“Don’t want me to leave?” Alec questioned playfully. Key’s response was swift as he pushed off the built-in barstool inside the swimming pool with his glass still in hand. He waded over to the oversized pool float, hopped onto it while somehow maintaining control of his drink, and put his glass in the cup holder, all while ignoring Alec completely. Like before, Alec pulled himself up from behind the in-pool bar and followed on the outside edge of the pool before dropping down to sit on the side closest to Key.
=?=
“I don’t need anybody,” Keyes blurted with his head and his heart in the midst of a fierce battle. He had to hang on to some fucking perspective where Alec Pierce was concerned before the daily turmoil between what he wanted and who he was as a man imploded in on him.
“I know you don’t.” Alec nodded in his reassuring and encouraging way—a way that instantly calmed Keyes and, at the same time, freaked his shit out.
Where Keyes had never been any good at reading people before, he was weirdly learning Alec. There was no question, he genuinely liked all the sides to this man, but what threw him off the most was his innate craving for Alec. His man gave him a sense of safety and acceptance—two things he’d never fully understood before meeting Alec. More than that, he never scared or offended Alec. Alec nurtured growth inside him, luring Keyes past his comfort zone. Alec had him tossing caution aside as if he wasn’t already balancing on the edge of sanity.
Oh hell, what did that mean?
Every single one of Keyes’s life-learned internal defense mechanisms slammed into place at the implication he refused to acknowledge. He’d mastered long ago how to protect himself, physically and emotionally. At the same time, Keyes felt compelled to comfort Alec who appeared to be deflating in front of him. His guy gallantly tried to hide his hurt feelings behind his pretty but fake smile that slid into place.
This right here was their common ground—what made them more alike than Keyes had ever been willing to admit before. They hid. Alec behind his tailored suits and Keyes behind his gruff tattooed exterior.
Luckily, his sunglasses were in place as he rolled his eyes and lifted his glass for a gulp of the Grey Goose. He hid his smile at the hilarity of the idea that he and Alec were anything other than polar opposites.
“But it doesn’t change that I like you here. I have since I pulled down the driveway and found you waiting that first night.” Alec’s direct stare didn’t falter as he stared Keyes straight in the eyes. No one but Devilman and Clyde ever looked him straight in the eyes. He liked that shit a lot.
“It still feels weird to be here with you like this,” he muttered, leaning his head back against the raft, kicking his foot through the water in such a way he stayed facing Alec and drifted closer.
“I’m sorry you feel that way.” This time he lost Alec’s stare as the man looked down into the swimming pool, watching the rippling water set in motion by Keyes’s foot. His heart ached again at the pain he picked up from Alec. It was just all the words. Alec was smart and focused, but when he got on this subject, this need to define them, he talked more and it freaked him out. “What we’re doing feels right to me.”
“I wish you wouldn’t say things like that,” he said, using his foot to splash water across Alec’s tanned body. Alec’s gaze lifted, shock on his handsome face, and he kicked his foot from his seated position on the side of the pool, dousing Keyes with way more water than he had managed.
“I’m sorry you feel that way, too!” Alec said and splashed him again. Keyes shoved away from the edge as Alec dropped back into the swimming pool, coming after him. Alec swam to the side of the raft, tugged Keyes partly into the water as he hoisted his arms over the side of the raft, crossing them to better float alongside with Keyes.
“Can’t we just not say things? I’m here. You’re here. We’re here.” Keyes got they were more than what he acted like, but it just helped him not to say it out loud.
“You know that’s doubtful, right? I’m a trained communicator. As much as you stay silent, I must speak. I like conversation. I like clarity. And all this is getting too much to keep inside. By nature of our relationship, I can’t tell anyone about you, so I only have you to talk to.” Alec was seriously too beautiful for words. And, man, Keyes did like those particular words, which somehow seemed to add to their deeper level of relationship. This secret they shared brought them much closer. Keyes studied Alec, lifting his hand, brushing dried strands of hair off Alec’s forehead before turning up the glass of vodka and draining the contents in two hearty gulps.