Accidentally Yours: A Friends-to-Lovers Gay Romance (Superbia Springs Book 3)

by Rachel Kane

“You yelled!”

  “Get out!”

  “Okay!”

  “No, wait, help!”

  “Okay!”

  “But don’t look!”

  Why does life play such tricks with time? Those moments we hope will last forever flicker past like shooting stars; blink and they’re gone. And then there are moments we wish we could have avoided, moments we wish would just end quickly, leaving us to escape and ponder our fates, but no, those moments have to stretch on and on, time in slow motion.

  Judah stood there, mouth working open and closed like a goldfish, unsure of what to do. He had the insane urge to mop the floor so Alex wouldn’t slip. Or to turn the water off. Or to do anything other than looking at the bookseller’s lean, naked frame, and certainly not looking at the member which hung so openly from him, so impossible to hide.

  “I’m sorry!” Judah said, hurrying to cover his eyes with his hands, even though they seemed to move through molasses, so slowly. “I’m trying not to look!”

  How ridiculous to stand there, a grown man with his eyes scrunched shut like a child’s, his hands adding an extra level of protection. This wasn’t the Medusa, it wasn’t like Judah was going to turn to stone if he opened his eyes.

  Guys saw each other all the time, didn’t they? Locker rooms across the world, athletic men lounging nude, leaning against one another, chatting, idly scratching, not a care in the world, certainly not concerned that their manhoods were exposed to view.

  Maybe you’ve been watching too much porn.

  Alex clearly wanted to cover himself, but to do so would be to fall. He needed both his hands. “I lost my grip on the tub, that’s all…but I feel like if I move, I’m going to slip again, and I can’t put weight on this stupid cast…”

  “Okay, I am walking toward you,” Judah said.

  “Yes, I can see that. You’re the one with your eyes closed, not me. You’re about to run into the—”

  “Ow!”

  “—sink. God, this is the most humiliating—watch out for the—”

  “Ow! Can I open my eyes a little bit? You know, if I had some sort of sonar, perhaps an infrared scanner, this wouldn’t be an issue.”

  “Just don’t look at me. For my own dignity’s sake. I’m not a hundred years old.”

  “Clearly.”

  “No personal remarks!”

  Finally Judah made it to the tub, his hands out in front of him to feel his way. His thigh throbbed from where he’d run into the sink, and he wondered if he’d have a bruise. He wondered how to reach out and pick up Alex, without looking at him. “Okay, so I have bad news,” he said.

  Alex practically whimpered. “This whole situation is bad news.”

  “Unless I’ve miraculously gained the power of telekinesis over the past few minutes—which I don’t think I have—I’m going to have to put my hands on you.”

  A hesitant voice: “Okay…?”

  “But that means opening my eyes.”

  “No!”

  “Or it means just grabbing at you blindly.”

  And possibly touching your cock. Which would be a bad thing. Literally the worst thing ever. Like the shiny red button on a doomsday machine. If my hand makes contact there, I will shrivel up in humiliation and die.

  It really wasn’t fair. If he was going to find himself in ridiculous gay porn situations, there should at least be a chance of getting off from it. Slipping into the tub next to Alex—

  Oh come on! Stop that! PLATONIC crush, remember? You’re just pals! You’d ruin absolutely everything about your friendship and your life if that happened!

  Besides, Judah had watched a lot more science fiction than he had gay porn. He could probably aim a photon cannon more easily than he could aim his hands right now.

  Alex said, in a preternaturally calm voice, “Judah…I can feel my hand slipping again. Slowly. I’m going to fall. Can you open your eyes just enough to get your hands under me?”

  Under him! Of course! All this worrying about accidentally touching his cock, it was useless, he had to reach under…

  Which he did. That’s how he found himself cupping Alex’s ass in his left hand, right as Alex lost his grip again.

  He nearly dropped him.

  He had never touched another man’s ass before.

  Just think of yourself as a nurse. A nurse supporting his patient. His wet, trembling patient whose bare skin feels like silk against his hands—

  Okay. Maybe not thinking at all was the solution here.

  “I’m lifting you up.”

  “God, please be careful. Did I mention how humiliating this is? I can’t even believe—yikes!”

  Alex might have been rescued, but his body was determined that it was still falling, and as Judah lifted him, Alex’s arms flew around his neck, and suddenly they were face-to-face.

  Judah’s eyelids fluttered open. “I’ve got you. Stop squirming. Put your foot down. The good one.”

  A certain realization stole through him in that split-second, before he squeezed his eyes shut again. Four realizations, to be precise, and right now Judah’s mind was precise as a laser.

  First, Alex had beautiful eyes, even when he was afraid. They were soft, gentle eyes.

  Second, his lips were strangely full, and when they were slightly parted, with his teeth pressed against them, they seemed almost unavoidably kissable.

  Third, when he sighed, through those same parted lips, and through those delicate nostrils, his whole body seemed to conform to Judah’s, pressing against him for safety.

  Fourth, and most important, the most crucial of all: Judah had to get away from him. Right now. Otherwise he might accidentally kiss those lips. And that would destroy the world.

  “There,” he said in a rush, slipping out of Alex’s shaky grasp, picking up one of the crutches and handing it to him. “Now you’re safe.”

  With a free hand, Alex swept a towel up in front of him. His blush went straight down from his cheeks to his throat, all over his chest, as though his whole body were burning with embarrassment. “We’ve got to stop meeting like this.”

  “Are you kidding?” Judah said, opening his eyes fully now that Alex’s privates were covered. “This is the best exercise I’ve gotten in months.”

  That’s right, make it funny, it’s all a joke, ha-ha-ha, I saw your cock, la-di-dah…

  The joke landed flat, and Alex grimaced. “So…um.”

  “Yeah.”

  “Maybe I’ll just…do a sponge-bath or something.”

  “Sure, yeah.”

  “You know, here by myself. In the bathroom. Alone.”

  “Oh! God! Right. Sorry, I’m leaving.” He rushed to stand outside the bathroom door. “You’re sure you’re okay? Need anything? Soap, or—”

  Alex’s laugh was dismal. “I’m good. Just, y’know, close the door.”

  “Towels, do you have enough—”

  “Plenty! Thanks!”

  Judah hurried out, but paused before he left Alex’s bedroom.

  Because, as it happened, in the momentary loss of control from the emergency, in the brief time he had been exposed to Alex’s nethers, a reaction had been forming, a simple biological—

  Yes, yes, okay, stop trying to overcomplicate it. You’ve got a hard-on now.

  And boy did he.

  There was no way he could walk out there like this. He quickly reached into his pants to adjust himself, to make it a little less obvious how inspired he’d been by the sight of Naked Alex.

  Must…delete…image.

  If only minds worked like computers! If only he could toss that memory into the recycle bin of his brain, let it be erased forever. Yet the more he tried to put it out of his head, the more vivid it became, as though his gaze had lingered for hours instead of mere seconds.

  There was no amount of adjustment that was really going to hide his reaction. In fact, the more he adjusted, the more his body seemed to think he was jacking off; his fingers were getting wet down there, and if h
e kept this up, his pants were going to be wet too. He pulled his shirt-tail lower. Would that be enough concealment? He hoped so. God, how humiliating.

  And naturally, naturally, the second he opened the door to leave the room, Liam was right there in the hall.

  “Everything all right? I thought I heard a yell.”

  “I— Why wouldn’t everything be all right? Everything’s fine. Just…normal, perfectly normal.” His hands tugging at his shirt, wondering if he should turn to the side to hide things better, or would that just make it more obvious. Please don’t notice, please don’t notice…

  Liam gave him a quizzical look. “So Alex is okay?”

  “He’s fine! Fine and dandy! Just…just fine. And dandy.”

  “Judah, sometimes, I swear…” Liam shook his head, and glanced through the open bedroom door. Not seeing Alex, he walked to the bathroom and rapped with his knuckles. “Alex, it’s Liam. Things all right?”

  “I’m fine!” came the muffled voice. “You could use a disability rail in here, though!”

  “Good point! I’ll tell Mason to work on it today. See you later!” He turned to Judah when he closed the bedroom door behind him. “Well, come on, we’ve got plenty to do today.”

  “But I thought… I mean, Alex needs to get to the store, and—”

  “Sure, sure. Noah will have time to take him. We’ve got to… Judah?”

  “I need just a second, okay?” he said with a strained voice. “Just…I’ll be at your office in like five minutes.”

  Liam peered at him, then finally shook his head. “You’re getting stranger and stranger, little brother. Okay. See you in five.”

  Once the hall was completely clear, he let go of his shirttail and ran upstairs, down the main corridor, to his little bedroom. He threw himself down on the bed.

  There was apparently only one way to get rid of this thing, before everybody in the world saw it. Well, he supposed he could pack it in ice until it went away, but that would cause more questions, if he walked around with an ice pack against his crotch.

  No, the only practical thing to do was to relieve himself of this biological pressure, at which point he could lose his erection naturally—

  Would you just admit that you are more turned on than you have ever been in your life, and you want to rub one out while the memory is still fresh in your mind?

  No. No, Judah would not be admitting that. Not to himself, not to anyone.

  Somewhere along the way, he (or the world) had attached a certain shyness to these matters, a certain reluctance. It would cause him to blush whenever the subject came up, avert his eyes, change the subject. Yet he was still a man, wasn’t he? A shy man. A man uncomfortable with these kinds of feelings. But a man nonetheless.

  And Alex was also a man. A man whose body, taut and strong, he had been holding upright above the water like someone who has just discovered the bath is too hot, Alex’s flanks and ass tensed to keep him in the air, as though with just a little more muscular contraction, he could hover above the surface, levitating.

  Judah devoted no thought at all to what his hands were doing, how they had freed himself from his pants, how quickly his fingers were working over himself—and surely that was a symptom of this reticence too, this business of calling it himself rather than his cock, because Judah certainly had one, just like Alex did. Alex’s was jutting there, soft yet formidable, gravity pulling at it the way hands might pull at it, softly, gently but inexorably downward.

  It was wrong to jack off to the memory of a friend’s nakedness. There was something deeply unethical about an accidental sighting of someone like this, when used for masturbatory fodder. It was something a stalker might do. Definitely one of the preliminary signs of becoming a creep, a peeping tom, a heavy breather over a phone with no caller ID. What…are…you…wearing…?

  But Judah’s anticipatory guilt was no match for his body, the body whose needs he tried so studiously to ignore in favor of a life of the mind. How do you fight it when your own mind works against you, when your memory clearly—if wrongly—shows that Alex was soaking wet, his hair tousled by the hot water, beads dripping off him, his cock towering upward, hard and majestic? What even is a life of the mind, if the mind has Alex turning his head toward you and giving you an inviting smile, saying, do you want a taste of this?

  I do, I do, muttered Judah, reaching the point in this fantasy where the speed of his hands met the hunger of his body, and his climax could no longer be denied. Falling back, gasping, imagining the look on Alex’s face when he came as well, that perfect face wracked with pleasure.

  Okay.

  Okay.

  Okay.

  It was out of his system now. Out of his system and on the sheets…and his jeans. Okay. Every problem has a solution. He shed his jeans and put on others. They all looked the same. He bought them three pairs at a time so he never had to make choices when it was time to get dressed, he could just pull on any old clothes. When he was young, someone had told him that’s the way Einstein managed his wardrobe, and from that moment he had always dreamed of having clothes that were that easy.

  Zipping up was much easier, his cock already slack and exhausted, the natural tendency to post-orgasmic self-reproach replacing the insane lust that had momentarily taken control.

  He could be normal now.

  Move the dial back to platonic. Maybe further. Maybe a crush was a bad idea. Maybe he could bury himself in work and not think about Alex at all today. It was probably for the best, since it brought him nothing but frustration.

  Robots never seemed to have a problem with this. The androids in his books either lacked all signs of human emotion, or if they were capable of it, had interesting tricks, like switching off empathy, or dialing down anger. Sometimes Judah pictured his emotions as a gigantic switchboard, like those telephone boards in the pictures from decades ago, wires coiled everywhere. Unplug lust from Alex. Unplug feeling awkward from Alex. Plug energy into just being normal.

  That was easy, wasn’t it?

  11

  Alex

  Toby studied the text as though there were something to find within it, some secret message. Alex had already thought about all the implications, doubted Toby would find anything extra about it, but it felt good to see that look of concern on Toby’s face.

  Anything to forget this morning’s farce. Not that he would ever have welcomed a text from Ian, but at least it gave him something to talk about other than the bath.

  He had been very, very careful not to think of the bath at all. Not to think of Judah’s hands. Or the sweetly embarrassed look on his face, those eyes closed tight like a little boy’s. But the hands that had held him? Those were grown-up hands.

  Back to the present. Back to a crisis he could actually handle.

  “He has always been like this,” Toby said, handing the phone back. “Ian knows how to choose his moment.”

  “But what for?” Alex asked. “I was so clear when we broke up. He wasn’t to call, wasn’t to text, wasn’t to write. We had rules.”

  “That was the whole problem with him. He always thought his opinion was more important than any rules.”

  “I never needed saving,” said Alex.

  Toby picked up the dustcloth—according to him, feather dusters did nothing but spread dirt around—and gently wiped off the edges of the bookshelves. Whenever he came across a book that hadn’t been put back correctly, he nudged it forward or pulled it back, until it exactly lined up with its fellows. Same as he would do with the liquor bottles back at the bar. They had inherited the same neat-and-tidy gene.

  Alex noticed he paused at the mystery section, taking special care to dust the Inspector Kestrel mysteries. Of course he did. Inspector Kestrel Solves Berlin. Inspector Kestrel Cracks Krakow. The globe-hopping detective, always on the case, always helping, always saving people.

  He could read the covers from here. Could see, at the bottom of each, the author’s name.

  Ian Grant.
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br />   “You don’t have to do my cleaning for me,” Alex said.

  “What, and let you break your other foot? You’re the clumsiest man on earth. I’m surprised they let you go on crutches. Be glad I wasn’t your doctor, I would’ve made them strap you to the hospital bed.”

  “I’m perfectly self-sufficient.”

  “You’re a mess is what you are. Nearly getting hit by cars, falling in gutters. All of this over Ian?” He jabbed the dustcloth at the mysteries. “Tell me you don’t still feel guilty over that breakup.”

  “Not guilty—”

  “You didn’t do anything wrong. He was the one who left. He found that skinny…oh, what’s his stupid name—”

  “Bastian.”

  “That’s the one. I’ve already said all I can say about them. You know my opinion. I never liked Ian. I thought he was bad for you…and then it turned out he was cheating on you. What a monster. A polite, helpful-seeming monster.”

  Alex hemmed and hawed. “I mean, maybe monster is too strong a word. He wasn’t a psychopath or something. And Bastian is about a thousand times prettier than me. Who could blame Ian? We’d already been having problems, he kept trying to get me to fly all over the world with him, I kept insisting on staying here…”

  Toby paused in his dusting. “Would you quit blaming yourself? There’s nothing wrong with you. Well, the snootiness, maybe. But more generally, there’s nothing wrong. You have to quit beating yourself up over this. It was years ago. If you ask me—”

  “I didn’t, really.”

  “—you need to get your head clear. You need something to take your mind off the past. An adventure. A vacation.”

  “I am staying at a resort these days, you know. It’s almost like a vacation. Except that I nearly broke my neck in the tub.”

  Shit. Hadn’t meant to bring that up.

  Toby shook his head sadly. “Do I have to hire you a full-time nurse?”

  Alex hadn’t told Toby the real joke, the joke where his body had been the punchline, Judah’s bashful face the set-up.

  He’s the most innocent guy I’ve ever known. He tried his hardest to make that situation less embarrassing, yet every move he made, I just felt so awful for him. For him! Even though I felt like any moment I might break my neck, all I could think about was, poor Judah, I can’t believe I’m putting him through this.