January Thaw

  Evernight Publishing

  www.evernightpublishing.com

  Copyright© 2013 Lilith Duvalier

  ISBN: 978-1-77130-645-4

  Cover Artist: Sour Cherry Designs

  Editor: Avril Ashton

  ALL RIGHTS RESERVED

  WARNING: The unauthorized reproduction or distribution of this copyrighted work is illegal. No part of this book may be used or reproduced electronically or in print without written permission, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in reviews.

  This is a work of fiction. All names, characters, and places are fictitious. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, organizations, or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

  JANUARY THAW

  Romance on the Go

  Lilith Duvalier

  Copyright © 2013

  It wasn’t supposed to have been this hard. None of it was supposed to have been this hard.

  After crying over his first and only C+ back in the third grade because he hadn’t understood long division right away, Thatcher began working on the “The Plan”. “The Plan” had matured as he did. “Study hard, go to college, marry a pretty girl and become a dolphin trainer” had, over the years, metamorphosed. It became “Take enough AP classes to make up at least one semester at the University of Minnesota. Never drink anything but beer or wine. Graduate summa cum laude. Take a year off and get married. Graduate from William Mitchell, and have the first kid on the way by twenty-nine.”

  It was everything that was expected of him. Everything he knew he could achieve. Everything he’d been told would give him the life he was supposed to have.

  But now it’s the beginning of his second semester of college, he’s had two mixed drinks already, and he hasn’t even been at the party that long. He can feel the way his socks are sticking to the filthy linoleum kitchen floor, and he’s kissing Cassandra Demont in front of a crowd of people way drunker than he is.

  He feels like he’s failed at all of it.

  She smells like talc and hair spray, and tastes like rum and maraschino cherries. Her hands clench into his sides and the points of her long nails dig through his t-shirt. None of those are the smells, tastes, or sensations he’s come to associate with being deep enough in love to consider abandoning “The Plan” over the last few months.

  He wishes this wasn’t happening anymore. He’s not sure why it seemed like a good idea to kiss her back ten seconds ago.

  Cassandra pulls back for air, and Thatcher sees the people around them differently than he did before her lips pressed, uninvited, against his.

  Ethan, his best friend, who he’s been lying to too often, is watching him as though maybe he’s a little bit relieved. Charlotte, Ethan’s girlfriend, is pursing her lips so tightly Thatcher can see the whiteness between them. She’s already mid eye roll. Her disapproval clings to her like condensation to a glass.

  And Peter… Thatcher isn’t even sure what to think of the look on his face.

  Thatcher laughs, unsure of what else to do, and very, very aware that, though sober he is not, he is still not drunk enough to be kissing some random girl in front of all these people. Cassandra grips him tighter and pulls him back in. He ducks his head to the side as diplomatically as he can manage, gives her a clumsy pat on the head and steps away. Her friends are already circling in on her, surely ready to either get her a drink of water or a place to sit down.

  Peter, somehow, has managed to move through the crowd like mist through branches, and disappear just as fast. Impressively for a guy his size, no one seems to have even noticed him leaving.

  Except Thatcher.

  Hating himself for it, he puts together his pretense for leaving. To the inebriated guffaws of a crowd already forgetting about him, he steps toward the door. He pulls out his cigarette case, (his third grade self had promised never to smoke. His eighteen year old self had realized that it made it easier to meet people and decided to forgive it under the guise of networking) making too much of a show of it. Assuring that later, if anyone asks—and they won’t—someone will be able to say, “Yeah. I saw him going outside for a smoke.” He shoves his feet into his sneakers, which he’d left by the back door. He’d wanted to wear his boots, but Peter talked him out of it. The party wasn’t far from the dorms, he didn’t want to be the dork who took up Lacey Grim’s entire foyer with his huge, practical winter boots.

  Thatcher doesn’t grab his coat, despite the cold. Peter’s already got too much of a head start, he doesn’t want to run up to Lacey’s bedroom to grab it and risk Peter heading home before Thatcher can catch him and convince him to stay. He steps out onto the deck, into the patch of already trampled snow and scattered cigarette butts. A few shoe prints venture out across the still fresh snow. Tennis shoes. Peter.

  He’s standing out in the yard, close to the house, in the shadow, right past the beam of light from the kitchen window. Thatcher can’t make out his features, but he’d recognize the tall, broad silhouette anywhere. Peter’s standing in the yard, back to him, walking away, but it’s definitely him.

  “Hey,” Thatcher calls out. He’s being quiet, but his voice carries through the frozen air. He shivers. He should have grabbed his coat. “Where are you going?”

  “Home.” Peter takes two more steps forward.

  Thatcher tucks his cigarette case into his pocket. “Do you want some company?”

  Peter pauses. Turns around this time. “You look like you’re keeping Cassandra company right now.”

  Thatcher’s shoulders cave, curving down on either side of him like the parenthesis around a thought only marginally attached to the discussion around it. “She kissed me.”

  “Yeah. Everyone saw. Congratulations.”

  Thatcher takes a few steps toward him, walking to the edge of the deck. Peter takes two steps backward along the side of the house, sinking down in the snow until he’s standing mid-shin in the drift. Thatcher shivers in the nasty breeze. He should have risked grabbing his coat.

  “What do you want me to say?”

  Peter sighs. “What would you say to me if I was your girlfriend?”

  Thatcher takes a few more steps toward him, walking off the deck so that they’re at the same level and Peter is easier to see.

  “I’m sorry. I’ve been drinking. It didn’t mean anything. I love you. Please forgive me?”

  “You kissed her back,” Peter says.

  Thatcher would give anything for him to sound angry. For Peter, just once, to get pissed. To rail at him. For months, months, Peter has been the perfect boyfriend. Annoyingly, aggravatingly perfect. Perfectly understanding of the fact that Thatcher still can’t deal with coming clean about the unexpected turn their friendship had taken. Perfectly supportive of the fact that Thatcher didn’t think he was gay, or bi, but wanted to be with Peter. Perfectly willing to sit with him when things with school, and his mom, and Ethan got to be too much. Perfectly willing to kiss, or talk, or fuck all the worry away.

  The fact that Peter was so goddamn easy-going was probably how their comfortable friendship had wound up with them naked and panting in Peter’s bed in the first place. The way he made Thatcher feel like he could stop worrying about the pressure to be perfect for a little while was probably why Thatcher had been coming back to him, to his bed, over and over for months.

  Peter makes him feel good in a way nothing else does. And now he’d made Peter feel bad.

  Peter takes a few more steps backward, until he’s past the corner of the house. Thatcher follows.

  “It … I didn’t mean to do it.”

  Peter ducks behind the side of the house. Thatcher rushes around the corner to catch up with him, afraid to have him out of sight. The snow sneaks down the sides of his sneakers, caught under t
he cuffs of his jeans. He’s walked maybe six yards and his ankles already sting. Peter is standing in the shadow created by the house and the strange extension off the front of the house. It’s like a fake lean-to. The front wall goes out about eight feet longer than the house actually does, and there is a door way, but no roof. It creates a little bit of privacy from the street, but not much.

  Peter’s muscular arms are resting on his slim hips, his silhouette from the bright moonlight night exaggerates his broad shoulders. Thatcher walks up to him. Peter holds still, waiting for Thatcher to catch up.

  “You didn’t mean to do it?” There is, for the first time, an edge to his voice. He actually sounds pissed.

  “Peter.” Thatcher steps closer.

  Peter seizes him around the elbows, turns him and presses him back against the icy siding. He doesn’t slam him, he doesn’t have to. Peter has six inches and fifty pounds on him. He’s the star of the basketball team. He can lift Thatcher up and hold him down effortlessly, and one of the most surprising elements of their friendship-turned-physical-turned-romantic relationship is that Thatcher loves it when Peter overpowers him. Loves the way Peter lets Thatcher give into him.

  Thatcher grips Peter’s forearms to steady himself.

  “I hate this,” Peter growls. “I hate that I have to be your secret.”

  “You said it was––"

  “I didn’t mean––” Peter sets his forehead to Thatcher’s and Thatcher feels his body clench. They’re out in the open. Anyone could see them.

  “If you … look, I’ve been out at this school for two years, and I never get razzed about it, but when I got an email from some high school bro last week, I mentioned a pretend girlfriend. So if you can’t tell Ethan, I’m not going to force you. If you can’t tell anyone what we really are, I can wait.”

  “I love you,” Thatcher whispers through chattering teeth. They’ve been saying it for a few weeks. It always feels good. It doesn’t feel scary or forced the way it did when Thatcher tried to say it to his high school girlfriend Lillian. He’s still not sure on all of the reasons for that.

  Peter steps forward, pushing Thatcher harder back against the house. The plastic ridges of the siding dig into his back. He gives Thatcher a quick kiss with cold lips and sighs. “I love you, too.”

  “I’m sor––” He’s cut off when Peter suddenly grabs him around the waist and hauls him upward. His legs kick out automatically in protest, and Peter slips between them, pressing them together groin to groin, and pinning Thatcher up off the ground. “Peter!”

  “If you want to keep this a secret for now, I’ll do that for you, Thatch.” He rolls his hips upward, just a little bit, enough for Thatcher to feel it and have his breath catch. “But if you want this, if you want to be with me, then it’s only me.”

  Thatcher wriggles against him, trying to get away, but not all that hard. Peter finally being upset is weirdly arousing. Peter holding him against the house, away from the ground so Thatcher can’t move hits every button he’s discovered since getting to college. He sucks in a breath and the cold air burns in his lungs.

  “It’s only you,” he agrees.

  Peter leans forward and presses his lips to Thatcher’s neck.

  “Say it again.”

  Thatcher’s entire body shudders with cold and want. His cock stirs in interest.

  “It’s only you.”

  Peter laughs and sets his lips to Thatcher’s frozen skin, sucking hard and rubbing his hips up against Thatcher’s. “You realize that you always get hard when you can’t get away right?” There’s a shiver in his voice now, too. “Without fail. If I want to get you all hot and bothered, all I have to do is hold you down.” He rocks up again, and this time Thatcher can feel him starting to get hard in response.

  “Maybe I should take you back to my room.” Peter rocks up against him again. He’s getting hard, too. “Pin you down while I undress you. Flip you onto your stomach. Hold your hands over your head while I fuck you.”

  Thatcher pulls in another gulp of freezing air, his body convulses with the cold as Peter rocks up again.

  “I could fuck you up against the shower wall again too. Love the way you look wet and begging for it.” Peter presses into him even harder and Thatcher moans, way too loud.

  “Shhh. Don’t get loud yet. Someone might hear you,” Peter whispers before he lets Thatcher’s body slide down the house until his feet touch the ground. He pulls Thatcher a little closer to the front of the house, so that the false wall hides them more fully from anyone who might walk by on the street, then tips Thatcher’s head back into a surprisingly gentle kiss which Thatcher returns, pouring apology and adoration into the kiss as best he can. He’d screwed up badly and Peter, despite the fact he’d fucking finally been less than totally zen about it, was brushing it aside.

  Peter slides his thumb up between their chins, presses it to Thatcher’s bottom lip, and pulls it down. He holds Thatcher’s mouth open, and Thatcher shudders as Peter slides his tongue into his mouth, thrusting it back and forth against Thatcher’s until his knees weaken. He lets his weight shift forward, settling it against Peter’s while Peter continues to plunder his mouth until Thatcher makes an embarrassing, mewling sort of noise, broken by how badly he’s shaking with cold.

  Peter pulls away, and releases Thatcher’s mouth.

  “Oh, please tell me that your roommate’s gone tonight.” Thatcher hears the whine in his voice and he doesn’t care.

  “At his girlfriend’s apartment.” Peter’s teeth are chattering too. “All night.”

  “Let’s go. It’s freezing out here.”

  Peter stops, as though he’s going to argue. He undoes the top button of Thatcher’s fly with a shivering hand. “Get hard while I get your coat.”

  Thatcher’s breath catches. He doesn’t know what it is about the gravel in Peter’s deep voice that makes him desperate to obey an order like that.

  “You want me to stand out here in Lacey’s yard with my hand in my pants?” he asks, his own voice gone deep and husky as well.

  Peter kisses him so hard his head hits the siding. “Do it.”

  “You want me to get myself all worked up and walk back to your dorm with a raging hard-on?”

  Normally, Thatcher playing along like that would make Peter laugh in victory, or at least growl in approval. He doesn’t do either. He settles his hand around the bulge in Thatcher’s jeans and fondles it enough to make pleasure lick down through his legs.

  “I didn’t say that,” Peter whispers. “Get going. I want you to be rock fucking hard when I get back.”

  He pushes Thatcher back against the house again and walks away.

  Thatcher watches him for a moment before tucking his frozen hands up under his shirt. With Peter gone he suddenly feels colder. His feet are numb under the snow. His ankles hurt where the snow has packed into the tops of his sneakers. His cheeks are burning.

  As the feeling starts to come back into his hands he marvels at how freaking stupid it is to be standing out here in the wind with the temperature below freezing and his coat thrown across Lacey’s bed.

  And how stupid it is that he’s going to do exactly what Peter asked him to. He leans back against the house and slips one semi-warmed hand into his underwear, then whines at the feeling of his chilly fingers wrapping around his half-hard cock. At nineteen years old, under prime conditions, like Peter’s bed with Peter’s mouth around him, he can get hard almost instantaneously. But these aren’t prime conditions.

  He starts jacking himself off, fast and dirty, but he’s straining his ears for footsteps, or any voices that aren’t coming from inside the house. The breeze is biting at the triangle of skin exposed between the sides of his fly. He shouldn’t have worn such tight jeans, they’re making it too hard to move his hand under the fabric and it’s way too cold to pull his cock out of whatever thin covering they have.

  The distractions and worry about exposure are too much. He scoots along the side of the h
ouse, toward the corner created by the side of the house and the wall extending out from the front of it and drops back into the corner. He’s a little better sheltered from the wind now, and feels more secure in his ability to hide what he’s doing if the need arises.

  He squeezes harder and brings his fist up around the head, working hard to keep himself warm as he jerks off. He’d feel totally ridiculous if he weren’t so turned on. Following Peter’s directions when he gets demanding like this always leads to something fun, and with very few exceptions, also leads to an orgasm so intense Thatcher loses all semblance of coherency for several minutes before and after. Peter was still giggling at him for last week, when he’d been left on the edge for long enough he’d muttered out what Peter had guessed was his grocery list.

  He loves that too, the way Peter knows how to get him almost to the edge and then leave him there. Like now, he’s struggling to get hard, but he’s still turned on. Even when he gets there, it’s still going to be a fifteen minute walk back to Peter’s dorm, with his cock begging as he tries to walk, and Peter’s going to keep teasing, too. If he’s got to face punishment for what happened with Cassandra, this is how he wants to be punished.

  He’s hard now, though rock-fucking is up for debate. He leans back, closes his eyes and tries to think of something hot.

  Peter is all that comes to mind.

  The way Peter felt so huge inside him last Wednesday night in the shower when Peter hauled him up against the shower wall and made Thatcher brace himself on either side of the stall while Peter fucked him. Two weeks ago when Thatcher had refused to come up to Peter’s room because it really was super important he study for a test, and Peter invited himself down anyway and declared Thatcher was going to take a five minute study break. He’d fastidiously marked Thatcher’s place in his book before tossing it aside and unzipping Thatcher’s pants. Then he’d gone down on him so ferociously that it was embarrassingly fewer than five minutes before Thatcher was blowing his load. Then Peter gave him an affectionate kiss and left him to his, now slightly shaken, studies.