Chapter 2
JAMES
Yeah, I thought about the fucker all week.
I’d be lying if I said I went home, felt dandy, and slipped right back into my desk at the bank like I do every time the four of us returned from a weekend on the town.
But that wasn’t the case. I felt like I was missing something. All damned week. There was a hole in my chest. There was a knot in my stomach. There was a pressure at the front of my eyes. I kept making stupid typos at my computer. I was clumsy, walking into things and spilling my coffee absentmindedly.
I had left something at that casino.
Something that didn’t have a shape.
Maybe not even a name.
I might as well have been beaten up for real, dragged through the marshes of misery, and hung by my hands to dry. Which was almost true, considering that I took such a hard fall and felt the incessant throbbing in my elbow nonstop.
I should have probably seen a doctor.
At least while I was at work, I could distract myself. When I got home, however, it became less easy. My house felt especially empty that week. Most evenings, I caught myself staring out the screen of my sliding back doors at the overgrown grass in my backyard, mourning my lack of motivation to do anything nice or special for my house or its pitiful landscaping. Anything green my hands touched died. Even the pecan tree by the fence didn’t want to drop any nuts anymore.
But my worries had nothing to do with pecan nuts. They had to do with my own. And the fact that I didn’t have any.
I should have said something back to him.
Like: “Whatever you’re going through, buddy, I’m sorry. I’m also going through stuff.”
Then maybe he would have apologized for running into me.
Because he totally did.
It was on Thursday night that I sprawled out on my big bed, exhausted from a particularly uneventful, boring day at the bank, and stared up at my crazy-tall vaulted ceiling. I had so much space in my house, it was a wonder I didn’t host parties with all the guys here more often instead of wasting our money on slot machines and poker tables every other weekend.
Despite all my efforts to let go of the past weekend, my mind went right back to that damned casino. Specifically, the street outside my hotel.
I could still see his piercing, powerful glare. The memory of it didn’t fade one bit.
It was so intense, how he stared me down like a predator and made me feel half an inch tall.
I was ashamed to admit it, but he reminded me so much of the authoritative young bastard who dominated me in my dreams that for a second, I couldn’t tell the two apart.
Did I dream him into existence?
“Watch where you’re walkin’.”
His words thundered through my mind, the memory so fresh, my heart raced the second I heard his voice.
“I said to watch where you’re walkin’.”
He was so forceful, so strong, so demanding.
“Yes, sir,” I mumbled out loud, those two tiny words filling my whole bedroom and bouncing off the vaulted ceiling above.
Yeah, I was hard the next instant. Like, rock hard.
Something about addressing this young bastard as “sir”. The way it made me feel small. The way it made me tremble all over with excitement. The way it made me feel like an object for his complete and total entertainment.
“You like calling me sir, don’t you?” fantasy-him asked.
“Y-Yes,” I blurted aloud, again.
“Yes, what?”
“Yes, sir.”
“Get down on your knees, you little bitch.”
The command had me hopping right off my bed, dropping to my knees for real, and unzipping my pants. With a yank of my underwear, my cock was freed, and I slowly began to stroke.
Fantasy-him was unzipping his pants, too. “You want to make me happy, don’t you?”
“Yes, sir,” I breathed, my eyes closed so I could see him more vividly from my memory—his tight white tank top, his loose, low-hanging jeans, even his body-hugging hoodie and his backpack, as they were part of his whole street-kid muscle-boy skater thing he had going on.
His messy bangs of hair that crept out from under his cocked black cap.
His thick, chocolate brown eyes that seemed so infinite, you could fall into them like a well and be lost forever.
His high cheekbones. His flushed cheeks. His pouty, defiant lips. His squared jaw. His strong, chiseled nose. Even his flared nostrils were sexy, like he was pissed at something.
Pissed at me.
And ready to take it all out on my kneeling, lowly self.
“Fuck,” I hissed, my heart racing so fast as I jerked my cock. I was already seeing stars behind my eyelids, I was so close.
I couldn’t control my thoughts. I wanted to put my hands on him so badly. If I had no restraint, I would have gripped him right there in the rain, pulled his soft, tough-guy lips against mine, and kissed him so hard it’d make our teeth ache. I could have crushed my body against his ravenously.
Just the memory of him drove me crazy. It was like our little dispute on the street never happened and I was still chasing him with my eyes in the dim, smoky rooms of the casino. It became such a game to me, my emotions flaring up every time I caught sight of him. It was daring. It was exciting. It was terrifying.
And now I could have him in my dreams. I could pull his lips to mine as an equal, making out with him for hours. Or I could drop to my knees in front of his commanding, muscular form.
Commanding.
Muscular.
Form.
I realized suddenly that I was seconds away from coming.
“Guys like you,” he spat down at me, “have been trying to control guys like me my whole life.”
I stopped jerking.
The less sexy words were starting to invade my fantasy. The real memory.
“So how about you take your entitled, comfy, fortunate hotel-room self and get the fuck out of my pathetic, dirty, street-rat face?”
I opened my eyes and looked up at him.
The sight of my blank bedroom windows greeted me instead.
There I was, kneeling on my bedroom floor with my hard-as-steel cock in my palm, right on the edge, and a sick feeling began to creep its way into my stomach.
I couldn’t put a name on the feeling any more than I could put a name on the thing I left behind at that casino.
“I don’t think you’re pathetic,” I heard myself say, both in the memory and out loud right then, my cock still in my hand. “I don’t think you’re pathetic or dirty at all.”
The next moment, I was sitting on my bed, my cock ignored as it slowly deflated, and I stared at the floor, lost deep in a swirling, dark tunnel of guilt and remorse and something else.
Something else.
Desire?
Frustration?
Curiosity?
It must have been that moment that inspired the decision I made when I went to work Friday. I gave Lewis a pat on the back—who regarded me with a tight nod as he adjusted his security radio clipped to his belt—and went straight to my office. At my desk, I emailed my mother to say I wouldn’t be coming to the family dinner on Saturday due to a sudden thing that came up at work, then told her to give my best to Dad, to my sister Ashlee and her hot husband, and to Uncle Charles. Then I pulled out my phone, called the Royal Flush Hotel & Suites, and booked myself a room.
The moment I clocked out, I sped home, cleaned up, packed a bag, then took off. Another weekend awaited me at the casino—except this time, I was braving it alone.