by May Archer
I was almost positive he’d never, and maybe reminding myself of that would help me get over this infatuation.
Mason looked up, his eyes searching mine in the near darkness. “This was for me.” He shut the phone off. “This is nobody’s business but mine. And yours,” he added.
“Let’s be honest. It’s mostly yours.” I forced myself to speak dismissively, as though the image of him pecking me on the cheek wasn’t indelibly inked in my brain. “Straight guy fun. Always amusing, until it’s time to share the joke.”
“That’s not—” Mason’s voice was small. Hurt.
I hated that. I hated this whole situation that I’d started by inviting him here tonight when I had really known better.
“Kidding, Loafers! I’m kidding. Hey, I’m hungry,” I interrupted, clapping a hand to my stomach. “You hungry? I’ve got some chips upstairs, I think.”
“No, I—”
“Yeah, just as well. Getting late anyway, huh?” I gestured to the skyline like maybe he hadn’t noticed the sunset. “We should get back up there, otherwise we’ll be stumbling around on the boardwalk with our flashlights in the dark, and I know you don’t dig the dark.” I waved at the forty-foot bridge over the sand dunes, which was less than ten feet from where we sat. “This was fun, Loafers!” I adopted a bright expression as I clambered to my knees. “You’re a great guy, and I’m glad we cleared the air. We should grab a beer together again sometime.” Just not this much beer. And not anytime soon.
“Stop!” Loafers commanded, pushing his hand firmly against my chest, preventing me from standing. “You’re freaking out again. And you’re running away again, too.”
“Once again, not running. In fact, witness me, still on my knees.”
He shook his head, his hand still poised above my heart. “Tachycardia,” he murmured. “Racing heart. Dead giveaway. Either there’s a hungry T. Rex behind me and you’re paralyzed with fear, or…”
“Or?” I shot back.
“Or.” He licked his lips, and his cheeks blushed pink. “I don’t know.”
Except he did. That blush said he did.
Fuck.
“Illuminating, Dr. Loafers!” I wished like hell that he’d remove his hand from me, but felt like me forcibly removing it would be giving too much away. “Don’t read anything into it. Some guy once told me stimulus is stimulus.”
He swallowed and looked up, his green gaze slamming into mine. My breath hitched.
“That guy sounds like an idiot,” he whispered. He bit his lip. “Hyperventilation, too, Fenn?”
“Don’t do this, Loafers.”
“Do what?” His fingers dug into the skin of my chest, but he sounded honestly curious, like he hadn’t a clue what he was doing. Like maybe he hoped I’d tell him.
“You don’t want my stimulus anywhere near your stimulus. Remember, Mason?”
“I wasn’t the one who ran away like my dick was a cattle prod. Remember, Fenn?”
I laughed with no humor whatsoever. “You’re straight.”
“I’m… yes,” Mason agreed. “It’s probably very likely that I am.”
“Probably very likely?” That was new. “So then what’s this?” I nodded down at his hand, which was stuck to my T-shirt like a burr. I could feel each fingertip through the thin cotton like five tiny, fiery brands.
Mason swallowed so loudly I could hear him. “You were there in the bathroom the other night.”
“I was,” I agreed. “And I heard that stimulus was stimulus, which was the dumbest thing ever. That was more than just you getting a semi, Mason.”
“And you left before I could process a fucking thing beyond that. And you avoided me for a solid week.”
“During which, you processed it.” I squeezed my hands tightly. “I’m dying to hear your conclusions.”
“I… don’t have any. I tried,” he said in a small, bewildered voice. “I have. But I don’t know what to conclude. If a person has believed himself to be straight for twelve thousand nine hundred eleven days, give or take, Fenn, and then realizes he’s… having other ideas for seven days, what does that make him? Does the not-straightness erase the straightness, like all those years never happened? Or do you average the days of straightness and not-straightness and come up with something in between? Does it mean you’ve always been not-straight and just lying to yourself? Or can it just be something new you pick up? Something you start to feel for one person in one crazy scenario?” He sounded a little bit desperate and a whole lot confused.
He wasn’t the only one. Was he talking about him? Was he talking about me and what happened last week?
“Is there, like, an algorithm, where the more recent days are weighted more?” he went on. “Does it matter how many people of each gender you’ve ever found attractive? Or, God, does it matter how attractive you’ve found the people of each gender? Is there a formula?”
“I… I have no idea.”
“The internet assures me that sexual fluidity is very common. That people can become more or less sexually attracted to one gender over time—”
“Can they?” I shook my head. “Because as far as I know, you can’t change your sexuality, Loafers, and no one can change it for you.” It was the motto I’d repeated to myself over and over and over again, after what happened in Texas. It wasn’t possible to make a person gay any more than it was possible for my mother to pray my gay away.
“Yeah, that’s what I said!” Mason exclaimed. “To myself, I mean, when I was reading about this. I know it’s a thing that exists, and if I’m sexually fluid or bi or pan or whatever, that’s cool… but I still don’t understand how it happens. Or what you call it. Or whether it’s permanent. So that’s why I’m saying, probably very likely straight. Okay?”
His fingers were clenching my pec, a nervous, unconscious motion. I grabbed his hand and held it tightly. “Loafers, breathe. It’s fine, okay?”
It was so not fine. I was completely out of my depth with this. Knowing I was gay had been the easy part; accepting it had been harder; coming out to my family had been harder still. But it sounded like Mason could accept it just fine, if he could really know it. But how could you know it unless you…
Oh.
Oh.
“What are we doing here?” I whispered.
His fingers tightened in mine. “I want my last dare, Fenn.”
I shook my head slowly. This was a capital B Bad Idea. Loafers was going to be on the island for weeks. We’d see each other all the time, and we’d never be able to unring this bell. And I had a rule about straight guys…
I had my One and Only Rule about straight guys.
Except maybe Loafers wasn’t so straight.
And I’d already broken that rule, anyway.
“How do you know what a thing is until you’ve classified it, Fenn? Until you’ve looked at the symptoms and run the tests and diagnosed it? Last week I… I thought about you.” His confession came out squeaky and breathless.
I nodded. “Sure. Yeah. It was a weird encounter. I thought about you, too. But that doesn’t—”
“No.” Mason clenched his eyes shut, and I could feel the heat radiating off his face. “No, Fenn, I mean I thought about you while I…” He squeezed my hands tight, and I suddenly understood.
Oh.
Motherfucker.
“You have really got to learn to say some words, Loafers,” I said roughly, but my fingers had tightened on his, too, holding him in place.
“While I masturbated,” he whispered.
My mouth went dry, and my brain went blank.
“So… I’d really like you to kiss me,” Mason blurted. “That’s my dare.”
“Like you kissed me?” I croaked. I leaned over and pecked his cheek, making sure I didn’t linger over it or inhale his scent… much.
“No, kiss me,” Mason said again, his voice lower this time and more urgent. He scooted several inches in my direction. “A real kiss this time. A… lip kiss.”
&
nbsp; “A lip kiss.” I couldn’t decide if his grade school innocence was the best or worst thing ever. Hell, I was pretty sure I’d stopped comprehending English somewhere in the last ten seconds, once all the blood had started rushing to my cock.
“A tongue kiss.” Mason pushed our joined hands against my knee, leaning toward me. “A french kiss.”
“You sound like you’re twelve,” I told him, and it was supposed to be an insult, but it came out all fond and amused. Fuck.
I closed my eyes, trying to remember all the reasons I’d totally disliked this guy a week ago. His stupid perfect hair. His stupid shiny shoes. His unnatural confidence. The way he’d sneered at me. The way he’d looked all shocked and aroused in the bathroom.
But it was hard to reconcile that guy from the airport with this man on this beach, smelling unbearably familiar and delicious, playing with my fingers like we’d been holding hands forever. And if everything he was saying now was true, Mason’s shock last Friday night had been really real.
Which meant maybe I’d been the one who’d reacted shittily.
“Your fingers are way bigger than mine,” he said curiously. He held them up and inspected them in the thin moonlight. “Hairier. And your skin’s all calloused.”
I fought the urge to snatch my hand away and hide it behind my back, but Mason didn’t seem bothered by it. He seemed fascinated. And with every stroke of his hand against mine, my cock jumped.
“I like it.” Mason sounded like he was confessing something, and shit, I really hated feeling like the sin on someone’s conscience.
“Mason. We don’t need to do—”
“I kissed a guy once. On a dare. It was awful,” Mason whispered in a rush. “I never wanted to repeat it. Why bother? But then this week I started thinking, what if the kiss was bad because I wasn’t into Rory? Or what if I wasn’t attracted to guys at all back then and I evolved? Or what if I’m only attracted to certain people regardless of sex?”
He meant me. He meant, he was attracted to me. I clenched my hands into fists to keep myself from grabbing him and pushing him down to the blanket.
“It’s not a big deal to me if I’m bisexual, or whatever I am,” he repeated. “But the idea that there’s this huge thing about myself that I got wrong, that I didn’t know? That’s just…” He huffed out a laugh and ran his hands through his hair, mussing the waves beyond all recognition. I wanted to replace his hands with mine. “What else have I gotten wrong? How much have I just not seen?”
“Mason.” I grabbed his jaw—just to steady him, I told myself. To comfort him. Definitely not so I could enjoy the feel of his light stubble under my thumbs as I stroked his cheek. “Chill out, okay?”
He nodded mechanically, his eyes studying the neckline of my shirt like it was a code he had to break. “I’m chill. Very chill. But—” He licked his lips. “I know I’m probably not your usual kind of guy. You probably like men who at least know how to kiss another man, right?” He laughed shortly. “Like, how to maneuver to avoid beard burn and who goes left and who goes right? But…” He looked up, his face flaming like a beacon in the fading light. “You’re someone I feel passionate about. So, please kiss me, just this once?”
My chest squeezed. My hands flexed against his jaw, and my fingers threaded into the short, brown waves by his ears.
“Okay,” I agreed. “Just this once.” Then I crossed the six inches that separated us and took his mouth with mine.
There was nothing else for it, really, was there? It had been bound to happen since the moment I’d laid eyes on him at the airport, all perfectly pressed and horribly out of his element, and there was a kind of relief in just letting it fucking happen.
Mason Bloom was an asteroid, and I was the earth, and Bruce Willis wasn’t conveniently around to save the day and avert the collision, so I might as well surrender to the impact.
And mother of God, the impact.
Mason tasted like salty tears and sweet surprise. He smelled like his fucking intoxicating cologne. His hair was silky soft, but not a single other thing about him was—not the lightly muscled body under my roving hands nor the press of his lips against mine. He went to my head like strong liquor, making me light-headed and brave all at once.
The entire world shifted on its axis as Mason pushed me down, and I didn’t even notice until my back hit the sand behind me and Mason’s shoes landed somewhere by my head with a soft plop. He climbed on top of me, barely breaking the kiss, all lean limbs and enthusiasm, saying my name in this little animal growl that was the least Loafery thing I’d ever heard.
This was not my first kiss with a guy by a long shot, but I’d had full-on orgasms that didn’t get me as worked up as kissing Mason Bloom did. I wrapped my arms around him and slid my hands down to cup his ass.
Mason moaned, a filthy sound that made my cock jump to life like my mom’s old border collie hearing the rattle of keys. Wanna go for a ride, Charlie? Fuck yes, I did.
And it occurred to me that for all that this was Mason’s first time, his experimental kiss, I was as much a newbie here as he was.
“Now what?” Mason demanded, pulling away with a gasp, only to rub his lips against my chin, like he was enjoying the scruff there. “What comes next?”
I swallowed. “Mason, maybe we should—”
“Fenn,” he begged. “Fenn. Please.” Then he did the same thing he’d done the other night—a tiny little undulation of his hips, the world’s most tentative fucking motion as he rubbed himself against my stomach—and my cock reacted to that tiny movement like he’d stripped naked and started dancing. One hundred percent, immediate commitment; zero to sixty in 0.6 seconds.
“Fuck.” A broken rule was a broken rule, right? If you were gonna rob a bank, you might as well take all the money? If you were gonna speed, you might as well fucking speed?
This was the distorted logic in my fevered brain, anyway. And that logic told me that when the guy who’d pissed me off and invaded my mind for the past six days was on top of me, whimpering my name, I was damn well gonna make him come so hard it obliterated every question in his mind… and maybe every question in mine.
We’d fuck this out of our systems—he’d get his answers, I’d get an orgasm, and then maybe this connection would end.
Mason’s face hovered over mine, a giant shadow in the darkness with the moon behind him, and I wanted so badly to see his eyes, to know that they were wide open and he was seeing me.
I speared a hand into the hair at the back of his head and dragged him down for another fierce kiss, and then I rolled us so his back was against the blanket.
I was prepared for him to try to stop me, to have to wrestle him just a little, since he always seemed to give as good as he got. I was not prepared for him to go boneless underneath me, and I was definitely not ready for him to start moaning like a porn star.
“Oh my God. Yes. It happened exactly like this when I thought of you.” He bucked up from underneath me, as frantic for friction as I was. “Fenn.”
“Yeah,” I croaked, rolling my hips down against him. “I’m right here, Mason.”
And I was, literally and figuratively, because I’d never had an experience like this before, not ever. Not the kind of sexual encounter that felt less like a choice and more like an inevitability, like a point we’d been driving toward for an entire week, even in the hours we were apart. I’d never gotten off in a way that made me want to watch every emotion play out on the expressive face of the man beneath me, like that was more important than getting off myself. I was two seconds from coming just from his throaty groans and the friction of shorts on shorts. I hadn’t even gotten a hand on him yet.
I pulled back, just slightly, and Mason whined until I leaned in and bit his bottom lip.
“Get these off,” I commanded. My voice was rough even to my own ears, but that was apparently what happened when my dick was hard enough to bend steel and my balls were more primed to explode than C4 with the cap attached.
Not that Mason seemed to expect anything fancier than that. This was in no way a seduction—it was pure, primal need.
I dug my toes in the cool sand and lifted my weight off him for a second in plank position, while he pushed his heavy cotton shorts out of the way. My own shorts were the thin nylon kind that—
Oh. My. Fucking. God.
—were almost like wearing nothing, when Mason bucked up under me again.
My head snapped back, spine going taut. “Mason.”
He ran his hands over my abs and down to my shorts. “Yours, too?” he panted against my lips, like he was asking permission or something.
Like I was about to say no. “Yeah. Yes.”
Mason dragged my shorts down over my hips to my thighs, then started to repeat the motion with my underwear… but he froze with his hands on my waistband.
Big, green eyes stared up at me, almost a little fearful, like in that one moment, his brain had caught up to his body and he realized just how far this dare had gotten out of hand.
“You good, ba—Mason?” I lifted one hand to brush his wavy hair off his forehead. His skin was damp with sweat, even though the air was chilly.
Mason hesitated for a second, like he was really thinking about it, then nodded slowly, almost solemnly. “I’m really, really good.”
“Yeah? You want more?” Please, I begged a Universe that probably didn’t exist. Make the man want more.
Mason’s tongue darted out to wet his lips, and his eyes crossed like he could taste me there and I tasted delicious. “Yeah,” he breathed.
Fuck. Yeah, this moment was seriously, seriously inevitable. And I was also gonna make damn sure it was perfect.
I lowered myself back down so our dicks were flush against each other, separated only by two layers of thin cotton, and balanced myself on my elbows so I hovered above him. Then I kissed him, slow and hard and messy.
I shifted to one hip without breaking the kiss and ran my hand up under his shirt. His skin was smooth and hot, and my fingertips traced what I thought were soothing patterns on his stomach, though the way his muscles flexed and jumped under my hand made me think maybe it was more arousing than anything.
