Word of Mouth Read online

  Jonah still didn’t look back, walking toward his bedroom, not even trying to pretend he was going to give Gordon a tour.

  Thank god his room was on the far end of the house. He opened the door and stepped inside, Gordon following him, Jonah now unable to look him in the eyes as Gordon passed him.

  Jonah quietly shut the door behind him.

  As an afterthought, he reached out and locked the knob.

  When he turned, the words tumbled out of him, and he realized he was talking over Gordon.

  “I’m so sorry, I—”

  “Please, whatever I did, I—”

  They fell silent and stared at each other for a long moment.

  Fuck it.

  This wasn’t just the man he loved—this was the only man he’d ever been with.

  The only person he’d ever been with, period.

  He flung himself at Gordon, kissing him, wrapping his arms around him and shoving him toward the bed. Before Jonah realized exactly what was going on, they were both shirtless and kissing, biting, apologizing, sucking, licking—frantic need and lonely agony wrapped in an exploding ball of gasses.

  Combustion.

  Flames.

  At six feet, Jonah was an inch taller than Gordon, and was still a little beefier, but had always willingly knelt for the other man, considered him bigger in many ways.

  He caged Gordon with his body. “I’m sorry,” Jonah said. “I was wrong, and you were right, and I’m so fucking sorry. Please tell me you’re still sober.”

  Gordon was crying now, and he nodded. “Yeah. Eight years.”

  “Oh, thank fucking god.” He crashed his lips over Gordon’s, sucking, biting, needing him now.

  “I haven’t been with anyone since you,” Gordon mumbled against his mouth.

  Jonah lifted his head, shocked. “What?”

  Gordon was still crying. “I hoped you’d come back, and then I didn’t know what I did wrong. I’m sorry, I—”

  “You didn’t. It was me. I was a fucking idiot. The guy lied to me.” He brushed Gordon’s tears away with his thumbs. “You were right. I fucked up. And I haven’t been with anyone but you, either.”

  Gordon softly gasped. “Really?”

  “Really. I will gladly grovel and do whatever I fucking have to do to earn your forgiveness, but please, I need you right now.” He took a deep breath. “I need Master, right now. And I’ll do whatever I need to do to get him back. Please.”

  * * * *

  At that word from Jonah’s lips, it felt like lightning struck inside Gordon’s brain.

  Master.

  Gordon flipped Jonah onto his back, now on top of him, straddling him. He sat up so he could unfasten Jonah’s shorts and yank them down enough to expose his cock, already dark and engorged with blood.

  Gordon hungrily devoured his cock, every moan and gasp music to his soul. He’d give him this one.

  The rest Jonah would have to earn, on his fucking knees.

  They could talk—later.

  Right now, he wanted to reclaim his boy. They could figure everything else out after.

  Then a thought hit him. He grabbed Jonah’s right wrist, where his hand was buried in Gordon’s hair, and lifted his head from his boy’s cock to look.

  There, inside Jonah’s arm, just above his elbow, were Gordon’s initials in the same stylized script as his own tattoo.

  Gordon started crying again as he leaned in and kissed the tat, tracing it with his tongue before latching on with his teeth, biting, drawing a hiss of pain from Jonah.

  Their old ritual.

  Gordon felt Jonah grab his left hand and bring his wrist to Jonah’s mouth, where he licked and sucked at the tat there.

  “Please, punish me, Master,” Jonah whispered against his flesh.

  Gordon released his bite and jerked his hand free so he could go down on Jonah again.

  This would happen, right now.

  He cupped Jonah’s sac in his hand and went hard and deep on him, sucking, rewarded almost immediately with a cry and the painfully familiar tang of his cum.

  Yes!

  He was already reaching to unfasten his own shorts as he sat up and climbed up the bed. Nothing tender or gentle about it as he fucked Jonah’s willing and eager mouth, choking and gagging him and pounding his cock into him, until Gordon’s climax hit. Agonizing pleasure twisted through him.

  Still, he kept fucking Jonah’s mouth, driving his pain and loneliness away with Jonah’s tongue and lips and the back of the man’s mouth, until he was drained dry of cum and growing soft, but Gordon was crying.

  Sobbing.

  To the point he finally fell off Jonah, to the side, crumpling to the mattress.

  Arms enveloped him, lips rained kisses across his cheeks, licking up his tears, and a fervent whisper repeating.

  “I’m so sorry, Master. Please forgive me. I love you. I’ll make it right.”

  Gordon wrapped his arms around him and, right or wrong, in this moment he held on tight and swore he’d never fucking let him go again.

  Chapter Eight

  There was a soft knock on the door a short while later.

  “Hey, guys? Pizza’s here.”

  Doyle.

  “Thanks,” Jonah called out, sniffling back tears. “We’ll be right there.”

  “Are you okay?”

  “Yeah, we’re good.”

  “If you need to talk after we’re done tonight, I’m here.”

  “Thanks.”

  Jonah tucked his head back under Gordon’s chin and closed his eyes. This had to be a dream. Maybe the plane had crashed and he was in Heaven, or he was in a coma.

  It couldn’t be this…easy, could it?

  “He’s a counselor,” Jonah told Gordon. “Addiction recovery. And he’s an alcoholic. Sober. Him and Mevi both. And, FYI, they’re kinky.”

  “Oh,” Gordon said.

  “Shit,” Jonah muttered. “You did sign an NDA, right?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Whew, okay. Good.” They lay there for another moment. “I’m so sorry, Master. I know I can’t take back what I said, or what I did, or the time we lost, but I’m fucking sorry.”

  He felt Gordon’s breath along his scalp. “I wondered what I did wrong.”

  Jonah tipped his head back and made Gordon look at him. “You didn’t. It was all me. I didn’t see it then. I was stupid and hungry for more, and…I’m sorry. I let Josh make me think I’d have it better out there in LA, and I’m sorry.”

  “You didn’t fuck him?”

  “No. I was never going to fuck him.”

  Looking back on the events, Jonah couldn’t believe he’d been so blind and stupid. He’d thought, at first, that Gordon was just being personally jealous for no good reason over his friendship with Josh, seeing things that weren’t there.

  Then, when what Jonah thought was a great opportunity arose, he thought Gordon was being professionally jealous that Josh had wanted Jonah to come out to LA and not Gordon. They hadn’t had the money, at the time, for both of them to go out for a visit, but Gordon had even encouraged Jonah to go for a short trial basis.

  The guy had connections, supposedly. Had played gigs with some big names.

  Well, he had, but what Josh had left out was that he was a nameless session player, and not any kind of producer.

  Had Jonah simply done what Gordon asked and taken his time, a trial visit first, he would have seen that.

  But Josh had been a player, and done a damned good job of worming his way into Jonah’s brain, helped twist stuff around that Jonah told him happened between him and Gordon to mean something it had not, and to make it look like Gordon was the bad guy, that Gordon was the bad kind of controlling.

  That it was Gordon using Jonah and afraid of losing his meal ticket. That Jonah was the one with the talent, not Gordon.

  And yeah, Josh had tried to get Jonah to fuck him once Jonah had moved out there, but Jonah had turned him down.

  He sat up and stared do
wn into Gordon’s blue eyes. “I’ll do anything to win you back and prove I mean it.”

  * * * *

  With the heat of the moment draining away, Gordon now felt split into two halves despite what he’d just promised himself—the rational, level-headed guy who was trying to pull the emergency brake only to have the lever snap off in his hands, and the heartbroken Master who wanted to do nothing more than go home, grab the collar he still—STILL—had kept, and bring it back here and slap it around his boy’s neck, where it belonged.

  Common sense told him he had no clue what Jonah was capable of. He’d left him once before, broken his heart, and who was to say what would happen after this all ended.

  Hell, in four weeks, everyone would be heading off on tour and leaving him behind.

  How did he even know he hadn’t just set himself up for another massive round of heartbreak by stupidly sleeping with the guy?

  How did he know anything about Jonah anymore?

  Why did he still love the guy so much, and why did Jonah still have the power to shred his world with a word?

  There might be a universe’s worth of difference between the Jonah he once knew, the man he wanted Jonah to be, and the man Jonah really was now.

  “I’m not leaving Venice,” Gordon quietly said. “I have a life here. I started teaching at a school this year. I still work gigs, and my boss at the school got me this one. Next year, I might actually be teaching full-time, but I have health benefits this year for the first time. That’s a sure thing. This is just…for now.”

  “I’m sorry.”

  “So am I.” He untangled himself from Jonah and sat on the edge of the bed. “I can’t tour with you guys, either. I won’t leave my job. Maybe that’s better right now.”

  He felt Jonah’s hand come to rest on his shoulder. “I won’t leave you again. I swear.”

  “You can’t make me that promise when you’re about to go on an eight-week tour.”

  “I mean…I’ll come back. I promise.”

  Gordon had thought it’d be relief filling him, if this day ever materialized. But now…now he felt a slow and steady seepage of anger from some previously unseen crack in the depths of his soul. A new kind of fear and dread he’d never felt before.

  “We need to get back out there,” he quietly said, standing and fastening his shorts.

  This was wrong…sooo fucking wrong, on so many levels.

  I should have had more control. I should have made him sit down and talk to me.

  He grabbed his shirt from where it’d landed on the floor and pulled it on, hurrying toward the door.

  “Master, please,” Jonah said, pulling Gordon up short, like a noose around his heart.

  He refused to look back. He’d been hired to do a job, a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity for someone like him. Maybe Jonah was used to working with celebrities, but Gordon wasn’t.

  He couldn’t afford to fuck this up.

  He closed his eyes. “We can’t do this again,” he said, squeezing back tears. “Not until after the tour’s over. Then…then we can talk. I can’t lose you a second time and survive it.”

  Not and stay sober.

  And he absolutely could not fuck that up.

  “You won’t lose me, Master. I swear.” He heard the rustle of Jonah climbing out of bed, but that only spurred Gordon across the bedroom and toward the door.

  “Please don’t call me that right now,” he said before slipping out and gently closing it behind him.

  It took him everything he had not to break into a run. He ducked into a powder room he’d spotted on the walk inside, near the hallway that led back to the studio. There, he locked himself in and turned on the sink, staring into the mirror before splashing water on his face.

  What the hell did I just do? I should not have done that. Any of that.

  For all he knew, Jonah could be a liar, or desperate for…

  He realized this was exactly the scenario he’d always secretly dreamed of. For Jonah to show up, allow him to apologize and take him back, happily ever after to follow.

  Now that he had it, he realized how…wrong it was.

  Actions, not words.

  Jonah was going to have to prove to him that he meant it, that he wanted to come back and stay this time.

  Because that was the other part, wasn’t it? No way in hell was Gordon going to give up the life he’d slowly started clawing out for himself in the wake of the destruction. He’d just started to feel like he was back on an even keel.

  The old agony he was familiar with was better than a fresh and strange hell he didn’t know and wasn’t sure he could survive.

  He finally emerged from the powder room and found Jonah back in the green room with the others. So Gordon did what he’d been so good at doing—pasted a smile on his face, started talking to his new coworkers…oh, and tried not to faint that, yes, he was going to be working with Mevi Maynard.

  After pizza, Bonnie and Mevi—Mal, he kept correcting himself—went over their notes about their schedule. They’d be taking Gordon’s teaching schedule into account, and he’d already arranged with a couple of friends of his to take over his scheduled gigs at the coffeeshop for the next month. They were more than happy to oblige him. Meant more money in their pockets for a little while, and he’d get to keep his regular slot once he was finished with this.

  Because Gordon was under no illusions that any of this was permanent. It was temporary, and could just as easily vanish tomorrow, leaving him there with his life.

  It was a lesson he’d forgotten once, and he wouldn’t forget it again.

  Chapter Nine

  Jonah wished he could drag Gordon out of the green room and make love to him again. If he could get him in bed, he could get him to listen.

  That was one place where they’d never had trouble communicating. That, and while playing together.

  The two of them, it was more like two hands playing one instrument than two people playing different ones, that’s how seamless their duets had always sounded.

  He’d been an idiot to think any differently, to believe he could have ever truly succeeded without Gordon at his side.

  He’d wanted to follow Gordon outside to his car when he went to get his instruments, but Doyle caught his eye and gave him a little shake of his head, and instead slipped out the door after Gordon.

  Maybe that was for the best. A third-party—a qualified third-party—to talk to him.

  Jonah had already confessed to Doyle. Maybe Doyle could help Gordon understand Jonah wasn’t playing him.

  Jonah moved into studio one and set up his Ibanez and amp, started tuning it. As the others moved into the studio, Mal grabbed his acoustic.

  “Oh, hey, get your mandolin.”

  Jonah swapped out the Ibanez for it and, with Mal leading on guitar, played the song for Rich and the others. Gordon returned at the tail end of it, freezing as he walked through the door and spotted the mandolin in Jonah’s hands.

  Maybe something can convince him I mean what I say.

  When they finished the song, everyone else broke into applause. Rich patted Jonah on the shoulder. “Dude, that’s perfect. Man, if we could hone that before we leave, we could debut it at the concerts for the acoustic set.”

  “That’s what I was thinking,” Mevi said. “It’s perfect. And now I can finish the lyrics, since we’ve nailed down the feel of it.”

  Everyone was still setting up, tuning, or shuffling sheet music around when Jonah had another idea. He swapped back to the Ibanez and turned down his amp so it wasn’t drowning out conversation-level talking. He started playing “Cavatina,” his gaze focused on Gordon, who was now set up on the other side of the room.

  Come on, Master. Play with me. You know you want to.

  He started slowly, watching Gordon.

  Praying.

  He started picking up the tempo a little, still hoping Gordon would join him. It took another couple of bars, but finally, he did.

  Jonah blin
ked back tears as he played, trying to will Gordon to just look at him.

  But Gordon wouldn’t. He kept his focus on his guitar, playing the duet the way they used to. Sure, it wasn’t a classical guitar Gordon was playing, but on his old Martin, it still sounded beautiful, rich.

  The others fell silent, watching them, listening, the old call-and-answer sections they’d always included in the piece, their custom addition. Jonah naturally fell into the harmony while Gordon continued in the original melody as it was written, before their next bit of customization.

  The song had been theirs. Whenever they played together, if it was a gig where they could play classical, they always included this number.

  Always.

  It was the number they’d perfected on the old patio balcony at that shitty apartment, an apartment that was like a luxury suite compared to what he’d been living in the past couple of years.

  An apartment he’d crawl through broken glass to live in again, if he could live there with Gordon.

  When they finished, they received a loud round of applause from everyone.

  Mal stepped forward. “Guys, we have got to include that in the show. That was…that was amazing!”

  “You guys still have it,” Rich said. “I forgot how brilliant you two are together.”

  “I can’t,” Gordon said, still not looking Jonah in the eyes. “I can’t leave my teaching job. I’m sorry. And I’ve got some other big events coming up that I’m playing that I can’t cancel.”

  “Bummer,” Mal said. “Before we head out on tour, though, we need to get the promo team in here to film you two playing that. We can post a video on YouTube. It’ll go viral. That was just…that was fantastic.”

  * * * *

  There was sooo much freaking irony, Gordon supposed, that a man like Mevi Maynard was awestruck over what he’d just played. Until an hour or so ago, Gordon would have felt flattered and said it was one of the happiest and most professionally successful and satisfying moments of his life.

  All he could think about right now, though, was the man standing on the other side of the room with the strap to the Ibanez slung around his shoulders.