“I live here,” Aiden replied. “There’s not much ‘out’ for me to head. But if you’re ready to go, I can show you out.”
“I thought maybe you’d come with me.”
“I get to walk you home? When I wanted to come pick you up you made it sound like it was an affront to your manhood. But I can walk you home?”
Cade made a frustrated, strangled sort of noise. “I thought maybe you’dcome with me,” he said. “Like, walk me home, and then walk me inside? And then stay awhile?”
Aiden felt like an idiot. “Oh. Oh, yeah! I—yeah, okay! I can do that!”
Cade snorted. “The tux makes youlooklike James Bond. But that’s where it ends, huh?”
“Okay, give me a break! You kinda pulled that out of nowhere. Caught me by surprise.”
“Really?” Cade looked around the room. “I admit it, I didn’t go to my prom. But I figure this is pretty close to what it must have been like, right? And there are certain prom night traditions….”
Aiden forced himself to say, “Don’t do it just because of a tradition. If you don’t want to—”
“Relax, Aiden.” Now that the die was cast, Cade seemed surprisingly calm about it all. But that was becausehe’dknown it was coming, Aiden decided. It was easy to be cool when you weren’t surprised. Cade grinned as if he could read Aiden’s thoughts, then leaned forward and kissed him gently on the temple. “I want to. A lot. I think we should.”
“Me too!” Aiden tried not to run as he pulled Cade out of the hall and toward the coatroom. “I have to go get my jacket. It’s in my room. I’ll be, I don’t know, like, fifty seconds. Not long.”
“Okay,” Cade said calmly. He handed his ticket to the girl at the closet door, and Aiden took off.
There was a bit of awkwardness when he opened the door to the room and saw the curtains were pulled across the opening to both MattandBrent’s bunks. The curtains gave the boyssomeprivacy, but they weren’t exactly soundproof, and Aiden was pretty sure it was a strangesort of frat exhibitionism that allowed so many guys to get action in the same room as their brothers. But that was none of Aiden’s business, and if Cade hadn’t had a convenient apartment, who knew what desperate measures Aiden would have taken. “Just getting my coat,” he said quietly to the room as a whole. Nobody answered, but at least he didn’t detect much movement behind the curtains. He grabbed his coat, then darted into the bathroom to find condoms and lube in his toiletry bag. He was safely out of the room seconds after entering, and running back down the hall before the faint echo of the closing door had faded.
He skidded to a stop at the top of the staircase and looked down at Cade. He wasn’t alone. Pete Sniderman, a senior Aiden barely knew, was talking to Cade. Smiling at him. Was Peteflirtingwith Cade?
But Cade turned as if psychically aware of Aiden’s presence. He saw Aiden’s expression and smiled. It was a new smile, slow and lazy and unbelievably sexy. As Aiden stood and stared, Cade lifted his hand and slid it underneath his tuxedo jacket. He rubbed his strong fingers along his neck, right above his collarbone, right where his shoulder started. Right where Aiden had marked him two nights earlier. Where Aiden had claimed him. And Cade was remembering it now, and reminding Aiden.
It was possibly the hottest thing Aiden had ever seen. Pete followed Cade’s gaze in Aiden’s direction, and after a moment, he looked back at Cade, who was still watching Aiden. Pete stepped back a little. When Aiden reached them and laced his fingers through Cade’s, Pete just smiled.
“Congratulations,” he said. It should have seemed a bit random, but Aiden knew exactly what he meant.
“Thanks,” he said. Then he turned to Cade. “You ready to go?”
“Absolutely,” Cade said. And he and Aiden left the party together.
Chapter Seventeen
“Careful withthat!” Cade ordered. “It’s borrowed!”
Aiden forced himself to be still. He didn’t give a good goddamn about the status of Cade’s bow tie, but hedidneed to calm down. He wanted this to be perfect, not a mad, frenzied rush.
So he took a deep breath and stepped backward, then sank down into the wooden chair at the desk. “Okay,” he said, trying to ignore the desire raging through his body for a little bit longer. “Okay. Soyoutake it off. I’ll just watch.”
Cade frowned. He raised his hands to the collar of his shirt as if about to obey, then shook his head. “No. I don’t like that.”
There was something about the way he said it that made Aiden think it was part of something larger. Like it hadn’t been easy for Cade to object, but like he’d thought it was important that he do so.
If Cade thought it was important, then Aiden wanted to respect it. But it wasn’t easy. “So I shouldn’t take off your clothes. But I also shouldn’t watchyoutake off your clothes.” He sighed. “If this is going to turn into a thing where you actuallydon’ttake off your clothes, I’d really appreciate it if you’d give me as much warning as possible. Because the way you were talking before? I’m pretty jazzed up over here.”
Cade looked torn. “Could we turn the lights out?”
“Seriously? I don’t get to see?” But if seeing was what he had to sacrifice in order to earn the privilege of touching, then Aiden could live with it. So he stood up and flipped the light switch.
It wasn’t pitch-black. There was enough light coming through the window for Aiden to see Cade’s general shape, and he saw how the shape lifted its hands and started working buttons free. Okay. They were undressing themselves. In the dark. It wasn’t the sexiest thing ever, but this was Cade, and that made it magic.
Cade was more gentle with his borrowed clothes than Aiden was with his own, so Aiden was naked well before Cade. He felt a bit foolish standing there, his hand instinctively wrapped around the erection he’d been sporting since the frat house. “Do you have an idea of what you wantto do?” he asked. Always an awkward question, and almost certainly going to be worse than usual given that he was dealing with Cade.
