finn #3
Jesse shot me a nervous look, but only for a split second. A grin lit up his face, not fully wiping away the tightness around the corners of his lips. “Course we will. I’ll sleep on my side.”
He still only looked at me over his shoulder, in passing, never letting his gaze linger, and I realized I was making him uncomfortable. I hurriedly opened my closet, took out an old, oversized T-shirt, and pulled it over my bare torso.
“Got one more of those?” Jesse asked, turning to face me at last.
“Sure do,” I said, then handed one to him.
Jesse undressed quickly, lifting his T-shirt and tossing it over the back of my chair, and I began to turn away from him just because of that lingering feeling of awkwardness, but my gaze remained on his body.
His arms hadn’t been misleading. He hadn’t been using tailored clothes to appear as anything other than what he was. Hell, he wasn’t using tailored clothes at all. Any old thing looked good on him.
The sacrilege of looking at my childhood friend now, of giving in to the curiosity that should have died years ago, bothered me, but not enough to look away.
The chiseled abs, the firm, confident posture, the broad chest and tapered waist, the Apollo’s belt marking the lower end of his torso, delineating it from his lower abdomen and his crotch, and the strip of elastic waistband of his underwear peeking from his pants were bad enough, but then I realized just how many tattoos adorned his tanned, golden-brown skin.
And before I could admire it for longer than another heartbeat, Jesse tugged the T-shirt down and concealed his torso.
Good.
I had no business watching him.
I turned back to my closet and found a pair of soft cotton shorts. “Want these?”
“Yeah, actually,” Jesse said, taking them from my hand.
His fingers touched mine as he took the shorts, and he pulled his hand back quickly.
Turning away from me, he faced the window.
Outside, the wind blew the rain sideways, and lightning revealed the pointy, bare branches of the trees in the front yard, leaves freshly torn away by the storm.
Then it was dark again, and the zipper dragging down pulled my attention back to Jesse.
He pulled his pants down, dragging each side over his feet, slightly bent forward, and I clenched my teeth hard while trying to look away from the dark red fabric of his boxer briefs with stark-black seams.
Straightening, he pulled the shorts up his legs, and I lifted my gaze to the window, where his reflection was perfectly clear, staring back at me.
I couldn’t shake it off, this feeling of having seen something I shouldn’t have, of having done something bad.
But Jesse’s lips lifted into a small smile, and some of the tension seeped out of me, so I changed my sweatpants for a pair of clean shorts after a moment and gestured at the bed. “Let’s be ten again.”
Jesse waited for me to get settled on the far edge of the bed, trapped between the wall and the space I reserved for him.
When he lay next to me, shoulders almost touching, the scent of sea and pines washed over me, wrapping around me, hugging me close.
“Fuck, you smell good,” I said as casually as I could.
Jesse let out a small laugh. “Thanks. Lights?”
“Kill ’em. Kill ’em all.”
He flicked the switch, and we lay in the dark, a single, paltry inch of empty space between us.
Jesse’s breathing was so steady that I knew he was consciously inhaling and exhaling.
The pattering of rain against the window never eased, and thunder rumbled in the distance, growing closer and moving away like it couldn’t make its goddamn mind.
The redness of Jesse’s underwear seemed to glow before my closed eyes, projected against the inside of my eyelids, and I realized just how shallow my breathing was.
We’d done the right things, made precautions, dressed like we were heading for a workout just to sleep next to each other safely, and I wasn’t sure if I was protecting him or myself.
What I knew now was that the silly, childish feelings from when I was ten years old had never truly gone away.
The idea that Jesse occupied a large space in my world was too easy to embrace again, to welcome back into my life, but I needed to resist it.
We were nothing like those boys anymore.
Right? Besides, just because he had grown into a sexy jock whose sculpted body made something coil inside my stomach, it didn’t mean he was remotely interested.
If anything, he seemed uncomfortable that I would even notice this about him.
But I had noticed.
I’d noticed how his leg hair was short and sparse, how it almost faded into smooth skin the higher up his legs I looked, and I’d noticed how round his ass was when he leaned down to step into the shorts. And I’d noticed the smoking hot tattoos on his perfect torso.
And it was hard to pretend otherwise.
It wasn’t every day that I had a hot guy in my bed and wasn’t allowed to touch him. Normally, the touching part would be the whole reason for getting into bed in the first place.
Pulling the comforter over my shoulders, I turned away from Jesse.