“Ugh, get away from me, you insanely unattractive freak,” when that was the exact opposite of what I thought.
I didn’t know how to handle men who were halfway decent-looking and currently residing in the same house.
Still, I had disrespected him by brushing him off and so what if my sudden attack of conscience was nothing but an excuse to insinuate myself into his presence again?
There’ll be plenty of chances for that, Kit. At breakfast. Lounging around in the evenings.
Passing the time of day on weekends. You don’t have to…
I watched my hand ball into a fist, my knuckles rap on his bedroom door. I hadn’t told them to do that. It seemed my cock wasn’t the only body part of mine which developed a mind of its own whenever Steven was nearby.
“Yeah?” Seconds after that pseudo-greeting, the door opened and Steven jerked back, as if he hadn’t expected to see me standing there. Perhaps he’d thought Gary wanted to speak to him. His lips parted slightly, obvious surprise keeping him mute. Obsessively observant me—in this instance at least—noted the way his fingertips tightened around the paperbacks he clutched in one hand. Minutes before that hand had been on my—
“Hey.” Nice opener, Blackman. “I…” What? Wanted to apologise? Straighten out what the fuck just happened even though I have no idea how to explain it?
“Want to come in?” he finally said, startling me with the invitation. That hadn’t been my intention, but now the tentative welcome was on the table, I’d take it.
I shrugged, little more than a twitch of my shoulders. I was a computer geek by trade, no actor, and my faux nonchalance fooled neither of us, I supposed.
The door clicked shut behind us and the knot of guilt in the pit of my stomach unfurled and became a twist of anticipation. He’d let me in and shut the rest of the world out.
Still, if Gary had happened by, he’d have seen two guys sitting in the bedroom of one of them, talking about whatever newly-acquainted housemates talked about.
When ‘they’ could have talked downstairs, sure, but for all he knew, I could have volunteered my moving-in services at last. Told Steven I’d help him unpack and shelve his books.
As it was, the word ‘migraine’ had been mooted so Gary wouldn’t dare disturb my closed bedroom door, nor the grumpy bastard he presumed lay behind it.
But, I reminded myself, as if I needed reminding, if he happens to knock on Steven’s and discovers me here, what’s he gonna think? “Why’s the door closed, guys?”
“Why’s the door closed?”
Steven cocked his head. “Does it make you uncomfortable?”
“No. I just thought…”
“I figured we could use some privacy.” Steven stood entirely too close.
My observational powers, rather than being muted with him nearby, were sharpened, magnifying the curly chest hairs just peeking out from the neckline of his vest. And now I knew he had a treasure trail and was definitely, definitely gay… “Oh?”
“Unless you just came to offer your services?”
I completely failed in my attempt to turn the cough of surprise into a simple clearing-of-my-throat. What I did manage to do was make him laugh.
“Helping me unpack, of course.” He waved two paperbacks at me. “What did you think I meant?”
“Nothing. Nothing.” Steven swanned past and stood in front of the near-empty bookcase, laughing to himself. His shoulders shook with merriment, drawing my attention—
once again—to his ink. “You know, considering you’re so tightly wound, you’re surprisingly easy to wind up.”
“I am not—”
The thud of the books hitting the shelf and sliding into place curtailed my denial. “Yes you are.” And Steven’s voice put paid to it absolutely. “Make yourself useful, then.”
My already-tense facial muscles tautened still further when I frowned.
“Open up the next box.” He nodded at the cardboard boxes on the floor at the foot of his bed and I complied.
Thankfully they weren’t taped, just fastened with each flap tucked under the adjacent one, daisy-chain style. It took seconds to undo the first.
“You know…”
Don’t fold your arms, don’t fold your arms, don’t fold your—ah, fuck it.
He folded his arms and leaned against the bookcase, grinning. “You probably wouldn’t get half the migraines you do if you just lightened up a bit. I bet the cost of your next beer consignment they’re stress-related.”
“How do you know how many migraines I get?”
“Tell me I’m wrong.”
“Is your sister stressed out?”
He gave a sharp bark of laughter. “Tiffany? God, no. She’s so laid back she’s practically horizontal. In fact.” He shrugged. “Most of the time she is, but anyway, nice deflection there, Kit. With women, migraines are mostly hormonal. It’s unusual for men to get them. Most of the time in those cases, they’re stress-related. You have a high-pressure job?”
“You’re joking, aren’t you? I dick about on computers all day; it’s hardly brain science. Rocket surgery. I mean—”
“Computers and stress, see. I hate to say I told you so.” He reached out for a pile of books and I handed them to him, casting a quick glance over the spines and titles.
“But you’re gonna do it anyway,” I muttered. “So this is the kind of thing you read, huh?”
“You said ‘this’ with your eyebrows raised.” He winked. He winked, and turned his back, not looking in the least embarrassed, sheepish or shamefaced before he did so. And why would he?
“Are you daring me to be shocked?”
Steven looked over his shoulder—his toned, inked, get the fuck over it, Kit, shoulder—
and laughed. “Not at all. I think I’d be the shocked one, though, if you read anything other than Computer Nerding for Dummies or any sort of geek manual.”
“I read proper books too.”
“Yeah? Name the last novel you read, Kit. For fun. The last DVD you watched that wasn’t Jensen Ackles wank-fodder.”
“You’ve been paying attention?”
“Or the last time you got laid,” he muttered, nearly but not quite under his breath, clearly intended to be heard.
“What?”
“Nothing, nothing. More books in that box, are there?”
“That innocent act isn’t fooling anyone.”
“Act? This isn’t an act.” Two supplicant hands waited, palms up, for the next load of books from the same box.
I slapped them down on his hands one by one. “Elizabeth Silver? Ash Penn? L. M. Turner?” I recited.
“I’m a gay guy with healthy appetites.” He shrugged. I couldn’t faze him no matter how I tried. It was me constantly on the back foot, and he’d only been a tenant for a matter of hours. The bed was made, he’d offloaded some stuff in the kitchen but his books and a few other bits and pieces were still in bags and boxes. He hadn’t even made his mark on the house yet.
Me, on the other hand…
“I read erotica on occasion. Sometimes I read the Brontes too.” He indicated a couple of books already shelved with, I had to admit, broken spines and worn covers. “Tolstoy for some light reading. I’m not all about the filth, Kit. I can be quite cerebral too.”
“I never thought… Look, I didn’t knock on your door to discuss your reading material…”
“No?” Without looking at me he shuffled a few books around on the shelf, perhaps grouping novels by the same author together, or arranging according to genre. Hell, he could have been colour-coding his shelves according to the appearance of the spines for all I knew.
“No. About the…” I thumbed in the general direction of the bathroom. “What happened.”
“Or didn’t happen, you mean.”
“Hmm. Yeah.” I crouched on the floor at the foot of his bed, pulled another box open without even thinking to ask if this one was also full of books.
It was. Kazuo Ishiguro, Wally Lamb
, Ian McEwan. Vladimir Nabokov.
My eyebrows lifted and I glanced at Steven. He caught my eye and stood, unmoving, one hand on the shelf at his shoulder height. “Like what you see?”
I gulped. “I’m impressed.”
“You say that like you thought I was a complete philistine.” He sidled nearer, but stopped when he was a foot or two away, thumbs hooked into his trouser pockets.
I remained on the floor, looking up at him. Now this, I both liked, and didn’t. I hated the way he looked at me, even as his scrutiny intrigued.
“Much as I’m sure you’d be uncomfortable if I went for the really obvious punch line,”
he began.
“What?” I asked. “While you’re down there?”
“See? Maybe we are on the same wavelength after all.” Steven grinned. “There’s hope for you yet.” Another shrug, and he went on. “Let’s see to the books first. You can talk about my taste in literature when the real reason for your call makes you too, you know…” He rolled each shoulder in turn, then grimaced. “Icky.”
“Look, I…”
“Come on. Bring the whole box over. I know how icky it makes you handing over a few books at a time. My touch has that effect on a lot of men.” Steven retreated and added from the other side of the room, “Well? I’m offering you the opportunity to hold the box in between us like body armour. Can’t say fairer than that. I can’t possibly stick my tongue down your throat in front of Vladimir Nabokov, could I? It wouldn’t be proper.”
I groaned as I rose, the box in my arms, and did as Steven bid. He’d only ordered me to stand there, holding the box while he did the organising work, but being this close to him was hard enough.
And it wasn’t the only thing that was hard.
One, one thousand, two, one thousand, three, one thousand…
“So.” He shot me a sideways glance after lightening my load by two Ishiguros and a Rushdie.
“So?”
“You knocked on my door, Kit.”
“Ah. Yeah. The…”
One McCarthy, a Mistry and a Kunzru. “Kiss-that-wasn’t-a-kiss?”
“That.”
“And you wanted to talk to me about it, did you?” Two McEwans. Two more.
Obviously a big fan.
“Yeah.”
“That’s strange.” His lips quirked in a parody of a smile and I shifted my weight from one foot to the other. Steven paused with both hands on the waist-height shelf and turned his head to look at me. His body, however, remained angled away. “Because I’m the one doing most of the talking.”
“It’s…” I cleared my throat, looked up at the ceiling, and startled when some weight lifted from the box in my arms. Two hardbacks. I didn’t see the names or titles. I’d somehow lost the ability to read. It didn’t help that they were Steven’s fingertips which skimmed over the gold leaf embossing a title which may have been written in a foreign language for all I could make out. “You know.”
“Hard?”
“Yes. No,” I amended instantly, but not quick enough to stop him bursting out laughing.
I glanced back at the door, as if I expected someone else to have crept into the room unheard by either of us.
“It’s all right. No one’s there.” Steven shook his head slowly as he emptied the box of its final novels. “Besides, I just laughed. If Gary heard me laugh, he wouldn’t think we were up to anything, would he?”
“He’d wonder what the hell Miserable Git Kit had done to entertain our new housemate.”
“Oh, I’m sure you could think of a few things.”
The way he looked me down and up made my spine tingle.
“If I’m in a guy’s bedroom and we’re up to something and he starts laughing, there’s something wrong with my pulling technique,” I muttered.
“Ah, but we’re not, though, are we? Up to something, I mean.”
“No. Maybe, but, oh, where should I…?” I indicated the box and he made a moue with his lips, I’m sure deliberately.
“Just leave it at the foot of the bed. I’ll crush the boxes up and stick them in the recycling bin tomorrow.”
All he’d said about his job since moving in was that he worked in an office. It probably didn’t allow its employees to show up in muscle-tight vests and jeans or shorts—dear God, shorts—but a crisp white shirt and dress trousers would look hot enough as I passed him on the stairs or in the kitchen and—
“Kit?”
“Oh, right. Yeah.” Tossing the box on the floor I turned back to him, startled by the furrowed brow, the intense scrutiny on his face. “I didn’t want you thinking, in the bathroom…” I rubbed the back of my neck as I always did when trying to initiate a bloody uncomfortable conversation, nearly dislodging the painkilling strip. I patted it back into place and cleared my throat. “Look, it’s just with us living together. I mean, sharing a house, not living together, that sounded a bit, you know…”
Near-imperceptibly, he shook his head, the merest twitch and an equally gentle, near-silent, “No,” was the only thing he said, leaning against the bookcase, arms and legs crossed.
“Look, it’s unusual for someone to, you know, in the…” Come on, come on, Kenton. Give me something here.
“Bathroom?”
“Yes.”
“You’d prefer I make a move on you in the privacy of my bedroom?” He pushed his weight off the bookcase and I shuddered, half in fear, half in anticipation. That twist in the pit of my stomach refused to fade.
“No. I mean, not that I…” I gulped when he took a step closer.
“Okay. Should I sneak into your bedroom in the middle of the night?”
“Now I know you’re taking the piss.”
“Why? How do you know?”
I fought the urge to back off, to beat a hasty retreat followed by a fervent session of beating off in my own room.
“Men like you…”
He lowered his chin and looked up at me through downturned lashes. “Men like me…?” he prompted. “I’m going to assume that was your half-hearted, fucked-up attempt at trying to compliment me, rather than an insult.”
“Merely an observation.”
“What is it about men like me? Actually, forget that. What is a ‘man like me’?”
“A fast worker.”
“Good God, Kit. It doesn’t take six months to work out whether or not you fancy someone. I mean, you’re socially inept, grumpy, selfish and a workaholic loner, but you’re pretty easy on the eye, you know?”
“You’re…”
He lifted his eyebrows.
“A straight talker.”
“It’s the only straight thing about me.”
I turned my laughter into a brief clearing of my throat. “I worked that out.”
“Observant chap, aren’t you?”
“Bit of a giveaway when you made a move on me on your first night here.”
“That? You call that a move? Nah, that was a clumsy attempt at a kiss made even more clumsy by you acting like you’d never been that close to another man before.”
“Been a while.”
“How long?”
“Embarrassingly long.”
“You’re probably a bit rusty, then. I mean, if you thought what happened in the bathroom was me making a move on you…”
“It wasn’t? I’d love to know what you…” My voice trailed away as I caught his eye, my face heating under his gaze. Busted.
“Oh, would you, now?” He took a step forward and my entire body wanted to back off but my feet just. Wouldn’t. Move.
“Steven, this really isn’t a good idea.”
“Why are you here, then? You could have just crossed the hall and gone to bed.”
“We live together.”
“We share a house. That’s not quite the same thing. And the lease is only valid for another six months, so…” He shrugged and it was only when he stood a breath away from me that I rediscovered the power to move. Trouble was, I followed his lead like it
was a dance with the final move being a left one-two, right one-two, and Kit’s back hits the wall.
“This is only your first night here.”
“Would you prefer I waited ‘til tomorrow instead?”
“No—”
“The weekend?”
“Steven. You’re not helping.”
He laughed. “Okay, then tell me what the problem is.”
I opened my mouth to speak but the way he inclined his head, eyebrows raised, eyes widened, taunted me.
“Don’t tell me. We live together, it’s my first night, things could get awkward, blah, blah, blah,” he singsonged, nodding his head in a mocking parody of someone dropping off to sleep.
“It’s true, though. And anyway, why would you? I mean, if I’m as grumpy and standoffish as you say, why would you even bother?” I knew I sounded like I was fishing for compliments and maybe I was, but the curiosity was genuine, at least. I just didn’t get it. This didn’t happen. Not to me. Not with men like him. I got the dregs, the leftovers, the bastards and the drunks. Not the gorgeous, confident, not-clinically-insane guys like Steven.
“I also said you were easy on the eye, so why the hell not?”
“I hardly know you.”
“My name’s Steven Kenton. I’m twenty-nine years old. I’m gay, and I’ve got my hand on your cock. What else do you need to know?”
“No you— fuck.” I groaned when he laid his hand over my erection, expecting him to laugh at my surprise, but his eyes clouded over. Only his arm, his hand, separated us and I thanked God the wall was at my back—nothing else would have kept me upright at that point.
“Okay, so it’s through your jeans, but we’ll soon remedy that.”
“This.” I took a deep breath and inhaled whatever it was about him that melted my resistance to nothing. “This won’t end well.”
“Are you kidding me? A Kenton hand-job is the stuff of legend. This will have a very happy ending for both of us.”
I gulped so hard my throat hurt. “No, really. This won’t end well—”
His hand tightened just enough to stop me speaking and he leaned in so close I could almost, almost, almost taste his skin. I could have counted the flecks of stubble shadowing his jaw if I’d had any presence of mind left. “You don’t have much faith in me, do you?” he murmured and I wanted to tell him, stop talking, stop talking, stop talking. Just shut the fuck up and kiss me. It’ll be so much better this time. No. Don’t.
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