Leo chuckled. He stretched his toes out, arching his feet, and the soft fabric of his dress sock rubbed my ankle. “You make it sound dreadful.”
I stuck my tongue out. “I just can’t believe I’m doing this. I can’t believe you make me want to do this. I always swore that I would never do this kind of thing,” I babbled.
“That’s a good way to ensure that something will happen,” Leo said with a nod. “Swear you’re never going to do it.”
I laughed. “That’s true. Just promise me you’ll keep saying terribly unromantic things about hookups and fuck buddies sometimes. If I ever get confused, that will drag me back to reality.”
Leo pulled himself forward on the bed. A few strands of his carefully combed hair fell out of place, tumbling over his forehead. He pressed his lips to my ear, and his beard scratched my cheek and tickled my skin. “River, will you be my fuck buddy?” he whispered.
I laughed and pulled him down on top of me, then rubbed the top of his head and messed up his hair. “I can’t believe you’re going to make me go to school,” I said. “There’s something weirdly hot about it.”
Leo laughed as he mounted me, spreading his legs on either side of my hips as he sat back on my thighs. “Go get that degree and make your boss proud,” he growled.
My hips jerked as a spasm shot through my muscles. Leo grinned down at me, his hand on my side. The purple light cast shadows over his features, and his nipples were hard beneath the thin white cotton of his shirt.
Kai was right down the hall. Hooking up with Leo at all was against his rules—was I really about to do it in his condo, too?
“Once a week,” I whispered, then palmed Leo’s cock through his trousers, unable to resist anymore. I squeezed his stiff length, and he let out a soft groan.
He leaned down and brushed a kiss across my lips, then grabbed my cock. “Once a week,” he whispered back. “Starting now.”
Chapter Twenty-One
Leo
Riverand I walked back to the condo from the matinee, the breeze cool on a cloudy, late summer day. It had been a couple weeks since we started our new arrangement, and I was almost getting used to the strange feeling of taking time off in the middle of the workday to catch a movie.
I would never get used to River, though. He’d just dragged me to seeThe Princess Bride, a movie I did not expect to enjoy watching again but totally fell in love with the second it started. In the nearly empty theater, he and I were able to whisper to each other, laughing at our favorite lines and each other’s bad jokes.
We were doing a great job keeping to the rules we’d laid out. On my end, it wasn’t really hard. Sure, I wanted to touch River’s body every time I saw him, but restraining myself meant that we got to have something much, much more exciting.
I wanted River to have the kind of independence he was looking for. He’d asked me to promise him that I would help him break his pattern, and keeping that promise meant a lot to me. If I could pull it off and support him as he built the life he wanted, it would mean I had treated River right. And if I screwed it all up and he had his heart broken again, I didn’t know how I would be able to forgive myself, let alone earn the forgiveness of my best friend or of River.
“I forgot to tell you,” River said. His hands were folded behind his back as we walked, and he had a light spring in his step. “I picked a school.”
“Yeah?”
“They have a program that lets me study arts administration, like I wanted, and there’s space in the degree so I can take a bunch of photography classes, too.”
“Photography, that’s great.”
He had an easy smile on his face, any hesitation or lack of confidence gone, and I took a deep satisfaction that I might have helped him get there.
River dragged his hand along the wall of a little restaurant as we rounded the corner to our street. “I’ve always been interested in it, and I’ve always taken a lot of photographs. I don’t plan for it be my career, but if I’m going back to school, I wanted to take advantage of the opportunity and study an art.”
“I think that’s great,” I said. “Can you start in the fall?”
“Part-time. I’ll take some intro classes at night and stay working for you some days, so long as you’ll have me.”
He bumped his hip against mine as we approached the condo.
“I’ll have you,” I said, then bumped him back.
“There’s one other thing,” he added. “I’ve been looking around, and I think I’m going to move into a little studio apartment of my own soon. I have the money, and you and Kai have been so welcoming...” We paused in the front of the building and he turned his eyes to mine. “I think it’s time.”
My heart jumped. Something inside of me screamed no, that he shouldn’t move away. Living together felt so right. I couldn’t understand why he would want to change that.
Luckily, though, I grabbed hold of my senses before I blurted something disastrous out. “I’m excited for you,” I said, my heart pounding. “School and your own apartment. You’re right on track.”
