Frozen Heart Read online

  I came to a halt so quickly I almost tripped over my own feet. Turning, I looked down at him. He was staring up at me, his huge, expressive amber eyes filled with what I realized was concern. Concern for me. I couldn’t remember the last time anyone had worried about me or my feelings. I couldn’t remember the last time anyone had cared about me. The gentle spring breeze seemed to eddy around the two of us, warming me.

  I spoke quietly, trying to keep any hint of emotion from my voice. “I told you, she left me. Four years ago now.”

  “Yeah, but why? Did it have something to do with you being bi?”

  “I suppose.” I swallowed against a sudden dryness in my throat. I was not prone to anxiety, but remembering the events that led to the dissolution of my marriage nevertheless made me, well, uncomfortable. “Though I suspect she was unhappy long before that day. But that afternoon… she found gay porn on my computer. And she was repulsed.”

  “I knew it!” He looked infuriated, his eyes blazing with righteous wrath. “So your wife was a homophobe.”

  “I don’t think she was homophobic, exactly. She just didn’t want to be married to someone who was attracted to men as well as women.”

  He snorted. “I’m not sure what your definition of homophobia is, Alex, but to me that sounds like a damn good description of a homophobe. Or a biphobe, maybe. The point is, you weren’t sleeping around, right? You were just indulging in a little harmless fantasy?”

  I swallowed. “I wouldn’t call it harmless. Not when it led directly to the end of my marriage.”

  “Yeah, but that’s on her, not you. Everyone has some fantasies, Alex. You are allowed to have fantasies in the privacy of your own head. And if she couldn’t deal with it—well, she was the one with the problem. Not you.”

  The warmth of the spring night seemed to penetrate my skin and sink deep into my bones. “I appreciate that, Nash, but—”

  “No buts,” he said firmly. “How’d she find your porn, anyway? Did you just have a Freudian slip and leave it up on your computer, or what?”

  I shook my head. “She was snooping. I believe she suspected already. And when she found proof to support her suspicions—well, she was furious. She didn’t even try to listen to my explanations. She told me it was disgusting, revolting filth, that I should be ashamed of myself, and—”

  Despite my efforts to control my emotions, I heard my voice rising. His hand squeezed mine in a comforting gesture. “And you’ve been ashamed of it ever since,” he said softly.

  “I was always ashamed of it,” I admitted, consciously lowering my voice. “My father would have been repulsed as well, had he ever been aware of my proclivities.”

  “Yeah, well, we’ve already established your dad wasn’t always right, haven’t we? Look at it this way, Alex. I like guys. Do you think that’s disgusting or repulsive or wrong?”

  “Of course not,” I answered promptly.

  “So it’s not wrong when you’re attracted to a guy, either. Do me a favor and be as cool about accepting yourself as you are about accepting me, okay?”

  I was silent a long moment, thinking about that. At last I burst out, “Does it bother you that I find women attractive, too?”

  “Nope. Bi people aren’t any more likely to cheat on their partners than anyone else. That’s just a stupid myth. I mean, I’m not into girls personally, but I find plenty of men attractive. Doesn’t mean I’m gonna sleep with them. Just means I like to look.”

  A knot of tension I hadn’t been aware of loosened in my chest. The simple fact that he accepted me so easily, so fully, was an immense relief.

  “You had best not sleep with them,” I informed him. “Because you belong to me now.”

  He gave his silvery, pealing laugh. “Dude, it’s a little soon to go all caveman on me. We’ve been together for like a week. I mean, this is our first real date. We haven’t even spent the night together yet.”

  “You’re right.” I saw his black Cruze parked on the street, and tugged him toward it. “Time we remedied that.”

  ✽✽✽

  The little Chevrolet rolled up the curving driveway that usually saw Ferraris, Lamborghinis, and Porsches, and came to a halt in front of my home. Nash switched off the ignition, then turned his head and stared.

  “Jesus Christ.”

  “I hope that means you like it.” I opened the door and stepped out into the dark night. “Come on in, Nash.”

  “Christ,” he said again, as he scrambled out of the car and stared some more. “You didn’t tell me you lived in an ice castle, too.”

  I’d had the house built six years ago. After my dad died, I hadn’t really wanted to move back into the grand old brick Colonial I’d grown up in. It was too full of ghosts and half-formed shadows. My father’s presence had loomed large there, even after his death, and I’d felt the need to create my own home.

  Lydia had wanted to remain in the penthouse we’d lived in since we got married, near all the arty things she loved—the museums and the opera and the symphony. But considering I spent twelve hours a day working in Chiswick, I dreamed of living a short distance outside the city limits. I wanted a refuge, away from work and stress and tension. This wooded ten-acre point that looked out over the widest part of the Wilson River had seemed perfect, and I’d worked with an architect to create a dwelling that maximized the views, using glass walls as much as possible. The locals referred to it simply as the Glass House.

  It had never occurred to me that it, just like my office, might resemble a structure built of ice. That this house, in its lonely, isolated grandeur, might say more about me and my life than I had ever intended.

  The thought that Nash might not care for my dream house, any more than my wife had, hit me with unexpected force. I stared down at the ground, and spoke very softly. “Do you like it?”

  “Are you kidding me? It’s awesome. I bet the views are amazing, huh?”

  Relief swirled through me. At least he didn’t hate it. I took his hand again, and tugged. “Come on inside,” I said.

  ✽✽✽

  The master bedroom looked out across the broad, calm waters of the river. During the day you could see herons and egrets wading in the tall reeds, and green-headed mallards and Canada geese paddling a little further out in the blue water. Not that I spent a lot of time dawdling about and gazing out over the river, any more than I did at the office. I was too busy, too important…

  It occurred to me that no man on earth was so important that he couldn’t carve five or ten minutes out of his day to look at a gorgeous view. I’d just fallen out of the habit somehow. After Lydia had left me, I supposed, I’d lost all interest in looking around me. I’d gotten lost in my own head, retreated to living inside the icy walls of my office and my house, and forgotten that I could look out through the walls if I wanted. I’d forgotten that there was an outside world that mattered.

  Maybe I’d wanted to forget. Maybe I’d found it safer to isolate myself behind the walls.

  I tried, quite consciously, to lift my gaze and look outside, but it was nighttime, and all I could see was the inky water, and a few scattered lights on the opposite shore. The light from the nearby city muted the stars, but some of them shone stubbornly enough to be seen.

  Even so, most of what I saw beyond the glass walls… was darkness.

  I turned my gaze away from the darkness, and back to Nash. He shone far more brilliantly than the stars. His vivid hair and his bright eyes seemed to light up the house, making it warm, welcoming, in a way I’d dreamed of when I built it, but which no interior decorator had ever quite achieved.

  All at once, after six long years, my house felt like a home.

  “C’mon,” he said. His hand was still in mine, and he drew me toward the bed, gently enough that I could refuse if I wanted. But I didn’t want to. I wanted him, wanted him in my bed and my life with a sudden surge of desperate need.

  The bed had a black lacquered curving headboard and footboard, and he chuckled as th
e two of us tumbled onto the mattress together. I lifted my head and squinted at him suspiciously.

  “What’s so funny?”

  “You are. Of course a guy named Snow would have a sleigh bed. Of course.”

  I rolled my eyes and didn’t deign to reply. Still self-conscious and unsure about being with a man, I’d been letting him lead all our sexual interactions, but now I leaned down, greatly daring, and pressed a kiss to his lips. He smiled in delight, and wrapped his arms around my neck.

  “I’m glad you felt comfortable bringing me here,” he murmured against my lips.

  “Why wouldn’t I?”

  “Well… you built this house with your wife, didn’t you?”

  I lifted my head and looked into his eyes, considering the question.

  “Not precisely. I had it built while I was still married, but she had no real input into it, because she didn’t want anything to do with it. She never liked it much, and avoided being here whenever she could. She preferred the penthouse in downtown Chiswick.” I heard a touch of bitterness creep into my own voice. “A place where she could look down on everyone.”

  “It doesn’t sound like you liked her much.”

  I answered slowly. “We were very young when we married, and we grew into very different people, I think. She was a social butterfly, and she found me disappointingly reclusive, which led to a great many arguments. I suppose that by the end of our marriage, it was something of a relief to see her walk away. Or it would have been, if the circumstances had been different.”

  “You mean, if she hadn’t figured out you were bi and used it against you as a weapon.”

  Nash had a way of getting right to the heart of things. I lowered my eyes against the intensity of his gaze, and spoke softly. “That final argument with her was extremely… distressing. I sometimes think that if not for the things she said for me, I might have gotten past the knowledge that my father would disapprove, and tried dating men on my own.”

  “You could have at least slept with some women after she left you. Celibacy sucks, dude.”

  “I could have,” I acknowledged, “but given Lydia’s reaction, I admit that I was afraid to try. The thought of coming out to another woman, or a series of women, was… well, off-putting. I simply didn’t want to deal with that sort of disgust and anger again. It was much easier to keep all my interactions with other people on a surface level. To keep everyone at arms’ length. And I managed that quite successfully… until you.”

  He ran his fingers through my hair, in what I imagined was meant to be a comforting gesture, and spoke gently. “I know it’s been a rough four years for you, Alex, but I have to admit I’m not sorry that I’m your first guy.”

  I looked into his eyes, and spoke as sincerely as I knew how.

  “I’m glad my first time is with you, Nash.”

  I lowered my head to his, and brushed his lips with mine. He kissed me back, gently, tenderly. Then all at once he put his hands on my shoulders and shoved, and to my surprise I found myself on my back, with him on top of me. I was much stronger, bigger, and more muscular than he was, and yet somehow he’d flipped me right over.

  It seemed that when Nash decided to do something, he accomplished it, one way or the other.

  His mouth met mine again, more forcefully this time, and I parted my lips in almost automatic surrender. Some other night, perhaps I’d try being in charge. But tonight, I was happy to be at his command.

  His tongue slipped into my mouth, and I groaned as my cock immediately sprang to attention. Nash seemed to have that effect on me more often than not. When I was with him, I felt a lot like the Italian sports cars in my garage—capable of accelerating from zero to sixty in nothing flat.

  Before I knew it, his nimble fingers were unbuttoning my shirt and shoving it aside, laughing at the undershirt beneath it. I helped him get that off, and stripped off his t-shirt as well, and suddenly his torso was pressing against mine, feverishly hot and incredibly hard. He might not spend all his free time in the gym, but he was nevertheless pretty solidly muscled. He felt wonderful against me.

  His mouth was everywhere, brushing kisses over my ear, my jawline, my throat, and then moving lower. His lips latched onto my nipple, creating a delicious suction that made my cock throb hungrily.

  My hands dug into his hair, asking for more. No—demanding more. He didn’t seem to mind. He suckled harder, until my hips rose off the mattress in an involuntary response. Then he released me, and his lips moved slowly down my abdomen.

  I couldn’t help but remember the way it felt when he gave me blow jobs—the gentle strokes of his tongue, the pleasure building slowly as he drew me deep into the heat of his mouth, until at last I lost control and came in hot spurts, right down his throat. He’d performed fellatio on me several times by then, and I loved it—loved his enthusiasm and his generosity and his sheer talent.

  But so far, he’d always been the one to give, and I to take.

  All at once I felt that it was time to change that.

  While he was distracted in fumbling at my belt, I moved quickly, shifting positions, grabbing him, and flipping him over onto his back.

  “Two can play at that game,” I informed him, lowering my head to his chest.

  He yelped, and caught at my hair. “Hey. Listen, Alex, you don’t have to—”

  I thought I understood his concerns. I remembered my own voice describing gay porn: Disgusting, repulsive filth. Of course I’d been quoting my ex, but I couldn’t deny that to some degree, I’d always felt that way about my own desires as well. Nash was fully aware that I’d suffered from a good deal of guilt and ambiguity about my sexuality until very recently, and that I still wasn’t entirely comfortable with it. He probably worried that giving him a blow job might, in his terms, “gross me out.”

  But strangely enough, it was an activity that I wished quite desperately to engage in. In fact I’d thought about little else for days now. The thought of bringing Nash that sort of overwhelming pleasure, of hearing him moan out my name as I brought him to a helpless, panting climax…

  Well, it was all I wanted.

  My fingers fumbled at his jeans, but he reached down and grabbed my wrists. For a smaller man, his grip was impressively strong, and I stilled.

  “Not here,” he said.

  I lifted my head and blinked at him. “What’s wrong with here?”

  “It’s just… the ice.” He nodded at the glass walls. “You’re still inside the ice.”

  I snorted. “I think you’re taking the ice castle thing a little too literally, Nash.”

  “No. I’m not. Maybe your wife didn’t like it here all that much, but the two of you probably did it right here in this bed, didn’t you?”

  I studied him. In the dimness his eyes were wide and worried. “Are you jealous?” I asked at last.

  “No. I mean, not exactly. It’s just—I don’t think you need any reminders of her, not when you’re—you know, those things you told me she said to you—”

  Disgusting, repulsive filth. All at once I grasped what he was trying to say, and warmth swept through me. He was right. I didn’t need the ghost of a failed marriage, with all its attendant guilt and shame and ugliness, haunting my first time with Nash. Neither of us needed that sort of baggage weighing down the beginning moments of our fragile new relationship.

  “There’s a huge deck outside, and an enormous chaise longue,” I said. “Let’s go outside.”

  I rose up to a kneeling position and offered him a hand. He sat up and blinked at me.

  “It’s still March.”

  “And it’s seventy-five degrees out. What’s your point?”

  He frowned. “Yeah, but what if someone sees us?”

  “Unlikely. I own ten acres. Security does patrol at night, but they know we’re here, and will remain a discreet distance from the house. And if they happen to hear anything from us, they’ll keep it to themselves. There’s little chance of anyone on a boat seeing us, either. The
house is situated on a bit of a bluff.”

  He frowned. “Someone could take photos with a drone.”

  “I’m not exactly the glamorous sort, Nash. The tabloids don’t have a lot of interest in me.”

  “They might,” he suggested, “if they discovered you were boinking your young, sexy, and incredibly gorgeous male assistant.”

  “They’ll probably find that out at some point,” I admitted. “And if they print it… well, they print it. I’m tired of hiding, Nash. I’m bi, and I’m not hiding it anymore, so sooner or later everyone will know about it.”

  “And you’re okay with that?”

  I took his hand and looked into his eyes.

  “I’m okay with that,” I said.

  Chapter Eleven

  Nash

  Alex was right—the weather outside was beautiful, despite the late hour and the fact that it was still March. But that’s southern Virginia for you… one day you get a blizzard, and the next day it’s time to head for the beach.

  It was warm, and a gentle breeze blew from the river. It was too early for mosquitoes—the plague of Virginia summers—and so it was basically a perfect night for being outside.

  We tossed a quilt down on an enormous deck lounge, which was easily big enough for two men—and probably three or four, if they didn’t mind a little crowding. But I was perfectly happy to share it with only one other guy. Alex and I sat side-by-side and kissed some more, looking out over the river, listening to the gentle lapping of the water against the shore. And then he unfastened my jeans, and dropped to his knees in front of me.

  He had quite clearly never done this before, but he licked at my hard-on eagerly, trying to find my most sensitive spots and not totally succeeding. Before long he drew me into his mouth with more enthusiasm than caution. I held as still as I could, afraid of making him gag on his first effort. It was far from perfect—his mouth moved on me sloppily, he had a hard time maintaining the suction, and I felt the occasional scrape of his teeth against places that were really better off not encountering incisors.