10. Harley #3
As soon as I step outside, cooler air slides over my overheated skin.
I move to the right of the door, out of the path of anyone coming or going, and Val is beside me a second later.
Away from the pounding music, the night feels almost too quiet, though traffic hums nearby and laughter drifts from somewhere down the block.
“Where to now?” Val asks.
Oh fuck me. His voice.
Deep, rich, rough around the edges, like warm velvet drawn slowly over my swollen cock.
I actually whimper before I can stop myself, then bite the hell out of my tongue.
Val watches me with that careful, intense focus of his, and I suddenly feel like a teenager bumbling in front of his crush instead of a grown man who has done this more times than he can count.
Except I haven’t done this. Well, not like this anyway. Because this feels different.
I don’t know where to go. My place is out of the question, absolutely and completely.
The thought of taking him there makes cold panic cut through some of the heat, because my apartment is too tied up in Joshua and the bedroom and waking up alone on the couch with my skin crawling.
Another club seems exhausting. An alley seems reckless.
A hotel would require too many lights, too many questions, too much pretending I’m a normal guy doing normal hookup things.
“You said we’re neighbors,” I say, because questioning him is easier than admitting I don’t know how to take what I want. “Did you just happen to run into me at Scoundrels?”
Val hitches one shoulder. “I believe you were chasing after me, weren’t you?”
My face burns so hot I’m surprised my skin doesn’t steam in the night air.
In the past, going after someone I wanted wouldn’t have embarrassed me much.
Maybe I’d have been flirtier, smoother, less feral about it, but I wasn’t shy exactly.
Tonight, though, the way I chased Val felt different. Like instinct instead of choice.
“I was,” I admit it this time. “Dunno why, exactly.”
Val blanches.
Shit.
I hear how it sounds as soon as it’s out of my mouth. Like I’m saying he’s not worth chasing. Like I don’t understand wanting him. His expression closes off so fast my chest tightens.
“Wait,” I blurt, because he looks like he might walk away. “I didn’t mean—I meant, it’s—I think you’re fine as fuck, dude, I do.”
“Right.” His eyebrow lowers, and he packs so much doubt into the word it could sink a ship. “I have looked in a mirror or two, you know.”
That does something strange to me. It’s not lust this time, though that’s still there. This time I’m definitely feeling something sharper and angrier. Because he says it like the mirror proved something ugly, and I hate that. I hate it more than makes sense for a man I barely know.
I narrow my eyes and let my gaze travel over him slowly, deliberately. I linger on the silvery scar running from his left eyebrow toward his neck, then on his mouth, then on the still-firm cock pressing against his jeans before I drag my attention back up to his face.
“Then you know you’re one hot fucker, don’t ya?
” I step closer as I speak. “Mysterious, built, big cock from the look of it, and the scar and eye patch?” I lick my lips because I can’t stop thinking about how his skin might taste.
“You gotta know guys are gonna find that all a turn-on. You look like a big, bad, good time, Val.”
The line sounded better in my head. Most things do.
But Val’s visible eye widens, and his nostrils flare like he’s dragging in air too fast, so apparently he gets the point.
I move closer until I’m pressed lightly against him from knees to chest. He’s warm.
Solid. His body feels steady in a way that makes some frantic thing inside me quiet down, and I don’t want to examine that at all.
“I haven’t wanted a guy to fuck me in a while,” I say, quieter now because there isn’t music forcing me to shout, “but tonight, before I even really saw you, I started thinking…”
I let the sentence hang and rub against him.
Val shudders.
For a second, he doesn’t move. Then his hands come around me almost tentatively, settling on the swell of my ass like he’s giving me every chance to flinch. I wait for fear to strike. It doesn’t. His touch is heavy and hot and careful at the same time, and something inside me opens toward it.
Maybe I can be normal again.
The thought is so fragile it hurts.
“Why haven’t you wanted anyone inside you, Harley?”
The words are barely spoken, but they drive into me like an arrow. My whole body jerks in his arms.
“I don’t want to talk about it.”
Now I’m not even sure I want to do it either. My dick is still hard, but panic has found a crack in the heat and started seeping through. There are other things we can do. Mouths. Hands. Anything that doesn’t require me to explain why a simple question feels like a trapdoor opening under my feet.
Val’s hands slide up my back, over my nape, then he cups my jaw with both hands. He tips my head back until I have to look at him again.
“I won’t fuck you,” he says, voice low and raw. “Not when it might hurt you somehow. And not unless you ask for it.”
I curse, and I would pull away, but his grip tightens just enough to keep me there. Then he kisses me.