I stood up, shoving my hands into my pockets. Handsoff.
“Look, I’ll leave you alone,” I said, exercising epic amounts of maturity and self-restraint this time by not pointing out how yeah, I was still going to go rub one out the minute I made it down the hall to my room.
“Wait,” Sean said, surging to his feet and grabbing onto my arm. “I… I… I am.”
“What?” I asked, covering his hand to pin it against my skin because I was a horrible, horrible person who couldn’t seem to stick to my own rules when it came to him.
“I’m g-g-gay,” Sean stuttered quietly, still pale as a ghost. “I am. I do, um, bat for your team.” He looked down, not meeting my eyes. “I just... I’m not supposed to be, and my mother—myparents—wouldn’t like it if they knew.” He glanced back up at me shyly. “I’ve… I’ve never told anyone before.”
My hand tightened spasmodically over his, something warm and kind of beautiful piercing my chest as I blinked down at him in shock. He’d come out tome? But then, as the way his voice had shaken at the mention of his parents registered, something else—something fierce and ugly—ripped through me, so hot and fast that I saw red for a moment.
I was biased—I already hadn’t liked those fuckers and all their rigid rules and expectations for him—but now, the way he looked legitterrified... Jesus. Just from having caught one side of far too many phone calls he’d taken from them since we’d moved in together, I knew he was right. No way could he come out to his parents. They’d straight-up end him for not fitting into their narrow little worldview, and that thought took me from a case of active dislike to full-on hating them in the blink of an eye.
How fuckingdarethey not appreciate what a gift they had in their son?
But—did I mention I’m a selfish shit and a total led-by-my-dick manwhore?—so hot on the heels of all that righteous haterade came a whole different feeling. Sean had just told me he was gay... and he’d also just popped some serious wood for me. And that? Oh,hellyeah. I started to grin. I could definitely work with that.
“What you said earlier, all that… that stuff about… what I was… was going to d-d-d-do tonight,” Sean said, still pale as fuck but now peering up at me shyly. “I don’t ever do that.”
“Don’t ever do what?” I asked, feeling dumb for a sec. What was he trying to tell me?
He suddenly blushed hard, color flooding his pale cheeks so fast they almost glowed. “I don’t, um, you know.” His eyes darted down to my cock for a split second and his free hand made a subtle, up-and-down twitching motion that I would have missed if I hadn’t had every ounce of my attention on him.
A twitching motion that was unmistakable.
Now I was the one wide-eyed with surprise. “You don’t jerk off?”
Sean nodded, looking mortified.
“Ever?” I asked, not quite comprehending how that would be possible.
He shook his head. “I can’t,” he whispered, the hand that was still resting on my arm, still locked under mine, trembling. “I can’t touch m-m-m-myself there.”
I opened my mouth, ready, able, and willing to offer a hundred and one dirty suggestions about how I could help him with that, but then I beat them all back with a stick, because he looked all kinds of messed up about that confession and I realized this wasnotthe time to be an ass… even if I definitely didn’t understand what the hell he meant. One dick. Two hands. I may not have been a math major, but it seemed like a pretty straightforward equation to me. How could henottouch himself? Fuck knows if I ever got the chance, I wouldn’t have that kind of restraint.
“What do you mean, Sean?” I asked, a weird jumble of feelings welling up inside me. One part confused, one part still—fuckingalways, around him—turned the fuck on, and a whole bunch of other parts that were starting to feel kinda worried about him, too, given how shaky he was getting. “You can’t touch your dick, baby?”
With epic levels of self-restraint, I beat back my inner horndog so I could pay attention with the confused-and-worried parts of me. Sean was starting to look wrecked, and not in the afterglow-of-riding-my-cock way I’d imagined so many times. And I… well, yeah, I for damn sure wanted to offer to touch that sure-to-be-as-pretty-as-the-rest-of-him dick of hisforhim, but more than that, I wanted to get that look off his face. I wanted to figure out what the hell he was talking about and… and make it better.
Jesus, was I getting soft? Sure, he was sweet and I liked him, but for all the guys I’d fucked—spoiler: that would be a lot—I’d never felt this way about anyone before. Never wanted to make things right for someone else without some kind of get-in-his-pants ulterior motive. Neverneededto make them right, the way I suddenly, desperately, needed to for Sean.
I let go of his hand and traced the tear track still visible on his cheek with my finger. “Tell me, baby,” I said... not because I was still hoping to fuck him even though of course I’d always be down for that if I ever let myself go there, but just because he was hurting and I had to find out how I could fix it.
Then my hand froze. Hell, my whole fuckingbodyfroze, the truth slamming into me like a goddamn three-hundred-pound tackle: I didn’t justlikeSean, I didn’t just appreciate him as a too-good-to-be-true roommate or daydream about fucking him because he was the prettiest goddamn thing I’d ever seen, Iactuallyliked him, like the kind of liking that could lead straight into the always-to-be-avoided minefield of shit like… likerelationshipsif I wasn’t careful.
How the fuck had that happened?
And even with the rubble still smoking from the detonation of the oh-shit-I’ve-got-feelings-for-him bomb—and despite my own personal preference for all sex to be quick, dirty, and with absolutely no strings or expectations attached—instead of hightailing it out the door and heading for the closest anonymous Grindr hook-up I could find like Ishouldhave been doing, I still had my hand on Sean’s face. I still needed to fix these tears he was leaking. Still had to figure out what the fuck he’d been talking about with his “no touching” revelation, wipe that stricken look off his face, and then find a way to get us back to good.
Maybe even to better than good.
“Tell me,” I repeated firmly, since he always responded so beautifully to being ordered around. I could deal with all the feelings bullshit later, sometime when I could concentrate on navigating that minefield without accidentally blowing something up. Right now, though, I’d just have to forge ahead, because I had other priorities and they were all about making sure my boy was okay.
“Okay,” Sean whispered, just like I’d known he would. And fuck, I loved how much he loved to do whatever I wanted, especially when I put some force behind the words like I just had.
He stared up at me with those big, wet eyes and sucked in a ragged breath as he braced himself for whatever he was about to lay on me… and my cock twitched hard.
Yep, I’m a fucking dog. Even knowing he was hurting and with the threat offeelingsto complicate things between us now, once I sorted this crying shit out for him, all bets were off. A guy can only be good for so long before he breaks, and when it came to the sweet little bundle of temptation known as my roommate?
