Aaron nodded, but it was reflexive. Everything felt unreal. “I feel kind of sick.”
Kelly laughed softly and leaned close enough to kiss Aaron’s cheek. “Take deep breaths. This is good, but scary.” Kelly tilted his head and wrinkled his nose, still grinning. “He’s geeky cute. Very young Dustin Lance Black. I would never have pegged him for your type, but I like it.”
Aaron feared Giles would hear, so he hushed Kelly, who laughed. They joined Walter and Giles’s conversation, which turned out for some reason to be about cars. Before Aaron could figure out how to wriggle his way in, Dr. Allison appeared in the doorway and announced, as he had every night, that the performers must leave to get ready for the concert.
“We’ll catch you before you guys get on your bus.” Walter waved his phone in a salute. “Text me where the best place is to meet you.”
“Good luck,” Kelly said, his tone heavy with double meaning.
On the way to the charter bus taking them to the theater, Giles and Aaron walked close together, helping each other with their instruments and stands and music as always, but this time everything seemed weirdly intimate. Their ride to the theater was only a few blocks, but evening traffic and one-way streets made it take longer. Every breath felt heavy, every look overflowed with meaning.
At the second streetlight, Giles spoke, voice trembling.
“I didn’t mean to say it like that. It’s not—” Even in the dim lights and reflected snowbanks, he looked pale. “It was kind of a crazy way to tell you I had…feelings for you.”
Aaron took Giles’s hand, which was cool and slender. It fit so well in his. “It’s okay.”
“I just— I didn’t mean to spring it on you. If you didn’t feel the same—”
Aaron stopped him with a squeeze. “I do.”
They stared at each other in the semidarkness, saying nothing more because there were plenty of words between them now.
All too soon they were at the theater and in concert mode. Aaron gave what he could to the performance, but his mind kept tripping ahead to after. The usual menagerie of passed items were almost an anchor tonight, keeping him in the moment as he tried to figure out how to pass a Kewpie doll, a feather boa, a set of anal beads and a handheld breast pump without cracking up or losing his focus. When the show was over, when everything was packed up on the bus, he pulled out his phone to text Walter, only to find out Walter had beaten him to the punch.
Kelly told me. Skip us. We’ll catch you over break. Go get your man, baby.
Biting back a smile, Aaron pocketed his phone and did just that.
He found Giles out by the bus. It was snowing, and Giles stood under a streetlight in a long wool coat, his sticking-out ears and his long nose pink from the cold. When he saw Aaron, he came over, but he still seemed nervous. “Do you—? Would you like to ride home on the same bus?”
How much did Aaron love the way Giles’s voice cracked? “I’d love to.”
They went to the orchestra bus hand in hand. It took a few minutes for the bus to settle down, for everyone to get into their seats and stop shouting across the bus at people or breaking out into song for no reason except they were all high on music. At first a few people tried to engage Aaron and Giles, but as if they could sense something heavy was going down, they quickly retreated to give them their own space.
“I think I’ve messed something up.” Giles kept his gaze on his knees. “When…when you first came to Timothy, I was upset. I didn’t know what it meant. I thought I was being a dummy reading too much into making out at the lake, because of the way you took off, but when you showed up…I was confused.”
Aaron frowned, wanting to argue—then his stomach rolled over as he realized how it must have looked that night. “Oh my God. I’m so sorry.”
Giles shrugged awkwardly. “We were just making out. You were leaving, I was leaving. I didn’t think we’d end up at the same place, is all.”
Aaron bit the truth back, reaching for a half confession to staunch the wound. “The night at the lake was…my second time with a guy. My first one was bad. With you it wasn’t bad, but…I kind of flipped, I guess.” He felt naked, but he remembered Giles’s declaration on the sky bridge and made himself go on, voice pitched low. “It’s kind of when I…figured it out. That I really was gay. Admitted it to myself.”
“Jesus.” Giles shut his eyes, wincing. “I feel like a shit-heel for not realizing. I’m so sorry.”
“No.” Aaron threaded their fingers tighter together. “I never thought about how it must have looked. I was sorry later I hadn’t taken your number. I worried you wouldn’t want to give it to me.”
I followed you to your college because it was easier than talking to you on Facebook. Aaron bit the confession back. Not yet.
Giles laughed, a sad sound. “I’d have given my number to you. All my numbers. Anything you wanted.”
He rested his head against Aaron’s, and they sat quietly together for the rest of the ride to the college. Aaron shut his eyes and drank in the moment, the scent of Giles, but the whole time he had to step on the urge to tell the truth, to get the secret off his chest. He told himself it was the wrong time. Was there ever going to be a good moment, though? Because it was crazy. It made him sound crazy.
Except it would explain to Giles how much the night at the lake had meant to him.
Except Aaron couldn’t be that brave. Even if he wanted to be.
Giles’s hand trailed softly over Aaron’s thigh. “The guys I hooked up with at A-H—they only ever wanted sex. They just wanted to get off, get gone. And if at all possible, they’d bash me after to make sure nobody knew they were fags. A couple…sent me to the ER.”
Aaron’s heart lurched, and he squeezed Giles’s hand tight.
Giles squeezed back, closing his other hand over their joined ones. “I’m so sorry I thought of you as the same as them.”
Aaron bled. He bled right out of the center of his heart all the way to Saint Timothy. The second they were off the bus, the moment he could pull Giles away from the crush, he did, off into the shelter of evergreen bushes near the side door, out of the circle of the streetlight.
With the snow coming down around them in sheets now, he swallowed his embarrassment and his fear, stared at the center of Giles’s chest and confessed, “I came here for you.”
Silence.
“What?” Giles asked at last.
Aaron drew a breath. “I came here for you. To Saint Timothy. I came here because you said it was where you were going.” He couldn’t quite read the expression on Giles’s face, and he was starting to panic, so he kept talking as if the words would build up some kind of wall. “I couldn’t find your number, and I was too scared to Facebook you in case you reacted badly. But I liked you. Couldn’t stop thinking about you. Then I realized I still had to pick my college, and I remembered what you said about them all being the same. Except Saint Timothy would have you. So I picked it. So I could maybe see you. It was dumb, I know. Crazy-stalker. But I couldn’t forget you, and we worked together and—”
His wall of words fell down as Giles grabbed him, pressed him to the brick and kissed him.
They had kissed three times now: at the lake, on the sky bridge, and now—and yet it was like nobody had ever kissed Aaron before in his life, because nothing in his realm of experience had ever been like this. Giles seemed to want to crush him and eat him at the same time, as if he wanted to merge their bodies through pressure even as he climbed inside Aaron’s mouth.
Aaron did his best to let him have what he wanted.
A series of whoops and a huge cheer distracted him, drew him out of the moment, but Giles pulled him right back in. “Ignore them,” he whispered, still kissing him, still touching his face and pressing so close Aaron could barely breathe. “Did you really come here because of me?”
Aaron nodded, nuzzling b
ack, trying to give Giles more room to take him. “Is…that okay?”
“Okay?” Giles laughed, but he sounded slightly strangled. “Jesus. Yes.” This time when they kissed Aaron could taste the salt of Giles’s tears. Giles drew Aaron to him in a hug that was almost sweet, like a child coming home.
Then Giles said, in a voice not at all like a little boy’s, “I want you to come to my room with me. I want you to stay the whole night.”
Aaron’s knees became Jell-O. “I don’t—have a toothbrush. Or clothes.”
“I have a spare toothbrush, unopened.” His hand skimmed Aaron’s hip. “You won’t need the clothes.”
Aaron had meant for the morning, but he couldn’t speak now, his brain too hyperaware he was about to get sex, sex, sex.
Sex with Giles. Tonight. Right now.
“Okay.”
As Giles led Aaron across the parking lot, past the buses to the dorm, he never let go of Aaron’s hand. The choir and orchestra started whooping and clapping again. They’d been cheering Aaron, watching him get kissed like that. By Giles.
He tripped over his own feet.
Giles helped him up and kept him moving.
“We’ll put your violin away for you, Giles,” Mina called out.
Giles didn’t even glance at her as he dragged Aaron off. “See you tomorrow. Afternoon.”
They all knew Aaron had been kissed, that now he was about to get heroically laid. Aaron faltered, but Giles caught his arm and looked at him, his face full of love and surprise and tenderness and tears.
The rest of the world fell away, so far gone Aaron wasn’t sure it could ever come back.
Chapter Seventeen
Giles’s dorm was deserted as he led Aaron inside. The only other students still in residence were his fellow orchestra and choir members, and they were all at the buses unpacking. Giles was tempted to go at Aaron again in the foyer, but he resisted the urge and headed to the stairs leading to his floor. He was going to do this, and he was going to do it right.
I came here for you. Giles was still ripped open inside from Aaron’s confession. It was one of his craziest fantasies, someone wanting him that much. Someone who would not only want him but who would hang around when he was a complete and utter tool, hoping he came to his senses someday.
I almost missed this. The thought made Giles drop his keys as he fumbled at his door. When he picked them up, they fell right back out of his hand.
When Giles bent to collect them a second time, Aaron crouched down too, and he put his hand over Giles’s own.
“Hey. It’s okay.”
Giles cursed himself inwardly. Be cool. Do not fuck this up. “Sorry. I just—I wasn’t going to say anything. I almost didn’t tell you how I felt. I didn’t want to mess anything up when our friendship was going well, but after all this time together at the concerts—” His voice broke.
Aaron touched his face. “I’m glad you said something.”
Yeah, he’d confessed that he loved Aaron. Way too fucking soon to say those words. Did Giles even know what love was, really?
He met Aaron’s beautiful blue gaze, felt his world align and thought, Yeah. I do.
Aaron unlocked the door, and Giles relocked it once they were inside. Originally he’d planned on pushing Aaron directly onto the futon and blowing him, but his whole key debacle had diffused his zeal. He turned on the desk lights and the one he used by his loft—the overhead lights would kill the rest of the mood completely. Hands in his pockets, he nodded uncertainly at the futon. “Do you want to sit down?”
“Sure.” Aaron sat, leaving plenty of space beside him.
Giles gestured to the fridge. “Do you want a soda? Bottle of water? I think Brian has a sample bottle of whiskey in his desk.”
“I’m good.” Aaron patted the futon. “Sit down, Giles.”
Giles did, wondering why he felt so strange. He still wanted to jump Aaron’s bones like nothing else. But he felt like they should talk more or something.
Except he didn’t know what to say.
Aaron bumped their knees together. He looked sort of nervous but mostly amused. “You okay?”
Giles touched Aaron’s hair, smoothing it from his eyes, letting his fingers linger on Aaron’s ear. “I can’t quite believe this is happening.”
Shutting his eyes, Aaron turned his face into Giles’s palm and pressed a soft kiss to the flesh. He kissed Giles’s wrist.
He pulled Giles’s hand away from his hair with a tentative touch, then placed it hesitantly on his own waist, drawing himself closer, putting his mouth in kissing range.
Closing the distance, Giles slid his palm around to cup Aaron’s ass.
Giles tangled their tongues, nibbled at the sides of Aaron’s mouth, diving in. The more he kissed Aaron, the more Aaron melted against him. When Giles drew Aaron onto his lap, Aaron went so obediently it made Giles’s toes curl.
It wasn’t just that Aaron was cute and sweet. It was that when they did this, Giles didn’t have to seduce him into letting Giles drive. Aaron wanted to perch over Giles’s lap, knees to the futon, and be made to take off his shirt. He wanted to tip his head back while Giles kissed the center of his chest, teased at his fur, rubbed circles against his pert nipples.
Aaron wanted to go anywhere Giles took him.
Take him Giles did. First he nudged Aaron out of the rest of his clothes and got rid of some of his own. He’d have stripped all the way down, but he could tell Aaron kind of dug being naked when Giles wasn’t. He stayed in his tux pants, dick like a concrete bar as naked Aaron ground on him, cooing and gasping as Giles slicked his fingers with the lube he kept tucked under the futon mattress for masturbation-to-porn convenience. Giles wasn’t masturbating now—he was sliding his middle finger into Aaron’s hot, flexing ass. Aaron curled against him, begging with breathy sighs for more.
In his pants, Giles’s cock said, Yeah, we got more.
Giles laved the corded muscle at Aaron’s throat. “How far do you want to go?”
Aaron trembled in his arms, pushing down on his finger. “I— Whatever you want.”
Wrong answer. Giles changed his carnal licking to a softer kiss and made himself ask the question he’d been trying not to think about for two months. “How far did you go with Baz?”
Aaron jerked, surprised, then self-conscious. “How—?” He shrank away from Giles.
“I’m sorry. I’m jealous and that came out clumsily.” He forced himself to regroup. “You said you hadn’t done much before me, but obviously some time has passed since then, and I know you were with Baz. I wanted to know what’s virgin territory, so I can respect it.”
Aaron was still mortified. “I haven’t… Nothing more than I did with you. Except—I blew him.”
Giles shut his eyes. You could have had that instead of him, if you hadn’t been so busy judging. Then he pushed regret away, focusing on Aaron. “I’d love to fuck you. I think you’d like it too. But I don’t want you to tell me yes if you’re not ready.”
Still impaled on Giles’s finger, Aaron clenched. “I want to,” he whispered. “With you. Now. Though I…I’ve heard it hurts.”
“It does at first. Sometimes a lot. But usually you get stretched, and it’s not so bad. And for some guys it’s never an issue. You never know until you jump in, unfortunately.”
Aaron was hunched forward, nestled half on Giles’s shoulder, face turned in to his neck. “Have you? Been…fucked?”
“Yeah.” Giles skimmed Aaron’s back with his free hand. “But it wasn’t great. The guys I was with were rough. It always felt too dangerous. And…honestly, I like the other end of the coin better. Not to say I wouldn’t bottom again. I just haven’t. Maybe with the right guy.”
I’d bottom for you, if you wanted it. He hoped that was clear.
Aaron stroked Giles’s side, still cuddled to h
im. “I always wanted to bottom. It made me feel ashamed because it went with everything else about not being man enough.”
“Honey, I’m here to tell you, you’ve got to be a hell of a man to take it up the butt. That’s serious trust, letting someone at your ass. It was why I couldn’t hurt the guys I fucked, even when they were jerks. How could I hurt someone who got so vulnerable for me?”
Aaron pressed a kiss to Giles’s collarbone. “I want to be vulnerable for you.”
Giles’s cock told him it was time to start finger-fucking Aaron again, so he did. “You’re seriously hot, Aaron. You make me crazy just looking at you. When you play or sing, half the time I think I’m going to lose my mind with want.”
Aaron put his hands tight on Giles’s shoulders, head tipped back while he rode Giles’s fingers. “It feels so good. Like I can let go. God. Giles, I want it. I really do.” His jaw fell slack, and he gasped as Giles hit his prostate. “Oh God, Giles, tonight. I want it tonight.”
Yesss, Giles dick cheered, but he shoved it down even as he slid in a second finger beside the first. “We’re going slow. And if we start and you change your mind, or it hurts too much, we’re stopping. Right away.”
“I thought—nyggh.” Aaron gritted his teeth and bore down as Giles went in all the way to his knuckles. “I thought—I thought the guy always said he couldn’t hold back.”
“You’re a guy too, says this gorgeous cock flapping against my chest. Also, anybody who says he can’t hold back or stop if his partner is uncomfortable is an asshole.”
Aaron opened his eyes—heavy lidded, soft with trust and lust. “You’re not an asshole.”
Yes, I was a huge one. “No, but I’m going to do some seriously exciting things to yours.”
Knowing the endgame helped. Aaron wanted to get fucked, and Giles wanted him to want it more than this once, so he took his time stretching Aaron’s ass. Aaron pleaded and begged, but Giles ignored him, understanding what Aaron couldn’t know, that fingers and dicks were worlds apart. When he finally got to the point of slipping on a condom and heading for the main event, he considered doing him from behind, but he worried Aaron wouldn’t tell him if it hurt too much. He kept Aaron in his straddle position, and after greasing himself and Aaron ten times more generously than he normally would, he guided Aaron over his cock, rubbing the glans along Aaron’s taint, toward his target.
Fever Pitch Page 19
