Carson looked at Atticus again. “It’s the jealousy that gets me off.”
“Whoa. Seriously?”
“Yeah. Seriously.”
“You want your partner to fuck other people because it makes you jealous?”
Carson nodded. “Yeah. Witnessing your partner being pleasured by someone and knowin’ they enjoy it … it makes you realize you’re not the only one who can give them that.”
See, that was where Carson was wrong. At least in Slade’s case. If Carson hadn’t been there, Slade never would’ve hooked up with any of the guys he’d been with.
“And this is still your thing?” Atticus asked.
Carson’s gaze lowered again. “It’s not somethin’ I can turn off.”
“Have you tried?”
“Yes,” Carson told Atticus. “I’m tryin’ now. With you.”
“That’s why you’re getting this out in the open? Because you think you can turn it off? For me?”
The skepticism in Atticus’s tone was harsh. It was apparent he didn’t think he was worthy of someone making a change like that.
Slade watched the two men stare at one another from a few feet away. He could feel the tension. It stretched until it was on the verge of snapping when Carson finally spoke.
“I told you last night … I don’t know why, but I can’t stop thinkin’ about you.”
An anvil could’ve fallen on him and not made him feel as flattened as that statement did. Slade had always wanted Carson to say that to him, tofeelthat for him. Instead, Carson had used him to get off, never committing on any other level.
“I should go,” Slade stated, not sure he could endure hearing Carson profess his undying love for a man he just met when Slade had spent years seeking that same connection.
“I still think about you, too,” Carson said.
Slade sat on the edge of the cushion, positioned to get to his feet as he looked at Carson.
“What I felt for you … it wasn’t only about sex. But I couldn’t tell you that. I couldn’t risk your derision.”
Slade swallowed hard, unable to speak.
“Past tense?” Atticus asked.
Slade waited with bated breath for him to answer that.
***
Carson knew if he told the truth, he would risk losing Atticus before he ever really had him.
It was difficult enough answering his questions up to this point, but he had vowed to himself he wouldn’t ruin this by letting his kinks own him. He’d screwed everything up once already—with Slade—and he knew a man didn’t get that many chances at love in his lifetime. If he didn’t confess now, there was a good chance he would spend the rest of his life alone.
Carson met Atticus’s bewildered stare and held it. “Not entirely past tense, no.”
“So what? You love him? Or you want to fuck him? I don’t understand.”
“I don’t understand it either,” Carson admitted honestly, still holding Atticus’s gaze. “After last night, I thought I’d moved on. Then I saw him at the bakery this mornin’.”
He could feel Slade’s eyes boring holes into him.
“I taunted him,” Carson told Atticus. “I told him he was welcome in my bed anytime.”
