by J. P. Oliver
“Go away, Bill,” I said.
“Oh, God. Not now, Bill,” Jason said, echoing my sentiments.
Bill sniffed us suspiciously for a few seconds. Then he turned with a haughty flick of his tail and jumped down from the bed.
“We should have been doing this all along,” I said.
Jason trailed his fingertips through the sticky mess on his abs and sighed. “Think of the time we wasted not doing this.”
“It’s a travesty. A damn shame.” I flopped a boneless arm onto his shoulder. “Guess we’ve got a lot of catching up to do.”
Jason smiled. “I’ve got a few more tricks I can show you. Get ready to be schooled, Dr. Johnson.”
I laughed. “For a virgin, you sure do have some balls. What makes you think I won’t teach you a thing or two?”
“I’m absolutely sure you will,” he said. “But you’d be surprised how inventive a person can get when sex is off the table.”
I leaned up onto my elbows and frowned. “Does that mean sex is off the table for us?”
“Hell no. Sex is definitely on the table for you.” He raised up and kissed me gently, the tip of his tongue sneaking out and flicking across the seam of my lips. “But you’ll have to earn it first.”
“Really.” I collapsed back onto the bed and laughed. “And how am I going to do that?”
“Hmmm…” Jason mused. “You’ll figure it out.” He jumped up and headed to the bathroom, buck naked, his ass muscles flexing in a way that made my mouth water.
God, the man was fine. How no one had ever managed to tap that ass was beyond me. I’d always imagined Jason Whitham had men falling all over themselves to be with him, and from what I’d seen, that assessment was true. Diego was clearly interested, and Kaden Grimes was cruising for a bruising if he didn’t calm down. The guy seemed to pop up every time Jason stepped into the locker room as if he were just waiting to catch a glimpse. As far as I knew, he hadn’t been lucky enough to see Jason sans clothing, and believe me I was paying attention.
Jason was careful in the locker room. Quiet and shy, turning away if there was a chance anyone might see his junk, using strategically placed towels like a fucking magician.
I, on the other hand, had wanted him to see me. I didn’t strut around like one of those older, pot-bellied men who seemed to get their jollies by blinding everyone with their fish-white rolls of gelatinous flesh. I was fastidious and respectful of others.
But with Jason, it was another matter entirely. I knew I had a nice cock—lord knows I’d gotten enough wide-eyed compliments from the guys I’d hooked up with over the years—and I wanted Jason to see it. Egotistical, maybe, but the compulsion stemmed more from need and desire than ego. So, I’d hovered near him on many occasions, sometimes purposely turning toward him as I pulled my shirt over my head, cock out and ready for his gaze. I’d seen him looking a couple of times, but he hadn’t let on that he’d seen anything he wanted to sample.
It had driven me crazy to the point that I’d done it more often just trying for a reaction. I’d longed for him to look at me with lust in his eyes. I’d had to be careful, though. I could only flash a glimpse before I covered it up or turned away, because I inevitably popped a boner every time.
Jason had commented the night before that my dick was unusually large when it was flaccid. That was true, but what he didn’t know is that every time he’d seen it, I was already getting hard at the mere thought of him looking at it. Jason Whitham had never seen me completely soft, and I doubted he ever would. It’s just what his nearness did to me.
Already I was getting hard again just thinking about him standing under that shower spray in my bathroom. I could hear the way the water changed with his every shift of angle and every slide of his hands over his taut abs. I wanted to sneak over to the bathroom door and have a peek, but more than that I wanted to fuck him, and he’d said I had to earn the right. Ogling him like some peeping Tom probably wasn’t what he’d had in mind, so I stayed right where I was and idly stroked myself instead.
God, what was I thinking? I had Jason in my apartment—showering, sleeping, dry humping and stroking me to climax. That couldn’t be good. He didn’t fit in my world, and I knew it. But I’d already gotten a taste of him, and I had no idea how much would be enough.
He appeared in the doorway in nothing but a towel and a smile, looking like a sweet young god. And at that moment, I thought maybe it would never be enough.
12
Jason
When I got out of the shower and found Mark stroking that fat cock of his, I nearly swallowed my tongue. How could the man be so confident, just lying there rubbing his bone and watching me with a hot, unwavering gaze?
He looked like royalty amid the luxury of his enormous bedroom, self-possessed and unconcerned about anything but pleasuring himself. He was a guy who was used to getting what he wanted, and right now it looked like he had his sights set on me. But what would happen once he got me?
Would he get bored and toss me aside? Try to work back into the easy friendship we’d had before? Would he expect a friends-with-benefits arrangement? A convenient fuck when he got horny?
None of that was going to work for me, but I felt deep down in my gut that one of those scenarios was the best I could hope for. That didn’t stop me from wanting him, though, and I had already decided I was going to sleep with him. I was going to let him go where no man had gone before. It was time, anyway. I was twenty-eight years old, and the clock was ticking. I had no intention of going my entire life without experiencing the joys of full-blown sex, and Mark was the perfect person to show me what I’d been missing.
“Are you getting started back up without me?” I asked, raising an eyebrow.
Mark let go of his dick and sat up on the bed, his gaze still hot. “Nah, I was just passing the time.” He stood and crossed the room, coming up so close to me I could smell the sex on him. He leaned in and kissed me on the lips. “Hope you saved some hot water for me.”
He slapped my ass as he passed by and went into the bathroom to shower, and I picked up the clothes I had discarded earlier and slid the shorts on. I dropped the shirt onto the bed, smiling to myself.
Mark’s clothes. Mark’s apartment. I had never been so close to his life before, and now I was a part of it, if only for a short time. It felt surprisingly good. Even despite the hospital drama and the possibility of losing everything, my heart sang. It was hard to feel sorry for myself with endorphins buzzing around like fireflies in my system.
I went into the kitchen to make myself another cup of coffee, but before I could get there, the doorbell rang. I froze. Then, when my brain kicked back into gear, I hurried to the bathroom door.
“Mark, there’s someone at the door.”
The bell sounded again. Several rings in succession, as if whoever was on the other side was getting restless.
“Don’t answer it,” Mark said. “They’ll give up.”
With a sinking feeling, I ignored the next several rings and headed toward the kitchen again. Mark didn’t want anyone to know I was in his apartment; that much was clear. Was he ashamed of me? Could it be a lover out there who would get angry or jealous if they found me here?
I didn’t have to wait to find out the answer. When I was just outside Mark’s bedroom door, I heard a key turn in the lock. Panic seized me. The door swung open, and Mark’s mother breezed in. I jumped back into the bedroom to avoid being seen, my heart pounding like the bass drum in a parade march.
“Mark, are you here?” she called. “I saw your car in the parking garage.” Then she screamed. “Oh, my heavens! Where did this cat come from? And what happened to his eye?” I heard her moving toward the bedroom, high heels clicking on the hardwood floor.
Shit! Shit! Shit!
I wanted to dive under the bed, but it was too late for that. My feet were glued to the floor, the footsteps were getting closer, and my heart was going to beat out of my chest. And then, before I could formulate a solid plan or excuse fo
r being there, I found myself face-to-face with Lyla Johnson.
I’d met her once before, briefly, when she’d been visiting a friend in the hospital and had stopped by the ED to see Mark. She was a thin woman—the kind of thin that comes from too much cardio and not enough food—and she carried the air of someone who believes they are truly superior to most of the people around them. Her long, dark hair was swept into a low ponytail, and she wore a silk blouse with lace accents and a pencil skirt that must have been shrink-wrapped onto her thin frame. Her face was equally thin, probably gaunt if not for the help of fillers and Botox.
Lyla screamed when she saw me, and I yelled in response. I could feel the blood rushing to my face, and I instinctively looked down to take in my state.
Mark’s shorts. That’s all I was wearing. And I was standing in her son’s bedroom with wet hair and a guilty look on my face.
Lyla gave me a cool once-over, then offered the most unconvincing smile I’d ever seen, as if she’d sucked a lemon and was trying to play it off. “Dr. Whitham,” she said. “I didn’t expect to see you here. Where is my son?”
Before I could answer, Mark called out from the bathroom. “Did you say something, J?”
“Ummm… yeah, you have company.”
“What?”
Lyla walked over to the bathroom door and positioned her red-glossed lips close to the crack between the door and the frame. “Your mother is here, dear. Hurry up and get out here.”
The water shut off immediately, followed by the frantic sounds of Mark shuffling around in the bathroom. Lyla avoided looking at me while she waited, choosing instead to study an abstract painting that hung in the small sitting area near the bathroom.
Mark emerged momentarily in a pair of ass-hugging jeans and a white T-shirt. His face was flushed, and droplets of water fell from his hair, soaking through the light fabric of his shirt. If his mother hadn’t been there, I would have been turned on at the sight of him. Well, I was anyway, but I shouldn’t have been.
“Mother, what are you doing here?” He asked breathlessly, his throat convulsively around a swallow.
“I came by to see my son.” She picked invisible lint off of her spotless skirt, then struck a defiant pose with one hand on her hip and nose in the air. “When you didn’t answer, I used my key.”
“I told you to only use that in an emergency. You just barging in here is an invasion of my privacy.”
“Well, you don’t seem to mind when I’m dropping off food. And besides, it could have been an emergency. How was I to know? Your car was here, but you weren’t answering the door. What if you’d slipped getting out of the shower and cracked your head open? You could have been lying helpless and bleeding on the bathroom floor.”
Her calculating gaze slid to me, and something in the depth of those dark eyes, so like her son’s, suggested that she would rather have found him helpless and bleeding than with the likes of me.
“I’m fine,” Mark said. “Is there a reason for this surprise visit?”
Lyla fiddled the lace bib of her top into place, then smoothed her already-smooth skirt. “I was going to talk to you about Belinda Trevayne’s fundraiser. It’s in two weeks, and she was expecting you to RSVP by now. Alex said you were vague about it the last time he talked to you.”
“I don’t know, Mother. I told him I’d think about it.”
“Well, you’re running out of time to think. Why don’t you just call him and accept the invitation? Your father and I wanted you all to come by the house afterward for a cocktail.”
Mark’s eyes narrowed. “Who is you all?”
Lyla glanced at me again. Daggers in those eyes. “You and Alex and his parents, of course. Oh, and his sister is home from college for the holidays. You remember little Ariel, don’t you? I don’t know if you’ve seen her lately, but she’s grown into quite a beautiful young woman. Anyway, your father has a new bottle of cognac, very expensive, and you know how much Lionel Trevayne enjoys a good cognac.”
Oh, so that was it. Even I could see through Lyla’s ruse. She was trying to orchestrate a meeting between Mark and Alex’s sister.
Mark pushed past her and into the living room, communicating irritation with his every movement. “Why don’t we have a cup of coffee in the kitchen? My bedroom is not exactly the best place for entertaining.”
Again, with the daggers pointed straight at me. Lyla Johnson was not a master of hiding her emotions. Either that, or she had no intention of hiding them. “Looks to me you’ve already been entertaining in here.” She breezed out of the room with that annoying clack of heels across the hardwood.
I took the opportunity to grab the discarded T-shirt from the bed and slip it on. When I caught up to the two of them, Lyla had deposited her rail-thin body into a chair at the table, and Mark was making coffee.
“Jason is staying here for a few days,” Mark was saying. “They’re doing some repairs at his place.” When he turned around to present the fresh cup of coffee to his mother, he glanced at me, and there was an unspoken apology in his eyes.
It didn’t help to soften the blow. Mark was a grown man; why did he have to lie about why I was in his apartment? Apparently, he needed his mother to think that there was a perfectly plausible excuse for me being there aside from friendship. Aside from him helping me through a difficult situation. Aside from us having sex. Because that was the bottom line, wasn’t it? Lyla Johnson would not approve of her son having sex with me, and Mark was purposely trying to steer her away from coming anywhere close to that assumption.
This was like a flashback from college and the bi-curious frat boys and jocks. Cocksuckers at night, and liars in the morning. But I had no one to blame but myself. I’d known how it would be with Mark, and I’d started something up with him, anyway.
I was going to sleep with him; I hadn’t changed my mind about that. But the way he was handling this situation with his mother reminded me that I needed to be extra careful not to lose more than my virginity in the process. Like my heart or my dignity.
Lyla took a sip of her coffee and grimaced, her perfectly-lined red lips stretching so thin her mouth looked like a bloody gash. “Didn’t he have any other friends who would put him up? You don’t even have anywhere for him to sleep.”
“Mother, please. He’s standing right here. Don’t you have any decency?”
“Decency?” Lyla scoffed. “You’re one to talk about decency. You have no concern about protecting our family name. What if people start talking?”
“What if they do?” Mark’s irritation was coming through now. It was in the set of his jaw and the deep furrow between his eyes. “And what are they going to say?”
Lyla set her coffee down on the table a little too hard, and a bit of coffee sloshed out. She snapped her fingers at Mark, who ripped a paper towel from the wall-mounted dispenser and handed it to her. She wiped slowly, soaking up the coffee, her face drawn tight. “You know very well what they’re going to say. People make assumptions these days.”
“Ummm… I’m just going to go watch some TV,” I said, feeling about as awkward as I ever had in my entire life. I wasn’t about to go into Mark’s bedroom again, and I hadn’t been invited to explore any of the other rooms. I couldn’t leave because Mark had kidnapped me and left my car at my place. That left the living room, which, as it turned out, wasn’t nearly far enough away from the kitchen. I could still hear most everything they said.
I turned the TV on but purposely kept the volume low. Not because I wanted to eavesdrop, but because I didn’t want to be a nuisance while they were trying to have a conversation. I tried not to listen, I really did. And I tried not to hope that Mark would take this perfect opportunity to come out to his mother.
“I don’t care what anyone else thinks,” Mark said defiantly.
“What about Dr. Rosenfeld?” Lyla asked. “I can’t imagine he would approve of this arrangement.”
I glanced up at that and saw the confusion on Mark’s face.
/> “What does Rosenfeld have to do with who I choose to have in my home?”
Lyla sighed in exasperation. “Are you really so daft, Mark? You’re making a terrible mistake.”
Mark didn’t say anything to that, and his silence was deafening in my ears.
“I think you should go, Mother. I have a lot to do today. I don’t get many days off.”
Lyla scoffed. “So, you’re just going to run me off before I’ve finished my coffee?”
“You’ve had that same swallow in the bottom of your cup so long it’s cold by now. Please, Mother. I’ll let you know about the fundraiser.”
“It would be nice for you to show your face. You’ve been ducking out of too many social functions lately. People are going to forget who you are, for heaven’s sake.”
“That might not be such a bad thing,” Mark muttered as he walked Lyla to the front door. His hand at the small of her back looked gentle but firm, and Lyla snagged one of her high heels on the rug as they passed me. She shot a hateful glare in my direction.
What did she think? That I’d tripped her? Used my powers of magic to cause her to stumble? Rubbed my mojo on her and given her bad luck? The lady was unbelievable, and one thing was for sure and certain. She did not like me, and she didn’t give a rat’s ass if I knew it.
“Ease up, Mark. You’re going to knock me down. Jeez, you’d think the place was on fire the way you’re hustling me out of here.”
“I’m just ready to get on with my day, and I don’t want to think about fundraisers and social engagements. I have more important things to concern myself with.” He kissed her tenderly on the top of her head. “I love you, Mother. See you soon.”
“I love you, too.” She stepped out into the hallway and turned a megawatt smile on her son. “RSVP about the event soon, okay? And don’t forget. Cocktails at our house afterward. We’ll have crab cakes. And I’ll call that bakery downtown and order those lemon petit fours you love. Mmmm…” She licked her red lips and laughed. “I know you can’t say no to those.”
