Clickbait

by E. J. Russell

  “I don’t know. But—”

  “Is this about my ragging on you today? Because you know I was just fucking with you, yeah?”

  “No. That’s not it. Not exactly. It’s—” Gideon crossed his arms over his belly. “It’s stupid.”

  “Is it my size again?”

  Gideon lifted one shoulder. “Sort of.”

  “Not because I’m black?”

  “What? No! I told you that already.”

  “You sure? Because some folks can’t get past the whole ‘big, bad, black dude’ stereotype, whether they cop to it or not.”

  “It’s nothing to do with your skin color, but the size thing . . .”

  Alex scooted a cable spool away from the wall and sat on it, putting his head below Gideon’s eye level. “Tell me.”

  But Gideon couldn’t. Not all of it. My biggest intellectual lapse, leading to my most painful and humiliating sexual experience, resulting in my most spectacular relationship failure. A triple threat.

  No way could he reveal all of that. But maybe a little. Enough so that Alex wouldn’t think Gideon believed he was less than or blame himself for Gideon’s own neuroses. God knows, the man hadn’t done anything to deserve that.

  He stared down at the toes of Alex’s work boots. “I had an . . . unfortunate experience with a man who was much larger than me.”

  “As big as me?”

  “Not quite. But close.”

  “He hurt you?”

  Gideon nodded, not able to force the word past his tight throat.

  “Hey.” Alex held his hand out, palm up, blocking Gideon’s view of his boots. “Can you look at me for a sec?”

  Gideon peered at Alex from under his bangs.

  “I promise I will never, ever cause you bodily harm.”

  “Is that a promise you can keep?”

  “I’ll do my damnedest.” This time Alex dropped his gaze. “I did something once. I mean, I didn’t strike a blow, but something I did caused someone I loved to be hurt. Badly.”

  “Did they get better?” Gideon whispered.

  Alex shook his head. “They got worse.”

  “Alex—”

  “But I swore I’d never hurt anyone else that way again. That was over ten years ago, and I’ve kept the promise so far.”

  “Okay.”

  “You believe me?”

  “I do.”

  “Good. Then anytime you get freaked out by my size, remember that. On my sister’s life, I will never touch you with the intent to cause you pain.”

  Gideon blinked. “Wow. Heavy.”

  Alex shrugged. “Needed to be said.” He stood. “Wanna test it?”

  A wicked grin replaced his earlier gravity, and he backed Gideon into the gap between two exposed metal studs. Gideon couldn’t help it—his eyes widened and he froze like the proverbial deer in the headlights. Alex stopped and raised both his hands, palms out.

  “Hey. No harm, remember?”

  Gideon shut his eyes and nodded. “Yeah.”

  “Good. Keep those peepers closed.”

  Alex cupped Gideon’s face between those enormous hands and kissed him.

  God. For a man with such rough hands, his lips were so soft. Lush. Gideon couldn’t help the little moan that escaped. Alex opened his own mouth and trapped the sound inside. Chased it back with his tongue.

  The tiny fraction of Gideon’s higher cognitive functions that was still online shouted, Bad idea. Bad idea. Everything else, including all points lower than his waist, screamed, More.

  Alex pulled away, and Gideon nearly fell onto that impossibly wide chest in his attempt to follow those lips.

  “You okay, G?”

  “Unnnng.”

  “Not sure if that’s a yes or a no.” His words vibrated with suppressed laughter.

  Seriously? He wanted to laugh? Screw that. Gideon had a reputation to preserve. He rallied his bitch-diva and poked Alex in his massive biceps.

  “Listen, buddy. Don’t think that just because you’ve got the mouth of a god and you kiss better than anyone in the known universe that we have anything in common.”

  “Oh, I don’t know. I think you kiss pretty well too.”

  Gideon narrowed his eyes. “That’s not what I mean, and you know it. This could never work. We’re too different.”

  “Why is different bad?” Alex stroked the side of Gideon’s face with the back of his hand. “Doesn’t same ol’ same ol’ get a little tired after a while?”

  Focus, damn it. Be strong. Gideon searched for a way to explain, which would be a hell of a lot easier if he understood it himself. “It’s about pattern-matching. Like with like.”

  “Like, huh. I like this.” Alex ran his thumb along Gideon’s lower lip, back and forth, then traced his upper lip with the tip of his forefinger. “You like this?” Gideon shivered, and Alex laughed, low and insidious.

  “I’m—I’m an evolved guy. I don’t let my libido rule my life.”

  Alex snorted. “Congratulations. You must be the only one on the planet.”

  “I’m serious, Alex. Do you really think our lives would mesh? I mean, while I can appreciate skin in an entire range of hues—yours, for instance, is a perfect #A05337—the collars on my men have always been a pristine, sparkling white. Not blue. Not ever. When was the last time you listened to NPR, or went to a film with subtitles, or—”

  “You talk a lot. You know that?”

  Alex was close. So close. Why don’t I want to run? “I—I know a lot of words. They spill out.”

  “One word I haven’t heard.” Alex trailed a finger along Gideon’s collarbone.

  “I’m sure I’ll get to it. I get to all of them eventually.”

  “I haven’t heard no. That’s the only thing it would take. Say no and I’ll stop. Move as far away as you say. I don’t ever want you to think your wishes don’t matter. You want to say no?”

  Gideon gazed into Alex’s eyes. Dark. Steady. Kind. Deep in a way that made Gideon feel shallow, lightweight, and flighty. He swallowed and shook his head. “No. I mean yes. I mean no, I don’t want to say no.”

  Alex rested his hands on Gideon’s hips in a loose grip, thumbs stroking the front of his jeans to either side of his fly, but not touching Gideon’s extremely interested dick. “You’ve been my fantasy crush for years, from those ten seconds at Lin’s party.”

  Gideon squirmed, trying to reposition those teasing thumbs, but instead of tightening his grip, Alex let go.

  Gideon grabbed Alex’s hands and returned them to his hips. “I wasn’t trying to get away,” he whispered. “But . . . what if one of your crewmates comes in?”

  “Everyone’s on dinner break. Nobody here but us.”

  “Nevertheless, the possibility of uncharted security cameras is putting me off my game.”

  “You’ve got game?”

  Gideon raised his chin, which seemed to give Alex the wrong impression, because he dove for Gideon’s throat like a porn-inspired bobbing-for-Adam’s-apple champion. Gideon sucked in a breath. “For your information,” he said, his voice wobbly, “I know seventeen ways to say blowjob.”

  “Seventeen?” Alex’s lips vibrated against Gideon’s jaw. “See that’s the trouble with education. It complicates things. All you really need . . .” Alex pulled back and gazed into his eyes. “Is one.”

  “One?”

  “Exactly one.”

  Alex kissed him again, a kiss that matched his eyes—hot and dark and deep. God. When was the last time someone had kissed him like this? Gideon usually didn’t allow such intimacy. But if this is what I’ve been missing, maybe I should rethink that.

  Alex traced the midline of Gideon’s chest, putting no pressure on him, although Gideon had to lean against the rough plasterboard or collapse. When Alex popped the snap on the hated paisley jeans, Gideon lost all access to his vocabulary. No matter, because he had no air to speak. It was all trapped in his lungs, as if he were awaiting Alex’s permission to exhale.

 
Alex eased Gideon’s zipper open. Slipped his hands inside, against skin, underneath Gideon’s briefs, and pushed outer- and underwear down. Gideon quivered at the sudden draft on his hips, his cock, his ass.

  Alex pinned Gideon in place with nothing more than a smoldering glance and a wicked half smile, then he sank to his knees in the drywall dust. He laced his fingers behind his head. “See? No hands. Bail anytime.”

  He took Gideon’s cock into his mouth.

  God. Hot. Wet. Heaven. Who would ever want to escape from this?

  “One,” Gideon gasped. “One is good.”

  Alex swallowed him down, lit up his nerves like a freaking Christmas tree. Gideon’s eyes threatened to roll back in his head, but he didn’t want to miss an instant of Alex’s lips on his cock. The suction—oh, God, yes, right there—threw Alex’s incredible cheekbones into stronger relief. So freaking beautiful. So freaking amazing.

  A chain reaction started at the base of Gideon’s spine and headed south, while lights winked in his peripheral vision. “Alex. I’m about to— God, please— You need to . . .”

  Alex didn’t pull off though. In fact, he sucked Gideon all the way to the root, flashing him a double thumbs-up before clasping his hands again.

  Gideon gasped and came, with Alex milking him through the last helpless thrust of his hips. A minute later, while Gideon was shuddering in the aftermath of his first nonsolo orgasm in months, Alex stood up.

  “Wait,” Gideon croaked. “Don’t you want . . . I can . . .” He reached for Alex, suddenly desperate to run his hands over those incredible pecs, to see how Alex’s prick would look, framed by those outrageously cut hip bones.

  But Alex stepped out of range and adjusted himself with a baring of teeth that was part grimace and part shit-eating grin. “Break’s over.”

  And then—while Gideon was still struggling to pull up his pants, Alex sauntered away, but Gideon took satisfaction in noting that he tugged his shirttail out to cover his crotch. Ha!

  Gideon was tempted to follow him, but the buzz of power tools and a bark of laughter signaled the crew’s return. Work. Check. That was why they were all here. He blinked at the exposed bones of the server room. What was he supposed to be doing? Oh. The network diagram.

  Stumbling over to the bucket desk, he collapsed cross-legged on the floor, staring at the dust sheet covering his portable printer for a full minute. Network diagram. Right.

  He’d never had so much trouble aiming his brain. Even the Luddite’s stupid list didn’t serve as a road map, because all of his available mental CPU cycles were consumed by one thing and one thing only.

  Alex.

  Before the blowjob (or BBJ, as Gideon now thought of it—an entirely different epoch), Gideon had been too strung out on shame to focus. Now, ABJ as it were, he seesawed between rubber-kneed reminiscence and hyperkinetic determination to repeat the glory and return the favor.

  After all, Gideon wasn’t selfish, damn it. Or anyway not that selfish. He owed Alex a little quid pro quo. It would be criminal to condemn a man who could suck Gideon’s bones out through his dick to a case of blue balls.

  Unless . . . had it all been a power play? To prove he could bring Gideon, whimpering, to his knees, even though Alex had been the one kneeling?

  Irony. God, he hated that shit. Well, he’d pay the man back whether he wanted it or not.

  Ewww. That sounded stalker-skeevy. Worse than Travis popping up every five minutes like a creepy jack-in-the-box costumed by Ralph Lauren.

  But Alex had said Gideon was his crush, right? So theoretically, he’d be up for it. A smirk inched its way across Gideon’s face. Oh, he’d make sure Alex was up for it. Way, way up.

  He tried to analyze why this felt so much more exciting than his usual short-term hookups. The novelty? He could count on one finger the times he’d been blown on a construction site. Maybe Charlie had a point. Maybe his peer pool was getting too stagnant.

  For their next date— Wait, did this count? In his old world of quick bar hookups, it definitely would have counted, at least as half of one. Could he make that fly with Alex? Cut down his obligation to one remaining date?

  He blinked at his laptop screen, stunned to discover that he didn’t want it to count against the date quota. No, he wanted every single minute he could get with Alex, the whole enchilada. Afternoons out like the one they’d had at the gallery. Sharing a meal when neither of them had anything to hide. Because if Alex could scramble his brains like this with a quickie blowjob in a fricking construction site, for God’s sake, what might he be able to do in an actual bed, in private, with no time constraints?

  Furthermore, what could Gideon do to Alex? Suddenly, he wanted to know what Alex looked like when he came. How his skin tasted. What his dick could do in Gideon’s—

  No. Sweat broke out on Gideon’s forehead. Not going there. He’s freaking huge, and if his dick is in proportion—just no. But the other stuff? Definitely.

  All he needed was a plan.

  Geekspeak: Bounce Rate

  Definition: The percentage of visitors who enter and exit a website from the same page, without clicking through to additional pages.

  Jesus, Henning, what the fuck were you thinking?

  He hadn’t been thinking, that was the problem. Same thing that had happened with his dad on the ladder—Alex had ignored the possible consequences because he’d wanted to get his rocks off with his boyfriend, and his dad had paid the price. Another five minutes, and Gideon would have paid the price this time—humiliation at the least, maybe losing a job he really needed too, all because Alex had gotten pissed about that fucker Haynes and had wanted to stake his claim.

  If he hadn’t heard the crew returning, hadn’t come to his senses enough to bail before he gave in to the lure of Gideon’s touch—

  He staggered and had to steady himself against the bare drywall while he tried not to hyperventilate. Thank God we dodged that bullet.

  Since he couldn’t face Manny or the crew with his dick straining at his fly, he retreated to the john. He splashed water on his face and stood with his hands braced against the counter, the water dripping into the sink.

  Jesus, Gideon had tasted good. Felt good in Alex’s mouth. Not just good. Fucking awesome. The way he’d come apart and turned nearly boneless, nearly collapsing into a puddle.

  If they’d had even one more minute, Alex could have finally taken Gideon in his arms.

  He raised his head and met his own gaze in the mirror. His lips were a little swollen, but otherwise nothing in his face showed that he’d fallen over the edge for a guy so far out of his league that . . .

  That he’d never have looked at me twice if I’d given him the choice.

  When Alex made his help with the project contingent on those three fucking dates, he’d forced Gideon’s hand. How much of an asshole did that make him? He’d basically paid Gideon to spend time with him, although the coin was labor instead of cash.

  His dad would have grounded him for a month if he’d done anything like this back in high school. “You help someone because it’s the right thing to do, not because of what you’ll get out of it.”

  Although Ned would never know how badly Alex had fucked up, Alex could imagine the disappointment on his face. He couldn’t let his dad down, not now, not ever.

  He took a deep breath and pushed off the counter. Okay, he could do this. He’d let Gideon off the hook—no more obligatory dates. He’d help with the project with nothing expected in return.

  But, damn, he didn’t want to take the fucking high road this time.

  He dried off and tracked Manny down near the new staircase. Tommy and Dave were installing the last of the handrails.

  “Hey, Manny, this looks great.”

  “Yeah. Boys did a good job. But then they always do, or I wouldn’t have ’em on my crew.”

  “Do you know when the vinyl’s being delivered for the server room?”

  Manny scratched his belly, squinting at the ceiling. �
�Not until next week, I think. Why?”

  “The IT guy needs to assemble the racks for the machinery. Be a little tight for him if he can’t do that until then. Think we could manage to set up a staging area for him?”

  “He ask you to do that?”

  “No. But makes sense, right? According to the master schedule, the consultant expects him to do eighty percent of the work on the last day.”

  “Damn consultants,” Manny muttered. “Bastards’ll steal your watch to tell you the time. There’s a spot directly across from the server room. Drywall’s done. Underlayment’s in place. It’s slated for carpet, though, so it’ll be free until after the vinyl’s down in the server room. He can use that.”

  “Thanks, man. I’ll go clear it out.”

  “I’ll come with you. These clowns don’t need me here.”

  As they moved the construction debris out of the staging space, Alex couldn’t help glancing through the big rectangular hole in the server room wall where the window would be.

  Hoping for a glimpse of your crush, you pathetic moron?

  Taking the high road might be good for his soul, but as far as his heart went—not to mention his balls—it sucked.

  Gideon finally printed out the network diagram. Yay me. I managed to focus for an hour. Postorgasm euphoria could do that for a guy.

  “Hey.”

  Gideon’s head snapped around at that velvet voice. Alex stood in the doorway cutout, and Gideon wanted to run to him and glom onto him like a starfish on an oyster.

  But before he could launch himself, the foreman’s head popped up over Alex’s shoulder. Bile burned in the back of Gideon’s throat. Had they been discovered? Was the foreman about to kick his ass for debauching his crew on the jobsite?

  “Um . . . yeah?”

  Alex jerked his thumb over his shoulder. “We’ve cleared a space across the hall for you to stage your server racks.”

  Gideon blinked. “You did?”

  The foreman shifted a toothpick from one side of his mouth to the other. “Yup. Put ’em together in there. We’ll help move ’em in here once the floor is laid.”