love in the way I used to. His breath hitched, the noise soft and shameful as it crept out of his throat, but he didn’t try to move away from me as he did sometimes when I would touch him there. I pulled him closer, willing him to understand what I was trying to say with my hands on his body, praying that he was getting the messages I couldn’t put into words. I gently cradled his cock and balls in my hand, feeling his body tense against mine a few times more until he finally relaxed, like he understood that nothing about his body would never put me off or make me love him any less.

  “I’m sorry,” he whispered.

  I rubbed my thumb over him where he rested soft and warm in my hand, letting him feel that in spite of whatever he was thinking, he was always attractive to me. I could sense him settling even more against me, relaxing into my touch, and kissed him on the top of his head, knowing what it felt like to think I’d lost him. “Don’t hide from me, Alex. Everything about this body is beautiful.”

  “It’s broken.”

  “It’s healing.”

  Alex didn’t respond, deep in his own thoughts. I always let him linger in his brain when he needed to, knowing that I’d pull him out if he fell too far away. He shuffled on top of me in his silence, trying to get comfortable again and I closed my eyes, willing us both into sleep and hoping his exhausted brain would finally let him go.

  Alex

  The text app sat open on my phone, the group chat I had been a part of since I’d left Horseshoe Lake behind already bustling as everyone did their usual good morning check-ins. I smiled as I scrolled up, taking stock of names and seeing that everyone had reported in for the day with at least a hello. I added my own good morning to the bunch and my phone went wild, pinging with notifications from the four other people in the group.

  Trenton: There he is. Good morning.

  Bram: Did you sleep in or something?

  Kavan: Took you long enough.

  Wayley: Christ. Finally.

  I laughed softly, glancing at the clock. It was only six in the morning, but I supposed I was running behind. I usually sent my morning check-in long before they were even awake.

  Me: Sorry, guys. Didn’t mean to be so late.

  They all sent back some kind of “lol” or laugh emoji, but I wondered for a split second what they’d really been thinking when my usual four a.m. greeting hadn’t rolled through on time. The last time I’d missed a morning check-in, I’d been in the hospital and they’d bombarded Robin with frantic texts demanding to know where I was that had grown increasingly more worried as time passed without response. He’d shown them to me when I was on the psychiatric unit, letting me know that I would have been missed, but I’d known that already, and the knowing hadn’t helped keep me from stepping off the dock. I followed the conversation in the chat for a few minutes before everyone started logging off, getting ready for whatever their day would bring them. We never lingered with each other anymore during the day, but first thing in the morning we needed to know that each of us was still alive and the darkness that had lived inside each of us since we were little kids hadn’t taken us away during the night. I added my own goodbye to the mix, reminding them all to stay safe and reach out if they needed it, the irony of my message not lost on me as I clicked send and crawled out of bed.

  Robin was in the shower, getting ready for work, and I wandered over to stand in front of the open closet, staring at the clothing I had always loved wearing before. The collection of sheer shirts, button downs, vests and dress pants were remnants of an Alex that had once existed. An Alex who saw purpose in collecting pretty things to wear out on dates with his boyfriend and one that saw meaning in breath and heartbeat. I swallowed hard and raised my hand to my chest, feeling the thud behind my ribcage through the bones, or maybe I was just imagining it again. I did that sometimes when everything stilled around me, sat down and imagined my heartbeat like it was a tangible thing I could grasp beneath my fingers, letting it settle in my palm with the knowledge that if I squeezed it hard enough, it would burst.
I probably shouldn’t have been able to find solace in thoughts like that, given what I’d done, but I couldn’t help it when things looked bleak.

  Having control meant everything when my brain stripped everything else away from me.

  I refocused back to my collection of clothing, eyes wandering unbidden through the hangers like they were going on a road trip through my life and my clothing was a compass pointing directly towards the present moment. When I’d graduated from college and escaped Horseshoe Lake—the small southern Alberta town I’d grown up in—to start my photography business, I’d delighted in being able to sock money away to spend on certain things that I’d only dreamed of owning before. My Alexander McQueen motorcycle boots with the studs in the leather. The artfully torn jeans that slid over my slender hips like butter and clung to the curves of my ass in a way that made Robin’s eyes widen in arousal. Even my drawers were full of frilly underwear and lacy things I hadn’t seen on my body in a long time, and though sometimes I considered being pretty again for Robin, it always turned out to be just a passing notion I couldn’t fully commit to. I had spent large sums of money to make myself gorgeous on the outside to hide what lurked beneath the surface, but in the days after my return from the hospital, I was scrubbed raw and hurting and couldn’t bother dressing myself up anymore. I wasn’t allowed to hide anything anymore, anyway. In one of my worse moments, I had tried to get rid of everything I owned, but Robin had stopped me from dragging the garments to the consignment store as I’d intended to do. He’d suggested that perhaps boxing them up in case I wanted to wear them again at some point would be a better idea, that I would regret hauling the labels out of the closet, and that I needed my clothing, but by then the urge to purge them from my life had faded. There they still hung, taking up space in a time capsule closet when I lived in sweatpants and t-shirts most days.

  “Blue sweatpants,” Robin said, walking into the room with a towel wrapped around his waist and breaking my concentration.

  I jumped at the sudden sound but caught myself before he noticed, instead offering a nod accompanied by a smile that recalled the request he’d made the night before. I did love those pants, they were soft against my skin and kept me warm when I got chilly. I grabbed them from the drawer and pulled out an oversized hoodie to go along with them, quickly changing as Robin pulled a pair of black slacks out of his half of the closet.

  “Acceptable?” he asked, holding them up alongside a blue checked shirt like he wasn’t going to end up spending the day playing with dogs. He likely had some meetings coming up, planning for the shelter’s fundraisers was likely underway, but that didn’t mean he couldn’t be casual. Robin always had these ideas of what someone who ran a business looked like and had confessed to me before that he didn’t seem to fit the boxes, not realizing that the only reason the shelter had done as well as it had, had less to do with what he looked like and more to do with the tender heart hidden within his large frame.

  I hummed, thinking as I rattled through the list of clothing he owned in my head. “The jeans. Those dark wash ones that cup your ass perfectly. You know which ones I’m talking about.”

  “You just want to see my ass,” he teased, reaching behind him and giving his rump a solid smack that echoed through the quiet bedroom. I laughed and nodded my agreement, I loved all of him but he cut a very attractive figure from behind. With a shake of his head at me and a small snort of a laugh, Robin pulled the pants I’d suggested out of the closet. He grinned at me, turning and giving me a nice view of his bubbly ass before giving it a shake at me and heading to grab underwear from the dresser. He rummaged around, digging deep into the drawer until he stilled. My gut lurched as his shoulders rose, a deep breath moving in and out of his lungs like he’d practiced for this moment. He kept it, he’d told me, in case I ever wanted to see it, to look at it and understand the depth of his love for me and what he wanted for our future, but I felt the guilt like poison in my bones every time he’d open the drawer. I didn’t know why he kept it there of all places, where every morning he could be reminded of the refusal I’d stammered at him, the way his smile had fallen and the way his thick fingers had snapped the jewelry box shut at my shameful, “I can’t.” We had both learned skills for coping through therapy after I was taken to the hospital, I reasoned that perhaps this was simply one of his though I couldn’t see how. It still felt a lot to me like a punishment when his only crime was loving me.

  “I… I can wear it, if you’d like.”

  Robin was silent, his fingers rubbing the soft top of the box he’d once offered me. The box I’d run from, eyes wide and heart screaming the words, “not worthy.” He squeezed it in his hand like he was testing the weight of it in his fingers, and I swallowed hard, glancing between his stoic face, devoid of the joy we’d started the morning with, and the box.

  “You said no,” he whispered, releasing it from his grasp and grabbing a pair of boxer briefs, a decision clearly made to not dwell on it this morning.

  “I…”

  “You said no,” he repeated, firmer and louder this time, like he was confirming what had happened for the benefit of both of us. “I want you to want to wear it, Alex, I really do. But I want you to want what it means about us, about our future.”

  He trailed off, turning and offering me a smile tinged with sadness that didn’t quite reach the corners of his eyes.

  “I’m sorry,” I offered, the words not quite capturing what I was feeling.

  “It’s okay, we’re okay. When you’re ready, right?”

  I nodded slowly, recalling a conversation we’d had in the hospital when I’d begged him to ask me again and promising I’d say yes. That day he’d given me a sad smile, curled himself around me on the starched hospital sheets and offered comfort through his body pressed against mine. He hadn’t asked me again though, despite my promises, and I knew he wouldn’t. Not now. Maybe not ever again. He said when I was ready for it, he would ask for my hand, but I knew it was the other way around. Robin had fallen away from the trust we’d once shared and it would take time to rebuild it again, if such a thing was even possible. I shivered at the thought, conflicted as always inside my head, closing my eyes to shake off the guilt that was crawling beneath my skin with a deep breath. When I opened my eyes, Robin’s smile was back and he held up his underwear with a grin that shifted the tone rushing between us. I returned his smile, grateful for his pull from the dark places inside me, and crawled onto the king-sized bed we shared. I sat cross legged at the end, watching as he slid into a pair of bright pink boxer briefs printed with small flamingos, knowing that he wore them just for me because they were my favorite. I’d bought them as a joke, teasing that he dressed his form in drab colors when he should be wearing brilliant shades that matched his personality. He turned around and grinned knowingly at the look in my eyes.

  “You love these stupid boxers,” he commented, with a hint of a tease in his words.

  “I love the man in them more.”

  “The man in them loves you too.”

  I couldn’t stop the silly grin that spread over my lips, cracking the caverns of my mouth open wide as he winked at our combined cheesiness and turned back to his morning routine. Robin was handsome in ways he didn’t understand, his softness around the middle adding to that, not subtracting as he often joked. His chest was hairy, but not overly so, and it made me want to rub my face all over him like a cat marking its territory, transferring scent that screamed, “This is mine and mine alone and I will find a way to keep it always.”

  “You like what you see, Mr. McNamara?” he growled playfully, wiggling his hips at me.

  “Always, Mr. Booth. Always.”

  He smiled at me again, his eyes softened at my words before turning his face away to finish dressing and examine his appearance in the mirror. He came to stand in front of me where I sat cross-legged on the bed and I knew what he was going to ask before the words even left his lips. “What’s the plan for today?”

&nbs
p; I thought back to my sleepless night and all of the promises I’d made in the darkness, trying to put them into order. “I’m going to eat breakfast, then I may take Bingo for a walk to the pharmacy so I can ask about sleeping pills.”

  Robin’s mouth turned down in a frown. “Sleeping pills, Alex?”

  “Yeah.” I nodded. “I just thought I’d ask if there’s anything that I could take that won’t interact with the cocktail.”

  His eyes softened at that. “Maybe you should book an appointment with Dr. Harris and ask him instead. That way you know for sure.”

  I cringed inside but he was probably right. Dr. Fred Harris had been my psychiatrist since I had been taken to the hospital six months ago, and if anyone would know what would be best it would be him. The fact that I believed he was a pretentious twat didn’t mean talking with him about sleeping pills wasn’t a good idea, unfortunately. “I see him in a few weeks. I’ll ask then.”

  “Everyone around today?” he asked, gesturing to my phone where it sat on the bed.

  “All present and accounted for.”

  He nodded, offering a small smile. The first night I’d spent at his place had also been the first conversation we’d had about the group I spoke with every morning. He’d listened in rapt attention as I’d explained what had happened when I was little, the boys who were buried in the lake the town was named for and the monster who’d put them there. When I was done, tears streaming down my face at my confessions, he’d surprised me by cradling me in his arms and pulling me onto his lap, holding me while I broke down in sobs. He didn’t pry for more information than I’d freely given like other men I’d dated had in the past, and I knew then that I’d somehow stumbled into someone special.

  Robin finished doing up his shoes and held a hand out to me, smiling as I let my fingers rest against his. He pulled me off the bed fast, bundling me into his arms, leaving me laughing and squealing, breathless as he rained kisses down on my upturned face. Fuck, I loved him so much it hurt sometimes. I tilted my face higher, begging for more kisses, more contact to shake off the remains of the earlier conversation, and he grinned, watching me preen like a satisfied cat at his caresses and love.