Saugatuck Summer (Saugatuck, #1)(69)
He had an impressive array of sex toys. By the time we crawled out of bed for breakfast Sunday morning, I was sore and exhausted from having a plug so thick I’d almost refused to consider it stuffed in my stretched, aching *. I’d struggled with it while he rode my cock and kept pulling me back from the edge of orgasm over and over again by tapping my nipple.
I didn’t know what I’d expected from his apartment. Maybe I’d seen Rent too many times, and assumed he’d live in some unimproved industrial warehouse space covered in red brick and graffiti. Someplace that froze in winter and broiled in summer and always needed something repaired. Instead, he lived in a very ordinary, cookie-cutter condo, almost excruciatingly boring except for the paintings he’d hung on the walls.
“Where do you work?” I asked, seeing no signs of a studio.
“Right there.” He pointed to his desktop computer, which was equipped with an elaborate graphics pad.
“I meant painting.”
“Oh, I rent a space from another artist when I need it. I don’t paint full-time. I do a lot of graphic design and digital art, with some set design work for local theaters on the side. I usually use the studio space on Saturdays, so I’m sure to paint once a week, and arrange for more time if I have a project I’m working really hard on.”
“It didn’t take you long to make those paintings of me.”
He smiled softly. “No, it didn’t. I was on fire when I was working on those. I was at the studio nearly three solid weeks, and I barely slept until they were done.”
I didn’t really know what to say to that. I’d known that night we’d spent together was incredible, but I hadn’t realized the extent to which it had affected him.
I was afraid to ask why.
At my request, we went to see the theater for which Jace had been doing set design the first time we’d met. Afterward, we had lunch and fell into bed again. Truth be told, we spent quite a bit of that time napping because we were both exhausted from the past few nights, and we didn’t crawl out of bed until almost dinner. When we were done eating, I did the good-guest thing I’d been brought up to do and insisted on cleaning the kitchen over his protests.
“Anything you’d like to do tonight?” he asked, leaning on his elbows on the table. “We’ve got a whole city to get into trouble in. We could head to Boystown, hit a club.”
“Aw, damn!” I sighed in disgust, pausing in wiping down the counter. “I knew I should have brought something to wear clubbing.”
“Not even the eyeliner?” He gave me a plaintive look, and I shook my head. “Okay, we’re so going shopping. Club’s on the agenda for tomorrow night.”
I laughed and decided the expense might be worth it. When I resumed wiping the counter, my cloth bumped a shiny business card sticking out from under a stack of mail. It had a picture of a muscle-bound and presumably nude man.
“What’s this for?”
He grinned, dropping me a wink. “Bathhouse.”
“What? Are you serious?” I blinked at him in surprise. “I thought those all got shut down with the AIDS epidemic.”
He nodded, pursing his lips. “A lot of them did. A few managed to rebrand themselves for the safer sex era. There are still some really seedy, disgusting ones, but others can be nice. They hand out condoms, discourage unprotected sex, even work with AIDS prevention organizations and offer on-site immediate testing. There are some new ones for the next generation, too, appealing to a younger crowd.”
I waved the card. “And you’ve been here?”
“Are you going to freak if I say yes? Because I’ll be honest, angel—until I met you, I hooked up a lot.”
“What? No, no. I’m not gonna, you know, judge.” Especially one particular part of me, which was quite interested in this conversation. I frowned, though, thinking of all the stories I’d heard about bathhouses being breeding grounds for disease. It didn’t fit what I knew of Jace, as cautious as he was about such things. “So what’s the appeal? Just a walk on the seedy side once in a while?”
Jace grimaced. “No, no. Look, I know the sort of rep those places have, and sometimes it’s dead-on, but . . . it’s part of our history, don’t you get it?”
He looked so earnest that I sobered. “No, I guess I don’t.”
“Well, think about why it’s there, angel. Why the clubs had back rooms.” Jace leaned forward on the counter, his arms folded under him. “They’re a remnant of a time—one not all that long ago—when most of us could never be ourselves at home. We couldn’t be out, or have a lover, at least not one we acknowledged. Hell, a lot of us were married with kids, passing as straight. A lot of us still are, and if things had worked out differently with my parents trying to reprogram me, that might even have been me.” He gestured at the card. “That’s why those places exist. It’s not just somewhere to go take a walk on the wild side. For a long time, places like that were the only places where we could be us. Anonymously, yeah, but still, for a moment we wouldn’t have to hide who we were. So yeah, it sounds sleazy, but you need to respect the history that resulted in the bathhouses and saunas and back rooms.”
“Wow. Heavy.” I bowed my head a moment and let myself absorb his words. For as much as my life sucked, sometimes it was hard to remember that there was a time when things could have been much, much harder. Honestly, being a flaming princess was one of my less significant worries, at least now that I was out of high school, and as long as I avoided being alone in the wrong places.