Gould doesn’t answer, but he does stop talking.
“You could tell her she’s beautiful and…” tries Luke.
“She knows she’s beautiful. Everyone tells her she’s beautiful.” Chase shakes his head.
“Just dance with her tonight,” I say. “Stand close to her when you’re talking and when you say something that makes her laugh, look at her like you can’t believe she’s real. Then ask if you can kiss her.”
“Yeah, you should totally do that,” says Gould as if it was his idea.
The place is packed. The line for the bar is a mile long. The ID Izzy got for me worked for the door, but I don’t love the idea of waiting for ages in line for a drink and then getting kicked to the curb. The music vibrates through the floor and up my legs. Strobes of alternating pastel light stain the dance floor.
“First round’s on me,” calls Gould and falls back into the crowd.
He returns surprisingly quickly with beers and shooters for all of us. Luke takes a beer but pushes the shooter away.
“Come on, Pookie, one little shot won’t hurt you.” He reaches over and tweaks Luke’s nipple through his tank. Before I even have time to start thinking about where I’d bury his body, Luke catches his wrist and holds it tightly.
“No,” he says, quiet but firm.
He lets go of Gould’s wrist and moves ever so slightly closer to me. Gould looks like he’s been slapped. His hand drops down to his side. He looks at Luke and me the same way he did earlier. Luke, then me, then back to Luke.
“Nice,” he sneers, leaning in close to my face, picking up Luke’s shot and throwing it back. “Fucking sweet.”
Luke shrugs and gives Gould anaw shuckssmile. It’s the same smile you’d give a puppy that was struggling to house train. “Gouldie gets a little belligerent when he drinks,” he explains to me without a trace of judgement in his tone.
We chat as a group for a while, talking over each other and shouting to be heard over the music. It’s far from a riveting conversation, but it isn’t nearly as bad as I thought it would be. Chase is being entertaining and having Izzy around is good. She resets the vibe, cutting through the bullshit and settling things down. The friends she’s with seem nice, too.
We head to the dance floor when we’ve finished that round of drinks and the next one. Luke and Gould lead the way, bouncing energetically as they walk. The rest of us follow, albeit a lot less enthusiastically. I’m way too sober for dancing. Dancing is something that falls squarely into Shit-faced Jessie’s domain.
I shuffle around uncomfortably for a while, gradually turning my back and closing the circle so Chase and Izzy are dancing on their own. Luke dances boisterously, but thankfully it’s nowhere near the carnage he unleashes at home. Every now and again he bumps into me with his hip or his shoulder. It makes me feel like I’m falling, even though my feet are both firmly on the ground.
“I wanna dance with you,” he says leaning in close to my ear.
His breath on my neck sends a little tremor through me. It runs down my body like fingernails on skin. Stroking me so lightly I can only just feel it, but it’s enough to make me start wanting. I glance around and see a sea of people I don’t know. I see a handful I do. I start feeling very, very vague about why I care if they know I’m into Luke. It makes total sense to want him. He’s the hottest thing in this club. Everyone wants him. Girls, guys, everyone’s looking. Their eyes on his body makes me feel like I’m going to combust. Like I’m going to lose it. I move closer to him. I can’t tell if it’s to shield him, or if it’s because being around him and not touching him is starting to feel like it’s going to hurt me. Either way, I start dancing. His smile hits a thousand watts and his eyes glaze over. His lips move, but I can’t hear him over the music.
“What?” I yell.
He leans in so close I feel his lips on my ear. “Can’t believe you’re real.”
The words slice into me. They cut me up inside and confuse my senses. They rake my skin like fingernails again, but this time they do it hard. They scrape down my belly and reach into my pants. They find my cock and my balls and they squeeze. I’m instantly so hard, I feel it happening; that subtle shift, the change from the version of me I trust to the one I really, really don’t.
Luke’s features are painted blue, highlighting his full lips and strong jaw. The light seems to refract as it finds the tiny slivers of skin peeking out of his mesh tank. It changes from blue to pink. Hard then soft. His lips part and I see a glint of his teeth. The sound and the lights and the booze are all getting to me. They’re making me feel stretched out and crazy. I feel overstimulated and so fucking horny it doesn’t feel safe to be around other people.
I swipe one hand down Luke’s lower back, easing my hand under his top and closing a fist around the warm skin I find there. I lean down slightly to make sure he can hear me.
“Can we go home?”
He doesn’t move out of my grip, despite the fact I’m holding him hard. If anything, he leans into it.
“No,” he says with an innocent smile. Then he grinds his hard cock against my hip. By the time he looks at me again, he looks a light year from innocent.
“You should run,” I sneer, grabbing at him again. One hand digs into his flank and the other curls tightly around his neck to make sure he can hear me. “If you had any sense you’d run from me.”
He pulls back ever so slightly, like maybe he does have a smidgeon of self-preservation. He doesn’t, though. He’s only stepped back to get a better look at me.
“Do I look like I’m going anywhere?”
The same wave of arousal from before hits me again. It’s stronger and darker this time. It’s so strong and so dark it feels like it’s going to destroy me. I can handle it, but I know if it takes me down, it’s going to take him down too. I step away from him and let him know I’m going to get something to drink.
