Free Double Heat [Twin Ties: 3] by Lynn Kelling Page A

you, too.”
    “You don’t have anything to worry about, you know. We’ll take care of you. Always.”
    “I can take care of you, too, you know,” Evan smirked, feeling momentarily brave.
    “Mm, love how you take care of me,” Alek agreed.

Chapter 8
Keeping Secrets
    Come morning, Evan was too sore to get up when his alarm went off, so he slept in. By the time he did get up, his side and his ass felt a little better and moving was easier. The apartment was quiet. It was late enough that Alek and Luka had already left for work and Brennan was away at class. Evan did some stretching exercises, poured himself a huge thermos of coffee and headed over to Mike’s Garage to at least get a half-day’s work in.
    His tardiness got him a stern talking to from Mike, who reminded Evan that he needed to call if he couldn’t make it. Evan noticed Mike was looking him up and down, maybe reading into the stiff way Evan was walking or the guilt in his eyes. All of the guys had started doing it, since Evan refused to talk about why he’d been out for medical reasons for so long, then stuck on desk duty until he was completely recovered. The quieter Evan became, the less the other employees talked to him. But there was nothing Evan could do about it. He wasn’t about to come out to them or tell them anything that was likely to get his ass kicked again.
    But it did make him feel lonely. That feeling of having things building up inside him hit again. The desire to confess or purge his concerns to a safe audience was overwhelming. He could call Jimmy, but knew Jimmy wouldn’t be able to relate to the real reasons why Evan was mentally weighed down. He couldn’t talk to Charlie, his father, about it either; not without provoking unneeded concern that Charlie was too many hundreds of miles away to do anything about.
    Evan had a lifetime of experience at getting used to not talking about sex. It had started five years ago, when he was thirteen, and he’d first let a grown man, who was many, many years older than him, touch him. It had been the first time Evan had realized the desire he felt for other guys rather than girls was acceptable. He finally saw he wasn’t the only one who felt that way.
    That realization had been a relief. He’d been complacent, letting his father’s buddy slip his large, calloused hand inside Evan’s underpants to play with his cock and balls while Charlie had been out of the house. It had felt nice, but it had been scary. The man—Drew Lahner—had been so much older, so much bigger than him. As soon as Drew’s hand went inside Evan’s underwear, each time it happened, a queasy tickle would form in Evan’s belly.
    That wasn’t all Drew had done to Evan, though. Drew had a streak of voyeurism in him, and a raging kink for anything that left Evan feeling wildly uncomfortable and questioning himself. No matter what they did together, Drew always had a way of talking Evan through it, keeping him calm, explaining away most of Evan’s uncertainty. Mostly, Evan had kept his eyes and mouth shut and stayed in whatever position Drew put him in, letting it happen and trying to get off on it as much as he could. He knew he was doing something he couldn’t tell anyone else about, but it felt too good to stop.
    And it kept happening. Drew was there when no one else was, showing Evan he didn’t have to be so alone all the time, talking about how his day was going, making him laugh and feel like there were people in his life who cared what was going on with him. Evan had always thought of Drew, fondly, as his first boyfriend, though a secret one he knew no one else could ever find out about. Sure, aspects of how they’d started to screw around worried Evan, but just like with his current worries about Alek and Luka, he was always able to reason them away.
    Even the way Evan had met Alek had been a result of Evan’s ability to recognize an older man’s sexual interest in him. After making a few subtle moves of