Chapter Seventeen #2
I couldn’t help myself, I had to turn and look at him. So much packed into that one word, one syllable. I needed to see the expression on his face, the confusion there.
“You turned me down,” I reminded him. Careful to keep my tone measured, not to sound bitter or annoyed. “Your ability to resist is undefeated.”
“Ah.” He snorted, but it was only a scant murmur of a noise. Barely more than a sigh. “That wasn’t about the same restraint, not really.”
It felt like a challenge to stare at him, but the idea of not getting an explanation felt even worse.
“I didn’t want to cheat,” Flynn said. “I was... I mean, I thought that William and I had an agreement. One that, frankly, I already felt like I’d pushed him into. I couldn’t just turn around and do something with you, knowing all that.”
“So it was better to watch me fuck your boyfriend?” I genuinely didn’t understand, the logic of it was just lost on me.
“Does everything you do make perfect sense?”
I ignored the sharpness in his voice. Or, more accurately, I decided there was little reason to be cowed by it.
“If we make a list of fucked-up decisions, who do you think is going to end up ahead?”
Flynn laughed. A loud, almost happy guffaw. “I forgot how competitive you were. You’d always get angry when you lost a game, when we were little kids.”
“I was magnanimous in defeat,” I told him, sniffily.
Another laugh. “The word you’re looking for is ‘grudging,’ and you’ve not changed a bit.”
“Ridiculous,” I muttered.
He shook his head at my stubbornness. Then leaned over, so that he could elbow me in the side. “Well, I guess one thing has changed, since you were little.”
I rolled my eyes. “Did you seriously just segue from me being a moody little brat, to my dick?”
“I do seem to have seen it quite a lot, recently.”
“Only because I was drafted in, like some sort of service top.”
“I’ll leave you a glowing review,” Flynn promised.
“It only counts if you’ve had hands-on experience,” I told him. “If you just watched, it means you’re a backseat driver.”
He winked. “I do know how you taste, remember.”
I felt my face flush red. “Well, there’s that.”
“William was furious, incidentally,” Flynn continued. “He doesn’t like sharing the attention.”
“Whereas you looked furious that I’d been so presumptuous.”
He shrugged. “That wasn’t how it was meant to go.”
“And yet you still came in your pants, unless my memory is mistaken. So, planned or otherwise, I hope you’re not trying to tell me that you didn’t enjoy it.”
“That... hadn’t ever happened before.”
I tried not to preen at that confession. Or not visibly, anyway.
“So... when you do have sex... like, actual sex...”
Flynn sighed, presumably at my reticence. “Just ask what you want to ask, Oli.”
The problem was, I hadn’t really known what I wanted to ask. Had been fishing, really, for whatever details he might choose to tell me. Whichever blanks he could fill in.
“When you and William...” I started.
“Can we not talk about him, please?” Not said sharply, but the interruption came so quickly, there was no denying he was upset.
“Fine, fine. When you’re having sex, do you... well, what do you do?”
A laugh. “All the things you do when you’re having sex, I imagine.”
I couldn’t resist the side-eye, my eyebrow arched. “All the things?”
He blinked at me, then shook his head. “Don’t tell me I’ve stumbled onto some terrifying kink, in a niche I’ve never even heard of.”
“No comment,” I told him, smirking.
“Look, I suck dick, and I fuck, and I eat ass, and I do all the fun stuff. Or” - he gave me another of those skeptical glances - “a lot of the fun stuff, anyway. Present company’s terrifying kinks notwithstanding. The denial wouldn’t feel so meaningful, if I didn’t enjoy what I was missing out on.”
There was something simultaneously thrilling and guilt-provoking, to be talking about all this stuff surrounded by his wrecked apartment. Like I’d swooped in, pretending to be there because I was worried about him, only to end up grilling him for his bedroom preferences.
“We don’t have to talk about this stuff...
I mean, if you’re not comfortable.” Easier, anyway, than talking about the gap that William’s absence now left.
New, but already yawning with a challenge of its own.
Easier than examining why, for all I knew its danger, the thought of not talking with him left me feeling hollow.
Flynn sighed. “Look, if you’re asking what I think you’re asking, then yes.
I would’ve gladly traded places with William, on both occasions.
Or, if you’d preferred it, pushed you onto your hands and knees, and fucked you for as long as I could last. Which, given how hot I think your ass is, would probably not have been that long. ”
I felt light-headed. So used to the teasing and the tiptoeing that this blunt, outspoken version of Flynn was making me dizzy.
“I... I see.”
He gave me a searching look. “Forgive me, if that wasn’t the answer to the question you actually had in mind.”
My shoulders felt jerky, the muscles twitchy, as I shrugged. “You think my ass is hot?”
Flynn’s laugh sounded a lot closer to normal than anything else I’d heard since arriving.
“I think all of you is hot, Oli. Watching you have sex, and not being able to join in, was a particularly effective torture.”
“Uh, thanks?”
Another laugh. “I mean it as a compliment.”
“I liked you watching,” I blurted out, still roiling in my self-consciousness. “Like, I would’ve preferred to be having sex with you, but it was really exciting, knowing you were there.”
“You were performing for me.” It worked as a question and a statement.
I nodded, suddenly tongue-tied.
“You wanted me to see what sort of a man you’d grown up into. How he could make other men feel.”
Another nod. I was hard, I realized, rigid in my jeans. Cock trapped uncomfortably in the tangle of my underwear, only I couldn’t move, couldn’t adjust myself. Not without Flynn seeing my body’s reaction to his words. Knowing how turned on I was.
“Have you been watched before?”
I bit my lip, not sure I could trust my voice again. Only the alternative to replying was silence, and I knew that would bring all this to an end. “At... at a bathhouse.”
A hook-up, on one of the apps. He’d dragged me - not so much protesting but wary, certainly - to what billed itself a men-only spa, but which was clearly just a cruising ground, at night at least. I’d fucked him again, sprawled across a bench in one of the tiny little rooms. The door open, strangers pausing there to watch.
Flynn nodded. When he ran his gaze across me - head to toe, and back up again - my skin prickled with the imagined heat.
“I want to see you again.”
I frowned, unsure what he was asking.
“Take your clothes off, Oli.”
Blinking, now, in confusion and arousal. The two things fighting for dominance in my brain, as Flynn stared at me placidly. A hint of expectation in his eyes.
I stood, before he had to make the request again.
T-shirt first, swallowing down the flicker of disquiet as the soft cotton covered my face, stole the sight of him.
Worried, almost, that when I gained my vision again, even in that split-second which had passed, it would be to find Flynn grinning and amused.
Entertained, that I’d fallen for this childish prank.
He wasn’t grinning, though. Merely watching me, expression controlled. Waiting.
I unbuckled my belt, with fingers that felt numb. Clumsy and thick, struggling at first to grasp the zipper on my jeans. Realizing, at the last moment and with the denim bunched around my calves, that I’d need to take my shoes off, too.
Finally, socked feet standing on the shed clothing - an island amid the shattered glass - I faced him again. Hyper-aware of the way my cock strained against the tight underwear, erection outlined lewdly.
Flynn’s stare felt like a physical, tangible thing, as he looked me over.
“Take those off, too.”
There was a part of me which wanted him to ask “truth or dare,” first. To make this some long-belated return to a childish game, an innocent thing.
I still pushed my thumbs under the waistband of my boxer-briefs, though, and slid them down.
Hunger, clear on his face. Blunt and raw.
“I wonder if some part of my brain knew I wanted you, when we were younger,” he mused, softly. “That I was into you, but the only way I knew to express it was asking you to play video games, or throw a ball around, or whatever. Anything that meant we could spend time together.”
“We were just little kids,” I said, my throat feeling thick. As though that explained everything.
Flynn looked up, eyes twinkling as he smirked at me. “Not so little now, Oli.”
I shook my head, amused despite it all. “Always with the bad jokes.”
“Guilty as charged. William always hated it.”
“We’re not talking about him, remember,” I said, gently.
His nod was slow. Thoughtful. “Then, what are we doing?”
I could circle around it, wait for the suggestion to come from him. That felt like the sensible, respectful thing to do. What careful, cautious Oli would default to; so mindful of the status-quo, and so terrified of letting down his guard.
“You’re taking me to your bedroom,” I told him.