“Go ahead.” I smile as he turns and walks away.
And then after the curtain is pulled and I can hear the rustling of clothes being removed, I turn back to the mirror.
I give myself a long, hard look. “Don’t,” I mouth silently to myself. “Don’t fall for him.”
Chapter Nine
Marcello
“You never shower with me,” Giles says as we walk through the changing room after a long, hard and sweaty hour of training. My legs have just about stopped shaking and my breath has returned to normal but my whole body feels warm and heavy and sated.
“Because I don’t normally sweat like that,” I reply.
“And it shows.” Giles looks back over his shoulder and winks at me. Hewinksat me.
I look down at what he’s looking at and suddenly, I’m naked. Naked and absolutely shredded. I have an eight-pack. Two pectoral muscles that look like freshly baked loaves of bread. And the V is back in my lower abdomen, a sight I haven’t seen since my early twenties.
Wait, where’s all my body hair? When did I shave that off?
“Come on,” Giles says, dropping his shorts to the floor. “Last one in isun’ uovo marcio.”
Che cazzo… Giles can speak Italian? Not that it actually made sense but since when…
But there’s no time to think about this because just as I turn the corner into the shower area, Giles stops and pulls his T-shirt up over his head. Naked, Giles looks every bit like the Greek God I imagined he would.
No, wait. I haven’t imagined Giles naked. I’ve never visualised the lines of his abdominal muscles or the curve in his quads. I’ve never thought about how biteable his ass cheeks were.
I've never thought any of those things, but I’m thinking them now.
Water starts running from somewhere and I look up to see Giles standing under a rainfall shower. Water flows down his hard body, droplets cruising over firm muscle, erect nipples and smooth hairless skin. They pull my eyes lower and lower and lower until…
I wake with a start, my eyes wide and my breath hitched.
What. The. Actual. Fuck. Was. That.
I know exactly what that was. It was the beginning of a sex dream. A sex dream about Giles.
Oh, fuck, no.
I get out of bed quickly and leave my room. I am as light on my feet as I can possibly be, passing my mother’s bedroom door, and I pad down the stairs. In the kitchen I switch on the light and move to the sink. Filling a glass with water, I set it aside and then splash my face with cold water.
Did that really just happen? Did I really just imagine Giles’ naked body under the shower? And – I look down at my boxers,merda– did I really just get hard doing so?
I down the glass of water like I’ve not drunk liquids in days and then fill it once more. After that glass has gone, I still feel no calmer, no clearer on what the fuck just happened.
I haven’t had a sex dream in years. I have also never had a sex dream about a man before. Not that that’s a problem, as such. I may not have got any A-Levels or degrees to my name, but I know that you can’t control your dreams. I know that it doesn’t necessarily mean anything if you have a dream about one of your male friends. It’s happened before. A long time ago. And Giles and I have been spending a lot of time together. In some ways it makes sense he pops into my dreams. But did it have to be a sex dream?
And did I have to enjoy it so much?
I look down at my crotch again and see the outline of my hard dick as clearly as I did a moment ago. I feel like it’s taunting me with just how solid and heavy it feels. And how nice it was to feel, well, as horny as I did in thatdream. Be it my ADHD meds or be it simply my age reducing my libido, I’ve not felt that spontaneously turned on in a long time.
I’ve missed it. I’ve craved it. I’ve had moments when I thought it was behind me.
But there it was. No, there itis, in the shape of my erection which refuses to disappear as flashbacks of Giles in the shower continue to pop up behind my eyelids as I close my eyes and take some deep breaths.
*****
The next time I wake up, I’m still hard, I’m still horny and I’m still just as confused. I’d eventually gone back to bed last night, still erect and turned on, and somehow fallen asleep again after resisting the powerful urge to watch porn and knock one out, but that would have risked doomscrolling on my phone and I needed to sleep. I’m grateful for that unusual foresight now as I’m doing the early shift again.
