“Bunch of rich white boys running around getting in fights, living on their daddies’ money,” Kaz scoffed, flipping from sarcasm to true irritation in an instant, not sure why Will or the thought of the crew he ran with brought it out in him so strongly. All he knew was he had a burning need to smack down Will’s antifa crew and their ridiculous and dangerous ideas about punching Nazis for sport and fun.
Or a burning need to do something, and smacking Will down was safer than what he really wanted to do.
“Hey. My family’s got money, but it’s all in land. Not like I was shopping for . . .”—Will’s mouth moved as if his brain was searching for something expensive. He clearly didn’t even know what kind of shit people with money bought—“Beats headphones in high school or whatever.”
Kaz just looked at him.
Will flushed, high cheekbones turning pink in a disturbingly appealing way. “Okay, so that’s probably a bad example. Farm kids in Iowa had Beats, so they probably weren’t a big deal anymore. But I still remember asking for them for Christmas and being crushed when I didn’t get them. My mom and dad bought me a knockoff version at Target instead, and I was too embarrassed to wear them to school.”
By the time he finished describing his embarrassment, Will was staring at his hands in his lap, long thin fingers twisting together awkwardly and Kaz almost opened his mouth to apologize, the need to make Will feel better was so strong in his chest.
“Besides, you’re the ambassador’s kid,” Will said pointedly, lifting his gaze from his lap to give Kaz a slow up and down look, arrogance back firmly in place.
“Diplomat’s,” Kaz corrected automatically. His mother was hoping to take that last prestigious step with her next promotion, but he’d been taught never to claim a higher rank than he deserved.
Will rolled his eyes. “Globetrotter. Whatever. DC is the first place I’ve been besides Iowa and school.”
Kaz pulled his head back, suddenly wary. He didn’t talk about his family much, period, and certainly hadn’t brought it up with any of his students aside from mentioning that his family was from Pakistan, although he’d grown up all over the globe. “How’d you know that?”
“Google. Duh.”
Having Will know things about him was almost as uncomfortable as remembering he’d helped bring him to orgasm without even knowing his name. “Yeah, well, my parents were government employees. We weren’t exactly rich.”
“But you moved in some pretty fancy circles, I bet.”
Kaz kept his mouth shut, because it was true and he wasn’t about to lie about it. There had always been visiting dignitaries and local political leaders to entertain and the embassy hadn’t spared expenses. Making a powerful and elegant impression was priority number one at all times. Between the two of them, farm boy and expat kid, Kaz was definitely the one who’d grown up with the trappings of wealth, whether or not the glamour actually belonged to his family or instead to their employer.
“In any case, rich or poor, I’m pretty sure I owe you a blowjob,” Will said, utterly shameless.
Kaz jerked back so suddenly his skull bounced off the window at his shoulder.
“You’re not blowing me in the back of the bus,” he hissed out, his whisper making sleepy heads turn in front of them.
“Just saying.” Will managed to keep the grin off his face, if not out of his lowered voice. “I’m willing to pay up.”
“You don’t even know me.” A stupid thing to say, considering the shit he’d done with near strangers in bar bathrooms or dorm rooms he’d have needed a map to find a second time.
Will laughed. “Dude. You had your finger in my ass, like, three hours ago. We know each other plenty.”
Kaz moaned and half-covered his eyes with one limp hand. “I am so fired.”
“Just saying.” Will shrugged. “I know you a helluva a lot better than some hookups I’ve had. Plus, like I said, I’ve wanted you forever. Ever since the first time I saw you, all scowly and cranky with us before we’d even had our first class.”
“I was in a shit mood that day. It didn’t have anything to do with you guys.”
“I know. You’re always polite. It’s kind of an ongoing disappointment, you know?” Will said with a smirk. “Half my fantasies revolved around one of your looks of crushing disappointment in me, followed by some serious corporal punishment.”
Trying not to engage with Will was like ignoring a giant slice of glistening chocolate cake, slathered with thick, dark frosting and reeking of temptation.
Trying to ignore Will when he was dumping his spanking fantasies in Kaz’s lap in a heated whisper was fucking impossible.
And it didn’t help that Kaz had never met anyone in his entire life who deserved to get spanked more than Will did.
“So if you’re interested, I’m totally up for living out some seriously detailed fantasies with you,” Will said, licking his bottom lip like he knew Kaz wouldn’t be able to stop staring at its shininess. “Let me know if you want a script.”
For a moment, Kaz was tempted. Hell, who was he kidding? He’d been more than tempted for hours now, ever since those strong arms had wrapped around his middle, hard chest leaning into his back, hand grabbing his thigh.
He’d been so good, for so long. Didn’t he deserve a little reckless heat with a guy who one hundred percent wanted it?
He wasn’t a saint by any stretch of the imagination, but growing up with parents who were career foreign service officers, embassy-hopping every few years, a premium had been placed on etiquette and the ability to behave flawlessly in any situation.
Kaz was equally at home at a white-tie gala or drinking tea in a tent while visiting an indigenous tribe, but he was rarely truly at home in his own skin. Always conscious that his actions reflected upon others, whether as the son of a diplomat or as the TA for a renowned professor. He never let himself just be.
“How about this?” Will’s eyes gleamed in the climbing and falling flares of yellow light from the tall highway poles that flashed rhythmically past in the window. “How about we make out for a while? You let me suck on your tongue and decide if that’s enough for you.”
You had me at suck on my tongue. The organ in question was suddenly thick in his mouth. He watched, frozen, as Will reached for him, eyes locked on his the entire time as if waiting for even a hint of refusal.
Kaz wasn’t going to give it to him.
Fingertips grazing his cheek made him shiver. Will curved a hand around his skull, and Kaz leaned in before he even felt any pressure. Let his eyes drift closed and waited . . . until soft lips brushed his. Pulled away and then returned with barely enough pressure to ease his mouth open so slowly every moment of the deliberate seduction was painted with pleasure. Will tasted of sweet cola and salty chips, all the crap poor college students ate on road trips, and Kaz’s hand slid to Will’s shoulder. He didn’t know if he was steadying himself or keeping himself from falling too deep. Different from the wildness Will had attacked him with on the motorcycle, this kiss was soft and sweet, and Kaz melted under its relentless gentleness.
The sound of people approaching had him pulling away from the kiss while his lips buzzed and his dick tried to punch its way through his pants. Two of his students, long-haired and pretty and both trying to flirt with Will while they talked, had wandered over to thank him again for being their over-25 adult for the bus rental.
“I was happy to do it,” he said, meaning it. It restored his faith in human nature to see the massive crowds that kept turning out for protest after protest in DC. “Thanks for coming out for the cause.”
“We were happy to,” the blonder one said, echoing his words with a friendly smile.
“Yeah, and we kept an eye on you all day,” the brunette added eagerly. “You know, in case anyone thought you were a terrorist.”
Kaz rubbed at his eyes wearily, ignoring the way Will stiffened at his side. A nod and a thumbs up were enough to send the girls back to their seats, and a hard hand
on Will’s thigh kept his mouth shut while they went.
When they sat, he let go, and Will’s mouth shot open.
“Why didn’t you say something? They didn’t need to say that last bit. To rub it in, how you’re different. The shit you have to put up with that they don’t.”
“Not worth it,” Kaz said, shaking his head.
“Not worth it?” Will’s brow was all tied up in knots, like he couldn’t wrap his brain around the idea of not responding with force to every provocation.
“Listen, if I responded to every problematic thing said to me, I’d never do anything else. Not everything is worth the energy and I don’t need a white guy telling me how I’m doing it wrong.” Will had the grace to look embarrassed at least. “Those girls spent all day standing in the sun and protesting for immigrant rights. I can lecture them some other day about not forcing me to relive shitty experiences by constantly talking about protecting me from them. But I’m not doing it now, so you can drop it.”
Which was pretty much guaranteed to put an end to the kissing, he guessed, so he turned his face to the window and stared out at the lights on the highway.
CHAPTER 5
“L isten, I’m sorry I suck at the, the . . . complicated stuff. This is new territory for me. I’ll work on it.”
Silence had lingered for a while after the girls left for their seats, Kaz gazing out the window, exhausted again, and Will fidgeting in his seat, mouth opening and closing repeatedly until he’d figured out what he wanted to say.
“On what?”
“On figuring out all the shit I’m not noticing because I’m a white guy who doesn’t have to worry about my passport or about my name keeping me from getting a job interview or whatever. All of it.” Will pulled one knee up and wrapped his skinny arms around it, hugging his leg to his chest. His eyes pleaded with Kaz when he spoke, as if it mattered to him, more than anything, that Kaz listened and believed him. “I know I don’t know shit about the world. But I know bullies. God, I’ve known ‘em my whole life. And I can’t stand watching people like the assholes who always tortured me back home fucking . . . take over. I’ve seen what happens.”
The hunted look in Will’s eyes made him want to push up the armrest between them and drag Will close until Kaz could wrap him up in his arms and squeeze the memories into submission.
“Even people who aren’t that bad—who maybe wouldn’t usually do anything more than make shitty comment sometimes—get caught up in shit when assholes start ranting. I mean, I guess you can’t be that good if all it takes is someone saying your most secret, worst thoughts out loud for you to feel like you have permission to do bad stuff, but still. I don’t know. It’s like, most people won’t actually do awful things most of the time. But when people start saying stuff out loud that they only ever used to say behind closed doors, suddenly it’s okay to start doing stuff too.
“So you have to stop giving those people a platform to say the worst stuff to the biggest audience. Because you can pretend there isn’t a connection, but I know what a mob looks like, and it starts with one guy whooping everybody into a frenzy and pointing them at someone weaker like a bullet shooting out of a gun.”
Kaz shook his head. “Sure. I hear everything you’re saying. But take a look around the next time you’re meeting up with your antifa buddies and see if everyone looks like you. And then ask yourself why that is. Ask yourself if large groups of masked black or brown people would be able to show up anywhere and be violent without provoking mass arrests or worse.”
“Shit. Yeah, you’re right,” Will said and sighed. “And I know I’m ignorant. But I’m not ready to stop fighting yet. I just got started and a part of me . . . I don’t know. I think I need it. Like, if I can’t get rid of some of this anger by fighting, then maybe someday I’m going to do something really stupid, because I won’t be able to stop myself. Besides, shouldn’t I do something with my privilege? If the consequences for me are lighter for punching Nazis, then isn’t that even more reason for me to do it, because other people can’t?”
Talking to Will was strange. He had so much privilege and unearned certainty, but at the same time he kept freely admitting his ignorance in a way that made Kaz want to keep talking to him.
God, he was such a sucker for a student who wanted to learn. No wonder he was an underpaid TA instead of an underpaid Third Secretary or Vice Consul at some tiny, remote embassy.
Somewhere in the middle of explaining, Will had stopped seeing him, eyes unfocused and vague, as if he were looking inside himself instead of at Kaz. But focus returned in a blink as Will sat up straighter and scrubbed a hand over his face, laughing randomly.
“Fuck. I need a beer. Why didn’t you order a keg for the bus? Now that would’ve been some good planning,” Will said with a sigh and a stretch that lifted his shirt high enough for Kaz to catch a glimpse of his flat, muscled stomach.
“You’re not old enough to drink,” he said reflexively, forcing his eyes up.
“Oh, please, son,” Will said, snorting. “I been drinking beer since I was thirteen. There’s nothing to do back home except drink beer and tip cows.”
“Is that a real thing?” He’d heard the phrase in America ever since he’d first arrived for undergrad, but figured it for the opposite of a urban myth. A rural rumor or whatever.
“Nah,” Will said, shaking his head. The tips of his dyed black hair swung against his sharp cheekbones. “You’d have better luck tipping a Camry.”
Kaz snorted, trying to picture it.
“Some professor calculated the physics of cow tipping once. I saw it in an article. Said you’d need five or six people and a damn docile cow. Probably ain’t ever happened.”
“So you’re really from the country, huh? Like, on a farm?”
“Yup. Like, on a farm and driving tractors and everything.”
“So how’d you end up at Carlisle?”
“I suppose I could’ve gotten farther from my hometown if I’d gone to school in Seattle,” Will said, musing aloud.
“Is that why you ended up going all the way across the country? To get away from your hometown?”
“Sort of. I mean, that’s why Massachusetts, I guess. Better than anywhere down south and I don’t like the rain enough for the northwest. But Carlisle is mostly because the only out gay guy I knew back home went to school here.”
Kaz let his surprise show on his face. “You followed a crush to college?”
“Ha, no.” Will smiled though, like the idea wasn’t unimaginable. “Jack helped me start the first GSA at our high school. Found us a staff sponsor, brought coffee and muffins to our meetings, talked to us about it gets better and all that shit, although I was the only gay kid. The other five kids were just my friends, being supportive.”
“He sounds like a great guy.”
“Yeah, well, I guess he wasn’t always. He got kicked out of school for a while for harassing this other kid whose dad was a crook whose Ponzi scheme stole all Jack’s parents’ savings. So, I guess he was probably not that great back then. But, I don’t know . . . he was the first adult who ever saw me, you know? And he’s only a few years older than me, but he was a college student and it was a big deal when he started talking to me.”
“How’d that happen?”
“He followed me into the alley behind the place we used to hang out after school when I went for a smoke break.”
“Yeah, I’m sure he did.”
“That’s what I thought too at first.” Will smiled ruefully. “Probably half-wished it, half-was terrified by the idea.”
Kaz remembered those days from his own childhood. The adrenaline rush of trying to figure out if a hot guy was interested in you or if you were risking a total public smackdown—metaphorical or not so much—by saying something that crossed the line from “I didn’t mean it like that” to blatantly flirtatious.
“He was worried about me, turned out. He played his banjo at the café, and he’d noticed me. Noticed I was h
aving some trouble too.” At Kaz’s intent look, Will shrugged, avoiding his eyes. “The usual shit. Small town bullies and the queer kid. Nothing special.”
“It’s always special, because it always sucks.” He nudged Will’s knee with his own, wanting to reach out but knowing that wasn’t appropriate.
“Yeah, well, I know a guy who was hospitalized in high school from the beating they gave him. Missed most of his senior year.” Will’s jaw clenched and the corner of his lip curled in a snarl. “So in the grand scheme of things, my getting my ass kicked occasionally was nothing special at all.”
“Fuck.” Kaz’s voice was heavy. He knew what Will meant. It wasn’t a competition, but lots of people had experienced objectively worse shit than either of them had. “Yeah.”
“Anyway, it’s cool being at Carlisle this year, because I actually get to see him and his boyfriend sometimes.” He rubbed at his curving lip with a thumb, nail polished black.
Kaz wanted to pull the hand away and suck on that pouty lip until Will was smiling for him, and not the memory of some other guy. Because his brain was a traitor and had lost all rational thought process, obviously.
“And they don’t mind if I tag along sometimes when they study or hang out.”
Kaz cocked his head, confused. If this Jack had been in college when Will was in high school, he should be long gone from campus by now.
“Miguel is a senior at Carlisle,” Will explained, smiling at the thought of this Miguel, who was apparently also a paragon. “Jack’s boyfriend.”
Kaz told himself he wasn’t jealous. Because being jealous of someone he’d never met, who was just friends with a guy he could never get involved with, would be incredibly stupid. “He’s younger than your friend?”
“Nah. Just didn’t get to go off to school until a couple years after Jack. It worked out pretty great though. Miguel spent his junior year abroad in France, and Jack had just graduated, so he got a job teaching English and, like, babysitting, and they spent the year living together in Paris, which was pretty much a dream come true for both of them.”
Rogue Desire: A Romance Anthology (The Rogue Series) Page 15
