“I know what to do with my dick,” I teased.
He pressed his lips together and shook his head sympathetically. “No, you don’t. You think you do, but you really don’t. You’ll probably come the second someone who’s not you touches it.”
“Bet I won’t.”
The conversation was light. We were joking. Taking the piss. Having a laugh. But my words had grown barbs, and suddenly, I was two hundred feet in the air, walking a tightrope without anything close to the skill required to do so.
He cocked his head, and when he looked at me again, there was a glint in his eyes that was more sex than sweet. “Bet you will.”
My laugh was strange, a hollow, clanking sound that rattled around the basement, bouncing off walls before finding a quiet place to land. We were sitting on the sofa, and Romeo got up to turn the Xbox on. He opened World War Z, his favorite game at the time.
Truth be told, I was a little bored of killing zombies and a lot more interested in our previous topic.
“Remember that time we kissed?” I asked, taking care to keep my voice low and spread my words out evenly.
He stopped what he was doing, his jaw dropping and mouth breaking into a huge grin that wasn’t at all like him. “Yeah.”
It wasn’t that we never spoke about it. We mentioned it a couple of times after it happened to check on each other. It was just that it had been a really long time since either of us had brought it up.
After a little while, I managed, “That was dumb, huh?”
He handed me a controller and traced his thumb along the seam of his lips before sitting. The bench seat of the sofa tilted as he sank into it, and I found myself more than a little off-kilter. There was space between us, but not much. Half a foot, maybe. We weren’t touching, but we would have been if either of us moved. For me, that little bit of space was almost worse than no space.
“Not that dumb,” he said matter-of-factly as he scrolled through locations in the game. “I handled the shit out of myself when I kissed Riley because I knew what I was doing. You were there. You saw me.”
I hummed noncommittedly and started praying for a more sensible version of myself to take the reins. No one turned up. “We could jerk each other off. You know, just so we’d know what it’s like. So we don’t, like, embarrass ourselves in front of anyone else.”
The attempt to keep my voice even failed spectacularly.
I felt myself color and burn from the horror and shame of what I’d just said. I died several deaths as I waited for Romeo to respond. I was about to take my words back andfocus my full attention on finding the highest structure in Alabaster and throwing myself off it when Romeo said, “And you won’t tell anyone?”
My head whipped to the side. His eyes were dusty blue. Wide open with nothing to hide. Pale, with no hint of storm clouds on the horizon.
There was no hesitation in them.
And there was no hesitation in my answer either. “Never.”
“Just this one time, right?”
“Oh yeah. Definitely. One time.”
My tongue had grown thick in my mouth and my heart was beating hard enough to crack bone. Romeo leaned back, lifting his T-shirt to expose a hint of his belly as he unbuckled his belt. His skin was paler there. Lighter than his face and arms. I watched, transfixed, as he did it.
There was no hint of a tremor in his hands.
Mine were shaking like dry autumn leaves in a strong breeze. I rubbed myself through my pants, a little ruse that impressed me at the time. I was rock solid simply from being close to Romeo, but I didn’t want him to know that—I remember coming back to that moment later and feeling stupidly proud of myself for thinking to do it.
I was wearing athletic shorts, so thankfully, I didn’t have to wrangle with anything as complex as buttons or zippers.When Romeo undid his fly, I shoved my shorts down and took my dick out.
His boxer briefs were salmon pink. A soft, faded color. I don’t know why that surprised me so much, but it did. At the time, I had at least an entire persona dedicated to thinking about things like what color Romeo’s underwear would be, and I’d always thought they’d be black or white. Maybe gray. Blue at a push.
But pink?Oof.
I loved that.
The air in the basement was heavy and hot. Stagnant. The feint generic rock of the World War Z theme played on repeat. Just the first part. Just the first few bars that play as you select your game.
I looked down and then up very fucking fast. Romeo had his dick in his hand. It was hard. Naked and swollen. The skin was smooth and darker on the head than on his shaft. It was perfect. The shock of seeing it in real life, not my hazy, lust-fueled dreams, knocked the stuffing out of me. I turned my gaze sharply to the TV and then to the ceiling, unsure where to look.
