The Flame by Christopher Rice Read Free Book Online Page B

Golden Girls , and suddenly the supple curve of her bare foot had seemed so inviting he dragged one finger across it.
    When she squealed and drove her body back against his, something about her vulnerability and frenzied pleasure had started an engine inside of him, an engine that drove him to take her in his arms and flip her onto her back. But once he got her there, once he had her squealing and panting and trying to bat his hands away, a voice in his head had said, Stop . The same voice he’d heard that day freshman year of high school, when the sight of Brent Parker running sprints on the football field, his tan skin glistening with sweat, had made Shane feel hungry and tingly and sad all at the same time, a voice that had said, It’s wrong. You don’t like any of the names for that feeling. So quit it!
    Years later, he didn’t release Cassidy as quickly as he’d looked away from Brent Parker that day. But Shane had been just as startled, just as frightened. It felt like he’d stumbled across a deeper current of desire. But that wasn’t right either; it had swept him up without warning. There were unexpected consequences to touching Cassidy in certain ways. How could that be? There was more there, it seemed. And he thought he’d reached a point in his life where if it seemed like there was more there with someone, you leaned into it, you didn’t pull away. But this was Cassidy. This was different.
    “Order a drink,” Samantha says and slams her own down onto the table to get his attention back.
    “I don’t drink during the week.”
    “Start. It’ll clear your head.”
    “Is this your way of apologizing?”
    “For what?”
    “For accusing me of trying to break up my best friend’s marriage.”
    Samantha rolls her eyes, lifts a bite of shrimp to her mouth and chews delicately while she considers her response.
    Shane’s appetite has yet to return.
    “You remember Jonathan Claiborne? Used to be a waiter here?”
    “Of course I do.”
    “You hooked up with him, didn’t you?”
    “I did.”
    In the past, Shane would have enjoyed remembering his no-strings-attached assignation with one of the hottest guys in New Orleans. Jonathan’s smooth, rock-hard body bearing down on his, the man’s skillful tongue swirling down the length of Shane’s cock, suckling his balls before tickling the edge of his taint while he looked up to gauge the depth of Shane’s blissful response with a broad, bright-eyed smile. But now these lustful remembrances do nothing to lighten Shane’s current mood.
    Or maybe it’s something else, he wonders.
    When compared to the raw passion he unleashed with Cassidy and Andrew, his hookup with a notorious local hottie seems sort of sweet, but not all that appetizing. Like taking a bite of hard candy and realizing you’re chewing more plastic wrap than sugar.
    “He’s missing,” Samantha announces.
    “Jonathan?”
    “Yep. No one’s heard from him for weeks.”
    “I thought he quit.”
    “He did and rumor has it he got another job. As a call boy.”
    “Are you joking?”
    “Nope. Quits his job here, starts selling what he’s got, suddenly no one knows where he is.”
    “And you think something bad happened to him?”
    “I think he needed to be special . I think it wasn’t enough for him to just be gorgeous and get up every morning and go to work. He had to wring every last dollar out of what God gave him because being Jonathan Claiborne wasn’t enough. He had to go turn himself into the spice in someone’s cocktail. And now who knows what happened to him ‘cause of it?”
    “You’re losing me here, Sam.”
    “Fine. Let me put it this way. I didn’t transition so that I could be some magical drag queen people hire for parties. I wanted a foundation of truth under me, Shane. And you deserve the same. What is it those two call you again? The twist of lemon in their Diet Coke?”
    Those two, he wants to say. These are my best friends we’re talking about. But instead