Chapter 4 #2
Before I can answer her, she continues. “In five months, we’ll build our own family. From the ground up. But you have to cut the old branches to enable new growth, Rob.”
Something about this feels wrong, but I can’t put my finger on what, so I just nod mechanically.
In fact, wrong is the predominant emotion I’m feeling. It’s been in the back of my brain since Ames started acting weird more than a week ago, but it became unignorable yesterday— I need someone who’s in my corner and will suck my ?—
Now, it’s like a buzzing under my skin that’s driving me crazy.
Tiny bees, stinging me from the inside, that won’t let me go back to right-foot-left-footing it through my life.
An awareness that my life isn’t as firmly in my control as I thought it was…
which, come to think of it, is a defining characteristic of drifting sailboats.
Fuck.
We finish lunch, and when we head out to the parking lot, the March wind’s cold enough to make Lissa shiver and press against me. I wrap an arm around her instinctively.
“Thanks again for making the drive, honey,” she says when we get to her car, turning up her face for a kiss.
I lean down to give her the quick peck she’s expecting, but when our lips touch, I can’t help pulling her against me and deepening the kiss.
I want so badly to ground myself in her and chase away all the confusing thoughts in my head with something simple and physical and normal.
For a second, she kisses me back. Then she gently pushes me away with both hands.
“Robbie, ” she laughs. “Easy, tiger. We’re in a public parking lot. ”
“Then let’s go somewhere private.”
I’m breathing harder than I should be, not because I’m feeling super into it but because it didn’t work, damn it. The buzzing wrongness is still there.
In fact, it’s worse than before.
She laughs again, but now there’s an edge to it. “Babe. We made an agreement.”
“Maybe we could rethink the celibacy challenge. Or at least expand it to allow, say, FaceTime?—”
“Robbie.” Lissa looks wounded. “I want us to be more than just sexual partners.”
“We are! Of course we are. Jesus, Liss. I don’t want only sex. I’m not that guy. I want…”
Someone who’s in my corner and will suck my dick while he’s there.
“Never mind,” I say, stepping back quickly. “Sorry. You’re right. Moment of weakness. I’m not thinking straight.”
Understatement .
Lissa’s expression softens, and she touches my cheek. “I get it. If it helps, it’s flattering as hell that you’re so desperate. Just imagine how epic our wedding night will be.”
“Ha. Yeah. Thinking about that does not help the problem, but thanks.”
But as she drives away… Lissa’s not what I’m thinking about. The whole world has narrowed down to Ames saying those words to me yesterday?—
Suck my dick
Suck my dick
Suck my dic k
And the buzzing has concentrated itself—Jesus fuck—right behind my balls.
I don’t mean to drive to Elspeth Peak.
I tell myself I’m heading to the station to prepare for my meeting with Greene in an hour.
But somehow, I find myself taking a turn, and then another, then bouncing down one of the old logging roads that litter the outer edges of Winsome, my suspension squeaking as the truck navigates the ruts and potholes.
The unpaved parking lot is empty when I arrive. It always is this time of year when it’s too muddy for hikers and too late for skiers, but Elspeth’s never particularly busy anyway. Ames and I had the whole mountain to ourselves when we came winter camping over New Year’s.
Still, when I park and turn off the engine, the silence feels fraught and guilty. Like someone’s watching me commit a crime. My freaking hands are shaking… but my dick is also rock hard behind my fly. Way too hard to ignore and hope it’ll resolve on its own.
It’s ridiculous, of course. I’m ridiculous, being here like this.
I’m not a teenager who needs to sneak around to jerk off. I’m an adult with an empty house and a job he should get to.
But this isn’t a typical jerk session. It’s not about arousal, and pleasure, and comfortable beds with crisp sheets.
It’s about… need .
There’s a tension inside me I can’t ignore. Sexual tension, yes—thank you, stupid fucking celibacy challenge—but not just that. The tension is also about all the shit I can’t control, like my family, and work, and the wedding, and Ames pulling away, and me trying to communicate, and him saying?—
I close my eyes and groan as my dick throbs .
My hard dick is not about Ames.
It’s not.
It’s my brain getting twisted up because it’s been a month since I’ve had anyone else’s hand— or mouth, Jesus fuck —on my dick, which is a goddamn long time for someone who likes sex as much as I do. So it’s helpfully combined all my stressors into one… physical stress manifestation.
A manifestation that’s trying to claw its way out of my jeans.
I unzip myself with trembling fingers and take hold of my cock.
This is about Lissa , I tell myself so firmly, I just about believe it. About that kiss that didn’t go anywhere .
It’s not about Ames.
Not about the way he looked yesterday, fired up and defensive.
Not how I wanted to grab him around the waist and haul him off his feet so he wouldn’t leave with Auden.
Not about the way I had to communicate directly with each of my fingers and make them release his shirt one by one.
Not about wondering what Ames’s mouth would feel like on my?—
Stop.
But my brain won’t stop. Won’t shut up. Keeps circling back to those words and the image they conjure of Ames on his knees, looking up at me with bright blue eyes. Ames’s lips?—
The way I imagine they’d wrap around my cock. The way they might feel against mine, soft but firm. The way his hands would feel on my body, on my dick. Slow fingertips teasing, skating across my skin in a barely there caress.
Damp, dark curls at the edges of his face while he pants out my name in a broken breath. Rob, please. More.
What would he be like in bed? I could almost imagine it. Sassy and back-talking but also open and free. Generous. Giving but also taking.
Letting me give him pleasure. Letting me try things out to see what he liked and what I liked.
I spit in my hand to ease the slide as I continue to jerk myself off. The air in the truck has gone warm and humid from my heavy breathing, and maybe if my eyes were open, I’d see the windows fogging.
But I don’t dare open my eyes because behind my lids is the world’s most beautiful naked man.
Would Ames let me pin him down the way I sometimes did when we wrestled? Only this time, the wrestling session would end in deep, drugging kisses and the slow grind of my hard cock against his ass.
Knowing me, I’d come before I could even get inside him.
I come with a strangled gasp, head thrown back against the seat, and for about thirty seconds, everything’s blissfully blank.
Then reality crashes me back to earth.
What the fuck? I just came to the mental image of fucking my best friend.
Of fucking a man .
I clean myself up with some fast-food napkins from the console. My hands are shaking again, for different reasons now, and I have to force them to steady .
This isn’t a big deal.
I was stressed and needed release.
It doesn’t mean anything deeper than that. Masturbation fantasies are simply that. Fantasies. Private thoughts that get the job done. No harm, no foul, right?
And no one will ever know.
People think about weird shit all the time when they’re jerking off. Hell, a guy I played hockey with in high school once confessed—after many J?gerbombs—that he fantasized about the little dude on the IKEA instructions. It didn’t mean he was… you know… IKEA-sexual.
And the important thing is that it’s done. My dick’s deflated, and my head’s clear, and the ends justify the means.
I start the truck, turn the blower on high, and open the windows to clear out any lingering… memories.
The station is quiet when I arrive. It’s just after shift change, so the daytime folks are gone, and most of the guys who were on call last night are taking comp time, which is just a fact of life when you have a small, mostly volunteer crew.
I bypass my office and head straight for the locker room to clean up before my meeting with Greene.
I push open the swinging door and stop dead.
Ames is standing by his locker, half-naked with his shirt in his hand. He’s obviously shit-talking with Metier and Ruiz—as I watch, Ames launches his shirt at Metier, then throws back his head and laughs when it lands. It’s a scene I’ve witnessed—hell, taken part in—a hundred times.
But today isn’t like the other days. The late-afternoon sunlight from the high windows catches on Ames’s bare, perpetually tanned skin, the dark stubble on his jaw, and his dark curls, making him glow like he’s backlit. My vision tunnels to him, just him, and for the first time in… ever… I see him.
Really see him.
Not as Ames. Not as the other half of me. Not as my platonic best friend.
But like he’s a stranger.
Like he’s a man.
Like he’s… a really fucking beautiful man.
Time slows in that underwater way, like I’m in a movie, and I see myself from a distance, zeroing in on the lean muscles of Ames’s torso—clearly defined, but not bulky like mine, the way his uniform pants ride low on his hips, the way the trail of dark hair disappears beneath his waistband.
On his eyes—bright blue ringed with navy.
On his tattooed bicep—the perfect match to mine —which flexes and bunches, making meteors dance and mountains shift, when he catches the shirt Metier whips back.
He’s… gorgeous .
Not in an objective “Ames Axford is the total package” that I’ve joked about. There’s nothing objective about this, and it’s sure as fuck not a joke.