Chapter Four #3
I waited for the follow-up, the inevitable next question, but it didn’t come.
“How did you...” I asked him, eventually, unable to hold my curiosity any longer.
This time Kai’s look was more knowing. “Figure out that you’re gay?” He chuckled at my nod. “Wait, you thought you were being subtle when you checked me out?”
A feeling like ice-water flooding my body; goosebumps as my stomach fell.
“I wasn’t...” I started, then swallowed. My throat felt thick, as though it was closing up in horrified protest. “I mean, I didn’t... I didn’t mean to...”
For the first time there was a hint of uncertainty in his expression when he stared at me. “Why are you freaking out?” he asked, after a moment. “I wasn’t saying it like there was a problem.”
I must’ve looked a little like a goldfish, mouth opening and shutting as I tried to find the right response. My brain busy spiraling into a panic.
“I wasn’t going to... I mean...” I attempted, desperately, to explain.
“To try anything?” Kai finished for me, then laughed. “Yeah, I kinda figured that when you almost threw up after I touched you before.”
Squeezing my eyes shut, I attempted to corral my thoughts into some semblance of order.
“I get it,” he continued. “It’s not like everybody is automatically going to be attracted to everyone else. That’s not how things work.”
The absurdity of that was oddly steadying; I gave him a disbelieving look. “Don’t be ridiculous, you’re gorgeous. Of course I’m attracted to you.”
I hadn’t expected his face to brighten as it did, or his smile to spread even wider. He looked... genuinely happy to hear that.
I blinked, utterly confused.
“So what stopped you from looking, since I’m assuming that means you wanted to really?” His eyes twinkled as he took another sip from his glass.
I shrugged, my shoulders feeling wooden and tense. “A reluctance to come across as a tired old gay stereotype, maybe?”
Kai laughed, loudly. “I’m sitting here in a Speedo I haven’t worn since high school, and which is only the latest in a series of increasingly revealing suits over the past week or so.
.. I’m pretty sure the only way I could’ve invited attention more aggressively is having scrawled ‘check me out’ across my chest.”
“You like the attention,” I said, finally.
Another laugh. “I like the attention from you, sure.”
I stared at him. “From me,” I parroted. I could hear the confusion in my voice; hoped that he would too, because then he might take pity on me and explain what all this actually meant.
Kai rolled his eyes. “From you, yes. Because you’re cute, Tate.” His tone was one you’d use explaining something to a child slow on the uptake. “I think you’re cute, and I wanted your attention. So yes, I wanted you to look at me.”
Silence, for a moment.
“I didn’t think you were... y’know,” I ventured.
“Really a med student?” he teased. “A real, honest-to-god former swim team member? Of sound body and mind?”
“Gay!” I exclaimed, suddenly exasperated by his avoidance. “I didn’t think you were gay.”
He made a face. “I don’t really like putting names on it like that.”
“So you’re what, bi?”
Kai shook his head, seeming amused. “There you go again, with the names. Some people don’t like labels, Tate.”
I sat back on the lounger with a frustrated grunt. “Some people don’t like second- and third- and fourth-guessing everything because they don’t have a clue whether the person they’re talking to is into them or not.”
A moment of silence at that. Then a sigh from across the deck.
“I suppose that’s a fair criticism, yeah. How about I just say that yes, I’m into you, and you specifically. And we table the rest of the labels until some other time, assuming they’re ever required.”
I thought about it. Not that it really required much thinking.
“I can live with that,” I told him. It was an understatement.
He tilted his head to look at me. While I had permission now, it still felt like I was doing something illicit when I flicked my eyes down his chest. Even relaxed, it was still a very pleasing landscape of muscles.
“You asked me a serious question, and I answered it... kinda,” he said, with a smirk. “So, now I guess I get to ask a serious question too.”
I squinted at him, skeptically. “Go on...”
“Before, when you freaked out in the water, it was because you got hard when I touched you, right?”
“That was your ‘serious question’?” I scoffed.
Kai shrugged, grinning at me. “That’s me, always asking the hard ones,” he joked. “So, are you going to answer?”
I lifted my glass as I considered what to say, only to discover I’d already emptied it. Pushed myself up off the lounger and walked in to where Kai had left the bottle on the kitchen counter.
“Yes, I got hard,” I told him, eventually, speaking louder so that he could hear me.
“But I ‘freaked out’ because I wasn’t sure what the hell was going on, and you touching me felt like something I’d interpreted differently to how it was intended.
” I watched as the wine sloshed carelessly into the glass, the reflected light from the kitchen’s halogens sparkling.
“And now?”
I stiffened. His voice wasn’t drifting in from the deck, it was from right behind me. Close enough I almost thought I could feel his breath on my shoulders. Part of me wanted to turn around, but my body was frozen. One hand on the wine bottle, the other gripping the edge of the countertop.
“Now...” I started. Swallowed. Still couldn’t bring myself to look around at him. “Now, I’m wondering just what you were actually intending.”
Bare feet on the smooth wood floor, there was no way to hear his movements.
The first I knew of what little gap remained between us was the heat of his chest against my back - a gasp, then, startled from the depths of my lungs - and the slow, almost casual slide of his fingers down my arm, until they were tracing my knuckles where they were white with tension.
Instinctively, I felt myself push back slightly; the faintest application of pressure in response to his own.
“Do you always insist on having everything spelled out, mapped?” he murmured. Voice low, lips close to my ear. There was a thickness to his tone, the slightest of rasps that betrayed his attempts at lightness: the casualness that Kai accused me of struggling with.
I swallowed, setting down the wine bottle gingerly. The warmth radiating from his body felt like a furnace, scorching me deliciously wherever we touched.
“I like to at least get a clear sign of what’s intended,” I told him.
He chuckled, something I felt as much as heard. “I’m not sure if I could be any more clear in my... signs,” Kai pointed out.
I felt his hips lever against my ass, the unmistakable ridge of his hardness pressing into my buttocks. Flesh separated by two scant layers of fabric, that slipped and slid against the other with quiet whispers.
I wanted to touch it. To reach between our bodies, and trace its thickness through his trunks. Yet there was still some part of me holding back; caught on the idea that, for all his words and the feel of him, this was some convoluted trap that I might fall prey to.
Perhaps he could guess at my reticence. Maybe I was telegraphing it, loud and clear, through my body language. Whichever it was, I felt his mouth push against the hairs at the nape of my neck.
“You’re overthinking things,” he whispered. Voice so low I still had to strain to hear him, despite his closeness. “I think you want this too. And if you don’t, that’s okay; just tell me and I’ll stop.”
I didn’t want him to stop. Made no move to prevent him, when Kai’s hands swept gently up my arms until, taking me by my biceps, he carefully turned me. My body still sandwiched between his and the edge of the kitchen counter, but face to face now.
I searched his expression for some final sign that this was all a joke.
That I’d reach out, let my fingertips finally make contact with his flesh, only to have him bray with harsh laughter in reaction.
Not sure, if I was honest, what exactly I was looking for, but desperately hunting for it nonetheless.
Found only hunger there instead.
“Hi,” he said, quietly, smiling at me.
I looked down, into the narrowing gap between us. Kai’s crotch was still pushed against mine, the blue and white of his swimsuit bright compared to the shimmering grey of my own. More important, I could feel his hardness forced against my cock.
“Don’t you want this?” he whispered.
I clenched my jaw. “Of course I want it.”
He shook his head, bemused. “Then take it.”
I wasn’t even entirely sure what “it” was that I wanted to take, but I could at least think of a place to start.
Cautiously, I placed my hand on his chest. Felt the firmness of the muscle there, his nipple hard against my palm.
Dragged my fingers down, across the heaped ridges of his abs.
Kai leaned back, our bodies still joined at the waist but giving me more space for my hand to explore.
Slowly I felt my way over his stomach, to where the creases of muscle arched down into his Speedo.
There was part of me, I knew, which was comparing his physique with my own, and unsurprisingly finding myself lacking. It wasn’t that I was out of shape, as much as simply short on anything close to the definition Kai had.
“I got so hard watching you get changed earlier,” he muttered, voice thick with lust. “It was all I could do not to grind my dick into the side of the pool.”
I had to chuckle. “I was so self-conscious. I wanted to run away upstairs so you couldn’t see me. I was, like, fifty percent terrified and fifty percent about ready to bone up.”
Kai smirked. “I wouldn’t have objected.”
Shaking my head, I added my other hand to the first, as it explored his torso. “At that point I still thought you were the innocent guy from next door.”
“And now?” he purred.
I squeezed the hard nub of his nipple between my fingertips, applying more and more pressure until he hissed through clenched teeth. “Now, I know better.”