Who growled at him. “What have you been doing?”
“What?” He knew what.
Carlos shifted closer to him and enunciated each word as if he were etching them into glass. “I need you to stop looking at me like that.”
“Like what?”
“Like you’re trying to figure out what my dick tastes like.”
Deion leaned into Carlos until he had him pressed against the wall, the rapid rise and fall of Carlos’s chest as he breathed the only movement between them.
“You don’t wanna talk about it. I don’t wanna talk about it.”
They both knew what he meant: being bi and not wanting to deal.
“So?”
“So let’s not fucking talk,” Deion said, and kissed him.
Carlos’s mouth opened under his like he’d been waiting for this. Hot, wet heat and a questing tongue that tangled with Deion’s for dominance. They weren’t well hidden behind the column, but Deion didn’t care. He needed to taste. To push and get pushed back by this man he couldn’t take his eyes off of. Whose throat moved when he tipped his head back to finish the last of his beer, making Deion want to bite it. Carlos tasted like malt and hops and lime, and his skin smelled like citrus and cedar. Deion wanted to eat him alive. Carlos shifted his hips and his hard-on pressed against Deion’s with an urgency that made him groan. Thank God he wasn’t the only one who was hard.
Carlos bit at his lip, then pulled away, licking at his own kiss-stained lips as he pulled his phone out of his pocket and checked it, eyes locked on Deion the entire time.
“The guys texted. We’re moving on.”
Deion nodded. “I need a moment.”
“See you at the table,” Carlos said with a smirk and a glance at Deion’s crotch, then dragged his entire body against Deion’s like he had to in order to get past him, the fucker.
It had been hard enough to resist Carlos when the DJ had been playing R&B, but the new club was nonstop bachata and reggaeton according to Carlos, and Deion felt the difference in his bones the moment the bouncer hauled open the massive brushed steel doors and waved them inside.
Heat and a Latin rhythm that thumped in his balls, singing of sex, of fucking, he was sure of it, even though he didn’t understand a word. Deion made a beeline for the bar and ordered a round, starting a tab. His buzz was fading, his nerves returning, and he liked it better when he didn’t think so much about what was going to happen next. He did a shot and sucked down most of a vodka soda with lime before passing out the rest of the drinks to their crew so they could work their way deeper into the massive club.
They weren’t anywhere near the dance floor yet when a new song came on and a roar went up from the crowd. Even Deion recognized the song, which had been remade by a pop star in English and blown up on US radio. In Miami, they played the original version, and Carlos tipped back his head in the heat and flashing lights of the club, hips swiveling as he did a complicated step in place, singing the first words in unison with five hundred other voices.
Then he flung a wicked look over his shoulder at Deion.
“My song.”
Deion tried to nod. Was almost certain he forgot some essential part of the move, like the part where you moved your head up and down, unable to look away from the sinuous shimmying moves of Carlos as he wove his way through the crowd. Following in Carlos’s footsteps meant getting swept up in clumps of gyrating men and women, hands pressing against his chest, his hips, groins snugging up against his ass or his crotch as Deion twisted his head and tried to keep a grinning Carlos in view.
When he finally broke free and caught up, Carlos was retreating off the far side of the dance floor, separated from the rest of their crew and looking back at Deion over his shoulder as he headed for a dark corner.
Deion found him there, holding up another wall. When Carlos opened his mouth to say something, Deion stepped into him, again. Carlos’s body, hard, muscled, radiating heat against Deion’s skin, was all he wanted. “No talking.”
“You don’t wanna talk about it with everyone and their fucking mothers, we gotta get outta here,” Carlos muttered against his mouth, long thin fingers wrapped like steel around the back of Deion’s neck, holding him in place as he dragged his mouth across Deion’s jaw, sucking on the skin there until it burned.
Deion looked down at him. Not nearly as far down as he’d ever done before with someone he was going to go home with. They’d said they’d see what happened, and he knew what he wanted that to be.
“What about them?” He lifted his chin toward the front of the club where they’d last seen their friends.
“We leave, text them we’ll meet them at the next club, and somehow just keep missing them,” Carlos said with a shrug and an innocent look. “No idea how that keeps happening. They’ll be fine. And they’ll know you’re with me.”
They would. Josh and Benji and the rest of them. If he and Carlos did this right, no one would think anything of it, and whatever the two of them decided to do would stay their secret.
He stopped at the bar to close out tab, avoiding everyone he knew on the way, and did two more shots before signing off on the check and adding a large tip.
Holy shit.
He was really doing this.
The extra booze hit his system in the Lyft on the way to Carlos’s place, which helped, because Deion’s right leg was bouncing like his heel needed to punch its way through the car floor, and Carlos never stopped looking at him like he was picturing Deion naked.
He couldn’t have said what Carlos’s building looked like or even what floor they were on. All he knew was that they were inside, and not touching yet, as if by some unspoken agreement that once they started, they wouldn’t be able to stop. Across the room, Carlos shucked his shirt and jeans damn near simultaneously after toeing off his boots, while Deion froze with his hands on his zipper.
Jesus fuck. Everything about Carlos made his mouth water. The dark hair on his muscled forearms. The trimmed pelt on his chest. That stark angle of muscle of his narrow hip, drawing a straight line to the dark hair between his legs.
And his cock. Deion had low-grade worried he might chicken out when it came time to go full hands-on with another guy’s dick. Which was stupid, but what the fuck ever. He’d never done any of this shit before.
Yeah, his stomach was churning with a mix of nerves and lust. But he could push past the nerves if he told himself the lust was the only thing that mattered. Hell, he’d made a career out of pushing his way past obstacles. The stress of throwing himself in the deep end of the pool in one go was just another defensive block to tackle and flatten without hesitation.
He stripped down to his briefs and then took three giant steps to the middle of the room, crashing into Carlos with his whole body and groaning at the feeling: heat, hard muscle, scruffy hair, and male sweat, and that tight grip on the back of his neck again that made his dick so fucking hard. He wanted to rub himself all over Carlos until he couldn’t tell whose smell was whose, where his body ended and Carlos’s began.
But first, he wanted to make Carlos groan.
Because he couldn’t resist the freedom to touch absolutely everywhere—and because touching most of that everywhere was way less scary than other things he thought they might do—he dragged his hands up and down Carlos’s back and sides, scraping with his fingernails over muscle and bone until Carlos shivered and shook himself like a dog in a rainstorm.
“Fuck,” he muttered, pushing Deion away with both hands. “Get on the bed before I fucking fall down. Christ, you’re hot.”
“Thanks,” Deion said, laughing sharply. Too sharply for someone who was supposed to be confident and take charge. “Back atcha.”
A smile tugged at the corner of Carlos’s mouth, even as something that looked like hesitation narrowed his eyes. He nudged Deion backward toward the bed in the corner of the room. “I meant your actual body temperature. You’re a furnace. But yeah, that too.”
“Oh. That.�
�� The mattress hit him at the back of the knees, and he stopped to take a breath. Holy shit. That was a bed. A big bed with pure white sheets and pillowcases, a maroon comforter in disarray across half the mattress. “I’ve always run hot. My mom used to say she didn’t need a blanket in the winter, all she needed was for me to ask to crawl into my parents’ bed in the middle of the night.”
“Mm-hmm. Let’s talk about our moms later. Because I love my mom, but thinking of her is a real boner killer, if you know what I mean,” said Carlos, giving him a more solid push that Deion resisted out of sheer perversity.
He wanted on that bed like whoa. Was totally ready to roll around naked with Carlos and see what happened next, because he was pretty sure they were going to set the sheets on fire. Yup. Totally sure of that. Uh-huh. But he also kind of wanted to wrestle. Wanted to make out with someone who was as strong as he was, or close enough, and could push back against every move he made. Not like they were resisting each other or pushing each other into anything. More like glorying in being strong and big and free to let loose with someone without worrying about being too much. And wrestling was easy. Was something he knew, even if he didn’t normally horse around with naked dudes he’d made out with not a half an hour earlier.
So instead of falling back onto the bed, he grinned and braced himself and didn’t move a fucking inch at Carlos’s push.
“Oh. So it’s gonna be like that, is it?” Carlos said, practically licking his lips at the idea.
“Yeah.”
They grappled for a minute, using half-strength holds and laughing as they twisted around the room, trying for an advantage without actually pushing hard enough to make things dangerous.
Deion shook his head mockingly when Carlos twisted out of his grasp again. “That’s cheating. Stand still and take your loss like a man.”
“Dude. I could totally take you down,” Carlos scoffed. “I’m restraining myself. In the interest of not totally demolishing my furniture.”
“We oughta go to Josh and Benji’s workout room. That floor is all mats. We could have the championship of all wrestling matches there,” Deion said with relish.
“Except not Josh and Benji’s mats, because we’ll never hear the end of it if we’re rolling around on the floor together.”
Whoops. That was right. They were flying under the radar. He covered up his disappointment and weird flare of irritation at not being able to just act however he wanted to around Carlos with a surge of boldness. “’Specially if I’m sticking my tongue in your mouth.”
Nobody was making him keep this hookup with Carlos to himself except himself. And Carlos. And they’d both agreed about why it was better that way. Neither of them were looking to make any long-term changes to their relationship options.
Carlos hooked an ankle behind his while Deion was distracted by his annoyance, toppling him with a hard push onto the mattress and crowing in triumph. He climbed on top of Deion, straddling his hips victoriously.
Deion told himself it was natural to have a hard time breathing when a six-foot-tall guy was sitting on his stomach. Naked. Cock and balls right there, all heat and soft skin and the drag of untrimmed hair pressing into his skin. He tried a long, slow inhale and found himself gasping for air instead.
Leaning forward and bracing his hands on either side of Deion’s head, Carlos stared down at him.
Deion waited for what came next. When nothing did, he put his hands on Carlos’s hips, then froze. He didn’t know what to do.
No, he knew what to do. He just didn’t know if he had the nerve to do it.
Fuck it. Push past this, you chicken. Just . . .
He didn’t know how to finish that sentence.
“Here are my rules for how this is going to go tonight,” Carlos said, looking down at him, dark hair falling forward from that widow’s peak to brush his cheeks.
Deion waited, holding his breath again. Shit. He hadn’t even thought about rules. Should he have come up with rules of his own? What the fuck kind of rules did they need? How extreme was Carlos planning on getting that he needed to announce fucking rules? Deion’s heart threatened to pound out of his chest.
“We can kiss and touch, but oral and anal are off the table for the night,” Carlos said firmly. “No exceptions.”
Because his first instinct was always to push for more, to go farther, work harder, he argued, even as his entire body was easing from its state of frozen tension with relief at the idea. “Why? I thought we were all about see what happens naturally?”
“That was before I realized how much booze you threw back tonight because you’re doing some freaking out here. That’s not a slam,” Carlos said, raising his hands in the air. “Trust me. I keep having moments of total freak out, where I’m outside of my body, thinking, ‘Holy fucking shit, I can’t believe this is happening.’ I get it.”
Deion wasn’t sure he did. “It feels like chickening out to just, I don’t know, kiss.” Which was probably the wrong way to look at it, but that’s what it felt like.
“This isn’t a race,” Carlos said, sliding his ass back until his dick pressed against Deion’s in his briefs, grinding against him until Deion gasped and threw his head back. “And I didn’t say anything about just kissing.”
“Oh, fuck, that feels good.”
“I’m highly in favor of feeling good,” Carlos murmured, bending down to kiss him for the first time since they’d left the club.
Deion thrust his hand into Carlos’s hair and held him there, arching up into his kiss. They were both panting with desire by the time they came up for air. Carlos’s hips circled against his, a hard rocking movement that dragged their dicks against each other, that Deion wasn’t even sure Carlos knew he was doing.
“I’m willing to be the guy you regret kissing when you wake up sober tomorrow. I’m not willing to be the guy you regret fucking or going down on. Or having me do those things to you.” Carlos shook his head firmly. “Nope. That stuff waits for fully engaged decision-making.”
Because it made sense, and because his body was still tingling with the adrenaline rush leaking out him, Deion nodded. “Deal.”
For the first time since they’d gotten naked, he moved his hands with curiosity and a quiet pleasure, instead of the frantic lust he’d driven himself to in his instinct to push past his nerves.
Carlos wasn’t circumcised, something Deion had seen plenty of in locker rooms but had never had his hands on before, obviously. Fully hard now, Carlos’s dick curved slightly toward his stomach. His foreskin was retracted behind the head of his dick and something about the pressure being off made it easy now for Deion to reach out and wrap his hand around the hard shaft. He moved his hand up and down, slowly at first and then faster, the loose skin letting his fist move easily over Carlos’s cock as Deion jerked him off, watching his hand with fascination.
“I’d need lube to jerk myself off this hard,” he said, totally mesmerized. He swiped his thumb across the wet, slippery tip, wondering if it was a sensitive as his own. His brain was buzzing again, but this time it wasn’t from the booze.
“Benefits of not being circumcised,” Carlos said on a gasp, braced on straight arms with his head hanging down while he sucked in air and shuddered with each stroke of Deion’s hands.
With his free hand, Deion touched his chest, dragging his fingernails across Carlos’s nipples until they stiffened to points. Carlos was moaning now, cursing under his breath in Spanish and English smashed together in a stream of words meaning want, need, and fuck.
Deion sped up his strokes, tightening his fist until Carlos shouted and arched his back, gasping. A hard pinch to one nipple pushed him over the edge, ribbons of come pulsing out of his cock and striping Deion’s stomach.
“Jesus Christ. Fuck.” Carlos’s hips were still pumping, pushing his dick in and out of Deion’s wet fist as aftershocks made him shudder.
“That was the hottest fucking thing I’ve ever seen in my life,” Deion growled.
Carlos lifted off him long enough to jerk Deion’s underwear down and off, and Deion didn’t have a chance to feel self-conscious before Carlos was grinding against him like he wanted to drill through him and into the mattress.
“Want me to jerk you off?” Carlos asked, his voice low and throaty as he slid his softening dick back and forth over the straining length of Deion’s cock. “God, I’m really regretting the no oral rule right now. I want to suck your dick so bad.”
Although that sent a surge of almost painful pleasure shooting through his cock, Deion didn’t need anything more than this. The sight of Carlos, sweaty and naked above him. The smell of sex filling the room. Carlos’s hard stomach rubbing against his dick in a slippery mess of his own come. He pulled Carlos down for another fierce, filthy kiss and thrust hard against him, filling Carlos’s mouth with a groan as he came, his orgasm slamming into him with the force of a body block.
For minutes afterward, he couldn’t hear anything except his heartbeat thundering in his ears and the rasp of his own harsh breath in his chest. Eventually, his senses settled back to normal range and Deion took a regular breath, pleased to find he was still in one piece after what had maybe been the best orgasm of his life. Carlos was flopped on the bed next to him, equally limp.
“Jesus, gay sex is messy,” Deion drawled, pulling a corner of the comforter over him and using its cover to wipe off his stomach.
“I’m gonna need more sheets,” Carlos said, yawning so hard Deion could hear his jaw creak. “Want some water?”
The question felt bizarrely normal after the strangest night of Deion’s life. But he suddenly realized he was dying of thirst, his mouth a parched desert. “Yes, please.”
When Carlos returned, it was with two glasses balanced in one hand and their cell phones in another. He tossed the phones on the mattress and handed Deion a cold glass.
“I figured they’ve probably blown up our phones by now.”
Deion chugged most of his water before picking up his phone. Sure enough. Several messages from Josh and one from Benji too. When he looked up, Carlos was already swiping out an answer to what were undoubtedly matching texts.
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