Chapter 17
JAMES
When I got into bed, I was so exhausted from the day that I could have fallen asleep before even counting to ten.
That was, until Lucas decided to sneak into my room.
“Hey,” he mumbled softly at the door.
I sat up. “Hey,” I called back.
I noticed he was wearing nothing but a new pair of underwear we had gotten him at the store—a pair of black briefs that fit his shape perfectly, cupping his ass and crotch with perfect precision. We had washed everything as soon as we got home, and he went and organized all his new clothes into the closet and dresser drawers of his room. I loved everything about it, how it gave him a boost of confidence, how excited he was pretending not to be when he put away his new clothes, and how normal it already felt to have him there in my house, even if he was acting the role of a bossy, entitled shit half the time and making my cock mad.
But this was the first time he came into my room at night and actually made his presence known. Was something wrong? Did something happen? Was he finally about to express the deep, dark doubts that might have been living in him ever since he agreed to stay at my house?
“Do you mind if …” He didn’t finish.
When he stood there in my doorway, there wasn’t a trace of that expected authoritativeness in his tone. Instead, he sounded sweet. Timid, almost, even in spite of his deep, masculine voice.
I encouraged him. “Yeah? What do you need?”
He shrugged it off, for a second appearing like he had changed his mind and was going to head back to his room. Then he bit his lip, thought better of it, and faced me again. “You mind if I sleep in here?” He nodded toward my bed.
Seriously. As if I would ever in a million years say no.
He rolled his eyes. “But only if there’s, y’know, enough fuckin’ room in that bed for another person.”
There’s the expected Lucas charm. “Yeah. Of course.” I slapped the empty side of the bed. “Get on up in here.”
A microscopic look of relief crossed Lucas’s face, which he quickly hid as he stiffened his back and came the rest of the way into the room. The bed shook as he hopped onto it and gently slipped under the sheets with me in one swift motion. The pair of us settled into place, each of us on either side of the bed.
Then silence fell over the room, a silence filled only by the soft, subtle sounds of each of us breathing.
But neither of us slept.
“Just like in the hotel room,” I murmured into the silence.
Lucas turned his face. “Huh?”
“The hotel room.” I turned mine toward his. “Y’know. Lying next to each other. In the hotel room.”
“Oh. Right.”
Then we looked back up at the ceiling. Silence fell over us like a second set of bed sheets, warm and heavy. A gentle night breeze swept by outside, the bushes softly tapping the glass in response.
“Should be used to it by now,” he mumbled.
“Yeah. Been sleeping next to each other every night now.”
“Guess I’m comfortable around you or some shit,” he grunted.
“Me too,” I said back, then we both fell into silence again.
Shadows from one of the bushes outside danced along the vaulted ceiling, looking like long ethereal fingers playing a piano. They’re playing Nocturne No. 15 in F Minor, I decided.
He spoke again. “I’m not comfortable around a lot of people.”
I gave a tight-lipped smile into the dark. “Me neither. Well, except for my buddies, I guess. Who should be at the Royal Flush Hotel by now living it up.”
“You’ve been friends with them for long?”
I shrugged. “I went to high school with Duncan, so I’ve known him the longest. I met Quinton in college, who now runs a coffee place that is known for having served a past president. Clinton or Bush, I don’t remember which. Quinton and I had the craziest idea several years ago to set up our older siblings together, so now his older brother’s my brother-in-law. Lewis is the security guard at my bank, who I obviously met there years ago. We hit it off. First several times we came to the casino, it was just me and Duncan, and sometimes Quinton and his brother, too. Then after my sister and—Are you following all this?”
“Yep.”
“After my sister and Quinton’s brother married, it was just the three of us hitting the casinos once or twice a month. Then Lewis was all, ‘You gotta get me in on your casino weekends. I need a break from the wife.’ That was before his little girl was born. Now it’s the four of us every other weekend or so.” I let out a sigh. “I’m surprised they didn’t give me shit about canceling.”
“Why did you cancel? You could’ve gone.”
I scrunched up my face. “You kidding me? I have no need or desire to go. And you’re right here. You and I can hang out. Or do something fun. Whatever we want to do, really.” I gave it a bit of thought. “I mean … I’m assuming, of course, that you didn’t want to go back to that grimy-ass beach town.”
“That grimy-ass beach town I used to call home.”
I nodded slowly, the cotton of the pillowcase behind my head hissing softly as I did. Then I stopped. “I mean, no offense.”
“None taken,” Lucas grumbled. “Fuck that beach town.”
“Fuck that beach town.”
The shadows continued to play as the silence swelled around us again. After a while, Lucas shifted slightly in the bed and turned his face toward mine. “Saturday night.”
“Hmm?”
“You said the last time you came was Saturday night.”
My stomach did a flip. “Uh … right. Saturday night.”
“When?” He was trying to work it out in his head. “I was with you that whole night. When did you have time to rub one out?”
Really? He’s going to pretend he really wasn’t awake for all of that?
He pressed on: “Did you sneak away at some point?”
“What do you mean?”
“Like, did you sneak away from me in the arcade and blow a wad behind Pac-Man or some shit?”
I wasn’t sure how to answer. Would he even believe me if I told him the truth? Was it that big a deal anymore, especially considering what already transpired between us that afternoon?
“So? You gonna hold out on me, James?”
“No. It’s just …” I wrinkled up my face with a sudden thought. Was he messing with me again? I turned my head partway toward him and decided to call him out. “You know what? I think you know damned well what happened that night.”
He frowned at me. “The hell you talking about?”
I blinked. Was he seriously unaware? After studying his face a bit longer, I decided to have it out. “It … was actually early Sunday morning. About three in the morning, to be precise. And you—”
“You got out of bed and got off in the hotel bathroom?”
“Well, actually …” I winced. “I was still in the bed.”
Lucas gawked at me. “You fucking kidding me? You wanked off while I was lying in that bed next to you??”
I propped myself up on my good elbow. I was going to enjoy the look on his face when I told him what he did in his dreams. “For a while, I almost thought that you were doing it deliberately, but your eyes were closed. And yet you were sooo into it …”
“Wait a sec. Me? What about me?”
“You were humping me in your sleep.”
A moment passed where neither of us moved. Then suddenly, Lucas burst out laughing, shaking his head. “No way!” he cried out between his laughs. “No fucking way! I don’t believe it! Nope!”
“You had your arm around me, too,” I went on. “And you—”
That made him laugh even harder. He couldn’t stop laughing. He was practically dancing on the bed, wrestling with his laughs.
“And … you were feeling me up. While humping my ass.”
He turned to me with tears of laughter twinkling in his eyes, then drew quiet as he studied my face and caught his breath. “You really aren’t dicking with me, huh? That all actually happened?”
“It did.”
He shook his head in disbelief. “And … And I felt you up?”
“More than that. You jerked me off.”
“And you came? You actually came?”
“That, I did. And hard.” I watched his surprised face. “Oh, and by the way, you did too. A lot.”
He drew silent and looked off. Then a short huff shot out his nostrils. “That explains the wet spot in my shorts that morning.”
“Hmm.” I had wondered about that. “Guess it does, huh?”
“And it clearly proves that I can’t hide what I feel for you,” he added softly. “Even in my dreams.”
Those words caught me. I waited for him to say more, like he was kidding, or maybe he would just laugh it all off, but he did neither. “What exactly do you feel for me?”
The shadow fingers kept dancing high above our heads. “I feel a lot of things. Shit, I don’t know. Can’t really put it into words.”
“Try.”
He grunted, almost annoyed. “It doesn’t matter, man.”
“Hey, you’re the one who said you ‘can’t hide how you feel about me’. You can’t just leave me with that. Now you have to fess up.”
“I don’t gotta fess up to nothin’.”
I chuckled, then let my eyes wander to the windows. “Alright, I know we’ve only known each other for a few days now …”
“Yeah.”
“But … it really feels like a lot longer than that.”
“Yeah.”
Was he agreeing with me? Or was he pissed because I teased him about having feelings for me? “It … feels like just yesterday I was scolding you for your language at a table in Alberto’s.”
“Fuck Alberto’s.”
I chuckled at that. “Yeah. Fuck Alberto’s,” I agreed.
After a moment, Lucas let out a long sigh, then mumbled, “I guess I’m just sort of waiting for this … dream … to end.”
Those words sobered me. I turned back to him with concern. “What do you mean? End? Why?”
“I dunno. ‘Cause everything good always ends.” He shrugged. “Maybe that’s what’s really on my mind. It’s only a matter of time before …” He sighed, leaving all the rest of the words unsaid.
“Before what?” I picked up for him. “I just bought you a crap load of clothes. I gave you a room. You’re here under my roof with me. There’s no rules. I’m not kicking you out or anything.”
“I know.”
“And … I mean, on that same token, you’re also free to leave whenever you want.” Fuck, those words hurt to say out loud. “I mean, not that I want you to leave. I don’t. But … you’re not a prisoner here. You can make your own choices.”
“That, I can. And did. I’m here, after all.”
“So, while it may be easier said than done, Lucas, please just try to … relax a bit. Accept that this could be your new life, if you wanted it to be. Accept that I’m not just some fickle person who’ll change his mind and throw you out on the street again when I’m bored. Does that sound like me?”
“Nah.”
“So just relax. I mean, it might not always be easy here. I’m not promising paradise or anything. It’s just a roof. And food. And, well, me. But the important thing is that I’m giving you a chance here to … start over. More or less.”
“Start over …” he mumbled in wonder.
His elbow brushed mine under the sheets. It was amazing to me, how there was so much room on this bed, and yet there were mere inches between our bodies, like we still couldn’t stand to be farther apart than we were right then.
I wanted to touch him. So badly. I couldn’t let us devolve back into being afraid of one another, not after all the progress we had made over the past week. He had made the first step by inviting himself into my bed every night, didn’t he? That had to mean something. It couldn’t be for nothing. The last move was his.
It was my turn.
But just when I went to touch his arm, he turned onto his side, facing me and causing me to withdraw my hand. “No rules, huh?”
I searched for his eyes in the dark. “No rules. Like I said.”
Suddenly, he put an arm around my waist and pulled himself against my side.
Oh, wow.
It felt like heaven, the way he held me close.
I froze right up under his touch, but ever slowly, inevitably, the warmth from his body made me thaw to nothing but a puddle at his mercy. It wasn’t long before I melted into his strong arms.
I could have lived there forever, embraced by Lucas.
“You forgot one rule,” he mumbled sleepily.
His deep voice was so close, it tickled my ear. “What’s that?”
Lucas slid a hand down my body until it came to a firm and deliberate stop at my crotch, cupping my cock and balls firmly. “No coming until I say.”
My face flushed red in the dark.
Fuck, this kid owns me so bad.