Ben closed his eyes again as Sam squeezed his shoulders.
“An extra stool for you two,” Annie said behind him. Ben pointedly ignored her, pretending to be too blissed out to listen. “A lot of men like having their tummy rubbed, if you’d like to try that.”
After a pause, Ben felt Sam sit down behind him. “You think she’s thinking of dogs, maybe?”
Ben snorted. “I have no idea. It’s never occurred to me to ask anyone for a belly rub.”
“Wanna try it?” Sam asked.
Ben swallowed. It was one thing to have him touching the back of his neck, but his stomach… that was getting dangerously close to other areas.
All the same, now that it had been mentioned, he was curious. And if Sam was offering…
“I’ll try anything once,” Ben decided.
“There is a laundry list of things you wouldn’t try even once when we were younger, but whatever you say,” Sam said. Ben could hear the smirk in his voice, but the moment Sam slid his hands down Ben’s back to rest on his stomach, he didn’t care anymore.
Ben wriggled as Sam worked his thumbs in, warmth pooling deep in his gut. Thisdidfeel good.
He wouldn’t have wanted just anyone doing it, though. It was the kind of touch that he knew immediately that he’d only want from people he trusted.
Not just trusted. He’d have to be attracted to them, too.
There was no point in pretending he wasn’t attracted to Sam. As the gentle massage continued, Ben was increasingly glad that Sam couldn’t see his crotch from the position he was in.
“So, is it good?” Sam asked softly.
“Oh yeah,” Ben said. “I could let you do this forever.”
Sam chuckled behind him, a warm, rich sound that made a shiver run down Ben’s spine. He’d been unsure when he was younger, but now that he was more comfortable with himself, it was impossible to miss how incredibly, deeply appealing everything about him was.
From the sound of his laughter to the brush of his breath over the back of Ben’s neck, everything about Sam was something Ben wanted more of.
He had no idea whether Sam felt the same way, but he needed to find out. He couldn’t keep wondering forever.
“Okay, time to switch,” Robert called out, startling Ben.
His heart thudded in his chest, the thought that he was about to touch Sam like this for the first time suddenly overwhelming.
Finding out sounded great in theory, but in practice, it required him to put a whole lot on the line. If Sam rejected him, he wasn’t sure he’d ever recover.
On the other hand, he’d faced rejection a thousand times in his work, and he was still going. He was used to it, even. The stakes were higher here—there was only one Sam, and he might only have one shot—but that didn’t mean he could afford to keep taking the coward’s way out.
Neither of them were going to wait around forever.
Ben stood, moving behind the stool he’d been sitting on before. He grabbed his t-shirt from where it had ended up draped over the tiny table the oils were on and pulled it back over his head.
“Do you want me to start with your neck, or skip straight to the good stuff?” Ben asked.
Fear aside, he wanted Sam to feel good. He wanted to make him happy, bring him pleasure, let him know how valued and special he was to Ben.
Maybe that was too sappy, but Ben was getting tired of hiding his feelings. He’d seen how happy Eliot and Danny were, and he saw how cute they were with each other. He hadn’t been kidding when he’d said he was sick of him and Sam not being the cutest couple here.
Ben had spent a long time hiding his feelings, making sure no one could ever use them against him. When they’d been fear and vulnerability, that had made all the sense in the world.
But love? He shouldn’t have needed to hide that. He’d been doing it for too long.
“Neck, maybe?” Sam said. He sounded… nervous, which was the last thing Ben had expected from him. “I can’t take my shirt off.”
