Beneath the Stain - Part 7 (2 page)

“Listening,” Trav said, bemused—and
aroused
, for sweet hell’s sake. God, Mackey on a roll was something to be admired.

“So there I was in front of my family, just
losing my fucking nut
, and you know what? My brothers? They came through. My brothers came through. My best friend came through. So they are
all
lying on top of me, loving me, and I realize, hey! This is it. I am living my nightmares, but my family is here, and you know what? I didn’t need nothing—no Xanax, no booze, no coke. I mean, I
want
’em, sure. But I don’t need ’em. You know what I need, Travis? The one lousy fucking thing that I need?”

Trav closed his eyes, dropped his head, and allowed a smile to hit the corners of his mouth. “I know I really need you to say it,” he admitted, stripped and empty and knowing that even this might not get them through.

“I need you,” Mackey said, dropping to his knees and resting his head on Trav’s lap.

Trav stroked his hair restlessly, knowing it would be soft because all the bleach left it that way.

“You need Grant,” Trav said, and he wanted to laugh, because it was childish and insecure and stupid, and his heart still felt it was true.

Mackey looked up and met his eyes. Trav’s heart squeezed, thumped, squeezed again, and Trav had trouble taking his next fifty-dozen breaths. God, he was beautiful. Those big gray eyes, that turned-up nose. So beautiful. For the past year, he’d been Trav’s—and Trav had known from the beginning that he was only on loan from his demons. But now his demons were barking at their door, and Mackey wanted to be more than on loan. He wanted to mortgage his soul. It was a bargain Trav very much wanted to make, but God, Mackey was right.

He was so afraid.

“Trav, man—I know your last guy cheated, but you’ve got to know something. I don’t know what Grant is going to need. I don’t know why he’s so damned happy to have us here. But I swear to you, I could go down on my knees and blow him for old time’s sake, for closure, for whatever the hell that comes up, and it would not have a
fucking thing
to do with how I feel about you. I
swore
I wouldn’t make a fool of you. I was three months out of rehab, and every day was still a battle, but I promised. Have I gone back on that promise in any way?”

Trav closed his eyes. “No,” he whispered, clenching Mackey’s hair. He was wearing a towel—just a towel—and Mackey’s head rested in his lap, his breath stirring the fine hairs along his thigh, and he offered such comfort.

And he was magnificent.

“I swear I won’t,” Mackey said earnestly. “I swear, Trav. Man, I want… I want it all with you. All I want with Grant is to give him some peace. You and me, we got
always
. Grant’s got—what’d you say to Heath? Two weeks? Two weeks. And I’m going to need you for it, but… Trav, I’m going to need you
afterwards
. Can you be there for me? You ain’t run yet. All the shit me and the guys have thrown at you, and you ain’t run. Don’t tell me this is what’s gonna do it, Trav. Man, this
can’t
be what does it. ’Cause this is where it all started, and we’re about to leave it free and clear behind us. Can you hold on? I made it through rehab, dammit, I
know
you can hold on—”

Mackey squeezed his eyes shut, and his face blotched as he spoke. He trailed off because he couldn’t talk anymore.

Trav couldn’t leave him hang out there like that, alone and afraid.

“I can make it for you,” he promised, framing Mackey’s face in both hands and brushing the tears away with his thumbs. “I can make it for you, Mackey. I promise.” It was the least he could do.

“Promise?” Mackey begged, sitting up so their faces were closer. “That’s a promise. You don’t go back on those—you never break a promise!”

God. He never did. This was a promise. This wasn’t on loan and it wasn’t temporary—this was
real
. Trav knew he might still lose a chunk of Mackey’s soul to Grant Adams, but he needed to promise anyway.

“Promise,” he said again. “I can make it for—”

Mackey’s mouth was sweet on his, sweet and soft and greedy. Trav wanted to pull away and brush his teeth, wash his face at least—oh God, clean the sweat off his body—but sweet and soft turned into
need you now!
And Trav needed too.

He hauled Mackey up by the armpits and rolled, pushing Mackey into the bed and taking over, raking his stubbled chin down Mackey’s jaw.

“You stink like booze and cigars,” Mackey panted while Trav nuzzled his neck by his collarbone. “I think you need to shower before we do any more of this.”

Trav had no answer to that. He rasped his face down to Mackey’s chest, ripping the thin blue T-shirt clean off his body and dropping the front halves so he could rake his teeth down Mackey’s skin and lave roughly on his tightened nipple. Mackey moaned and clutched at his head, and Trav nipped at his ribs, at the soft skin of his muscled stomach, and down.

Mackey wore his softest jeans, and the button came undone with a jerk of Trav’s teeth on the denim. That quickly, Mackey was naked, and Trav planted nibbling kisses, small, savage nips that teased with an edge of pain.

“Suck your dick, isn’t that right?” he rasped, punctuating the words by taking a shaved testicle delicately in his mouth and then releasing it. “You told me I owed you. I’m paying up.”

“Fine,” Mackey muttered on a challenge. “Fi—
uhng!
” Because Trav had taken his other ball and sucked on it gently. “You go ahead and suck my dick, and then we’re going into the shower and I’m sucking yours. And then, if we got anything left, I’m fucking you up the ass, because we made promis—
augh!
—promises!”

Trav sucked him harder, took Mackey’s soft-skinned cock down his throat as far as he could. Trav loved giving Mackey head more than any other lover he’d had, because Mackey didn’t just lie back and take it. Mackey tugged on his hair and made sexy noises and said things like “Faster, faster, faster,
dammit
!” and he was just as responsive today as he had been their first time.

Trav couldn’t get Mackey’s cock far enough down his throat. He grasped the base hard, spit spilling over his fist, but he shoved down until the flared head caught in his throat, and then shoved harder past the gag reflex because he
needed
, needed to be filled with Mackey’s cock.

“Omigod, Trav—I’m gonna come—just now. Stop. Don’t wanna come yet—”

Tough, Mackey. I need you inside me.
Trav swallowed again, a shot of precome spurting against his throat.

Trav’s fist was swimming in spit and precome, and he let go of Mackey’s cock, working his mouth lower, and shoving his hand between Mackey’s thighs. He used his thumb to massage between Mackey’s balls, stroked his slick middle finger down Mackey’s crease, finding his pucker and soothing.

Mackey groaned, pounding the side of the bed in agitation. Too much too soon, Trav knew that, but he’d woken up alone too, woken up without Mackey. He’d rolled over and reached for where Mackey had lain for the better part of a year and had forced himself to imagine life without him.

He’d imagined walking away, finding an apartment with four white walls, managing the band from nearby but not living in the house anymore. He’d imagined watching Mackey perform from the sidelines, hiding when the band came off stage because he couldn’t stand to see who Mackey would kiss when the set was over. He imagined the coldness of another lover’s touch after the heat of what was filling his mouth, his hands, his nostrils, his skin,
right now
, and he needed.

With a groan, he pushed his finger in to the second knuckle as his lips brushed Mackey’s bare skin.

“Trav, you
asshole—
!”

Come, hot, rank with musk, and bitter spilled down Trav’s throat. Trav savored it, pulled back so it could hit his palate, hit his tongue, and he could milk Mackey until he was done spurting.

Their breaths sounded harsh and grating in the space of the hotel room.

Mackey sat up suddenly, scrabbling for purchase in Trav’s hair. “Shower,” he snarled, and Trav was at his mercy.

Trav went first while Mackey stopped to grab something from the beach bag, and for a moment, he had a reprieve. A second, a heartbeat alone in the bathroom while he stepped under the spray. Because Mackey wasn’t going to give him any space. Trav promised and Mackey wouldn’t let him go. Trav had been able to walk away from every relationship he’d ever had, but not this one. Suddenly the idea that he’d been Mackey Sanders’s for over a year was ludicrous. That much bright, that much shining, that much fierce possession—turned on Travis Ford? It was laughable. Trav did stable. Trav was organized and….

Trav hadn’t been that man since he and Mackey sang “Cocaine” together, when Mackey was more dead than alive.

He held his face up to the water, swishing some around his mouth, and spat. Mackey’s taste lingered, and he was torn between wanting his toothbrush and wanting that proof that McKay James Sanders was his, soaking through his soul with his come.

Mackey stepped in behind him, a washcloth and hard hotel soap in his hand, and he started a rough scrub of Trav’s body—his back, his ribs, his neck and chest. Trav tried to capture his hands when they were in front, but Mackey batted him away wordlessly. No softness. Trav got it. Mackey might not be mad anymore, but he wasn’t in a sweet mood. He pulled at Trav’s nipples, fingers slippery and irritated, and Trav leaned his head against the wall and groaned.

He’d been hard when they’d gotten into the shower. Now, with Mackey’s hands on his skin, kneading his thighs, Trav’s abdomen clenched so tightly with arousal that the muscles in his legs shook.

Mackey’s hands disappeared, slid around to Trav’s ass, and Mackey leaned forward to whisper in his ear. “Spread ’em, Trav. I’m gonna wash you.”

Trav braced his hands on the wall and complied.

Torturous, rough, practical,
insane—
the washcloth left nothing secret, from the crease of his groin to the inside of his knees to his—o
h God
—now bright and squeaky clean cock, balls, and asshole. Trav’s body parts got scrubbed, rinsed, scrubbed again, which felt worse than Mackey playing with him on purpose. Trav leaned his head against the wall, groaning.

“Mackey—”

“My turn,” Mackey muttered. “You take care of us, you make us all into a family—someone’s gotta take care of you sometimes, Trav. If this is gonna work, you gotta have faith that I can.”

Mackey balanced one hand on the small of Trav’s back while he reached outside the shower. He came back in with the bottle of waterproof lube they stashed in their luggage, and Trav closed his eyes and forced himself to relax.

“Your ass is trying to make shit into diamonds,” Mackey snapped, flicking Trav’s buttock with the tips of his fingers. “You either trust me or you don’t!”

“It’s not the same—
God!
” Mackey grabbed his cock and grasped hard, gliding long and slow, sliding the skin from the shaft over the head when he got there. His hand was slick with lube, and the pressure/pain was…
exquisite.

“Yeah, it is,” Mackey whispered over his shoulder, stroking, stroking, squeezing. He rubbed circles around Trav’s backside with his other hand, and a particularly hard shiver rocked Trav,
forced
him to give up the control that kept him clenched.

Mackey rewarded his faith with a finger in his asshole, and Trav shuddered again, his muscles melting, sagging into that single lubricated, dominant finger penetrating him while Mackey kept stroking, stroking, stroking….

“I’m going to fall,” he confessed thickly, his knees going weak.

“Bend over,” Mackey said mercilessly. “Over the toilet, knees on the side of the tub. Grab a towel.”

Awkward as hell, but Trav grabbed a towel and dropped it on the edge, just like Mackey said, Mackey’s finger—
fingers, two!
—
still in his body, his hand still stroking Trav’s cock.

“Mackey,” Trav rasped as he fumbled for the curtain. He stumbled, ripped the curtain off the rod, then found the towel with his knees by chance and rested his hands on the top of the toilet. The water spattered around them, and Mackey spared a moment from that insidious, hard-gripped stroke around his cock to turn it off.

Silence descended, punctuated by Mackey’s harsh, muttering breaths behind him and Trav’s own tortured breathing.

And someone was making little breathy, moaning sounds, grunts, tiny, giving mumbles of reluctant pleasure… was that… was it really….

Mackey kept finger-fucking him hard, harder, with two—four, oh God, four, it felt like a fist.
Trav buried his face against the unyielding plastic toilet lid, slipping with the water dripping from his shoulders and hair, and heard those sounds echoing back at him through his crossed arms.

He was making them.

He was making those sounds as his lover took control of his body, stroking one end, penetrating the other. Trav was incoherent, begging, pleading,
screaming—

“God, Mackey, fuck me… fuck me…
oh please, baby, fuck me
!”

Mackey’s fingers disappeared and Trav gasped, missing him, invasive, larger than life, a pain he couldn’t exist without.

And that quickly Mackey was inside of him, cock to ass, throwing his slight body, his stringy weight, against Trav’s backside with the force of a runaway train.

Trav groaned, the sound bouncing around the tiny bathroom, becoming a roar, becoming timpani, becoming Trav’s breathless need.

“Yes! God! Keep… need…. Mackey, fucking need…
oh please
!”

Mackey adjusted his angle, pushing up, probably standing on his toes, but he pegged Trav’s gland hard enough that Trav saw stars and made a sound that should have shorted out the lights.