Chapter 5
Five
No Strings
“EZRA, WHAT THE FUCK?”
His blue eyes are like ice as he strides across the bar toward me, and I’m pinned to my seat, because in twelve and a half years since the day I met him, Cole has never looked at me with so much anger.
“Cole — I didn’t — I mean —”
“Did you know it was me?” His voice shakes a little as he slides into the booth across from me, folding one of his long legs underneath him and plunking both elbows onto the table, leaning into my space. Fuck, he looks good.
“Fuck, no, I wouldn’t have —” I pause, studying Cole’s face. “Wait, did you?”
“Of course not.” Cole tosses his head. “You made yourself pretty fucking clear the last time I saw you, and I’m not looking to get rejected twice.”
Look, I can’t read people for shit, but even I can tell that Cole is radiating hurt, and it makes me want to crawl under the table and die. “I —”
“The fuck you doing in New York, anyway?” Cole cuts in, and I’m grateful for a question I can actually answer.
“I moved here for grad school eight years ago, and I guess I just stayed. I teach at a couple of different schools now.”
“Really?” Cole studies me closely, his eyes piercing through my armor. And even though I’m shaking, I can’t help the heat that builds inside me whenever he looks at me. “You fucking hate noise. I’m surprised you can stand it here.”
“Who says I can stand it?” I can’t help a wry half-grin, and when I glance at Cole, the corner of his mouth twitches. “I mean — I dunno. I wanted to go someplace where I could get lost, I guess. Where I could be myself and nobody would give a shit.”
“How’s that working out for you? Being yourself?”
I chuckle drily. “Pretty fucking wretched, actually. Turns out I’m kind of a dick.”
Cole snorts, but he doesn’t contradict me. So I take a sip of my beer, and then try deflecting.
“So what about you? You said at the party that you’re still making art —?”
“Yeah, I just had an opening this week.” Cole chews on a fingernail, staring me down. “I’m surprised you heard anything I said at the party. You looked like you wanted to be literally anywhere else.”
“That wasn’t what I — I mean, it was, but —” This isn’t the time or place to spill what it does to my insides, just being near Cole again. He doesn’t want to fucking hear it.
Not when his eyes are flashing, his mouth twisting as he looks at me. “I also got the distinct impression that you’re not out. And yet here you are meeting up with dudes for sex. So I just want to know — what am I getting myself into? How badly am I gonna get hurt here?”
My mouth opens and shuts a few times as I try to pin the words down. “I mean, this wasn’t — Look, my family doesn’t know me and they don’t need to know about me either. It’s my business.”
“Sure.”
Cole is staring me down, splashes of color dotting his cheekbones, a flush creeping up his chest, and I swear I can see his heartbeat through his thin shirt.
That’s when my stupid brain decides to flood my thoughts with every one of the filthy texts we’d exchanged over the past two days, every depraved thing we’d promised to do to one another.
“Wait —” I can’t believe the words tumbling out of my fucking mouth. “On the app — you said you were talking to me because I reminded you of someone you couldn’t fuck —”
“Yeah, guess who I meant.” Cole rolls his eyes. “This must be some kind of fucking record — we just speedran You’ve Got Mail in two days.”
I blinked. “We what?”
“God, why am I so attracted to you?” Cole huffs, sitting back hard in his seat and stretching his legs out underneath the table, brushing my ankle as he moves. “You also said that just because you’re a dick, that doesn’t mean we can’t fuck.”
“I did, but —” All the reasons we shouldn’t do this are flashing across my brain in glowing neon letters, but I can’t deny that I’m starting to press uncomfortably against the zipper of my jeans.
Cole leans forward once more, his long fingers creeping toward mine. “I can’t fucking believe I’m saying this, but — Look, I just spent half an hour cleaning out because I thought I was getting railed tonight. Either you’re going to do it, or somebody else will. Which is it gonna be?”
A pause, both of us blazing into each other’s eyes, my heart beating in my throat. Then I grab my glass, draining the last of my beer and slamming it back onto the table. “Let’s do this.”
Cole snatches my hand and drags me out of the booth. “Come on then — before I wake up and realize how fucking stupid this is.”
***
“So, where are we going?”
We’re heading down Seventh Avenue, and I’m nearly trotting to keep up with Cole’s long strides. The sun is low in the sky, glinting off the towers of stone and glass and lighting his hair up with gold.
“I live just around the corner. I don’t actually — you know, sex in public — at least not most of the time. Usually I meet a guy at a bar first to make sure he’s not an asshole, and if he’s not, then I bring him home.”
“And in my case?” I don’t know why I can’t stop poking. You’d think I would learn to shut up.
Cole cocks an eyebrow at me. “In your case, I’m making an exception.”
We turn down a shady street lined with elegant mid-century apartment buildings, and I find myself doing some calculations in my head. “So, uh — you must be a pretty successful artist?”
“I am, actually,” Cole replies, a little stiffly. “But you know Mom and Dad — always trying to buy me to make up for not actually giving a shit about me. Technically, it’s their apartment, but I’m not gonna turn it down.”
Cole stops to usher me into a stately brick building with an arched doorway made of wrought iron and glass, and when he greets the doorman, I notice that he drops the annoyance in his voice, all sunshine and smiles where it counts.
Then he’s pushing me towards the elevator, one hand on the small of my back, and I shiver at the touch, at once possessive and intimate.
“Cole —”
I turn to face him in the elevator, but I barely have a chance to let a single word escape my lips before he’s on top of me, his mouth covering mine as he crowds me against the wall.
He’s wild, a whimper escaping his throat as he threads his fingers into my curls, yanking my head back hard enough to make my eyes water.
But I’m feeling just as feral, a wave of something cresting inside me, and so I grab his hips, reversing our positions so that he’s the one with his back against the mirror, lifting him up on his tiptoes with the force of my kisses.
DING.
The elevator door opens, and Cole grabs both of my hands, yanking me down the hall.
When we reach his door, he fumbles in his pocket for his keys, and I can’t help crowding in behind him, my lips at the nape of his neck, thrusting gently against his ass as my hands skate over the ribbed material of his tank top.
“Fuck, I’m never going to get this door open if you keep doing that —” he gasps.
“I could fuck you right here in this hallway if you want —”
The keys slip from his fingers, and I crouch down to retrieve them.
As I right myself, I slip between him and the door, keeping my back to the painted wood as I drag my open lips up over the rough fabric of his jeans, dampening his shirt as I slide upward, until I’m kissing him once more, one arm draped around his shoulders while the other slips the keys back into his hand.
Behind me, I can feel a faint jingling, and then I’m stumbling backwards into the apartment as the door swings inward, Cole’s arm looping around my waist to keep me from falling.
“Try not to crack your head open, I just had these floors redone —” he growls, and I snort.
“Nice to know where I rank with you —”
I know this is insane, that we shouldn’t be doing this, that there’s no way this doesn’t end in disaster.
But the truth is that I’ve been a little bit gone on Cole ever since I first laid eyes on him when I was seventeen, long before I understood what any of it meant.
And as he’s kicking the door shut behind us, pinning me against the far wall, nearly bending me backwards as he mouths the side of my neck, I can’t remember what the problem is, why this is a bad idea.
All I can think about is how he feels just the same — that maybe his hair is a little longer, maybe he’s a little sturdier than he was when we were teens, maybe his cologne is a little more expensive — but that it’s still him, and that he feels like coming home in a way that should scare me, that would scare me if I wasn’t thinking about how good it was going to feel to pin him to the bed and fuck him.
I feel teeth on my throat, and my eyes fly open, my hand clutching his hair.
“Wait! I teach college students —”
Cole pulls back to study my face, his eyes heavy-lidded, a half-smile lifting a corner of his mouth.
Then, with purpose, he lifts a hand, unbuttoning two buttons of my navy blue shirt and dragging my collar and undershirt aside to expose my shoulder.
When he leans down again, pointedly fastening his lips over my bare skin and sucking a bruise there, I shut my eyes once more, my cock twitching in my jeans as I let him take me apart.
He’s on the move, pulling me away from the wall and beginning to steer me through the apartment, and as I look around me, I have the faint impression of a comfortable living room with original molding, a small but newly refitted kitchen, walls covered with Cole’s work — paintings and collages and drawings.
“This is a nice apartment,” I mutter, and he cackles.
“Do you want a fucking tour?”
“Absolutely fucking not —”