Tymber Dalton - Safe Harbor

That’s all I am.”

Mac forced him to his feet, one of Sully’s arms around his shoulders, and into bed. He helped him undress as he usually did, while Sully still ranted and railed, vacillating between anger and anguish.

Finally settling on rage, he screamed at Mac. “Leave me the fuck alone!”

Mac turned on him. “No! I’m not going to sit by and let you waste your fucking life. You’re going to get better and when you do, you’ll figure out where to go from there. When will you get it through your thick goddamned head that I’m your friend and I love you and I’m not going anywhere no matter how much you tell me to?” His breath caught in his throat. It was as close as he’d ever come to confessing.

Sully’s evening meds had kicked in, adding to an already bad mood. He grabbed his crotch through his boxers and screamed, “Fuck you! You can suck my dick. Life sucks. I wish they’d let me fucking die!”

As good an invitation as any, Mac didn’t have time to consider the consequences. He pinned Sully’s wrists to the bed. “You’re telling me to suck your cock, Sul?”

“Yeah!” Sully sneered. Sully’s pupils had dilated, the pain medicine mostly in charge at this point. “You want to fucking stay here with me? Well make yourself useful and suck my goddamned cock, asshole!”

Mac grinned. “Okay.” He’d never done it before, but had to admit he’d fantasized about it plenty of times while helping Sully with his bath or going to the bathroom. Before Sully could protest, Mac yanked down Sully’s boxers and greedily sucked the man’s cock.

Sully went silent and still. Mac, not releasing Sully’s cock, changed position to kneel between the man’s legs so he could look at him. Shock, disbelief, and…more than a twinge of lust painted Sully’s face.

After a few minutes, Sully’s head dropped to his pillow and he started working his hips in time with Mac’s mouth. When Sully’s hands tangled in his hair, Mac closed his eyes and slowed his movements, trying to think about how he loved getting a blow job and what girls did to him and doing that to Sully. He didn’t feel at all squeamish about it.

He’d consider the consequences later.

After a few minutes, Sully started muttering, “Fuck, fuck, fuck,” under his breath. Mac grabbed his hips and held on as Sully’s body tensed, then Sully moaned as his climax hit. Hot seed pumped over Mac’s tongue. Again he didn’t have time to consider it as he swallowed every drop. It felt right.

It felt good.

Sully didn’t move his hands, left them resting on Mac’s head.

From the ragged sound of Sully’s breath, Mac knew he was still awake. Mac finally released his cock and rested his cheek against Sully’s hip. He didn’t move, was almost afraid to breathe.

Sully still didn’t move his hands.

After long, anxious minutes, Sully whispered, “I’ve never done that before.”

Mac laughed. “Well join the club. Neither have I.” He felt that maybe it was safe to lift his head and look. “I’m not going to apologize for it either. You’re the first guy I’ve ever been with. I don’t know why you, why I love you, but I do. So you’re stuck with me for a while. If you want to tell me to get the fuck out, fine, I accept that. At least let me stay with you until you’re on your feet again. I owe you that much for keeping me going and not letting me die. If you tell me never to do that again and want to pretend it didn’t happen, fine, I accept that, too. I’ll even apologize if you want. I won’t lie and say I didn’t enjoy it when I did.”

Sully’s grey eyes settled on him. For once, they seemed less dead than they had for the past several months. “You love me?”

“Yeah. I thought I was only into girls. I still like girls. But I love you. So gay, bi, whatever that makes me, I don’t care. All I know is I love you.” He took a deep breath. “Do you want me to go?”

Sully slowly shook his head. “No,” he finally whispered. “I don’t want you to go.”

Mac felt a relieved sigh escape him. “Good, because I don’t want to go.”

* * *

“Then what happened?” Clarisse asked.

Mac shrugged and took another swallow of his beer. “We went to sleep and woke up the next morning, both of us sort of uncomfortable.

His painkillers had worn off and I thought, ‘Oh shit, I hope I didn’t screw things up.’ We talked, kept talking. It was a long road between then and now. A good road. Not a perfect one. We’re like anyone else with a relationship. There’s good and bad times. In our case, very few bad and minor compared to many people’s problems. The good always makes it worth it.”

Mac looked normal, natural in a collar, nipple rings, and nothing else. He damn sure had the body for it. “How did you become his slave?”

“That happened early on. I ran naked out of the bathroom one day to grab the phone and he joked that he liked the look on me. I started walking around naked.” He smiled as he took another swallow. “That led to more interesting things.”

“But how did you know you were submissive?”

“How do you know you’re a girl? I’m not like this with everyone, if you haven’t noticed. Only him. Even then, we switch it up a little.

On the boat, I top and he bottoms.”

“You mean he’s your slave.”

“Fuck no. He’s always my Master. Top and bottom can be different from Dom and sub or Master and slave. He lets me top on the boat. I get to call the shots. Like the day we found you, he’s still my Master and I defer to him. He would never try to get his way while we play when I’m topping. That goes back to trust. That lets me get my needs taken care of to be in charge, lets him relax and turn over control in a safe way.”

She scrubbed her face with her hands. “I don’t understand why you only want to be in control sometimes.”

“When we didn’t have the boat, we had a different arrangement, like one weekend a month or something, we’d switch. I like that structure, knowing that in certain cases, this is what I am and do and the rest of the time it’s all him. I loved that about the Army, the protocol, the procedures. I hated some of the assholes I worked under and getting my fucking ass shot at. Master gives me what I need and want.”

“That didn’t answer my question about how you knew.”

He shrugged. “I loved taking care of him, being there for him. I didn’t want to stop. As he healed, I started doing other things for him.

Let him focus on his writing and, later, the classes he taught. It made me happy. It made him happy. Hell, if you’d told me a few years ago I’d be happy doing this, I’d have said you were nuts. Much less that it was with a guy.” His brow furrowed in concentration.

“Master and I…fuck labels. They’re just that, better for clothing or food contents than people. We’re not gay. We don’t go lusting after guys. If we see a cute guy, yeah, sure, we might make a comment to each other. It’s not like my dick hardens. A beautiful woman walks by, honey, my dick stands up. So does Master’s.”

He met her eyes as she felt molten heat pool between her legs. “I look into Master’s eyes and I want to drop to my knees and beg him to fuck me. He’s the only guy that does that to me. You walk by and my dick screams for attention and tries to talk me into fucking you.

Believe me, I wish I could, because I would in a heartbeat.” He finished the beer before standing and walking out to the kitchen.

His words rang in her ears. They weren’t gay.

Numb shock washed through her system. When a wild-assed hope from far left field popped its head up and screamed for attention, she beat it back. She didn’t want to go there. She didn’t want to hang her hat on impossible hopes and have her heart broken. Sully and Mac were devoted to each other. Only a moron could miss that.

She wished they felt like that about her.

* * *

Sully felt his BlackBerry vibrate next to him on the bed, rousting him from his nap. Without looking, he fumbled for it and answered.

“Nicoletto.”

“Hey, Sul. It’s Jason.”

Sully flexed his leg. It hurt, but not as bad as the other day.

“What’s up?”

“You know me, can’t mind my own business. I’ve been doing some digging.”

“What?”

“I found out something interesting about Officer Bryan Jackson.”

Sleep left Sully’s system. “What?”

“Ed and Lorraine Moore died in a tragic hit and run accident three years ago. Their car plunged off an embankment one evening. Paint scrapes showed another vehicle was involved.”

Sully rolled over. Jason had his full and undivided attention.

“Clarisse’s parents?”

“Yeah. That same day, about an hour before the accident scene was discovered, Officer Jackson reported his car stolen. Never recovered.”

Sully chewed that over in his mind. “Son of a bitch.”

“Yeah. Get this. I requested the accident report from the Licking County sheriff’s office up there. One witness reported a car the same color as Jackson’s car leaving the area about the time the accident would have happened, but it was dark and they didn’t get a tag or make-model or see the accident happen.”

“He killed them?”

“He had an alibi. He was sitting in the station, filling out a report on the car. Before that, he’s on surveillance video shopping at Wal-Mart, complete with a time-date-stamped credit card receipt. His car was stolen from the lot, also caught on video, but the perp was never identified.”

“No one ever thought to put that shit together?”

“Jackson’s father and the police chief of that charming little hamlet went to school together.”

Sully closed his eyes and pinched the bridge of his nose. “Clarisse received a hundred-grand life insurance payout when they died.”

“He might have known that since they dated for a couple of years before.”

“Most likely. Son of a bitch.”

If she’d stayed, how much longer until Clarisse would have met with an “accident”? More importantly, how much danger was she in now that she’d pressed charges against Jackson?

* * *

After dinner, Clarisse curled up on one end of the couch to watch TV. Sully emerged from his office. “Mind if I join you?”

“It’s your house.”

He settled on the far end of the couch. “You okay?”

“Yeah.” She tried to focus on the show and not Sully’s presence.

After a few minutes, Mac finished cleaning up the kitchen and joined them. Instead of sitting on the couch, he sat on the floor by Sully.

Clarisse felt her heart skip as she watched Sully tenderly stroke Mac’s hair. Mac’s eyes dropped closed as he settled against Sully’s leg.

She wanted that. The bond, the closeness. The tenderness.

The love.

She found it difficult to focus on the TV show. Part of her wanted to crawl across the couch and snuggle with Sully.

When the show ended, Sully tapped Mac’s shoulder. Mac startled.

He’d been asleep. “Bedtime, buddy,” Sully said.

Mac sleepily nodded and stood. “Good night, sweetie,” he said to Clarisse.

“Night.”

Sully offered a smile. “See you in the morning.” Mac followed him to their bedroom, leaving Clarisse alone with her own conflicted desires.

She headed for bed with a book. Chances Taken, by one S. N.

MacCaffrey.

She smiled. Sully wrote under his own name too, for his nonfiction and some of his fiction. For the erotica, however, he used the pen name. This was the first chance she’d had to read any of his books. It touched her that he used Mac’s last name for his pen name.

Three hours later, Clarisse yawned, but she was so engrossed in the book she couldn’t put it down. It wasn’t just erotica, but a gut-wrenching, emotional, beautiful, and sexy romance between two men who loved each other, yet life and circumstances kept them apart.

Fortunately, it had a happily-ever-after ending. From the depth of the writing, the skill used to weave the story around the intensely erotic scenes, she knew Sully’s still waters ran deep, so to speak.

When she closed the book, she was surprised to find it almost five in the morning. She closed her eyes and drifted to sleep, thinking about the book and wondering if she’d ever find her happily-ever-after.

The next day, before lunch, Sully called Clarisse into his office.

He handed her a new cell phone.

“What’s this for?” She examined it, an expensive phone with all the bells and whistles.