ATF Universe
At 0600, the Spokane, Washington Red Lion Inn's swimming pool was usually unoccupied. Almost no one but the staff was awake this early in the middle of the week, and that was just the way Vin Tanner liked it. The motel was almost deserted in the mid-weeks early hours save for the night clerk, and the maintenance staff who cleaned and opened the inside pool area around 0500.Vin had discovered it the last time that his ATF Team was in Spokane on an assignment -- the same assignment, but one that had washed out at the time with a missed rendezvous by the smugglers they were setting up. The Team had been there; the "bad guys" had stopped along the way from the border to help a broken down church bus and the bust had fallen through. That time, frustration and too much to drink afterwards had awakened Vin early, and he had discovered the pleasant surprise of a nearly silent, private hideaway in the pool.
This time the deal had come down like a Cowboys football game -- a little rough play but overall, a cake-walk of a take-down.
As usual, the night and morning after a bust going down, Vin was wound up and got little sleep. However, this time there were a couple of reasons the sharpshooting weapons expert had slept badly: he told himself that mostly it was the adrenaline in his system from the arrest of the Canadian arms dealers. These fellas had been moving farming machinery as a cover to bring Russian-made weapons in across the border with Washington State from the vast rolling farmland of British Columbia. Vin had been a key player on the team, pinpointing the deal from the top of an old windmill on the farm where the trap was set, then covering the rest of the team as they went in.
In all, it had gone like clockwork, with the ATF and local law enforcement nailing these guys before anything went wrong and anyone got hurt. The worst part had been cold, windy weather and spitting snow. Even the confrontation had been anti-climactic -- these particular Canadians were almost a cliché, polite even as they backed off and fled without shooting their way out, just running.
Vin had watched from his windmill perch as their team leader, Chris Larabee and their youngest, JD Dunne, had chased down two of the suspects on foot through a cattle barn and into a snowy wheat field. It had not been much of a chase or fight, and no one had come out of it with anything more than bruises.
All in all, it was the way a situation like this ought to have ended, instead of with treachery, gunfire, and blood. Now, they would have at least another two days of mopping up the paperwork before heading back to Denver. The weather in Spokane was no vacation from the freezing snow of Denver, and Vin wanted to get home.
Not that the hotel wasn't comfortable: room service was excellent, the coffee shop served decent food; the hotel carried satellite TV with several ESPN Channels, had a weight room with respectable equipment and a pool with a hot tub. Especially the pool and hot tub. For Vin, this place was all he needed for a couple of days relaxation. Almost. If he could manage to relax.
The other reason for not sleeping well was his boss, the team leader, Chris Larabee. His lover. The man whose lover he was. The man whom he missed like one of his own body parts when they were not together. The man for whom he had to stay cool on the job. The man he could not sleep with when they were on assignment, thus making him restless, frustrated, and perpetually on edge. The man who was the reason he wanted to just go home where they could have privacy and be together, out at Chris's ranch.
Right now, it had to be enough that he was with Chris Larabee around the hotel, riding with him to and from the law enforcement offices, and on a team assignment. It was no place or time to indulge themselves in their on-going sexual relationship, so friendly companionship was the most Vin could expect and Chris would allow.
Chris was by-the-book, and as Federal agents, they were in the "don't ask, don't tell" category. The other team members -- close friends off the job as well as a tight team on the job -- respected them as men and friends first. As far as the rest of the crack ATF team nicknamed "The Magnificent Seven" was concerned, what they did between themselves was their own business. Neither Chris nor Vin brought their relationship to work, and because of their self-discipline, it had gone smoothly.
Vin wouldn't have wanted to, anyway; he was private and it was none of anyone's business. Chris was almost compulsively so outside of the bedroom and away from their respective homes, rarely showing emotion other than casual friendship. On the job he showed little or no partiality to Vin, and certainly no favoritism. On assignments away from Denver, they rarely even ate together unless some of the rest of the team were present. Going out together, just the two of them, was out of the question.
Vin missed spending time with Chris, hungering for their passion and time together, but had learned to occupy himself when they were on the road. Their relationship meant too much to him to screw it up by pushing the envelope. He knew Chris felt the same way and admired his ability to keep it separate. Sometimes it was all Vin could do to keep himself from knocking on Chris's door in the middle of the night, just to see his lean, blond lover's face and hear his quiet, yet intense voice.
Instead, he sucked it up, gritted his teeth, and kept himself in check. There was no room for weakness or whining about this, so he dealt with it, even though he sometimes cussed Chris's strength.
Now, here in the early-morning peace and quiet, Vin could almost imagine he was at some high-class private spa, someplace like Ezra Standish -- their spoiled undercover agent with his blue-blooded background -- might vacation.
The pool was glistening clear aqua, the room was almost warm enough to be comfortable from the early morning sunlight filtering through the louvered windows overhead under the eaves. Through the floor-to-ceiling smoked glass windows, Vin could see that the outside pool was covered with a big tarp that was frosty and snow-covered. Groundskeepers worked around the parking lot across the yards, clearing the early morning layer of snow that had fallen during the night. He enjoyed the ironic contrast of standing at the warm windows like this, staring out into the frigid, snowy courtyard of the hotel and knowing no one could see him watching them in the cold.
Vin wandered into the pool room, dropped his towel on a lounge chair, and peeled off his sweat pants and tee shirt down to his Speedos. He liked wearing the Speedos Chris had bought him as a surprise present a while back because it was an invisible thread to the lover he could not touch on the weeks they were away on assignments with the team.
Even though the room was warm, he shivered at the sight of the snow outside. He hated the cold; he was a South Texas boy and always would be -- and there wasn't a cactus or a palm tree in sight. The closest thing to sub-tropical warmth was the steam swirling up at the other end of the pool room from the whirlpool.
The top of someone's head was barely visible, a dark form above the edge of the cream colored tiles in the steam. Vin stepped down into the pool, letting the cool water slowly surround him. He waded deeper to get used to it, before he slid forward with a slight splash into the deep end.
At the sound of his splash, the head turned. When Vin surfaced, blowing water and shaking his long hair from his eyes, a wave of warmth surged through him. Chris Larabee sat watching him from the Jacuzzi pool, a slight smile on his freshly-shaven face, his piercing eyes fixed on Vin as he cut through the water. His hair was damp and slicked back, looking darker than it's reddish blond.
Vin flexed his body, otter-like, and drifted over to the edge of the pool nearest the hot tub, resting his arms on the chilly tiles. "Mornin'," he said. His eyes flicked around the room, out toward the corridor through the glass doors, and back to Chris.
"Kinda early," Chris said.
"Yeah, usually no one's here. What'cha doin' up?"
Chris hitched one muscular shoulder in a shrug. "Wasn't sleepin' too good," he said. "You know how it is after a take-down."
"Soakin' out a hangover?"
Chris grinned wryly. "You know I don't do that any more," he said.
Vin bobbed his head in acknowledgment. Seemed he stopped drinking so much once they started their friendship. Vin liked to think it was because of him, but with Chris there was no telling what made him do things.
Chris slid deeper into the greenish, foamy hot water that smelled of mineral salts. "Soakin' out yesterday's 'exercise.'"
Vin shot him a grin. "Old age gettin' to you?"
"Don't talk to me about old," Chris said with a grin that six months ago wouldn't have been there. "We ain't that far different in age. Besides, I heard you bitching about hangin' off that tower in the wind chill."
Vin flashed him a sheepish smile and flexed his sore shoulders. "Maybe I'm gettin' soft, hangin' around with an ol' man like you." Vin hoisted himself up on the tile, but stayed in the big pool. An involuntarily shiver ran through him as his skimpily-clad butt touched the cool tiles.
Chris nodded with a sharp jerk of his head. "C'mon in, it's warmer."
Vin frowned, glancing around again. "You sure?"
Chris snorted in exasperation. "Ain't nobody around. Ain't nobody's business."
Vin wasted no time sliding over and into the hot water luxuriating as the heat penetrated his muscles. This time his shiver was of pleasure and he couldn't stop the sigh that escaped him. A moment later, he noticed Chris was watching him with a slight smile.
"What?" Vin demanded, defensively. "Just feels good."
Chris just kept smiling enigmatically.
He could see down into the water to where Chris sat, wearing a pair of loose blue running shorts instead of trunks. The other thing Vin could see was a large bruise on Chris's thigh, purplish in the hot water.
Chris saw him notice. "That fight yesterday...that Canuck got a good kick in before he went down."
Vin nodded and let it go. He knew better than to fuss; hell, he hated it himself.
They sat together in the near-silence of the indoor pool, listening to the lapping of the water and the bubbling of the Jacuzzi. A warmth began to suffuse Vin that had nothing to do with the water temperature. A sweet ache settled in his lower gut and between his legs, and he felt himself harden inside his snug little Speedo under the water.
To distract himself, he started his stretching exercises for his shoulder and chest. He was still recovering from a knife wound he had taken months ago down in Key West when they had taken down Titus Diving and Salvage in a bloody fight at sea off the Keys. The scar across the pectoral on his left side was nearly invisible now, but his muscles still bothered him occasionally. Yesterday's climb up the seventy-foot tower in freezing wind had left him a little stiff here and there.
He felt something touch his leg like a little fish and looked up at Chris, startled. That smile teased around Chris's lips, and for a moment all Vin could think about was tracing the shape of that mouth with his tongue. Chris's long legs were stretched out, and one foot drifted close his calf again.
He let his own feet play around Chris's, rubbing his ankles and the hard, curving calves. The surging whirlpool pounded against his back, foaming up under his arms to caress his chest, and it felt like his nipples and scar were being touched by invisible hands.
One of Chris's feet pressed against the inside of his thigh, about six inches from the center of the Universe. Chris was just far enough away that he could reach no further. Vin knew it was safer with him that way, and a pang of hunger flashed through him.
They had a lot at stake, keeping propriety in place when they were out and around, especially on government business. Chris was right in his decision to keep it cool and distant as much as they both valued their jobs. It was just that sometimes it was hard for Vin because he just plain needed Chris around him. On him. In him.
Sometimes Vin wondered if Chris felt as strongly about their relationship as he did; if Chris needed him as much or hungered for him as deeply. More than once, late at night and lonely, Vin had found himself thinking that maybe he was just a convenience, just an outlet, a friend who was willing to get fucked when Chris felt it was safe and they had time.
Of course, in the cold light of day, he knew that Chris was right about playing it safe. Vin thought they could handle it and keep it discreet, but he didn't feel it was his decision to push. Still, Vin wished it was different at times like this.
"Come over here and let me rub your shoulders. Best thing in the world, a back rub in a whirlpool."
Vin's eyes widened in shock, but he obeyed without hesitation as all those common sense arguments went down the drain.
They both knew it was an excuse to get closer, to touch. Chris spread his legs and pulled him sit between on the narrow tub bench, and laid his hands on Vin's shoulders. The action of the foaming water floated him up against Chris, his tight, spandex-covered cheeks pressing against Chris's groin. There was no mistaking what Chris was feeling at this moment -- it was poking hard at his butt-- but Vin still could not believe the change in their tacit rules.
"You sure --?" Vin's voice was a husky rasp. His eyes flicked around the pool area again, making sure there were no prying eyes.
Silently, Chris continued. His touch was the only answer from him. His strong hands kneaded and pushed at Vin's muscles, and combined with the surging water and the feel of Chris's hard-on against his ass, Vin was ready to come right there and then.
Vin heard himself moan softly, then felt Chris's hands leave his shoulders and work their way down his arms, over his biceps to his forearms. Then Chris slipped his hands around Vin's waist and ran his hands down the rigid plane of his belly to the snug spandex band of his Speedo. Vin lifted himself off the bench, letting Chris's hands peel the tight elastic fabric away from his raging erection. A hand closed around it, and Vin arched backward against Chris's solid upper body. The other arm went around Vin's waist, and Chris's mouth fell on the hollow of his neck. His tongue pushed aside his wet hair to reach behind his ear to that sensitive spot that always a shuddering gasp of reaction that always excited Chris into passionate love-bites.
Vin's hips pressed back, twisting his now-bare ass against Chris's trunks and the hard shaft he could feel probing at him. His own Speedos were only halfway down his thighs, binding them. His balls were pulled forward and trapped --not painfully but excitingly tight -- by the clamped-together position of his legs. Chris's hand slowly worked the skin of his cock in the hot water, and with it, the action of the hot water seemed to carry the sensation all over his body.
"What --what if s-someone --?" Vin stammered as a sweet surge of need tightened him with the need to come. At the feel of his tension, Chris lessened his grip and rested his movement. Vin relaxed and Chris started again.
"Shut up," Chris growled in his ear. "No one's around. Anyway, we'll hear 'em coming."
Chris's loose nylon shorts enabled him to push aside the fabric and expose his shaft, which he slipped between Vin's ass cheeks and into the tight crevasse created by his thighs. The water created a friction that dragged on their skins, but Chris was hot and ready, and slid back and forth while he jacked Vin slowly with his hand.
Vin laid his head back on Chris's shoulder, turning his face to him. Their mouths could barely reach, but they kissed with their tongues as both men felt the tension and desperate need grow. Vin held on to Chris's powerful thighs as they gripped him, letting Chris flex upward as he thrust between his legs. The head of his cock rode along his scrotum, pushing against his ball sack from behind, each time making Vin grunt with pleasure-pain from the intense friction.
The heat was almost unbearable, inside and out, and Vin's world shrank to the hard, sweet strokes jerking at him, and the rhythmic thrusting across the root of him, teasing his anus in the tight cleft of his ass.
"Damn I wish we had some lube," Vin murmured. "I want you bad, Cowboy."
Chris groaned a reply. "Can't stop....God, I need you ...." The heat of the water seemed to fuse them together in a boiling pool of sensations.
Chris's words penetrated his mind with an overwhelming surge of emotion. Vin could feel his own orgasm building like a firestorm behind his balls, and he gasped "Chris... Coming... Now..." Then it was on him, and he felt himself erupt in a white-hot burst that seemed to come from every fiber of him as Chris's hand worked him on the outside as his words worked him inside into dizzying, explosive ecstasy.
Chris's arms tightened around him as he arched and shuddered in his passion. "Hold on," Chris growled, his mouth against his neck, his lips fixed to Vin's flesh in a passionate kiss. He thrust hard several more times as he came.
Vin could feel Chris's cock pulsing against him and the hot spurt against his balls seemingly even hotter than the water surrounding them. Every muscle in Chris's body was rigid as a shudder wracked him as the orgasm washed over and through him. Hoarsely, he gasped into the curve of Vin's neck, "Ah, Vinnnn..."
Clinging like shipwrecked mariners in a storm, they slumped back against the edge of the whirlpool, breathing hard. Their eyes were glazed with the afterglow of coming, but as Vin pivoted in the water, their gazes met in a moment of clarity when their emotions were laid utterly bare.
Vin no longer had any question about what Chris felt for him. He read it there in his eyes and in the shy almost confused expression.
They had nothing to say, but lay in each others arms for a moment, letting the foaming water around them carrying through their recovery. When he regained motor control --and realized he had not yet done it -- Vin tugged his Speedos back into place.
As if suddenly remembering who and where they were, Chris looked around with the grin of a guilty kid while he did his own adjusting underwater.
"You okay with this?" Vin asked, knowing that Chris had just violated one of his own unwritten laws.
Chris nodded, pushing back his blond hair from his forehead and scrubbing a wet hand over his face. He blinked and shot Vin a grin. "Reckon."
Their re-dressing forced them to float apart, and the timing could not have been luckier.
About that time, the glass door to the pool room swung open and a couple of little kids in swimsuits burst in, threw down their towels and cannonballed into the main pool. They were followed by a heavy set woman in a loud and colorful caftan who shrieked, "You two stop that! Behave yourselves!"
Both men tensed in shock before they realized that her attention was not on them. Vin ducked lower in the water and laughed. "She's about two minutes too late to be yellin' at us."
Behind them, the children splashed and their mother yelled at them again.
Chris grinned and pulled himself upright after making sure he was back in place inside his loose shorts. He snagged his towel from the chair behind him and levered himself up on the side of the whirlpool. Vin watched him from the other side, head back and relaxed as if nothing in the world had happened here -- instead of everything.
"Gonna hit the shower." Chris stood, towering over Vin in the pool below him. Chris wrapped the towel around his waist and slipped into his flip-flops. "You comin'?"
Vin flashed a smile but kept his voice low. "I already did, but you offerin' more?"
"Ready to play the whole game this time." Chris smiled, as if he felt a little self-conscious.
Vin tilted his head in an unasked question.
Chris nodded. "Sometimes when it's important, there's chances a man's got to take when the opportunity presents itself."
"Never thought you'd take the gamble," Vin said.
Chris shrugged. "Some things are worth it," he said and reached out his hand to help Vin out of the pool. Their hands gripped a moment longer than necessary, but the woman and her loud children were not paying attention.
"Best not play this game too often," Vin said. "Odds are..."
Chris nodded; they'd talked about it often enough. "Just got to know when to play the game. And where."
Before they walked away, Vin looked down at the bubbling hot tub with its greenish foam fizzing in the center of the jets. "You ever thought about gettin' a hot tub for the patio at the ranch? Kinda liked what we just done..."
Chris made a low noise that sounded like a snicker. "Only if you clean it..."
"So, maybe we'll just check into hotels once in a while."
"Knew you'd see it my way," Chris said, and opened the door to the shower room with that smile that Vin knew so well and a peak in the front of his shorts.
"Always do," Vin said, brushing past him so that his hip just tipped Chris's new erection. "You're the boss..."
Vin's contact against him brought a soft grunt of pleasure from Chris. As the door closed after them, Chris said, "Y'know, sometimes I wonder ...."
THE END
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