I stopped with my hand on the banister and just listened for a second, telling myself I was wrong, telling myself it was the television or the neighbors or anything other than what it clearly was. Then Troy made a sound that went straight through the walls and through my chest and settled somewhere below my belt, and I stopped lying to myself.
They'd come back here.
I should have gone back to Murphy's and drunk until last call and stumbled home after they were asleep.
But I climbed anyway. One step at a time, slow and quiet, boots careful on the hardwood because I didn't want them to hear me. Didn't want them to know I was here. Some part of me already knew that was the wrong instinct to have, that a decent man would've made noise, made his presence known, let them hear him and have the decency to wrap up whatever was happening behind that door.
I was apparently not a decent man tonight.
Troy's door was ajar. Not wide open, just cracked, the latch not quite catching. Golden lamplight spilled out in a thin strip across the hallway floor. I stopped outside it, told myself to walk away one more time, and then I heard Troy's voice come through the gap and everything else stopped mattering.
“Come on,” Troy said. His voice was low and rough and stripped of everything careful. “Raf, come on, I've been thinking about this all fucking day.”
Rafael laughed, low and warm. “Yeah? Tell me what you were thinking about.”
“Your cock.” Flat and unembarrassed, no hesitation in it. “Specifically your cock in my mouth. You gonna make me beg for it or what?”
The sound that came out of me was silent. Just air, pressed out of my lungs before I could stop it. I leaned against the wall beside the door and tried to remember how breathing worked.
I looked through the gap.
The lamp on the nightstand threw everything in warm amber, and I could see the bed clearly, could see both of them. Rafael was sitting on the edge of the mattress, still mostly dressed, shirt open but not off, and Troy was on his knees between Rafael's legs on the floor. He'd already gotten Rafael's jeans open. His hands were on Rafael's thighs and he was looking up at him with an expression I'd never seen on Troy's face in the years I'd known him. Open and wanting, nothing held back at all.
My chest was tight. My cock was already half-hard just from the sound of Troy's voice saying those words, and seeing him on his knees with that expression on his face sent the rest of the blood in my body south so fast I felt lightheaded.
“Beg then,” Rafael said. He wasn't being cruel about it. Just easy and confident, like he knew exactly where this was going and was enjoying the journey.
Troy's jaw tightened. Then I watched the exact moment he gave in, watched resistance melt off him like wax. He leaned in and pressed his mouth to the inside of Rafael's thigh and said, “Please. Give it to me. I want to taste you.”
Rafael threaded his fingers through Troy's hair, and Troy tilted into it like a cat being stroked, and then Rafael guided him forward and Troy opened his mouth and took him in with a low sound that I felt in my back teeth.
I couldn't look away. My mouth was dry and my cock was pressing hard against the front of my jeans and I was a man standing in a dark hallway watching his stepson do what I had absolutely no right to be watching. And I stood there anyway, eyes fixed on the gap in the door, watching Troy work.
He was good at it. That was the thing that hit me second, right after the gut-punch of want. The way he moved, the way his hand wrapped around the base and his head bobbed slow and then deep, the sounds he was making, low and hungry like this was what he wanted and not a performance. Rafael's head had gone back. His hand was loose in Troy's hair, not directing, just resting there, and he was making sounds that confirmed everything I already knew about how this was going.
My hand went to my cock without permission. Pressed the heel of my palm against myself through the denim, trying to take the edge off, trying to convince myself this was just pressure and not what it actually was.
“Fuck,” Rafael said, not loud. “That mouth on you, man.”
Troy pulled off long enough to say “shut up” and then went back down, and the wet slick sounds of it were obscene and clear through the cracked door and I had my hand pressed flat against the wall beside me because I needed to hold onto the structure of the house to stay upright.
That's when I saw the lace.
Troy had stripped down to just his underwear at some point, and in the warm lamplight I could see it clearly. Black lace, low on his hips, the same scalloped edge, the same cut. The same ones I'd pulled out of his laundry and held in my hands while I tried to figure out whose they were.
There hadn't been anyone else.
They were Troy's. Had been Troy's the whole time. That soft delicate black lace sitting low on his hips, incongruous against the lean muscle of his back and thighs, and he wore them like they belonged there because they did. I'd held them in my hands. I'd stood in the laundry room and breathed in whatever faint scent still clung to the fabric, and I hadn't known what I was doing, and now I did and the knowledge went through me like a live current.
Rafael reached down and ran his thumb along the waistband of the lace where it sat at the small of Troy's back, and Troy shivered visibly, a full-body tremor that I could see from the hallway.
“Get up here,” Rafael said. “Come on.”
Troy pulled off, wiped his mouth with the back of his hand, and climbed up onto the bed. Rafael flipped him with easy strength, got him on his hands and knees, and I watched Rafael run both hands down Troy's back and over the curve of his ass through the lace like he was taking his time, like he was enjoying everything he'd been given.
My cock was throbbing now. I could feel my pulse in it, each beat sending a wave of pressure through my entire body. I was leaking into my boxers, the fabric already damp, and I hadn't even touched myself properly yet.
“You're so fucking pretty,” Rafael said, quiet but clear.
