Yeah, but just for a minute.
Sam knew damn well that if he were a good little romance novel hero, he would dismiss the possibility of love.For him to actuallygetlove, he needed to wander into it all unknowing, like a lamb stumbling innocently to the slaughter.
Wait, that analogy wasn’t quite right.Um ...the birthday boy walking blindly into his surprise party.That worked.
Point was, for this to be a romance novel plot, Sam should naïvely assume that Ian had meant it when he said he didn’t want anything more than sex.
It just seemed like Ian wanted more.
This is nothing like any plot I can recall.
Maybe that’s because it’s real life and not a romance novel.
Sam sighed.Here he was, back to thinking about things he shouldn’t be.And he’d mopped himself into a corner.
On Monday, Sam took his courage (and other pertinent body parts) into his hands and did something he’d been planning on since he’d been pierced.
He bought a captive bead ring—ten gauge (gulp), five-eighths inch in diameter.
The wordcaptivemade him a bit shivery, and possibly sympathetic to women in gothic novels who were prone to swooning.He began to see the appeal.
Having the girl who’d pierced him in the first place change his jewelry from bar to ring was less fun.She was the first, last, and only girl—other than his mother, presumably, but like he wanted to think aboutthat—who had ever handled Sam’s manly bits.He’d had some idea he could do it himself, but she looked at him askance when he asked her if he’d need any special equipment for changing his body jewelry.
“It’d be better if I did it for you,” she told him.
“Have I told you I’m gay?I’m not really into—”
“I’m not trying to get a free grope,” Piercing Girl said, tucking her hands in her back pockets.“I just know from experience that it’s safest for the client if the piercer does it.What kind of phone do you have?”
“Wha ...?Phone?”
“Your cell phone,” she elaborated, still patient, and possibly concerned about his native intelligence.“What is it?”
Sam gaped at her a second.“It’s an iPhone,” he finally told her.
Her brows lifted slightly, as if she found that amusing.He began to feel like a stereotype.“When you bought it, did you have them put the screen protector on or did you do it yourself?”
His face got hot.“I had to take it back and have the salesgirl do it.Those things are ...yeah.”Sales Girl had been bossy, too.
Piercing Girl seemed to feel a single raised brow was all the answer he needed.
“How hard can it be?”Sam asked, annoyed by her attitudeandthe attitude of the girl who’d sold him the damn phone.
“Okay,” Piercing Girl said, turning to dig through some shiny tool things in a box.“You’ll need at least one pair of pliers, but I recommend you get both the ring-opening and the ring-closing pliers.These—” she turned back to show him some instrument of torture “—are the ring-opening pliers.”
Sam could feel the blood draining from his head.“Never mind,” he croaked.“You can do it.”Ian had better be worth this.
Not that he was doing it for Ian.
She was kind enough to hide her smirk by turning away to drop the pliers back in the box.“Okay, get naked below the waist, then lie on the table with your feet in the stirrups.”
He had the strangest feeling she enjoyed saying that.
He spent most of Monday and Tuesday dealing with the new realities of having a heavier and now ring-shaped thing living behind his balls.Realities like relearning how to sit, and trying not to adjust himself too frequently in public.Not to mention the concentration required to keep himself calm every time he walked and the weight between his legs swung, just behind his nuts ...
Oh God.
In class on Tuesday morning, the girl who always sat next to him—Eva of the multiple facial piercings—caught Sam trying to reposition the damn ring through his jeans.He’d sort of lost all pretense of subtlety in the previous twenty-four hours.
