Ghostwriter of Christmas Past Read online

  “It was before Mom remarried,” Tom said. He resorted to the fork without trying the chopsticks. “And it’s cheaper than New York. I take it you never thought about coming back?”

  “No.” The answer came to Jason quickly, harsh with a lot of resentments. He only thought it through afterward. That it wasn’t just judgment and poverty and his shithead of a dad he’d left behind. “Sorry.”

  Tommy shook his head. “Don’t be. It wasn’t my life plan to end up back here. It just made sense at the time.”

  “I wanted to say goodbye,” Jason said.

  “You don’t have to—”

  “It wasn’t easy, is all,” Jason said. He put his chopsticks down. Tommy had given him an out. He didn’t know why he wasn’t taking it. “Tommy… Tom. I knew if I told you I was going, you’d have come with me.”

  “Ow?” Tommy said dubiously. “Really, you don’t have to explain anymore.”

  “Your dad was sick. Your mom needed you,” Jason said. “I had eight grand and a bus ticket. You would have come with me, and you were better off if you didn’t.”

  He licked the memory of blood off the back of his teeth and didn’t say he couldn’t let Tommy see him that night. Tommy had never known when to back down.

  “Can I ask something?” Tommy asked. He leaned over the table and covered Jason’s hand with his. His fingers were long and roughly callused.

  “Sure.” Jason braced himself.

  “Would you mind sleeping in my bed tonight?” Tommy asked. “Yours was my mom’s, and it feels weird.”

  Jason took a breath that was ragged with a mixture of relief and surprise. Not a lot of surprise, but still. He turned his hand under Tommy’s and laced their fingers together as though his grip could forestall any backtracking.

  “Works for me.” He glanced down at the food. For all his anticipation earlier about going out on an actual date with Tommy, suddenly he just wanted to be alone with him. “Get this to go?”

  Tommy tugged on his hand and kissed him over the table. It made Jason feel stupid, soppy, teenage giddy. “Yeah, well, not planning on putting a show on for my ex,” Tommy said as he leaned back.

  They were already back in the car before Jason’s brain caught up with that tidbit of information. He felt a bubble of unfair resentment, a jab of irritation that Tommy hadn’t put his life into mothballs until he got back. He supposed he should be glad. It would have been creepy if Tommy’s sex life began and ended in the creaky back seat of Jason’s old car. That didn’t stop him wondering who it was—the slim, floppy-haired waiter, the scowling man in work boots in the takeout line, the old man reading Kant over his kung pao?

  Whoever it was, he supposed, they knew Tommy was with him.

  The adolescent cockiness of that thought made Jason laugh with a quiet snort of humor. He reached over and ran his hand up Tommy’s thigh. Long muscles tightened under his fingers with a twitch of reaction that mirrored the breath hissed in through Tommy’s teeth.

  “We could just pull over.” His hand reached the top of Tommy’s thigh, and he cupped him through the sheath of denim. The metal strip of the zipper pressed cold against his palm as he squeezed, the bulge underneath heavy and solid.

  “It’s below freezing.” Tommy’s voice always had that scrape to it, but it sounded tight, as though it were caught in his throat. “And now we don’t have to worry about my mom hearing a weird noise and coming to see if one of us hurt themselves.”

  Jason smirked and leaned his head against the headrest. His cock was hard—just at the verge of being uncomfortable under his jeans—and want ached heavily in his balls. It was dully frustrating in that pleasant way where you knew it would be relieved soon.

  “Do you think she knew we were—”

  “Oh yeah,” Tommy said firmly. “They were… not unaware.”

  It had been years since Jason felt the familiar ache of wistful jealousy. He could still identify it almost immediately. Maybe his mom would have accepted him, accepted who he was, but his dad made it clear he never would. He’d rather have just one son than have one of them be gay. That still hurt Jason’s chest, and he didn’t want to let it in tonight.

  His hand stayed between Tommy’s legs, and they got back to the house faster than was probably safe.

  They dashed into the house, the clatter of their boots on the step loud in the still, white silence, and Jason dragged Tommy into a kiss before the door closed behind them. Cold lips and the heat of his mouth met and mixed. Eager hands and no words needed as they stumbled up the stairs, every misstep an excuse to stop and kiss, touch, grope. He dragged Tommy’s T-shirt over his head and nearly throttled him as the sleeves caught around his biceps.

  Jason left him to struggle with that and pressed eager, hard kisses against the bare stretch of throat and shoulder. He found the tight line of tendon and bit down. Under the tangled T-shirt, Tommy swore a thick curse in that rough voice. “Fuck.” Half-surprise, half-demand.

  The shirt came off, and they left it slung over the banister to slowly slide down the polished oak as they finally made the landing. Tommy grabbed Jason’s arms and shoved him against the wall. His fingers flexed around Jason’s biceps, and his mouth tightened as something raw cut through the sticky heat of impatient want.

  “I missed you.”

  “I said it first.”

  Tommy rolled his eyes. A wry smile tucked the corner of his mouth, and his beard tufted up around it. “Really. Now?”

  Jason laughed. Tommy caught the sound with his mouth, and he tangled his tongue around Jason’s. It was probably for the best. Jason could feel the urge to one-up him caught on the back of his tongue—words he wouldn’t want to take back.

  Tommy let go of Jason’s arms and went to work on his shirt buttons. He made short work of it without even looking and rasped his appreciation as he dipped his head to lick down Jason’s chest.

  “I’ve wanted to do that all night,” he muttered.

  “Next time start with that,” Jason gasped. He ran his fingers through Tommy’s hair, and the unruly curls caught around his knuckles. “Save us a drive.”

  Tommy laughed, kissed his way down Jason’s stomach, and dropped onto one knee. Anticipation clenched Jason’s stomach muscles so tightly they ached.

  “God, Tommy,” he groaned, his hand still tangled through the cropped dusty-blond curls. “You’re gonna kill me.”

  He tilted his head back against the wall and bit his lower lip as Tommy tugged at his jeans. It didn’t stop the choked “fuck” that dragged out of him as Tommy wrapped his mouth around him. Pleasure twisted in his balls—a tight knot of want that dragged everything taut from his thighs to his stomach. Tommy wrapped his hand around the base of Jason’s cock and squeezed in time to the lick-suck-swirl of his lips and tongue.

  Jason folded his free hand behind his head and squeezed his eyes shut. The heavy pulse of pleasure in his balls verged on an ache. He shifted, his jeans rough where they caught around his thighs, and slid his hand around to cup the back of Tommy’s head.

  The muscle memory of teenage hookups made Jason bite the inside of his cheek to try to throttle back a groan. He wasn’t seventeen anymore, and Mrs. Ryan would have to drive from Ithaca to yell, “What are you boys doing?” But it still felt weird. She never came to look, Jason remembered randomly. Fuck. She had totally been aware, hadn’t she? The thought flittered through his brain, a scattershot attempt to hang on to control.

  Jason sucked in a raw breath as Tommy pressed his tongue up against the underside of his cock and the rough scrape of his beard rubbed against the tender inside of Jason’s thighs. Fuck. If he didn’t stop, he was going to come before he even got Tommy naked. Maybe he was still seventeen after all.

  He looked down and groaned to himself as he watched Tommy’s mouth slide wet and eager along his shaft. The point of no return jolted dangerously forward, his balls pulled up tightly between his legs, and he swore to himself as he pulled Tommy’s head back.

  There
was something brutally lewd about his cock, wet and tight, sliding from between Tommy’s lips. It might have been the wet drops of precome in his beard or the way Tommy swiped his tongue over his lips like he wanted to savor the salt and come taste of it.

  “I want you,” he said. In the dim light, his eyes were colorless as he looked up at Jason. “I want to taste you when you come.”

  “Later,” Jason promised raggedly as he pulled Tommy up. “I want you. Now.”

  Habit made him head for the guest room. Tommy laughed and dragged him the extra steps down to his door.

  A petty little part of Jason’s brain took the time out from wanting to sniff, About time. He stifled the urge to laugh and then have to explain against Tommy’s mouth. The taste of him on Tommy’s tongue—flat pennies and sweat—brought his attention back to where it should be.

  They stumbled to the bed, clumsily dragged or shoved clothes out of the way, and fell onto the mattress. Jason straddled Tommy’s lean form, his knees on either side of his hips, and pinned his wrists to the bed as he kissed him.

  “Crap,” Tommy muttered around Jason’s tongue. “Jase, condoms?”

  “Never needed ’em before,” Jason said.

  “I knew exactly where your cock had been before,” Tommy pointed out. “And we were dumb as rocks.”

  True. Jason rolled off Tommy and dragged his ditched jeans off the floor. The condom in his wallet probably wasn’t at its most effective, but he wasn’t going to look for another one. He dug it out from between a Starbucks card and an old hotel key card he never got around to throwing out. He ripped the package open and shook out the ring of latex so he could roll it down over his cock.

  “So we’re just assuming you get to go on top?” Tommy asked. He tossed Jason a small bottle of lube.

  “Hey, you can sit on my cock if you want,” Jason said. “But it’s my condom. I get to use it.”

  “Next time we toss a coin,” Tommy grumbled.

  Jason smirked at the promise of a next time and rolled a cooperative Tommy over onto his stomach. The broad spread of Tommy’s shoulders against the sheets, the way his jeans, shoved down but not off, caught around heavily muscled thighs, made Jason’s mouth go dry and his cock twitch.

  His idea of hot was always based on this, hardwired when liking boys and liking this boy came up at more or less the same time.

  He buried slick fingers in Tommy’s ass and worked them deep enough to make Tommy gasp and push back against his hand. The thought that Jason could make Tommy squirm, tease him until he was sweaty and begging, occurred to him. It had its appeal, but he’d been promised a next time, and right then he just wanted to fuck Tommy.

  Jason shifted behind him, hands on his hips, and pressed the head of his cock against the slick pucker of Tommy’s hole. He felt the brief resistance press back along his cock—a sweet ache that caught behind his balls—and thrust through it. His cock slid deep into the tight, well-slicked channel.

  “Shit,” Tommy muttered, the word drawn out between his teeth as his ass stretched around Jason’s cock. The heavy muscles across his shoulders clenched and moved smoothly under his skin.

  “What?” Jason teased as he ran an appreciative hand up the plane of Tommy’s spine. “Your ex have a small dick?”

  He felt the snort of laughter through Tommy’s back and around his cock.

  The slow roll of his pelvis worked him deeper until his hips were snug against the curve of Tommy’s ass. Tommy braced himself on one hand and reached down to wrap the other around his own cock.

  Jason pulled back, his cock slick and shiny under the latex, and thrust again. Heat twisted in his thighs with a heavy weight of want and plucked back to somewhere deep inside him. He folded himself over Tommy’s back and pressed a kiss to his shoulder. The scruff of short curls at the nape of Tommy’s neck tickled his lips, and his breath came hard and quick as he fucked Tommy. Sweat was a slippery film between their bodies, salty against Jason’s tongue when he licked Tommy’s shoulder.

  “Jase,” Tommy groaned. “God, I want you. I need you.”

  Jason scraped his teeth over the tight plane of Tommy’s shoulder and sped up his strokes to keep pace.

  Tommy’s body trembled under his as he came, his arm gave way, and he slumped down onto the bed. Jason followed him down and sprawled out on top of him. He could feel Tommy’s orgasm clench around his cock, a pulse of pleasure that twisted through Jason.

  He pulled out and rolled onto his back and impatiently twisted the condom off his cock with one hand. The edge of his orgasm hung just out of reach, his need to reach it a breathless weight that started in his balls and ran up to his brain.

  “Fuck sake, Jase.” Tommy crawled over and straddled Jason’s thighs. “Nothing wrong with asking for help.”

  “I know,” Jason said as he rubbed his hand over his face and scrubbed sweat up into his hair. He grinned around his forearm at Tommy. “I like it better when you offer.”

  Tommy snorted. He sprawled out, sticky and heavy on top of Jason, and kissed him. He thrust his hips against Jason’s, their cocks squashed together, and he worked his hands under Jason to grab his backside.

  “Son of a bitch,” Jason groaned, his muscles twitching under his skin. He hooked his leg over Tommy’s hip and dragged him closer until the pressure on his cock gave him the choice between pleasure and pain. His body picked pleasure, and he ground his release out against Tommy’s lean stomach.

  They sprawled on the bed, spent and sleepy, until the door rattled open downstairs.

  “Fuck,” Tommy muttered. At the same time, Mal yelled from downstairs. “I’m back! Did you have a good time?”

  Jason plastered his hand over Tommy’s mouth to shut up the muttered litany of fucks. He ignored the glare he got for that and propped himself up on one elbow.

  “Yeah,” he yelled back. “There’s takeout in the car if you’re hungry. Forgot to bring it in.”

  “Oh great,” Mallory yelled back. “I’m starving.”

  The door slammed again, and Jason smirked and kissed the back of his hand where it covered Tommy’s mouth. “She’s always hungry.”

  Tommy pulled his hand away from his face. “So was I,” he said. “That was dinner.”

  “So make more pancakes.”

  Tommy rolled onto his back and stretched. Apparently sated didn’t mean blind. Even with come still drying on his stomach, Jason could appreciate the view.

  “I got something for you,” Tommy said. Almost immediately he looked as though he regretted it. “I mean—”

  “Is it the bottle of whiskey?” Jason asked. He grinned and traced his finger over Tommy’s shoulder. “Mal’s not the best wrapper.”

  “Yeah,” Tommy said. He hesitated and then sat up, one long leg folded under him. “I got this too, though. Just… a while ago. I suppose you might as well have it.”

  He reached into the bedside drawer and pulled out a narrow book with curled pages and a cracked spine. Jason tilted his head to try to make out the title, but before he could, Tommy tossed it to him.

  “You can chuck it if you want.” He scrambled off the bed. “It’s old. I meant it, though. I’m going to clean up.”

  He padded toward the bathroom. Jason put his bafflement on hold long enough to appreciate the view of his tight, sex-flushed ass. Once the view disappeared behind the door, Jason looked back down at the book.

  Philip Larkin. He wiped his hands on the sheet so he didn’t get the pages sticky and flicked through it. He smiled with delight at the present—not just the book, but the evidence Tommy really had missed him, missed him enough to get the book and keep it for however long “a while” was.

  He finally flipped back to the front and frowned in annoyance that someone had written on the page. Then he actually saw what they’d written in defiant, firmly scrawled letters.

  JASON, I LOVE YOU. And apparently “a while” was so long ago that he was still going by Tommy. He had signed his name in cramped letters just above the bo
ok title.

  It was…. Jason took a deep breath and pressed his knuckles to his mouth. His eyes itched like he was about to cry. Crap. He was crying. Jason sniffed again and wiped his face on the sheet. What the hell was wrong with him? So his boyfriend loved him when they were seventeen. He knew that.

  He should have known that, but it wasn’t like he’d ever heard it. Before he had to work out what to do with it, someone hammered on the door.

  “What?” he snapped. Then he winced and squeezed his eyes shut. What the hell was wrong with him? It wasn’t his room. What the hell was Mallory going to think? “I’m, umm… just helping Tommy wrap some presents.”

  “You’re kissing,” Mal said with contempt. She made a wet smooching through the door. “Like in your rooooo-mance books. I’m not little.”

  Jason sighed and scratched his head. “I know. Sorry. Did you find the food?”

  “Yeah,” she said. “And I wasn’t snooping, but I heard something in the garage. It sounded like, umm… the best present ever maybe knocked something over.”

  “What?”

  “And, umm… thanks, Uncle Jason.” Mal gave a snotty-sounding gasp and took off, her feet loud as she ran down to her room.

  It was the first time she’d ever called him uncle. Jason was too confused to appreciate it.

  “What?” he repeated.

  The bathroom door jerked open and a naked, dripping-wet Tommy leaned out. “Shit.” He shoved his sodden curls out of his face and glanced from the door to Jason and back again until he finally grimaced apologetically. “Sorry. Crap, Jason, I forgot.”

  Maybe the third time would be the charm. “What?”

  “I may have left a dog crated in the garage. There was no room at the animal shelter, and I didn’t think….” He shrugged.

  A dog. That was the best present ever? Jason dourly supposed he could find the receipt for that MacBook.

  She had called him uncle, though, for the first time since last year’s dutiful Christmas card. He didn’t want a dog, but then, it wasn’t his present. Jason leaned over and set the book on the nightstand. He climbed out of the bed.