The Innocence Series: Complete Bundle Read online

  Or why it felt so nice to have Ben’s hands on his shoulders, where they still rested, warm enough that he felt it even through his clothes. Maybe Isaac should be angry, with Hank’s hands still on him, but instead, he found that he couldn’t stop staring into those determined green eyes, fascinated by the intensity of them, the pure beauty.

  “Hank, get out,” Ben said, and the strangest little shiver of something which Isaac didn’t understand, something which danced like lightning along his nerves and arched through his whole body. “We don’t tolerate this sort of bullshit here.”

  “Come on, Ben,” Hank protested, and Isaac let out a soft sigh of pure relief as he felt the other man’s hands leave his body. “He could have just danced with me.”

  As he kept complaining, Ben seemed to loom larger and larger over him, and Isaac looked over his shoulder in wonder. Hank was still speaking. How would anyone dare to keep complaining when Ben was so obviously getting more and more angry?

  “Out,” Ben growled, and something about the tone of his voice or the gleam of threat in his eyes finally seemed to get through to Hank, as drunk as he was. Grumbling, the man turned to leave, and Isaac felt his shoulders relax, releasing tension that he hadn’t even known that he was holding.

  He’d never had someone put their hands on him like that, and now that it was over, he found himself sort of amazed by the whole thing. His whole life, no one, at least to his knowledge, had wanted to dance with him. And no one had ever defended him like Ben had.

  “Thank you,” Isaac murmured, turning away from the sharp retort of the slamming door. This Hank, he thought, was not going to be a huge fan of him for a while. Well, honestly, the sensation was mutual. To say Hank was pushy was a pretty huge understatement.

  “No problem. He’s a dick,” Ben spoke offhandedly like this whole thing was no big deal, and that struck Isaac as a little sad. This wasn’t the first time Ben had had to kick someone out. He could tell that just as clearly from Ben’s eyes as if the man had actually spoken the words.

  They sat in silence, and Isaac sipped at the drink, which was really quite tasty. Slowly, in pairs or singly, the other men in the bar left. There were no women. None at all, and Isaac had to wonder just what his father would say if he knew that he was in a gay bar. Or worse, that there was one so close to his church. How many members of his father’s congregation had come here?

  “Last call,” Ben finally broke the silence, and it was silent. The jukebox had run quiet, and Ben had turned the televisions off. It was, Isaac realized, just him and Ben in this one room, him alone with a man who Isaac was certain he would be told was dangerous.

  “I should go,” Isaac realized, slipping off of the bar stool and collecting his trench coat. He’d been in here for hours, and his coat was almost dry again. It was a pity that the rain would soon soak it through again. Unless it had stopped, but with the luck he was having, that didn’t seem the most likely option.

  “Do you live close?” Ben asked as he busied himself with tidying up the bar. “There’s supposed to be a thunderstorm tonight.”

  “No,” Isaac answered honestly. “But I can sleep in my car.” As odd as it was to think it, it would probably be more comfortable for him in his car than in the church, where he’d have to find a chair and prop himself up, probably waking up with a sore back and neck from the awkward position.

  For a moment, Ben just looked at Isaac, his eyes holding Isaac captive until he couldn’t move and also sort of felt like he couldn’t breathe. There was a curious intensity to that look, and Isaac found himself shifting back and forth, swallowing nervously as Ben thought something through.

  “Look, I don’t do this, but …” Ben took a deep breath, then let it out all at once. “Come home with me. I just live down the block a bit. You can sleep on my couch.”

  It was an extraordinary offer. Through the years, Isaac had learned to expect kindness from members of his father’s congregation, but not from strangers. It was a surprise, and he considered it very carefully.

  He knew what his parents would say. He should pray for Ben, that he would renounce his sinful lifestyle. He should have compassion for him, but not leave himself vulnerable to his wicked influence.

  But Ben had helped him, had protected him, and Isaac couldn’t help but trust him because of that. Besides, there was something in Ben’s eyes which seemed kind to him, and more than that, there wasn’t a couch in the world so uncomfortable that it would be worse than spending the night in his cold, drafty car.

  “If that’s a real offer,” Isaac could tell that he surprised Ben almost as much as he surprised himself with this, “Then I’ll take you up on it. Thank you.”

  THREE

  For all he knew, he’d just invited a serial killer or something home with him. But what else was he supposed to do? Leave the poor man to sleep in a broken car? Or all alone in a creepy empty church?

  No way. There was such a thing as right and wrong, and anyway, Ben had taken risks like this before. True, it had always been for sex before, but he was a big guy, and when he looked at Isaac, he was pretty sure he could take him if it came down to it.

  Not that it would. Ben had this sense about people sometimes, something sort of like an instinct that told him if he could trust someone or not. It was a useful thing for a bartender to have, and that instinct was telling him that he shouldn’t be afraid of Isaac.

  Afraid for him, maybe.

  The guy was adorable, and he had no idea. At all. No wonder Hank had been drawn to him. Ben felt that same draw, and it took him awhile to understand what it was about Isaac that had Ben’s full attention, which pulled Ben toward him. It was a sense of innocence. It took him a second to recognize it.

  It wasn’t something that Ben was used to seeing, and when it walked right into his bar, he didn’t even get it. Not at first. It wasn’t until he’d seen how Isaac had reacted to Hank that he’d really gotten it.

  There had been a healthy dose of wariness from Isaac, but also curiosity. Like he wasn’t used to this sort of thing. Whatever it was, it was fascinating, and Ben knew he was being drawn like a moth to the flame, but even knowing the danger, he couldn’t help himself.

  “Sorry for the mess,” Ben mumbled, pushing piles of clean clothes—at least he thought they were clean, he couldn’t remember—off of the couch so that Isaac would have someplace to stay. He hadn’t been expecting company, and he did his best to do a speed tidy.

  “Can I help?” Isaac asked, and Ben shook his head, then glanced over at Isaac briefly. Or that was the idea, anyway. Once he was actually looking at him, he found it impossible to look away.

  Isaac was soaking wet, just as Ben was. The rain was coming down harder than ever out there, and there had been flashes of lightning on the horizon, lightning which, if the weatherman could be believed, they could expect to see coming their way overnight.

  How could someone look so appealing when they were soaked through to the skin? Isaac was even shivering a little, and Ben forced his gaze away with what actually did feel like a physical effort. His gaze fell on a towel, which he picked up, surreptitiously sniffed, and decided that it was clean.

  “Here. Take your coat off,” Ben’s voice was gruff as he handed the towel over. “The building has a drier. I can … get your clothes dry, if you want …”

  Which would mean that Isaac would have to take those clothes off?

  The offer had been made with good intentions, but damned if Ben could keep himself from wondering what the other man looked like under those preppy clothes. Not that he should be looking, and he handed Isaac the towel then politely turned away to let the other man take care of it himself. Isaac could decide for himself how stripped down he wanted to get.

  When the soft whisper of clothing being removed had stopped, Ben turned around and almost swore, though he was sure that the curse words he knew would shock the poor pastor’s son far too much. They almost came out anyway, though, when he saw Isaac.

  The
other man was smaller than he’d looked while dressed, but his body was also tighter, more toned and firmed, than Ben would have expected. His skin was smooth, and the muscles were defined beneath it, shimmering with the dampness as though he’d been oiled.

  How much he’d taken off, Ben didn’t know, but the pants, at least, were gone, the bright blue towel making those vivid, sapphire eyes seem almost to glow. With one hand, Isaac held the towel around himself, while the other one held his discarded, sopping wet clothes.

  Without a word, Ben turned and left the room. He went to the bedroom and had a stern talking to with himself as he stripped off his own clothes, all of them, and found his robe.

  This was not a person that Ben should be trying to touch. What would Isaac even say if Ben did try to lay his hands on him? Would he push him away, or preach at him?

  Or, perhaps more terrifying, would Isaac maybe pull Ben to him and touch him back? Would he be receptive to his kisses, if Ben gave them? That was maybe the scariest idea to Ben, that he had the nagging suspicion that Isaac would be willing. There was something in his eyes, something in the set of those full lips.

  Ben had always had a pretty good gaydar, and in this case, it was going off like crazy. Not that he hadn’t gotten false readings before. Not that it mattered, because gay or not, the beautiful man in the other room was not the sort of casual liaison that Ben favored.

  Besides, the guy pretty much screamed virgin at the tops of his lungs, with every single damn movement that he made. Ben had never been with a virgin before, and even on the off chance that Isaac was interested …

  Groaning softly, Ben grabbed his own wet clothes, then walked into the other room and took Isaac’s, too. He even managed not to stare at the other man as he walked by him, even though those shoulders were much broader than he would have thought, and the towel had slipped down to reveal a fair bit of bare, tight, toned chest, two beautiful little pinkish brown nipples hardened from the rain.

  How was he going to sleep at all, knowing that this man was in his house? This man that, for so many good, amazing reasons, he couldn’t have? He growled as he went down to the building’s laundry room, pumped the coins which he kept in the pocket of his robe for just such a purpose into the drier, and packed their clothing in.

  When he came back, he was a little bit calmer. A little. Enough that he probably wouldn’t do anything too terribly stupid, though that wasn’t by any means a sure thing.

  Isaac was still standing there awkwardly in the middle of his living room, clutching to the towel as if for dear life.

  “Uh, you can sit.” Ben grabbed a throw blanket from where it had been tossed haphazardly over the back of his couch and crossed the floor so that he could hand it gingerly to Isaac. Despite his care, his fingers brushed over the other man’s, and the shock that went through him, radiating out from the very tips of his fingers up his arm and through his whole body, thrilled Ben more than far more intimate touches had done.

  What was it about this man? Was it just that Ben couldn’t have him? That had to be it, though there had been men who had been off-limits to him before, and none of them had ever gotten to him like this before.

  Isaac looked at him, then blushed and glanced down. God, a man who blushed. The people Ben usually surrounded himself with would never blush, were far too jaded to do anything so sweet and innocent. Ben included. Was Isaac really, seriously blushing because of that light touch?

  Come to think of it, though, maybe it was just the warmth in here. It had been chilly outside, but Ben wasn’t feeling cold at all anymore.

  Quietly, they moved toward the couch together, while Ben tried to tell himself that he wasn’t looking at those impossibly full, beautiful lips. He wasn’t imagining what they’d feel like under his own. What noise Isaac might make for him as they kissed. Surprised, probably, but not dismayed, he thought.

  Those eyes, would they darken with arousal? Ben’s experience had him thinking that eyes of that rare, remarkable shade of blue would go dark, like the twilight sky. Not something he should be thinking about, but now that he had, it wouldn’t get out of his mind.

  “You still cold?” Ben asked, very aware of the smaller man by his side, the way that his shoulder brushed against Ben’s arm. It really wasn’t a very big couch, and they were sitting right up against each other.

  Isaac nodded, and Ben hesitated, then wrapped an arm around the small, chilly body beside him, pulling him close against himself. Isaac was the perfect height so that his head could rest against Ben’s chest, and what really struck Ben was how it felt like they belonged like that somehow.

  It was a strange flight of fancy and not the type which Ben was used to giving into or to even having at all. Romance was fine, for other people, but the way it felt to have that beautiful, sexy, half-naked little body pressed against him, it did things to his heart rather than just his dick.

  “So what’s your story?” Ben asked, forcing his mind away from the sweetness of their bodies pressed together, how his own body, if he didn’t distract himself, could have some reactions which the robe he wore would not be enough to hide. “You have to sleep in the church or your car? Seems a bit intense.”

  Isaac shrugged, which Ben felt more than saw. He eyed the top of Isaac’s dark head, finding himself stupidly tempted to drop a kiss on the damp hair, a gesture of intimacy that Ben didn’t usually do even with people he was sleeping with. Maybe especially with those people.

  Still, it might help him to get laid. If he was going this far away from his normal type as he clearly was, it couldn’t hurt to release some tension that way. Let’s see. It had been, what? Six months, at least, since the last time Ben had picked someone up or let himself be picked up. Six months. That was just stupid.

  There had been offers, so why had it been so long? Ben shook his head as he looked down at the top of Isaac’s head, at the shape of his nose and his chin. He had this utterly adorable little heart-shaped face, and it was becoming more and more difficult to pull his gaze away from it.

  “My car is pretty old, I guess. It breaks down. Normally I would just walk home, but it was pouring rain, so my dad thought I should stay at the church,” Isaac admitted.

  The words were simple, but there were things that he didn’t say in them, too. Things that Ben read in his tone, rather than his actual words. This man still lived at home, didn’t he?

  Way, way too young and innocent for Ben, he told himself firmly and put the matter firmly out of his mind. He even managed to keep it out until the moment when Isaac raised his head suddenly, and their lips were less than a quarter of an inch apart, close enough that Ben could feel Isaac’s hot breath against his mouth.

  FOUR

  It was a cliché, the whole deal with time standing still, and Isaac had always felt like it was sort of a stupid one. He’d never, in his entire life, felt anything like that before. Time could slow down sometimes, like when he was bored, or speed up when he was having a good time, but even subjectively he had never actually thought that time could stop marching onward at all.

  Until the night when the storm had brought him to seek refuge with a stranger. Until the night when he took a risk unlike anything he’d ever taken before and found himself face to face with the most beautiful, attractive person that he’d ever seen.

  He had always known what was right and what was wrong, and he had never been tempted much to sin. The right thing to do was to wait until marriage, and it had never seemed all that difficult for him to do. People who seemed to trip and fall into situations where they ended up behaving badly had never made any sense to him because he’d never felt these temptations himself.

  His parents were proud of him for going all the way through his teens and even into his early twenties with no scandals to speak of. No young women pregnant. No rushed marriages. Not even the slightest hint of anything that would make even the most conservative member of his church clutch at their pearls in dismay.

  Now, he found himself wonde
ring if there wasn’t a very good reason that he had never been tempted to do anything with a woman. If maybe, the whole time all of his friends in the church had been hooking up with pretty girls, he hadn’t been at risk for going a different way.

  Ben was so beautiful. Far more lovely than any girl he’d ever seen, or any boy, either, for that matter, though he wasn’t really used to allowing himself to think about other men that way. He could get lost forever in those eyes, so round and bright and with eyelashes that a supermodel would envy.

  Isaac had never kissed anyone before, but as his eyes met Ben’s, as he realized just how close they were, cuddled on the couch, and how perfect their bodies seemed to fit together, he found that he was trembling and in a way which had nothing to do with the cold.

  “… Isaac,” Ben whispered, and Isaac could swear that Ben felt something, too. For one moment, it didn’t matter to Isaac at all that Ben wasn’t a member of his church and that Isaac’s parents would doubtlessly not approve. It didn’t even matter to him that Ben was a man and a bartender at what had obviously been a gay bar.

  The fact that this couldn’t happen, that it was unthinkable, didn’t stop it from happening. For a long, long moment, the tension built between them, rising up in that tiny amount of space between them which seemed to tingle with an electric charge, until Isaac could almost swear that he actually saw it, crackling and sparking between them.

  Ben swallowed, his Adam’s apple bobbing, and the tip of his pink tongue came out to wet his full lips in a gesture that ended up being too much for Isaac to take.

  The really shocking thing was how easy it was to throw away the habits of a lifetime, the morality, and close that last little bit of space which lingered between them. He didn’t so much cross the distance as he did eradicate it, leaning in with his heart hammering in his chest so hard that he could hear his pulse in his ears, feel it along the entire length of his neck and throat, and sense it even on the back of his tongue.