In Another Country Page 2

  Tupper didn’t seem to notice the broke-college-student decorating scheme, though; he came on in, hung his jacket neatly on a rickety chair-back and sat stiffly on the godawful couch while Dec brewed a pot. Once they got set up with mugs Dec sat next to him, explained about the stakeout and asked, ”So, what are you, State Bureau of Investigations?”

  “No,” Tupper said, “Royal Canadian Mounted Police.”

  Dec blinked.

  “The hell?” he said. “The Mounties? Why are y’all interested in robberies in North Carolina?”

  “We...I’m not,” Tupper said, and cleared his throat. “I. That is. I am in the area in an official capacity—a few of us are doing some antiterrorism training with the 82nd Airborne. But I wasn’t at the club in any official capacity. Just for, uh, personal. Enjoyment.”

  “Ohhhh,” Dec said, a little startled by how very happy that made him. Except Tupper didn’t look happy. He looked frightened to the point of queasiness, what the hell—oh. He was assuming that Dec was a totally straight guy doing undercover work, and damn it, Dec just accidentally put him in a position where he either had to lie or come out. Dec tried really, really hard not to do that to people, since he never wanted anyone to do it to him.

  “I—well, I’ve never gone to that bar before, because it’s too close to where I work, you know?” Dec said. Tupper looked up sharply, and yeah, Dec was pretty sure that was a spark of hope on his face, and that gave Dec the courage to keep on going. “I usually go to the Power Company in Durham,” he said, and in case Tupper didn’t know that place’s rep, added, “When I want to meet guys.”

  “Ah,” Tupper said, and smiled. It was a great smile, a gorgeous smile, but then it dimmed a little when he said, “Would you still consider yourself on the clock, Dec?”

  “Oh hell no,” Dec said, and was rewarded with that smile amping back up. “Bars are about to close for the night anyway. I’m definitely done with work. In fact,” he said, and he put his coffee mug down on the table, leaned back against the couch cushions and gave Tupper his very best come-hither look, “I’m thinking it’s playtime.”

  He was worried that was a little cheesy, but Tupper’s smile got even wider and he said, “I’m glad,” and leaned in, hallelujah.

  Their lips met and Tupper was being careful and polite, just softly brushing his lips against Dec’s. Dec was a little startled because that wasn't the way these things usually went, but hey—it was kind of sweet, kind of high-school. He smiled into the kiss and got a hand in Tupper’s hair—soft, just a little long for a cop, nice.

  Tupper moaned softly and Dec thought interesting, and tightened the hand in the hair a little, and Tupper got louder. Fuck—gorgeous, super polite, kindly escorted a drunk stranger home from a bar for totally unnefarious purposes, and liked it a little rough. Dec was having the best night ever.

  “Is your name really Tupper?” he said, and he didn’t really know why; it wasn’t as though it mattered, he wasn’t gonna need to track the guy down later.

  “Last name. First name’s Ambrose.”

  “Ouch,” Dec said. He’d thought Declan was bad. (His mom had a thing for Irish saints.)

  “Indeed,” Tupper said, and they got back to business.

  They just necked on the couch for a while there, like they were in no hurry, like they had no place else to be, and Dec was determinedly not thinking about how early he needed to be at the station in the morning, and not asking Tupper if he had to be back at Fort Bragg for dawn...bugle or something. Dec’s hands were wandering a little but not getting too frisky just yet, sliding up inside Tupper’s shirt to feel his muscled back, and then Tupper slid his hands up the front of Dec’s shirt, just trailed his fingertips softly across Dec’s nipples, and whoa, now there was hurry, now they definitely had some place to be. Dec broke the kiss and gasped, “Bed.”

  He grabbed Tupper’s hand and led him toward the bedroom. And yeah, there were dirty clothes on the floor and Dec hadn’t made a bed since the day he moved out of his parents’ house, because why did anybody make beds ever? But he changed the sheets pretty recently, and besides, if Tupper was even noticing that stuff Dec did not get him nearly revved up enough with the kissing. Dec was pretty sure his kissing was better than that.

  He was right—Tupper just flopped down on his back in the middle of the rumpled bed, and Dec climbed on him and kissed him some more, but this kissing was a lot less leisurely because Dec was rocking down and Tupper was rocking up and good god Dec was hard, almost to the point of aching, and it felt like Tupper was right there with him. Sounded like it too; Tupper was moaning loud into Dec’s mouth.

  Dec sat up on Tupper’s hips—hard to pull himself away from the kissing, but he really wanted to unbutton Tupper’s shirt, and wow, nice chest under there. Muscled and broad but not too cut, almost an old-fashioned kind of muscled, like Tarzan in old movies. Dec approved.

  Figuring people mostly do stuff they’d like done to them, Dec brushed his fingers lightly across Tupper’s nipples, and yup, Tupper’s eyelids fluttered and he rocked up so hard he lifted Dec’s knees off the mattress a little. Dec snickered and then curled down to flick his tongue tip against one nipple, and Tupper whimpered, nice.

  Dec settled in happily to sucking and licking, and Tupper moaned for a while and then got it together enough to murmur, “What will you…what do you…what’s on the table?”

  Dec shivered and made himself stop feeling and think for a minute. There was a fuck of a lot he’d like to do, and of every guy he’d met since he got booted into singlehood this guy was the most...healthy and clean-looking, like he should be on a Wheaties box. But no, no, you can’t risk your fucking life on appearances, so he gasped out, “Hand jobs. Blow jobs with a condom.”

  Tupper’s eyes closed and he wrapped his arms around Dec, tightened them. Murmured into Dec’s ear, “Intercrural?”

  “Uh?” Dec said, because he wasn't totally sure that was English.

  “Between the thighs.”

  “Oh, yeah. Sure,” Dec said, squirming in Tupper’s tight grip to keep rubbing their cocks together through their pants. He wasn’t sure he could make it through much more of a discussion of all the things they could do. “Just...do something,” he breathed against Tupper’s neck.

  “You currently have the positional advantage,” Tupper pointed out, and Dec sat up on him, breaking the hold, because if Tupper was arguing against being the one to start anything, was he not really into this?

  But no, Tupper didn’t look like he’d rather be alone in his Bragg bunk, he looked...amused. And challenging. Like, who was gonna be the first to break and start things, here?

  Jesus. Using ten-dollar vocabulary and grinning cheerfully at Dec while messing with his head. It was as if somebody had given this guy a brochure on “How to Be Dec’s Type.”

  Dec moaned helplessly and went for Tupper’s belt, unbuckling it with shaking fingers. Tupper had stopped with the grinning and was just looking at Dec, not at his hands but at his eyes, which wasn’t helping with the shaking. But Dec managed the top button too, and then the zipper. Tupper broke off from staring at him and did a helpful little hips-up move so Dec could slide pants and boxers down his thighs.

  Turned out Tupper was a big guy all over. And uncut, which Dec had seen once or twice but not a lot, so when he wrapped his hand around he started off slow, just getting used to the way everything moved inside his stroking hand. It was hot, not just sexy hot but Fahrenheit hot, somehow way more of a temperature contrast against his palm than stroking his own dick. In a situation like this Dec’d usually be getting himself off at the same time, either with his other hand—he was ambisextrous—or rutting up against the other guy’s thigh. But now with this fucking beautiful man in his bed, Dec didn’t want to miss anything, so he slid off Tupper’s hips to lie alongside him, put his head on Tupper’s shoulder and just watched what he was doing.

  He took it slow for a long time, listening to Tupper’s moans taking on a desperate edge, w
atching his hips rise and fall, watching his chest shudder with hitchy breaths. Finally, Tupper blurted out, “Please,” which did something to Dec, and he sped up, squeezed a little harder. He was taking in this pretty, pretty porn movie of his hand on Tupper’s cock and then he glanced up, hoping to catch Tupper’s orgasm face. He was expecting the usual eyes-squeezed-shut and mouth-wide-open one, but instead the second he looked at Tupper’s face Tupper’s eyes flew open and he came all over Dec’s hand while he was groaning and looking Dec right in the eyes and it was kind of overwhelming.

  Dec flopped down beside Tupper but he didn’t have much of a chance to lie there being overwhelmed, because Tupper apparently bounced back to life from that kind of thing way faster than most of the guys in Dec’s admittedly short experience—he took a couple deep recovery breaths and then he was suddenly on top of Dec and stripping him really efficiently—zip, yank, naked. Dec had a sudden vision of watching Tupper break a rifle down that fast and he moaned, eyes fluttering shut.

  When he opened his eyes after that brief flash of gun porn, Tupper was looking him up and down really thoroughly. Dec took a deep breath and hoped he passed inspection.

  “You’re lovely,” Tupper said, and he looked completely serious, but Dec cracked up, because, “lovely?” That was a new one, and ridiculous besides, because Dec was skinny and scruffy, especially next to Mr. Clean-Cut Universe here.

  “No flattery necessary, big guy,” Dec laughed, and Tupper murmured, “None given,” in a deep, deep voice that made Dec stop laughing and start shivering.

  Tupper stretched out on him and started kissing again, but this was very different from the living-room kissing, because for one thing Dec’s cock was pressed against Tupper’s hot stomach with nothing in between and that was really great. And for another Tupper wasn’t being high-school sweet and polite with his mouth this time either, he was being pushy with his tongue and biting at Dec’s lips a little. Dec groaned with his mouth full of Tupper’s tongue.

  Tupper groaned back and then sat up, slid his hands down Dec’s arms and clamped them hard around Dec’s wrists.

  “Fuck,” Dec gasped, shuddering under Tupper, and Tupper said, “Ah-ha,” grinning at him. So, okay, established that they both had a little kink going here, excellent, but then Tupper tightened his hands even further and said, “I want to tie you up.”

  “Oh god,” Dec said, because that sounded fantastic, and he had to fight to clear his head enough to think, wait, no, just wait a second here. He was getting nothing but fantastic vibes off this guy but, Jesus, they met about two hours ago. Letting himself get immobilized would be completely fucking stupid.

  “I, ah, no, next time,” he gasped, and what the fuck was that? There wasn’t going to be a next time. He hadn’t gone back for seconds with a guy once, because no way was he up for getting emotionally tangled up with somebody again now or probably ever. Plus, this guy was just around for a short while, so it would be extra stupid.

  But Tupper just nodded briskly, as if Dec hadn’t said anything weird, and said, “Condom?” which, oh god, meant Dec was about to get blown here.

  “Nightstand nightstand,” Dec gasped, and Tupper did a quick one-handed rummage, pulling out a box of tissues and a snarl of neckties that Dec didn’t like and, oh god, a magazine titled “Hot Boyz in Uniform,” which Dec had totally forgotten he had. He was possibly going to die of embarrassment before he got to come.

  Tupper sat there on Dec for a minute, just looking at the terrible, terrible cover of that magazine, and then held it in front of his chest, framing it right between his nipples, and said with a totally straight face, “I do have a big red uniform, if you’d prefer I go get that on before we proceed.”

  Dec fucking lost it, laughed so hard tears were leaking out the corners of his eyes, which you would think would involve also losing his hard-on, but no. He couldn’t remember ever being this turned on while cracking up at the same time—his cock was bobbing with every giggle, it was really fucking weird.

  Tupper grinned down at him, tossed the book onto the other side of the bed and rummaged some more and hallelujah, came up with a strip of condoms. Dec stopped laughing.

  Dec was expecting the condom process to be super brisk and efficient like the stripping-Dec process was, but of course now that Tupper had already gotten off he decided to be a damn tease. He tore the condom packet open so carefully it was like he was disarming a bomb, and eased the condom down Dec’s cock so slowly that Dec could probably take a nap and wake up and the condoming would still be happening, except he couldn’t possibly take a nap because he was about to die here, he wanted to come so bad now, felt like he was in danger of embarrassing himself just from Tupper’s hand sliding the condom down his cock so, so slowly.

  “Jesus, come on, come on,” he said, and squirmed under Tupper, but this didn’t turn out to be a good plan because it made Tupper go from sliding the condom down excruciatingly slowly to not sliding it at all.

  “Not enjoying yourself, Dec? I could stop,” he said, and he'd managed to make his voice completely calm and cool, like they were talking about...taxes or retirement funds or something else really boring, but he was flushed and his chest was heaving. He was clearly as into this part as Dec was even though he'd come already.

  Dec grinned at him and said, “Liar. I don't think you could stop.”

  Tupper blinked, as if he hadn’t been expecting pushback, and then just rolled the condom the rest of the way down all at once, whoosh, and just fucking—dove down onto Dec.

  He was apparently done teasing, because he swallowed Dec up in one smooth glide, all the way down. Dec yelped out something incoherent, mostly in happiness but partly in surprise, because he had never ever had that happen before. Sure, he was scruffy and skinny, but since the first time he glanced around secretly, under his lashes, in his junior-high locker room, he'd known that he was pretty fucking hung.

  Dec's size was not a problem for this guy, apparently. Tupper was going at it with enthusiasm, pulling up almost all the way off and swirling his tongue around the head, gliding back down and working his throat around Dec.

  Dec closed his eyes, trying not to come in an embarrassing fifteen-seconds-or-under, but that made it worse, nothing to focus on but the amazing things happening to his dick, so he stared at the ceiling instead and tried to think about boring things like ceiling tile and cracks in the ceiling and just...ceilings, but it wasn’t working, he couldn't think about anything but tongue and hot and suction and wow, and yeppppp he was coming.

  Dec had been having a dry spell the past few weeks—every time he'd come lately it had just been him and his hand and a porn movie (and, okay, a couple times him and his hand and Hot Boyz in Uniform.) And coming like that was...way better than nothing, sure, but this, this was something else, this was fantastic, this was beautiful sweet heat all over Dec's body and sparklers going off in his brain.

  “Ahhhhhh,” Dec managed, and then he remembered that on the occasions he lucked out and got to do this with another person, he usually had this weird grabbing instinct. Mostly he managed to make fists in the bedclothes, but there had been a couple unfortunate hair-pulling incidents.

  He cracked his eyes open, hoping he hadn’t just snatched a bald spot on this beautiful guy because then he'd probably never see him again (and he needed to stop thinking shit like that, because he wasn't going to see him again).

  His hands were not in the bedclothes, but he hadn't done any damage, either—one was clamped onto each of Tupper's shoulders.

  Tupper’s throat was working as if he was swallowing, and Dec took a moment to just think—if it felt this good with a condom on, how good it would feel to be bare in Tupper’s hot mouth. Just the thought gave him a little orgasm aftershock; he gasped and shivered, cock jerking slightly against Tupper’s tongue.

  Tupper pulled off and looked at him, raising an eyebrow. “Acceptable?” he said, unbelievably, and Dec just groaned, because coherent speech was beyond him right now. Ap
parently he managed to get his meaning across, though, because Tupper smiled and said, “Good,” and took care of the condom.

  Tupper flopped down beside him and they just breathed for a while—Dec was digging how it felt to have another human in the room, just making human breath noises. Not anything he could afford to get used to, though. In fact, now was clearly the time to tell Tupper thanks, that was great, hope you enjoy the rest of your stay in our lousy town, see you around maybe but probably not because we're both busy guys, right?

  It was clearly and obviously the time to do that but what Dec did instead, because he was clearly and obviously a moron, was he propped up on one elbow and said, “You hungry?”

  Tupper blinked at him and said, “Starving.”

  Dec grinned, because it was fun to find somebody else with his particular post-sex setting. Dec was never the cliché guy falling asleep right after orgasm. He'd always been the guy who, five minutes after coming, was in the kitchen making a sandwich. Christine used to joke that they should just get a dorm fridge for the bedroom.

  That thought didn’t have the sting that memories of her usually had, even a few months along. Easier to deal with them when there was someone just as hot as Christine in his bed, apparently.

  “Come see what you like in the fridge,” Dec said, and they both pulled on boxers and padded out to the kitchen. Dec had plenty of sandwich options, because knowing his after-orgasm routine, he pretty much thought of masturbation supplies as including lube, tissues and cold cuts.

  They ate the sandwiches sitting on folding chairs at his wobbly kitchen table and it was...nice. Companionable. Dec definitely had to put a stop to this, because Tupper showed no signs of volunteering to leave, and this would just be way too easy for Dec to get used to. A hot guy in his kitchen happily eating a sandwich and licking mayonnaise off his fingers and making Dec want to drag him back to bed.