CHAPTER TEN
Coming awake slowly, Cameron snuggled deeper into the blankets and sighed. He couldn’t remember what he’d been dreaming about, but it must have been good, because he felt warm and tingly, and a smile lingered on his lips.
Still buried under the comforter, he stretched experimentally, surprised at how relaxed he felt.
Considering the amount of alcohol he’d consumed the night before, he should have been kneeling in front of the toilet and praying his head didn’t explode.
He always had a hangover after drinking, even from just one beer.
The severity fluctuated depending on the type and amount of alcohol, but he never escaped without at least a minor headache.
Throwing the covers off him, he flopped onto his back and opened his eyes, blinking several times when the sunlight spilling into the room threatened to scorch his retinas.
When he could finally open his eyes without squinting, he stared up at the ceiling and thought over the events that had led to him waking up alone in the guest room.
He remembered arriving at the club. The tequila. A lot of tequila. People had randomly stopped to talk to him at the bar. He didn’t really remember what they had talked about, but they’d seemed nice enough. He’d danced.
“Oh, Jesus,” he moaned, covering his face with his hands as heat crept up his neck and into his cheeks.
No, he hadn’t danced . That description sounded too tame for what he and Asher had done.
The way that man moved his body was practically indecent, but damn if Cameron didn’t want to do it again.
He couldn’t remember the last time he’d had so much fun, even if his modesty was barely clinging to life.
He’d never really considered himself a sexual person.
Sure, he enjoyed it, but it had never been something he craved.
With Asher, though, he couldn’t even look at the man without getting hard.
Every touch, every taste, only made him desperate for more.
He thought Asher might be on the same page, so how the hell had he ended up in the guest bedroom?
Things had been getting heated, and they’d decided to leave. He vaguely remembered stopping to talk to someone on the way to hail a cab. Then…hash browns.
In the full minute it had taken to get from the dance floor to the exit, he’d decided he was starving. Not just hungry, but a deep down, ravenous need for food like he hadn’t eaten for days. Drunk him clearly couldn’t be trusted to make good choices.
The diner had been cute. ’50s-themed…or maybe it had been the ’40s.
Asher had forced him to drink about a ga llon of water.
There might have been coffee in there somewhere as well.
Then plates upon plates of just about every breakfast item on the menu.
After that, everything was kind of blank.
He didn’t even remember leaving the diner or coming back to Asher’s house.
Embarrassed by his behavior, mortified that Asher had witnessed it, and feeling guilty about inadvertently being a cocktease, never leaving the bed sounded like an excellent plan.
Even as he thought it, though, his bladder protested, forcing him out of bed.
It was probably for the best. He’d have to face Asher eventually, and he might as well do it sooner rather than later.
Dressed only in his boxer briefs—he’d have to ask Asher what had happened to his clothes and pray he hadn’t puked on them—he plodded into the bathroom to relieve himself.
Once finished, he took his time brushing his teeth as he studied his reflection in the mirror.
Shadows swept under his eyes, and his face was still a little puffy from the alcohol.
A glint of light had him leaning closer to the mirror, curious as to how the hell he’d ended up with glitter in his hair and eyelashes.
Hoping a shower would help not only his appearance but his mood, he started the water to let it warm while he shuffled back into the bedroom to grab a pair of sweats and a T-shirt from the closet.
He had a few new things from their lavish shopping excursion he could wear, but while they looked amazing, they weren’t exactly made for comfort.
Thinking of shopping made him think of the clothes he’d worn to the club, which in turn, brought him back around to the way he’d derailed the entire night. Embarrassment flared again, and he bit his bottom lip to stifle a groan as he made his way back to the shower.
As much as he was tempted to linger—he wouldn’t call it hiding, not really—he didn’t take as much time as he would have liked.
He washed quickly, shampooing his hair twice to make sure he got out all the glitter.
Then, he cleaned under his fingernails, scrubbed his face, and thought about shaving, but decided he could go one more day.
When he finally ran out of places to clean and parts to groom, he reluctantly turned off the water and stepped out onto the plush, memory-foam rug.
It took another ten minutes to dry himself, pull on his clothes, comb his hair, and brush his teeth once more for good measure. After, he spent a little time tidying up the bathroom, then a little more making the bed and straightening the closet.
Finally, when he couldn’t put it off any longer, he left the guest suite and went in search of Asher, wondering what in the hell he would say when he found him.
Hey, sorry I totally blue-balled you last night. No hard feelings, right ?
Oh, yeah, great conversation starter. Not awkward at all.
“Good morning,” Asher called when Cameron strolled into the brightly lit kitchen.
“Good morning,” he said back automatically, but his feet refused to take another step.
Standing at the kitchen island, Asher had at least a dozen take-out boxes lined up on the countertop, each with their lids open to reveal a variety of breakfast foods. It was actually kind of funny, but that wasn’t what had stopped Cameron in his tracks.
Wearing only a pair of black basketball shorts that rode low on his hips, Asher epitomized male perfection.
His hair was damp from a recent shower, the locks almost black at the roots.
His lips were still swollen from sleep, so he probably hadn’t been awake very long, but otherwise, no one would guess he’d drank just as much as Cameron had.
No one had any right to look that good first thing in the morning.
Cameron couldn’t move. Hell, he could barely breathe. So, he just stood there, drinking in the sight of the muscled chest framed by broad, defined shoulders, and tight cobblestone abs that blended into the perfect V at his hips. It was then he finally understood that John Mayer song.
Asher’s body was indeed a wonderland .
He tried not to stare. He really did, but every time he attempted to meet Asher’s eyes, his gaze would be drawn back to that lickable V between his hips. Cameron’s breath lodged in his throat, and his cock swelled with appreciation, tenting his sweats and throbbing in time with his rapid heartbeat.
“So, uh, what’s all this?” he asked, trying for nonchalant but pretty sure he wasn’t pulling it off as well as he hoped.
“Leftovers.” Asher shrugged, then slid a fork down the counter. “Hungry?”
He was hungry, just not for food. “Can you put a shirt on?”
The words tumbled out before he could stop them, but dammit, Asher was too fucking distracting. Cameron needed to focus, to do…something, because…reasons.
Naturally, his internal meltdown did not go unnoticed. Of course not. Asher saw everything. His lips curled into a smirk, and his eyes darkened, his lids sliding to half-mast as he traced his bottom lip with his tongue.
“Am I upsetting you?”
Cameron cleared his throat and stared fixedly at the countertop. “Distracting is probably a better word.”
“Oh, do tell.” He shuffled a little closer. Not so close that their bodies touched, but enough to feel the heat that radiated from his bare skin. “What exactly am I distracting you from? ”
The seductive, cocksure attitude from the previous night had returned, and that sexy confidence did nothing to soothe Cameron’s nerves or tame his growing desire.
Just the sound of Asher’s voice sent him from zero to sixty in the span of a heartbeat, and by the time he’d finished talking, Cameron was so hard he fucking hurt.
Worse, a wet spot had already begun to form on the front of his sweatpants.
He cursed himself for not having the foresight to buy boxers during their ridiculous shopping trip.
Who the hell spent a thousand dollars on jeans and T-shirts and didn’t think to buy underwear?
Honestly, most people, if he had to guess, but he should have thought of it. He always remembered things like that.
He planned. He scheduled. He organized. He made lists, checked them, rechecked them, then color-coded them. He did not just decide to spend the weekend with his kind-of-maybe-might-be boyfriend on a whim.
What the hell were they even doing? Three dates, a couple of kisses, and some public dry-humping did not a relationship make.
Asher had agreed to no random hookups while they were together, but he’d probably assumed he would be getting some pretty regular sex out of the deal.
Not a guy who basically cockblocked himself.
Cameron wasn’t a prude. He just had certain rules when it came to dating and sex. No kissing on the first date, and no sex until he’d been seeing someone for at least thirty days. It wasn’t scientific or anything, but it did make him feel better, calmer. More in control.
So, what was it about Asher that had him wanting to break all his carefully crafted rules?
~
After calling Cameron’s name twice and receiving not so much as a glance in acknowledgement, Asher plopped down on a barstool at the island and just watched. He didn’t know what was going on inside the guy’s head, but from the looks of things, it appeared to be intense.