11. Ryan #2
I can’t stop my smile from spreading. The way he takes her shit and asks for more is so fucking endearing, I don’t even know how to handle being a witness to it.
I finally let myself try the cheeseball as the conversation moves on to the theoretical podcast. In addition to onions and cream cheese, there are also pineapple pieces and pecans. It’s weirdly addictive.
There’s some argument as to whether our program should be contentious or collaborative. Then we table that and start running numbers on costs. After that, as we’re wrapping up, Bailey gives us some quotas to shoot for.
“I’d like to see at least five Patreon subscribers day one. If we get none, we’re doing something wrong, and we need to meet up and recalibrate.”
“Five is a pretty low number,” Mal notes.
I was thinking the same thing.
“I’m a pessimist.” Bailey works her way up from the beanbag, which isn’t the easiest thing to get out of. Once it has you, it wants to keep you. “Prove me wrong.”
Once she’s up, I watch Mal, waiting for his move. He’s not moving.
I stand and take his plate along with my own while I follow Bailey out of my bedroom. A week ago, I would have been ninety-nine percent sure he’d be right behind us. Tonight, I’m at fifty-fifty .
But by the time I’m putting the dishes in the sink and Bailey’s ordering a ride home, Mal still isn’t out here.
Fuuuuccckkk…
Don’t make me be alone with his legs…
Bailey looks up from her phone. “Try one with the glasses tomorrow,” she says. “You’ll see.”
“I got made fun of for wearing glasses until I was seventeen.”
Her smile is soft. “Me too. Kids are assholes. Hey, next time, let’s meet at my place. I think I slipped a disk in that beanbag.”
“It was his idea.” I gesture weakly to the bedroom.
“You gonna be okay alone with him?”
The question feels like an attack. “Yeah. What? Why?” Shit, will I?
“I don’t want you two fighting. Messes with the team dynamic.”
“Trust me, the dynamic is already as fucked as it’s gonna get.”
If she can’t tell how badly I’m already suffering, then I’m convinced there’s nowhere to go but up.
“See you tomorrow?”
I nod and walk her to the door. On her tiptoes she presses a peck to my cheek, surprising the hell out of me but acting like it’s the most normal thing in the world. “Good night!”
“Good night.”
Once I don’t hear her on the stairs anymore, I walk to the living room window to make sure she gets safely into her ride.
I feel him before I see him. Heat and breath.
When I finally glance his way, Malcolm is leaning on the window frame like an expert at leaning.
He’s facing me with his hands in his pockets and his legs crossed.
The kitchen lights are on, but what’s mainly lighting his face is the streetlight outside the window.
The slats of the blinds make it impossible to read his expression, slashed through with dark shadows .
“What?” I ask softly.
“Nothing,” he says.
“It’s something.”
He shrugs a shoulder. “Maybe, maybe not.”
I’d love to bust this up and say I’m not in the mood for games, but I am. I’m very much in the mood for games. Must be the mood lighting. The weird innuendos. His legs. Already my pulse is thrumming, and my blood is warming. I feel every pore on my body, every hair, every molecule alight and alive.
I turn back to look at the street where Bailey is sliding into a car, tote bag on her shoulder. As her ride pulls away from the curb, I step back from the window, into shadow.
“I need the bathroom,” I say. “You need anything?”
He shakes his head.
Leaving him there, I go back to my room and close myself in the bathroom where I brush my teeth and gargle mouthwash to get the cheese and green onions off my breath.
Don’t get me wrong—I don’t think after all this time Mal’s gonna have some miraculous awakening and want to kiss me, I just don’t want to have bad breath if we happen to start talking.
When I come out, I find him sitting on the beanbag like it’s a throne, his arms stretched out and his legs spread.
Stephanie is curled up beside his right thigh.
Bud is sitting like a statue on the window seat behind them, eyeing the tiny dog with suspicion.
His tail is in full fluff mode. “I love this,” Mal says with a smile, patting the black fabric.
“It was a Christmas present.”
“Seems like it can fit two people.”
I nod.
“Prove it,” he says, and I recognize the look on his face from forever ago. He’s daring me.
“No thanks,” I tell him. I have limits, okay.
“I thought we could watch the trader guy together. ”
Manipulative fucker. “Sure. Right. That.”
“Yeah,” he says with the half smile again.
Walking all the way to the end of my own personal plank, I create some space next to him. He doesn’t let his arm drop to drape around my shoulders, but that hardly matters since we’re now touching from calf to ribs. My head feels like it’s full of fizz. All foam and flavor, but no substance.
“Wanna show it to me?” he asks.
The question sounds filthy. My body reacts, cock stirring in my jeans. “Are you trying to…”
“What?”
“The shit you’re saying tonight…”
“Is?”
“You know what it is,” I tell him. “You know exactly what you’re doing.” What I don’t get is why .
His soft laugh sounds slightly nervous. “I don’t, actually, but I’m glad it seems like I do.”
I dig my phone out of my back pocket, find the message Bailey sent with the TikTok handles in it, switch into the app, and pull up the Wall Street guy. Meanwhile, I’m hyperaware of my breathing and my thigh resting against Malcolm’s.
@Inside_traderNY is older than me and Mal—maybe early thirties.
In his first video, he’s talking about the Nasdaq.
He’s handsome with slicked back dark hair and a sharp-edged jawline.
In a pin-striped suit complete with a navy pocket square and shiny paisley tie, he oozes success and wealth.
His apartment is as Bailey described. Outstanding.
He’s leaning back against a floor to ceiling window with the Manhattan morning as his backdrop, a mug of coffee in hand.
Occasionally he tugs a cuff, straightens his tie, smooths an eyebrow, and it’s a slick delivery of his expectations for what markets will do today. Or whatever day this was filmed .
“I don’t know what we’d do with this,” I admit. It’s a different vibe meant for a different audience.
Malcolm doesn’t say anything. But he does lift the arm he’s got behind me and sets his hand on my thigh. I suck in a breath, the contact so sudden and unexpected, my vigilant dick startles. For some reason, I keep my mouth shut. I flip to the next video.
Different suit, rainy morning, same mug of coffee, another rundown of market expectations. I click on the comments to see if this is working as a thirst trap, or if the people following this creator are a bunch of dudes who want to know where to move their money.
Before I can read the first comment, Mal’s hand is between my legs, on my cock . I jerk so powerfully, my phone goes flying. “What the fuck are you?—”
“Shh…”
“No, I won’t shh—” I reach for his wrist to get his hand off me, but he locks his elbow and gets his fingers around my length, which is already throbbing and growing and apparently desperate to humiliate me. “Mal, what the fuck are you doing?”
“Let’s not talk about it. Would you just relax?”
“We have to talk about it.”
His tone is faintly pleading when he says, “Ryan…shut up. Please?”
I close my eyes and throw my head back, trying with everything in me not to get any harder than I already am. He’s not moving his hand, and there’s two layers of material between his palm and my dick, but he’s gripping in exactly the right place. What the hell is he thinking? Is he thinking?
“Breathe,” he tells me.
I do. It’s sharp, fast, jagged and embarrassing as fuck. It doesn’t help. “You can’t just?—”
“No talking. ”
“Fuck that,” I grit out. “You can’t just touch someone like this without their permission.”
“I couldn’t figure out a way to ask. Forgive me?”
I think I hate the word forgive. The whole concept of forgiveness in general. “Fuck you,” I say with no heat whatsoever.
“Am I hurting you?”
“No.” Yes, goddamnit , everything he does hurts me. His existence is a festering wound on my soul. I have to admit, when I was thinking about games, I was thinking it’d be verbal—not physical. This is going way beyond my field of expectations.
“Then may I?”
Shame on me, shame on my stupid ass. “Yes. Fucking asshole ,” I add under my breath.
He relaxes his grip and lets his hand rest there, like it was originally. “Thank you,’” he says. “And I’m sorry.”
“It’s fine.” I don’t know why I say that. Nothing about this is fine. What was only a mild remembering of wanting him is now a raging inferno of need—specifically for a hand job.
We sit like that for a while. A few dozen seconds.
A minute where I deep breathe and try to focus on the pulse in my neck and not the one throbbing in my groin.
Despite any mindfulness techniques he suggested or I attempt, I have a significant erection, but his hand is more in the region of my shaft and balls.
The sensitive tip has moved out of the way, and I hope he stays the fuck away from it because it’ll start leaking any second, and the last thing I want to be is wet for him .
Right now, there’s just a hand on my cock. I’d probably get hard if it were my hand, too, just like anyone would. Leaking only happens when I’m genuinely aroused, but I don’t know what he’ll read into it.
Enough. He’ll know enough.
I start to wonder if he’s ever going to move. As much as I want him to stop, there’s a big part of me, no pun intended, that wants him to do more.
“Talk to me, Mal.”
“What do you want me to say?” he asks quietly.
“I want you to tell me what the fuck you’re doing.”
“I’m feeling your dick.”
“Why?”
“I wanted to know what it felt like.”
“Again…why?”
“It’s something I’ve been thinking about. A lot.”