Letting me give him pleasure. Letting me try things out to see what he liked and what I liked.
I spit in my hand to ease the slide as I continue to jerk myself off. The air in the truck has gone warm and humid from my heavy breathing, and maybe if my eyes were open, I’d see the windows fogging.
But I don’t dare open my eyes because behind my lids is the world’s most beautiful naked man.
Would Ames let me pin him down the way I sometimes did when we wrestled? Only this time, the wrestling session would end in deep, drugging kisses and the slow grind of my hard cock against his ass.
Knowing me, I’d come before I could even get inside him.
I come with a strangled gasp, head thrown back against the seat, and for about thirty seconds, everything’s blissfully blank.
Then reality crashes me back to earth.
What the fuck? I just came to the mental image of fucking my best friend.
Of fucking aman.
I clean myself up with some fast-food napkins from the console. My hands are shaking again, for different reasons now, and I have to force them to steady.
This isn’t a big deal.
I was stressed and needed release.
It doesn’t mean anything deeper than that. Masturbation fantasies are simply that. Fantasies. Private thoughts that get the job done. No harm, no foul, right?
And no one will ever know.
People think about weird shit all the time when they’re jerking off. Hell, a guy I played hockey with in high school once confessed—after many Jägerbombs—that he fantasized about the little dude on the IKEA instructions. It didn’t mean he was… you know… IKEA-sexual.
And the important thing is that it’s done. My dick’s deflated, and my head’s clear, and the ends justify the means.
I start the truck, turn the blower on high, and open the windows to clear out any lingering… memories.
The station is quiet when I arrive. It’s just after shift change, so the daytime folks are gone, and most of the guys who were on call last night are taking comp time, which is just a fact of life when you have a small, mostly volunteer crew. I bypass my office and head straight for the locker room to clean up before my meeting with Greene.
I push open the swinging door and stop dead.
Ames is standing by his locker, half-naked with his shirt in his hand. He’s obviously shit-talking with Metier and Ruiz—as I watch, Ames launches his shirt at Metier, then throws back his head and laughs when it lands. It’s a scene I’ve witnessed—hell, taken part in—a hundred times.
But today isn’t like the other days. The late-afternoon sunlight from the high windows catches on Ames’s bare,perpetually tanned skin, the dark stubble on his jaw, and his dark curls, making him glow like he’s backlit. My vision tunnels to him, just him, and for the first time in… ever… I see him.
Really see him.
Not as Ames. Not as the other half of me. Not as my platonic best friend.
But like he’s a stranger.
Like he’s a man.
Like he’s… a really fucking beautiful man.
Time slows in that underwater way, like I’m in a movie, and I see myself from a distance, zeroing in on the lean muscles of Ames’s torso—clearly defined, but not bulky like mine, the way his uniform pants ride low on his hips, the way the trail of dark hair disappears beneath his waistband. On his eyes—bright blue ringed with navy. On his tattooed bicep—the perfect match tomine—which flexes and bunches, making meteors dance and mountains shift, when he catches the shirt Metier whips back.
He’s…gorgeous.
Not in an objective “Ames Axford is the total package” that I’ve joked about. There’s nothing objective about this, and it’s sure as fuck not a joke.
The knowledge, the fullness of it, hits me right in the solar plexus and steals my breath. It makes my mouth go dry. It makes my pulse race. And I’m suddenly desperately grateful that I pulled into a parking lot to jerk off less than an hour ago because otherwise I’d be mortifyingly hard right now.
