Stowe Chloe Hard Wood, Soft Heart

Hard Wood, Soft Heart

by Chloe Stowe

Ravenous Romance

www.ravenousromance.com

First published in 2011, 2011

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Hard Wood, Soft Heart

by Chloe Stowe

CONTENTS

Don't miss these other great books by Chloe Stowe!
Chapter One: Driven to Extinction
Chapter Two: Ghost Runners
Chapter Three: Animal Tactics
Chapter Four: Sugarcoated Damnation
Chapter Five: Gentle Obscenity
Chapter Six: Dirty, Little Secret
Chapter Seven: Behind Dusk's Curtain
Chapter Eight: Under the Joshua Tree
Chapter Nine: The Irony of Sirens
Chapter Ten: Between the Polite and the Psychotic
Chapter Eleven: Creosote Bushes and Bearpoppies

* * * *

Hard Wood, Soft Heart

by Chloe Stowe

* * * *

Hard Wood, Soft Heart

By Chloe Stowe

A Ravenous Romance(R) Original Publication

Hard Wood, Soft Heart

by Chloe Stowe

Don't miss these other great books by Chloe Stowe!

Blow Torch

Hard Water

Torched

Barbarian

Taken

Forever Bound

* * * *

[Back to Table of Contents]

Hard Wood, Soft Heart

by Chloe Stowe

A Ravenous Romance(R) Original Publication

www.ravenousromance.com

Copyright (C) 2011 by Chloe Stowe
Ravenous Romance(R)
100 Cummings Center
Suite 123A
Beverly, MA 01915
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be

reproduced in whole or in part without written permission
from the publisher, except by reviewers who may quote brief
excerpts in connection with a review.

ISBN-13: 978-1-60777-451-8
This book is a work of fiction, and any resemblance to

persons living or dead is purely coincidental.

[Back to Table of Contents]

Hard Wood, Soft Heart

by Chloe Stowe

Chapter One: Driven to Extinction

Saul Tidewater stood on the rooftop overlooking Las Vegas

clinging to his heterosexuality by the skin of his teeth. A
colorful concoction of vodka, lime, and some desert flower
he'd never heard of sat clinking in a high ball of ice in his
hand. It was half empty.

"How the hell did that happen?" he wondered briefly to

himself as he poured another ounce of the liquid fire down his
throat. It slid down his gullet with an ease that promised a
stellar hangover in the morning. Thank God he didn't report in
to his new job for another five days. Only two more "Welcome
Aboard" parties to go. He was beginning to think of his first
days in Vegas as an adult version of college hell week. If his
liver survived, the city would open her big arms to him and
welcome him home.

He could only hope that was the case, at least.
He was in need of a new home right about now.
A bevy of female beauties wearing nothing but strings,

heels and diamonds strolled by, eying him up and down like a
piece of prime meat. His dick didn't so much as twitch. He
glanced down at his ungodly priced trousers and thought,
"What the fuck?" When he realized that he was actually
waiting for a reply from his errant penis, Saul cautiously set
the drink down on the railing and backed away slowly.

The truth was rapidly becoming ugly and obvious: Dr. Saul

Tidewater, thirty-two-year-old cardiothoracic surgeon, was
not wired for this kind of lifestyle.

Hard Wood, Soft Heart

by Chloe Stowe

Having grown up on the shores of the South Carolina

coast, Saul was not a man adverse to sand, he just preferred
his attached to an ocean rather than a desert. Even the heat
the newborn Las Vegas summer had already promised him
paled in comparison to the suffocating mugginess of a
southern backwater August. Although he didn't buy for a
second all the crap about this being a dry heat, he honestly
didn't think he'd have any trouble adapting to the triple digits
either.

His sisters had laughed their collective asses off when he

had told them where he was going. One, the youngest and
the brat of the family, had bet that he'd dry up and blow
away before the Fourth of July. "You're a fish," she had
teased while giggling past the last slurps of a Myrtle Beach
snow cone. "You've got gills, big brother. Better hope that
place the hospital's setting you up in has a lap tub."

On day one, he had sent a picture of the Olympic-sized

swimming pool at his condo on the Strip to his dear sister. He
made sure to include the waterslide and swim-up tiki bar just
to bug the shit out of her. He could just imagine her stomping
through their parents' house whining at the top of her
seventeen-year-old lungs, "That's totally not fair." Saul
grinned every time he thought about it.

A part of him wished he was there to laugh at her right

now.

Saul was a family man. With two parents who had been

married since the stone age, three little sisters and one big
sister, and a collection of cousins that would fill a phonebook,

Hard Wood, Soft Heart

by Chloe Stowe

Saul was a soul used to "blood company," as his mother
always called it.

He was alone in Las Vegas.
It was a fact he thanked God for every night.
His divorce from Elise Delgado had been final for seven

months and two days. The fact that he still marked each
passed day off with a smiley face in his desk diary made his
feelings about the end of his marriage quite clear... if it was
only as simple as that.

Lost for the moment in the clusterfuck that had been the

last few years of his life, Saul nearly jumped out of his skin as
a voice rattled off just to his side.

"How's Vegas treating you, kid?" A short, old man, whose

name Saul really, really should know, nudged Saul's hip with
a bony elbow. The man grinned up at Saul with a set of
dentures probably worth more than Saul's first car. "Got to
admit that we throw a hell of a welcome party."

Since it was officially now the third welcome party of the

week, Saul easily conceded the point, "Yes, sir. This is truly
an experience I'll never forget." While swimming with the
dolphins at last night's shindig had really tipped the scales
into the unforgettable category, looking around at the gala
laid out before him tonight, Saul had to admit that even with
the lack of sea life this was pretty damn spectacular, too.

The Las Vegas strip stretched out far below them. Two

spotlights kept crisscrossing in the night sky like the patrons
truly expected Sinatra's ghost to stop by for cocktails and
maybe a quick set on the stage by the pool. The long, sinuous
pool that lazily snaked through the guests really was the star

Hard Wood, Soft Heart

by Chloe Stowe

of the show. Palm trees and all things succulent softened its
curves and hid the occasional steps luring passersby into the
pool's warm, lit waters.

"Well, you enjoy yourself son. Be sure to drop in and see

me next week. I've got my own espresso machine." The old
man leaned in and confided with a wry twist of his mouth,
"That coffee on the third floor will kill you. Can't have you
dying before learning to hate the place." With a wink, the
man weaved himself away.

Dropping his chin to his chest, Saul sighed miserably. He

hated new jobs. Come to think of it, for all the hype about
starting a new life and finding a new home, Saul really hated
new cities too. Just like back in his hellish years of high
school, Saul never found it easy just to slip in with a new
crowd. Hell, he didn't even try more than was absolutely
necessary for his career to "blend in" any more.

Case in point: a good whiff of him just an hour ago would

probably have turned up an aroma of cardboard dust spiced
with drywall. The cologne he had grudgingly dabbed on
himself as he walked out his condo's door hid most of the
home improvement aroma, but there were still the bandages
sprinkled across his appendages. Each Band-Aid and butterfly
bandage was damning evidence of Saul's battles with the box
cutter. Why the hell he had dragged that much crap across
the country had escaped him after unloading the twenty-third
box of things he never even remembered packing. He still
hadn't found most of his clothes yet, which was why his
wrecked heart was currently covered quite handsomely under
a $3,000 tailored suit he'd had to buy his second day in the

Hard Wood, Soft Heart

by Chloe Stowe

city. His favorite old cotton t-shirt with a hole above his right
nipple that he was also wearing proved two things, 1) thank
God he packed his underwear in his suitcase and not a box,
and 2) Saul Tidewater was not planning on getting fucked
tonight.

The wearing of this t-shirt was unfortunately not the only

reason that there would be no sex this fine Las Vegas
evening. The desertion of his dick to "the other side" basically
sealed that deal. It was by no means an unexpected betrayal,
but its timing sure sucked; the amount of beautiful women
wearing hardly anything but skin at this party bordered on
the ridiculous and the pitiful. It was like wasting Mozart on a
deaf man. It was just cruel.

As the sarcastic twist that fate was playing on him tonight

started to dampen his mood and make a night in front of his
television look damn appealing, Saul decided to give that
desert flower drink thing another shot. Just as he turned to
reclaim his abandoned glass of liquid wickedness, movement
beneath the poolside palms caught his eyes.

Saul was lost the moment he stopped and stared.
A long, lithe and very male figure of golden skin and rich

brown eyes stepped out of the pool. He was wearing only a
pair of soaked trousers that clung to him like a second skin,
leaving nothing to the imagination. A table off to the side held
his dry, crisp white shirt and his shoes. The devil-may-care
grin he gifted to the waiter handing him a towel left Saul
speechless and in a desperate case of lustful need.

The man's hair was blond, the color of sun kissed sand, his

lips were the same shade of flushed pink as his hardened

Hard Wood, Soft Heart

by Chloe Stowe

nipples, and his dimples were sinful. Saul found himself
grinning just looking at the man. He was a little shorter than
Saul's 6'2" frame but carried a good deal more finely
delineated muscle around on those perfectly proportioned
bones than most.

Saul nearly swallowed his tongue as the stranger bent over

and shook his head. All the extraneous droplets of chlorinated
water flew from him in some kind of slow motion that surely
signaled that Saul was having a stroke.

No way in hell was Saul looking away, however.
All the little twitches and nudges of interest his penis had

shown throughout the night whenever a nice looking man
would stroll by, now joined together into a monumental
hardening swell that was threatening to drop Saul down to his
knees right there. Fumbling for the back of a gratefully
nearby chair, Saul clung to its frame like a boy hanging on to
his mother's apron strings.

He slammed his eyes shut, pleading with his blood to

abandon its southern folly and return to his brain. "Come on!
Come on!" he mumbled to himself as he forced his breaths to
remain deep and relatively steady. He was a grown man, for
God's sake. Puberty had left enough of its own scars the first
time around. This gay epiphany/second puberty he had
recently been experiencing sure as hell wasn't going to take
him out... at least not here in public in a sea of colleagues
and hospital board administrators.

No way.
No how.

Hard Wood, Soft Heart

by Chloe Stowe

"Are you alright, man?" A deep voice coarsened by bits of

latent though promised fire slipped roughly into Saul's ear.

Saul gulped down what might very well have been a mewl.
The sturdy and still damp hand to his shoulder did not

help.

"Hey? You need to sit down?"
To Saul's horror the man did not wait for an answer. He

simply started manhandling him around to the front of the
chair. Wet hands were everywhere and touching everything.
Saul cracked open his eyes to see if the whole world was on
fire or if it was just him.

Maybe, just maybe, mid-life gay puberty really shouldn't

be mixed with vodka, lime, and desert flower crap.

He was sitting down now. It would have been a painful

position considering his bursting through the zipper condition
if his dick hadn't deflated just a smidge with his utter
humiliation. His situation, however, was still quite noticeable.
Reaching out blindly he grabbed the man's towel that had
been slung over the naked shoulder. Saul bundled it up in a
ball and placed it strategically on his lap with as much
decorum as a man in his state could hope for.

"You're going to get your pants wet," the man commented

with a barely suppressed laugh.

"Not my biggest concern right now," Saul snapped as he

wished really hard to die.

"Hold on a second," the gravelly-tongued voice was riding

low again and the hand was back on his shoulder, this time
patting it before disappearing all together. As the bare feet
slapping on the cement moved away, Saul seriously

Hard Wood, Soft Heart

by Chloe Stowe

considered making a break for it. People had survived fifteen
story falls before. Hey, if he was really lucky, he'd hit the
awning over the hotel's front entrance and bounce around a
little before going splat altogether.

The bare feet were back. Damn this man and his wet toes.
Suddenly, the towel was swiped from him. A neatly folded,

white linen shirt quickly replaced it. Saul looked down at his
lap and couldn't help snarking, "You're going to get your shirt
wet." Saul's pants were already damp from the towel and his
embarrassment when he finally had the balls to walk out of
this place would be nearing its zenith.

Apparently knowing what the problem was, the man

reached down and peeked under the shirt. "It doesn't look so
bad." The proximity of those lips to Saul's need was just
about too much to handle.

Saul covered his reddening face with his hands. "I look like

I wet myself." He stubbornly ignored the issue of his cock
nearly popping his fly. Some things were best left unsaid.

The stranger's hand swatted him lightly on his knee before

standing up and declaring, "Hold on a second."

"The man with all the answers but no shoes says again,"

Saul muttered into his palms. Apparently Las Vegas was hell.
Nobody mentioned that crap in those commercials.

The bare feet returned, with it the voice, "It's draft."
"Huh?" Confused, Saul peeked out from between his

fingers just in time to see a whole pilsner of beer being
dumped onto his lap. The fact that the glass did not
accompany said liquor was the guy's only saving grace. Saul

Hard Wood, Soft Heart

by Chloe Stowe

may be a doctor but he could kick some ass when needed.
"What the fuck..."

"You're a clutz," the man shrugged. "Better than being,

you know..."

"Yeah, yeah, I know." It really was a good idea but an

uncomfortable one. Saul took absolutely no pleasure in
soaking up the beer pooling on his pants with the stranger's
shirt.

The man was kneeling down beside the chair, the empty

pilsner balanced precariously on one knee. There was a smirk
to his lips. "Do I get a thank you?"

Saul slammed his eyes shut. How the hell could this guy

smell like some kind of ungodly mix of sunshine and
sandalwood after just peeling himself out of a pool? Saul felt
a headache coming on, really not all that surprising when
death by embarrassment was about to occur. "I'll make a
note of you in my will. Keep an ear open for "shirtless,
barefoot filet mignon on rooftop" when my lawyers read it
tomorrow. That'll be you."

Even with his eyes still tightly closed, Saul could feel

something loosen in the man's posture. His next words
cleared everything up. "Filet mignon? Did you just call me..."

Apparently the grim reaper whispering sweet nothings in

your ear made a man lose all rein on his tongue. Mortified
was the word that came to mind. "A beef steak. God, I called
you a beef steak to your face." Saul bent over his beer-
soaked lap and dug his fingers deep into his scalp, hoping for
a little brain damage to blot out a good chunk of his life.

Hard Wood, Soft Heart

by Chloe Stowe

"To my face?" The man huffed out a chuckle as his hand

once again found Saul's knee and squeezed playfully. "You're
not looking at me, at any part of me."

"There's a point to that." Saul growled down at his own

feet. "You know, a plan and shit."

"And how's that working out for you?" The man snickered.
Figuring whatever damage could be done, had been done,

Saul raised his head up and stared at the cockily smiling bane
of his current existence. Saul accused needlessly, "You're
enjoying this, aren't you?"

"Yeah." The man shifted knees against the hard concrete

but kept on kneeling and kept on smiling. He added a shrug
to the mix as he admitted, "Giving the best looking guy here
a killer hard-on is nice, you know."

Saul's heart did a funny flip-flop thing that hadn't

happened since he had kissed Rosemary Flowers when he
was twelve-years-old. He wasn't about to admit to how
selfishly good the stranger's statement felt however. There
were some standards of manliness after all. Intentionally
rolling his eyes, Saul griped, "Glad I could help, as your ego
so obviously needs the help." He doubted this guy had ever
known a moment of self-doubt.

A pale rush of red came to the stranger's cheeks. His smile

turned crooked and a little bit sad. "You might be surprised."
Shaking his head, getting whatever thoughts had apparently
polluted his smile out of his brain, the stranger hoisted
himself back to his feet. "There's a men's store downstairs.
Let me run down there and get you some pants, Okay?" He

Hard Wood, Soft Heart

by Chloe Stowe

suddenly resembled a Labrador retriever wanting to go fetch
something nice and juicy for his master.

This time it was Saul viciously shaking thoughts out of his

head. Quickly, he got back to less potentially pornographic
matters at hand. Cocking his head up to face the handsome
goof, Saul informed the guy nicely, "I've mentioned your
state before, but what the hell? You know that no shirts, no
shoes rule? They're talking about you, hot shot."

Those ungodly ripped shoulders shrugged. What that

shrugging did to the rock hard nipples and the delicious pecs
they were attached to made Saul's brain fuzz out for a
moment. The light scar barely visible on the man's sternum
was quickly forgotten. When all his senses came back online,
the man of the shoulders and the nipples was saying, "I know
the owner. She won't mind."

"I'm sure she won't," Saul snarled intentionally, although

the heavy inflection on the word "she" wasn't quite planned.
He immediately clinched his jaw shut, not wanting any other
flagrantly jealous words to pop out and condemn him even
more. Sure, Saul wanted this stranger; he was man enough
to admit that to himself. As far as he was concerned the rest
of the world was just going to have to wait for that
notification for another year or two, long enough for Saul to
accept this gay thing as more than a premature midlife crisis.
Saul snorted at his luck. Some guys got a convertible for his
thirties, he got a craving for dick. How the hell was that fair?

While Saul was internally fighting the good fight for his

rapidly paling heterosexuality, the man currently at the center
of the controversy was, well, watching Saul. If the smirk that

Hard Wood, Soft Heart

by Chloe Stowe

was teasing his lips was any sign, apparently Saul was an
open book to this guy. Narrowing his dark caramel eyes, the
stranger spoke seriously, "One question for you."

"What?" Saul found himself squirming under the man's

glare. He shifted in his seat uncomfortably, trying valiantly to
ignore how that made the seams in the fly of his pants do
naughty things to his already out of control cock.

"Are you military?"
That was not what Saul had been expecting. "What?" Saul

sputtered out, "God, no." The prospect of dealing with this
sexual revolution of his under the auspices of the just
repealed "Don't Ask, Don't Tell" shit was frankly
unimaginable.

The stranger slowly released a long breath. With a look of

total determination, he replied, "Good answer." Suddenly
hands were on the collar of Saul's shirt, yanking him up and
into smiling, hungry lips.

The fact that Saul Tidewater was actually kissing a man

receded into the background with a strangled yelp of "No,
duh." What became immediately more important and
intimately more pressing was the sparks shooting out of his
brain and firing up every nerve ending in his body. The fire he
felt was fucking amazing.

The stranger pulled back just enough to rush out on one

heated breath, "Stop thinking."

Dumbly, Saul nodded. He could do that.
The devouring of Saul's mouth was then resumed just as

heatedly but at a different angle. Saul quickly realized that

Hard Wood, Soft Heart

by Chloe Stowe

this new angle was perfect for the man to shove his very
insistent tongue down Saul's very non-resisting throat.

While Saul had promised not to think, there wasn't a

damned thing in this world the guy could do to make him stop
feeling. And, man, did Saul feel.

Despite the fact that the spit in Saul's mouth had

evaporated in stark fear as Saul was being yanked up and
toward those undeniably manly lips, the kiss somehow still
managed to be wet and wonderfully messy. There was
nothing gentle about this lip-lock. This was all eagerness and
lust. Saul had never felt anything close to it in his whole life.
Like the doofus he knew he could sometimes be, he found
himself grinning while his insides were being sucked up his
throat by a damned talented mouth and wily tongue.

Saul was suddenly shoved back and into a wall he didn't

know was there. The stranger grumbled as he used the move
to gasp in some air. "You're still thinking," a surprising
chuckle was quickly lost to the total, unrepentant assault on
Saul's mouth. This time, apparently, Saul wasn't being given
a choice in the "no thinking" matter.

A hand still damp with pool water was suddenly shoved

down Saul's pants.

The good doctor's brain stuttered to a violent stop, as did

the rest of his body.

Using the momentary shock to his advantage, the stranger

did some maneuvering of their bodies. Vaguely, Saul sensed
them moving around a corner. A planted palm tree stumbled
by the corner of his eye. The music and chatter of the party
died down to a distant hum. Saul didn't know exactly where

Hard Wood, Soft Heart

by Chloe Stowe

on the roof they were now, but he knew in his gut that
wherever they were, they were now alone.

The whole time Saul was being literally manhandled into a

private corner behind a row of potted palms, the stranger's
hand never left the throbbing member in Saul's pants. God,
this guy was talented.

Finding himself again shoved against the sturdiness of a

wall, albeit a different one, Saul took the opportunity to pull
away just long enough to say, "Forget the men's store."

It took a second for the words to click for the guy, but it

wasn't long until he grinned, "Yeah?"

"Yeah." This time it was Saul who pulled the man roughly

back into the kiss.

In mute appreciation of Saul's efforts, the man gave Saul's

member a little twist and pull.

Saul's knees deserted him at this point.
The man shoved him harder against the wall, one hipbone

and a meaty thigh holding Saul upright against the stucco.
Except for the hand busily and brutally at work in Saul's
trousers, the complete lengths of the men's bodies were
pressed up against each other.

Saul grunted in stupid pleasure when the man's nipples

pushed into his own.

Knowing the strength of the man that was in the midst of

jerking him off, Saul had no fear in pushing right back. In
fact, he quickly found that by wrapping his arms around the
man's torso and digging his fingers into the naked back, Saul
could start to hump the invading hand with vigor.

Hard Wood, Soft Heart

by Chloe Stowe

The man laughed into their kiss, but did not pull away. In

fact, he only hissed as the scratches up and down his long
spine were carved into his unprotected skin and then pumped
Saul a little bit harder.

Minutes where there was nothing but skin and touch and

heat and lust fled by in a fog of unspoken "fuck me now, fuck
me harder." A moan from deep in Saul's throat bled forth.
Saul was getting close.

Sensing this, the man suddenly pulled ever so slightly

away. He asked as he panted, "Names? Or is that part of
this..." The guy didn't look like he cared what the answer
was, as if he was just asking it out of politeness or maybe
just a hint of curiosity.

"Your name is the fucking last..." The rest of the words

were shoved down the stranger's throat along with Saul's
impatient tongue. Hating to leave the long free expanses of
naked skin, Saul's move to the fly of the man's pants was
slow and at first hesitant. As his fingers bid goodbye to the
stranger's spine, however, they latched on to the firm,
sweeping curves of ribs. Following their arcs around to the
front, his hands found the six-pack. Drifting down over each
muscle with a patience that amazed even him, Saul's thumbs
dug possessively into the navel.

The man's abs quaked at the unexpected pressure,

quivering as Saul stroked the remainder of his nails down the
tight skin of stomach and then hip. There was a grunt of
lukewarm disappointment when the navel was deserted all
together for points further south.

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by Chloe Stowe

Saul smiled at the accomplishment of making that noise

come from this man. The control he felt at that little
inconsequential victory left Saul wanting more.

Quickly, the man's fly was undone. Without consent, his

pants were shoved down over and below his ass. The white
cotton boxer briefs followed, ending their journey with the
slap of elastic on thighs. Saul grabbed onto the red and
wanting shaft and began to drive it like his own. Whatever
social graces hadn't wept out of his dick made one last
attempt at pulling Saul back from the brink of the "sex in
public" kink. "Should we..."

"Go?" The stranger squeaked out in what could very well

have been a whimper.

"Yeah."
"No. Your pants are already ruined." The stranger latched

onto Saul's Adam's apple and sucked.

As a moan deftly turned into a "I'm going to fucking blow"

groan, Saul muttered his agreement, "And there's always
more beer."

Moments later, in a fizzy-edged reality that could only be

found in Las Vegas, Saul Tidewater came hard. The stranger's
hand didn't let up, it kept pumping, kept screwing Saul's dick,
milking and wrenching the cock dry.

A strangled noise erupted from Saul's throat just as the

other man started to buck and come in Saul's hand.

Consciousness fled from Saul in a bang and a whimper.
A phone ringing roused Saul from his come-happy doze.
The rich gravelly voice was then back, "Damn. I've got to

take this."

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by Chloe Stowe

Saul waved at him to go ahead. Speech was still a few

minutes off for Saul yet. Using the wall at his back for
support, he slowly managed to find his feet again. A quick
glance around confirmed that the palm trees in their giant ass
planters were still surrounding them, blocking their view from
everyone. The last few seconds of the encounter had been a
blur. He wasn't quite sure what else might have been blown
away from the earth-rocking, sky-splitting event. He was glad
that the palms had survived untouched. Saul Tidewater had
nothing against a good tree.

Once again, it was the slapping of naked feet on cement

that alerted Saul of the stranger's return. He squinted at the
man and knew immediately what he was going to say.

"I've got to go. Listen, this isn't how I meant for this to

end up."

A rush of cowardly relief flooded over Saul. "It's Okay." He

reached out and patted the bare shoulder in a gesture that
even his dick-dulled mind knew was damned patronizing. He
couldn't help it though. He just needed to push this guy, this
whole experience away.

The man looked truly apologetic, sincerity creating a pout

that did funny things to Saul's heart. "Do you want me to run
down to that store before I go? Do you need me to call a cab
or anything?"

Saul shook off the offers. "Go. I'm good." He glanced

around and spotted the sign that would be his rescue. "I've
got a clear shot at the bathroom over there. A little soap and
water and then I'm gone. No harm, no foul." He played it off
as if this was nothing, as if jerking off a guy during a party on

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by Chloe Stowe

a rooftop was no big deal. Who knew that he could be such a
fantastic liar?

"I'm sorry." Having retrieved his shirt and shoes during

some point of Saul's little blackout, the stranger started
hurriedly putting them on.

Saul shrugged as he watched the man's gorgeous body

disappear behind cotton and buttons. "Blips on the radar are
good things. I fucking love them."

The brown eyed gaze suddenly found Saul's again and

danced a little nervously as the guy offered, "I could give you
my..."

"No." Saul dragged his own gaze away as he shoved a

smirk out onto his still swollen lips. "Blips don't have names.
They lose all their blip-ness if they do."

"Blip-ness?" The distraction worked. The man laughed.

With shirt buttoned and shoes properly though hastily put on,
he announced with a small almost guilty smile, "Okay. I'm out
of here then."

"Okay..." Saul gulped down a lump in his throat that was

just about to kill him. "Thanks for the beer."

The stranger surprised him one last time. He leaned

forward and gave Saul's lips a warm and soft kiss. "Good
night," he whispered as he pulled away.

"Goodbye," Saul replied lowly as he watched the man who

had no name disappear from his life.

[Back to Table of Contents]

Hard Wood, Soft Heart

by Chloe Stowe

Chapter Two: Ghost Runners

It was the proverbial morning after and the banana in

Saul's fruit bowl was taunting him. There it was just lying
there next to a couple of hefty sized limequats that were
exhibiting their own pornographic tendencies. The peach, with
its nice, fuzzy crack running alluringly down from pucker to
stem, quickly brought things to a head.

"Cock, balls, and ass," Saul strangled out unbelievably as

he stared at the morning food group. "God, I can never go to
a grocery store again." With a hardy clunk the good doctor's
forehead hit the breakfast table. He was so, so fucked.

His stomach growled in agreement.
A part of him, he supposed, had foolishly hoped that after

last night's rub off he'd be able to put this gay thing to the
backburner. Not forever. Just until he had a chance to catch
his breath from his cross country move and settle into his
new position at a new hospital. Was that so much to ask?

The banana in the fruit bowl apparently thought it was.
With head still firmly entrenched in table top, Saul blindly

reached out and tossed a dish towel over the sexually
harassing trio. He just needed a little time to think.

Satisfied that it was now safe, Saul raised back up and

gulped down a glass of grapefruit juice before his screwed up
brain had an opportunity to make even that somehow x-
rated. Closing his eyes, he let the juice refresh him, cleanse
his thoughts and give him a new outlook on his new life.

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by Chloe Stowe

He nearly jumped out of his skin as the phone in his

kitchen suddenly blared to life. With the hospital, friends, and
family having his cell phone number, this was the first call he
had received on his landline. As the old fashioned ring
screamed out and rattled his teeth down to their frayed nerve
endings, Saul decided that his first job of the day was to
shoot that piece of crap and toss its little remains out with the
banana, the limequats, and the fucking peach.

"Dr. Tidewater," he growled into the doomed phone. He

hated having his grapefruit juice afterglow interrupted.

The familiar voice on the other end of the line chuckled

knowingly. "Hey, Saul. This is Pryce. I've got a favor to ask of
you, buddy."

"Shit," Saul groaned as he proceeded to thud his head up

against the solid wood cabinet doors. Forget the hangover, he
was going to have a grade two concussion before his morning
shower if things kept going along at this rate.

Pryce Landon was the only person Saul knew in Las Vegas.

Despite sounding blatantly pathetic, it had served its purpose
well. Pryce had helped hook Saul up with the new position at
the hospital. He had even given Saul a rundown of where to
grocery shop in the city without having to sell your soul for a
pound of potatoes. Pryce had shown him the ropes the first
few days and then the man had let Saul be. While Pryce
might not have been privy to all the sordid details of what
and whom Saul was leaving in South Carolina, his old medical
school buddy did know enough to give his friend room. For
that, Saul would be forever grateful.

For this, however, Pryce was off the Christmas card list.

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Pryce was a man with many friends, one of his best being

the other thoracic surgeon at the hospital. So when dear old
Dr. Applewood went down with the flu, he had immediately
called on Pryce to help him find a replacement for a week or
two. Pryce might have many friends, but only two of them
were thoracic surgeons. Saul didn't have a hope in hell of
turning the man down.

As noon cracked the day in half, Saul had just finished

seeing the third of Applewood's four patients of the day.
Thankfully they had all been post-op check-ups, nothing that
was any trouble to cover. Walking down the hallway with the
fourth patient's file in his hand, Saul figured he could be out
of there and back home to his banana dilemma within the
hour.

Somewhere, as Saul Tidewater opened the door to exam

room number three, Fate cackled loudly and wisely.

Saul opened the door and found a man sitting on the

examining table. Dropping his head to his chest, Saul
lamented, "How the hell is this my life?" Stepping into the
room fully, he quickly closed the door behind him and went
for the lock. Of course there was no lock on the door, this
being a damned examination room in a hospital who the fuck
would need a lock on the door?

The man from last night, the man who had jerked Saul off

so beautifully, so anonymously just a few hours ago looked
up from the paper covered metal table and asked, "You're
Doc Tidewater?" The bastard was grinning.

"Shut up." Saul looked frantically around, his mind

calculating blockades. He could just imagine the whole

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hospital flooding in here outing him before he'd outed himself
to himself. Maybe he could wedge a chair behind the door?

His jerk off partner was talking again, and, yes, he was

still smiling. "I was expecting somebody old and grisly, not..."

"Your fuck from last night?" Saul finished for him as he

studied the panels in the ceiling feverishly. Shimmying up
there couldn't be that hard.

"Well, technically, we didn't fuck," God's curse to men

straddling sexual orientations helpfully pointed out.

"Really?" Saul snorted disbelievingly. "You're going to Bill

Clinton that?"

There was a flash of movement from the exam table that

may have been a shrug. Since Saul was no longer looking at
the returned bane of his existence he couldn't swear to it.
"Just wanted to stop you from freaking, Doc."

He immediately huffed at the hated nickname. "I'm Saul,

not Doc. And I am not freaking." He wondered if he could
jimmy up some kind of "Do Not Disturb" sign for the door?
Hey, maybe a "Quarantined" sign would do the trick?
"Spotted Fever" sounded just about right.

"You're not looking at me again," Mr. Oblivious with the

delectable nipples observed.

"No shit." Giving up on escape or burrowing himself into

the room for the next decade, Saul finally locked his attention
on his patient. The man was wearing a hospital gown, and,
damn it, he was rocking the look. "That's what got me into
trouble the last time," Saul admitted as the bare toes once
again came into play. "And don't you ever wear shoes?"

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Saul had expected some crack about boots not going with

a paper gown. Instead the man surprised him and asked Saul
with a wince of disappointment, "It really embarrasses you
that much?"

Well, that made Saul feel like a first class ass. He,

however, was not one to buckle into apologies. Explanations,
yes. Apologies, no. "We are not talking embarrassment here.
We are talking my peace of mind, which after the bananas
this morning I've lost completely."

Immediately regaining the gleam that made the man

literally glow with life, the patient confided, "Well, there's no
substitution for the real thing, Doc." He grinned cheesily.

Saul refused to laugh. "Who the hell are you?" Sure, it was

a question he should have asked before sticking his hand
down the man's pants and pumping his dick off last night.
Better late than never, right?

"You're the one with my chart. You tell me." Dropping his

head down to his chest, he swung his feet slowly, maybe
even a bit nervously, against the examining table on which he
was sitting.

It took the clunk, clunk, clunk of nervous feet against

metal that he'd heard a thousand times over the years with
his patients to slam Saul back into reality. "You're
Applewood's heart patient?" For the first time he really looked
objectively at the man sitting before him. What he saw was a
guy propped so firmly up behind a brave front that he
doubted the man had peeked out from back there in years.
"For how long?" The question slipped out before he could stop

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it. He had the answers right there in his hand. All Saul had to
do was look.

"A couple of years," the man mumbled out with a brief

shrug, obviously uncomfortable having to talk about it. "You
can get your details there." He nodded to the still closed file.

Saul nodded and opened the file. His eyes skimmed the

first page, landing immediately on the man's name. "You're
Mercer Braun? The baseball player?"

Saul remembered the story clearly. How could a man in his

field not? Mercer Braun was a ball player just reaching the
height of what would likely have been a very long and hugely
successfully career. There had been some kind of incident
during a game that had landed Braun in the hospital. While he
was there it was discovered that he was suffering from severe
aortic stenosis. It was a miracle that they had found out
about the condition when they did. Braun would have died
within months without the valve replacement surgery. It was,
however, a blessing with one hell of a big thorn. Braun's
baseball career was lost.

"Was a baseball player," Mercer corrected, hiding his

obvious bitterness behind a fake smile. "First base for the
Pittsburgh Pirates."

"You were good." Saul didn't know much about baseball,

but he did remember hearing that.

Color flooded his cheeks. Whether it was embarrassment

or anger, Saul couldn't tell. "Yeah, but I'm alive now. I guess
it's a fair enough trade."

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Saul busied himself reading the file. The details were clear

and unmistakable. He could feel a grateful smile tug at his
lips. "You're doing well. Damn well."

"I'm lucky, remember?" Mercer shook his head, still staring

down at his feet.

"You are," Saul assured the man he could no longer read.
"Glad to hear it." Mercer huffed out with a sardonic half

grin. "Now, if you'll just warm up the equipment over there,
we can get me all checked over for this six months and I'll be
out of here. Then you can go back to your bananas." This
time the smirk the man dug out was genuine and teasing. The
bitterness or sadness or whatever the hell it was that had
sucked the life right out of Mercer Braun just a moment ago
was gone. Fleetingly, Saul wished to God it would never come
back.

Instead of stating something supportive or blatantly cliche

and inspirational, Saul stated plainly, "I hate bananas."

Mercer nearly choked on his chuckle. "What?"
Saul busied himself jotting down little notes in Mercer's

file. No way in hell was eye contact in the cards with what he
was just about to say. "Bananas" he inflicted the word with as
much sexual innuendo as he could, "are too soft and squishy
for my taste."

Mercer's face went an amazingly attractive shade of red.

Somehow Saul doubted that Mercer ever allowed a lot of
people to witness that particular coloring of his cheeks.
Quickly, however, any knee jerk reactionary blushing was
tamped down by a cockily raised eyebrow and a devilish
twinkling in the darkest swirls of caramel in his eyes. "Are you

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saying you prefer things hard and..." The accompanying hand
gesture was lewd and much appreciated.

Saul shrugged his shoulder in lieu of a nod. "Hard and

suckable." He swallowed, found he had no spit, and went
back to talking. "I've never tried it, of course, but I'm thinking
that's the way to go with..." He rolled his free hand out and
down, encompassing all southerly parts.

"Fruit of the loin?" Mercer quite helpfully suggested.
Saul laughed and completely forgot his reasoning for not

looking at this surprising wonder of a man. "Well, that's
certainly one way to put it."

Mercer smirked. "There's several ways—and places—to put

it, actually."

Saul, the consummate professional here, laughed and then

proceeded to blush all the way down to his toes. He felt like
an idiot. He hadn't laughed this hard in more months than
he'd ever admit. "Are you this way with everyone or just
me?" he asked although he wasn't really sure if he was ready
to hear the answer.

"Life is short." Mercer shrugged as a smile softened the

sentiment. "Go for what you want."

"Do you carpe diem with Applewood?" Saul had met the

man. Old codger was a kind description.

Mercer slowly shuffled his feet against the paper sheet he

was sitting upon. "Nah, he's too busy giving me grief about
my lifestyle to bother."

"Your lifestyle?" A sick feeling settled uncomfortably in

Saul's gut. "You don't mean that he gives you a hard time
about being..."

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"Bi? No." Mercer laughed emptily. "Believe it or not, my life

is a hell of a lot more than banging anything willing." The
attitude accompanying the sharp words was intentionally
caustic. Apparently Saul had hit a sore spot with the man.

Saul, being the consummate professional that he was,

decided to hit back, "That's a shame. I was hoping to see you
humping one of those lions from that circus joint."

The shock on Mercer's face was just a little bit priceless.

The accompanying laugh was even more so. "You're a sick
man."

"No, that would be you." Saul joined in the laughter,

ignoring the warm fuzzies beginning to swirl pleasurably
around inside. "Me? I'm a doctor. I get to heal you now."

"God complex, huh?" All the caramel flakes swimming

around in those truly gorgeous eyes were now shining and
lighting up the whole damned world.

Saul was doomed, and knew he was doomed, but he

carried on bravely with a smirk. "I prefer the wise guru at the
top of the mountain image myself. People scaling great
heights to get to me puts a little zing in my day."

Unexpectedly and just a little bit tragically, Mercer's face

fell. The words came slow and solemn. "Never rely on others
to give you your zing, Saul." It was the first time Mercer had
said Saul's name and it struck a deep throbbing chord in his
soul that no one had ever found before. Mercer kept talking,
"Find that zing yourself. You won't ever lose it that way." The
pain was palpable and Saul just wanted to fix it.
Unfortunately, Mercer stripped him of the chance. "Sorry,"

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the former ballplayer snorted embarrassingly before warning,
"but one crack about a broken heart and..."

"Stethoscope through the eye, got it." Saul would let it go,

for now. Glancing back down at Mercer's file, Saul asked with
a genuine curiosity, "So, tell me about this non-sexual
lifestyle of yours. What's got Applewood putting little
notations of "difficult" and "might as well be talking to lint" in
your file?"

Mercer shrugged and went back to swinging his feet back

and forth against the paper. He looked like a boy just caught
with his hand in the cookie jar and crumbs on his lips. "I'm a
desert rat. Any free time I've got, I'm out there hiking. He
hates it."

Saul slipped into his role as disapproving parent easily,

nodding solemnly as he further questioned, "What exactly
does Applewood say he hates about it?" Saul wasn't an idiot
and no matter how much of a stick in the mud Applewood
might be Saul knew the doctor was a damn good heart
specialist. Applewood wouldn't be putting up a fuss about
good, healthy exercise. There had to be something more. By
the mulish look now planted stubbornly on Mercer's face, Saul
knew that his suspicions were right.

For a moment Saul was afraid he was going to have

actually pull the words out of Mercer's throat. Saul's patience,
however, was finally rewarded with a tense couple of
sentences spit at him. "The 'where,' 'when,' and 'how.' I like
to call it Applewood's damned trifecta."

"Okay." Saul was getting a bad feeling about this. He was

going to take this slow. "Let's start with the 'where?'"

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"Desert National Wildlife Refuge." A purposefully blank look

on Saul's part spurred Mercer to toss out some pertinent
details. "It's about thirty miles northwest of Vegas. It's huge.
Not a lot of roads. Isolated. Little water. Cell phones are
worth shit out there." Mercer rattled off the little list of death
traps with a smug, "you can't do anything about it" tilt to his
head.

Saul eked out a patient smile for the man. "How about we

move on to the 'when?'"

"I work through the winter and the spring. I run a one-on-

one hitting camp for pro baseball players. While they're out
playing ball in the summer, I've got time on my hands. I'm
damned well going to enjoy it." The mental bulldog had now
manifested itself in the thrust of Mercer's chin, his jaw jerking
out at an absurd angle.

Saul would have laughed if he wasn't getting really pissed.

"So you hike in the desert in the summer? And let me guess.
The 'how' is alone?"

"It's done." Oh yeah, the bastard laid out another shrug.
"It's not done by people with a severe and chronic valvular

heart disease."

Mercer, however, didn't give an inch. "I'm fixed," he

declared.

"Bullshit and you know it." Saul declared right back.

Slamming the file down on the metal table at their side, Saul
decided he couldn't risk pulling any punches with this guy. He
had a hell of a lot of crap to dig through here. "I'll give it to
you. The playboy mask is a good one, enjoyable and
ridiculously attractive. But this 'I'm an idiot jock' mask you've

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got going on right now," Saul reached out and grabbed
Mercer's jaw, making the fool look him full in the eye, "this is
not working for you. It degrades you and me and all the
professionals that have gotten you sitting here today."

Defiantly and with a spark of something dangerous

promised in his eyes, Mercer jerked his chin away. He
assured, "I don't need to be lectured by you."

Leaning forward just enough to bug the guy by intruding in

his personal space, Saul let a smirk ride his lips as he spoke,
"I'm sure you don't. I'm sure you know everything I'm about
to say. A man comes as close to death as you did and he's
going to know everything he can about what sent him
knocking on St. Peter's door." Saul laughed sadly. "You, Mr.
Braun, are probably the premier expert on your condition.
You know what you're doing."

Mercer apparently wasn't a man to cower even in the face

of overwhelming facts. With a sly grin of his own he too
leaned forward, stealing his spot in Saul's own personal
space. "I'm living, Doc. That's all I'm doing."

Saul had to fight with himself not to move. The way

Mercer's breath brushed over his neck like a million fiery
fingers had Saul's body desperate to lean in further, lusting
for an actual touch. Saul's mind, heart, and every other organ
of any kind of sensibility, however, yanked hard on his dick's
leash. A guy with a death wish was not someone to fuck
around with, either literally or figuratively. Just to make sure
that Mercer knew what stakes he was playing with, Saul
shrugged, "Going to be dying soon."

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Mercer's smile turned feral. It was clear the man was

egging him on and enjoying every minute of it. "Not your
problem."

"Unfortunately not." Saul leaned back, intentionally

breaking any physical connection between them. He could
not, would not, jump in the back seat of a car heading
straight for a train. He'd had enough shit to deal with lately in
his love life. Saul was not looking to take on another hopeless
cause. Standing back up, Saul distanced himself even more
as he tried to drag back on the remaining shreds of his
professionalism. "We better get started with your check-up
then. Time is wasting."

At the cold shoulder he was intentionally being given now,

Mercer retreated. The slump of his shoulders through his
paper gown and the lackluster haze that now covered his
brilliant brown eyes were the only outward signs that the man
had just lost something.

To be honest, Saul hadn't expected even that much of a

reaction. After all, there were a hundred other Saul
Tidewaters out there willing and able to jump into the pants
of Mercer Braun. Saul's rejection had to be nothing to
Mercer... had to be.

So why did Saul feel like he'd just kicked a lost puppy

looking for his first home?

The examination had ended with a handshake. No words of

familiarity were exchanged. Professionalism and resignation
had chilled the examining room completely.

With a few measured words and well-placed silences, Saul

assured Mercer that he was doing very well, that Applewood

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would be back for his next appointment in two months, and
that Saul had no interest whatsoever in seeing Mercer again.

For the second time in twenty-four hours, Saul watched

Mercer walk out of his life. This time, however, Saul wasn't
left with come-soaked pants and a ravaged cock. This time all
that was left behind was a stark emptiness shaded in
sadness... and the deep in his bones feeling that maybe, just
maybe, Saul Tidewater was the stupidest fuck in the world.

Mercer Braun walked out of the hospital feeling as if he

had just lost something. It was a silly feeling to have, one
that he couldn't really explain to himself. As with most things
in his life that he couldn't quickly wrap his mind around,
Mercer relegated the feeling to the back burner. There was a
hell of a lot of issues simmering away back there, but Mercer
took great pride in ignoring them. If they really needed his
attention they'd set off the fire alarm or sprinklers or
something. It may have been a naive way to live, but Mercer
liked it and wasn't planning on changing it any time soon.

Born in St. Louis on a wickedly hot July day, from the very

beginning Mercer's life had been about avoiding the things a
man can't change. Like the blazing hot weather that seemed
to follow him around every summer of his childhood, he came
to mutely accept the fact that his father only came to visit on
the weekends and that his mother rarely smiled at anyone
but her little boy.

College came quicker than anybody seemed to expect.

Mercer didn't like it, but he did it to play ball. He excelled at
baseball, loved the game with an unholy passion and clung to
it through the proverbial thick and thin of life. Although his

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concentration was always on baseball, he did take time off to
date, which wasn't a hard thing to do when he looked the way
he did and wore his confidence around his shoulders as easily
and warmly as a cashmere sweater.

The women loved him. It turned out, to his utter surprise,

that the men loved him too. Mercer had no preconceived
notions of his own sexuality. He just did what he liked with
whomever he enjoyed doing it with. His two years of college
flew by with an absence of serious relationships but a colorful
bevy of sweet interludes and rock 'em sock 'em fuck matches.

When Mercer was drafted by the Pittsburgh Pirates in his

junior year of college, he dropped out of school and limited
his sexual adventures to more sedate flings that could in no
way risk the progress of his big league career. So women
came and went. Men dropped into his world occasionally, but
love was never mentioned by any of them. Mercer didn't care.
As corny as it might have sounded, his heart belonged to
baseball.

Then one September night in Pittsburgh everything

changed when his heart literally broke for the game he so
loved.

It was the bottom of the eighth inning and the stands were

mostly empty. The 9-0 score had long ago run off the more
casual of observers. The sloppy defense and lackluster effort
of a team twenty games out with two weeks left to go in the
season had finally driven away the most die-hard of Pirates
fans. PNC Park resembled more of a yawning cavern than a
major league ballpark.

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Mercer Braun had manned first base for the Pittsburgh

Pirates for two years. Although the team was crap, their first
baseman was good. Very good. After spending his first five
years in the majors bouncing around from team to team,
Mercer had finally found a home in Pittsburgh. With that
home, came unprecedented success for the never say die left-
hander. Forty home runs, thirty stolen bases, and a batting
average that had hovered around .300 all year had landed
Mercer on his first All Star team in July and had handed him a
meaty contract extension with a truckload of incentives, all of
which he had far surpassed by the last month of the season.
He was rich, his future was bright, and he spent nine months
of the year playing a game he had loved since he was a kid.

Life was good... until the bottom of that eighth inning.
A foul ball was popped up to the right side of the infield. A

lingering summer wind blew the ball toward the visitor's
dugout. Most players would have just let the foul go. Mercer
Braun, however, never let anything go. It didn't matter if he
was eight-years-old playing in his backyard with ghost
runners on first and second, or if he was twenty-nine and
playing before a half-hearted, mostly drunk crowd. Mercer
always, always, gave the game one hundred percent.

September 24, 2008 would be no different.
With full speed, Mercer followed the ball towards the

dugout. A quick glance at where he was going confirmed that
he had another four or five feet before he would hit the metal
railing that cordoned off the five step drop from the playing
field. It was plenty of room for Mercer to stop before crashing
into the rails.

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But then Mercer Braun slipped. The two hour rain delay in

the long ago fourth inning had left patches of mud on the
outer edges of the field. The mud was still wet and still slick.
Mercer's right foot immediately slid out from under him. His
momentum careened him into the metal railing chest first. He
heard his ribs break before the white fire of pain swallowed
him whole. Consciousness was stripped from him as the
ground rose up to meet him.

Three days later, Mercer Braun woke up to five broken

ribs, a fractured sternum, and a chest of deeply modeled
bruising. For the next two days he was either in excruciating
pain or high on pain meds. The fact that the doctors were
pointedly telling him nothing never crossed his drug addled
mind.

On day six, the meds were lessened. The doctors, yes the

doctors plural, finally stood at his bedside. Their faces were
solemn. The eyes of a hovering intern were filled with pity.
Mercer grabbed the sheet covering him. There was no one
there to hold his hand as they spoke, as they tore his world
apart and offered him no hopes of ever being able to put it
back together again.

His career was over.
His future was stunted.
He was facing major surgery and a recovery that would

steal away the game he had loved since he was a kid,
forever.

That night he had dreamed of ghost runners weeping by

his bedside.

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The diagnosis had been Aortic Valve Stenosis. In laymen's

terms it was an abnormal narrowing of an important valve of
the heart. It was a congenital condition; in other words, he
had had it all his life. If he hadn't fallen and broken his ribs in
the bottom of that damned eighth inning, nobody would have
known anything about it to this day.

Three months later, after countless tests and scores of

doctors shaking their heads sadly, valve replacement surgery
was deemed necessary. It was major surgery with a real risk
attached to it. Without it, however, the medical community all
reluctantly agreed that Mercer Braun would die.

The surgery was done the day after Christmas. A

mechanical valve was inserted rather than a bioprosthetic
valve. Research claimed that the mechanical valve would last
longer, and that with a steady diet of blood thinners and anti-
coagulants Mercer Braun, former first baseman for the
Pittsburgh Pirates, would live. Never again, however, would
the eight-year-old boy who had turned All Star play baseball.

Secure financially but adrift in all other ways, Mercer had

learned to enjoy the fleeting company of one night stands and
the no string perks of friends with benefits. He asked nothing
more of anyone, wanting nothing more. Living from day to
day with a big hole in his heart was tough enough without
him dragging another poor slob along with him for the ride.

So the whole settling down thing had been simmering on

his crowded back burner for years. It was one of those pots,
however, that never made a peep. It never called out for any
of Mercer's attention, so it got none of it.

Forgotten, the prospect of love burned away unnoticed.

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What was really mournful, however, was that Mercer

Braun didn't know enough to miss it.

An hour after Mercer's second departure from his life, Saul

Tidewater sat at his desk, staring blankly at a stack of pink
post-it notes. Words and half-baked images were flying
around his head like some kind of x-rated pinball machine
stuck on "Tilt." Without sparing it a glance, he reached over
and grabbed his Styrofoam cup of coffee. He drank the
remaining half cup down without so much as a wince at its
coldness.

Patiently he waited for the jolt of caffeine to hit his system.
It never came. The coffee just settled in his stomach like

mud.

He blamed Mercer Braun.
The man had a freaking death wish. He was walking

around like his expiration date read yesterday, and figured
that since he was already spoiled why not go for the kicker
and dive head first down the nearest sink.

Saul scrunched up his face and muttered, "What the fuck?"

Not only was his brain making no sense whatsoever, his own
damned heart was idiotically chiming in with "Save him. Save
him."

"No way in hell," he told the pink post-its.
They did not answer him back.
Their silence was lost on Saul, however, as he argued out

his points with vim and a shit load of vigor.

"There is nothing medically I can do for the guy. He is as

healthy as modern medicine can make him, and that's pretty
damned healthy. Hell, he's probably got more years left in

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him than me." Saul winced at the memories of smoking away
his teen years in an effort to be cool. He had been such a
stupid kid.

"And I'm not going to be stupid any more. Mercer is

trouble. I don't need that kind of heartbreak in my life. And
I'm sure he sure as hell doesn't need me." The bevy of men
and women Mercer no doubt had sniffing him up was not
something Saul wanted to contemplate right at this moment.
Saul backtracked to his first argument. "He's a walking time
bomb with his own damned thumb on the trigger."

He let that thought linger in the office's air for a bit. It was

the truth, but hell was it sad.

Just as he was coming to accept his very sensible decision,

his freaking heart whispered, "All you've got to do is cut the
blue wire to save him."

"Damn it! There's no fucking blue wire. The time bomb is a

metaphor!"

The pink post-its stared back at him accusingly.
He dropped his head to his desk. "Great. Now my paper

products are guilt-tripping me. First the bananas and now the
Post-its. Where the hell did his my go wrong?"

Thank God there was no answer. He doubted if he could

handle his stapler lecturing him.

As the gentle tic-tic-tic of his watch wedged under his ear

accompanied him through the rest of the long afternoon alone
and admittedly pouting at his fucked up luck, only one truly
rational thought was left in his head: where the hell did he
get pink Post-it notes?

[Back to Table of Contents]

Hard Wood, Soft Heart

by Chloe Stowe

Chapter Three: Animal Tactics

Saul hated working the emergency room.
The agony stricken faces, the sobs of fear and loss, the

dumbstruck words that often made no sense but demanded
answering just the same, everything about trauma work he
loathed. While thoracic surgery was hardly a rose-scented
stroll in the park, at least there was some kind of order to
things. Nothing was rushed. Clearer heads always prevailed.
And when shock did accompany his patients out the door it
was never without knowledge. He made sure that everything
he did, everything he said was backed up by lengthy
discussions of the cold, hard facts and softened with vows of
a doctor swearing never to give up on them. Although
sometimes there were dragons he knew from the start he
would not be able slay, Saul always went into battle with the
hopes of a miracle guiding his hands. The weapons education,
passion, and experience had armed him with were at his side.

The emergency room held no such illusions of grandeur for

Saul. He despised working in the place and had fought tooth
and nail not to be working it this current afternoon.
Unfortunately, by still being the low man on the totem pole at
the hospital, when a wave of food poisoning took out a
healthy chunk of the interns and all of their supervisors, Saul
was deemed good filler material. Filler? He'd never considered
himself that hateful Styrofoam popcorn shit before but he
appreciated the sentiment just the same and would

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by Chloe Stowe

remember each and every one of his superiors come
Christmas time.

Three weeks had passed since he'd seen Mercer Braun in

more than his wet dreams. Three weeks had passed in utter
sexual frustration and a sore, now calloused right hand. His
resolve, however, had remained sure. The metaphorical blue
wire and the man inexorably attached to it hadn't entered
Saul's thoughts in days... well, at least, hours.

It was understandable, therefore, that Saul Tidewater was

in one hell of a bad mood when the screams began.

"Pizza! Pizza! Pizza!" The thunderous demands of a

thousand high-pitched voices barreled in through the
emergency room doors with a cloud of short dirt and the
harried beating of cleats on a concrete floor.

Warily, Saul leaned out of his makeshift office and

squinted at the fast moving thigh-high apocalypse coming his
way.

Luckily, Joanie, a nurse of much sturdier stock and real

battle field experience, stepped out from behind the admitting
desk and directly into the pizza craving fray.

There was a moment when Saul lost sight of her, a

moment where he thought he'd have to go in after her.
Thankfully, Joanie emerged just as Saul was deciding on
where the hell to look for a take-out menu with an emergency
number.

A whistle pierced the chaos.
Silence immediately fell on the emergency room.

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by Chloe Stowe

The dust settled with a disappointed sigh and a dozen tiny

eight-year-old baseball players appeared beneath the harsh
overhead lighting.

Then, an "Ah, coach!" broke the din of nothingness.
A man appeared in the doorway. He held the hand of a

little boy in a torn and muddy uniform, a mis-bent arm
hugged carefully to the tiny chest.

The fact that the man was Mercer Braun took Saul a little

more time to process.

"Okay, men, let's leave the animal tactics on the field."

Mercer and his broken armed protege had now merged with
the elementary school herd. He stood proudly in the middle of
the shushed chaos, looking a little uncomfortable only when
he spotted Joanie, open-mouthed, staring him down.

"Animal tactics?" Joanie asked over her clipboard. "They

are, under all that dirt, baseball players, right? Is there really
such a thing as animal tactics in baseball?"

Mercer's grin resembled that of the Cheshire cat. Slapping

his hands together in a move that mocked every would-be
world conqueror, he gathered the attention of his troops.
"Okay, boys, who wants to answer the nice lady while I take
Bulldog here," he rubbed broken-arm's head gently, "over to
have my favorite doc fix our boy up?"

While Saul was dealing with the shock that his presence

had already been noticed and apparently approved of, the
answering "Me, me, me!" to their coach's question were a
little dizzying. The eager explanations, however, that poured
from the second grade mouths were really quite impressive...

"You've got to run like a puma!"

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by Chloe Stowe

"You've got to think like a fox!"
"You've got to dive for the bases like a hawk."
"You've got to be as smart as a barn owl."
"You've got to be as quick as a snake."
The answers and their accompanying animals continued as

Mercer and his little injured charge made their way carefully
across the waiting room.

Despite his Hippocratic oath and the inborn concern for a

child in pain, Saul admittedly considered making a run for the
fire door. Only one fact ended up stopping his cowardice from
running amuck... it was damned hard not to notice how
Mercer Braun wore a baseball uniform.

At one point the jersey, with its top button undone and

revealing all kinds of tanned, firm skin and the accompanying
pants, which teased playfully every luscious line of taut
muscle from calf to thigh to ungodly ass, had once been white
with tiny pinstripes of dark blue. Although the dirt now
spoiled the once pristine nature of the uniform it did
absolutely nothing to detract from the ridiculously good-
looking man wearing it. Saul was gaining a whole new
appreciation for the sport of baseball.

There was no hint of awkwardness or doubt to Mercer's

step. In fact, he walked straight up to Saul with an easiness
that spoke of years of friendship. Mercer dropped his hand to
the back of the injured boy's neck and squeezed warmly as he
bent down to meet the child's eyes. "See, Jacob, your luck's
changing already. This here is Doctor Tidewater. I know it's a
mouthful to say so I bet he'll let you call him Saul?" Mercer

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by Chloe Stowe

directed the last part to the doctor himself, a hopeful smile
curling his lips.

Whatever the hell was going on between him and Mercer,

Saul held nothing against the boy and directed all of his
attention to him. Saul smiled. "Only if I can call you Jacob?"
Saul knelt down on one knee, meeting the boy eye to eye. "If
that's alright with you?" He wasn't great with kids, but he
always figured that giving a child respect was a good thing.

"Sure." Jacob nodded, a few tears making their way down

his dirt stained face.

Saul immediately turned his gaze down to the cradled arm.

"This must hurt," he commented as he ran his hands gently
down from the boy's elbow to his wrist. There was definitely a
fracture of the radius bone, but thankfully at first inspection it
appeared to be simple.

The boy manfully swallowed back a sob.
"How old are you, Jacob?" Saul asked as he moved the

boy's fingers up and down slowly one by one.

"Eight," Jacob hiccupped out.
Saul put on his best surprised face and exclaimed with just

the proper amount of awe, "Wow. I was thinking at least
eleven." The lie felt good coming out of his mouth and must
have felt equally nice to Jacob, who was now trying a
tentative smile himself.

With one last reassuring grin to the boy, Saul pulled

himself back up to his feet. A wave of musk, sweat and all
scents "man" met him as he accidentally brushed Mercer's
shoulder. Ignoring the touch, the smell, even the sound of his
breathing, Saul forced himself to keep his eyes steady on the

Hard Wood, Soft Heart

by Chloe Stowe

child even as he directed his comments to the bad penny of
his life. "So, Coach, how about we get this young man fixed
up? I bet I can have you out of here within the hour."

"Great!" Mercer slapped Saul on the shoulder. His hand,

however, did not move away. It just sat there on Saul's body,
burning its warmth and strength through Saul's lab coat and
shirt and down to his skin. "Paperwork?" Mercer asked just as
Saul gave in to the threat that was this man and actually
looked at Mercer.

The man was smiling.
Saul smirked. He knew he wouldn't be for long. "Lots of it."

He couldn't help but chuckle at the pained look on Mercer's
face. "But I'll clear it with Joanie and you can fill it out while
you keep Jacob company."

"Thank you." Damn it. The smile was back and it was

fucking warm.

"Now, I suggest we get going before Joanie realizes that

you're just about to leave her in charge of..." Saul looked
pointedly back to the dust covered boys still spouting out
animal names and bouncing around on cleats.

Mercer, however, was busy staring at the woman, eyeing

her with the healthy suspicion of a parent about to put his
child in her care. "Is she..." Mercer started.

Saul confidently finished, "I'd trust her with my mother's

life. I swear."

Mercer nodded, apparently taking Saul's word as authority.

"Let's get to it then."

Hard Wood, Soft Heart

by Chloe Stowe

First, Mercer ordered pizza. He ordered a hell of a lot of

pizza. Only after his team of empty stomachs had been
addressed, did he turn to the hospital's needs.

After Mercer got done with the reams of paperwork, he

pulled a long list of names and numbers from his back pocket
and got busy notifying all parents as to where they could pick
up their future major leaguers. Through all the phone calls,
however, Mercer never left Jacob's side.

By the time Saul had Jacob ready to head home, all of the

boys' parents including Jacob's had arrived. Two hours after
the initial invasion of the hospital's emergency room, all the
little ones were headed home. Mercer Braun, alone, was left
behind.

Saul found him in the now empty waiting room flipping

through information on his phone.

"Did your pint sized ruffians desert you?" Saul asked,

hands stuck in his slack's pockets, palms definitely not
sweating.

After patching up Jacob, there had been a flurry of

incoming patients into the emergency room. Saul had had no
choice but to leave Mercer to his lot and get his own ass back
to work. He'd half-expected, half-hoped, that the coach would
have disappeared with his players by the time Saul signed
out. Of course, he had no such luck. And of course, his dick
was busy making merry mayhem at the news.

Mercer looked up at him from the fake leather couch and

graced him with a crooked, sun-bleached, and dusty grin.
"I'm thinking the parents had enough of me for the day." His
smile suddenly faded as he shrugged sadly, "I'm betting I've

Hard Wood, Soft Heart

by Chloe Stowe

lost five maybe six today. Practice is going to be a little slim
come Tuesday."

"Why?" Saul asked, inexplicably stung at the notion that

anybody would be blaming Mercer for Jacob's broken arm.
"The kid tripped over his own feet going for a fly ball." Jacob
had told Saul the whole story while the plaster on his cast
was setting. It had been an accident, the kind of accident
every little boy or girl had. "You want me to talk to them?"
Okay, that was out of his mouth way before his brain had a
chance to catch up with his good intentions.

Clearly surprised at the out of left field offer, Mercer asked

with a curious though grateful tilt to his head, "And what
would you say, Dr. Tidewater?"

Saul looked down at the floor and shuffled his feet about.

"Well, I could throw a shitload of statistics at them. Tell them
how normal broken arms are for kids their age. Maybe toss
out a few figures of how much safer baseball is to play than
soccer or football. Nobody can argue with good, strong
numbers like that." That was the biggest load of bullshit Saul
had thrown in quite a while. Apparently his tongue was
working on auto-pilot these days.

"Okay," Amused, Mercer nodded, obviously contemplating

matters. "Any of that true, though?"

"Could be." Saul stopped there. He wasn't prepared to dig

himself any deeper in that hole.

Another studious nod was given before Mercer asked the

question that was currently weighing on Saul's mind as well.
"And why do you care what all the moms and dads think of
me?"

Hard Wood, Soft Heart

by Chloe Stowe

"Because I want to get into your pants" was one answer.

He had a feeling that truthful-but-crude might work for this
guy. Unfortunately for his ever-ready cock, another answer
held more of the truth. Suddenly, that was the reply being
tossed out there. His dick was going to kill his brain. "It looks
like you're doing something important, something that really
matters to those kids. No need for it to stop just because
some of the parents get a little skittish."

"Thank you." Mercer grinned.
Saul's toes curled accordingly.
"So, you really want me to make a few calls?" He'd have to

put in a few hours of research, but Saul was sure he could
find the numbers to back whatever needed to be said. If
Mercer gave him a day he could even knock out a power point
presentation for him.

"No. That's Okay." Thankfully Mercer waved him off before

Saul started contemplating hiring a couple of experts to
testify on Mercer's behalf. "I'll handle it, but thanks for the
offer."

"Not a problem." Saul shrugged like it was no big deal. All

the while, however, he was sketching out plans in his head of
how he could lift that list from Mercer's back pocket without
the guy noticing. Distraction would most definitely be called
for. Distraction he could do. His penis shimmied confidently in
his pants. Oh, yeah, he could do distraction real well.

Speaking of distraction, Mercer suddenly nudged Saul on

the leg. He must have been practicing that mind-reading
thing again as his brown eyes took on a depth and a hardness
that could only be born of the bright white flames of long,

Hard Wood, Soft Heart

by Chloe Stowe

lingering lust. "You done here?" he asked in the dark, gravely
voice he had used on the rooftop all those weeks ago.

"Yeah." Saul found himself shifting from one foot to the

other wondering if his own pupils were already blown. Fuck,
he had it bad for this guy. Digging his hands out of his
pockets before they could start scrambling around his pants
trying to help the distressed cock out of its current and rising
frustration, Saul let the damned blush he'd been feeling since
that first night rush up over his face. "Shit." Saul croaked out
as he shook his head in a possibly fatal case of
embarrassment. "You make me nervous." And wasn't that the
understatement of the year?

The fire in Mercer's eyes shifted into something softer,

something honestly surprised. "Why?" he asked as if he really
didn't have a clue as to the effect he had on at least three-
quarters of the adult population.

Saul didn't trust the naive question though and quickly

pushed it aside as he snapped grumpily, "How the hell should
I know?" If this guy was looking for a game of hard-to-get,
Mercer Braun had a surprise coming. Saul was not about to
start lobbing out compliments at the guy, hoping he'd hit on
the right one to bring the man literally down to his knees.
Scrubbing his fingers through his hair, Saul sighed tiredly.
"Look, I'm out of here. I think I need a shower or something."

"You need a shower?" Mercer looked down at himself and

grimaced. "I never got this dirty playing in the majors."

Saul found himself smiling again. The words of genuine

feeling slipped out of his mouth before he could stop them,
"Maybe good intentions make the muck stick."

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by Chloe Stowe

A little bit of that damning color flushed across Mercer's

cheeks as he tried to shrug the sentiment away. "Maybe."

Saul knew he should be walking away not digging deeper,

but, ah, what the hell. All the blue wires attached to death
wishes be damned. He knew he wasn't going to be able to
walk away from this, at least not today. "So, what got you
into coaching those boys?" He had a suspicion but wanted to
see if Mercer would admit to it.

Mercer did. "It's selfish really. I miss the game. Those kids

give it back to me."

"Good man." Saul needed to say it apparently as much as

Mercer needed to hear it.

The man laughed, looking as uncomfortable as Saul had

ever seen him. "I wouldn't go that far, Doc."

"I would," Saul immediately assured him, an assurance

that apparently the whole world had been slacking off by not
giving him. His lips couldn't help twitching a little as he asked,
"You want the numbers, Coach?"

"No." Mercer finally stood up, his 6'1" frame now only

inches away from Saul. He cocked his head to the side and
slowly smiled, "What I'd really like is a ride home."

Saul gulped back down a whole wad of "fuck me through

the floor" and instead answered easily. Hell, it was almost
breezily, "That I can do."

Saul Tidewater's resistance was dead in the water and

starting to stink.

Saul pressed the button on the key in his hand and waited

for the annoying little twirp of noise to go away. He hated
that sound. It made him feel like he'd just scared the living

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by Chloe Stowe

daylights out of the quietly resting vehicle. He was always
surprised when he didn't find a puddle of oil under the car
after that, the mechanical version of it peeing its pants.

It took Saul a few unaccompanied steps to realize that

he'd lost someone. Shit. Maybe Mercer Braun could read
minds and had understandably balked at letting a mad man
who thought about cars wetting themselves drive him
anywhere. Dropping his chin to his chest, Saul let out a
"damn, damn, stupid me" sigh and slowly turned around. At
least the guy was still standing there. Oddly enough, Mercer
wasn't even staring at Saul. His entire gaze instead was
whole-heartedly latched onto Saul's truck.

"You drive that?" Mercer asked with what amounted to an

awe-tinted gleam in his eyes.

"It's a truck," Saul defended in a knee-jerk reaction.

Although he'd only been in Vegas a month he had already
taken enough crap about his choice of a pickup over
something more low slung that tended to scream "sex with a
gear shift."

"Yes, it is," Mercer whispered in stark appreciation.
Saul shook his head, utterly lost at this reaction. "What?

Have you never seen one before?"

"I've got one myself." Mercer shifted a little. If Saul wasn't

mistaken there was definitely some impressive tenting action
going on in the pants of that uniform. Mercer all but
confirmed said erection by sucking his lower lip slowly in
between his teeth just before essentially pleading, "Want to
take her out for a ride in the desert?"

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by Chloe Stowe

Saul was suddenly having a flashback to an old western.

He thought it best to talk slowly now. "This truck is not a
horse. And how do you know it's a she?"

"Look at the way she's sitting there all shiny in the sun."
Saul leaned forward a little and, oh yeah, the guy's pupils

were actually blown. "That's what metal does. Put a can of
beans out in the sun and it'll shine at you too."

"Can I drive?"
"No!" Saul spat out like a neglected wife or something

equally horrifying. "I am not letting a damned truck make you
harder than me."

"I wasn't going to fuck it, Doc." Mercer reached out and

started petting it. Up and down the hood, softly up its sides,
the man's hands moved seductively over the metal as if
vehicular foreplay was a concept with which Mercer was
frighteningly familiar. "Just wanted to play with her for a
while. Warm her up, get her purring, maybe make her scream
as I drive her hard and deep into the sand..."

"No," Saul grabbed an elbow and yanked the guy a

respectable distance away from any piston or throttle. "My
truck is not having babies with you. Now, get in the cab and
keep your dick in your pants." Saul was not going to watch
this man spontaneous orgasm in the hospital's parking lot
over Saul's damn truck.

Mercer made it around to the passenger side and looked

inside the window. He lit up like a Christmas tree or its x-
rated equivalent. "Ah, man, she's got leather seats!"

Slack-jawed, Saul stood and stared at the man, half

expecting that the guy was going to start humping the door.

Hard Wood, Soft Heart

by Chloe Stowe

Said-potential humper started to laugh. Mercer laughed

hard. He laughed long.

Saul narrowed his eyes. Had the freak been faking?

Realizing that was exactly what the lunatic had been doing,
Saul shot his arms out to his sides and growled, "Are you
fucking kidding me?"

"Yep, sure am." The body-quaking laughter melted into a

sheepish grin. Somehow the bastard was able to pull off
looking both sorry and smug with the same expression. It
was a talent Saul had no doubt had landed him a bed full of
conquests.

At this moment, however, Saul was more confused than

anything. It was damned obvious to anyone with half a
functioning brain cell that Mercer already had the doctor
wrapped around his dick and was a sure thing. There was no
need for games here. Just show Saul the mattress and he and
his ass were there. Shaking his head at the conundrum he'd
latched himself onto, Saul asked with all manner of
exasperation, "Why would you..."

Mercer's face immediately went hard. He took a step

toward Saul and whispered harshly, "Get in the truck."

"What the hell?" Saul was immediately riled. No fucking

way was he going to be screwed with... at least not screwed
with no dicks and assess immediately involved.

"Get in the truck and I'll show you." Mercer took the last

step between them and unceremoniously slapped his hand
over Saul's mouth before continuing in a heated rush, "Unless
you really want me to yank down my pants right here and

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by Chloe Stowe

show you the hell of a boner I've gotten just watching your
ass cross this damned parking lot?"

"Huh?" Saul mumbled intelligently through the muffling

palm and fingers.

Dropping his hand slowly from Saul's lips, Mercer sighed

almost impatiently before he reached out and dragged Saul
into a kiss that would have crossed the devil's eyes. Pulling
himself back with a growl of frustration, Mercer dropped his
voice to a level previously unknown to man, "I didn't want to
tell you. I didn't want to scare you."

"Scare me?" Saul's dick must have borrowed a pair of lips

because there was no way in hell he had enough brain activity
going to actually form words from his own mouth.

"About how fucking hard you make me." Without giving

any warning, Mercer grabbed Saul's wrist and rammed Saul's
hand hard against the uniform's crotch. The bulge was even
more impressive tactically than visually.

Fighting down the heat that was suddenly rushing to his

face, Saul cleared his throat and allowed himself one
manhandling squeeze before asking with a smirk, "So you
thought..."

Mercer shrugged. He divulged his grand plan with a wry

twist to the corner of his lips, "You were going to notice," his
gaze slipped down to his still palmed balls and cock, "so I
figured, you know, blame the truck not the doc's dick."

Saul grinned. "I thought it was my ass that you..."
"Package deal, I guess." Wrapping his hand around the

back of Saul's neck he dragged the doctor back into a full
body kiss. It was slower this time, the rhythm of the kiss

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by Chloe Stowe

humming instead of flailing. It was steady and life-assuring
like the beat of a heart.

Mercer once again was the one to pull back. The distancing

was a struggle, one more painful than apparently Mercer had
counted upon. A small frown creased his brow, his gaze fixed
hard on the mouth that had confounded him so. Finally, he
mumbled almost guiltily, "I've gotten a taste, Saul. I want
more."

Words were useless at this moment, so Saul simply yanked

and pulled and manhandled the man into the passenger's side
of the truck and strapped Mercer into the seat. "Don't you
fucking move," Saul warned. No way in hell was he letting
Mercer take care of his current predicament on his own. If an
orgasm was going to be pulled from that gorgeous body it
would be by Saul's machinations not Mercer's or the damned
truck's. Slamming the door closed, Saul strode purposefully to
the driver's side. A moment later the truck roared to life and
the doctor pealed out of the parking lot.

Sex was going to be had and it was going to be had

damned soon.

Three blocks later with Saul lost in the blue haze of lust

and the cityscape of Las Vegas whizzing blurrily by the
windows, Mercer cleared his throat and asked kindly, "Want
to know where you're going?"

Saul winced. "Fuck." He glared over at his partner in soon

to be crime and laid the truth out there for Mercer to deal
with however he'd like, "If your house is not less than ten
minutes out I'm pulling over to a Seven-Eleven and we'll take
care of it there."

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by Chloe Stowe

Mercer laughed. "Yes, sir."

[Back to Table of Contents]

Hard Wood, Soft Heart

by Chloe Stowe

Chapter Four: Sugarcoated Damnation

"You have a water slide," Saul stated it plainly enough. He

put no question mark or exclamation point at the sentence's
end. It was simply a statement of fact, one that held no
judgment for or against the idea of a grown, single man with
not a kid in sight having a freaking water slide in his
backyard.

In spite of the previous warning, the trip to Mercer's

sprawling ranch-style house had taken a good hour, just
enough time for all penises involved to ratchet their mutual
needs down to bearable levels. Traffic really was a bitch and
she, no doubt, was busy laughing up a tit at the blue balls the
men had to fight off between minutes twenty-five and thirty-
seven. Only Mercer beginning to hum the damned rubber tree
song had saved the men from having to resort to self-help
measures. So, as two grown men with hard-ons the size of
civil war cannons were wont to do, Mercer and Saul had spent
the last twenty minutes singing about ants and high hopes.
Oh yeah, this was Saul's life in a nutshell.

Mercer stepped in front of him and narrowed his eyes.

Arms crossed in front of his chest, the muscles in his jaw
reflected hard thinking going on inside of his handsome head.
He didn't say a word, just stared.

"What?" Saul asked when the weird silence had started

giving him chills. By some kind of weird and mute mutual
agreement they had exited the truck and wandered around to
the back of the house like two old pals off to enjoy eighteen

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by Chloe Stowe

holes before lunch at the club. It was like the clawing,
ravaging need their bodies clearly had for each other had
settled back on their respective haunches, satisfied with just
watching and relishing the taste of the mad, wanton sex that
would soon be coming their way.

Mercer jerked up his left shoulder in an abbreviated shrug.

"Just checking if I should lie or tell the truth about the water
slide?"

Stuffing his hands in the front pocket of his khaki's, Saul

rocked back on his heels and smiled. He was amused and saw
no reason to hide it. "The lie being..." he cocked his head to
the side, a motion for the man to finish the thought.

The corner of Mercer's lips quirked up in a most delectable

smirk. The man really was a walking "Fuck me" sign. "The lie
being that the slide came with the house."

"It didn't?" Saul knotted his fingers together inside of his

pockets. He was not going to reach out and grope. He was
not.

Mercer upped the game by chuckling. It did ridiculous

things to his freakishly taut biceps. "Yeah, kind of why it's
called a lie."

When his pocketed fists started making moves toward his

own crotch, Saul realized that he was in real trouble here.
Yanking his hands out of the danger zone, he hooked them
together behind his back. Aware that he probably looked like
some awkward first day at boot camp soldier at rest, he threw
some more words out as a distraction. "So, you put this in
yourself?" he asked with some kind of alien sultry tease
slipping in there with it. He immediately slammed his mouth

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by Chloe Stowe

shut. Innuendos, particularly bad innuendos that he didn't
quite understand himself, were not helping. His cock twitched
in agreement, nudging him to just get on with it.

By now, Mercer's smile had turned almost feral. Apparently

his junior member was getting a little antsy too. Mercer's
gaze locked hard on Saul's face. Saul imagined he had stared
down many a pitcher with that "Come on! Give me your best
shot" taunt of a glare. "Yeah, I'm good at putting things in
tight places."

Saul groaned then made a quick scan of their

surroundings.

Curiosity quickly got the best of Mercer. "What are you

looking for?"

"The speakers," Saul answered, stifling back a smirk of his

own. "If some cheesy seventies porn music doesn't start
playing soon I'm going to be really disappointed."

Mercer rocked back on his heels, looking supremely

intrigued. "You think I'm trying to seduce you with my water
slide?"

"Hey, I'm new at this. Lingo could be flying over my head

here."

Mercer stepped forward, his hands hooking possessively to

the waist band of Saul's khaki's. "Do you want to know the
reason I put in a water slide, besides always really, really
wanting one when I was a kid?"

"Sure." Saul's mouth suddenly turned dry and wanting.
Mercer nodded but his attention was elsewhere. He was

studiously overseeing his fingers undoing Saul's pants. There
was no hesitation in his movements, only a self-assuredness

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that was fucking hot. As the zipper went down, Mercer added
words to his foreplay. "Well, you see the end of the slide over
there?"

"Yeah," Saul choked a little on the word as his khaki's were

pushed down past his hips.

Fingers slid down between his skin and the elastic of Saul's

briefs. Goose bumps followed the fingers wherever they
roamed. "See how it's curved? How it could cradle a man, not
letting him fall off on either side no matter what was being
done to him?"

"Uh-huh," Saul managed after almost swallowing his

tongue. Watching his own cock practically leap out of his
underwear as his briefs joined his pants low on his thighs was
a turn on Saul couldn't explain.

As Mercer's warm calloused palms slowly inched their way

back up from Saul's knees, the doctor could feel each of the
fine hairs of his own thighs rise up and bow to the long
fantasized touch of a male on a male.

Mercer's voice lowered as his hands reached the flat plain

of the groin that extended out so smoothly from weeping
penis to hip. The fingers claimed this playground as their own
and started running long, lazy circles across the sweet,
untouched skin. "And then with the water rushing down under
him," the playful fingers back and around to his ass,
squeezing the hard cheeks that they found with gleeful
hunger, "a doctor no matter how naked under the Vegas sun
would stay nice and cool..."

"No matter what was being done to him." Saul closed his

eyes and surrendered to the thousand new sensations the

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rough groping of his ass was sparking throughout his body
and his mind.

"Very good." Mercer rewarded the surrender with a gentle

nibble of his chin. The kneading of the glutes continued as
Mercer pulled Saul closer into his body.

"I went to medical school," Saul spouted out as if that

somehow excused the way his body was folding under
Mercer's machinations. Yeah, it made no sense, but what did
about this whole situation?

Mercer didn't seem to mind the nonsensical segue. In fact,

with a devilish smirk clinging to his lips, he jumped right on
the bandwagon. "Well, Doctor, you're going to have to show
me some of your toys sometime."

What started out as a laugh bubbled up and out of Saul's

chest as some kind of animalistic moan. If this guy was
looking for some verbal foreplay, apparently Saul wasn't
going to be able to deliver. "After the water slide, right?" He
suggested a little desperately. If he didn't get some action
soon all the molecules in his body were going to melt into a
gooey glob of stupid.

Mercer nodded, his own need digging restlessly into Saul's

thigh. "After the water slide."

"Got any trunks?"
Slowly, guilelessly, Mercer began to hump Saul's leg.

"Why? You need some?"

Saul looked down at himself. What he could see of his

junior member as it was being ground into a uniformed groin
was that his cock was red and ready to rock. "Guess not."

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Saul's left ear came under assault as Mercer began to

nibble between every word, "Haven't you ever..."

It didn't really matter what Mercer was about to ask.

Whether the rest of the question was "done it outside?" or
"fucked in a pool?" the answer was the same.

"No. My ex required pillows for everything."
Mercer's laugh rattled through Saul's ear and straight

down to his dick. "No quick off's in the ocean? Come on,
you've got to have been tempted, man."

"Some of us know the meaning of restraint." If Saul wasn't

currently morphing into an orgasm with legs and lips, the
superiority he tried to latch onto his rebuttal might have been
something more than laughable.

"Yeah, you're all about restraint, Doctor." He scowled no

doubt referencing the ride over in the truck.

"I was," Saul rebutted... and what a delicious word

rebutted was.

"Before Las Vegas?"
Saul shook his head, digging his fingers deeper into

Mercer's back. "Before you."

There was a moment of silence, followed by stillness. Both

were broken by, "Damn, why do you have to say things like
that?" Mercer wrenched himself away, panting and gasping
and fisting and unfisting his suddenly empty hands.

"What?" Khakis and underwear down around his thighs,

arms spread out wide to his side, penis reaching for the sky,
Saul knew he must look like an idiot. He sure as hell felt like
one.

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Bending over at his knees, Mercer was fighting getting his

breath back. After a few moments of near fruitless gulping, he
got enough air back in his lungs to say, "Put your pants back
on." He waved blindly in Saul's direction, his gaze never
leaving the ground.

Now, Saul was getting angry. What? The guy couldn't even

stand looking at him now? "Damn it, Mercer..."

Mercer yanked himself back up straight and planted his

gaze firmly on the sky a thousand miles above their heads.
Hands now shoved under his armpits, he stated between
gritting teeth, "I'd do it myself but I'm not risking it."

"What the hell?" As much as his pants around his thighs

would allow, Saul took a menacing step forward and shoved
the man's shoulder back hard. "Risking what, asshole?"

Mercer shoved back, anger reddening his face. "Doing this

right!"

"Huh?" Saul mumbled out intelligently.
A sigh packed tight with so many emotions slumped

Mercer's shoulders and brought his voice to a level that could
only be called sweet. "Doing you right."

The clarity of what Mercer was saying, the sentiment

behind it, shook Saul. He didn't know quite what to do with
the unexpected emotion so he tossed it back in Mercer's face
as frustration, "Fuck it, Mercer. I am not a girl. I don't need
or want you to feed me dinner and do the sweet nothings shit
before you get around to actually screwing me." Saul winced
as it sounded a lot more desperate than he had intended.

A smile crept back onto Mercer's face as he took a sure

step forward and ran the back of his fingers and hand down

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the side of Saul's cheek. "Trust me. I will make this so good
for you that there won't be a drop of your creamy hot seed
left in your body when I'm done with you." Mercer slowly
pulled his hand away and shrugged. "Not that you'll know it of
course since I fully plan to finish by fucking you out cold."

With thoughts frozen in some kind of libidinous shock,

Saul's only reply was the pearl of pre-come that bubbled up
on the head of his ramrod straight cock.

Mercer's smile turned predatory and somewhat

commanding. "Put your pants on, Doctor."

Saul did.
And as soon as Saul did, Mercer Braun started taking his

own off. Jersey, pants, cleats, socks, jock strap, it all went.
And when it all went there was nothing left but a body so
damned perfect that Da Vinci couldn't have done it any
better.

Without a word of explanation or direction, Mercer strode

over to the shower head attached to the base of the slide.
Turning the water on he stepped into it and began to quickly
scrub off the dirt from the baseball game that still clung to his
skin and hair. Even though he wasn't putting on a show doing
it, Saul caught himself graying out a couple of times as his
own cock started beating restlessly against the constraints of
his pants.

The water was suddenly turned off. Bending over at the

waist, Mercer shook his hair dry. Without bothering with the
towel that hung to the shower's side, the man strode right by
Saul's side, not offering a passing touch or even a glance, and
headed straight in to his patio doors.

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Saul was quickly at his heels... the Tidewater cock leading

the way.

"We're going to take this slow." The word "slow" rolled off

his tongue like some kind of sugarcoated damnation. It was
as if he was saying, "Yes, expect this to be torture but you'll
be so high from the foreplay you won't really care."

All Saul could do was nod. The ability to produce words of

his own apparently had been sucked up in the vacuum left by
his brain cells deserting his head at mock speed heading
south. Mercer Braun standing in front of a person buck naked
would do that to any male appreciating man, especially a dick
loving man who was still cursed with a complete compliment
of clothes. Saul sighed. Hell, maybe cutting off all verbal
communication from his brain was a good thing.

"Let me do all the work," Mercer was talking again. The

breath that carried each low-riding syllable tickled the hollow
in Saul's neck. Tiny goose bumps rushed down past his
shoulders, down to his fingertips and his booted toes.

Once again, Saul nodded.
"First, I'm going to take these clothes off of you." The flat

steady heat of Mercer's palms settled on Saul's chest, the
warmth bleeding through the cotton of his shirt. The brown of
his eyes turned a speck richer as he confessed, "I want to see
your body."

Saul swallowed, his Adam's apple bobbing so slowly in his

neck that it felt as if it was already drowning in the drug that
was Mercer Braun.

A look of complete, all-encompassing and hungry

concentration swept across Mercer's handsome face. He

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looked now at Saul as if he were the last strip of New York
steak left in a world of gristle. His tongue slipped out and
made a slow though fevered run across his soft pink lips.

Saul shifted on his unsteady feet, his dick straining against

his underwear and pants. He fisted his hands against the side
of his legs, fighting the impulse to reach to his own fly and
release the beast being born there.

Mercer smiled, Saul's efforts of restraint clearly not having

gone unnoticed. "Easy," Mercer all but purred like some man-
eating cat, as his hands moved and cradled Saul's face within
the palms. "I'll take care of you, I swear."

Like a puppet on a master's string, Saul nodded again.
The hands deserted Saul's face, trailing down his neck and

slowly onto his collar and the tiny buttons holding the now
hated shirt on to his body. One by one the buttons were
released. Saul looked down at his chest, watching Mercer's
fingers weaving plastic through cotton with a keen
deliberateness that dried Saul's mouth.

Gently, Mercer pulled the tail of the shirt from the

waistband of Saul's pants, bringing the last remaining button
to bear. It too was quickly dispensed with.

"Better," Mercer spoke around a devilishly certain grin.
The slight chill of the air conditioned air fondled the strip of

exposed skin that ran down across Saul's chest and stomach.
He could feel the muscles of his pecs and abs contracting at
the touch of the phantom cold fingers. His nipples, though still
covered, hardened like river worn rocks awaiting a boy's
hands to play.

Saul bit his tongue to rein back the moan.

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Suddenly, Mercer's lips were upon his in a feathery light

kiss that would have curled the toes of even Michelangelo's
marble David. The world swayed for a delirious moment. Then
just as suddenly the lips were gone, words replacing them.
"Don't hold back. I want to hear every sound you make."

This time, Saul didn't dare to nod, the room and its air and

its light were still all too unsteady to risk even such a benign
movement.

Returning to his work, Mercer's fingers grabbed gentle hold

of the two sides of Saul's shirt and slowly peeled the cotton
off of his chest, his shoulders, his arms and then his fingers.
The spent material fell to the floor with only a whisper of
sound.

The running of the tongue across Mercer's lips returned,

along with a hum of fervent appreciation.

Saul smiled at the look of increased hunger in the depths

of those beautiful brown eyes.

Mercer suddenly dropped to his knees, his face in line with

the begging shaft still hidden so far and deeply away.

Throwing his head back, Saul moaned.
But only a soft laugh fluttered briefly across Saul's fly. He

peeked down to see Mercer grinning up at him. "I'm down
here to take off your shoes."

Saul could feel the heat of embarrassment flood his face.
A not so gentle kiss was pressed suddenly to his pant

caged cock.

Saul's hands flew up and grabbed onto Mercer's shoulders

as his knees thought about buckling and his heart thought
about leaping from his chest.

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Mercer's words held no condemnation, no teasing. They

were simple fact. "I want you, Saul Tidewater... in every way.
Never doubt that. I need to unwrap you slowly. I want to
taste and remember every second of this."

Gritting his teeth, refusing the inborn urge to hump his

hips and the painfully swollen cock that they carried into the
face so close, Saul groaned as he instead just nodded.

"Thank you," Mercer said just as he reached down and

undid Saul's shoes.

Saul mutely lifted his legs two times each as the boots and

the socks disappeared to the side. The rug was warm and soft
against the soles of Saul's feet. He wiggled his toes in the
piles of cream colored carpet, relishing the new feel.

Mercer stood up, his gaze no longer soft but hard and

wanting. "I want to watch your eyes as I make you naked."

A twitch of fire shot through Saul's cock, making it weep

into his briefs. Saul closed his eyes and prayed not to come
like a pubescent boy in his pants.

Mercer quickly dispensed of that concern as he again found

his knees and his teeth found Saul's fly. Tooth by tooth the
zipper was split open. Saul's cotton clad dick popped out with
eagerness.

Mercer dropped a kiss on its risen but still smothered tip.
Saul grabbed on to Mercer's hair to hold on to his balance.

Equilibrium was not helped as Mercer's fingers slipped in
between waistband and skin. The touch didn't linger however
as his hands swiftly divested the underwear from his hips.
With his hand still on the steadying head, Saul stepped
obediently out of his briefs.

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The feel of the cold air on his swollen penis did wondrously

maddening things to the rest of his body.

There wasn't time to catalogue them though.
Mercer was leading him to the bed.
Saul went willingly.
"Lay down on your stomach," Mercer instructed gently.
Saul obeyed.
"Now, spread your legs wide. I want to see your hole."
Saul bit down on the pillow under his head but did as he

was told.

The bed dipped. Weight and skin settled on the back of

Saul's thighs. He could feel Mercer reaching over to the
nightstand. Saul heard the drawer open. He heard the
wrapper of a condom being torn apart.

There was more movement on the bed and then the sound

of a top of a tube being screwed open and then tossed onto
the nightstand.

Saul whimpered into the pillow in piquing frustration. He

had expected a reprimand for his impatience or at least a
word of encouragement, all Saul got instead was a lube-
coated finger up his ass.

It hurt. Saul gnashed his teeth.
The finger began to move around. The pain melted into

just a feeling of being full and tight. Soon pleasure
threatened.

A second finger joined the first and started the process of

acceptance all over again.

By the time three fingers were inside of him, Saul was

writhing on the bed in previously unheard of pleasure.

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There was a pat to his hip and then words he was finding

increasingly hard to understand. "Raise up for me."

Even though Saul's mind was already fuzzy in need, his

body understood. Saul was soon kneeling on the bed with his
ass still three fingers full stuck up in the air.

The fingers disappeared.
Their replacement was thicker, longer, and had blood

pulsing hard through its meat. Mercer's cock entered him
slowly, carefully. Tiny circles were being drawn on his cheeks
for comfort, for distraction? Saul didn't know. At this point,
Saul only felt.

The further the dick pierced his body, the more Saul

moaned into the pillow.

The moans quickly turned into deep throated groans.
Mercer grabbed on to his hips and shoved his cock into him

at a different angle.

The world and its gods exploded into light and fire. The

pillow couldn't hold his scream of pleasure.

Mercer began to thrust.
In and out, fast then slow. Every third or fourth push his

dick would brush Saul's prostate. There was no definable
rhythm, nothing for Saul's sanity to latch on to. It was
maddening and masterful and if Saul wasn't already bowing
down in front of him he would have dropped to his knees and
begged for more.

The thrusts became harder. They began to rock Saul's

whole body. They began to rock the entire bed, the
headboard now banging violently against the wall.

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Saul's breaths became shallower. His thoughts turned

muddy and thick. Every touch to his skin turned electric.
Lightning threatened to sizzle through his body.

Mercer's angle changed again. His hand slipped around

Saul's front. The previously untouched penis was grabbed and
pumped.

Once.
Twice.
The third time, Mercer rammed the full weight of his cock

against his prostate and Saul was suddenly coming. The
universe dissolved into one bright pinprick of light that
flashed and flickered and finally went out with a howl.

Then the darkness overtook him and Saul Tidewater

surrendered to it with a smile.

Face pressed to the mattress, Saul awoke to a warm but

empty space beside him and a spicy balsamic scent drifting
through the air. After a brief struggle with the lone sheet left
covering his naked body, Saul knuckled his eyes roughly
trying to get the world to turn into something more
identifiable than a twilight tinted blur. A bedroom of pale ivory
walls combined with white washed wooden floors and only a
select few pieces of maple furniture combined to create a
clean modern look with soft welcoming edges. A down
comforter of meadow green laid in a tangled pile on the floor.
The pillows currently missing from the white sheets and bare
assed doctor on the bed were scattered across the room,
stark testament to the afternoon's explosive activities. A
blush that felt like it started from x-rated cheeks to his g-
rated ones burned lightly across his body. Saul Tidewater was

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not a man of middle-of-the-work-day sex. A painful clinch of
his ass chimed in with a reminder of the gay part of the
afternoon's festivities.

"Ow," he hissed as he rolled over ever so gently.
"Another three minutes and I'll fix that." Mercer stood in

the doorway to what appeared to be the bathroom wearing
nothing but a towel slung low on his hips. He looked freshly
showered, his hair still a little damp. Saul wondered briefly if
the warm, almost conifer-like scent that still pleasantly teased
his nose was a clean, just soap-scrubbed Mercer Braun?

"Did you hear me?" Mercer asked around a soft smile.
"Yeah," more knuckling of the eyes ensued. He wasn't a

fool. He wasn't going to let an opportunity to stare at a barely
toweled Mercer be lost to any fuzzy remnants of sleep and a
hard fucking. "I got sidetracked for a second." As all details
came into crystal sharp focus, Saul mused if he licked his way
laboriously all the way from the man's brow to his toes if he
would taste the incense on his tongue. "What the hell kind of
soap do you use?" he just had to ask. He was used to the ex-
wife coming out of her bath smelling of roses in the winter
and honeysuckle in the summer. Yeah, she smelled nice, but
this was different. This was way more proactive, hammering
in hard on his still spent dick.

"You like it?" a damned distracting twinkle accompanied

Mercer's question.

Saul shrugged. He wasn't about to act poetical about

scents and shit. There were certain things a man just didn't
do.

"Good." Mercer nodded, seeming to get it.

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He sat up a little straighter in the bed. "Why? You're going

to let me use your soap? Are you saying I stink?" Saul would
admit to a little flailing of the emotions at the moment. It
wasn't every day that a guy got his virginal ass fucked.

Bending his head down, no doubt hiding a most deserved

chuckle, Mercer took a few cautionary steps to the bed. "You
trusted me enough to let me stick my dick up your asshole;
think you could trust me enough to fix you a shower?"

A warm rush flooded his chest. His heart flip-flopped

accordingly. "In all the centuries of my marriage, my ex not
one time 'fixed me a shower.'"

Mercer shrugged a little sheepishly, "We're not married."
"A valid point." Saul found himself smiling. Slowly, he

moved to get out of the bed. He didn't even try to hide the
winces. He did however grump just loud enough to assure
Mercer could hear, "Jeez, that thing should come with a
warning. I'd suggest 'wide load' but you've already got a
healthy enough ego you're working with there."

Mercer just stood there in his towel smirking.
Once uprightness had been reached, Saul motioned for

Mercer to go ahead. "No way I'm leading. You're not getting
Braun Junior anywhere near my ass again tonight."

"Just tonight?" Mercer tried to play the question off lightly

but there was a bit of anxiousness in his eyes that he just
couldn't hide. Apparently he was worried that he'd really hurt
Saul.

That warm rush was back again. "Just tonight," Saul

assured him before turning and pushing him toward the

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bathroom door. "But nobody's going to be wanting to have
sex with me if I don't get a shower."

Mercer looked over his shoulder and grinned. "Personally, I

think you rock the well and truly fucked look."

Saul could only roll his eyes at that. Words deserted him

as he stepped into the bathroom straight out of the pages of
those architecture magazines. He had thought that the
bedroom was impressive. This room was just ten times
better.

Warm cocoa colored tiles lined the walls of the sprawling

bathroom. The cabinets were of a light colored wood. The
floor was an off-white marble. A huge picture window
overlooked the pool and its enigmatic slide. Dark green towels
filled the wooden shelves. Large glass bowls served as sinks
on counters of granite. What stood out most however was the
shower. It spanned the length of one side of the room. Its
glass walls ran from floor to ceiling. Inside were two bench
seats with a collection of shower heads of every shape and
size between them. Saul would guess that at least four fully-
grown linebackers could fit comfortably in the shower.

Saul almost hated to admit it but sometimes a person has

to own up to his gut feelings. "This is sick, man." He glanced
over at a smug-looking Mercer. "I mean, really, who lives like
this?"

Mercer shrugged. "It came with the house."
Saul snorted. "It's the reason you bought the house, isn't

it?"

"Maybe." That was as much information Saul was about to

get at the moment as Mercer reached down and released his

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towel from its loose hug of his hips. It fell to the floor like it
belonged there.

In a move that for some reason tickled Saul's insides,

Mercer took Saul's hand within his own and led them both
into the shower. He closed the door behind them and then
turned on one of the many streams of steaming hot water.

Without a word, Mercer maneuvered Saul over to a

particular spot in the shower and then turned on even more
of the shower heads.

A warm rush of water hit his ass, massaging a million hot

fingers into his cheeks.

Saul moaned.
Mercer smiled and began soaping his lover up. The

mesmerizing scent that had greeted him when he woke soon
filled the shower. Saul closed his eyes and surrendered to it
and the talented hands gently washing his body.

After long minutes of this sweet torture, Saul wasn't

surprised at all when Mercer kneeled down in front of him and
took Saul's morning wood gently into his mouth.

The blowjob was gentle and loving, as if Saul's penis was

something to be worshipped and adored.

It didn't take long for Saul to come hard in Mercer's

mouth, his body bucking slowly under the steam.

Once his own come had been milked completely out of his

body, Saul fell down on one of the benches and clumsily
dragged Mercer's hips toward him. Saul then proceeded to
swallow down Mercer's cock whole. It seemed natural to Saul,
like he had given a man head all his life, not for the first time
ever.

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Mercer came with a hard shudder and a grateful "Fuck,

yes!" on his lips.

Saul swallowed down every drop of come Mercer gave him,

eventually easing the spent man down to the floor in front of
him.

The water and the heat and the smell of good sex lulled

both men into a dreamless sleep.

His senses returned with a tickle, a tickle in a most

unusual place. If his cock wasn't sleeping the sleep of the
comatose, it would probably have been making some sweet
murmurings by now. A man didn't get tickled often on his
groin. There were so many other things to do while in that
area that tickling rarely came up.

With a smile prickling itself up closer and closer to his

mouth, Saul really needed to find out what was going on
before dissolving in embarrassing laughter. Holding the giggle
in, he cracked open one eye and looked down onto his lap.
The very last thing he expected to find was Mercer Braun
asleep on his thighs, his head turned to his crotch, mouth
open, mute snores falling sporadically on Saul's dead to the
world cock and balls.

Saul was still sitting on the shower's long bench, both feet

planted on the tiled floor. Mercer was still kneeling on both of
his knees, one arm wrapped around one of Saul's knees, the
other lying slack at his side. He looked damned uncomfortable
and completely boneless at the same time. The mop of wet
dark golden hair that was plastered around the strangely
angelic sleeping face proved irresistible to Saul's fingers. With
an uncoordinated flop that he blamed entirely on Mr. Braun

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using his dick like a candy coated straw, his hand landed on
the head with little grace but full mischievous albeit sleepy
intent.

Surprisingly, Mercer didn't stir right away. In fact, he

didn't stir at all even after a good five minutes of combing
clumsy fingers through his hair. Finally, there was movement:
an unconscious nuzzling of his face farther into the lap. It
ended with lax lips being pressed to a slowly rousing shaft
still reddened from its last fucking.

Saul sucked in his breath, mashing his tongue to the top of

his mouth to prevent any embarrassing noises from escaping.
Unfortunately his fingers showed no such control as they dug
hard into the scalp they were petting, eliciting a lazy wince
around the sleeping eyes.

"Shhh..." Saul immediately cooed, then immediately

kicked himself for cooing. What the fuck? He had never cooed
in his life.

"Did you just..."
"Shut up." Which of course Saul really didn't mean,

because words felt even better on his dick than breaths. Not
to mention the way Mercer's lips curling against the skin of
his shaft with each spoken syllable made Saul's eyes cross.
Clamping his hand tight on the head in his lap, Saul hissed,
"Don't you dare move."

Saul could actually feel the accompanying smile blossom

across his cock. "I was thinking," Mercer mumbled with a bit
of unnecessary but totally appreciated tongue.

"No, you were..." Saul gasped embarrassingly, "snoring."

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The resulting huff of laughter against his groin nearly sent

Saul through the roof.

"I was thinking before..." Mercer kissed the dick in his face

to define his distraction, "that I'd really like to take you out
on a date."

"Like a girl?" Saul immediately blamed the shock for the

stupidity of that question.

Mercer's lips formed into a most distracting smirk that sent

goose bumps shooting down Saul's thighs. "Men date."

"Yeah, I know they do." Saul banged his head back against

the shower's wall, trying to knock the feeling of being a grade
A coward out of his skull. He figured a confession, albeit a
tiny one, was a good place to start, "I just never thought I
would, you know, date. I didn't know if I'd want to date. I
knew I wanted to fuck but actually dating a guy..."

"Makes it more than just a sex thing?"
"Yeah," Saul sighed. "Sounds stupid, I know."
"Sounds honest." Bestowing another soft kiss on Saul's

dick, Mercer raised up and looked Saul straight in the eye. He
challenged him, "You've already jumped into the deep end,
Doc. Might as well swim around and play amongst the other
fishes."

"A date?" Saul asked still a little leery at the concept. High

school and college fiascos swirled around his head.

Mercer nodded, looking all smug and utterly fuckable. "Our

first."

"You know that implies that there'll be more?" Saul wanted

to be sure that he was hearing this right.

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"A second, a third, a nine hundred and ninety-ninth? Yeah,

I know." The smile Mercer gave him riled up a squadron of
butterflies that had been on official downtime since his
wedding.

"No pressure there." Saul's head sought out another good

whack against the shower's wall. Mercer tapped politely on
the naked thigh he was still sprawled against. He waited until
he had Saul's full attention again before promising, "No
pressure, Doctor. Let me take care of the details and all
you've got to do is tag along. Deal?"

"Deal," Saul mumbled... as if there was ever any doubt.

[Back to Table of Contents]

Hard Wood, Soft Heart

by Chloe Stowe

Chapter Five: Gentle Obscenity

The lightweight, long-sleeved knit shirt clung to Mercer like

a sated lover. Lazily, the ocean blue material hugged every
curve of his chiseled pecs, biceps, and abs. Loose enough to
dance across his light golden skin, the shirt rode the ex-
ballplayer with skill and gentle obscenity.

Saul was finding himself damned jealous of that shirt.
The faded, light blue jeans embracing Mercer's ass with a

pornographic gluttony not allowed in most states did not help
Saul's lack of goodwill toward the basic idea of clothing either.

Saul had nothing against the light brown boots, although

they looked like they would rather be hiking in some kind of a
desert hell than walking into a darkened nightclub on a dead
end road in Vegas.

It had been one week since Mercer had asked Saul and his

dick out on a date. Over the last seven days, Saul went to
work and performed his job with his usual excellence and
fervor. His lunch hours had turned into a game of who can
blow whom the fastest, and even this didn't affect Saul's
commitment to his profession at all. In fact, his afternoon
appointments commented regularly on his particularly good
mood.

By mutual decision, the past seven nights had been spent

apart. Saul was scared shitless of moving too fast and getting
too comfortable with the idea of Mercer Braun in his life.
Afternoon romps were a hell of a lot different than waking up
to a guy every morning. For his part, Mercer had just nodded

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his head a lot as Saul rambled on about his reasoning. He
never tried to change Saul's mind, just accepting the screwed
up rules with a patience and easiness that had stroked his
increasingly interested heart just right.

Finally, after seven nights of tossing and turning and

cursing a too empty bed, "date night" had arrived.

Mercer had picked Saul up at seven.
Saul had been ready since five. Sitting on his couch,

nervously watching the clock, he found himself palming his
groin every so often, just to make sure that despite all signs
to the contrary that, no, he had not turned into a girl.

The drive had been a quiet one. The silence, however,

hadn't been awkward, just comforting. Just being in Mercer's
company felt a little like coming home... a thought that
basically scared Saul shitless. Ever since Elise, ever since
leaving the Carolinas, Saul had been searching for a new
home. The fact that he may have found it in a guy toting
around a death wish on his shoulders did bad things to his
stomach and silly, silly things to his heart. Before either a
lecture or God forbid some kind of declaration could wrench
itself from his mouth, Mercer had turned into a small parking
lot and announced proudly, "We're here!"

There were no bright lights "here," no showgirls wearing

an ungodly amount of feathers and little else. There were no
slot machines, no squeals of tourists as they won a bucketful
of coins. Nothing strobed. Nothing pounded. Everything was
dark, classy, and smooth.

A small stage sat at the end of the room. Round tables

with simple wooden, unassuming chairs filled the space

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between door and microphone. A bar ran along the long brick
wall to the left. The bank of black leather stools were already
filled with low-talking patrons sipping on shots and dark beer.

There were only a few tables left empty, and they all were

tagged with little "Reserved" signs. A woman was warming up
on a piano to the right of the stage, while a man with a
saxophone sat waiting nearby. The low, warm buzz of a crowd
nearing showtime filled the smoke filled air.

"What is this place?" Saul asked, feeling a little like a

tourist himself.

"This is where locals, like you, come to hear the best of

our town. This, my friend, is—" Mercer said in a voice laced
with respect. "When the top acts playing the casinos or just
traveling through Vegas want a little low-key downtime and
some good drinks, they come here... If they know about it,
that is."

"Why am I not surprised that you know about it?" Saul's

comment was only met with a wry smile.

Ten minutes later, the two men were ensconced at one of

the more private "Reserved" tables. Drinks had been ordered
and served. Unfortunately, Saul's beer hadn't helped in the
loosening of Saul's lips. Most of the time Mercer wouldn't
have minded the silence, but he had missed Saul this last
week. While he had enjoyed his time with the doctor's cock
and absurdly talented mouth, Mercer couldn't deny wanting
more. More was damned hard to come by when the doctor
wasn't doing anything more than breathing and looking
scared out of his skin.

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Determined, however, to follow Saul's lead, Mercer settled

back in his chair and waited for Saul's next move.

Mercer didn't have to wait for long.
Saul picked up the "Reserved" sign. He turned it over in

his hands and stared at it curiously. A smile that teased of
good memories curled the corner of his lips. Saul Tidewater
was a fascinating man to watch. Mercer could sit there all
night and simply stare.

Of course, Saul wasn't about to allow that. "What?" the

doctor asked cautiously. He turned and looked behind him,
scouring the crowd for someone, anyone who could garner
such interest for Mercer.

Knowing exactly what the man was doing, Mercer shook

his head. He was amazed at the doctor's complete lack of
self-awareness. How a guy who just oozed an easy classiness
and throbbed with pent up heat couldn't know how desirable
he truly was bothered Mercer to no end. He wondered if the
naivete had been born to Saul or had been cursed upon him
by circumstances and people out of his control? Of course
with Mercer not being the kind of guy who would just straight
out ask about that kind of psychological crap, the ex-
ballplayer went instead for healing the symptoms than
worrying about its cause. "I was looking at you, Doc."

"Why?" The puppy eyes went straight to Mercer's dick.
"You were doing this thing with your lips." Mercer found

himself making a vague hand motion that he knew nowhere
near approximated the enticing curl he was trying to describe.
Mercer shook his head at himself. He really was a goner for
this guy already. He knew he was in damned trouble here,

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but being a fool, he wasn't looking to escape it. He did try to
tamp down a little on the puppy love-ness though. "Just
wondering what put that look on your face, that's all."

Saul shrugged as if trying to rid himself of the

embarrassment that was suddenly creeping up onto his face.
"Growing up, my sisters were all in to the tea party thing.
They'd set up all these little TV trays inside of our house and
out in the back yard. They were everywhere. It annoyed the
hell out of me. I mean, really, Teddy bear tea parties? How's
a boy supposed to play with his Nerf football around that?" He
chuckled, then proceeded to scratch his chin, looking, well,
crafty. "So when no amount of complaining to my mother got
me anywhere, I got creative. I started playing by their rules."

"The Teddy bear tea party rules?" Mercer asked, just

wanting to keep the details straight.

"Exactly." Saul grinned excitedly like a little boy just about

to pull off a really big caper. "My sisters couldn't watch all
their little tables all the time, so whenever they left one
unattended, GI Joe would invade. There'd be guns and tanks
and missile silos and B-52's and nuclear submarines. I was
one heavily outfitted little boy, let me tell you. But I knew
that wouldn't be enough to keep my sisters at bay. So..."
Saul picked up the tiny sign again, "in the middle of every
little table slash military encampment, I stuck up a little
'Reserved' sign, just like this."

"Spelled correctly?" Mercer laughed, after all details were

always important in these kinds of things.

"Of course." Saul almost looked affronted.
"Of course," Mercer apologized with a smirk.

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A smile crept slyly across the doctor's lips as he explained

the logic of that long ago day, "No self-respecting Teddy bear
tea party maven would dare mess with a legitimate 'Reserved'
sign."

Mercer couldn't help it, he snorted. "That in the by-laws

somewhere?"

In all seriousness, Saul nodded. "Little sisters have all

these weird rules, man. It's freaky. You don't delve too far
into their world or you might come out wearing barrettes in
your hair and a pink tutu on your ass."

"Experience, Saul?" While Mercer wasn't really into that

kind of a thing, he'd still gladly take his time in imagining Mr.
Med School ballerina-fied.

Saul immediately reached for his beer. Swallowing down a

gulp, he shook his head. "Not coming near that with a ten
foot pole, Mercer." Apparently satisfied at his date's silence
on the matter, Saul wrapped things up, "Anyhow, this," he
stared down again at the little sign in his hands, "reminded
me of that." This time the little shrug that followed was more
of a "I can't believe I just told you that" tic than an
embarrassment-chaser.

Mercer decided to take pity on the guy. He asked him

instead, "How many sisters do you have?"

"Three. No brothers." Saul shivered a little. "It was like

growing up in a war zone, my friend. My only back-up was
Lester, a fifty pound basset hound I paid off with English peas
under the dinner table."

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"I'm lucky you're here." It was meant to be sarcastic but

had somehow come out of Mercer's mouth all different and
serious. Mercer was in deep shit here.

"That you are," Saul replied with a wise-ass grin.

Thankfully, either Saul hadn't noticed Mercer's unintentional
slip into smarm or he had chosen to ignore it. Whatever the
case may be, Mercer loved the guy a little more for it. "How
about you? Any brothers or sisters?" Saul asked behind a long
sip of beer.

"Only child." Mercer fiddled with his glass until he could

find something to add that didn't make it sound so damned
pathetic. Inspiration came with a tail. "We did have a cat
though. A white ball of fluff and claws we called Q-Tip." Yeah,
Okay, it still sounded sad.

"Nope. Sorry." Mercer immediately laughed. "Not feeling

sorry for you."

Mercer rolled his eyes, feeling all kinds of grateful and

stupid. "Drink your damn beer, Doc."

"You don't?" Saul eyed the soda water sitting untouched in

Mercer's glass.

"I don't," he replied easily enough. This was a topic he was

used to dealing with. "I got out of the habit while I was
playing ball and never saw any need to get back in to it."
While most of his teammates had drank and had bore no ill
side effects from imbibing, Mercer hadn't been willing to risk
it. He had wrapped his career so tightly in caution that when
it did still manage to break it took out much more than just
his ability to play ball, but all the life choices he had made
specifically to buffer and further that boyhood dream. "Kind of

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lost the taste for it, I guess." The truth was that he feared if
he ever started drinking, he'd never be able to stop. The
oblivion alcohol offered was just too tempting.

"My ex would love you then," Saul replied with a roll to his

eyes that Mercer couldn't figure out meant that the guy was
being serious or sarcastic. He would have asked but there
was a much more important question he needed to put out
there.

"Ex-wife or ex-girlfriend?" Mercer asked in real curiosity.

He was being sucked into Saul Tidewater in so many ways
that Mercer was just about ready to completely give in to the
pull.

"Ex-wife," Saul confessed with a humorless laugh. "Yep,

went for the whole bowl of wax on that one."

"Sorry." And Mercer found that he really was. He didn't

want anybody screwing with this generally good guy.

Saul chuckled as he pointed across the table at Mercer

accusingly, "Don't tell me. Bachelor?"

"Yeah." Usually he bragged when he was asked about that.

This time all he felt was a surprising ache. Although
admittedly he had never wanted any kind of a serious
relationship either before his career or during it, it kind of
hurt knowing that with his heart condition and at best flaky
future he was probably never going to have one now. It was
something he didn't like to think about. Particularly now,
sitting across from a man that had an air of forever in
everything he did.

"Bastard," Saul spit out with no fire.

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"Trade you your ex-wife for my bad heart?" The words

were out of Mercer's mouth before his brain could catch up
and nix them.

By the brief spark in his eyes, it was obvious that this slip

Saul did catch. Instead of rightfully calling Mercer on it,
however, the man smoothed it out and just smirked, "No
deal. I wouldn't do that to you."

Mercer tipped his glass at the man and admitted truthfully,

"I appreciate that."

The music swept over them like a warm blanket after a

cold, hard day. About an hour in, a few of the patrons started
moving a few of the tables closer to the walls. A little empty
spot pretending to be a dance floor was soon born.

Couples of every make and size wandered in and out of

the makeshift arena the rest of the night. Saul watched them
all with an envious eye.

When the place started emptying out and only the woman

on the piano was left on the stage, Saul took one large,
fortifying gulp of beer and asked, "You want to dance?"

Nearly spitting out the handful of nuts he had just shoved

into his mouth, Mercer found himself nodding and standing up
before his brain was able to recover from the shock.

Mercer Braun had never slow danced with a man. It was a

fact odd in its nature but embarrassingly true. "Virgin," he
whispered as they stepped out onto the small makeshift
dance floor.

"No, I'm not." Saul immediately frizzed up like he was

some kind of pack animal and an outsider had just insulted

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his herd. Then an accusatory glare was shot in Mercer's
direction. "Unless of course you did it wrong."

"I did not do it wrong." Mercer immediately bit back. He

could get his own frizz up too.

"Thank God." Saul smirked as he reached out and

confidently maneuvered Mercer's hips in line with his.

Getting more and more the feeling that he was dealing

with some kind of closet Fred Astaire here, Mercer quickly
finished his initial point, "I'm talking this slow dancing stuff.
I've never done this with a guy."

"Oh." Saul nodded solemnly, his hands dropping from

Mercer's hips mournfully. The puppy eyes were back. "Want
to bail?"

"No." Mercer rolled his eyes, knowing he was being played.

"I don't want to bail. Just thought I should warn you."

"Okay. So no dipping. Got it."
"Could you just shut up and dance?"
Saul grinned. "You sound like one of those 80's dance

movies."

Having just about enough of this shit, Mercer reached out

and grabbed hold of Saul's belt buckles and yanked the smart
ass doctor right into his hips. The bulge the man found
waiting for him shut Saul up quite effectively. It was Mercer's
turn to smirk.

Saul's shock wore off quickly. A look came to his eyes that

seemed to say, "So you want to fucking challenge me?"

Mercer swallowed suddenly feeling like the bull to a

matador. "I want to fucking be with you. Dancing, sucking,
screwing, whatever." Mercer stopped, took a deep breath and

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summed up his dumb ass confession, "I just want to be with
you, Okay?"

Saul looked a little stunned by the admission, but he

wasn't bolting for the door either. In fact, as his lips were
whispering, "Okay," his arms were wrapping around Mercer's
waist, pulling him close then starting to sway.

As one low, slow song bled away into the next, the men

silently stared into each other's eyes as if searching out and
finding their place in the other's soul.

Saul was the first to speak. "I want to kiss you." The

declaration came out on a heated breath that blew warmly
over Mercer's lips. The lowly spent words tickled Mercer's
tongue before slipping down his throat tasting of mint and
beer.

"You can't." Mercer slid his hand slowly down the linen

covered back, relishing the feel of the strong spine beneath
his fingertips. With the hard won determination of a damned
good ballplayer, Mercer concentrated only on the soft threads
as they lingered beneath the whorls of skin. "We're dancing."

"I can kiss..." Saul shifted, sending the muscles of his back

into an erotic dance of flesh over bone. His arms tightened
around his lover, bringing him dangerously closer to body
parts straining in obvious and eager lust. "And dance." He
swayed just a little bit harder to cement the point to Mercer's
libido.

"But I can't." Mercer's confession caught in his throat as a

shudder bled through his body. Saul's fingers had found the
skin just above his jeans, the shorn nails digging long, open
circles into his body, into his consciousness. Chill blades

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erupted around the subliminal-laced touch. He was finding it
harder to think. He was finding it harder to speak. His words
came out rushed, on the back of one unsteady breath, "I
can't because I'd have to have more."

"More?" the bastard teased behind a devastatingly

handsome crook of his mouth.

Not able to slowly and painstakingly devour his lover's lips,

Mercer sucked his own bottom lip between his teeth. He
hissed as he bit down on the tender flesh. The slow lick of
pain wasn't enough, however, to sidetrack the simmering pit
of desire threatening to boil over and scald the very depths of
his gut. "I'd want more here." His mouth was dry; his words
literally hurt. There were no "would"s left in this conversation.
Everything was about now. There was no use in pretending
anything different. "I want more now." He humped his need
hard against Saul's thigh, closing his eyes and sighing long
and lowly at the searing though bridled passion that it
brought.

Saul had stopped moving. He stood perfectly still as he

sucked in a breath heavy with "wants" and "cant's." He
spared one to his tongue to make room for the other. "You
can't."

It was Mercer who swayed now, rocking them lazily back

and forth into one another. He was not going to suffer
through this sinful dance of abstinence by himself any longer.
He would have company in his blazing, forbidden need.
"Haven't you ever..." Mercer angled his head around until he
was able to take the lobe of Saul's ear between his teeth. He
bit down hard. Saul jerked and held onto Mercer tighter.

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Dipping down a few more precious inches, Mercer nuzzled his
nose deep within the curve of neck into shoulder. Only after
Saul's goose bumps rose and fell beneath his cheek did
Mercer finish his well demonstrated thought, "With everybody
watching?"

As tense and taut as a guitar string under a maestro's

touch, in small tight little jerks, Saul shook his head.

"Breathe," Mercer reminded him as he moved even lower,

dropping feather light kisses to the hollow born of Saul's
collar bones. Mercer sucked in the scent that was his lover,
allowing himself to get high on the man's musk. Mercer let
out a low, long moan just loud enough for Saul's ears and the
ears of any voyeurs they may have lured their way.

Mercer could feel the color begin to burn across Saul's

skin. "You know what I'm doing, don't you?" he breathed into
the curve of his partner's jaw. Bringing his hand to his face,
Mercer painstakingly swept his thumb across Saul's lower lip,
memorizing every crease, every turn of the dark pink flesh.
"You know that I'm making them watch you." He pulled back
just enough to burrow his gaze deep within Saul's eyes. "They
want to see if I'll push you too far." He let his hand fall to
Saul's shoulder and then down to his chest. Palming his hand
over Saul's thundering heart, Mercer kept talking, "They want
to see you going over the edge," his other hand found the
swell of Saul's ass, "They want to watch you come." His words
picked up speed, "They're watching for your body to quake
right now. All eyes on you. All eyes hungering for you and
your seed."

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Saul jerked his body away, biting down on what could have

easily have been a yelp. He didn't go far however. His eyes
were wild, feral in their fire. The hand that shot out and fisted
the collar of Mercer's shirt no longer held any human
restraint. Slowly, Saul began to walk backwards, dragging
Mercer along with him. Only when their feet left lazily
swimming lights on the dance floor did Saul yank him
completely into his body and whispered, "I come only for
you."

Mercer didn't need telling twice.
A bathroom was found.
An empty bathroom stall was claimed.
The jungle like sounds that followed would become

legendary in the club's lore.

Saul awoke to a mammoth jostling of the bed. It was

either an earthquake—he was still a virgin in that territory—or
Godzilla had stopped by to try his luck at twenty-one. Either
were perfectly reasonable explanations to the cottony mush
that was currently Saul's brain. Seeing no need in opening his
eyes to deal with the undealable, Saul started to drift back
away letting the act of God or the act of Japanese cinema sort
itself out.

Just as the sandman was luring Saul his way again,

something wet and slippery landed across his face with a
sloppy smack. This time the choice not to open his eyes
wasn't really his.

Whatever slimy creature had just face planted on his face

wasn't moving. It was just lying there across the bridge of his
nose and up over his forehead. If most of his brain cells

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weren't still passed out in a back room of his groin, Saul
probably would have tried to defend himself by now. As it
was, however, he didn't want to touch it or touch it any more
than it was already touching him. Even the visions of a giant
slug slowly sucking his brain out of his eyeballs didn't get the
blood moving. No sir, there was no fight or flight response
going on in this bed. Maybe Mercer had actually fucked him
stupid last night? Maybe that's why he wasn't panicking or
maybe, just maybe, it was the suffocating aroma of a very
ripe banana that had immediately laid his fears of death to
rest?

"Uh, Doc, there's a banana peel on your head."
Unfortunately, Mister Obvious was running a smidge late

with his grand pronouncements. Saul would have rolled his
eyes at his lover but he didn't want to risk banana slime
clogging up a tear duct or something. "Yes, thank you. I
realize that." Instead of reaching up for the offending fruit
skin, Saul simply folded his hands across his chest and asked
politely, "Care to tell me why there's a banana peel on my
head?"

The bed shook just enough to indicate a nod. Mercer then

answered simply enough, "I misjudged my landing and then
overcompensated for the sprung spring you're working over
here."

Saul tried to count to ten but could only make it to four.

"Okay, never mind. I'll ask something simpler then. Why is
there a banana peel still on my head?"

"I was thinking of taking a picture."
Of course.

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100

"What are you? Eight?"
Saul didn't have to see it; he could just feel Mercer's

smirk. "Eight inches of solid girth, Doc, all for you."

Wondering when he had slipped back into that bad

seventies porn, Saul slowly shook his head and reached up
for the peel. As he eased it and its left over gunk off of his
eyes, Saul really hoped he wouldn't find Mercer sporting an
afro and a thick and juicy moustache. He shivered at the
mere thought.

"Want a towel?" was asked behind a lousily hid snicker.
"No, no, I've got it." Saul blindly reached out for his

bedside table where he knew there was a box of tissues
waiting.

Suddenly, a hand clasped around his wrist and tucked his

arm back near his body. The voice had lost its snicker and
had gained a truckload of gravel. "Here, let me do it."

Saul grayed out there for a minute. The fact that Mercer

Braun, former major league first baseman, was licking
banana juices off of Saul's face in long, slow laps of his
tongue would have shorted out even good old Einstein's
circuits. Saul allowed himself the small phase out and tried
desperately not to giggle when a previously unknown ticklish
spot on his left eyelid fell prey to the tongue.

Saul didn't know how long Operation De-Slime Tidewater

had taken, but he did know it hadn't been near long enough.
As the end was declared by a peck of lips on the tip of his
nose, Saul finally opened his eyes and looked straight down
to his dick doing jumping jacks under the sheet. "Hmm, think
it's a kink?"

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101

"I don't know. Want me to Google it?" Mercer, who was

kneeling on the bed at Saul's side, looked down apparently
amazed at the aerobic talent of doc junior. Curiously Mercer
poked his finger at it.

Immediately Saul slapped the exploring hand away. "Hey,

hands off. This isn't a petting zoo." He then pushed himself up
into a sitting position against the headboard. Carefully, he
folded his hands over the over-enthusiastic member. He was
not going to have sex until he found out how a banana peel
ended up on his head.

Mercer leaned back and pouted just a little. It was

adorable and unfairly fuckable, but Saul had his rules and was
fully prepared to stick to them... for at least the next half
minute.

"I ask again. Why..."
"I answered that," Mercer broke in indignantly.
"Not in any human dialect, you didn't."
Mercer sighed and began his explanation again. "I was

hungry. I found fruit." And the bastard actually planned on
ending it right there.

Saul pounded him in the thigh.
The explanation resumed. "I was going to scare you. I

leapt on the bed with my peeled banana and like I said
before, I misjudged...."

"You leapt?"
"Yeah," Mercer shrugged like it was an everyday

occurrence which maybe it was in his world. "And you've got
a sprung spring, Doc. Better have that looked at."

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102

Sure, Saul would definitely file that away under "urgent."

Right now Saul was a bit more concerned that he'd
accidentally slept with a toddler last night. "Did you not play
enough when you were a child? Was there a lack of
trampolines in your formative years?"

There was a flinch in those gorgeous brown eyes that

disappeared before Saul could have even sworn it was there.
Mercer's laugh sounded forced. "You're the grown up in this
thing. Haven't you figured that out yet?"

"This thing?" Saul slowly repeated, his heart beating way

too fast.

Tilting his head to the side, all laughter gone from his face,

Mercer asked seriously, "What would you call it?"

"I don't know the lingo," Saul backed out of the hot seat

lamely.

Mercer rolled his eyes, accepting the deflection for the cop

out that it was. "There is no lingo. Unless you call "seeing one
another"..."

"Exclusively?" The word left his mouth before Saul could

stop it.

Mercer nodded, accepting it without so much as a "Hell no!

Are you fucking insane, man!" In fact, Saul just might have
caught a smile ever so swiftly across those delectable lips.
"Unless 'seeing one another exclusively' is some kind of hip
jargon you're not comfortable with, Old Man."

Any fluffy bunny-like feelings were swept out to the curb.

"I'm five months older than you, Bastard."

The s.o.b. grinned. "It must have been a long five months

then."

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103

Saul wisely ignored that particular dig, choosing instead to

look for a little confirmation. "So, we're..." Saul flicked his
hand between them briefly.

"Yeah, we're..." Mercer repeated the gesture with a soft

laugh.

Saul felt himself beaming like a fool. "Hey, you want to go

spray paint our names on an overpass or something?"

"Or something." Mercer shook his head and proceeded to

spread the whole length of his body out over Saul's like warm
melting butter on a piping hot sweet roll. The grumbling of
Saul's still empty stomach was quickly drowned out by deep-
throated moans.

[Back to Table of Contents]

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104

Chapter Six: Dirty, Little Secret

It was only five in the morning, but somehow Saul

Tidewater was already running late.

What really stung was that this was his day off. He wasn't

even on call today. With his career, it was a rare thing to
have twenty-four hours completely to himself. He should be
sleeping in, not hopping around on one socked foot while
trying to sock the other before the sun had even crawled out
of its own bed. Maybe if his damned kitchen phone would stop
fucking ringing he wouldn't be jumping around like a clumsy
kangaroo on speed trying to get to it. Of course just as he got
to it, Saul heard the front door open. Shit. He must really be
running late. Sparing no time to greet his lover with a "Fuck,
this is early," Saul answered the phone with a brisk "Hello?"

"Good morning, big brother!" Valerie Tidewater's

seventeen-year-old voice burst through the thousand miles of
distance with vim and vigor and all things inappropriate for
five o'clock in the fucking morning.

"Valerie? What the hell?" By his sister's chipper tone that

had already scratched out an ache in his head, Saul knew that
nothing was wrong on the South Carolina home front. His
mom apparently hadn't fallen in the oven. His dad hadn't
finally lost the battle with the old oak tree in the backyard
he'd been working on cutting down for decades. There were
no little sister parts strewn across any highway. Most of him,
of course, was damned thankful for the knowledge, but that
remaining pissed off part of him, the part that was currently

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staring down a sock only half way up his bare foot, was
growling, "What the fuck, Val?" He winced as he hadn't meant
to let that little pissed off part of him actually get a hold of his
tongue. "Sorry, sorry," he tossed out the same apology big
brothers had been forced to give little sisters for centuries.

Even Valerie's silence was smug. Knowing his little sister

she was probably recording this conversation and would be
running off to tell their Mom about it the moment she hung
up. While Valerie Tidewater might be seventeen-years-old to
the rest of the world, she would always be an eight-year-old
brat to her big brother. Saul didn't know why the heck he
loved her so damned much.

When her continued silence got a little too much for him to

take, Saul sighed and plopped himself and his one and a half
sock-covered feet up on the counter, settling in for the long
haul that was often his sister Valerie. "You do know it's only
5:03 out here, right?" The time zone concept had never
seemed to breach the girl's hardened teenage crust.

"Yes, Saul. They taught us all about clocks and telling time

last week. I even got a gold star for it and everything," she
gushed drolly.

Saul rolled his eyes and wondered if it was really too early

to bring out the rum? "What do you need, Val? This is my first
day off in two weeks so..."

"I needed to say hi to my big brother, check in on him,

make sure Sodom and Gomorrah hadn't eaten him up and
spit him out yet." Valerie was an expert at dishing out the
guilt and the sarcasm in the same roll of the tongue. It was a
talent she had learned from their mother.

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"Well, thanks for your concern. I'm fine..." Mercer chose

that moment to walk into the room. There was skin. The man
was wearing a pair of cargo shorts that ended an inch or two
above his knee. Mercer's calves were ungodly, even his knee
caps had a hint of the devil to them. Saul had to shake his
head a little to draw his attention back to his sister and a
correction that needed to be made. "Actually, Val, I'm great.
Super, even." Saul waved Mercer farther into the kitchen
when his lover mouthed if he should leave. There was no way
in hell that man looking like that was getting out of his sight
for the rest of the day, if not for the rest of his life.

"You're super?" she asked incredulously. "Big brother, you

haven't been "super" ever."

"Val..." Yes, Saul whined. His sister could wring a good

whine out of the hardest of souls.

"You're a man of no extremes, bro. Even when Elise..."
"Don't go there," Saul warned her seriously. "Not today,

Okay?"

"Okay," she slowly agreed sounding more curious than

actually subdued. "Are you alone?"

At this point, Saul basically just wanted to die. He was not

having this conversation with his teenaged sister. He was not.

Apparently, however, he was as his sister did a little

screech into the phone before pinning him to the proverbial
wall, "You're not, are you? Oh my God, you've got a girl over!
What's her name? What does she do? She's not one of those
dancers like in the movie "Showgirls," is she? Do you need
me to send condoms?"

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Saul hopped off the counter and walked deliberately over

to his liquor cabinet. His hand closed around the bottle of rum
with no second thoughts. He was amazed that all big brothers
didn't come with lifetime memberships to AA stamped to their
asses.

Suddenly another hand joined his, gently prying his fingers

away from the golden liquid relief. Saul glanced hard up at
the intruder into his bar space but found only a raised brow
and a concerned look in his lover's eyes. There was no
chastisement or judgment to be found anywhere.

Once again sighing, Saul reached up and patted Mercer's

face briefly before returning to the hellish world of little
sisters offering condoms.

"No, I do not need condoms," Saul ignored the snort from

Mr. Braun, "and if Mom hears you asking that she's going to
lock you up in the basement until you're forty."

"Actually, Mom's the one who wanted me to ask." She

waited a beat, making sure the pin had dropped and rattled
around in all its appropriate doom. "Mom's right here. Do you
want to talk to her?"

"No, I don't think I'll ever talk to her again, thank you very

much." Even with his sister's giggles echoing evilly in his
head, Saul steadfastly refused to imagine the look of
amusement and good-natured concern for her little boy that
his mother was no doubt wearing right now. He glanced up at
Mercer expecting little red devil horns to have sprouted from
his head. This kind of shit just doesn't happen outside of hell.
A hornless Mercer, however, just radiated bleak pity. Saul
rolled his eyes and returned to his sister. "I'm not saying

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another word to you, Val, until you swear that you are locked
alone in your room with all recording devices turned off."

"Ah, party pooper," she fussed. The sound of a door

slamming however clued Saul in to the fact that his little
sister had actually done what she was asked. "Okay, you're
all safe. Now I want to hear details. Preferably dirty ones that
I can tease you about incessantly."

The trouble with Valerie was that she lied about the

stupidest things. She might rag on him about some things but
his relationships with women she never touched. She had a
damned good listening ear, one of which he'd probably used
too much since his divorce from Elise. While he had never
admitted any of the darker details of the separation to
Valerie, he did gain comfort from listening to her odd mix of
hopeless romanticism and irrepressible frankness.
Unfortunately, the result had been that Valerie could now
read him like a book and her bulldog tenacity Saul knew was
not going to allow her to let go of her suspicions until she
found out the truth about her big brother's love life.

He could feel a smirk tugging meanly at his lips as he

warned her, "Be careful what you wish for, Sis." Hell, he
hadn't planned to do it this way but outing himself to his baby
sister at five-freaking- o'clock in the morning sounded just
about right.

"Okay. I'm ready." Saul could picture her sitting cross-

legged on her bed, elbows to her knees, chin cupped in her
left hand. "Lay it on me, Saul. Who is she?"

"We're not talking she, Val. We're talking he."

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Pins can drop in the Carolinas too. "He?" she asked with

only the barest hint of a stutter.

"Man," Saul confirmed.
The sound of his sister's phone dropping to her mattress

was clear.

In her credit, the phone didn't remain abandoned for long.

The sound of her scrambling for it amid a colorful array of
curses brought a smile to Saul's face.

"You're bullshitting me," Valerie accused, sounding a little

hurt and a lot mad.

"No," he answered seriously. He did not want her thinking

that, not for a moment. "I'm not, Valerie. I swear I'm giving
you the God's honest truth here."

"Oh my God," she finally whispered.
Saul's heart sunk. His voice mirrored his fall, "Is it so bad,

Val?"

"It sure the hell is!" she snapped. "How the fuck could I

have missed this?" There was a loud smack that sure sounded
like a slap to a forehead. "Shit. I'm an idiot."

"Uh, Sis, are you pissed at you or me?" Hope crept into his

voice

"Well, duh! Me." The roll of her eyes cut through the miles

with venom. "Wait a minute. You didn't think that I would be
mad or..."

A laugh of utter relief bubbled out of his mouth. "Kind of

new at this, Val. I didn't know what to expect." While his
family weas open-minded and had never voiced any problems
with the idea of same-sex relationships, Saul had still been
carrying around that painful niggling of doubt. Valerie would

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never understand the gift that she had just given him. He
leaned heavily on the counter and just grinned.

"How long?" Having fully recovered from the initial shock,

she apparently had no trouble shifting back into nosy little
sister mode.

"About a month now." No need telling her the exact hour,

minute and second count. Saul could do without that added
torment, thank you very much.

"So, is he... I mean, do you..." she sputtered before

getting her crap together and just asking it straight out, "Ah,
hell, is it good?"

"Yeah," Saul found his lover's gaze and smiled, "It's real

good."

"Super?"
He could hear the snicker in his sister's voice and just

wanted to hug her. Instead, he just answered simply and
honestly, "Yeah."

The answering squeal was not totally unexpected but was

ear shattering nonetheless.

"Val! You're going to scare Mom." Giving his mother a

heart attack really wasn't on his docket for the day.

"Oh, don't be such a worry wart," she brushed him off with

the kind of ease only a teenager could know. "Besides, I bet
Mom already knew it."

Oh yeah, that's exactly what he needed to hear. "Are you

really trying to give me an aneurysm here?"

"I'm just saying..."
"Well, stop it." Mercer's leaning into the refrigerator to

grab himself some milk sidetracked Saul for a second. That

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ass really was ungodly. Clearing his throat and readjusting
the growing bulge in his pants, Saul confessed a little huskily
into the phone, "I have plans for the day that don't include a
nervous breakdown, alright?"

Trust Valerie to latch on to the telltale deep hum to his

voice. "Is he there? Is he with you right now? What is he
wearing?"

How this conversation with his little sister had degraded

into sounding badly pornographic Saul would never, ever
know. "Okay, that's it. Conversation is now over."

"He is there," she sounded truly awed, a fact that either

meant that she hadn't really believed his little revelation or
the fact that being a moron ran in the Tidewater family.

"You are not talking to him, Valerie." Saul was going to nip

that in the bud right now.

"Did I ask?" she tried her best to sound affronted. When

that didn't work she reverted to pain in the ass. "Can you
send me a pic?"

"Val!"
"He can have his clothes on, jeez. I'm not that twisted."

There was a little bit of silence and then a soft and genuinely
curious, "Do I at least get his name?"

"Hold on a minute." Turning to Mercer, not bothering with

trying to hide his question from Val's obnoxiously good
hearing, Saul asked, "Does my little sister at least get your
name?"

They hadn't talked about it. Sure, they had been "doing"

Vegas as a couple, using their real names and all that shit,
but Saul knew that that damned commercial about "What

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happens in Vegas, stays in Vegas" could encompass a hell of
a lot of things, things like Saul and Mercer. Saul found himself
holding his breath painfully as he waited for Mercer to
answer... an answer that was taking a damned long time...
and what was with that smirk?... and where the fuck... what
the hell was Mercer doing?

Now standing in front of Saul, the aforementioned smirk

still beaming bright, Mercer reached out and took the phone
from Saul's apparently numb fingers and spoke right into the
receiver, "Hi. The name's Mercer and I've got a thing for your
brother."

Saul could feel his mouth flopping open and closed a

number of times although nothing was coming out. Yeah, he
was acting like a freaking fish out of water but at the moment
he just couldn't bring himself to care. He wondered briefly
how the hell his life had come to this point? Before he could
answer himself, Saul watched in a mixture of horror and utter
disbelief as Mercer Braun blushed into the phone. The words
that followed out of the red-faced mouth didn't exactly help
calm Saul's pending stroke.

"How old are you again?" Mercer nearly stuttered as his

laugh held a definite nervous twitch to it.

Swiping the phone out of his lover's grasp before the four

horsemen of the apocalypse showed up and started doing
their thing, Saul informed both parties as he brought the
phone back up to his own ear, "Valerie is seventeen and won't
be seeing eighteen."

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Valerie was already in full whine and plea mode, "Ah, come

on, Saul. It's not like I don't know what two men can do. I
think it's hot."

Yes, this was hell. "Goodbye, Valerie."
She laughed, giving up graciously. "Bye. Love ya, big

brother."

Hanging the phone up slowly, still locked in an "I can't

believe this shit" daze, Saul found the damned twinkling
brown eyes of his lover. He asked him genially, "Did you
really have to do that?"

Mercer laughed. "I really, really did, Doc."
"Do not call me that." Saul stomped over to Mercer's side

and grabbed the glass he held in his hand and emptied the
milk down his throat without an ounce of regret. Saul had so
much pent up energy right now that he was just itching for a
fight.

Mercer, however, wasn't falling for it. Handing Saul a

napkin with a soft smile, he commented, "Valerie seems
nice."

Saul's frustration was not about to be soothed so quickly.

"I repeat, she's seventeen years old. She's a pain in the butt."
At Mercer's stern look, Saul relented, if only a little, "She's a
pain in the butt that I love lots, Okay?" Great, now he had his
lover defending his little brat of a sister. Could this day get
any better?

"Okay." Mercer nodded agreeably as he headed for the

fruit bowl.

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Ripping the banana out of Mercer's hands, knowing what

kind of trouble lay on that path, Saul accused without any of
the heat from before, "You're early."

"No," grabbing a handful of grapes instead of his beloved

banana, Mercer corrected, "You're late." He grinned, a little
more than was called for in this situation.

Saul called him on it immediately, "Why are you smiling?"
Popping a grape into his mouth, he shrugged, "I just think

it's nice that you told your sister about me."

Saul stared at his lover for a long, long time. "You're

actually going to brag about that?" he finally managed to
mutter out with a healthy dose of "What the fuck?" "I thought
that you... that I...I mean, you're a public figure and it can't
be easy and..."

Mercer laid his hand gently across Saul's mouth. "You

thought you were my dirty little secret?" he asked, clearly a
little hurt that Saul had read him that way.

Gripping Mercer's wrist he slowly pulled the hand away.

"Yeah... although I'd hardly call myself little." Saul tried to
make light, knowing that he had just fucked up royally.

"True enough." Brown eyes traveled appreciatively down to

Saul's groin. "Little is one word I'd never use for you, Doc."
Taking his last grape, Mercer then slowly brought it up to
Saul's lips and grinned like a naughty school boy as Saul bit
down on the fruit. "I'm not ashamed of anything you and I
are doing. Don't you ever doubt that. Hey, I'd even sell
tickets but..."

"But?" Saul licked the grape juice off of his lips.

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Mercer smirked as he leaned over and kissed off a drop of

juice from Saul's chin. "You're mine, Doctor Tidewater, and I
don't share."

"Good to know." Saul couldn't help but smile. Maybe this

day wasn't going to turn out too bad after all.

The road was bumpy. Saul didn't mention that though. He

figured it was fairly obvious. Besides, he really didn't want to
engage the man. Mercer was driving. It was definitely an
inappropriate moment to play vacuum cleaner and suck the
man's brains out through his cock like a straw.

Nope. It was best that Saul kept his mouth shut. Firmly.
He was sure that the ride would be over soon. It had to be.

Thirty miles of watching firm thighs under richly tanned and
softly furred skin jostling with every bump and crevice of the
poorly maintained black top had to come to an end sometime.
His life was just shitty like that.

It had been two weeks since their first "date night." Saul's

hospital schedule sucked, so the men had been relegated
once again to lunchtime delights. This time, however,
overnighters were no longer off limits. Waking up in Mercer's
arms had quickly become one of Saul's favorite things. He
didn't allow himself to indulge in it often however. Only three
times over the past fourteen days had he dragged himself
from the hospital late at night and headed straight to
Mercer's. After fourteen hour shifts Saul had been in condition
for sex. Snuggling, however, became nearly as addictive.

When Mercer had suggested a second "date" the first time

Saul had a day off, the doctor had jumped at it. Even when
Mercer had told him to pack a bag and buy himself some

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good hiking boots, Saul hadn't balked. At this point, Saul
would have followed Mercer to the ends of the earth.

Apparently "to the ends of the earth" was exactly where

Mercer was taking him. Slowing down the truck, Mercer pulled
into a spot by some big rock before Saul could even ask for
another go of it around the block. He could definitely go for
another hour or two of a tightly jiggling Mercer behind the
wheel.

A quick look at his passenger as Mercer turned off the

engine brought a frown to the man's brow. "You car sick or
something?" he asked Saul.

At this point Saul considered banging his head against the

dashboard until unconsciousness was had. Anything had to be
better than having your lover mistake the look of sexual
appreciation on your face as a need to puke. "Something,"
Saul huffed as he opened the door and prepared to drag
himself out of the truck and into the blazing hot oven called a
second date.

Mercer grabbed his arm.
With one foot out the door, Saul looked back at the driver,

the "What the hell?" he left to the curves and planes of his
apparently nauseated face to ask.

Sucking the luscious soft pink flesh that was his bottom lip

in between his teeth, Mercer studied Saul a little unsurely for
a moment before wondering aloud, "Aren't you going to
explain the 'something?'"

Saul narrowed his eyes at the man, uncertainty ramming

its fist down his throat and making him want to choke up all
his bat shit crazy insecurities for Mercer's amusement. This

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guy was a walking cock, all self-confidence and sex on a 6'1"
stick. What the hell was Saul thinking? Sure, he may be a
doctor, a damned good doctor at that, and a decent enough
person with an interesting sense of humor and a healthy dose
of manly spunk, but Saul Tidewater was nowhere near the
league of Mercer Braun. Talk about hitching your dick to a
star... a hand suddenly cupping his face brought the inner
tirade to an immediate halt.

"You've got to stop doing that." A lazy smile had settled

upon Mercer's lips.

"Stop what?" He was damned proud of himself for not

stuttering. The heat radiating through Mercer's skin and into
his own did funny things to his head. In an act of pure self-
preservation, Saul shook his head and reluctantly pulled his
face away from the brain stuttering caress.

Mercer sighed and let his hand fall again to his lap. "Over

analyzing everything. One minute you're looking at me like
you want to eat me with a spoon and the next you look ready
to bolt for the hills."

Saul turned away and locked his gaze on some imagined

spot a hundred miles away. "Actually I was considering
digging a hole and crawling in it." The confession lacked heat
or the humor meant to be attached. Saul hoped Mercer
wouldn't notice.

Mercer noticed. "Why the hell would you want to do that?"

He thumped the back of his hand against Saul's thigh, no
doubt trying to draw his attention away from the "over
yonder" hidey hole.

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Saul decided to be a stubborn jackass and refused to even

glance at the driver as he laid an embarrassing part of his
teenage years out on the line. "Sophomore year, Sawgrass
High. I get these flashbacks sometimes." He did manage to
flop his hand through the air once, trying to convey without
words or gaze that yes, in fact he did know how ridiculous it
sounded.

"Nerd?" Mercer guessed right away.
"To the nth degree." Saul shuddered as some of the

crueler memories rushed from the farthest corners of his
mind back out front and center. He closed his eyes as the
joint feeling of being both an idiot and a big fucking baby
settled into his bones like a summer cold.

Apparently, Mercer's adeptness at reading a curve ball

being launched at him at ninety miles per hour didn't
translate into reading Saul Tidewater's insecurities. The ball
player blithely responded, "So? What does that have to do
with now?"

Saul pinched the bridge of his nose and huffed out

unkindly, "Asks the jock with his tongue down every
cheerleader's throat and his dick in every..."

"I was home schooled, Saul," Mercer interrupted.
Saul's eyes shot open at the unexpected flood of cold

water thrown onto his stereotype driven argument. He
immediately felt like a moron. Combined with the idiot and
big fucking baby syndrome, Saul was going to be lucky to
make it out of this second date without a complex. He opened
his mouth to confess to his moron-ness, but Mercer beat him
to it.

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Wearing a look on his face that said "Well, shit happens.

What's a guy supposed to do about it?" Mercer continued, "I
never saw the inside of a classroom until I walked into college
that first day. I puked up my guts in the potted fichus down
the hall ten minutes before Freshmen English was going to
start. I tossed up what was left in a bed of God-awful
tangerine impatiens five minutes after class was dismissed. I
hid out in my dorm room for two days after that. The only
thing that got my ass back in gear was wanting to play
baseball. I had to go to class to be on the team. So, I went
and hated it, but I pulled a B average without even sleeping
with any of my professors, male or female. I was drafted my
second year." Mercer shrugged, even going as far as to
adding a lopsided smile to his conclusion, "All in all I guess it
worked out in the end."

Saul was basically speechless after that. His mouth flopped

open a time or two but nothing came out of it.

"What?" Mercer asked, as apparently Saul's imitation of a

starving guppy had not gone unnoticed.

"How the hell did you end up like this then?" As soon as he

asked it, Saul knew it was going to need some explanation.
Damn it. He blanched and turned away. Why the hell didn't
he just staple his lips shut for good?

Giving Saul no time to wallow, Mercer rapped his knuckles

against Saul's arm. "Like this?"

Saul had to look at him. There was no other way to know if

Mercer was just curious or about to practice his home run
swing on Saul's face. Turning around, Saul thankfully found a
softly furrowed brow that radiated only a little bit of "What

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the fuck?" but no immediate violence. Figuring that this look
was the perfect example of what Saul had been saying, the
doctor flapped a hand toward Mercer's face and answered,
"Yeah, like that."

"Like how?" The furrow disappeared, replaced with a look

of barely restrained amusement.

If Saul hadn't found himself falling so hard in maybe-love

with Mercer, he would have really hated this guy. "Like some
fucking poster boy for popularity and confidence. You know,
like Mr. America or some kind of cape-less shit. Let me just
tell you, it's sick. In fact, you're sick. And if you weren't hung
like some Greek god, me and my latent issues would be out
of here. There's a reason you don't sell the rhinestones next
to the diamonds. And you, my friend, are it." God, did he just
compare himself to a freaking rhinestone?

Silently, Mercer stared at him. He stared at Saul for a hell

of a long time before replying gently, "You know that all of
what you just said doesn't make any sense, right?"

Admittedly, Saul had lost himself somewhere after the

"hung like some Greek god" statement. The visuals
accompanying that truth had sort of overwhelmed his circuits
for a second there. Where the rhinestone crap had come from
he really didn't want to contemplate. That stapler to the lip
thing was looking better and better all the time. "Okay, I
agree with you. Nix all of that."

Mercer nodded then shrugged. "I liked the hung part."
"Of course you would." Saul snorted. "Look, all I'm saying

is that you've got to give me some leeway with all this
confidence shit. I am not you. I don't have people falling all

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over themselves just to get a sniff of me. Don't get me
wrong. I'm not jealous of the sniffing, in no way do I yearn to
be sniffed by the general public. I just find it weird, good but
really, really weird, that a guy like you is wanting to..."

"Sniff?"
"A guy like me."
Mercer tilted his head to the side and shrugged. "Get used

to it, Doc. I'm nowhere near done sniffing you." Thankfully
the ex-ball player didn't wait for a reply. He was out the door
and around to the back of the truck way before Saul's grin
reached the goofy stage.

Once he had beaten his loopy smile back into submission,

Saul joined Mercer at the truck's bed and watched him rustle
through their equipment. There were first aid kits, sleeping
bags, enough water to drown a fish and all the other sundries
that bespoke of a man who had done this kind of thing way
too often. However, as Saul's eyes categorized and then
dismissed each hiking goodie, a particularly important
"sundry" seemed to be missing. "No tent," he stated dryly.

Head down, Mercer was busy calibrating something GPS-

looking in his hands. He mumbled something mostly
unintelligible into his chest.

Saul did catch the words "sky" and "cover" though. He was

getting a bad feeling about this. "What did you just say?" Saul
asked anxiously.

Mercer and one of his damned shrugs struck again. "You

heard me. The sky will cover us just fine."

Saul really hoped the man was kidding. He grabbed and

yanked Mercer's arm toward him, forcing him to actually look

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at him. Saul really needed some kind of facial clue as to the
severity of what was being said.

Mercer looked up at him accordingly.
Saul's gut hit the ground. "You're serious."
There was another fucking shrug. "Of course." When Saul

gave him no response, confusion began to eat away at the
features of his handsome face. Suspicion soon followed. "I
thought you had done this before?" he accused still looking
dumbfounded.

"Yes." Saul threw his hands out to his side in a sign of

complete exasperation. "Camping, as in a tent with a cot, and
camp counselors stationed at the flap armed with flashlights
and bug spray." If summer camps couldn't be classified as
camping then they sure as shit wouldn't be called camping...
that, however, was a bit of logic Saul chose not to share at
the moment.

"Oh." Mercer looked crestfallen, his boot toeing a hole in

the dirt. "You should have said. I could have borrowed one
from somewhere, I guess. Or I could run back into town and
buy a tent for you?"

"What and leave me here, by myself?" That was not panic

in Saul's voice. It was not.

"To stake our claim, yeah."
Stake our claim? "Excuse me, when did we decide to pan

for gold?"

Mercer could do exasperation too. Hands on his hips, a

deep breath raked from his lungs, Mercer asked in slow, short
words, "You don't want to lose this spot, do you?"

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Saul didn't even flinch. He just simply exploded into words

and accompanying, and in no way emasculating, hand
gestures. "Two points. One: This spot is just like that spot,
and that spot over there, and..."

"I get it." Mercer rolled his eyes.
Saul didn't care. "Two: Lose this spot to whom? There's

nobody else here. And just so you know, no matter your
affinity for this particular plot of dirt, if a scorpion or a desert
hyena really wanted this spot while you were gone, I'd let him
have it, Mercer, I really would."

Mercer shook his head sadly, a tentative curl to the corner

of his lip. "You would have made a lousy prospector, Doc."

Saul snorted. "That hurts, Braun."
With all seriousness, Mercer asked, "You really need a

tent?"

Saul immediately scoffed, "I don't need a tent. Need was

never mentioned."

Mercer nodded patiently. "But you want a tent?"
Arms tucked across his chest, Saul confessed in his most

manly manner, "Yes. I want a tent."

The bastard threw a freaking shrug at him. "Well, I'm

sorry. I don't have one for you." He didn't so much as blink as
he stared at Saul as if he was just daring the doctor to whine.

Saul smirked, unexpectedly finding himself in the perfect

position to get what he really wanted. "Then I want a rim job.
A big one."

Mercer looked suitably stunned. Then he looked

ridiculously pleased. "Really? You're up for that?"

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A quick look down at his own cargo shorts confirmed Saul's

condition in no uncertain terms. "Yes, I believe I am."

The setting sun cast a deep red glow to everything,

including Saul's ass cheeks. Leaning over the open tailgate of
the truck, shorts and black briefs in a puddle at his left ankle,
booted legs wide and waiting, wife-beater pushed up to his
chest, arms braced for heavy assault, Saul looked like a porn
star's wet dream. Mercer hoped to God that his heart was
going to make it through this.

Mercer had purposefully picked this far corner of the

Reserve, a corner that was rarely visited by hiker or park
official, in hopes of just this type of brazen encounter.

"What are you waiting for? And if you say something corny

like enjoying the view, I'm going to kill you." Saul sounded
nervous and a little pissy. In impatience, he shuffled his feet
around as much as his spread position allowed. The muscles
in his calves, thighs, and butt danced accordingly, the x-rated
portion of the evening already in full swing.

Mercer needed some water. Taking a long sip from the

bottle at his feet, Mercer found spit again and was finally able
to answer. "I'm just planning my strategy, Doc. There's a lot
of prime real estate to cover back here."

Saul groaned. "I can't believe you just said that."
Mercer chuckled. "Want me to go back to 'I'm just

enjoying the view?'"

"Might not be a bad idea. I'm nervous enough as it is

without me imagining a platoon of soldiers back there
measuring up the best approach to my asshole."

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"Shh..." Mercer shushed as his plan of attack became

clear. "Whatever I do, you do not get to move, understood?"

"Yeah." Saul nodded.
Mercer began.
The long, lean line of the Achilles tendon drew him first.

Tight and strung so hard between heel and calf, it was an
objectification of everything Saul Tidewater was making
Mercer Braun. Decision made, Mercer dropped down to his
knees. Finding that he needed to get even lower, that he
needed to bend at the waist and stick his own ass up and out
in the dry desert air just to reach the chosen destination,
stirred something submissive and completely unexpected in
the deepest pit of his soul.

With his dick already hard and fighting for space in his

shorts, bending to the ground at the waist proved painful and
almost daunting. A weaker man would have abandoned the
quest. The insane desire to skin teeth along the length of the
slim taut tendon would surely have been pushed to the
wayside in favor of morsels not requiring such subservient
posturing. Mercer, however, just took it as a challenge, half
wishing that someone did see him this way, hoping for a
stranger's lens to have captured this moment and saved it for
an eternity more of Mercer's own fantasies.

These wishes and hopes faded deep into the background

lull of the desert as Mercer's mouth finally enveloped skin.

The Achilles tendon jerked in response to the newness of

the sensation. With one hand steadying his kneel on the
ground, Mercer's other hand clamped around Saul's shin,
holding the leg still as its muscles bucked and then finally

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calmed. Saul tasted of salt born of sweat, of soap from their
morning shower, and of leather from his hiking boot. Slowly,
Mercer trailed his teeth and his tongue up the back of his
lover's leg, pausing only to linger at the change of texture,
the change of shape and girth as heel became calf and calf
became knee.

The hollow created at the bend of the back of the knee

proved to be even more intoxicating to Mercer than the
achingly long tendon had been. He felt like he was licking a
bowl clean of its batter. Not wanting to miss a spot, not
wanting to ignore a taste, Mercer suckled at the often
neglected spot.

Saul's thighs quivered under Mercer's steadying hands. He

mouthed a "shush" into the warm worshipped skin. It was a
warning more than an admonition. Where Mercer's attention
was headed next he knew to be a fire keg on his own body.
He was counting on Saul feeling the same.

Leaving the wet bowl of the knee, Mercer mouthed

hungrily at Saul's thigh. Sometimes teeth were bore deep into
skin, sometimes only tongue and lips nursed the strong
though quaking flesh.

Smelling the need of the man who was now beginning to

moan only spurred Mercer on faster to the awaiting star
shaped cauldron of fire stretched and pinched in the dead
center of his vision. Circling his hands around to the front of
Saul's body, Mercer dragged his shorn nails roughly up from
leg to groin. Cupping the balls he found hanging heavy there,
he massaged their weight in slow, calming kneads, just
enough to distract any nerves but not enough to put flame to

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any new fires. Mercer was careful not to touch Saul's shaft, a
shaft he could already feel straining as it came to hardened
attention. Mercer wanted all of his lover's attention to be
focused on what was about to happen between his cheeks.
The penis could wait until the star caught up with the
festivities.

Mercer gave no warning. His tongue simply breached

Saul's asshole, digging as far in as the tight man would allow.

Saul bucked as if he had just been privy to an

executioner's chair's fire.

Squeezing the captured balls tighter, Mercer used his

upper arms to brace Saul's hips in place.

Saul fought the intrusion with determination, a

determination that slowly melted down and away into
pleasure.

Just as Mercer could feel the muscles in Saul's ass cheeks

begin to relax, Mercer slipped out his tongue.

Saul let out a pitiful moan and shoved his butt back,

searching out the lost tongue.

Not wanting the man to suffer, Mercer swiped his tongue

back down to the treasured valley and began to loop up and
down the hard sides. Around and around, licks were circled
about the furiously puckering star.

Saul began to plea.
Then, he began to beg.
Only when the sweat began to pearl on Saul's backside did

Mercer relent. He stabbed his tongue back deep into the hole.
This time, however, Mercer began to thrust.

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Saul gasped and Mercer could feel the man's legs start to

wobble. He tightened his hold around Saul's waist, no longer
needing to use the sacs for distraction. There was no doubt.
His tongue was the only thing now in Saul's existence.

It was time to add more.
With the tip of a single finger, Mercer touched the base of

Saul's ripened shaft.

Saul jerked.
Slowly, the finger followed the vein up to the head.
Mercer was still thrusting.
Saul was barely standing.
With a precision in stark contrast to his jamming his

tongue into Saul's asshole, Mercer began circling the tiny slit
at the end of Saul's cock with the feather light touch of his
finger.

Saul threw back his head and screamed.
Mercer could feel the orgasm thundering through his

lover's body, crumbling defenses, rocking muscles until they
literally rolled in surrender to the pleasure.

Only when Saul's knees did finally buckle did Mercer slip

out his tongue. With a smile and a hard-on that would mostly
likely kill him, the ex-ball player caught the doctor in his arms
and held him tight as he quaked.

Mercer's whispered "I love you" went unheard by the

pleasure-shattered man.

[Back to Table of Contents]

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Chapter Seven: Behind Dusk's Curtain

Night had fallen over the desert. The two men lay on top of

their open sleeping bags ensconced in the back of Mercer's
truck. After a blowjob had dealt with Mercer's lingering
erection, dinner had been had and makeshift beds were
made. Both men now lay on their backs, naked from the
waists up, admiring the millions of stars peeking down on
them.

Saul was the first to break the silence.
"How many times have you done this?" Saul waved his

hand lazily among the darkened heavens. He thought the
subject matter was fairly obvious.

Apparently not. "This?" Mercer wrinkled up his nose,

somehow morphing into a five-year-old boy asked to explain
trigonometry. "As in watching the stars?"

Saul was learning more and more that the naive

questioning Mercer sometimes fell into wasn't a show. He
wasn't putting on a facade; he was stepping out from behind
one. That took a lot of faith in someone to do. Saul was
quickly finding himself honored by that trust. Of course, he
wasn't about to tell Mercer that. "As in the stars watching you
fuck a lover out here with the coyotes and sagebrush?"

"Oh, that." Mercer twitched his shoulder a little, apparently

the lying down version of his favored shrug. "Would you
believe me if I said you were the first?"

Saul snorted. "The first cardio thoracic surgeon, maybe."

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Mercer shook his head and confirmed simply, "Nope,

you're it. One and only."

"One and only man, you mean? Girls would just eat this up

and you know it," Saul argued with a lot of scraped up gusto
but no heart. He was under no illusions that Mercer had been
just sitting around waiting for Saul's arrival in his life.

An achingly genuine smile crossed Mercer's lips as he

argued right back, "I'm sure they would, but you, my friend,
are still the only one."

"I'm still the only one?" Saul repeated it slowly, sure that

he'd heard that line in a hundred different country music
songs. He just never thought he'd be on the receiving end of
one of them. Saul worked up a harried sigh. "Well, at least
you didn't sing it."

"I've got a guitar back there. Do you want me to get it?"

The bastard was grinning.

"You would too, wouldn't you?" Saul shook his head with a

smile. Not much would surprise him anymore about this man.
"You can probably sing, huh?"

Mercer shrugged but didn't deny it.
"You want to explain to me again why I'm the one that's

here?" He was working on the confidence thing, but
sometimes it was a damned slippery slope.

"I like you," Mercer confessed simply enough. After a

particularly shaky breath he admitted almost shyly, "Maybe I
like you too much."

"Never could happen," Saul quickly assured while his belly

did a warm little flip-flop. Damn, he was so gone for this man.

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"I'll try to remember that." Mercer smiled at him easily,

almost gratefully, no doubt blissfully unaware of the
somersaults Saul's insides were doing.

Already feeling like he was going puke up a bunch of

butterflies, Saul took a deep breath and said it, "I like you
too."

"Good." Everything about Mercer suddenly turned soft and

achingly gooey.

Saul really wanted to lick him from head to toe right about

now. Unfortunately with all the "likes" being bandied about, a
distinct feeling of being in grade school clung to his bones.
Saul tried to shake it off. "Okay. Recess is over. Everybody
back to grown up class."

"I missed that," Mercer commented softly.
"What?"
"Recess. I never had one." Mercer's smile turned bright

again as the thoughts of swing sets and jungle gyms and
games of kickball and hide and seek no doubt filled his head.
"I think it would have been fun."

"I keep forgetting," Saul admitted, only then asking the

question that had been bothering him all afternoon, "So, why
were you home schooled?"

The question surprised Mercer even though he knew it

probably shouldn't. Even though most people he took to bed
didn't give a rat's ass about any of his history prior to
baseball stardom and tragedy, Mercer should have known
that Saul was different. In fact, he'd been different right from
the start. It was a realization that left Mercer feeling a little
off keel. It was disorienting, maddening, like a sailor stepping

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off of a boat for the first time in his life. It was damned hard
to find and keep his footing.

Knowing this was going to take some explaining, Mercer

dug his arms back under his head and pillow and tried his
damnedest to look casual while he discussed crap that was
anything but. "My father wasn't around much when I was a
kid. He traveled a lot for work." It had been an excuse given
to him so many times that it had eventually become its own
kind of truth. Closing his eyes, he figured he'd just lay his
stupidity out there. Let Saul see the moron he had been
fucking. "I'd see him for a couple of days every few weeks but
never anything more. I thought nothing of it. I just thought
that's what fathers did. What did I have to compare it with
really?"

"Yeah, you said you were an only child?"
He could feel Saul's eyes on him, as if he must be

measuring him with some kind of normal childhood stick.
"Kind of," Mercer confessed with a hard pinch to the bridge of
his nose. "Look, it turned out that my father had another
whole life and family separate from me and my mom. Yeah, I
know, no big shock nowadays. I mean I should have figured it
out, right?"

"Mercer..."
Flinging his eyes open, he turned his head toward his

partner and confessed with a humorless laugh, "Well, me
being a really stupid kid I never did figure it out. My mom
ended up telling me when I was twelve. I was having a fit
trying to convince her to let me go to regular school.
Apparently, she finally got tired of my shit. She sat me down

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at the kitchen table and told me that I was Dad's little
secret." Mercer couldn't look at Saul any more. He let his
gaze drift to the half moon over Saul's shoulder. "She said
that I couldn't go to school because nobody knew about me.
Nobody could know about me or my Dad would get in big
trouble. That scared the crap out of me."

Saul turned to lie on his side, stealing the safety of the

moon from Mercer. "That's..."

He couldn't afford to let Saul start to talk. If Mercer was

going to get this out, he was going to do it quick, kind of like
purging a sickness from your gut. "Like I said, I was stupid. It
took me a few more years to realize that Dad getting in big
trouble didn't mean the cops were going to lock him up or the
mafia was going to put a horse's head in his bed or
something." Okay, he had been a little obsessed with "The
Godfather" for a while, but what boy hadn't? "Big trouble
meant his actual wife knowing about me and my mom. He
didn't want to get his ass kicked out of his "real" family."

Saul summed the whole situation up in one word, "Shit."
"Exactly what I told my father to his face when he showed

up that next time." It had been a hell of a wait. The man had
only been coming once a month those last few years. Three
weeks had dragged by before there was that knock on the
door. "I was fourteen," Mercer added for no particular reason
other than it had felt really important to him at the time.

"And?" Saul nudged, not about to let Mercer get away with

telling only half a tale.

"I never saw him again." Mercer found himself smirking.

He doubted Saul thought the ending was coming so soon.

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"Neither did my mother. I still feel horrible about that." His
mom never really smiled a lot after that day. She never
laughed and when she had died ten years later, Mercer could
have sworn she was glad to be going. "Sure, my dad was a
creep and a no good asshole, but he was my mom's
happiness. She lost that because of me." It was a guilt that
he still carried with him every day. It was a guilt that held the
place of the family he never had. Mercer rubbed his hands
wearily across his eyes. Shit, he was so pathetic.

Suddenly his hands were pulled away. Saul's earnest face

replaced the chosen darkness. "You know that's wrong, don't
you?" When Mercer didn't respond, Saul cupped his face with
his palm, cradling the grown man who still bore a boy's woes.
"Mercer, a child should be a parent's one true happiness."
Something fleeting and painful flared briefly in Saul's eyes,
but it was gone before Mercer really knew it had been there.
"No disrespect, but your mother was fucked up. Not your
fault."

When words came they sounded as broken as Mercer had

felt most of his life. "Keep telling me that, will you?" He
hadn't meant to ask it. He had no right to ask Saul for
anything. But like a drowning man who is suddenly offered a
life preserver out of nowhere, Mercer couldn't help but grab
on to it.

Inexplicably, what Mercer could have sworn were the

beginning of tears welled briefly up in Saul's hazel eyes.
Wiping them away immediately, the doctor found a smile to
accompany his vow, "I can do that."

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Mercer had no choice but to kiss him. Saul happily

reciprocated and the men made love until the new dawn.

The weeks passed in a lazy rush of sex and longing. Saul's

work hours continued to be crazy. Their "dates" continued to
be scattered and too many damn hours apart. The "sleep-
overs" as Mercer loved to call them had increased in
regularity to the point that two toothbrushes now resided at
each man's "home" sink.

Their moments together during these weeks were tiny

treasures in their own right... memories to hold to in the dark
nights to come...

The thin, white cotton sleep pants hung sinfully on Saul's

hips. The oranges and pinks of the newly born dawn bathed
his bare chest in soft color. His hair still dripped from his early
morning shower. His shoulders were slung low, completely
relaxed, as he sipped on his coffee. Although ungodly early,
the grinding buzz of the Las Vegas strip below already
whispered through the open balcony door. A warm wind that
promised another baking day gently danced with the legs of
his pants giving the illusion of Saul standing on some bluff
overlooking a slowly brewing sea.

Mercer watched his lover from the bed, his fingers lazily

stroking his morning wood. A part of him wanted to slip out
from the sheets and tangle his needful body into the calmness
that was Saul's. Another part of him wanted to do nothing
more than lie there and soak up the striking beauty of dawn
on the man... his man. Mercer dared to hope. He was falling
in love with Saul Tidewater. He was falling hard and with eyes
wide open. A tingle of excitement fluttered through his belly

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and down into his cock. He hid his smile into his pillow as his
soul moaned in pure happiness and utter terror.

The rustling of sheets, pillows, and lips must have brought

Saul back from the imaginary bluff. He threw a curious glance
over his shoulder and smiled at the sight of his no doubt
rumpled lover. "Good morning." His voice was rough but kind.
"I didn't want to wake you."

"You didn't." Mercer grinned. "Your empty pillow did." It

was the truth. While Mercer might have had a lot of lovers, he
rarely slept a whole night through with them. An empty pillow
by his side was the norm not the exception. He was afraid to
admit why it was different this time.

Slipping the mug of coffee off on to a small table by the

balcony's side, Saul surrendered to a yawn and a slow, long
stretch that was doing sinful things to Mercer's already
sinning body. Mercer shifted his hand, moving his thumb so it
could circle his slit.

Saul's voice flittered in to his awareness dampened by his

slow building arousal. "You were dead to the world when I got
up." Saul was moving to him, his steps teasing in their
slowness. The hazel eyes were watching Mercer, burning a
hole into his soul Mercer was beginning to fear would never
heal up if this man ever left his world.

Though clouded and lust filled, Mercer did still have the

capacity to flirt himself, although admittedly a little more
blatantly. "Maybe dead to the world but apparently not dead
to your body." Mercer eased the sheets down and off his hips,
revealing his risen cock. It wept in the early morning light like
a beggar child whispering, "Please, sir, I want some more."

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With the covers away and all pretense of innocence long lost,
Mercer reached down and palmed his balls, letting the sacs
roll lazily back and forth within his fingers. Mercer watched
himself play with his body for a long, stoking moment then
turned his eyes back up to the cause of all his disarray. "Look
at what you've done to me."

Saul's laugh sounded strangled, his movements as he sat

his ass down on the side of the bed were no longer so sleek
and sure; the bulge in those sleeping pants surely having
nothing to do with it at all. "You can hardly blame me for
that." Saul glared at the offending specimen, the hunger
seeping from his gaze was damned hard to ignore though.
"Biology, anatomy, and physiology are the more likely culprits
for that..." he swallowed, slow and just a little bit unsteadily
as Saul watched Mercer's Adam's apple bob and weave before
more words came, "...that impressive, I might even say
scrumptious, offering you've got going there."

"Scrumptious?" Mercer's toes curled at the insinuation.
Saul shrugged, his finger now idly stroking the line of a

naked hipbone. "It's early. My taste buds are a little frantic
for their morning sausage."

Toppling fully over to his back, Mercer dissolved into

laughter. "I can't believe you just said that."

"I can't believe I just thought that." Saul shook his head

slowly, his gaze still loitering thirstily on the exposed and very
enthused member. As Mercer's laughs died down, he
watched, he felt Saul's eyes scrape over his body, prickling
his skin as they moved from his groin, to his abs, to his chest

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and finally onto his face. Saul blew out a soft, shaky breath.
"Damn, you're fucking stunning when you laugh."

Mercer's heart tripped over itself. It was suddenly so full of

things it had never known before that, like the man, the heart
could no longer keep its balance. Mercer reached out and ran
his fingers gently, lovingly, along the lines of Saul's ribs as he
returned the truth, "Well, you're fucking stunning when you
breathe."

A blush crept down Saul's face, neck, and deep into his

nipples. He sputtered a bit as he finally found a response,
"And what am I supposed to say to something like that?" He
sounded a little broken and unbalanced himself.

"You say nothing," Mercer whispered as he watched as his

fingertips traveled down to the thin cotton hiding so many
wondrous things. He felt a smile brush his lips just before his
tongue wet them anxiously, hungrily. "You just take off those
pants, get back in this bed and kiss my morning sausage
away."

Saul smirked but obeyed. Raising his hips just far enough

over the bed to drag his pants down over his ass, past his
thighs and eventually free of his feet. He resettled himself
nude by Mercer's side, but stubbornly still not in the bed. His
hand, however, clasped down possessively on Mercer's thigh,
negating any disobedience by stoking the fire. Saul's heavy
gaze settled again on Mercer's still ripe cock. "What if I want
to do more than kiss that fine link of meat?"

The chuckle was swallowed in a spike of untamed lust.

"Like what?" Mercer fought not to stammer in need. "What
else do you want to do?"

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Readjusting his pose, slipping one hand over to the other

side of Mercer's hip, he braced himself as he leaned over
prostrate body and leaned in toward the offered dick. "Lick."
Fingers swept over the skin of the painfully erect shaft, up to
its head, swirling its whorls through the pre-come. "I need to
lick these juices up. Waste not, want not."

"Okay," Mercer managed to eek out just as Saul

descended and long wet tongue met hot needy dick.

Savoring the straining length like hard candy, Saul played

with the cock in long, lingering laps of his taste buds scraping
across the shaft's skin.

Mercer sucked his bottom lip into his mouth and moaned.

He felt like he was melting.

The torture lasted too long but nearly long enough. A sigh

of relief and equal sorrow slipped from Mercer's mouth as
Saul pulled away. A crinkle of gentle concentration burrowed
across the doctor's brow as he mused aloud, "Then I might
have to suck. Just a little at first."

"Just a little?"
"At first." Mercer could feel Saul's head nod against his

groin. "Then, I'm afraid, there's going to be swallowing."

Six days later, it was over a cold pasta salad and a glass of

grapefruit juice that Mercer learned about Anthony.

The sun was tucking itself deeper into the horizon and a

couple thousand stars were backstage eagerly awaiting dusk's
curtain. It was one of those in between times of the day,
when it was neither dark or light, day or night, late or early.
Mercer had always cherished those moments in the day. Even
as a child he'd hurry through his dinner and homework just to

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be able to rush out into the backyard and throw the baseball
around in those magical twilight hours where dreams were
just days away and life was a big open road curling into the
heavens.

It was strangely ironic therefore that it was in one of these

creases between the sun's life and death that Mercer would
learn about a little boy who never saw a single dawn.

The conversation hadn't started out as anything more

serious than discussing the merits of a late night swim over
an early turning in.

Saul had the floor. His argument was simple. "I need

sleep." He downed half of his juice before looking to Mercer
for a response.

"And you'll get sleep," Mercer sucked an escaping bow-tie

noodle back into his mouth. "Just think of it as earning your
sleep."

"A ten hour shift in emergency followed by an eight hour

surgery doesn't cut it, huh?" Saul was in a good mood and in
much better shape than he would have Mercer believe. He
chased the cherry tomato around his plate with a lazy
fondness instead of cutthroat zeal. It was a sure sign that
Mercer still had room to push.

"Yeah, but I didn't get to watch you put in that sweat and

tears."

"Tears?" Saul raised his brow but did little else to

interrupt.

Mercer shrugged as he stabbed an apple slice with his fork.

"I like to watch you sweat. If not in the bed or across the

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kitchen counter or on the rug by the fireplace, I like to watch
you sweat in the pool."

"You're crazy." It was something Saul tried to tell Mercer

every day.

Mercer ignored him as always. "And you're hot when

you're clawing through the water, all of the muscles in your
back and ass and thighs straining to keep up with your
powerful strokes."

Saul quirked a smile, "You've been reading again."
"Ha-ha." Mercer pushed himself away from the table,

settling his arms casually across his chest. "I do know how to
string a few pretty words together for effect, you know. I'm
just not... well... you."

Saul laughed as he slipped a wedge of avocado between

his lips. "I am not taking that as an insult simply because I'm
way too relaxed to wrestle your ass to the ground and shove
this baby corn up your nose."

"See?" Mercer nodded, point proven. "You're a regular

word shark."

Saul snorted.
Mercer took it as agreement. "And sharks need water."
"And you need help." Saul laughed as he tossed another

handful of croutons across the salad. One got away. It was
quickly plopped into Saul's mouth and crunched into
nonexistence.

Leaning forward, elbows now on the table, Mercer smirked.

"Don't pretend that you're not a fish. I've seen your gills."

Saul huffed around a bite of radish, his neck suddenly

sharing the radish's hue. "Those are not gills," he assured.

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"I don't know." Mercer smirked as he popped his own

crouton into his mouth. "They sure take my breath away."

"That was so bad," Saul groaned into the napkin purposely

hiding his smile.

Mercer grinned watching the Adam's apple across the table

tirelessly work as Saul downed the last of his juice. "You want
some more?" he asked already reaching for the pitcher.

"Not if you expect me to put in a few laps tonight. I don't

want to slosh."

He nearly choked on a laugh. "God, we wouldn't want

that."

The moment dissolved into shared smiles and then a soft

silence.

It was so easy being with Saul. It felt natural. It felt right.

It felt like home.

With his head tilted back into the oranges of the coming

dusk, Saul asked, "What time is it?" Ignoring the watch that
set on his own arm, the doctor's gaze lingered heavily on the
horizon. Where Mercer's thoughts were light and floated
carefree within him, Saul's seemed to carry weight.

"It's half past seven," Mercer answered after a reluctant

glance to his wrist. He didn't want to take his eyes off of his
lover right now. He didn't understand it. He just felt as if he
were waiting on something or someone that might come and
depart in a single blink of the eye.

"Do you believe in ghosts?" Saul's voice was thick, almost

bloated, and seemed out of place over bow tie pasta and
grapefruit juice.

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"Yeah," Mercer found the answer coming with little

thought. Memories of the ghost runners that would fill the
empty bases in his backyard as a boy drifted out from behind
the haze of years. Although "ghost runner on second" or
"ghost runner on third" was just a little kid's saying, Mercer
had always wanted to believe that there were spirits out there
who wanted nothing but to play ball with a lonely little boy.
Mercer cleared his throat and with it the bittersweet that
always slipped in with memories of his childhood. "Yeah, Saul,
I believe in them."

Having deserted the fading sun in favor of his hands

clasped loosely together on his lap, Saul admitted to what
seemed to be to him a crime, "I want to." He watched the nail
of his thumb pick intently at a knuckle. "Elise doesn't believe
in ghosts."

Mercer leaned forward in his chair. He had not expected

that turn to the conversation and childishly didn't welcome
the presence of Saul's ex-wife on his patio, in their
conversation, sharing in their twilight. "Elise?" He tried to
keep the discomfort out of his voice but failed terribly.

Saul's lips twitched, although it seemed to be an effort.

"Jealous?" His eyes flicked up to Mercer's, smiled, then
dropped back down to the knot of fingers.

"No," Mercer manned up and lied. "Just surprised. You

don't mention her much."

"I don't like thinking about her much." Saul shrugged a

heavy shoulder but didn't seem ready to add anything more.

"You want to tell me why you're thinking about her and

ghosts tonight?" Saul had told him little about his failed

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marriage, only that Elise had "lost it" at the end. Saul never
said it but Mercer suspected that she was the main reason for
Saul's cross-country move.

"I don't know." Uncharacteristically, Saul chewed on his

bottom lip. He looked nervous, uncomfortable. Mercer hated
it.

"Look, forget it. You don't need to tell me anything, Okay?"

He had meant for the offer to sound comforting not
condescending like it somehow had. Mercer immediately
winced.

Saul didn't react at all. Mercer wasn't even sure Saul had

heard him. With his bare foot, Mercer nudged Saul's leg under
the table. "Hey, you alright?"

There was a brief nod, a mere flutter of movement before

the words came and knocked the world away. "Elise and I had
a son." His hands went still. "His name was Anthony."

"Was?" Even on such a small, common word, Mercer found

his voice breaking.

"Yeah." Saul cleared his throat. "He died before he was

born."

There was nothing to say to that, nothing that mattered,

nothing that would help. Mercer just waited. Saul was in the
lead here and would always be when it came to this. He could
deal with his own shock, his own feelings later.

Saul's eyes slowly rose and buried themselves deep again

into the reds and burnt oranges of the horizon. "There was a
car accident." Saul stated simply. "I was driving. There was a
truck. He didn't see us. He didn't see the red light." A small

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misplaced smile found his lips. "It happened at sunset. The
sky looked just like this."

"God, man, I'm sorry. Do you want to go inside?" As soon

as he asked it, Mercer knew how stupid the question was.
"Forget that I just said that, please?"

Again, it was like Saul never even heard him. He was lost

somewhere no man ever wanted to go. "I'd like to think there
were ghosts, some part of my little boy able to play in the
twilight."

A lump grew in Mercer's throat. His eyes grew heavy with

tears. Mercer Braun hadn't cried in years. He brushed them
away before they had a chance to fall. "It's a good thought,"
he stopped and swallowed, "Maybe it is true. I know dusk is
the perfect time to play ball." Thoughts of his ghost runners
were pushed away, too difficult to bring back now.

Saul wasn't ready for such comfort though. Mercer

doubted a father ever could be. Saul's voice was almost lost
to a gentle stroke of the desert wind. "Elise just thinks that
he's dead. No heaven. No hell. No in betweens."

"I'm sorry." Mercer knew the words were trite but he knew

they were all he could give him.

"Yeah," Saul cleared his throat and finally looked Mercer's

way. "Me too."

"Anthony's a nice name." The words crossed Mercer's lips

without forethought.

For the first time in what seemed like forever, Saul

Tidewater smiled. "I like it."

There was no late night swim that evening. There was just

two men watching stars rise and fall in the heavens.

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[Back to Table of Contents]

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Chapter Eight: Under the Joshua Tree

It ended softly, in a swirl of cowardice stoked by the desert

sun.

"Can I ask you something?" They sat in the shade of a

Joshua tree, shoulders brushing. It was hot but not scorching.
If a man stayed well hydrated and took regular breaks from
the sun and didn't push his body beyond its means, he could
survive hiking in the desert today. What worried Saul, what
was really starting to rub him the wrong way, was not today.
The next time that Mercer was out here alone, no nagging
cardiothoracic surgeon tagging along behind him, that was
the day that was beginning to scare Saul to death.

They didn't talk about it often. The risks Mercer took with

his health was a subject both steered clear from. The times
they had broached the topic it had turned into an argument
so cutting that both men had left it bloody and hurting.

It was a scab neither wanted to pick at.
Unfortunately, however, it was a scab that was starting to

itch. Badly.

This was the fifth time that Mercer had taken Saul out to

the desert. It was the first time though that they actually
hiked. The trail was one Mercer had taken many times. He
knew the landmarks like the back of his hand. All Saul could
see, however, were the outright dangers and monumental
stupidity.

Oh yeah, it was starting to itch damned bad.

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As the two men sat there re-energizing themselves with a

protein bar and some water, there were several things that
Saul knew without a doubt...

He knew that they had another five miles under the

burning sun to go before they reached the truck.

He knew that if he hadn't been with Mercer, no way in hell

would the man be sitting under this stupid Joshua tree, eating
the much needed cardboard and giving his heart a well-
deserved breather.

He knew with a doctor's certainty and a lover's gut that

Mercer was pushing himself too hard out here.

He knew that Mercer was screwing around with life and

death boundaries, not giving a rat's ass about if he
accidentally and permanently stumbled across the border.

He knew that Mercer Braun, former baseball player, heart-

valve recipient, and man that Saul feared he could love like
no other, was going to one day die out here.

He knew he had to say something.
He knew that Mercer wasn't going to listen.
He knew that he was going to have to make Mercer listen

or he knew he was going to have to walk away. Watching a
man that he loved kill himself was something Saul just simply
couldn't do.

Having to start this battle somewhere, he'd asked a simple

innocent question between bites of dry fiber. The last thing he
wanted were red flags being raised before Saul could
surround the camp and cut off any potential escape/"fuck
you" routes.

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"Sure," Mercer shrugged as he wiped any remains of water

off of his mouth with the back of his hand. For all of Saul's
valid concerns, Mercer looked good. He didn't look like a man
playing Russian roulette with his heart. He looked happy.
Ironically, in this forthcoming situation, that was not a good
thing.

Saul cleared his throat and dove right in. "Why do you do

this?"

"This?"
Saul rolled his eyes. If Mercer was going to play the dull

tool in the shed, Saul was going to have a hell of a lot of
trouble winning this battle. "Yeah, this." With his water bottle
Saul pointed at the mesas, the distant mountains, the high
isolated desert that surrounded them with miles and miles of
utter though admittedly beautiful desolation.

Mercer went for the damned shrug again. "I like it."
Saul sighed trying to cling to his patience, his patience that

seemed to dry up and turned to nothing but dust out here in
the middle of fucking nowhere. "Yeah, I get that. I even
understand that part of it." Saul wasn't lying. He saw the
beauty. He appreciated it even. That didn't mean it didn't
scare the shit out of him though.

"So?" Mercer was playing the part of blissfully unaware

with such skill that Saul almost joined him in the pretend
"don't worry, be happy" world of his.

Almost, but not quite. Saul rubbed his sweaty hands

across the legs of his shorts. He was trying so hard to take
this slow, to avoid triggering a fight or flee response.

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Unfortunately, that left him sounding like an idiot. "You, uh,
usually do this alone right?"

"What? Hike?"
No, eat this stinking fiber bar. "Hiking out here in the

desert by yourself." Saul tried to grind in that last point. Hell,
Mercer could hike all he wanted out here as long as he had
another able-bodied human at his side to make sure he didn't
fall over dead.

"Yeah. I told you I did that." Mercer's face scrunched up

into the most kissable frown man had ever known. Either the
ballplayer was being intentionally dense or he never really
had anybody except doctors care enough about him to say
"don't do this." Saul wasn't sure he wanted to know which
case it was.

Sitting up a little bit straighter against the fucking Joshua

tree, Saul tried again, "To be honest here, the question
you've got me asking, Mercer, is why?" The man was a chick
and cock magnet. There was no doubt whatsoever that he
could get whoever he really wanted to follow his desirable ass
out here for a romp in the desert. All Mercer Braun had to do
was ask.... Something he had apparently never done before
Saul.

Mercer, however, wasn't done playing Mr. Dense. "Why? I

told you."

"Damn it! Quit fucking playing dumb with me," Saul found

himself unintentionally growling. The playing it cool portion of
the day's program was obviously over. Drawing and releasing
a long steadying breath, Saul added in a softer but no less
confrontational voice, "I know better. And so do you."

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Dropping all pretense, Mercer looked Saul right in the eye

and told him straight out, "I've heard the lecture, Doctor.
Applewood's even given me an appropriate pamphlet on it." A
smile twisted his lips. "Next, I'm betting he's going to drag
out the post mortem heart pictures. You know, try to shock
me straight?"

Despite the humor Mercer was trying to weasel into the

conversation, Saul was having none of it. This was too
damned important to play off as a joke. "Applewood might be
a stick in the mud, but he knows what he's talking about."

"I never said he didn't." Mercer bowed his head, scrubbing

at the back of his neck impatiently as he explained, "I just
disagree with him. I think the risk is worth it."

"Why? To feel alive?" Saul scoffed. "Because let me tell

you that there is no surer way not to feel alive than by being
dead."

"Don't worry about it." Mercer waved Saul's concern off as

he pulled himself to his feet and walked a couple of steps
away.

"Okay, sure." Saul slapped his hands on his thighs and

stood up himself. He was getting a little peeved too. "That
would have been no problem before I started making love to
you," he snarked at the man's back.

Slowly, Mercer turned back around. The look of confusion

on his face was genuine this time. "Making love? I thought we
were fucking." He didn't seem to be bothered by that notion,
just unsure of it. While they had admitted "liking" each other,
the word "love" had yet to be called into play.

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"We were," Saul paused making sure that he had the

man's full attention for the important part. "We were fucking
that first night. We're not anymore and you know it." Stealing
away the last few steps of distance between them, Saul dared
him to deny it. "It might scare the hell out of you but you
know that's the truth, Mercer."

Surprisingly, Mercer's reply apparently required no

thought. The truth rarely did. "I'm not arguing about that,
Saul." Stuffing his hands into his shorts pockets, he rocked
back on his heels looking the Norman Rockwell version of
contrite. He assured around a hint of a smile, "I'm not."

It was an odd feeling. Having all these important things

finally said and confirmed but still skirting around the
elephant in the middle of the room. Deciding not to pull any
more punches, Saul declared, "I don't want you to die. That's
the bottom line."

Mercer's smile grew. "I'm not looking to die either. There's

a hell of a lot easier ways to kill myself than suicide by
desert."

Damn it. Saul did not want this to turn into a joke. "This

isn't funny." Saul's anger was growing.

Apparently, so was Mercer's. "No, it's not. It's my life." Out

of his pocket, his left hand pounded on his own chest. "It's
my decision how I choose to live it. I'm not going to quit
walking across the street just because I might get run over by
a bus doing it."

Saul bit his tongue, not letting the "You're an idiot" get

farther than an entirely reasonable thought in his head.
Dragging out whatever vestiges of patience he had left, Saul

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argued back in the chosen vernacular, "But that's not what
you're doing here, Mercer. You aren't just crossing the street.
You're walking out blindfolded on the interstate at rush hour.
It doesn't make any sense."

Just as calmly, just as rationally Mercer replied, "But it

does to me, Saul."

In all of his years of med school, in all those truly lousy

months of divorce lawyers and court, Saul had never wanted
so much to pound his head through a brick wall. Saul drew
back a couple of steps as his knuckles pummeled his eyeballs
in mounting aggravation and dwindling hope. "What if I come
with you? Have anybody come with you? Just promise me you
won't come out here alone anymore. You know, just in
case..." It was the last resort, but as soon as Saul felt the
words come out of his mouth he knew that they too would
prove useless.

Anger roared to life in Mercer's eyes. "What? You want to

be my fucking guide dog? Lead my blindfolded ass across the
street? I don't think so."

"Fuck, Mercer! We're not talking about pride here. We're

talking survival, man. You know, living to fuck the next day."

"I thought it was making love." Mercer's anger had died

down into something resembling nauseating acceptance.

Saul thought about puking up his guts right there. "You're

right. It is making love. And I've got to tell you, that's where
the problem is." Reaching out, Saul grabbed Mercer's chin
and held it steady and secure in his hand. "I just can't sit by
and watch the man I'm probably in love with toss away his
life like it's a piece of garbage. I can't do it."

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Mercer softly grasped Saul's wrist and pulled the arm

away. "That's not what I'm doing."

"Maybe," Saul begrudgingly allowed. Suddenly not

knowing what to do with his hands that had never felt so
empty, he shoved his empty fists back into his pockets. "But
it is what you're doing to me." The "if you die, I die" Saul left
unsaid. He hadn't come to accept that part yet himself. He
wasn't about to ask Mercer to do it first.

"When the fuck did my life come to mean your life, huh?"

Mercer shouted in backbreaking frustration. "When?"

"I don't know." Saul yelled right back. "It just happened."
Mercer threw up his hands and turned his back on Saul.

His voice fell low and tired. "Shit happens, Doc, not love."

Saul stared at his lover's back. "Well, you're shoveling

enough of it around to know."

"It's my life!" Mercer growled out to the horizon, his voice

shaking with heavy emotion. "This, all of this right here, is
about me, not you."

"You're right. It is." That simple acceptance felt like some

kind of freaking death knell. Saul was going to be sick.

Mercer must have felt it too. He turned around slowly, un-

shed tears welled up in those gorgeous brown eyes. "I'm
sorry, Saul."

Nodding his head, it was Saul's turn to look away. "I'm

sorry too."

The last five miles were made in silence.
The drive back to Las Vegas was quiet.

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When Mercer dropped Saul off at his condo and drove

away, Saul knew that it may not be over, but it sure as hell
was dying.

Talk about shitty irony.

[Back to Table of Contents]

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Chapter Nine: The Irony of Sirens

Two weeks passed without one word spoken between

them.

Saul Tidewater felt hollow, dug out like some abandoned

canoe on the Zambezi River heading irretrievably for Victoria
Falls...

Saul shook his head and roused himself from the stupor

born of exhaustion and one too many cups of dangerously
bad coffee. Grabbing the remote control that had fallen off of
his stomach and onto his couch, Saul turned off the Discovery
Channel. Apparently now was not a good time for him to try
to broaden his horizons. He needed to stay grounded in the
here and now and not allow himself to drift into the "could
have been's." He'd just wallow right here in the mud with the
hippos. Maybe bake a little in the African sun, waiting for the
next lion to stroll by and have him for lunch...

Okay, that little bit of morbidity got him moving.
Not giving a shit that it was only dusk, Saul turned off all

the lights in his eerily empty condo and dragged himself to
bed.

He didn't sleep much anymore... unless it was on the

couch. His bed was too big, too lonely now.

As he forced himself under the covers determined to get at

least one decent night's sleep, the words he never even dared
to say to Mercer kept taunting him, echoing incessantly
through his pathetically breaking heart...

"If you die, I die."

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Laying his head on his pillow, Saul couldn't help but ask,

"So why do I feel so fucking dead already?"

The desert had always called to Mercer Braun like some

kind of siren.

"Oh, yeah," out of breath and out of patience with his

body, he grumbled into the arid dusk, "A siren luring lost
ships to her rocks." He laughed mirthlessly, "I bet she's going
to love the pile-up of stubborn, stupid, broken ballplayer she's
about to get."

By this point he was stumbling more than he was actually

walking. He should sit down. He knew he should sit down,
catch his breath, let his patchwork heart catch up to the
idiocy he was putting his whole body through. He knew it, but
hell was he going to do it.

Still moving, still tripping over grains of sand, he checked

his GPS. For the first time, he had to flip on the embedded
night light to see his carefully planned route laid out on the
little screen. He squinted hard at the dot that was him and
cursed. He still had two more miles to go.

As always he had planned the loop through the high desert

with precision and challenge on his mind. He had been
scheduled to get back to his truck just as the sun set across
the western peaks. He even had a cooler packed with sports
drinks, water, and a damned fine turkey club he'd made
himself this morning waiting for him in the passenger's seat.
He knew the refuge like the back of his hand and would have
no trouble driving out of there in the dark. Besides, he liked
watching the million stars pop out of the dark heavens. When
he had been a boy he had thought it was some kind of magic

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trick. He remembered his mother laughed when he'd told her
that. He never told her anything like that again.

"Damn it," Mercer hissed as he tried to shake the unbidden

and unwelcome thoughts from his head. "Where the hell did
that shit come from?"

Roughly knuckling his eyes with hands that trembled, he

tried to rub out of his mind everything that wasn't tied
directly to this hike, to these two miles he needed to make to
get to his freaking beautiful sandwich.

That worked for exactly twenty-two and a half faltering,

lame-assed steps when a creosote bush came out of nowhere
and sent him tumbling knees and palms first into the dirt.
Unfortunately desert dirt is not the cartoon variety sand
everybody thinks of. When it's hard and packed firm like this
dirt most certainly was, desert dirt is a lot like course strips of
sand paper stapled down carelessly to the uneven earth. So
the resultant cloud of curses and the two angry tears that had
the damned gall to fall down Mercer's face were
understandable. Shredded knees and grated palms hurt like a
real motherfucker.

Once every four letter word he could dredge up had been

spit off of his tongue, Mercer rolled over on to his back and
stared miserably at the pastel-colored sky.

Vaguely, he heard a siren's laugh peppering the desert air.
Six hours passed and Mercer was only a mile closer to his

turkey club. Things had gone a little gray for a few of those
hours. The last two weeks of pushing his body to idiotic
extremes and not getting any real sleep to level things off had
apparently caught up to him. At one point he had passed out.

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It had happened to him before. Mercer was sure it would
happen to him again. It just had never happened out in the
desert before. After replaying Saul's words about dying out
here over and over in his head for the last fourteen days, it
was no wonder that Mercer felt a little freaked.

Maybe a "little freaked" was an understatement. As Mercer

dragged his satellite phone out of his backpack and dialed the
well-known number, the ex-ball player had to admit that
"fucking freaked" might have been a tad more accurate.

"Hello?" the muffled voice of Saul Tidewater finally picked

up. It had taken five rings and a hopeful stretch that the
doctor even answered calls from unknown numbers on his
house phone. Mercer was going to have to talk to him about
that.

"Get your face out of your pillow, Doc," Mercer gently

chastised. It was a habit he had noticed Saul had whenever
he wasn't in Doctor Tidewater, lifesaver mode.

"Mercer?" It took a few moments but he finally beat back

the sandman enough to fire up a brain cell or two. "What the
hell?" he groused.

The sound of Saul scrubbing his hands up and down his

face and then grunting when he more than likely rammed a
stray finger into his eye was blessedly familiar to Mercer. A
little bit of the tension gnawing at his spine disappeared. It
was just so damned good to hear Saul being Saul. Shaking
his head, Mercer pushed away the thought of how much he
had grown to count on this man. It would only freak him out.
It would probably freak Saul out too, so it was better just to
let the realization go unspoken. Instead he'd go for being a

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smart ass. "So? What are you up to?" he asked in his most
cheery manner.

Saul snorted into the phone, no doubt having already

found the face of his bedside clock that would be blinking
2:45 am at him. "Are you drunk or just being a dickwad?"

"A dickwad, huh?" The knots that had been strangling his

neck muscles loosened. Mercer laughed. "Nobody's called me
that since..."

"I don't care," Saul informed him inside of a cavernous

yawn. The accompanying sound of the bed springs springing
again warned of a very short conversation. Saul could drop off
to sleep like a damned rock.

Mercer hated that he sounded like he was pleading, but he

just really needed a few more minutes of Saul's calming
presence. "Pretend you're being doctorly and listen to me for
a while, Okay?"

"Are you alright?" Concern shot through the phone.
With a sigh, Mercer banged his head back against the

ground. "Pretend, Doc. P-R-E-T-E-N-D. Familiar with the
concept?"

Apparently the answer to that was "no." Saul was heading

full speed into some kind of parental panic fit. "What number
are you calling from? Where's your cell phone?"

He knew this had been a mistake. He had known it and did

it just the same. This whole freaking day was shit full of deja
vu. "Is that really important, dad?"

"That's sick." Saul ineffectually huffed back a snort of

laughter.

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"No. That would be sick if you had your cock up my ass

when I called you that. When you're nutting out and sound
like you're about to ground me, calling you "dad" is perfectly
acceptable, warranted even." Mercer winced. Damn it. Now
he sounded like Saul.

"You sound like me, Braun. I can worry."
Fucking a guy who could somehow tune into your own

messed up frequency was really a bad idea. "Don't. There's
no need to worry." Mercer was quite satisfied that the lie
came out without even a hint of tell-tale stutter.

Unfortunately, Saul had a habit of not buying any of his

crap, stuttered or not. "Oh, of course not. Why the hell would
I worry... Was that a coyote I just heard?"

Shit. "You did not..." Mercer shot straight up and scanned

the darkened horizon for the tattle taling culprit when the
truth punched him right in his big fat stupid nose. "Bastard,"
Mercer hissed into the phone although he didn't know if he
was talking about Saul or himself.

Saul snorted righteously, "Better a bastard in a bed than

an idiot in the desert."

Flopping back down onto the ground with a little more

speed than he had initially planned, he chose to let the
silence talk for him while he tried to get the world to stop
spinning on its tail.

Saul wasn't one for silence though. His voice rang out clear

in the dizzying dark, "Are you currently bleeding?"

"What kind of question is that?" Mercer snapped, way too

over-defensively for his own survival in this conversation.

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Saul took his advantage and ran with it. "It's the kind of

question a heart doctor asks a patient on heavy duty blood
thinners."

"I am not bleeding," which was mostly true. The scraped

knee he'd gotten when he'd lost consciousness and face
planted into a bush really didn't count, especially since it had
essentially stopped bleeding nearly an hour ago. A little
sluggish leaking really didn't count as full out bleeding.
Mercer would defend that statement to his dying day... Ok,
bad thought. Maybe it was time for Mercer to stop thinking
now.

"What's your heart rate?" The MD had raised his ugly head

and there was no hope in hell of getting the beast to retreat
back into its cubby hole.

Mercer sighed. He'd really hoped that they'd get a little

farther into the conversation before that came up. "My heart
rate is within normal parameters now. All systems are a go,
Doc."

"Now?"
Of course he would pick up on that. "Yes, now. That's

what's important, right?" Mercer cursed the trace of
desperation that had latched on to that last part. He was a
grown man. He did not need assurance.

"Yes, probably you're right." Saul had slipped into bedside

manner and was lying/comforting like a pro. "Are you going
to share with me what happened?"

"Nothing to share." Mercer's lying was nowhere near as

smooth as Saul's. He was going to have to work on that if this
thing with the good doctor did in fact miraculously go

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somewhere other than this, whatever the hell this was.
"Nothing that hasn't happened a bunch of times before." That
would be two.

Saul actually scoffed. "And that's what has you freaked

out? A 'bunch of times' event?"

Mercer had reached the end of his rope. He snapped, "Shit.

I wasn't calling a doctor I was calling my... friend." The word
"lover" had almost slipped out. He didn't think he had the
right to call Saul that anymore. That hurt his heart more than
any damned disease.

There was a whole lot of silence at that.
When Saul finally spoke again, he spoke fast and furious,

"Okay, Okay. I get that. And I appreciate you not using
anything that has an 'ex' in front of it. I don't think I could
handle that discussion at three in the morning."

Maybe they should talk about it. Hell, they had to. "Yeah,

about that..."

Saul huffed out in extreme impatience as he cut him off.

"Didn't you hear what I just said? Or did your 'bunch of times'
event take out your ears too?"

The impatience was catching. Mercer snapped, "No, but it

must have taken out a shitload of my brain cells because I
don't know why the hell I'd think I'd feel better just hearing
your stinking voice."

Silence met his childish outburst. Mercer checked the

phone just to make sure that their connection hadn't been
lost. It hadn't.

Scrambling to come up with something to say, Mercer

opened his mouth to try to fix whatever he'd broken when

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Saul's voice thankfully sputtered back in, "Oh... So you mean
you called just to hear my... I mean that's really kind of..."

Rolling his eyes at the desert sky, Mercer stated plainly, "If

the word sweet comes out of your mouth I'm going to fucking
have a cardiac arrest right now just to piss you off."

Saul snorted. "I was going to say 'surprising,' asshole. I

might have even thrown in an 'encouraging' just to up the
ante a little."

"You don't gamble," Mercer pointed out calmly.
Saul countered with a sigh, "Is that really the point right

now?"

"Yeah, it kind of is." Mercer hadn't planned on going there

with Saul right now but, hey, he wasn't about to pass up an
opening like that. "You being with me would be the biggest
gamble of your life. You know the odds, Doc, better than
anyone, and you don't like them. I get that." The fact that
Mercer did honestly "get that" ached. It would have been a lot
easier to sit on his moral high ground if Saul was being an
unreasonable shit about all of this. Next time, Mercer was
sticking to fucking jerks.

After a beat of more of that worrying silence, Saul asked

him simply, "Were you hit repeatedly in the head with a
baseball when you were a child?"

"I don't..."
Saul snorted. "No, you're perfectly right. You don't get it."
"You said you didn't want to watch me die."
The laugh almost sounded bitter. "No, I said I didn't want

to watch you kill yourself. Big, honking difference there,
slugger."

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Mercer rolled his eyes and tried to explain this again. "I

want to live. And by live I mean more than just breathing in
and out on a regular basis, Saul. I want to enjoy what's out
there for as long as I've got. Why is that so fucking hard for
you to understand?"

Mercer could hear Saul breathing. It was slow and it was

somehow damned sad. "Life is precious, Mercer. Just
breathing in and out on a regular basis is a wonderful thing.
There's no shame in holding on to that." Saul sighed.
"Anthony didn't even get that. Not one fucking breath."

"Saul..."
"It's like you're throwing it up in all of their faces, all those

people who fight tooth and nail just to take another breath,
all those freaking kids that never got the chance to live one
second..."

"That's not..." Mercer tried, hating himself a little more

than he had ever hated himself in his whole life.

"I know," Saul's voice softened as if he could feel what

Mercer was doing to himself. "But it's how I see it. It's how I
see you. And it just hurts too damn much. I don't have the
right to ask you to stop risking your life, but you don't have
the right to ask me to watch you do it."

"I understand, Okay." Mercer did. He understood. All he

was asking now was for Saul to do a little understanding
himself. "Look, man, this can't be all about you."

Saul laughed. "It can't be all about you either."
Mercer felt like they were just going around in circles,

getting no closer or further away from the proverbial
"resolution." He was at a loss. Mercer Braun, however, didn't

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like losing. He never had and never would. The time for
beating around the bush was over. It was time for a simple
hard truth. Taking a deep breath that rattled his very soul,
Mercer declared, "I love you, you know."

Neither man had said it before, at least in Mercer's case

where Saul could hear it. Yeah, they had implied the whole
love-thing under that damned Joshua tree, but neither had
actually said the words... until now.

Saul's breathing had definitely picked up speed. "This

better not be your version of a death bed confession. I'm not
dealing with that crap either."

"Like I said, I'm fine, Doc." Mercer was surprised to find a

smile forming on his lips. "I've only said that to two other
people in the world, you know."

There was silence and then a soft guess. "Your mom?"
"And my dad..." Mercer chucked up a bitter laugh at that

sad admission. "Yeah, I know. Pitiful, right? But, hey, I've
never been one to give something up for lost without killing
myself first trying to hold on to it."

There was a dead quiet.
"Are you still there?" Mercer finally had to ask.
Saul's reply was not what he had expected. "Three," the

doctor stated simply.

"What?"
Saul cleared his throat. "Not counting my family. Three

times I've said it."

"Elise," Mercer had no trouble guessing one of the three.
Sighing, it sounded like Saul was settling back onto the

bed. The muffled sound of a pillow catching a weary head

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seeped through the line. "Laurie McEnroe. She lived across
the street and developed way before the rest of the fourth
grade."

Mercer snorted. "Can't blame a boy there."
There was a breath of a short-lived laugh. "And Charlotte

Upton, freshman year in college." A hint of still remembered
pain accompanied his words. "I swore I'd be waking up next
to her every day for the rest of my life. Unfortunately, after
the first three months, she didn't exactly appreciate that
sentiment anymore."

"Sorry."
Saul chuckled. "You shouldn't be. If things between me

and Charlotte had worked out I wouldn't be lying here about
to make you number four."

Mercer found himself laughing as he banged his head again

into the desert floor. "We are such fucking idiots."

"Not exactly the reaction I was aiming for." Saul sounded a

little put out.

Mercer ignored it. "We get around to the 'I love you's' only

when we're ending it. How pitiful is that?"

"Are we?" Saul asked, never having sounded more unsure.

"Ending it?"

There was a beat of thought before Mercer admitted

honestly, "I don't know."

"Okay," Saul finally breathed out, relief and exhaustion

cutting the word back down to a whisper.

"Okay." Nothing was resolved, but nothing was ended.

Mercer would take that as a win for tonight.

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A yawn pierced the encroaching silence. Mercer smiled at

Saul's words, "I'm going to sleep. If you die out there you
lose your number four status, just saying."

"Understood." Mercer joined in with his own yawn as he

dragged himself back up to his feet. He had another mile or
so to go but he had no doubt that he would make it now. "No
bad dreams," he admonished as he slipped the backpack over
his shoulders.

"No stepping on scorpions," Saul replied in kind.
Mercer laughed. "Bye, Doc."
"Good night."
Seventeen hours later, Mercer would realize that Saul

never actually said the words "I love you" to him.

Seventeen hours later, Mercer would fear that it was too

late.

Two thousand miles away, a woman boarded a plane in

Raleigh, North Carolina bound for Las Vegas.

Her name was Elise Delgado.
In seventeen hours, she would have her revenge.

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Chapter Ten: Between the Polite and the Psychotic

Elise Delgado was a striking woman. With hair as black as

a raven's heart and skin as perfectly pale and rich as the
freshest of creams, she was a vision of contradictions. A dark
stormy gray colored her large, doe-shaped eyes. Her
cheekbones were strong, bold enough to carry the heaviest of
lie-borne smiles. She was tall with the legs of a runner but
the tight posture of a model. Her lips were full and forever a
brick red. A tell of her rising nerves and her former life was
the licking of her tongue across the front of her stunningly
white teeth. A smudge of misplaced lipstick had once been
her greatest worry.

Times changed.
Unborn babies died.
Elise Delgado now met most of her days behind a sifter of

brandy and a cigarette. When she was out in public she was
forever sucking on a hard candy mint. Her parents no longer
recognized her, the soul of the little girl they had so lovingly
raised having been dulled by liquor and mis-shapened by
hate.

Yes, Elise Delgado now hated. She hated with all that was

inside of her. Before, once upon a long ago time when
pregnancies were viable and the baby's room was still
periwinkle blue, Elise used to love.

She had loved her career as an interior designer.
She had loved the little townhouse she had bought all by

herself.

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She had loved the peek of ocean she could get when she

stood on her tiptoes on her chair from her rooftop deck.

Most of all, however, she had loved her husband. She had

loved him since she was a little girl. Oh, his name had
changed over the years. First, it had been Jimmy in the
second grade when husbands were nothing more than
permanent friends who would push you on the swings. Then
there had been Darryl, her first kiss, and Richard, her first
lover. All were welcomed into her heart with the unspoken tag
of "this could be my husband" blinking tirelessly above their
names.

Up until the moment she and Saul Tidewater had said "I

do," all Elise had really wanted in her life was to be a wife.

The next day, she wanted to be a mother.
Titles had always been very important to Elise. The fact

that her husband was also a doctor thrilled her to no end. The
fact that his name had ended up being Saul instead of Jimmy
or Darryl or Richard made no difference to her.

With one objective met, she put everything she had into

becoming a mother. Saul didn't mind.

Three months later when her OB/GYN had confirmed that

her wish was about to come true, Elise Delgado had loved her
husband even more.

The car accident six weeks later changed everything.
There would be no child for Elise ever, the injuries had

assured that.

Having a husband no longer mattered.
She started to drink.

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Then having a husband who had killed her baby and

stopped her from ever becoming a mother only meant having
someone and something to hate.

He took even that away from her when he branded an "ex"

across both their titles of husband and wife.

She would never forgive Saul for that.
Elise Delgado would hate her baby's killer forever for that.
She moved like a cat through a jungle, all lean muscle and

silent throbbing focus. Although the bottle of liquor in her
hand was half empty, her eyes were shining and bright with
clear purpose and sharpened passion. Hatred pulsed from her
in deep, steady breaths that put Mercer even more on edge.

It was seven o'clock when his doorbell had wrung.
After dragging himself back home from the near disastrous

hike the night before, Mercer had slept away most of the day.
He had only finished showering and fixing himself something
to eat when his most unexpected visitor had arrived.

Mercer hadn't known who she was until she had told him.

The liquor that reeked off of her skin needed no such
introduction.

He had invited her inside, for her safety as well for her

well-being.

She had said that she needed to talk to him.
She had said that there were things he needed to know.
She had said as she pulled something out of her purse that

she had brought a gun. She showed it to him with a steady
hand and a dead gaze. In her other hand, she held a half
empty bottle of brandy. It was clearly not her first of the

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evening. She sipped on it as regularly as a smoker sucked on
a cigarette.

Mercer didn't want to hurt this woman. He had never put a

hand on a woman before, and he sure as hell didn't want to
start now.

He didn't want to call the authorities. She had already

been through hell. Bringing the police into the situation would
only be a last resort.

He doubted that he could talk her down, but maybe, just

maybe, he could wait her out. The alcohol would have to
absorb into her system sometime he thought, either leaving
her passed out or sober. He just needed to get that bottle
away from her.

"Why don't you sit down, Ms. Delgado? I was just about to

have dinner and I've got plenty to share." She seemed to
have no qualms with his moving around the house. The gun
and its steady and sure crosshairs simply moved with him.

She shook her head at his offer of a meal. "When will he

be here?"

"Saul's not coming." He could actually see her pulse

quicken as it pounded in her too thin neck. He didn't want to
make this woman mad... or madder. Mercer added calmly.
"Saul doesn't live with me."

"You are a liar," she stated each word succinctly and with

long held venom. "I overheard Valerie talking about the two
of you."

"You can check the house if you like. The most you're

going to find of your ex-husband here is a prescription he
wrote me a month ago for a cold." Although that was a

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blatant lie, it was a lie that Mercer bet she'd have no chance
of discovering for herself. The hellish two weeks the men had
just spent apart hadn't changed anything in Mercer's house.
Their clothes had become so intermixed he had a hard time in
remembering whose was whose. As for the always damning
toiletries, Saul had the habit of keeping all of his stuff in a
shaving kit he lugged with him wherever he went, hospital or
lover's. As he'd once told Mercer, "Finding a toothbrush in a
hospital is a worrisomely hard thing to do." Carrying his own
in his bag had become a well-ingrained habit.

Elise's lips slowly curved into an accusatory smirk. She

pointed the bottle at him as she spoke, "You think you're
clever, is that it?" She laughed. It was harsh and ugly. "I was
his damned wife!" Apparently she still remembered. The
shaving kit habit hadn't slipped her mind with her sobriety.

"Then you're just going to have to take my word for it,

aren't you?" He decided to change tactics with her. Maybe a
firmer approach would be able to sink through her alcoholic
haze.

"I hate you," was her calm reply.
Mercer snorted. "Well, I don't really have the warm and

fuzzies for you either right now, but hey I'm an open minded
guy. Things can change and I'm always willing to let them."
Maybe a mix of firm and gracious host would wear her down
quicker? He nearly laughed. He didn't have a fucking clue
what he was doing. Hell, he just wanted to get them both
through this whole thing, preferably with no bullet holes or
felony charges. "Come on and sit down, will ya? We can talk
and I can eat. You can still join me if you'd like?"

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He turned his back to her and walked into the kitchen. It

was a risky move, seeing as how she had a very effective
weapon already clinched in her hand. Mercer didn't think he
had much choice though. He still wasn't ready to give up on
this woman.

Walking to the cupboard, he reached in for a plate for

himself. When he heard her footsteps on the kitchen floor, he
glanced casually back over his shoulder at his guest and
asked one last time. "You sure? It's really no problem."

She shook her head tightly.
Mercer shrugged and continued gathering up his silverware

and napkins. Quite frankly, he didn't know how he was going
to stuff down that ham and provolone sandwich waiting for
him in the refrigerator. Elise Delgado had sucked the appetite
right out of him. No wonder Saul didn't have an ounce of fat
on him, the woman was a walking diet.

"I just wanted to talk to you," she said plainly as she

hovered on the other side of the kitchen's eat-in bar. While
her feet never remained still, her eyes stayed glued to Mercer
unwaveringly. It was like being a damned moth pinned to a
board by some freaking scientist. It was starting to unnerve
Mercer. He really didn't want to be around when she started
pulling off wings.

Grabbing a bottle of fruit juice from the refrigerator, he

and his sandwich reluctantly sat down on a bar stool and
pretended to enjoy each other's company.

Elise Delgado, apparently, did not play pretend. The hate

she had already stated shown clearly in her eyes. "Do you
know the man you're fucking?"

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He nearly choked on a piece of cheese at her choice of

language. Apparently southern belles weren't too shy about
cursing these days. "Yeah, I do. Saul's a good man."

"He's a baby killer," she leaned over the bar and hissed.
He was sure that she thought he'd be shocked by her

words. "No, Elise, he's not." His calmness seemed to rattle
her.

"Don't patronize me, Mr. Braun." Her voice rose to a

carefully modulated shriek. "Don't pity me either. I am not
distraught. I am not the woman scorned. I am the mother of
a child I will never see, I will never get to hold. I will never
get to know the color of his eyes or the shade of his soft, fine
hair."

He took a measured sip of his juice and prayed that she

didn't notice the slight tremble to his hand. "I'm so sorry for
your loss," he offered her with sincerity.

She slammed the bottle of brandy down onto the counter.

"The man you stick your cock into? That man was driving.
That man drove us into the side of a truck. He might as well
have taken a shovel and dug the fetus out of my womb."
Where pain should have resided in her eyes there was only
rage.

Slowly, he gave his answer, "The truck ran a red light.

Saul hit the brakes. He tried to stop." One night after a few
too many beers, Saul had told Mercer all the details of that
horrible night. Every detail was now ingrained in Mercer's
mind.

Elise laughed as though Mercer was nothing more than a

dumb child. "Wouldn't you lie if you'd just killed your son?"

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"He didn't lie." For the first time, Mercer could see the gun

shake in her hand. Whether it was of fury or hellish sorrow, it
didn't matter to Mercer right now. He just knew that it was
time to make his move. Standing up slowly from the bar
stool, he began to circle around the bar towards her. Never
once did his voice rise above a steady whisper. "Elise, the
police reports, all the crash experts said that Saul did
everything he could do to avoid hitting the truck. He even
jerked the car sideways to make sure he got the brunt of the
impact."

"It didn't work, now did it?" Her laugh turned high-pitched.

As Mercer kept coming closer, Elise began to step back. She
spit out, "My baby is dead, Mr. Braun."

"The baby was Saul's, too." Mercer kept inching toward

her. If he could pin her up against a wall maybe he could get
close enough to go for the gun. He held his hands out in front
of him, hoping she'd believe that he was no threat. "Saul
never got to see him either or hold his little hand."

She had reached the fireplace, the top of her back hitting

the mantle. Her hand that had once held the bottle now
sitting on the counter dropped to her side. She seemed to
regain some of her previous control even as she continued to
spout hate, "Should I cry for him? Is that what you think I
should do?"

He only needed two more steps. "Did Saul cry for you?"
That brought her to a pause, but it was only a short one.

Laced in spite, the explanation spilled across her lips, "They
were crocodile tears."

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Mercer almost laughed at the absurdity of that thought.

"Have you ever even met Saul Tidewater?" The remark
slipped out just as he began to take that last step.

He never made it.
The door was locked. He rolled his eyes at his own

stupidity. Of course, the door was locked. Mercer always kept
his door locked. Saul wrenched the knob the opposite way,
just to be real damned sure. Still locked.

He had gotten the call from the credit card company less

than an hour ago. Apparently, a woman had charged a plane
ticket to Las Vegas on his card. With Elise being a repeat
offender of swiping his credit for her own purposes, the bank
was always vigilant in looking for red flags. After identifying
himself and, again, his credit card to Elise's favorite car rental
company, he knew what car he was looking for and knew of
only two places his ex would fly all this way to be. He had
checked his condo first. Saul broke a number of speed limits
on the way to Mercer's house.

Now, here he was outside a locked door with his no doubt

soused ex-wife confronting his former/current male lover just
inside. Sometimes he really hated his life.

Options flipped through his mind's eye like they had been

stashed on one of those old fashioned Rolodex's for decades.
The possible courses of action he could take at the moment
spanned all the gray area between the polite and the
psychotic. Married to Elise those last few months, you had to
have all exits scoped out before entering a room. It was a
sure bet that by the end of the encounter one or both of them

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would be wanting to run screaming out the door. In situations
like that, exit ways had to remain clear at all times.

Although he had never imagined wanting to break into a

room with Elise and her booze in it, he figured it would just
be like working in reverse.

He could ring the doorbell. Hell, he could knock. How

fucking gentlemanly would that be? Maybe Elise would greet
him in the foyer with a snifter of brandy in her hand and a
warm smile on those often frowning lips? Although he
wouldn't put it past Mercer to figuratively charm the pants off
of his ex, Saul feared that she was way past the point of any
amount or brilliance of charm being able to break through her
icy hatred.

He could always go ninja on the door. True, he had no so-

called ninja skills but he had watched a Bruce Lee marathon
only a couple of months ago. He was sure he could fake it.
Besides, having sex with Mercer had improved his flexibility
into the near astronomical range. He could do this. He stared
hard at the door just now noticing that it was metal, not
wood. Even Mr. Lee himself couldn't have chopped his way
through that.

Barring any kind of battering ram or handmade explosives

from the equation, Saul was left with only two viable options:
knock or go home.

The ear piercing scream from behind the house, however,

immediately changed all that.

Saul tore around the side of the house and jumped the

fence into the backyard. He knew that scream, he knew it
was Elise. She sounded as if she had gone mad. Giving no

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thought to his own safety, only Mercer's well-being driving
him on, Saul ran onto the patio that connected the pool to the
house. Throwing open the French doors, Saul saw a figure
lying on the floor near the fireplace.

Mercer and Saul's world just about stopped right there.
He only got to take one step toward his fallen lover,

however, when the barrel of a gun was jammed into his face
and the sweet voice of his ex-wife informed him, "We need to
talk."

The darkness released its hold on Mercer slowly. His head

hurt. A lot. What was of more concern than the fire roaring in
his brain though was the sight wavering just on the other side
of the French doors.

The former husband and wife sat at the side of the pool.

Saul was on the edge of the teak lounge chair. She was on its
matching stool. They were more than an arm's length apart
but just barely.

Saul sat bent over his knees, his elbows hanging over his

thighs. There was nothing in his hands.

Elise sat rim rod straight, both feet firmly on the ground.

Her left hand cradled her right on her lap. Her right hand held
the gun; it was steady, it's aim true. If she pulled the trigger
a bullet would tear through Saul's heart. Saul Tidewater
would be dead.

"Damn!" Mercer cursed into the floor. The world swam

sickeningly before his eyes, his flickering consciousness
spending more time off than on.

He had to do something.

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"Off," however, suddenly ambushed him, and Mercer's

world fell dark once again.

Saul risked a glance back over to the half open French

door. He could just barely make out Mercer's shape in the
stark moonlight. It was a little like watching an old black and
white movie stuck on pause. The dark, broken silhouette was
not moving. Saul refused to believe that his lover was not
breathing. The lines were just too fuzzy in the pale darkness
to pick up such tiny movements. That's what he kept telling
himself again and again.

A rustling of silk against denim brought his attention back

to his ex-wife and the gun she held unwaveringly in her
hands.

Elise hadn't lost the buzz yet. She was still coasting along

like an old train on a well-known, worn track. It was when she
began to shake that Saul would really have to worry. Elise
was so far gone to her alcoholism that she could think better
soused then sober now. Sober, she got nervous, scared, and
confused. Drunk, she was steady and her anger was calm,
calculating and vengeful. He'd rather have a drunk Elise with
a gun than a sober one. How fucked up was that?

"You're not laughing at me, are you, Dear?" Elise looked

thoroughly amused at the thought. "I know you've got balls,
but now's really not the time to use them. Trust me."

Saul needed help.
There was no way in hell he could get to a phone, but he

had to find some way to get Mercer help.

If Saul could get her to fire the gun, there was at least a

reasonable chance that the neighbors might hear it.

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Apparently her shriek hadn't bothered them, but a gunshot
was a lot harder to ignore. He just had to make sure that if he
got her riled up again that her anger and the accompanying
bullet would be aimed only at him, not Mercer. Saul knew it
was a fine line he was going to have to walk and he was
going to have to walk it in a damned short time. Although he
didn't know how badly Mercer was injured, he did know that
even a small injury to a man with Mercer's condition could
prove to be fatal.

That was simply unacceptable.
That was not going to happen.
Even if it meant getting shot, and yes possibly killed

himself, to get the help rolling their way, Saul was fully
prepared to do it. Mercer Braun was worth it.

Of course, all the convictions of the heart and soul were

not enough to keep the quiver completely out of his voice as
he began the taunting game. "I wonder what Anthony's
thinking right now?"

It was the first time Saul had ever called their unborn son

by the name they had planned to give him while talking to
Elise. Once their little boy had died, neither could say his
name. Even now, the word burned in Saul's mouth
bittersweetly. Saul found himself fighting back a dry wash of
unsheddable tears.

As expected, Elise's reaction was a bit more extreme.
The Arctic ice cap had nothing on the cold that now burned

her eyes. She swallowed once, twice, and then went
completely still.

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Saul's gaze fell to the gun. A small tremor ran through the

barrel's length.

He was on the edge of death and knew it. He longed to

look at Mercer one last time, but he didn't want to miss his
chance. Maybe, just maybe, if he caught her finger moving
against the trigger before she actually pulled it, Saul would be
able to dive out of the bullet's path. Not completely, of
course. He wasn't a damned idiot. But perhaps he could move
just enough out of the way to keep the gaping hole in his
chest from being mortal.

If Mercer was still alive, Saul had to be alive for him.
"Anthony's dead." She clucked her tongue against the roof

of her mouth, a habit that had always drove Saul crazy. "My
son's not thinking anything."

"Our son, Elise," Saul corrected her.
She shook her head and the gun with it. "You don't get to

claim him. You lost the right."

"What about you, huh? Hate and liquor, that's all you exist

on now." Saul balled up his fists, trying to control the anger
that was starting to burn inside of him. "What kind of mother
would you have been, Elise? A part of me is glad that
Anthony's not here to see this." That, of course, was a total
lie. Saul would have given anything for his son to have been
given the opportunity just to take a breath. All this shit their
boy could have dealt with, if he had just been given the
chance.

"You don't mean that." Elise responded coolly. She had

always been good at reading his mind.

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Saul had hoped the alcohol would have blunted that talent.

It hadn't. He was going to have to stick to the truth from here
on out if this was going to work.

"So, now, you want to deal with truths. What kind of

fucked up logic is that, Elise? You come barreling across the
country to tell my lover that I killed our baby when you know
for a fact that I did not!" He could just imagine the smug
smile that must have played across her lips as she had
"revealed" the truth to Mercer.

Elise opened her mouth, but Saul wasn't going to let her

spew out any more of her shit.

"You may hate it. You may try to block it out by drowning

yourself in liquor but the truth is still there. It may be ugly
and fucking unfair, but it's there. You're just too damned
afraid to accept it, to accept that we lost our baby to a shitty
accident. You couldn't have stopped it. I couldn't have
stopped it. No one could have stopped it but God." Saul
inched closer to her on his seat. The most condescending
smirk he could manage sat crookedly on his lips. "You want to
blame someone, Elise? Why don't you blame God? He's the
one with Anthony now. He's the one you should be aiming
that damned gun at." Saul prayed with all his soul that she'd
turn and point that gun angrily at the sky and shoot the hell
out of the heavens.

Cold fire flared in her eyes as she replied, "But God's not

here, Saul. You are."

With a calm, demented smile, Elise Delgado pulled the

trigger.

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184

Chapter Eleven: Creosote Bushes and Bearpoppies

Elise Delgado's bullet wasn't the only one to fly at that

moment, however.

Hell, hers wasn't even the first.
A uniformed cop only three weeks with a badge, stood at

the now opened backyard gate. A city issued Glock 22 shook
in his hand. He looked green, felt green, but none of that
mattered. His aim had been true.

The bullet had struck Elise in the shoulder. She now lay

writhing on the patio. Her gun had flown out of her hands and
was sinking to the bottom of the pool. Her bullet was wedged
into the wall by the set of French doors.

A blood-spattered Saul Tidewater had spared little

attention to the cop except to whisper a "Thank God" in his
general direction. He had paid no attention to his fallen ex-
wife. He had been through the doors and at Mercer Braun's
side before the police officer's Glock had even begun to cool.

The policeman called for an ambulance.
Saul slid to a halt at Mercer's side. He dropped down to his

knees with prayers rattling off of his tongue like some revival
preacher.

Mercer couldn't help but chuckle.
Saul's look of "Thank God you're alive" rapidly curdled into

something approaching "I'm going to kill you myself, jerk."
Incredulously, Saul asked him, "You're laughing?"

"No, well, yeah, but I'm thinking it has to do more with the

fireplace poker your ex thunked me in the head with than any

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185

real humor of the situation." He reached up to his forehead
and with a wince dabbed carefully at the gash on his
forehead. He had been so focused on that stupid gun that he
had never seen her grab the poker. By the time she was
swinging it at him, it had been too late for Mercer to duck.

Saul immediately swatted Mercer's dabbing hand away.

"Don't touch it." The doctor pressed a torn piece of his shirt
onto the cut. "You hurt anywhere else?"

Mercer started to shake his head but thought better of it

when the world started to tilt around him. "No," he whispered
instead. "Are you alright?" Although he had been able to
watch some of the events by the pool he needed to make
sure.

"I'm fine," Saul answered shortly, apparently pissed at the

world at large.

"Elise?"
Saul huffed. "Do you really give a damn?"
"Yeah," Mercer answered because for some weird reason

he did.

"You would." Saul shook his head, the accompanying laugh

was soft and fleeting. "She got hit in the shoulder. She should
live, I guess."

Cops began swarming the house and the patio.
Mercer watched it all with a fading eye. "Had you called

the cops?" he asked because Mercer didn't really understand
why Las Vegas' finest were now invading his house.

Saul suddenly looked as confused as Mercer felt. "No. I

don't know why..."

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186

A shadow fell upon them as a mountain of a cop emerged

from the front hallway. "Do you have a sister by the name of
Valerie Tidewater?" he asked while staring hard at a little
notebook.

Saul immediately straightened up, fear piercing his voice.

"Yeah, why? Is she alright?"

"Oh yeah." The cop waved off the concern immediately.

"You might even call her the hero of the day. She called us
when she couldn't get a hold of you or Mr. Braun. Apparently,
your ex-wife left a 'just in case' suicide note pinned to your
mother's door."

"Valerie found it?" Saul finally allowed his shoulders to

relax.

The cop nodded. "And saved the day, yes, Sir."
"I love that girl," Mercer mumbled as things were

beginning to turn gray and unfocused.

Saul's hand suddenly warmed the side of his face again. A

kiss was pressed to Mercer's lips and a whispered but sure "I
love you" was heard right before unconsciousness reclaimed
Mercer Braun.

The key slipped into the lock with surprising ease. Saul

was shaking so badly he had feared that he'd need some kind
of back up just to get into his door. The office was dark and
smelled of pine cleaner and window polish. Not bothering with
the overhead lights, Saul crossed over to his desk and flicked
on the Frank Lloyd Wright inspired lamp that his sisters had
gotten him last Christmas. The glow from the low watt bulb
was soft and comforting. It was as close to a sisterly hug as
he was going to get tonight. He shook his head, knowing that

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187

he was being stupid, but sometimes it was damned hard
being so far away from family.

His still unsteady gaze found the phone on the corner of

his desk. He had already called Valerie and promised her that
pony she had always wanted. She had laughed, which was a
hell of a lot better than the tears that had accompanied her
"Hello?"

"I need to call them," he whispered to the empty room. His

parents needed to hear what happened to Elise from him.
Gossip had already cut his family so deep. Saul wanted to cut
this firestorm of words and accusations off at the pass.

When his hand didn't move toward the phone, however, he

blew out a breath he didn't know he had been holding and
said to the night, "Later."

The night didn't argue with his decision, so Saul put all

those thoughts away for a moment. Before he dealt with the
people in South Carolina, he needed to wrap his mind around
what just happened in Vegas.

Slumping down in his chair, he brought his hands in front

of his face. They were still stained with blood.

"I wonder whose?" he asked as he started to pick off the

dried remains on the palm of his left hand. When Elise had
been shot, some of the spray from the wound had landed on
him. He hadn't remembered that until just that moment.

He thought he was probably in shock, at least a little bit. It

was nothing that needed medical care or attention, just
enough to skew things sideways and make all the edges too
sharp.

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He should lay down and rest. He had a perfectly suitable

couch across the room just waiting to be filled. There was
even an old quilt of his grandmother's in the tiny closet off his
private bathroom. He could hide under the squares of soft
treasured fabric until the night was gone.

It would be so easy to hunker down into exhausted sleep.

Oh, he was sure the nightmares would try to come, but he
knew himself well enough to know that he'd sleep through
them, at least for this one night.

He glanced at the couch with longing. It was to his hands,

however, that he stared with stalwart determination.

He had to get the blood off.
Sleep could wait. It would wait.
Jerking up and out of his seat, Saul winced as the back of

his abandoned chair hit the wall with a thwack. Maintenance
wasn't going to be happy. Staring bullets at the freshly made
hole in the wall, Saul snapped out tiredly, "Well, maintenance
can just go fuck themselves."

With a new seed of anger planted in his battered soul, Saul

stumbled off toward the bathroom, stripping his soiled clothes
off and into a far, dark corner as he went. He was standing in
just his boxer briefs when he reached inside the shower and
turned on the hot water. Exhaustion hit him with the blessed
sound of the water. Half-heartedly, he even contemplated
stepping inside with his underwear still on. He was just so
damned tired now.

He relented, however, as the steam rose up to meet his

face. He needed to feel the water. He needed to feel it

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everywhere. Kicking away the boxer briefs, he grabbed onto
the slick, tiled wall and gave himself to the rush of the water.

Though written in red, in big official looking block script

even, the letters A.M.A. still rode Mercer Braun's release form
blurrily. Well, Mercer had had a concussion before. Being
beamed by a ninety-two mile per hour fastball in the side of
his helmet had taught him well the signs of minimal brain
trauma. He could deal. He wasn't sure Saul could though.

The hollowed out expression Mercer remembered seeing

on his lover's face in brief flashes before the ambulance had
arrived scared the shit out him. He didn't care what "medical
advice" told him. Hell, he'd have the damn A.M.A. letters
tattooed across his forehead if it got him to finding Saul any
quicker.

Thankfully, the room the hospital had prematurely dubbed

as "Mercer Braun's" looked over the parking lot. He had let
out a grateful sigh as he had spotted Saul's truck parked in its
usual spot. At least he had a starting place to begin looking.

It had been explained to Mercer in no uncertain terms that

Doctor Tidewater had been sent home. Mercer needed rest
and the "good doctor" had needed a shower and a nice ten
hours of sleep.

Mercer would bet that their "good doctor" hadn't left his

side quietly.

Having bribed an orderly into letting him borrow his spare

set of scrubs, Mercer was currently weaving his way through
the long and surprisingly tricky hospital halls on his way to
Saul's office. He felt ridiculous stumbling around in hospital
issued slippers. He suspected he looked like some half-baked

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190

lunatic trying to escape the asylum. That was the very reason
why he clung to his release papers so tightly, ready to flash
them at any well-meaning hospital employee giving him the
stink eye. So far he'd only had to do that three times. Not too
bad for four floors and one hellish elevator ride.

Finally, the end was in sight. Saul's office was at the end of

a particularly curvy stretch of hallway. Luckily, the door was
already open. Mercer doubted he had the coordination needed
to actually knock.

He walked inside with an unintended lurch as the floor

decided to do a sudden jig. Being a man who had, at one
point in his much younger college years, been able to hold an
absurd amount of liquor, Mercer was able to keep to his feet.
Just the same, he scowled at the carpet menacingly before
raising his head up to face his lover.

All Mercer got for his troubles, however, was an empty

desk and a hole in the wall.

Thankfully the sound of the shower running made it

through his muddled mind before he started looking for Saul
underneath his desk.

At some point Saul had slipped to the floor. He didn't

remember it, the kneeling on the hard ass tile that is. The
rest of the screwed up day he remembered perfectly. In fact,
full Technicolor images of the evening's gruesome events kept
playing in a loop in his mind. The doctor part of him knew
that that wasn't healthy. The rest of him though didn't really
give a shit. He just let the flashes of blood and guns and ex-
wives and almost dead lovers fill his head until it was too
heavy for his neck to hold up.

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191

Hmmm. Maybe that's how he ended up on the floor.
"What the hell are you doing on the floor?" A voice not his

own angrily shouted over the pounding water.

Shielding his eyes from the spray, Saul looked up and

found Mercer Braun swaying in his shower's doorway. While
the events of the last few minutes might be a bit blurry, Saul
was damned sure that Mercer wasn't supposed to be standing
there. "What the hell are you doing out of bed?"

Mercer rustled a handful of papers at him. "A.M.A." He

smirked down at him proudly.

"You're an idiot," Saul informed him.
"Who's the freak on his knees?" Mercer wobbled a little as

he pointed in Saul's general direction.

"It's my shower. I can do what I fucking want." Saul stuck

his chin up in the air defiantly.

The argument he was trying to spark off fizzled, however,

with Mercer's answer, "Fine. Scoot over, then."

"What? Why?"
"I've got a concussion. I should be in bed, but I'll settle for

sitting right now."

Saul really couldn't find the logic to argue that at the

moment.

After Mercer had wedged himself on the floor next to Saul,

the doctor looked at his lover as the water streamed down his
still pale face. "You really should have turned off the shower
before you sat down, you know. Or at least taken off your
clothes." Staring at him through the rising steam, Saul
noticed what Mercer was wearing, ill-fittingly wearing at that.
"You look like a reject from Grey's Anatomy." He fingered at

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192

the material casually as if they weren't two men, one naked,
one in scrubs, sitting like a couple of sardines in a fully
operational shower.

"Better than that paper gown they had me in." Mercer

shuddered.

"Damned right." A picture of Mercer roaming the hospital

halls in one of those gowns flashing those damned perfect
cheeks to the world replaced all the other images in Saul's
shock-tinted mind. He really wasn't up to kicking any more
ass tonight.

"You going to explain this to me now?" Mercer flailed his

arms around the wet cubicle of tile.

Saul shrugged. "I had to get your blood off of me." At least

he wasn't sitting under a running shower fully clothed.

"Oh." Mercer nodded then winced. "Her blood too, I

imagine."

"Yeah, but that I could handle." Saul scrubbed a little more

at his now clean hands. "Yours, well, yours I never want to
see, Okay?"

"Okay." Mercer smiled agreeably. "So you're saying if I

skin my knee don't bring the bandages to you, huh?"

Saul knew Mercer was trying to be funny, but Saul just

wasn't up to that yet. "That's not what I meant."

"I know, Saul." Mercer patted him on the knee and just left

his hand there.

They let the muffled sound of the water beating on their

clothes and skin take center stage for a while.

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193

Mercer's voice finally broke the silence. The words were

low, as if they were a little unsure of their place. "I was afraid
I'd never hear you say it."

"What?"
"The 'I love you.'" Mercer shrugged away its importance.
Saul closed his eyes. He had finally realized on his drive

over to Mercer's that for all of his cataloguing the "I love
you's" in his life he had failed to actually put voice to the
most important one. "As you can tell by my ex-wife, I'm not
very good at this kind of stuff," Saul laughed sadly. "I'm
sorry..."

Mercer cut him off. There was apparently something more

important to be said. "Lying there on the floor when I realized
that you'd never said those words, do you know what I
realized?"

"No." Saul opened his eyes and squinted through the water

at his lover.

The deep brown eyes met Saul's and stayed. "That I'd

trade one 'I love you' from you for..." he took a deep breath,
"for playing blindfolded on the interstate at rush hour."

Saul was speechless.
Mercer filled in the gap. "I saw you taunting her. You were

good. I'm guessing you were doing that on some fucking self-
sacrificing, heroic shit notion that if she shot you, it would
save me?"

After a few abortive attempts at making sound, Saul

defended himself as best he could, "I didn't want her to
actually shoot me, just shoot in general. I thought the
neighbors would hear the gunshot and call the cops." This

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194

time, Saul was the one to shrug. "I told you I don't want to
watch you die."

"No," Mercer immediately rebutted. "What you said was

that you didn't want to watch me kill myself. Then you called
me 'slugger,' which, by the way, I hated."

"Sorry," Saul thought he should probably say.
Mercer ignored him. "Tonight I was forced to lie there and

watch you try to kill yourself. I hated it." His voice broke with
the vow Saul never expected to hear, "I won't intentionally do
that to you again. I swear."

"Really?" Saul asked around a grin so large it was only

eclipsed by the damned tears now flooding his eyes.

Even though the shower was still beating down on them,

Mercer reached out and gently wiped the fallen tears away.
Then, the ex-ball player threw a crooked grin the doctor's
way. "I'm just going to drag your ass out to the desert with
me to see every creosote bush, every mulberry tree, every
bearpoppy..."

"Bearpoppy?" Saul asked around something that was

definitely not a lump in his throat.

"Doc, you're going to be loving some bearpoppies." Mercer

beamed.

There was only one question left to be asked. It was an

important one, too. "And when I get too old for you to drag
my ass out there?" This was a long term deal for Saul. He had
to make sure it was one for Mercer too.

The gorgeous brown eyes that Saul had fell in love with

that first night on the rooftop shined brightly at him. Mercer
knew exactly what Saul was asking. "We'll have the

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195

bearpoppies delivered, Doc. You know, senior discount and all
that."

"I love you." It just had to be said. Saul leaned over and

kissed him with all the love a soul could give.

Mercer pulled away and whispered against the doctor's

lips, "Keep telling me that. It's all my heart will ever need."

The End

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