Wylde by Jan Irving

kiss me like some kind of goddamned wild man!” Noah stated, looking pissy. The soft, cloudy look that he’d worn directly after Kell had kissed him cleared, and the familiar snap was back in his affronted gray eyes.
    “Wild man, huh?” Kell bit his lips before continuing, focusing on Noah. “Baby,” Kell said in a deep, husky voice, his erection throbbing hungrily under the sheets, “I’m sorry if I scared you. I just had to be inside you.”
Noah jumped off the bed. “I told you I wasn’t—”
     
Kell raised a hand, getting pissy himself. “You rang my gaydar from the minute I met you, so don’t give me that shit.”
    “My… reticence is not shit! And I also don’t appreciate being manhandled. When I date someone, I expect things to be… different.”
    Kell could see his eyes take on a familiar predatory gleam in the mirror opposite the bed. He carefully veiled them from Noah with his eyelashes, since he was already in hot water. “So what do you expect when you date someone?”
    “I….” Noah looked thrown for a moment by Kell’s calm question, but then his mouth tightened. “Well… we might attend social functions together. Visit the theater. Go to an art gallery viewing. We’d eat together. Talk about books we’ve read and places we’ve traveled.”
    Kell chewed his lip. “Huh. Last thing I read was Lightning by Dean Koontz. Places I’ve traveled I’m still not allowed to talk about. The only theater in town is at the high school. But I could take you to a movie and for a meal at the diner.”
Noah huffed out a disbelieving laugh. “You’re actually asking me out on a date? Are you for real?”
    “Yep,” Kell said.
“Kell, I will not play Jane to your Tarzan!”
Kell smiled. “I don’t want Jane. I want you.”
    “Dad, how come you’re growling at the Chief?” Josh interrupted, walking in and rubbing sleepy eyes. Bright late afternoon sunlight illuminated his tousled hair as he looked from one man to the other, as if feeling the tension pulsing between them.
Noah swallowed, giving Kell a warning look.
    Kell’s mouth flattened in a grim line. Did Noah think he was going to push the come-on with a kid in the room? He sat on his temper, knowing he’d have to show who he was to the wary Noah. “Your dad was just a little pissed at me for something I did,” Kell told Josh. “How are you feeling? I guess this isn’t the way you imagined moving in would be.”

“O KAY
,
I guess,” Josh said. He noticed his dad was flushed and
    avoiding his gaze. Of course, he’d heard the whole thing: the Chief wanted to date his dad, and his dad was freaking out. He guessed he had to act like a total kid and pretend he didn’t know what was going on or Noah would probably pass out.
    At school in Seattle, Josh’s older best friend had been gay. That was not a big deal. But since it was his dad…. It wasn’t that the Chief was male exactly, it was…. Josh sighed, not sure how he was feeling but embarrassed it might be kind of like a little kid or something, accustomed to having Noah’s attention focused solely on him.
“So, someone made off with some food, your Dad tells me.” Kell’s questioning voice broke into Josh’s thoughts.
    Comfortable with the Chief despite his gruffness, Josh sat down on the corner of the guest bed and put aside his qualms. “Yeah, it was weird. Like, most of our dinner. But it has to be someone who needed it more, right? At least that’s what I think,” he said gravely. “It wasn’t that kid Thomas, was it?”
    “Nope, not him. Just do me a favor and don’t take any hikes in the woods for a while. I think….” The Chief scrubbed his unshaven jaw, and Josh could almost read his thoughts; he didn’t want to scare the city kid. “There’s maybe a bear… or, uh, something in the woods.”
Or something, Josh thought. “I’ll stay around the house. So the Chief is going to take us to a movie? Can we see something cool?”
     
K
ELL didn’t miss how