Free Whatever the Cost by Lynn Kelling Page B

forcefully.
    “So, you’re going to punish me for this? By shutting me out? That’s not fair. This isn’t my fault!”
    “I’m not,” Liam starts, then closes his eyes and takes a breath, lowering his volume with effort. “I’m not punishing you. I just don’t know how to do this as your friend.”
    “It needs to be a game, doesn’t it? Or an act? Like with Leah?”
    Tugging absent-mindedly at the edge of his shirt, shoulders hunched, Liam seems to try to get smaller, to shrink in on himself.
    “Okay,” Jacen says slowly. “I’ll be your client. For this, I’ll be your client. But you’re my best friend, Liam. I refuse to give you up over this. You hear me?”
    Liam turns his face away, covering his mouth with a hand, the elbow braced on the desk.
    “Will you come downstairs and have some dinner with me? There’s a small chance I’ll even let you toss my salad.”
    Laughter is surprised out of Liam at this, but it quickly turns into a shaky, pained whimper.
    “Liam....”
    “No. I’m sorry. I can’t. I just... I can’t.” Liam pushes past him, almost running to his room and slamming the door violently shut behind him.
    Jacen reels, fists balled up at his sides. He pounds them against the wall and presses his forehead against the drywall, letting out a wrenching cry of frustration and anguish. Not once for the rest of the night does he see Liam. Dinner is made quietly, on his own. The house is still and the air eerily thick around him as he sits by himself at the table, picking at his food, listening to the clink and clatter of his fork against the china.
    The two friends remain close in proximity but separate all that night and the next day, too. In the morning, Liam slips out, headed to Amé and Jacen’s stomach flips at the realization that he’s going partially to get ready for him, that in only a few hours, Jacen will have Liam, naked, willing, begging, underneath him, to be touched, sucked and tasted, explored and adored. Jittery with his own nervous energy, Jacen goes out for a run after doing his daily exercise routine in the small gym set up in their garage with his set of weights and weight bench. He runs for miles, coming back purged, feeling better for it, steadier, ready. Liam is back in his room, closeted away. Time ticks by, sometimes fast, sometimes slow, but ever forward, carrying them both toward the inevitable—the moment that will change everything for them, forever.

    Jacen and Liam drive to their job separately, in their own vehicles, leaving the house at different times. The messages received from Della directed Jacen to be there a half-hour before Liam, at eight in the evening rather than eight-thirty. But they wouldn’t have driven over together anyway. Liam’s psyche wouldn’t be able to bear it, driving to a strange house with his friend, knowing they were only going there to fuck for someone else’s amusement and about a grand extra in their bank accounts.
    Or maybe it won’t have to go that far. The text from Della implied that Claudia was expecting oral, and not more than that, but Liam knows that things can go any which way once they start. It’s best to be prepared for everything. That’s a lesson learned the hard way for him, after a number of overly eccentric paying clients with decidedly kinky tastes. Say they want one thing over the phone, ask for another in person, promising more money,
lots
more money, if only—
    At about seven o’clock Liam stops being ‘Liam’. He shifts into the character of a shy, straight-acting jock, who’s meeting a hot guy for sex. All he knows about the hot guy is that he’s the favorite of a rich woman on the east side of town; that she pampers him and spoils him with gifts and favors. Wanting to be with this guy, he’s also freaked about it, about what it’ll feel like to have a man’s mouth busy between his legs, licking, kissing, sucking, while
she
is there, seeing everything, maybe instructing the man to do this or