Level Hands: Bend or Break, Book 4

by Amy Jo Cousins

  Denny opened his eyes.

  “Thought you were sleeping,” Rafi whispered, startled to have been caught attempting to memorize the lines of Denny’s face with his eyes.

  “Nope.” He stared back at Rafi until the tension of the moment had Rafi’s skin tightening. Denny trailed a look down Rafi’s blanket-covered body, and Rafi felt it like he’d been petted from head to toe. Tingly. “Just wishing there was room enough on the couch for me to join you.”

  Rafi’s balls pulsed, his dick growing harder than ever. He closed his mouth to keep his moan soft and slid a hand beneath his blanket to wrap his fingers around himself. God, this was killing him. But he just couldn’t. Too weird. “I wish too.”

  “So I take it the waiting period is over?” Denny’s soft voice was easily audible in the dark, dancing over Rafi’s skin and making him shiver.

  He snorted. If only. He flicked a glance at the closed bedroom door. “I thought so, but not quite, I guess.”

  Denny shook his head, the edge of his teeth white against his lip as he bit it. Then he pushed himself up on one elbow, still facing Rafi, and used his other hand to shove his blanket down.

  Rafi knew Denny had been wearing sleep shorts when he’d crawled under the dark red blanket Steph had left out on the air mattress. His bare chest had been distracting enough, pressed against Rafi’s own while they kissed, but if he’d been totally naked, Steph and Cash would’ve interrupted something very different upon their early return. Rafi was pretty sure he wouldn’t have even managed one kiss before hitting his knees right there in the middle of the living room.

  But Denny, the tempting, torturous bastard, had kicked those shorts off and was lying there exposed from neck to groin, the trailing edge of the blanket running back over his hip to cover his ass.

  Rafi swallowed. Hard.

  Denny raised a finger to his lips.

  Shhhh.

  Rafi damn near squeaked. Shhhh? Holy crap. Was Denny going to…

  Run a single finger down the length of his hard dick from the tip to the base while staring Rafi in the eyes?

  Yes.

  “Oh my God,” he whispered, watching Denny as if he’d die if he stopped. The yellow glow of the old-fashioned streetlights illuminated the room enough for him to see the slow stroke of Denny’s hand. The arch of his neck as he tilted his head back, the shadow of the dip at the base of his throat. In the silence, he could hear Denny’s breathing grow harsher.

  Rafi swallowed.

  As if the sound reminded him of his own saliva, Denny lifted his hand to his mouth, licking his palm. The slick sound of that palm sliding over hard flesh fired every nerve in Rafi’s body. He clenched his fist around the base of his dick, holding back his own climb toward orgasm.

  With a soft cry and a curl forward, Denny came, pulling his hand up to spill into it instead of on his belly. For a second, Rafi wondered if Denny was going to do something Rafi had only ever seen in porn before and lick it off his own hand. But with a tired groan, Denny grabbed the T-shirt he’d left on top of his bag next to his head and wiped his hand clean.

  Rafi could smell him in the dark, the thick scent of sex and sweat and come surrounding him as Denny’s rough breathing slowed. Before he had a chance to think about it—unlike Denny, he was facing their hosts’ bedroom door—Rafi pulled down his afghan and exposed himself.

  Exposed. That was the right word for it. With Denny’s eyes on him, Rafi felt seen like he had never been before, even as he wondered if his darker skin made it impossible for Denny to pick out the same details that had fascinated Rafi. He didn’t have the patience to move slowly. He was too close to the edge. Right before he came, Denny reached up with one hand and rested his fingertips on Rafi’s forearm. A touch that pulled every ounce of his focus from his cock and balls to those five soft spots where Denny’s fingers pressed into the muscle of his arm. Rafi held his breath. He’s touching me. As dizziness swept over him, he exhaled with a harsh burst of air that matched the pulse in his balls as he came, spurting over his stomach and chest.

  It was like dying, with a witness. His muscles trembled and he rolled onto his back, come cooling on his skin as he pulled himself back into his body. After a moment, a throat cleared. Rafi turned his head to look over the edge of the couch.

  Denny passed him his messy T-shirt. His whisper held an edge of laughter. “No sense taking two home.”

  Rafi snorted, sweat cooling on his exposed skin. He wiped himself down and they stuffed the T-shirt deep in Denny’s bag. Then they settled back into their beds, looking at each other and breathing quietly in the dark. Rafi saw Denny’s eyes flutter heavily as he fell asleep.

  The shadows on the wall shifted over the next several hours every time a car passed on the street, and Rafi watched them flicker while he tried to talk himself into falling asleep. But all he could think about was how impossible it had been to resist the temptation of Denny Winslow.

  Yes, the waiting period was officially over.

  Chapter Nine

  Rafi strode across the quad, dead leaves crunching under his feet, circling around the edge of the wide grassy space to avoid disrupting the Frisbee game taking place in the middle. A cold wind cut across the campus, the perfect contrast to the bright sun shining down. In the shade, he’d zipped his fleece up to his chin, but in the sun, the brisk chill was a highlight to a perfect fall day.

  Excitement hummed under his skin, adrenaline churning in his stomach. He’d been slammed all week, midsemester papers due in almost all of his classes. And Coach hadn’t let up on their workouts at all upon everyone’s return from the Head of the Charles. The woman was determined to keep them cruising right into winter time trials on the ergs, with the added bonus of upping their weight training. He’d barely seen Denny outside of practice all week. When his phone had vibrated during Spanish class, only his determination not to give his TA another reason to pick on him had kept him from checking his messages. The second class was over, he’d pulled it out, though, and had whooped loudly at the message he’d hoped to see, making Bree laugh.

  Denny’s aunt had given him the go-ahead for the weekend.

  Two whole days—almost three if we leave early enough on Friday—and two nights. He’d have to get permission from Coach to miss practice on Saturday, but he hadn’t missed a single workout so far. Denny had said it shouldn’t be a problem. Unlike the killer pace of the spring, they had more freedom during the off-season.

  Not much more freedom. Training never slacked. But a day could be missed. With begging.

  The door to their suite was propped open, drop cloths on the floor and the reek of paint radiating from the common room. Austin had a new project going, obviously, although he was currently working on it by lying on the couch and staring at the ceiling. Rafi only noticed him when he spotted the curly hair hanging over the edge of the armrest.

  The new project wasn’t enough of a distraction to keep him from listening in on Denny’s conversation with Rafi, when Denny showed up a half hour later. Rafi was studying on his bed with his window open to let out the fumes.

  “Road trip?” Austin called out, sitting up on the couch. “Thank God. I’m dying to get out of here. And, frankly, this place is going to reek for days.”

  “No.” Denny glared at Austin, who stuck his tongue out and bounced up off the couch. “We’re not leaving until tomorrow anyway.”

  “Perfect timing.”

  “And you’re not invited.”

  “You can’t go to Vermont by yourself. That’s against the team spirit rules. Also, those of us who don’t have winter homes in the mountains would be fucking jealous.”

  “Piss off.” Denny sounded like he wouldn’t be moved. Austin flopped back down onto the couch, invisible now except for the pitiful whimpering noises proclaiming his disappointment. “Stop making puppy noises. You went to Switzerland last Christmas to ski.
You’re not jealous of Vermont. And you’re not coming.”

  “Coming where?” Vinnie returned from the showers, flip-flops slapping on the floor, forest-green towel wrapped tightly around his lean hips. Austin, who had peeked over the couch back again, looked like he was trying not to swallow his tongue.

  “To Vermont.” A heavy sigh from their cox. Austin’s voice rang with put-upon pain, like a funeral bell feeling sorry for itself. “Weekend road trip.”

  “Who’s going?”

  “Denny and Rafi.” Mournfully slow.

  From his bed, Rafi raised an eyebrow at Denny. Surely they weren’t going to let themselves get talked into making this a group outing? They’d barely spoken in person since the drive back from Boston in the predawn hours early Monday morning, heading straight to practice from the highway.

  He’s spent every night since remembering the way Denny’s body had arched in the dark. The sound of Denny’s hand moving on himself until he came. Rafi had jerked off the same way, picturing Denny’s eyes watching him again.

  He was ready to do more than look.

  But Austin was a persistent and whiny fucker, who had a long monologue in his pocket about the need for boat unity. And how fucking bored he was with campus parties lately. In the end, his suitemates were impossible to refuse as they talked their way into Denny and Rafi’s weekend away, the whole suite coming along for fun times in the promised land, aka Vermont.

  Fun times, it turned out, required stopping for one small pickup from a friend of Austin’s at a neighboring school.

  “I’m not comfortable with this.” Rafi sat up so straight in the seat behind Denny that his head damn near touched the ceiling. His voice was tight. Denny’s eyes found his in the rearview mirror.

  “Don’t worry. It’ll only take ten minutes for me to run up to his room,” Austin reassured him, halfway out of the backseat and oblivious to the tension vibrating in Rafi’s voice. Vinnie was already out of the car and waiting on the sidewalk for Austin to exit. Rafi wasn’t sure Bob, who had conked out in the front passenger seat immediately upon getting in the car, had even noticed their stop.

  “I’m not worried about the time. If somebody gets busted with pot and I go down with you, I’ll lose my scholarship.”

  “We’re not gonna get busted. Dougie’s not a dealer.” Austin’s eye roll was practically audible.

  “He’s not a dealer, but if you show up on his doorstep, he’ll just happen to have some pot lying around and he’ll sell it to you?” Rafi snorted. “Sounds like a fucking dealer to me.”

  “Relax. His mom and dad are total hippie wannabes. They’ve got, like, a garden that’s half tomato, half marijuana plants in Portland. I think they sell to medical places or something. They always send Dougie back to school with a huge stash, and he doesn’t actually smoke up much. So he lets those of us who like to fire up from time to time take it off his hands. It’s kind of late in the season actually. I don’t know if he’ll have any left.”

  “Please tell me you’re not keeping this shit in our suite.” Rafi clapped a hand over his eyes. This wasn’t happening. He’d smelled the pot smoke coming from Austin’s room the day he’d arrived on campus. There’d been hints of it since then, but so faint Rafi assumed Austin was smoking elsewhere and carrying the smell back on his clothes. He knew Denny had gotten high a few times on his gap year. But he’d said it mostly made him super dizzy, which led to some spectacularly unpleasant vomiting, so he hadn’t tried it since.

  Back at home, Rafi wouldn’t have minded if anyone around him wanted to fire up. Stoned people were kind of boring. Way less of a pain in the ass than drunk assholes, at least. But having his scholarship on the line changed the situation.

  “Hardly ever. And you’d notice if I was a stoner, so you can relax. I promise there’s not going to be any trouble,” Austin said and ended the argument by scrambling out of the car.

  He was back inside fifteen minutes, and they hit the road without any further delays. Rafi curled up in the backseat, glaring out the window at the fall foliage that hordes of tourists drove up to Vermont every weekend to view. It was fucking glorious color, damn it, even if Denny insisted it was “past peak viewing season”. He wanted to enjoy it, but he was getting more agitated with every mile they headed farther north.

  The rising tension was enough to mute conversation among the rest of them, and after twenty minutes of near silence, Denny gave up. He flipped on his blinker. “I’m hungry. Who wants a snack?”

  He barely had a chance to park before his passengers were spilling out of the car.

  “God, yes. I’m starving.” Vinnie unfolded his long legs from the backseat and hauled himself out with a hand on the roof.

  “You’re always starving.” Austin was in cranky mode, which Rafi assumed he was responsible for. That meant they’d be listening to bickering all weekend. He’d have thought eighty miles of practically sitting on Vinnie’s lap would put the cox in a better mood. Apparently not. “And you already ate all my trail mix. How can you possibly be hungry?”

  “I’m a growing boy.”

  “You’re a beast. With a tapeworm. Gimme back my gummy bears.”

  “I’ll buy you more.”

  “Jesus, how do you not puke with all the crap you eat?” Vinnie’s and Austin’s bickering voices trailed away as they walked toward the entrance to the white clapboard building that sat off to the side of the rural highway.

  “Quilts and fudge?” Rafi stood next to the car and clasped his hands over his head, stretching to the right and left as he eyed their surroundings. They were far enough in the country to have him on the lookout for bear attacks. Or peasants with pitchforks.

  So this is rural. We are far, far, far from civilization, man.

  “Classic Vermont,” Denny said, doing some stretching of his own. Rafi dragged his gaze away from the exposed skin of Denny’s stomach. Stop it. No staring, no imagining licking your way down that flat stomach, feeling that fuzzy trail under your tongue. No wondering what his dick tastes like. He cursed the extended visual that had been stuck on replay in his brain since last Sunday night.

  Before Denny, Rafi had never found locker-room nakedness an issue. He’d spent most of his life not looking at naked teammates. Rafi appreciated a fine ass as much as the next guy, but being an out gay kid in his neighborhood had required enough hyperawareness to avoid fights—and the willingness to take a punch, and throw one of his own, when he couldn’t avoid them—to use up all his energy. By the time he’d hit Carlisle, don’t look was ingrained in his bones.

  Which sucked, actually, because there was nothing like rowing for creating perfection in the male form. Damn.

  But lately he was cursing the locker room. The knowledge that Denny was naked in the same room with him had made the first couple of months of practice a daily torture. With Boomer’s pole smoker “jokes” still ringing in his ears, the last thing he wanted to do was draw more attention to his own sexuality.

  It was going to come out. No way around that. He wasn’t going to get into a relationship, or a bed, with Denny and try to hide it. But, damn, Rafi was not looking forward to dealing with the fallout he knew was coming his way.

  Our way. Because you know they won’t leave him out of it. No chance.

  And that bothered him more than the idea of his own hazing by teammates or others. The idea that Denny was going to have to deal with this crap too made Rafi fume in anticipation.

  Mountain Dew and Cool Ranch Doritos. Focus on that, please, not a list of things that haven’t happened yet. Or the way Denny’s ass sticks out when he bends down to touch his toes, damn it. Does he have to do that right in front of me?

  He turned his back on Denny’s attempt to seduce nature at large while unkinking his spine, and rapped at the window for their straggler to get out of the car.

  Bob grumbled at them from the front seat,
muttering something that sounded suspiciously like fuck off, so they left him to his nap and headed inside. Wide wooden steps painted a peeling dark green led up to the front door, which banged shut behind them. Inside the store, Austin’s laughter was the loudest noise in the quiet room. The middle-aged woman with sensible, short hair behind the sales counter looked up at the sound of their entrance, her eyes widening.

  Rafi nodded politely at her and turned down an aisle. Denny waited until they were around the corner before busting out with a whisper that could probably be heard back at the checkout counter.

  “Jesus, did you see her stare? What’s her problem?”

  Rafi kept his voice at normal volume. “She’s probably worried your big, clumsy ass is gonna knock something over.”

  Denny narrowed his eyes. Before he could open his mouth, Rafi headed for the coolers with the pop bottles. He opened the door and pulled a Diet Mountain Dew from the rack, holding the cooler open for Denny to grab something. “I’m going hardcore here. What are you getting?”

  Yes, he doubted the shopkeeper would have stared so hard if the rest of them had entered the shop without him. But no, he was not interested in talking about it with Denny or with her or with anyone, damn it. He was glad Denny was aware of racial stuff and didn’t ignore it or assume it never happened just because it wasn’t a factor in his life. And there were plenty of situations where Rafi would call someone out on their shit. But sometimes a guy simply wanted to drive to Vermont without getting in a thing with the nice white lady who ran the quilts-and-fudge shop.

  He bumped Denny with his elbow, and made a funny face at him until Denny smiled and shook his head. Having someone give a shit was pretty cool.

  They found Austin and Vinnie in front of a wall of glass jars, buying candy by the pound. Rafi snorted as he and Denny walked over to his suitemates, pointing to the large bags of kettle-cooked potato chips stuffed in the wicker basket hanging from Austin’s arm.