His computer had yet to power on, so he leaned back in his chair and fiddled with his phone, finding a message in his inbox from George. The two of them had exchanged a few words, and Remington found himself feeling bigger and braver with every word they shared. Behind the anonymity of the app and the privacy of the vague profile, Remington could pretend to be the version of himself that he longed to achieve. He didn’t have to tell anyone he was a virgin, that he’d never even had his dick in someone’s mouth. But most importantly, he didn’t have to tell anyone about the new and terrifying part of himself he’d been learning about.
The dominant side.
The side that specifically wanted to dominate Sebastian.
Yesterday, Callahan and Jace had practically started fucking each other at the table, so Remington had sent them home, leaving himself with a completely intoxicated Sebastian. He’d driven the other man home, washed his face, and helped him into bed. He’d plucked at the fly of Sebastian’s hundred dollar slacks, and he’d seen the thick bulge that he kept hidden behind his underwear. He hadn’t looked, or he hadn’tstared, and he definitely hadn’t touched.
But he’d wanted.
He’d wanted.
Sober or otherwise, Sebastian radiated despair and confusion, feelings that Remington was certain to become familiar with himself in the near future. Remington found himself wanting to help, to somehow ease the pain that ate away at Sebastian, but he also wanted to shove the other man into a wall. He wanted to hit him, to shake him.
He wanted to kiss him.
But Sebastian was off-limits, or he should have been. The only reason he knew the book was even donated by Sebastian was because the packing slip had been erroneously left in the delivery with the St. George name emblazoned across the bottom of the page. He’d pieced two and two together pretty easily. He supposed Jace was right. If he wasn’t supposed to know, what could the harm be?
But that didn’t change the fact that Sebastian was freshly bi-sexual and on the heels of a complicated divorce. It didn’t change the fact Remington was a virgin with a capital V.
All of those were reasons why the hookup app had been a good idea. He’d congratulated himself after the fact on being brave enough to sign up, and again once more after deciding to teach himself how to role play by presenting himself as the kind of man he wanted to be. The man he wished he could have been under different circumstances.
He’d decided to test the waters of his dominant side through conversation via chat before trying to do it in real life because with screens between him and whoever he was involved with, there was a buffer, a sort of protection. Remington could portray the strong version of himself he felt he was, that he wanted to be, and see how he was received. All bets would be off when—or if—it came time to meet with someone face to face, but that was a lifetime away. He had now, and he would take it.
Remington opened up the app on his phone and tapped the message icon. The message filled the screen.
George. You can call me George.
Remington set his phone down on his desk and threaded his hands together behind his head. His name was George, and he tried to not think about Sebastian when he heard the name. He keyed out a quick message on his phone as his computer screen finally lit up, asking for his login credentials.
George,
Remington stared at his phone. He didn’t have the slightest idea what to say. All the books he’d read, the porn he’d watched, none of it had told him how to initiate the relationship he was looking for, only how to maintain it. He failed in his quest to not think about Sebastian, and instead found himself thinking about helping Sebastian into his house, cleaning him up, tucking him in. The way Sebastian watched him with careful eyes, like he saw something in Remington that no one else did. It was enough inspiration for him to find the words he was looking for, and he typed out a reply to George.
I would like to do some role playing with you to test the waters. If this is agreeable, I’ll send you a list. I will not ask anything major, but please reply with things that are off the table just so we can be clear. I know we are pretending right now, but it would please me to know something about you that you deem utterly inconsequential.
-Allan.
He’d picked the name Allan because he couldn’t stop thinking about Tamerlane. He couldn’t stop thinking about Sebastian. Remington sent the message before he could talk himself out of it. What was the worst that would happen?
“’You call it hope,’” he muttered the lines of the poem under his breath as he scrolled through his email to find the one from his boss about the grant. “’That fire of fire.’”
Remington clicked the email from his boss, eyes scanning the message for trigger words, his stare landing on the ones he’d hoped weren’t there.
Not approved.
He read the rest of the email, stabbing at the speaker button on his phone and pushing the speed dial for his boss.
“Happy Monday, Remington,” his boss, Grant Montgomery, answered on the third ring.
“Is it?”
“Depends on if you’ve read my email, I suppose.”
“I have,” he shared.
Grant said nothing, and Remington read the words again, working his fingers through his hair with a frustrated groan. “You know, Grant, you didn’t necessarily offer me any feedback about the length of time the department would have funding, but if you knew the survival was reliant on acceptance of a single grant, that would have been helpful information to share as part of the hiring process.”
“At the time it wasn’t,” Grant answered.
