Heat Stroke (Beach Kingdom Book 2), Page 3

  Lately, though…Marcus had started wanting a little more privacy. Like right now. Still, he couldn’t ignore his brother on the street or he’d have his balls broken over it for weeks.

  With a growl, Marcus slowed to a walk on the sidewalk, throwing up a middle finger at his brother on the other side of the avenue. “I’ll see you later, J. I’m late.”

  “Get over here, you mutt. Late for what?”

  He plucked the tickets out of his back pocket and waved them at Joey. “Does bailing on me ring a bell?”

  Joey blew out a cloud of smoke and grimaced. “You going alone?”

  Marcus hesitated. For a split second—and that was all took.

  “A girl, huh?” Joey called, raising an eyebrow. “It must be serious if she’s willing to sit through Monster Jam for you. When do we meet her?”

  “Never.” Apprehension pressed down on Marcus’s sternum and he backed toward the train station. “Go take a fucking shower. I can smell you from here.”

  Joey flipped him the bird. “Ahhh!”

  “Ahhhh!” Marcus yelled back.

  As soon as he ducked into the shade of the LIRR overhang, Marcus stopped and pressed his back up against the concrete wall, pigeons rustling overhead in the rafters. Breathe. Just relax. You’re just hanging out with a friend. Even if Joey ran into him with Jamie, there was nothing going on. Nothing ever would go on.

  Marcus couldn’t buy his own bullshit, though.

  There was something about Jamie Prince that announced he was batting for the same team. It wasn’t flashy or obvious or probably even intentional. There was just something about the knowing eye contact, the confident smirk, his clean shaven, well-moisturized skin. Joey would know, in no uncertain terms, that Jamie was gay. It wasn’t like his brother and father hated gay people—lifestyles different than their own were just other. And they weren’t comfortable with other. Not growing up and not now.

  More than that, though, his family would never believe Marcus was hanging out with Jamie simply because he liked and admired him as a fellow human being. They would assume something else—and that something else broke Marcus out in a cold sweat. Because if his family called him out, he wouldn’t be able to pretend that everything was continuing at the status quo anymore. That he didn’t think about Jamie way, way too much.

  Like basically nonstop.

  “Hey.”

  At the hesitant sound of Jamie’s voice, Marcus’s spine shot straight and he clonked the back of his head hard against the wall. “Jamie Prince.” He readjusted his hat and performed a quick check for any gaping wounds of blood. “What’s the good word?”

  “Are we just going to pretend you didn’t just concuss yourself?”

  “You caught me.” Wincing, Marcus leaned forward and braced his hands on his knees. “Jesus, that fucking hurt.”

  Marcus peeked up to find Jamie observing him curiously through his glasses, arms crossed. Might as well admit Jamie looked extra nice today and Marcus had thought nothing could beat Jamie in red lifeguard shorts. But in jeans and a white T-shirt, Jamie wasn’t just good looking, he was comfortable being that way. Most guys their age wore loose jeans. Jamie’s weren’t tight, but they were a size smaller than men typically wore. Just tight enough to make him kind of intimidating. As in, I’ve made it easier to check me out—you’re welcome. His shirt was so lived-in, it had the opposite effect. Made him and the cut muscles of his arms look…touchable. He wore a ball cap, too, but his was facing forward and advertised the New York Public Library. Stray ends of his dark hair stuck out around the sides and made Marcus’s fingers flex.

  “Are you going to live, Diesel? We’re going to miss the train.”

  “Shit.” Marcus pushed off the wall and they started toward the platform. “You were worried about me a little bit there. You can admit it.”

  “If you died, I’d miss the chance to cross Monster Mash off my bucket list.”

  “Monster Jam—and I’ll make you another bet.”

  “Seeing as how the last one worked out so well, how could I pass?” They reached the platform just in time for the train to arrive and stepped into the air conditioning, finding seats in the middle of the car. “Details, please.”

  Marcus had never sat this close to Jamie before and he wasn’t sure what to do with his hands, so he folded them and wedged them between his knees. “If you don’t have a good time watching cars get crushed by big-ass trucks, I’ll…” Marcus tried to think of something Jamie probably wanted more than anything in the world and landed on it right away. “I’ll stop asking Andrew to assign me the chair next to yours.”

  Jamie’s gaze shot to his. “You must be pretty confident.”

  “Oh I am.” Marcus’s grin was short lived. “You can’t lie and just say you hated it, though. I’ll know if you’re lying.”

  “No, you won’t.”

  A prickle climbed the back of his neck. “Yeah, probably not. How about I won’t ask Andrew to assign us together on Tuesdays when the beach is quiet?”

  Jamie shook his head on a laugh. “Fine. So what if I have the time of my life?”

  Marcus leaned back and took a moment to consider. Honestly, he was going to make the stakes easy. Like, making Jamie wear his hat backwards on the ride home or something. But something else entirely came out of his mouth. “You have to help me.”

  A few seconds ticked by, the train rocking around them. “Help you with what?”

  “I, uh…well.” Marcus shifted in his seat, nerves making his pulse pop. “I got a call before I came to meet you, right? This real estate management company. My application to rent the commercial space on the ground floor was approved, which is crazy, because my credit score is like, not terrible but not spectacular. I sort of abused my GNC credit card trying to look this fucking good. Anyway, it’s a storefront. And I got approved.”

  “What?” Jamie turned toward him slightly, his mouth opening and closing. “A storefront for what? What are you going to sell?”

  Marcus unwedged his hands from between his knees, swiping his flattened left hand slowly through the air. “Juice.”

  The train trundled loudly. “Juice?”

  “Yeah. A juice bar. Right across the street from my CrossFit gym. When I saw the open space, it was actually the location that gave me the idea. Plus, I make good fucking juice, Jamie.” Marcus turned all the way in his seat, excitement making it so he couldn’t get his stupid mouth to stop smiling. “The storefront is really small. Maybe enough for a few high tops, but really people are going to take their juice to go. A whole day’s serving of fruits and vegetables in one hand. I’m going to call it the Main Squeeze.”

  When Jamie’s mouth ticked up at one end, his gray eyes roaming over Marcus’s face, he was happier than he’d been when the phone call came in that afternoon. “Congratulations, Diesel,” Jamie said. “Your juice is good. I think people will buy it.”

  “Yeah?” He cleared the earnestness from his voice and nodded. “Hell yeah they will.”

  Jamie was still smiling. It was the greatest day of his life. “So,” Jamie said—and it was impossible to miss the slight hesitation in his tone. “What do you need my help with?”

  “Um. You know, like, setting it up.”

  “Setting what up? The tables?”

  “Or maybe all of it?”

  Jamie wasn’t smiling anymore. “Jesus Christ. Exactly how hard did you hit your head?”

  Marcus gave him a cajoling look. “Come on, Jamie Prince. It’ll be fun.” He nudged him in the side. “Only the smartest of the smart could pull it off—”

  “Oh God,” Jamie groaned. “Don’t do that. Don’t appeal to my superiority complex.”

  “I have no choice. Everyone knows I’m a dumbass.” Marcus swallowed the lump in his throat. “I have the money saved, from working summers. My mom left me some, too, when she passed away. But I don’t have the smarts—”

  “Who called you a dumbass?” Jamie interrupted, sounding pissed.

&
nbsp; “You’ve called me a dumbass.”

  Jamie’s Adam’s apple worked up and down. “If I have, I didn’t mean it.”

  Marcus’s mouth spread into a smile. “You didn’t?”

  “No.” Jamie bit down on his bottom lip, chewing on it as he studied Marcus. “You’re not a dumbass, you just have an uncomplicated point of view. Maybe everyone else is dumb.”

  They both quickly faced forward in their seats again, breaking eye contact. In his periphery, Marcus could see the fast lift and fall of Jamie’s chest. Marcus’s own chest did the same, but he couldn’t explain why everything below his neck suddenly felt full to bursting. His body always did funny things around Jamie, but this…it was different. It was more. Something he could no longer ignore or write off as a dude crush.

  “I’ll help a little,” Jamie muttered. “Just to challenge myself, though.”

  “I know.” Marcus battled like hell against his smile, even though he wanted to pick Jamie up and toss him in the air like a pizza dough. “Thanks, Jamie.”

  CHAPTER FOUR

  Jamie couldn’t believe what was happening.

  There he sat, in an arena full of drunk assholes who’d actually prepared chants for a monster truck rally. His boots were sitting in a sticky puddle of Budweiser, thanks to the man sitting behind them who’d spilled a whole tray of beer before the trucks even emerged to wreak havoc on perfectly drivable vehicles. It was so ever-loving loud, he could barely hear himself think. And he was enjoying the hell out of himself.

  Marcus poked him in the shoulder. “Jamie—”

  “Don’t.”

  “You’re smiling.”

  “No, I’m not.”

  In the center of the arena, a neon green monster truck spun its wheels, turned and prepared to launch itself off a ramp onto a line of Oldsmobiles. It had to be dangerous, but the crowd demanded no mercy. It had to be done. The audience would accept nothing less than utter destruction. Their sleeveless T-shirts said so.

  As the monster truck revved its engine and gunned it toward the ramp, Jamie’s hand shot out and gripped Marcus’s naked lady forearm. “Fuck. Fuck. Fuck.” The massive tires crashed down on the cars in a deafening crunch of glass and squeals of twisted metal—and it was so satisfying and weirdly cathartic that Jamie couldn’t stop laughing. When he glanced over at Marcus, he was staring at Jamie’s hand on his arm. He quickly took it back. “If you tell my brothers about this, I’ll deny it.”

  Marcus was frowning at the hand Jamie had removed from his arm. “Where do they think you are tonight?”

  “They weren’t around to ask me,” Jamie said, jerking back when an ancient Toyota pickup was smashed like a pancake. “It’s Rory’s night off, so he’s with Olive trying not to propose before their one-month anniversary even passes. Andrew is working the bar.”

  The announcer’s voice over the loudspeaker broke in, promising more bone crunching after a short intermission and the lights turned on, illuminating Marcus’s thoughtful expression. “Would you usually be on, like, a…date or something?”

  Jamie narrowed his eyes. “Why?”

  “No reason. I just saw you slide those digits to Father Time at the bar last night. Maybe if you hadn’t lost the bet, you’d be out with him.”

  “First of all, he wasn’t that old.”

  Marcus snorted.

  Jamie rolled his eyes. “All right, fine. I date older guys. It’s easy.”

  “Why?”

  “Because…” Christ, this was hitting way too close to home. And by home, he meant this so called friendship between him and Marcus. He’d gotten out the door with his self-respect intact tonight by telling himself he was only going to Monster Jam because he’d lost a bet. Not because the thought of hurting Marcus’s feelings made him want to gouge out his eyes. Here he was again, though, trying to shield Marcus from the obvious truth. He didn’t want Jamie as just a friend, no matter how he probably denied it to himself.

  Jamie wasn’t doing Marcus any favors by shielding him from reality. He wasn’t doing himself any favors, either, by swallowing the truth of how hurtful it could be when someone refused to acknowledge him in public.

  “I date older guys because most of them aren’t scared. To be who they are. A lot of them are past that.” Jamie exhaled slowly. “I’m never going to wait around again for some guy to figure himself out. Especially when they don’t really want to. It’s exhausting.”

  There was a flicker of discomfort in Marcus’s eyes, before it was replaced with rapt curiosity. “Again? That’s happened before?”

  Jamie didn’t answer, but he could hear the wheels turning in Marcus’s head.

  “Did it have something to do with the incident?”

  “The incident.” Jamie laughed, even though a crack formed straight down his middle. The incident. The incident. “Is that what people call it?”

  They both had to stand so someone in their row could sidestep by with a tray of nachos. When they sat back down again, Marcus looked like he was chewing something distasteful. “Finding out what happened to you on the beach six summers ago is kind of like playing telephone. Most of the lifeguards we work with now weren’t there at the time. But I thought what happened to you was just some drunk idiots looking for a fight.”

  Just like the other night in the bar, Jamie could feel the hands. Sticky, clammy hands, dragging him toward the water. Too many of them to count or fight off. The police sirens. His brother being loaded into the back of a police car, because of Jamie. Because of his idiotic decision. He took several calming breaths and pasted a blank expression on his face. “Relax, Diesel. Let’s just watch some cars get mutilated, all right?”

  During the second half of the show, they didn’t laugh as much, but the tension between them ebbed after a while, even if the groove etched between Marcus’s eyebrows seemed to be permanent. When it was over and they’d left the stadium, they took a bus to the LIRR station and hopped on the line back toward Long Beach. The train was packed full of rowdy monster truck enthusiasts headed back to parts unknown, unfortunately, so Marcus and Jamie were forced to stand in the corner by the sliding door. At the next stop, even more people piled on, pushing their way into the crowded car—

  And that’s how Jamie found himself pressed against Marcus.

  It was a slow progression. They were already inches apart, which was certainly too close for Jamie’s comfort. Then inch by painstaking inch, the distance closed and Marcus hips nudged Jamie back against the tinted partition that blocked them from the seated passengers of the train car. Desperately trying to avoid eye contact with Marcus, Jamie’s gaze cut to the side, toward the other standing commuters. All of their backs were turned. It was as if he and Marcus were really alone in the dim, rocking train car—and that was bad.

  Really bad.

  Marcus cleared his throat and shifted a little, but not before Jamie felt the other man’s erection drag across against his belly. Due to their size difference, Marcus’s bulge came to rest on Jamie’s right hip, the heavy weight of it fucking with Jamie’s head. Big time. Because before he could recite a list of nineteenth-century diseases and talk himself back from the ledge, Jamie’s own body reacted, too. Not just to their proximity or the proof that Marcus wanted him.

  No, it was a lot more than that.

  It was Marcus’s beer and bedsheets scent. He smelled like bad decisions that would feel really fucking good. It was the fact that he could hear Marcus’s heart slamming up against his ribs, could see the pulse moving at the pace of machine gun fire.

  It was the fact that Marcus made him laugh.

  Made him feel good. About himself. About the world in general.

  Turned him on with all that strength. All that size.

  Fuck, Jamie was in need.

  This was one of those times he wished for looser jeans. His cock pressed to the teeth of his zipper, making him bite down hard on his lower lip to distract from the pain. Vaguely, he registered the door on the opposite side of the train s
liding open and more people piling on. And the bodies crowding the train forced Marcus closer. Closer. His forearm came up and rested against the partition by the side of Jamie’s head and his dick dragged higher on Jamie’s hip. Pressed tighter. Christ, it was huge. They were so close, he could unzip Marcus’s jeans and stroke him off without anyone on the train knowing.

  Don’t do it. Just get through this.

  Marcus moved his hips slightly and hissed through his teeth. There was no doubt he could feel Jamie’s arousal on his upper thigh. What would he do about it? Would he move away and pretend this wasn’t happening or would he—

  Add pressure with his thigh. Jesus, that’s what Marcus did. He flexed the muscle in his leg and moved it side to side against Jamie’s hard cock. Their breathing turned shallow. Came faster. Marcus’s warm breath rasped near Jamie’s ear, the train rocking side to side just enough that they could probably pass off what was happening as an accident. A byproduct of a packed train. Good. They’d both need the excuse later.

  But not now.

  The train’s lights flickered and dimmed as they traveled underground, the motion of the train pitching Marcus and Jamie forward and back, urging them together again and again. It wasn’t just the train creating the much-needed friction, though. Not anymore. Marcus was rolling his lower body against Jamie’s hip and Jamie felt the split second it wasn’t enough for either of them. Marcus’s hand twisted in the waistband of Jamie’s jeans and subtly tugged him sideways, once, twice, until their hips were locked—and their cocks ground together.

  Marcus moaned into Jamie’s ear, the sound swallowed up by the roar of the train.