It's Not Shakespeare (6 page)

The low, moaning grunt he made when he came hotly over his stomach and against Rafael’s bare tummy, almost rattled the windows. Rafael’s grip eased up, but the kiss kept going, and James kept his leg splayed over the island and the seat so Rafael’s hips could thrust between his thighs, and the placket on Rafael’s jeans ground up against James’s bare balls with almost painful intensity. But Rafael was desperate, peaking, and James couldn’t just leave him. Using some of his prized initiative, he moved his hands to Rafael’s chest, under his tank top, and rubbed, taking the sharp, dark nipples that had been peeking out through the knit fabric all day and pinching them hard for a moment before releasing the pressure.

Rafael let out a gasp and a groan of his own that was about the sexiest thing James had ever heard, and then came in his jeans.

T
HEY
sat there for a minute, and James wrapped his arms around Rafael’s shoulders, because, expected or not, it had been sex, and it had been intimate, and that’s what you did for a lover, even one you’d been trying to refuse politely right up until you came in his hand.

Rafael wiped his hands on his own tank top and then rested his head on James’s shoulder as they caught their breath.

“You gonna try to tell me that was a mistake?” he asked, humor in his voice, but also a certain bracing sound—he was expecting rejection.

“Wish I could,” James told him honestly. “It would make me a better person.”

“You’re a fine person,” Rafael said, still breathless. “You just needed to get the big O out of the way so we can have some fun.”

That statement was almost as surprising as the sex.

“Why would you want to have fun with me?” he asked, not realizing how completely socially inept he sounded until that just blurted out of his mouth.

Rafael snickered. “Because you’re fun to talk to,
pa
—
uhm, Professor Jimmy. And you’re pretty to look at. And I like your dog. I work Friday, but I got Friday night off. What you want to do?”

James blinked. “Uhm, well, I go to the dog park on Fridays….”

Rafael’s disappointment was palpable, but not about James’s boring life. “Are we back to ‘uhm’ again, Jimmy? Really?”

“It’s not exactly a stellar night out,” James mumbled, making a conscious effort.

Rafael laughed. “I tell you what. I’ll meet you at the school, have Sophie take my car, and we can go somewhere your little papa will have some fun, okay?”

“Besides the dog park?” The idea was alien.

“Yeah! I can’t promise
you
will have fun, but little man, he’ll get to go out and see people and pee on new tires. He’ll like it, we can eat outside, and you know,”—Rafael gave him a sly look out from under lowered lashes—“maybe this time, we can get a condom on or somethin’. You would not be
lieve
the advances in sex since the last time you had some!”

James had no choice. He started laughing, using the movement of his chest to shift, and he pulled his pants up so his bare ass wasn’t schwacking on the vinyl. Rafael straightened enough to help him do the fly and the belt and then, much to James’s surprise, resumed his position on James’s chest.

And he felt so right that James didn’t have to think twice about wrapping his arms around Rafael’s shoulders and pulling him right back into snuggle.

“You’re a real smartass, you know that?”

“Naw, I’m just too old to be doin’ no more of this in cars, old man.” His good humor was unmistakable, and James turned his face down, just a little, and met him halfway for a sweet, almost chaste kiss.

“Should I wear anything special?” he asked humbly, and Rafael pulled back and grinned.

“You got jeans and a black T-shirt?”

“Sure.” Well, he had
jeans.
He’d have the black T-shirt by Friday. Because, apparently, he hadn’t learned a damned thing in three and a half years, but now, thanks to the sweet, relaxed post-coital throb in his groin, he was going to select emotional amnesia. He was back in the saddle again.

Rafael smiled dreamily, as though completely unaware that James had just done something monumental in his own head.

“Okay, Jimmy. I’ll see you then.” This kiss was warm and wet and lasted for just long enough to make James yearn for more, and then Rafael sighed regretfully and pulled away, for good this time. “Since your little
papi
can’t hang in my place, I’ll pack for Friday night. Don’t gimme no grief now, ’kay? It’ll be fine.” And with that, he carefully picked his way around Marlowe’s (
still!)
sleeping form, opened the door, and slid out.

James watched him bemusedly as he walked to the electric-blue Dodge Charger and got in. The keys were tucked in the visor, where anyone could get them, and the door had obviously been unlocked, and all James could think as Rafael gave him a happy little wave out the side window and then pulled away, was that it must be nice to have such faith in the world.

All that faith seemed to spill out of the car and into the spring night, and James wondered if there wasn’t enough in the crystal starlight to catch.

Chapter 3

Low Rider

F
RIDAY
was all about Ayn Rand and
Anthem,
and Sophie pretty much tore the book apart. James defended it with the zeal of an uncle defending a favorite nephew, and at the end, they agreed to disagree, or rather Sophie muttered, “Well, Jesus, if you’re
that
attached to it, maybe it doesn’t suck.”

Their debate was spirited enough to prompt a doggie bark from Marlowe, and Sophie grinned at the little dog in a way that made James almost forget what they were talking about. He’d heard Rafael talk about her big heart, but he hadn’t seen it until maybe that exact moment. She saw his regard and scowled.

“Dogs are smart. People are stupid. Stop looking at me like my mother.”

James held up his hands. “God forbid!” The class laughed, and he went on to prep them for Madeleine L’Engle.

When everyone left, James walked Sophie out, and she leaned against the doorframe after he’d locked the door.

“So I get to drive Rafi’s Charger again tonight. Sweet!”

James blushed. “Yeah. Uhm, he probably doesn’t want Marlowe to crap on the floor mats.” He looked around the hallway, then set down his briefcase and started unbuttoning his plaid shirt. The tight (“Athletic Fit”) black T-shirt underneath actually made his working-out muscles look worth the time, and his jeans were a little looser than he remembered them being. Sophie watched him with great amusement, even as he folded up the pressed plaid shirt and slid it tightly in his briefcase next to the stack of midterms that needed to be corrected.

“You look good, Prof Richards,” she said with appreciation. “Whatcha doin’ tonight?”

“I have no idea,” he mumbled. While he was bent down, Marlowe took the opportunity to lick his face, and James took the offered encouragement where he could get it.

“What’s with the jeans?” she asked, and he looked at her blankly.

“He asked me to wear them,” he said, and then blushed again because that sounded really submissive. “I mean, he said that’s what would fit in.”

“I’m not arguing with him there—I’m just sayin’. You’ve got three kinds of fashionable jeans in this century, Professor. You’ve got the super-tight ‘let’s see if you’re circumcised’ jeans, and you’ve got the uber-baggy ‘I’m tripping over my own crotch’ jeans, and you’ve got the hip-dropping ‘do we wax or go au-naturale’ jeans.”

He looked at her blankly. “Yeah—which ones are these?”

“They’re not any of them. How you managed to make jeans look like a bad polyester suit is beyond me!”

James found he was grinning at her. For some reason making the barely worn denim look less than glamorous made him feel like less of a fraud.

“It’s a gift,” he said modestly. “When you hit forty or so, come around and ask me. I’ll show you how!”

Sophie laughed so hard she actually spit through her compressed lips. She covered her mouth then and gurgled with a complete lack of dignity while James just looked at her, pleased beyond words that he’d managed to make Sophie—cast-iron-Goth Sophie—giggle like a pink-skirted middle-schooler.

“Hey, heifer! Someone dose you with nitrous or something?”

Rafael was wearing a black tank top (did he have a drawer full of them?) and what Sophie might have called “trip over your own crotch” black jeans. He had an oversized pressed white button-up shirt on over the tank, and his “fall in the eyes” hair had been pulled back into a queue. James blinked, realizing that there was a shaved wedge under the fall of hair, and he wondered why he hadn’t felt it when they’d been….

He flushed brightly, and before Rafael could send him a knowing look he said, “You look good,” with such quiet sincerity that now Rafael was the one flushing.

“Well played, Professor Jimmy,” Rafael murmured. “You older men, you got some skills!”

This sent Sophie into another paroxysm of laughter, and Rafael grinned at her. “You laugh now, Sophie, but some day, you’re going to discover dating, and then the whole world will draw up a chair to lose some ass!”

“Yeah, you say you’re laughing your ass off,” she retorted, “but you always got a big ass left!”

Rafael’s shoulders pulled back with stung dignity. “My ass is
not
big!” he protested, and James was… charmed. Rafael, for all his cockiness, had the Achilles heel of vanity. It was a small thing—a
young
thing—but it settled some of the screaming nervousness hurtling through his blood.

“Your ass is perfectly proportional to your thighs, back, and stomach,” James told him gravely, and was rewarded with another guffaw from Sophie and by Rafael’s quick grin.

“But it’s a little small compared to other things, eh, Jimmy?”

“Ewwwwww!” Sophie squealed. “Give me your keys before you make me yak!”

Once again, the keys went up in that shiny, jingly arc, and Sophie caught them neatly.

“It needs gas, heifer. Your turn to fill the tank.”

“I work tonight; will it get me there?”

“Yeah—but go get gas first—you don’t know what kind of people are there at bumfuck a.m., you feel me?”

Sophie’s rolled eyes were eloquent. “I can take care of myself, biaee-atch! Don’t go all mama hen on me!”

“Sophie?” James said gently, and she looked at him in surprise. “No one is too old to be careful, okay? Not even me. Don’t argue with him because he wants you safe.”

All of the attitude turned to out and out horror. “Oh, Jesus—you just turned into my father. That is too weird. I am fuckin’ outta here!”

And with that she turned around and flounced off, leaving James mentally smacking himself. “Probably a good reason my sister had all the kids,” he muttered, picking up his briefcase in the hand that had Marlowe’s lead wrapped around his wrist. Rafael casually grabbed his hand, and James froze.

He and Rafael looked at each other, and Rafael flushed. “You work here,” he said softly. “This is a school. You’re… a professor and shit. They’re not all that, uhm….” Rafael flushed. “They’re not real big on gay people here, are they?”

James gave his hand a squeeze before he released it. “I can’t believe your profession is any better,” he said, smiling kindly.

Rafael shrugged. “Probably not, but I can tell them all to fuck off, because don’t nobody do that full-service oil change fast as me, you know? I’m like King of the Lube Job, and if they give me shit, well then, being King of the Lube Job makes us all lots of money, you know?”

James laughed, both at the dirty pun and at the blessed self-assurance. Was that youth? Had he ever been that cocky, even when he was young? Was it just being hurt that made you want to curl up in a self-protective ball and tell the world to bugger off?

It didn’t matter. They were at the car now, and the chance to walk hand in hand under the spring sky was gone. As he opened the car and watched Rafael swing easily in, he thought that maybe it was the world’s dumbest regret. He’d try not to be so afraid of being with a young, pretty man that he wouldn’t enjoy stupid little important things because of fear.

“So where to?” he asked as he stowed his case in the back of the car. Rafael had a backpack, much like a student one, that he threw behind his seat too, and James paused for a moment and looked at it. It was a sleepover. On the second date. It almost felt slutty, and he hadn’t been a slut in oh-so long. Just looking at the black backpack made him shiver.

“Hit the freeway, my man. We’re going to Cal Expo.”

James had never been to Cal Expo before. He knew about it, of course—it was where the state fair was held every year, as well as the occasional concert—but he’d never been. (For one thing, the fair was held either in July or August, when the temp was usually somewhere between 101 and 107 degrees F—he couldn’t imagine anything more miserable than trucking around in the soggy heat, looking at cows.) But this was different. As he pulled off the freeway onto Exposition Boulevard, under the watchful eye of the trademark water tower, he was told that the real excitement wasn’t in the main lot, with the also-trademark golden California bear sculptures, but in the north parking lot instead. They had to pay to park in the paved part of the lot, and then they trotted, Marlowe in tow, looking excited at the new venue, past main fair gates and going toward the “back” of the fairgrounds to what was usually the carnival part of the fair in the summer.

At the moment, it housed some of the most exotic cars James had ever seen.

There were souped-up wood-paneled Model T Fords and purple El Caminos with the hoods raised to reveal engines plated with chrome. There were Dodge Chargers in a rainbow of electric colors—blue, green, red—and an amazing number of Chevy Impalas in no-bullshit black.

And that was just the show they paid their ticket to see.

In front of the car show, in the overflow parking itself, was a swap meet, and after wandering around from car to car on the fair grounds listening to Rafael get excited about chrome V-8 engines, Hemi transmissions, and posi-traction steering, James was pleased to see him fit into his element like it was a second skin.