Chapter 11
JAMES
I don’t know what the hell I was thinking. I could barely contain myself at the hotel the whole weekend. Now Lucky was under my roof, living in my house, and I was going to have to be around that hot piece of ass every day.
Lucas. Not Lucky. Lucas.
And he wasn’t just a hot piece of ass. I knew that. He was so much more. He was strong, and also sensitive. He was ambitious. He was curious, yet cautious.
Also, he was hot.
Okay, fine, I’ll stop being coy and acting like I wasn’t noticing that fact every second of our Sunday evening at my house. He was hot. Crazy hot. I knew that already, of course, but having him in my house and around me all the time made me so much more aware of it than before.
Maybe because the close proximity made my fantasies with him more possible.
Also, he was nineteen.
That was another fact that sobered me. And froze me to the spot. And kept me from daring to touch him, or daring to stare too long, or daring to let my mind wander off too freely.
“You wanna break, or should I?”
Lucas’s voice jerked me out of my thoughts. I lifted my gaze to find him waiting on the other side of the pool table for my answer. He had his cue stick jabbed into the ground like a spear, gripping it with both fists and staring at me over its tip.
Staring at me like he could eat me for dinner.
Staring at me like he’d had men like me for dinner.
I couldn’t possibly be making all of this up in my head. Just his stance right there reeked of sex—and he knew it. How the fuck was I seriously expected to contain myself for however long he stayed at my house, let alone for that afternoon and night?
How long was I expected to endure this endless, evil foreplay before I exploded from anticipation?
“Either you’re gonna break,” said Lucas, “or else I will.”
Whether he meant the double entendre or not, I was seconds from breaking, and his stating that nearly threw me over the edge.
I took a breath, then grabbed my cue stick. “I’ll break.”
I positioned myself at the other end of the table—which put me right next to his body where he still stood like some Greek god awaiting his challenger, his eyebrow cocked and the corner of his mouth pulled up in an arrogant smirk.
I took aim, pulled back my stick, then made my shot.
The balls scattered like my sanity.
A striped ball and a solid fell into either side pocket.
“Damn,” he sang, then broke away from his pose to observe the table. “You hit that shit like you meant business.”
I put on my best cocky smile, coming around the other side of the table. “Been playing for a while, you could say.”
He watched me as I scoped out what I wanted to hit next. Just when I got into position, he asked, “So which are you?”
I peered up at him. “Which what?”
“Which side are you playing for? Which team?”
My mouth parted, totally caught off-guard. I thought he already knew. “I’m … I’m gay. I figured it was sort of obvious.”
He screwed up his face. “No shit. I meant stripes or solids.”
Boy, did I feel stupid as fuck. I clenched shut my eyes. “Sorry. Of course you did. I’m just—” I shook my head and repositioned myself, flushing horribly. “Stripes. I’ll be stripes.”
He nodded, then watched keenly as I took aim. With my face burning red, I squinted, pulled my stick back, then let it fly. The cue ball cracked across the table, sending the striped twelve toward the pocket. Unfortunately, it didn’t send the ball into the pocket, distracted as I still was by my own embarrassing error, causing it to bounce off the wall and tap the two ball.
Lucas grinned. “My turn.” He came around to my side of the table, then leaned over it to inspect his angles.
His act of leaning over the table gave me a very upclose view of his tight ass in his jeans. The shirt he still wore with the dice on them was small for him, so it pulled up as he stretched over the table, giving me a glorious peek of his lower back muscles and the top of his ass cheeks.
Because thank the gods, Lucas’s pants were low-hanging on his hips, and he was going commando today.
He took such a long time to take his turn, I was convinced he did it on purpose just to agonize me even further. And it worked; my eyes were glued to his cheeks while my cock grew hard at the subsequent thoughts tiptoeing through my brain. Then when he finally thrust his stick, his tight ass wiggled from the force—boing, rock hard—and he remained in that suggestive, bent-over pose as he watched the balls draw their chaotic geometry across the table.
Yeah, the fucker’s doing it deliberately.
I came around the table, partly to seek a better angle for my shot and partly to hide any evidence of my erection, and felt a tiny stroke of courage. “So what about you?” I asked, super casually, as I lowered my stick to the table.
“Hmm?”
“Which team do you play for?” I pulled my stick back, then let it fire. The cue ball flew like a bullet and sank the fourteen in the corner pocket, then came to a stop perfectly aligned for me to sink the nine next. “And I’m not talking stripes and solids.”
Lucas smirked at me, stabbing his cue stick in place on the ground as he gripped it powerfully like a stripper pole, staring at me from behind it. He looked so striking, strong, and dominant standing like that.
But a smirk wasn’t an answer. “Well?” I came around the table and aimed for my next shot, lowering my eye to the stick. “Guys or girls? Or are you not going to answer me?”
He shrugged. “I’ve only dated girls so far.”
“Really? Only girls?” I pulled the stick back.
“But I look at guys.”
I thrust forward—and the stick barely tapped the cue ball, sending it on a wimpy, unintended journey to the seven ball, which it barely touched, then sat in place.
I straightened up. “Just look? What does that mean, exactly? You’ve never … done anything?”
He shrugged again, frustratingly flippant as ever, then took his shot from right where he stood. The ball flew across the table, hit one of his own, but didn’t make it into the pocket.
“You have a lot of oomph,” I pointed out, “but your aim’s off.”
He shook his head. “Pool isn’t really my game.” Then he met my eyes, his own shiny with mischief. “You wanna give me some pointers, mister expert?”
That offer hit me right in the dick. “Uh … pointers?”
“Yeah. Pointers.” He gave his cue stick a firm, suggestive grip and a pat on the end. Of course, I couldn’t not picture that stick being something else entirely.
And that thought didn’t help my hard situation downstairs.
I shook my head too quickly. “Nah, you got this.”
“C’mon.” He beckoned me over with a lift of his chin. “Show me what I’m doing wrong over here so I can have a fair shot.”
I shifted slightly, ensuring my boner wasn’t too visible before I came around the table. “Alright,” I muttered, giving in. “First off, your arm is too—”
“Show me.”
His voice was like steel, strong and authoritative. “That’s what I’m doing,” I protested.
“Nah, you’re just telling me. I want you to show me.” He laid his stick on the edge of the table, then half-bent over it. Once again, I was given that glorious view that started my situation in my pants to begin with, except this time, he was eyeing me full-force, and I wasn’t allowed a chance to sneak even one tiny peek. “Get your ass over here and show me.”
My stomach literally shook with the kind of excitement that made you feel just as good as you did sick. When you hadn’t had such stimulation in a long time, any attention from a guy could literally make you feel like you were going to toss your cookies.
Let alone a hunk as gorgeous as Lucas.
“Fine,” I said, shoving a cork in all my bubbling emotions.
I placed myself next to Lucas and acted like his stick was my own. With the small yet notable exception of last night in the hotel room when Lucas was (knowingly or unknowingly) cuddled up against my side, this was the closest I’d ever been to him. Our bodies were nearly cradled as we both held that cue stick and I corrected his angle.
“You see here?” I murmured, ignoring how nervous my voice sounded. “Line up the shot. It’s all about the geometry of it.”
“Uh huh.”
“And your grip,” I noted, taking his hand.
Fuck. Touching him is stirring awake everything inside me.
We both were gripping that lucky cue stick, his soft fingers beneath my own, as I helped him aim. Lucas’s face was right next to mine, so close I could feel his every cool, calm breath.
“Like this?” he murmured back, his voice tickling my ear.
“Like that,” I agreed. “Just breathe, and make it fly.”
Lucas pulled back the stick, preparing.
“No, no, no.” With my hand still covering his, I corrected his angle. “See how you go out of alignment when you pull your cue stick back? Your tip is going upward. You gotta keep it straight.”
“Straight,” Lucas agreed. His voice is so fucking sexy.
“Y-Yeah. Straight. So your tip hits right there.” I pointed with my free hand. “Right in the center of the cue ball.”
“Don’t let go ‘til I complete my shot.”
My heart was trying to drum its way out of my chest.
“I won’t,” I promised.
“Keepin’ it straight.” He pulled the stick back.
“Straight as an arrow.”
He brought the stick forward without hitting the cue ball yet. “Straight as a stick.”
“Straight as a … a …”
“As wood,” he stated.
My cock flexed in my pants.
Then he thrust the stick forward almost calmly, hitting the cue ball with a controlled, patient force. It drove across the table and smacked his seven ball, which dropped into the side pocket.
“Fuck yeah,” moaned Lucas into my ear, reminding me way too much of what he might say while sticking his cock somewhere.
I had to squirm away from him, letting go of his stick. I was pretty sure I was leaking in my underwear. “Great sh-shot,” I got out, blushing from the annoying stutter I let out and my stubborn cock, which wouldn’t obey any of my demands to stop being so damned excited for no reason.
Lucas looked like he just got a promotion, strutting around the table to where the ball went. “You’re a great teacher,” he told me with a knowing smirk. “Just got my first point.”
“There aren’t really points in the game, per se. It’s more about who sinks the eight ball first.”
He shrugged, then lowered his eyes to the table, aiming his cue stick for his next move. Before going, he looked up. “Well?”
I frowned. “Well what?”
“You gonna come here and continue teaching me or what?”
He was clearly a mad sex scientist running an experiment on my nervous system. If I got any more excited than I already was, I’d be in danger of having my cock literally explode in my pants. I would be the first person in history showing up to the E.R. with a case of an exploding penis.
An exploding penis due to excessive horniness.
What the fuck treatment does a doctor prescribe for that?
I came around to his side of the table, then placed my hand on his, guiding him again. This time, I had come to his back side to get a proper perspective of what he was seeing. When his angle was just right, I gave him an encouraging, “Go.”
Lucas responded by shifting his body slightly.
His butt pressed against my crotch.
There’s only so much teasing one man can take.
“Like this?” he asked, knowing damned well the agony he was putting me through—I was certain of it now.
Instead of buckling under the weight of his sexual taunting, I leaned into his ear and gave it right back. “Keep the stick straight. Y’know, as ‘straight’ as you are.”
He heard the quotes around that word, I was sure of it.
But naturally, Lucas was about as disturbed by my goading as a stone wall would be by an errant poof of wind.
I’m that errant poof of wind, by the way.
Lucas launched his stick, the sudden movement of his body sending a shockwave through mine that began and ended at my already swollen cock. With every time Lucas brushed me off, or teased me, or excited me, he owned me a little bit more. The less he acted like he cared, the more crazy I realized I was for him.
He had to feel the same way. There was no other reason why he kept doing what he was doing unless it was just a game to him. And even if that’s true, it’s a game I don’t mind playing over and over again, as long as I keep losing long enough to drive me crazy.
Lucas slipped out from under me, sauntering around the edge of the table. I looked up to find that he had hit another of his balls into the pockets, though I failed to notice which one; I hadn’t been paying attention.
“Looks like I just took the lead,” noted Lucas, strutting along the other side of the table like the cocky little shit he was. “Too bad we didn’t wager anything on this game. I might actually have a fighting chance against a pool expert.”
I felt a pinch of excitement at Lucas’s words, which dripped with sex, strength, and innuendo.
“How about this?” proposed Lucas as he came to a stop at the end of the table. “Winner gets a foot massage by the loser.”
Foot massage? I scrunched up my face. “You kidding me?”
“Does this pretty face look like it’s kidding?” He pointed at himself for good measure, then shot me one of his royally superior smirks. “You afraid to lose to a nineteen-year-old billiard noob?”
“Can you quit stressing your age?” I mumbled under my breath.
And of course he heard every word. “But doesn’t that make it more humiliating? To lose to a teenager?”
“You’re a legal adult.”
“With all your worldly knowledge and experience … c’mon. Are you not man enough to take me on, banker boy?”
“Banker boy?” I had to laugh at that one. Despite my laughter, exactly zero of the tension in my body was relieved. “Oh, I’m man enough. And I know I can win against you.”
“So what’s the worry?” He beat his chest. “Take me on, bitch.”
I narrowed my eyes. Why was the prospect of losing against him just as appealing as the prospect of winning? “You’re on.”
And so began the real game, though we were already both down a handful of balls with just a few more to go before one of us was declared the winner. I swear the term “handful of balls” didn’t have me chuckling like a teenager in my mind.
Especially since balls was what I needed to win this game.
Alarmingly, he sank two more balls before making a scratch. On my turn, I missed the eleven I was aiming for and succeeded in sinking the two ball on accident. Lucas found that to be the most hilarious thing—taking a point to thank me—before taking to the table and sinking yet another of his own.
No, Lucas never once let up his parallel game of aggressive cock-teasing the whole time. I had to endure him bending over the table much too far to be natural. Also, during my own shots, he would stand within view, posing suggestively with his cue stick between his legs as he innocently watched me. He knew what he was doing; that invisible halo over his head didn’t fool me.
It wasn’t long before we had reached the fateful final moment of the game. I had my thirteen ball still on the table. Lucas only needed to sink the eight ball to win.
“You gotta call the pocket,” I reminded him.
He shrugged, pointed at the corner pocket with his stick, then lowered himself to the table and took aim. And boy, did that cocky fucker keep his arm straight as an arrow, just as I only moments ago taught him.
The stick shot out.
His cue ball crashed into the eight ball like a lover going for one last desperate kiss.
Boom, straight into the corner pocket that eight ball went.
Lucas rose from the table at once with the biggest, cockiest, most victorious grin in the world and threw a fist into the air. “Fuck yeah! That’s how you do it!”
I set my stick on the table in defeat. “So the student becomes the master,” I mumbled.
His stick joined mine. “Don’t think I’m letting you out of the deal. The winner’s gotta collect his winnings.”
I quirked an eyebrow. “You were serious?”
“Fuck yeah, I was.” He strutted right over to the game room couch, plopped down onto it, then kicked his big feet up on the ottoman in front of him. “C’mon, banker boy. Get on it.”
I was equal parts taken aback and excited. This would be the first time that Lucas was actually inviting me to touch him. Granted, I might have preferred being invited to touch a different part of him, but I guessed his feet would have to do.
For now.
I strolled over to the couch. My heart was pounding. There was something else going on in the depths of my psyche I wasn’t willing to face, something to do with all my subconscious desires and the fantasies that manifested themselves in all my jerk-off sessions and dreams.
The cocky shit with the belt who loved to spank me and put me in my place.
The cocky shit who now bore Lucas’s gorgeous face.
The cocky shit who just propped his feet up for me to worship.
“Well?” Just that one stupid word was rich with that young, masculine pride of his. “You gonna keep the winner waiting?”
After a moment of reluctance, I knelt in front of the ottoman. In front of a young muscle god. In front of his big, socked feet. In front of Lucas, formerly known to me as Lucky.
And boy, do I feel fucking lucky right about now.
I brought my hands to his feet, then firmly began to press my thumbs into them. They felt exactly like I would have expected the feet of a young man as strong as him to feel: solid as stone, yet pliable, responsive, and warm as a fire.
“Really get your fingers up in there,” he taunted me from his totally comfortable seat on that couch—on my couch. “Firmer.”
“Oh, we’re barking orders now, are we?” I threw back.
To that, he closed his eyes and leaned back with his hands behind his head, which pushed his feet even more into my face. I hardly recoiled, keeping my hands hard at work on him. My gaze, however, remained glued to the rest of his perfect body, which lay there like a fucking feast for my eyes.
If this was what losing was, I wanted to lose. Every time. I was going to become a professional loser.
Just to be at the feet of Lucas, a slave to his strength, beneath him at all hours of the day, existing only to serve him.
Then I stopped and listened to my thoughts. Serve him? Be beneath him? A slave to his strength?
What the fuck has gotten into me?
“Your hands stopped,” he complained from the couch.
“Sorry.” I made them move again, kneading his feet like the most stubborn dough I’d ever had the pleasure of working.
After some time, my fingers moved up to massage his ankles and heels. Strangely, the more I worked his feet, the more relaxed I seemed to feel, as if I was vicariously absorbing the pleasure he was receiving from my efforts. That, or it just brought me relief to know he was enjoying my hard work.
And it was hard work; I had hardly been massaging his feet for five minutes and my fingers and forearms were already killing me.
“I guess I go both ways.”
I glanced up, startled by his sudden statement. “You what?”
“I go both ways.” His eyes were still closed, and he shrugged. “I never really gave it much thought, to be honest.”
He had taken us back to that conversation—the straight-as-a-cue-stick back-and-forth taunting we had earlier. “Oh, okay.”
“I mean, I had a girlfriend my freshman year of high school. I never dated guys. But …” He shrugged again. “The prospect never turned me off. I’ve fantasized about them before.”
My mouth went dry, and I clenched up with excitement. He certainly had my curiosity piqued. Literally, I stopped blinking as I listened to his every word, ears perked. “Fantasized …?”
“Yeah. I kinda always liked to … uh …” He shifted slightly, his feet wiggling in my face for a second before he settled in place and shook his head. “Nah, never mind.”
“What? Go ahead,” I encouraged him, desperate to hear more. “I won’t judge you. You can tell me.”
“I know. It’s just …” He curled his bottom lip into his mouth and bit it, his eyes still closed.
Fuck, I want to be the one biting that perfect, plush lip of his.
I needed him to keep going. “Yeah?”
He let go of his lip and said, “I guess I have a sort of power-trip fantasy or something.”
My eyes glazed over. “Power-trip fantasy?”
“Yeah. I kinda get off on power.”
His eyes opened just then, and I was assaulted with the beauty of his strength as he stared down upon me from between his legs, sitting on that couch like a king with his hands behind his head, his pits exposed, and his feet in my face. Literally, I couldn’t even dream of a more dominant position for him to be in and a more submissive one for myself.
If this wasn’t the perfectly fateful beginning of my living out my lifelong sexual fantasies, I had no idea what was.
But I totally kept my cool. I played it all off like my dream wasn’t actually coming true before my eyes. “So, uh ... what are you saying, Lucas? You saying you like what I’m doing right now? You’re enjoying having this power over me?”
The tiniest smile curled his lips. “You could say that.”
Fuck me, fuck me, fuck me, fuck me, fuck me.
“Cool,” I muttered, totally casual, easy as a slice of apple pie.
He didn’t say anything after that, letting me work on his big beautiful feet, except now he was watching me intently. To avoid a staring contest, I kept my attention on his socked soles, rubbing with mounting firmness despite the ache building up in my arms.
Then a nerve in my elbow, untimely as ever, pinched.
I winced and let go of his feet, grabbing my elbow instead. “Damn it,” I hissed, annoyed at the bad timing.
He was off his couch-throne and at my side in an instant. He took my arm into his own soft hands. “Is it hurting?”
I glanced up, surprised by his one-eighty. “It … It was just a pinch. Of a nerve, I think. Or something. No big deal.”
He shook his head. “We need to bandage it up again, dude.”
How could Lucas go from being a dominant winner to a sweet and caring nurse in the space of a second? “It’s fine,” I insisted. “Lie back. I’ll keep massaging your—”
“Nah. We gotta wrap this up.” He lifted me to my feet. “Don’t you got a first aid in your bathroom or something? Take me to it. We gotta keep pressure on that arm.”
I was beside myself with bafflement. I didn’t know whether to be disappointed that my moment with his feet ended, or touched beyond words at the way he was instantly caring for me.
A minute later found me sitting on the edge of my bed while Lucas gently wrapped my elbow in an ACE bandage, making a tight and careful cocoon of my wound.
“I don’t get it,” I mumbled as he worked. “It isn’t even bruised on the outside anymore, yet the inside is all—”
“Achy,” Lucas finished for me. “Painful. Hurt. Yeah, I know. The worst wounds are the ones we can’t see.”
He kept wrapping my arm, and I had the feeling that Lucas was talking about something else entirely. Indeed, I might have agreed, had I the balls to pull his attention to his own wounds that were, without question, gaping and wide open, as I learned after we watched that dark, sad movie back in the hotel room. And I hope someday, I can tend to your inner emotional wounds the way you’re so generously tending to mine.
“All good,” he announced as he finished, then met my eyes. “Feel better?”
I could have stared into his eyes the rest of the evening. As it was, I couldn’t manage to speak. I was hypnotized at once, tickled by heavy emotions that sat in my chest and begged me to lean forward and kiss those perfect lips of his, those lips I had been longing for ever since I first saw him across that hotel lobby.
“Much better,” I finally managed to answer.
Then, in typical Lucas fashion, he grinned and added, “Don’t for a second think this gets you off the hook for the rest of my foot massage after dinner, bitch.”
To that, I had to laugh. It’ll be my total pleasure.