Heat Stroke (Beach Kingdom, #2)(39)

“What’s wrong?” Jamie asked, his legs dropping from their perch around Marcus’s waist. “You want to…talk about anything?”

“No,” Marcus said honestly, dread still trying to battle its way into this perfect moment. He wasn’t going to let it. Searching for courage, he reached down and twined his fingers with Jamie’s. “Can I stay?”

Jamie shook his head. But he said, “Yes.”

Marcus grinned and pulled Jamie toward the bed, but when he would have dived into the clean, white sheets, Jamie yanked him to a stop. “Whoa, whoa. Christ. Get rid of the condom first, would you?” he said, flicking a hand at Marcus’s semi and the weighted latex hanging off the tip. “Is this a pretty good indication of how nasty your sheets are?”

Unable to wipe the smile off his face, Marcus grabbed a tissue and wrapped up the condom, dropping into Jamie’s waist basket. Not bothering to hide that fact that he was ogling Jamie’s naked body, Marcus bounded into bed and got comfortable in the sheets, gesturing for Jamie to join him. After a definite hesitation, Jamie started to climb in—

And Marcus pulled Jamie into a backwards bear hug, wrapping legs and arms around him so he wouldn’t get away. “I’d clean my sheets for you, babe,” he yawned into Jamie’s neck.

It wasn’t lost on him that Jamie didn’t answer.

But Marcus was soaring so high on cloud nine—spending the night in Jamie Prince’s bed—he could only close his eyes and surrender to the best sleep of his life.





CHAPTER FOURTEEN





Jamie had apparently woken with the maturity level of a nine-year-old, because he was pretending to be asleep while Marcus plodded around the room getting dressed. Truth was, he’d been awake since before dawn, wondering what the hell to do about the two-hundred-and-fifty-pound man in his bed. The one holding him like a stuffed teddy bear.

Beneath the comforter, Jamie’s cock woke up at the sight of Marcus’s naked silhouette. It was outlined in the sunlit blinds, showing off…everything. His dangling dick looked like a someone had filled a sock with wet sand, and Jamie knew if he so much as rolled over, that thing would jump to attention like a boot camp soldier.

As for the rest of Marcus…it was beautiful, too. His hair was in disarray from bed, one side flat, the other in ninety-two directions. He looked softer in the glow of the morning sun, his mouth relaxed, eyebrows knitted together while he tried to find the neck hole of his T-shirt in the dark.

When Jamie’s heart turned over in his chest for the tenth time since waking, he forced his eyes shut. The mature thing to do here was wake up. For real. Ask Marcus if he wanted some coffee. Compliment him once again on the fucking of a lifetime. Because yeah. That’s exactly what it had been. Jamie was afraid to find out what Marcus could do with some practice. Okay, maybe afraid was the wrong term. More like salivating.

Which is why he continued to feign sleep.

Marcus wouldn’t do the awkward morning-after dance. Jamie knew that without a doubt. He would probably wrestle Jamie into another hug and ask if they could sit together on the beach today. And Jamie would say yes. He’d say yes to anything right now that meant he could spend more time with Marcus.

Anything.

Bad. That was bad.

Case in point, it wasn’t even eight in the morning and Marcus was leaving so no one would know he’d been there. Even now, Jamie could feel the warmth of the embrace he’d slept in dissipating, replacing itself with cold. This is how he’d feel all the time if he gave in to the urge to see how a relationship with Marcus played out. So he forced himself to think of the ridicule on Chris’s red face as he held him under the water, calling him disgusting names. It was impossible to picture that same expression on Marcus, but what if his family found out? When a man’s back was to the wall, there were no guarantees.

And God, Jamie wasn’t sure he could survive Marcus actively denying this thing between them. Because he’d been an idiot and let himself get in too deep, hadn’t he?

Jamie tried to keep his breathing even as Marcus approached the bed.

“I’ll see you at the Hut, Jamie,” he whispered. “I wish…I could stay. I wish so many things. But mostly I just wish for you.”

It was a wonder that Marcus couldn’t hear the knocking of his heart. The creaking of the floor signaled Marcus walking to the door and as soon as he was gone, a rush of breath left Jamie and he couldn’t haul it back in, no matter how hard he tried. He sat up on the edge of the bed and buried his head in his hands, vacillating between a wish to go back in time and keep Marcus at arm’s length and wishing he hadn’t pretended to be sleeping.

“I’m so fucked,” he muttered, standing and snagging a pair of sweatpants from his drawer and yanking them up his legs, before putting on his glasses and heading downstairs—

Straight into an intervention.

Rory and Andrew were standing at the kitchen island with their arms crossed.

And he hated that the first words out of his mouth were, “Don’t you dare tell anyone he was here.”

His brothers exchanged a concerned look.

Andrew kicked out a stool. “Sit down.”

“Fuck you.”

Rory whistled. “Someone is gunning for my position as the family asshole.”