Everyone’s got secrets. Some are just harder to hide.
Off Campus
© 2014 Amy Jo Cousins
Bend or Break, Book 1
With his father’s ponzi scheme assets frozen, Tom Worthington believes finishing college is impossible unless he can pay his own way. After months sleeping in his car and gypsy-cabbing for cash, he’s ready to do just that.
But his new, older-student housing comes with an unapologetically gay roommate. Tom doesn’t ask why Reese Anders has been separated from the rest of the student population. He’s just happy to be sleeping in a bed.
Reese isn’t about to share his brutal story with his gruff new roommate. You’ve seen one homophobic jock, you’ve seen ’em all. He plans to drag every twink on campus into his bed until Tom moves out. But soon it becomes clear Tom isn’t budging.
Tom isn’t going to let some late-night sex noise scare him off, especially when it’s turning him on. But he doesn’t want any drama either. He’ll keep his hands, if not his eyes, to himself. Boundaries have a way of blurring when you start sharing truths, though. And if Tom and Reese cross too many lines, they may need to find out just how far they can bend . . . before they break.
Warning: This book contains cranky roommates who vacillate between lashing out and licking, some male/male voyeurism, emotional baggage that neither guy wants to unpack, and the definitive proof that sound carries in college housing.
Enjoy the following excerpt for Off Campus:
Every time Reese had brought home a guy, Tom had been out at the library, only showing up partway through the action to sit in the hall and eavesdrop on the scenes that had been fueling his fantasies for the past month. He’d threatened that one time to walk in on Reese, but there was no way he’d ever do it.
Only his headache tonight, so intense he’d felt dizzy, had persuaded him to give up precious study time at the library, hiding in the stacks on the seventh floor, for an early night’s sleep. He was curled up on his side, facing the room, a pillow punched up under his cheek. He kept his eyes shut and listened to Reese stop halfway in the room, knowing he’d been spotted.
“Hey, your roommate—”
That night’s “first prize is a blowjob” winner wasn’t as drunk as he sounded.
It took Reese about two seconds to make the decision to cross the line. Tom could have sworn he could hear the thoughts themselves running through his brain.
It was my room before it was his.
What’s he doing back so early anyway?
If he wakes up, who cares? Maybe he’ll leave.
“Sleeps like the dead,” Reese announced, voice barely low enough to qualify as a whisper. He tugged his guest for the night, smaller and slimmer than him, as always, farther into the room, the other guy leaning back a little, pulling with his body weight against the hands Reese had wrapped around his wrists.
Tom kept his eyes open, bare slits that allowed him to watch as Reese pushed the smaller boy with the long straight hair past his shoulders up against his closet door, the boy’s hair a dark colorless curtain in the shadows of their entryway, half-lit by the shine from the hall. Reese pulled a wrist to each side and pinned them against the closet door, and Tom felt himself grow hard under his sheet. He slid a hand down to grab himself, simply holding on for now. He squeezed once and a hot jolt of pleasure shot up his spine and down to his toes, flexing them with a quick spasm of sweet nerves.
Reese was grinding his crotch against that of the strange boy who tore his mouth away from Reese to pant out a protest.
“Wait. My room. We can go—”
“No.” Reese captured his mouth again, almost gently, still pinning him to the door with hands spread wide and the pressure of his hips. Tom tried to imagine it, the press of Reese’s hard cock through his jeans and felt his own penis thicken in his hands. He dragged his thumb across the head of his dick and shivered. Reese whispered loud enough for him to hear, “Too far away. Come on. All you have to do is be quiet. You can do that, right?”
The strange boy proved almost immediately that he wasn’t a good bet for silence when he moaned as Reese tucked his mouth against the side of his neck. The kid’s head fell back against the door, eyes shut tight, his lower lip clamped between his teeth as he tried to keep his mouth shut while Reese did whatever it was that made the kid push his hips hard against Tom’s roommate and curl one ankle around Reese’s calf, locking them tight together.
The kid held out for about two minutes.
“Okay,” he gasped, as soon as Reese transferred both of his wrists to one hand pinned above his head and dove straight for his zipper with his free hand, sliding his hand in the kid’s pants. “But what if he wakes up?”
Reese’s voice was low and dirty.
“Do you really care?”
His arm pumped, hand deep in the kid’s pants.
Tom dragged his hand up and down his own dick, imagining how different it would feel to have another man’s hand on him instead of his own.
You don’t have to imagine it. Just remember.
Because he did remember. He remembered the boy at boarding school who’d followed him into the showers late one night after casting looks up through his eyelashes from across the dining room table for weeks. And don’t think Tom hadn’t been aware of what was going to happen when he announced to the group of boys in his room at midnight that he was kicking them out because he needed to shower the stink of practice off himself before bed.
That boy, the one who hung out with his crowd, an automatic ticket to join bought by his father’s billions that commanded respect even if the boy hardly opened his mouth, didn’t try to one up the other boys with their increasingly wild and no doubt mostly invented stories of their sexual escapades. That boy followed him a minute later into the bathroom and didn’t say a word when Tom eyed him in the mirror as he hung his towel outside the shower stall and stepped naked inside, somehow managing not to close the off-white plastic curtain all the way.
That boy slipped in through the open curtain a moment later as Tom tilted his head back under the warm spray, eyes locked on the gap in the curtain. They didn’t speak, only watched each other, the boy’s nakedness a slim white flame collecting a wet shine as the spray bounced off the shower walls, off Tom, and slowly gathered in drips on his skin. Tom was hard, had been hard since he’d decided back in his room to clear the way for this very moment to happen, by announcing himself casually to a room full of boys that included the one boy who always watched him, eyes drifting over him but never a word said out loud. He dropped a hand to his dick and stroked himself almost roughly, feeling the muscles in his legs, in his ass, twitch with the sudden surge of pleasure as the boy’s eyes dropped to his hand. His cock.
As if that were the signal, the green light, the kid dropped to his knees in front of Tom, floppy blond hair immediately darkening with wet as the shower splashed against him where he knelt, one hand braced lightly against Tom’s thigh, the other sliding under Tom’s hand on an upstroke to take over the pulling stroke on his cock, so hard now he felt like he’d burst right through his own skin. Tom braced himself, suddenly unsure of his legs, one hand on each shower wall at his sides, and hung his head forward, eyes closed to focus on the soft small hand stroking him. The movements were more tentative than his own hand would be, which somehow made him burn with the hotness, the strangeness of having this boy’s hand on him. This boy who was pulling him forward to his mouth.
“Ahh! Okay. I don’t care. Stay here.”
Tom’s mind snapped back to the present with a crack that had to have been damn near audible. He opened his eyes and saw a different boy, mouth hanging open as he panted, Reese’s hand deep in his pants and pumping him hard. The boy’s back arched away from the closet door suddenly.
“Stop,” he hissed, eyes screwed shut tight. “I’m gonna come in my fucking pants. Stop. We can stay. Just fucking wait. You said you’d suck me off.”
Reese froze, one hand still high, pinning the boy’s wrists, his head tucked in the curve of the boy’s neck. After a moment, he pulled himself away with a sudden step back and jerked his head toward his bed. His face was blank, his voice low.
“Get on the bed.”
The kid stripped his pants off as Reese shut the door, cutting the light from dim to near darkness. Tom closed his eyes, knowing they’d adjust quickly to the thin light that spilled in the window from the street. The sounds of one boy getting naked—he realized suddenly that Reese was always dressed, or at least mostly dressed, when he kicked his nightly visitors out of their room and wondered if his roommate ever got undressed at all—rustled loudly in the quiet room. Tom concentrated on keeping his breathing slow and even, and the movements of his hand under the sheet, sliding up and down his dick with barely enough pressure to tingle, not enough to bring him close to the edge.
“Spread your legs.”
His eyes flew open.
The short sharp catch of a breath in a throat followed by the creaking springs as Reese climbed over the boy’s leg to kneel between his spread knees. Tom watched Reese press down on the boy’s hip with one hand and wrap the other around the base of his cock, which was standing up and begging for a touch as the kid wriggled and squirmed, panting.
“You touch my head and I’ll bite your dick off. Got it?”
“Jesus. Yes. God. I hope he doesn’t wake up.”
Reese ignored him.
“Hold on to the rail if you need to.”
The kid grabbed the rail above his head and held on for dear life. Reese curled over and opened his mouth, swallowing half the kid’s dick in one swift motion.
“Fuuuuck.”
Tom had already been forgotten, if that loud groan was anything to go by. The boy arched up, trying to push more of his dick into Reese’s mouth, who shoved his stomach back flat against the mattress with one hand and pulled off with a sucking pop.
“Stay still. If you don’t move, I’ll suck your balls inside out through your dick. You’ll come so hard you can’t walk. But stay. Fucking. Still.”
“Okay. Shit. I knew you were weird.”
“Shut up.”
Reese cut off the rest of the kid’s bullshit by sucking his dick into his mouth again. And someone was paying attention, because the guy stayed still, skinny arm muscles and abdominals clenching against the pressure to move, move, just fucking move as Reese held true to his word and hollowed his cheeks while sinking deep over the kid’s cock. Tom could see the moment when the boy’s dick must have pushed into Reese’s throat because the muscles in his neck jumped as he gagged himself on it but didn’t pull back for a second. He curved the palm of his own hand around the tip of his dick and pushed against it, squeezing and imagining it, the hot wet press of Reese’s throat against him and felt his own spine arch as pleasure shot through him and out his mouth with a small, soft, “Ahh.”
Reese’s bobbing motion faltered and his eyes stared hard across the room as he slowed his motions, pulling back with one long, slow suck, his tongue visible for a moment at the end, swiping a fast circle around the head of the kid’s dick. Reese kneeled up for a second and turned his head to look straight at Tom, his hand still moving up and down absently as he narrowed his eyes.
Tom knew his eyes were barely open, the crack in them invisible in the dark room as he lay feigning sleep, his arm still, his hand beneath the sheet. If he held still, breathed evenly, Reese would never know for sure whether or not he’d been awake and watching them.
He opened his eyes.
Reese dropped his shoulders back, pushing his chest out, his hands moving sharply to brace themselves on the mattress behind his own hips. He looked ready to shove himself off the bed and to his feet in an instant. His gaze was locked on Tom.
Tom held his breath. And didn’t blink.
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