“I get that,” I said gently. He raised his eyebrows as if he didn’t believe me, which was a fair assumption considering how little we knew about each other. So I decided to give him some honesty too. “Two months ago I broke things off with someone I’d been with for three years. This person also happened to be my boss, who has been married to his wife for years.”
He cringed. “Ouch. Well, then I guess here’s to making horrible choices in bed.” He raised his bottle of beer and I raised my glass of water. We clinked them together, each of us taking a sip right after, and then I was smiling because yeah, that about summed up what my relationship with Paul had been like.
The pizza was done ten minutes later, and we ate quickly, neither of us saying much, before we walked over to the couch and I chose a movie for us. I didn’t think it mattered what we watched since we both kind of seemed lost in our own thoughts, but I chose something upbeat and action-y anyway before I came to sit down next to him. Trent surprised me by putting his arm around my shoulders. We were okay like that, I figured. Friends could do that. Friends could do a whole lot more too, I knew, but I tried not to think about that as we sat together.
“How many guys have you been with?” Trent asked before the movie had even officially started.
“Three,” I answered without thinking. Paul, Steven, and Chris. Trent didn’t say anything to that so I turned to look at him. “I don’t think I want to know your number.”
He shrugged. “Maybe. Maybe not. We’re not having sex, so it’s probably not even an issue worth mentioning. I do actually know it, though. I’m not that weird.”
“Then why ask me?”
He didn’t have a good answer for that, just pursed his lips as if he was refusing to say anything.
I settled back against his arm and tried not to think about it. But I couldn’t help it as I pictured him with some guy on the same night I’d nearly slept with him. “Was he any good?” I asked. I really didn’t want to know about it. I didn’t want to have any more images in my head of him fucking some other guy.
“Who?”
“The guy you had sex with after I told you no,” I said bluntly, because I was a little annoyed at him for not figuring out what I meant.
He gave me a look and shook his head. “You don’t want the details.”
Well that was true enough, but that didn’t mean I didn’t want my question answered. I was sure he could figure out a way to give me one without the other. “No, I don’t want a play-by-play. But just tell me if he was good.”
“Why?” Trent stalled.
Irritated, I blew out my breath. “Because I want to know?”
Trent shrugged, and I did get my answer, though. “He wasn’t awful. But he didn’t mean anything to me either, so he couldn’t have been that good.”
It was an answer, of sorts, I supposed. But then again it really wasn’t. “How often do you have sex with random guys?” I continued.
Instead of answering me, Trent used his body in a move that was far too fast for me to counter as he pushed me down so I was on my back on the couch and he was over me with his body between my legs. “Umph,” I groaned as he pressed into me, putting his weight on my stomach and chest.
“If I hold you down like this, will it keep you from asking more questions?”
It wouldn’t. I knew that much. “Why? Don’t you want to answer them?”
He frowned and shook his head. With him on top of me like this, I could feel everything about him, including that he was a little hard. I wondered if it was because he was lying on me or if it was because he was thinking about the guys he’d been with recently. “People don’t know about the guys I have sex with, Caleb. It’s not something I advertise, and it sure as hell isn’t something I’m particularly proud of. When I hook up with people, I usually don’t know their first names. Then I have sex with them and never talk to them again. Sometimes we don’t even do much talking while we’re having sex. More often than not they call me random names of guys they’d rather be having sex with anyway, and I think about the people I’d rather be with too. It’s not a great, earth-shattering experience. The only reason you know is because I want to be friends with you and real friends are typically honest with each other. So could you please stop with the questions about it?”
I stared at him for a long time and eventually he simply laid his forehead against the side of my neck and went still on top of me. I didn’t know what to say or even really where to begin. Everything he was talking about was stuff I couldn’t—and wouldn’t—do. It sounded dangerous and empty. I’d judged Paul for his number, but I had the feeling Trent’s was even higher. The difference, though, and the thing that mattered most to me, was that Trent was willing to be honest with me whereas Paul had never even tried to be.
Chapter Six
Trent
CALEB WAS thankfully silent for a while after I lay down on top of him. It was nice to lie there, to feel someone under me, to feel connected to someone without having to be naked with him. But then he opened his mouth, and I wished I had something to stuff in there to shut him up.
“Where do you even find these guys?” he asked.
I wasn’t up for arguing with him or answering any more of his questions so without lifting up my head I took out my phone, swiped my finger across it to unlock it, and then showed him the app I used when I needed to have sex with someone. I used it enough that I knew where it was on my home screen without having to actually look at the phone.
“Hot Guy Hookups?” he read, sounding a bit incredulous as he took my phone from me. I should have pinned his arms down too because he started going through the app without even asking me first. I guess since I’d handed the phone to him that was permission enough, but still, I didn’t want him seeing the kind of people I’d had sex with recently, which were all starred automatically from the home page of the app. Their reasoning was that I needed easy access to them in case I wanted to get together with them again. My thinking, though, was that I needed help remembering who I’d already been with on there so I knew to avoid them.
“You had sex with him?”
I lifted my head up to see which profile he’d clicked on. Denver guy, early forties, bald, and with a little bit of a stomach. I’d still found him attractive enough. “Yeah.” I put my head back down on his shoulder.
“Him too?”
I didn’t want to put my head up again. “What’s he like?”
“TieMeUpDaddy69.”
I snickered at his username but unfortunately that wasn’t enough to go on for me. “Is there a little star next to his name?”
“Yes. That mean something?” Caleb asked.
Nodding, I shifted my weight on him to make it more comfortable for me. If he didn’t like the change, he didn’t say anything. “Means I met up with them, which typically means I had sex with them. Not always, but generally.”
“Ohhh.”
“Yep. Now you know all my dirty little secrets.” I’d meant it as sort of a half joke, which it really wasn’t. I enjoyed sex, but I knew the difference between the stupid sex I had with the people on that app and the actual sex I could have with someone I genuinely liked. One was like exercise; the other I hadn’t had in years.
“And you never call any of them back?”
I wasn’t sure why it sounded like that was so hard for him to believe. “No. I never do.” I lifted my head and pressed my hips a little against him. We were trying to be friends, but it was hard for me to lie there on top of him and feel his cock right beneath mine and not get affected by it. He blushed a little, and I knew he’d felt my movement, as small as it was, too.
“Why not?” he asked. I couldn’t believe we were still having this conversation.
“Because they didn’t mean anything to me the first time around. Why would that change on the second?”
He shrugged and lifted one of his hands to lay it over my shoulder. I couldn’t help noticing how hot he really was. He was tanned, likely f
rom too much time spent in the sun in LA, but he wasn’t overly muscular like some of the beach guys I saw on TV. His thighs were what did me in, though, even now as they pressed against my hips. He had muscular thighs, the kind a person didn’t get from sitting at a desk all day. I rolled my hips against him, and he bit his bottom lip.
“Trent… I can’t.”
I might have been mean for doing that to him, especially since I knew he wasn’t into casual sex. But the thing was, I didn’t want to just fuck him right then, though I would have gladly taken that opportunity. I wasn’t needy or on edge, and I didn’t feel like my skin was crawling and the only way to get it to stop was to spend all my energy fucking some complete stranger.
No, for once I was completely in the moment with someone, just like I had been years ago. I hadn’t felt that kind of draw since Simon, and even though I knew I wouldn’t be having sex with Caleb tonight, just rubbing against him was enough for the moment.
“I know you don’t want to have sex. I’m not going to get you to change your mind in one night. I know that,” I reassured him.
“Then what…?” I rolled my hips again and felt him rise up to meet me this time. He might not have wanted to have sex, but he certainly wasn’t immune to me. “What are you doing?”
I shrugged and leaned back down to press my forehead against his neck. I stopped moving on top of him, and he kept one of his hands on my shoulder. It wasn’t fair to either of us that I turned us both on when I had no intention of finding someone in Denver to screw and Caleb had no reason to have sex with me.
“Messing around,” I confessed against his neck.
“It’s not fair.”
I smiled. “But it felt good.” He had no argument for that. “You okay?” I asked. I wanted to make sure I wasn’t crushing him by being comfortable on top of him.
“Aside from being hard and not really having a good way to deal with it? Yeah, I’m perfect.”
I laughed. I was in the same boat as him. “Have you ever tried casual sex?” I asked, even though I was pretty sure I knew the answer. Most people who had only ever had three partners in their lives didn’t try the no-strings-attached kind of pleasure.
“No. And I’m not interested now.”
I shrugged and kissed the side of his neck, because it was right there in front of me and also because I could. He was able to tell me to get off and I would have, so I was comfortable touching and kissing him where I wanted to, within reason of course. We could still be friends who sometimes kissed, I figured. I’d had friends like that in college, though they were more fuck buddies than friends, so maybe that wasn’t the best example.
“Never said you had to be. Just asked a question.” I reached down to grab on to the bottom of his shirt and felt him jerk against my hand as I rested my fingertips against his belly. “How bad was your accident?” It was a strange question to jump to, but when I’d asked if he was okay, I was mostly trying to figure out if I was hurting his back.
He groaned, and I felt it in my chest, which made me smile. “That’s a whole sordid tale on its own.”
“I’ve got time,” I promised.
“You don’t have to run off to go get someone to take care of you?”
He was joking, kind of, but being a cop meant I was used to hearing the lies in people’s words and the little things they didn’t want me to hear in their otherwise normal conversations. Caleb may have been trying to joke, but I heard the pain and a bit of jealousy in his voice. I moved my head forward to kiss the big muscle that ran along the side of his neck. “No. I’m good here. It’s only on the bad days that I need to find someone or else go insane. You happened to catch me on one of them the other day.”
“And you won’t tell me what it was?”
I shook my head. I hadn’t even told my dad yet about what was happening with Simon next month. “No.”
“Okay.” He took a deep breath. “So the person who hit me with her car was my boss’s wife.” I groaned, already expecting this story to get a lot worse. “Oh no, it’s not over quite yet,” he said. I knew it. “She found out about us somehow. I don’t really know, but he made himself out to be the victim. So while I was driving the company car to a meeting, she rear-ended me. Then when the police and ambulance were coming, she got out of her car, and screamed at me like a crazy person for seducing her husband and tricking him into having sex with me.”
I laughed as I pictured it, but then I remembered he’d gotten hurt and stopped laughing. “Are they still together?”
“Of course.”
“Are you jealous?” I asked.
Caleb snorted, and I smiled at his neck, since that’s all I could see of him without lifting my head. “No. Not at all. I had thought I loved him, once upon a time, but when it became pretty obvious he was never going to leave her for me, I stopped feeling like that.”
I nodded and gave his neck a kiss, which made him squirm. So I tried it again and got the same response.
“Your beard tickles,” he said. I could hear the smile in his voice.
I took my hand off his stomach, even though I really didn’t want to, and touched the side of my face. “I don’t have a beard,” I protested.
“Your stubble, then. It tickles.”
I rubbed my cheek against his neck just to feel him jump against me again. Him moving around like that was making it hard for me to lie still on top of him, though. I reached down and held on to his hip, forcing him to stop moving as I laid my head against the side of his neck again. “Stop. It’s too much.”
He must have realized what I meant because he stopped moving on his own and just relaxed. He still felt so good, though, even doing nothing beneath me. He curled his fingers in my shirt over my shoulder, and I forced myself not to rub against him. I wasn’t close or anything like that, and I wouldn’t be rushing off to find someone to have sex with, but I didn’t want to be uncomfortable with a hard cock I couldn’t do anything about either. The movie was still playing, but I had no idea what was going on. Maybe we’d watch another. It was still early enough that we could hang out for a few more hours, and I didn’t want to be the one to ruin it just because I was hard for him.
“I want you,” I said softly against his neck, in case he hadn’t noticed that already.
He nodded. “I want you too, Trent. But I can’t….”
I wasn’t an asshole. I wasn’t saying I wanted him to have sex with me right then and there, though if he offered, I wouldn’t turn him down. “I know. I just wanted you to know what I’m feeling right now is for you. In case you were wondering.”
I shrugged and felt him go even softer under me, like he’d let go of some tension he’d been hanging on to or something. “Thanks. I think I needed to hear that.”
Nodding, I released his hip and put my hand back on the small patch of his stomach that I’d exposed. That pinned my hand between us, but it wasn’t so bad that I was uncomfortable. “Do you want me to get up?”
“Not necessarily. Are you comfortable?”
“Very. I could go to sleep just like this.”
He laughed. “Maybe don’t do that. I don’t know if I’m strong enough to get you off me.”
“You don’t need to be stronger. It’s all about leverage. You could easily get me off you right now.” I’d taught self-defense for a few months before someone older, more experienced, and less attractive had taken over the classes for me. One of the guys on the force had told me it was my lack of experience. My dad told me the truth, though. They were getting e-mails from women asking for my number after having a class with me. That’s when I started taking over the e-mails too, so the other guys didn’t have to deal with my fan mail, my dad had said. There weren’t that many guys on the force, twelve at most usually, and I was the youngest of them all.
“What you would do is wrap your outside leg around one of mine and then twist yourself. That’s the easiest way to explain it and—umph!” I didn’t expect him to do it right then, but suddenly I was
on the floor, and he was sprawled out on top of me.
“Is your back okay?” I asked. I hadn’t really thought about how twisting like that could hurt him.
But he sat up and rested his hands on my chest for balance. I tried not to think that he was sitting over my lap. “Yeah. Feels okay for right now. I still desperately need to find a chiropractor.”
I chuckled and took a chance at putting my hands on his upper thighs. “Good luck there. We don’t have any in Thornwood. I know that for sure.”
He chuckled, and he probably didn’t mean to rub against me just right, but whatever he did sent a wave of pleasure straight through me and had me digging my fingers into his thighs. “Get off me,” I groaned as I looked up at him.
“Not as much fun being the one on the bottom, is it?” he teased. And as he pushed against me again, this time curling his fingers into my chest, I realized he was doing it on purpose, which bordered on being cruel since I knew he didn’t want to have sex.
I could have easily put him under me again, and I was tempted to, but I didn’t want to risk hurting his back. So I lay there and took it as he rubbed against me and left me gritting my teeth because I couldn’t do anything else to him besides grab his hips, which I was already doing.
“You’re not being fair,” I ground out.
“I know. But you weren’t either.”
Finally he did get off me, and I sat down on the floor next to him with my back against the couch. “Fuck,” I snapped out as I rubbed my hand over my swollen cock. “You knew exactly what you were doing to me.”
Caleb shrugged, and I let my head fall back against the sofa. “I’ve had sex before, so yeah, I know how to turn a guy on. You do too, so don’t act all innocent with me like you didn’t know what you were doing either.”
One More Time Page 7
