“Don’t worry, I’ll have a word with him,” he said grimly, on his way to the doorway. “That shit stops here and now. And when I get done with him he can explain to the cops what he was doing prowling around --”

But Perry grabbed his arm, and somehow Nick couldn’t pull away from him. Instead, he returned Perry’s hug, putting his arms stiffly around him.

“I knew it,” Perry said. “I knew there was something weird. I could feel it sometimes when I was getting undressed or” -- he moaned -- “when I was jacking off.”

The picture that conjured raised an entirely inappropriate response from Nick’s body. A response that was pretty damn difficult to hide what with Perry clutching him and inarticulately mumbling his embarrassment into Nick’s neck.

If Teagle wasn’t a murderer, then in the greater scheme of things it wasn’t really that traumatic -- some lonely old perv copping a peek through the bathroom wall -- but Perry was about as sheltered as they came these days, and clearly he felt violated on all kinds of levels.

So Nick tried to ease his erection out of Perry’s groin while not actually breaking free, because Perry apparently required a hug, and it was unexpectedly important to Nick that Perry get what he needed when he needed it.

“Yeah, I know. But it’s done and you’re okay,” Nick told him. He meant to say it bracingly, but it came out soft and coaxing. It was a tone he couldn’t remember ever having used before on anyone -- certainly not with Marie, certainly not in the rough and mostly silent encounters with his occasional casual lovers.

Perry raised an indignant face. “And he had the balls to tell me I should stay with him, because we didn’t know anything about you!”

Nick laughed and gave in to the urge to brush Perry’s fair hair out of his eyes -- his fingertips sensitive to the silky texture of eyebrows and hair, warm skin, eyelashes.

Perry’s lashes fluttered down, concealing his eyes.

“Hey,” Nick said huskily.

Perry gave him an uncertain look.

It was a mistake, of course. A huge mistake. But suddenly, urgently Nick wanted to taste Perry’s mouth, so he bent his head. Perry’s eyes widened, then their faces bumped, and his mouth found Perry’s.

It was a gentle kiss, because Nick was thinking what a stupid thing this was to do, and that Perry, being inexperienced, would probably expect songbirds and firecrackers.

Perry tasted like hot chocolate and something warm and young and male. It was unexpectedly erotic. He responded sweetly, opening right up, and Nick’s heart turned over in his chest.

His hands slid down Perry’s back, feeling delicate bones and tension, warm nakedness beneath too many clothes. And, without thinking anymore, his hands went to Perry’s waistband. He was amused and titillated to feel Perry’s hands mimicking the motions of his own. The kid’s knuckles felt feverish against Nick’s belly as he fumbled with Nick’s belt. His expression was dead serious, which touched Nick in some unused corner of his heart.

“Let’s take this below deck,” he said, and he scooped Perry up over his shoulder. Perry burst out laughing, head dangling down at Nick’s waistband. He tried to raise up, and Nick smacked his ass.

Nick carried him into the bedroom and flung him down on his back on the bed. Perry was still laughing, a kid’s untroubled laugh. There was trust in the fawn eyes that pierced Nick right through some vulnerable piece of his anatomy there really wasn’t a name for.

Perry was nearly his own height; small framed but not badly built for being so slight. His cock sprang up like a cadet eager for training.

“At ease, son. You don’t have to salute,” Nick told him, and Perry gave that endearing giggle. Nick pounced on the bed and crouched over him. Perry reached up and ran his hand through Nick’s crisp, short cut.

“Like porcupine quills,” he said. “Only soft.” He smiled. “You have the bluest eyes I ever saw.”

“The better to see you with.”

Perry’s lips quivered. “My, Grandma, what white teeth you have.”

“The better to eat you with,” Nick said and proceeded to demonstrate.

Perry was…delectable. Sweet and shivering beneath Nick’s onslaught, moaning softly as Nick nibbled and nipped, keeping him writhing in desperate pleasure. But Nick miscalculated Perry’s excitement -- and experience -- and the sudden eruption of slippery hot silk between their bodies took them both by surprise.

Nick drew back to study the mistimed fusillade.

“Goddamn it!” Perry said, sounding so chagrined that Nick laughed.

“It’s all right. Plenty more where that came from.” And at Perry’s age, it was true. As Nick’s tongue traced the damp pulse of Perry’s femoral artery, Perry was gasping, his body already beginning to respond in slow, sensual movements.

Nick took his time -- anything worth doing was doing right -- and he wanted Perry’s first real experience to be the very best it could be, so he applied the tactics he’d learned with Marie. Little tricks with tongue and lips he’d never have dreamed of using on another guy -- not in the kind of impersonal sexual encounters he typically favored -- but they made Perry wild.

Something to make note of for another place and time, but oddly enough, Nick didn’t want to consider another place and time. Right now, showing and sharing with Perry seemed the only thing that really mattered.

Perry’s thin, artist’s hands clutched Nick’s shoulders, and he was getting hard again, moving against Nick in urgent little thrusts -- surprisingly, enjoyably uninhibited.

Nick took the head of the kid’s cock into his mouth, tasting that salt and sweet, and Perry arched up, making inarticulate sounds Nick unexpectedly found exciting. He drew the long, thin shaft in, sucking Perry hard and then easy, taking him in deeply, maneuvering his way down to the kid’s silky groin, which smelled pleasantly of boy sweat and semen.

Perry raised his head and watched himself disappearing in and out of Nick’s wet, hard mouth, and he made a long, keening sound, dropped his head back in the pillow, and began to ejaculate in creamy spurts.

Nick had known by the way Perry’s belly clenched, the way his thighs squeezed, what was happening -- he probably knew before Perry did. There was time to move out of the line of fire, but he found that he didn’t want to. He wanted to do this for Perry -- and he wanted to do it for himself -- and he swallowed the warm, wet burst of orgasm.

By then Nick’s need had reached boiling point, and he lowered himself on top of Perry’s shuddering frame and ground against him, his swollen, throbbing dick finding relief in the friction of velvety skin and the hard, close press of bodies. He’d timed it just about right, and it didn’t take any time at all before his own release was shooting between them, slick and hot.

“Oh God, Nick,” Perry said. It was practically the only thing he’d said the entire time, and it was disarmingly heartfelt.

Nick collapsed on him, and Perry fastened a tight arm around his back and kissed him on his ear and his temple and his hair. Puppy kisses, Nick thought. Puppy love…

* * * * *

Perry surfaced. He was warm and sticky and utterly, deliciously relaxed. From the other room he could hear Nick talking quietly. The phone? California calling again? He frowned a little, thinking about what would happen when Nick left.

That would be hard. He’d have to tough it out somehow. Nick would never have patience with him getting all weepy and clinging, and he wanted to spend every possible minute with Nick before he left.

He’d need those memories to hold to all the long, lonely nights that would follow Nick’s departure.

Hearing the murmur of a second voice, he realized Nick wasn’t on the phone. He sat up, pulled on his jeans. Found his shirt. His hair was sticking up on end. He combed his fingers through it, walking down the short hallway.