Page 81 of Steady Stroke
They kissed until Lincoln’s hands were cupping Emmett’s ass, squeezing his cheeks, encouraging him to rut. At some point they’d slid further down the couch, so Lincoln was flat on his back, his legs hitched up around Emmett’s hips, Emmett rocking into him. They’d only ever made out the other way around, and Emmett enjoyed his chance to be the dominant one. To cage Lincoln with his arms and suck a mark on the cord of his neck.
Until something changed. Lincoln’s arms and back had gone stiff, and when Emmett looked up, his eyelids werepressed shut.
“Crap, is it a migraine?” Emmett sat up, careful not to jostle him too much. “Do you need a pill?”
“Not a migraine.” Lincoln didn’t open his eyes or relax. “Sorry, give me a second.”
Unsure what was happening, or how to fix it, Emmett went into the kitchen and poured a glass of water. When he returned to the couch, Lincoln was upright, knees drawn tight to his chest. He sipped the water Emmett offered, then put the glass on the side table. Emmett watched him from the other end of the couch, uncertain of his footing here. Lincoln hadn’t frozen up because he was in pain. It was something else, and he had no idea how to ask.
“I’m sorry,” Emmett said.
Lincoln blinked at him. “For what?”
“If I did something. If I caused . . . whatever this weirdness is.”
“Believe me, Em, it’s nothing you did. It was something I did. Or several somethings. One bad decision piled on top of another, because I felt sorry for myself.”
Emmett wanted to reach out and hug Lincoln, but he looked like one loud noise might send him bolting to another room. So he stayed put. “Tell me about it?”
“It’s not that big a deal.”
“Linc, if it’s still eating at you and making you tense up, then it’s a big deal. Please? I’ve put so much of my personal crap on your shoulders. Let me carry something for you.”
For one brief moment, Lincoln looked ready to burst into tears. Then his expression cleared, going eerily blank. “Dominic and Trey were supposed to visit Memorial Day weekend. They’d negotiated the time off to relax, and I missed my best friend. We’d lived in each other’s back pockets for four years, making XYZ work, and suddenly he was always gone, on tour with Trey. I was happy for him, but I was crazy jealous,because he was out living our dream, and I couldn’t even strum my guitar without falling over. I was really looking forward to seeing him. And then Dom canceled the visit.”
“You were upset.”
Lincoln nodded. “I was mad, but mostly I felt sorry for myself. I wanted to feel normal, so I decided fuck it all and went to Off Beat.”
“That was a week before we met.”
“Yeah.” His eyes brightened briefly. “I also met Melody that night. She tried hitting on me to buy her a drink, and I told her she wasn’t my type. So we guy-watched together and I got a little hammered. A lot hammered. I’d taken my depression meds later in the day than usual, plus four beers, and I wasn’t making great decisions.”
Warning bells started ringing in the deep recesses of his mind, where Emmett saw a potential conclusion to this story that put all of his protective instincts on high alert.
“At some point this super-hot guy named Tom came over and we started flirting. We both agreed we were looking for a good fuck, so I brought him back here. He sucked me off, and drunk brain decided it was only fair to let him fuck me. Not my favorite thing, but the mix of alcohol and sex was starting to give me a godawful migraine, which was fucking with my head, so I wasn’t thinking super clear. I tried to tell him to slow down, not go so hard.”
He shivered, his gaze shifting to various points around the room, avoiding Emmett completely. “That’s when I realized he wasn’t wearing a condom.”
Emmett’s stomach churned with acid.
“I told him to stop. More than once. He kept going, and I freaked. I scratched him hard enough to draw blood, but the fucker still fucking came inside me.” Lincoln’s expression went stormy, both angry and scared, and it made Emmett want tofind this Tom person and beat him senseless for making Lincoln feel that way. For putting him at risk like that.
“Fucker got pissed at me for scratching him.” His fear was slowly being beaten back by anger. “Said I should have asked for what I wanted, but I put the goddamn condom on the dresser. It was right by the fucking lube. I mean,fuck!”
He surged off the couch, hands fisted by his sides, his face scarlet. “Fuck him. Fuck him!”
Emmett watched helplessly from the couch as weeks-old pain rose to the surface so fast, burning so hotly, that Lincoln didn’t seem to know what to do with it. He paced the length of the living room, angling every few strides as if he meant to take a swing, maybe put his fist through the wall. Or punch an invisible assailant.
It explained a lot. The moments of tension, when Lincoln froze up or pulled back. Reacting to Melody’s assault. Emmett raged alongside his boyfriend, even as a little piece of his heart broke for him.
And then a terrifying thought jumped to the forefront of his mind. “Babe, did he give you something?”
Lincoln froze in midstep, halfway between the couch and the kitchen. Some of his anger seemed to bleed away, and he swayed. Concern had Emmett on his feet and gently pulling Lincoln back to the couch to sit with him. He held both of Lincoln’s cold hands in his and squeezed them tight, fighting back his own panic over what Lincoln might or might not say.
“I still need to do a six-month follow-up to be absolutely certain,” Lincoln said. “But all of the initial tests were negative. You have no idea how relieved I was to know that.”
“I can’t even imagine.” Emmett pressed his forehead against Lincoln’s temple. “I hate him for what he did to you. You put the condom in plain sight, and he chose not to wear it. He also chose not to stop when you revoked consent.”
