“No.” I tugged him back. “Don’t stop. I just—fuck.”Fuck. How could I explain something that made no sense?
I wanted Locke.
I’d wanted him for longer than I probably even knew.
So why did this moment—this imperfectly perfect fucking moment—suddenly make me feel like I was jumping out of a plane with no parachute?
“Thinking about it isn’t the sin. It’s acting on it. Promise me, son. Promise me you’ll never do anything that would hurt your mother like that.”
An old echo I’d learned to ignore. Fuck, my dad’s voice had been gone from my head for years. So why the fuck was I hearing him now?
Because you’ve never been with a dude like this. Handjobs and blowies in the dark don’t count.
Handjobs from randos I’d accepted for blessedreleaseand always regretted afterwards. Blowies I’d walked away from halfway through because I didn’t want any mouth on me that wasn’thers.
But I wanted Locke’s mouth on me.
So fucking much.
I hated myself for stumbling away from him and sinking into a crouch, hiding my face in my shaking fucking hands. How was being naked with him this morning the easiest thing in the world, and yetthiswas imploding my brain?
Locke’s warmth reached me. Then his big hand on my back, my shoulder, the top of my head. “Too much?”
“It’s not that.” The words were muffled. I raised my head and found him on the floor with me, though he’d yanked his T-shirt on. “It’s just... a lot for me. The dude thing. Apart from Rubi a thousand years ago, I’ve never really done it.”
Humour crinkled Locke’s bewitching eyes. “You kissed Rubi against that sink?”
“No, I fucked him in my bed upstairs, but we were so drunk we tried to order a taxi from the speaking clock to take us back down again afterwards.”
“Sounds amazing.”
“We fell off the bed while we were doing it.”
“Wow.”
“Twice.”
Locke laughed. Then he sobered. “Rubi’s the only dude you’ve ever been with?”
I started to answer, but the door banged open. It was the wind, but the noise broke the moment, and I realised I was crouched on the grotty bunkhouse floor about to admit to the hottest bloke I’d ever seen that I was pretty much a dude virgin.
A heavy sigh escaped me and I hauled myself upright, an old injury in my knee protesting the motion.
Locke steadied me, concern and curiosity still clouding his gaze.
I don’t want him to worry about me.
Fuck. I didn’t wantanyoneto worry about me. The people I cared about deserved a better life than that.“There were others that spun my head way before that, but my parents couldn’t handle the gay.” The Lord’s Prayer tattooed on my chest itched. “It’s why they packed me off here to live with my uncle. Make amanof me.”
“How old were you?”
“Sixteen. I was twenty when me and Rubes messed around, but we didn’t do it because we liked each other.”
“An experiment.” Locke nodded, understanding. “Been there.”
“Yeah?”
“Fifteen. The hot kid from the surf shop on Berrydown Road. Lo thought I was mental. Then he banged his brother three years later.”
