“Unlike some of us,” the bassist said as he entered, “I know how to drink.”
Aksel groaned. “Can’t we just postpone it for one day? My head is killing me.”
“Should’ve thought of that before you drank your weight in tequila last night,” Xander mocked him as he took off his coat and left it with the rest of their stuff beside Aksel. “Let’s get this started.”
Kaj cleared his throat, trying to shake off the lingering tension from his one-on-one with Noah.
He never thought they would meet again or that his body would still react to him this way, yet he couldn’t deny this man stirred things in him he hadn’t felt in a long while. It was devious and dark, but it was better than the vacuity that had ruled his life for years. Even Aksel and Xander had noticed the shift in his behavior.
They knew him well enough to see past the mask of indifference, and still, sometimes, they said it was hard to tell when he was being frank or joking. That was just how emotionally anesthetized he’d been. Until now.
As the notes of the first song filled the room, electricity crackled in the air. He wasn’t looking at Noah, but he could feel his eyes on him as he double-kicked. And fuck if that didn’t shake the animal within him awake.
Kaj played on autopilot, his body going through the motions while his thoughts raced. He couldn’t shake the image of Noah’s dark eyes plunging into his, pupils blown with a mix of perplexity and lust. He wanted more of that.Neededmore.
With both palms pressed on the tiled wall, Kaj panted and left his head hanging between his arms. He tried to focus on the scalding water cascading down his back, hoping it would stop his temples from thumping and his dick from asking for more.
He’d done everything in his hand to stop this sensation of a thousand flames from spreading inside of him, but nothing had worked so far,obviously.
He had gone swimming for an hour first thing in the morning, and later he’d hit the gym, where he’d done some weightlifting and ran on the treadmill. He hated running. You’d only catch him doing so if there was a fire or if a creature from another dimension was hunting him down, but that was how desperate he was.
In the afternoon, he drove around the countryside in his ridiculously expensive car. One that, along with his two motorcycles, he didn’t need since he lived downtown and walked or rode his bike everywhere—having money as punishment made him kind of eccentric, or absurd, depending on how you looked at it.
Nevertheless, the need to fuck and destroy Noah was becoming a form of torture, an ambiguous one that pissed him off.
As animals, humans constantly seek the things that reaffirm and gratify our egos, as well as whatever gives us pleasure. Those are the basic drivers of our existence—rational thinking comes after that. So, when the delicate balance of our psyche is threatened, affronting our pride or making it impossible to satisfy our needs, something new blooms in the dark. And it’s precisely that negative emotional response Kaj had clung to in order to keep breathing.
But hatred and desire aren’t that different. While they’re on opposite sides of the emotional spectrum, they’re both obsessive and all-consuming. Forces that could end worlds.
So here he was now, waiting for the exhaustion to kick in so he could go to bed and not wake up in the middle of the night craving a fix.
Closing his eyes, Kaj wrapped a hand around his cock again and sucked in a deep breath. He slowly stroked himself while the fantasies unfolded.
“This is what I call a nice welcome.”
Kaj immediately stopped moving his hand, but he didn’t let go of his dick, waiting for it to go soft. “What are you doing here, Mads?” He sighed and put his hands on the wall again.
“And here I thought thelittle dudewas happy to see me.”
“I haven’t gotten hard for you in years.”
“That’s so mean.”
“What are you doing here?” Kaj repeated, turning off the water tap before he opened the shower screen and stepped onto the bathmat.
“Well, the tour is over, and I didn’t feel like coming back to an empty, cold house.” Mads pouted, standing there like an idiot with his suitcase and violin case while Kaj rolled a towel around his hips.
“Is it the twenty-third already?”
“It is March twenty-third, yes. Sorry not sorry for disturbing your peace.” Mads shook his head. “Get ready. I have so much shit to talk about since you’ve been ignoring my texts.”
“Are you seriously staying?”
“Yes.” Mads cackled as he walked away. “I just arrived after a month of being away. My fridge is empty and I don’t feel like grocery shopping right now.”
“You could order takeout.”
“And eat alone?”
