Chapter 25
RILEY WAS IN HEAVEN. He’d never imagined that Josh’s ass was the promised land, but here he was declaring himself its new mayor, its new king. Hell, he felt like a god.
His cock was wrapped in a tight, hot vice of euphoria.
His view was of the most beautiful man he’d ever seen, bouncing on his cock like it was a damn pogo stick.
Nothing had ever felt so amazing in his life, and he could tell Josh thought the same thing, his face showing nothing but ecstasy and pleasure as he rode Riley.
Riley’s gaze moved from Josh’s eyes to his glistening torso, down to his own cock sliding in and out of Josh.
Their moans and grunts and the creak of the bed were the only sounds that joined the slapping of their skin.
“Fuck, I’m not gonna last much longer,” Riley said, his voice shaking.
“Take over,” Josh answered. “Fuck me good, Ri.”
Riley bent his knees and planted his feet flat on the bed, and Josh leaned back, settling his weight on Riley’s trembling thighs.
Riley thrust into Josh, pounding into him and trying to draw out their orgasms.
The change in angle must have been the right move because Josh shouted in response.
“Right there, right there, just like that, fuck, fuck, fuuuuck.”
His body was a piston as it hammered into Josh’s body, nailing his prostate on each thrust.
A tingling settled in his spine as his pleasure careened toward him, unable to restrain it, but fighting to hang on until Josh came first.
“Oh my God, yes!” Josh shouted, spurts of white shooting out of him against his abs, hitting Riley’s too as Josh’s cock bounced between them, coming untouched.
The sight of it, combined with Josh squeezing him, had Riley’s orgasm rocketing forward. He stiffened with his hips in the air, his hands gripping Josh’s thighs while they screamed in ecstasy.
Their shouts mixed together in a symphony of bliss, until Riley fell to the bed.
Josh was still leaning back, the panting of their breaths mingling in the otherwise quiet room.
They were absolutely doing that again.
Josh’s breath stuttered, his gaze dropping to his softening dick and the come splashed over both of them.
Riley was still inside him, but was incapable of moving, his own cock beginning to soften inside Josh.
Josh leaned all of his weight on one of his hands, the movement making Riley’s cock slip out, both of them wincing at the sensation. Josh brought his free hand to Riley’s balls, a slight soft pressure meeting them as Josh studied them.
“What are you doing?” Riley said between panting breaths.
“I wanted to see what our balls looked like squished against each other.”
Riley let out a breath of laughter.
“Yeah? What does it look like?”
“Hot. Lumpy, but hot. Kind of like one of those bubble popping toys.”
Riley burst out in winded laughter and reached to pull Josh against him, holding him tightly, Josh wrapping his arms around his sides and resting his head on Riley’s collarbone, his forehead nestled against Riley’s cheek.
Riley turned his head and kissed Josh’s sweaty forehead, relaxing against him.
“Next time, I want a turn with your dick.”
He could feel Josh’s smile against his skin. “Yeah?”
“You made it look pretty good.”
“It was better than good, Ri. It was everything. You’re gonna love it.”
Riley wondered if Josh could feel his heart pound in his chest at his words.
They should have disposed of the condom and cleaned the mess, but Riley couldn’t bring himself to move. He wanted to live in this moment for as long as he could, soiled condom be damned.
By the time they vacated the bed, they’d stayed so long they needed to change Riley’s sheets and shower, their torsos sticking together as they separated painfully.
They learned their lesson and would likely put more effort into cleanup next time.
Next time.
Riley couldn’t fucking wait.
He wanted there to be an endless amount of next times. He never wanted to run out.
It was obvious to Riley how fast he was falling for his best friend, or maybe how fast he was accepting that he’d always loved him like a partner rather than a friend.
How could he ever need more?
They were nestled on the couch later that night, a dumb movie on as Riley worked on some side projects while Josh sketched in one of his many sketchbooks. He had different ones for each of his drawing moods.
There was his work sketchbook, which was only for work-related sketches, colorful tabs marking each company sketch so he could find them easily.
Then there was his doodle sketchbook that he used for fun, drawing things from a man with tentacles to an apple with angelic wings.
He also had a practice book for when he wanted to work on his skills.
In there, he’d made close-up drawings of hands, feet, toes, things lots of artists struggled with that Josh continually tried to improve on.
At the moment, Josh sketched some of the Marvel superheroes in the movie they were watching, but with a fun twist.
“Check it out, it’s Captain Hulk!” Josh said, turning the pad so Riley could see the detailed sketch of the Hulk dressed as Captain America, even including some rips in the uniform where it stretched thin.
“Looks awesome. You should do Iron Thor next.”
Josh narrowed his eyes for a second. “Do you mean Iron Man dressed as Thor or Thor dressed as Iron Man?”
Riley shrugged. “Why not both?”
He gave a firm nod and turned to his sketchpad. “I’m on it.”
Riley chuckled and refocused on his screen. An extremist religious group was surveying their community to name members who weren’t representing their Christian values, so Riley was digging for information on the group’s leaders and posting the info to their social media page.
It wasn’t hard to use the cloud to hack one of the pastor’s computers to find evidence of him grooming some of the youngest and most vulnerable members of his church.
Riley had also found evidence of the guy watching hours of gay porn on his work computer, despite preaching that the people in those videos would burn in hell.
Hypocrisy was too easy to find in political leaders, unfortunately. The loudest voices were often the biggest hypocrites of all.
Their followers often weren’t any better. Riley had spent some time taking screenshots of posts that completely contradicted later posts, saying one politician should be impeached for one action and later applauding another for doing the exact same thing.
He posted the evidence he found to the group’s main social page, even though it would likely be deleted fairly quickly.
He ran a bot that would repost it every ten minutes for twenty-four hours to drive them crazy.
As a backup, he also placed a little bug in their system that would attach all the info to their pastor’s automatic email signature, then he sent it to a trustworthy political influencer who would help spread the details.
Everything was done under an anonymous account, completely untraceable for his safety. He didn’t want to have to worry about any retaliation against him or anyone he cared about.
His gaze sprang to Josh at the thought. He was deep in the zone, not noticing anything else around him as he sketched. Riley considered himself a calm, rational man, until Josh got involved.
When they were kids, Riley would sometimes have to stand up to bullies for Josh. It wasn’t that Josh couldn’t handle himself, but he didn’t always realize when he was being targeted. If Riley was a superhero like the ones Josh was sketching, Josh would be his biggest weakness.
Josh was simply too trusting. He believed everyone had goodness in them. Riley had seen enough of the opposite to know that wasn’t the case, but he loved the optimistic view Josh had of the world—and he’d do anything to protect that innocence.
He remembered holding Josh as he cried after a girl in high school told him she’d rather have someone more manly to date, rocking him in his arms as he complained about a math teacher questioning if he was really Asian after getting a D on a test, crying with him as they held ice packs to each other’s jaws after getting in a fist fight after school with kids who wanted to challenge “Jackie Chan” to a brawl.
The bullying wasn’t as bad in college, but when COVID hit, some of their clients didn’t want to work with them anymore, blaming the virus on Josh’s people.
Riley was still shocked by it every time it was mentioned, unable to understand how anyone could look at Josh and see anything but an amazing man.
It angered Riley like nothing else. And every single time, every. Single. Time. Josh would wipe his eyes, blow his nose and say they didn’t know any better. He was a stronger man than Riley ever was, than anyone he’d ever known.
There were some moments over the years when it seemed like things were getting better. When Marvel released Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings, Josh finally got some positive attention.
His whole life, Josh had had to deal with people thinking he was someone else, since some ignorant people had trouble telling Asians apart.
However, Josh actually looked a lot like Simu Liu, the man who starred in the film as the superhero.
They were in their mid-twenties when Josh dressed as him for Halloween for a trip to an Atlantic City nightclub and collected more numbers that night than he had the last five years combined.
Riley remembered how confused Josh had been at the attention. It was like the world had finally realized how hot he was, when Riley had always known.
After the Barbie movie came out, Riley donned a blond wig for Halloween so they could dress as the two main Kens. That night, a buxom woman dressed as Barbie convinced them to have a threesome.
It wasn’t something they’d ever repeated, though.
At the time, Riley wasn’t sure why it wasn’t the hottest night of his life, but he got distracted every time he watched the woman kiss and touch Josh.
There was a moment where she’d been between them, her hands pleasuring both of them at once, when he’d gotten a flair of anger watching her touch his Josh.
He’d had to close his eyes to keep from losing his erection.
It was pretty obvious to him now that he’d been jealous of her hands on Josh, wishing he was in her position.
What an idiot he’d been. He'd wasted years on mediocre sex with women when his dream man was in the next room.
He refused to waste any more time.
Riley realized he didn’t hear Josh’s pencil scratching paper anymore, and when he turned to see what he was doing, Josh had stopped sketching and was looking at Riley thoughtfully.
“What are you thinking?” Riley asked.
“I was wondering, how did you get so handsome? Like, how do you do it?” Josh asked.
Riley couldn’t help but chuckle, but he stopped when he saw how serious Josh was.
“What are you talking about? You’re handsome.”
He scoffed. “No, I’m cute. Big difference. You’re like GQ handsome; tall, dark and handsome; romance cover novel handsome.”
“Josh," Riley said. "You’re fucking beautiful. I see you and I… I can’t believe you picked me. I can’t believe I get to wake up to your beauty every morning.
And you’re so much more than that. You’re my best friend.
The only one who really sees me, who knows all my tells.
You’re a sweet cinnamon roll and you were made for me. ”
Josh smiled, but it didn’t quite reach his eyes, and Riley realized what bothered him.
“You’re also so fucking sexy, so handsome.
I would say I wished more people saw that, but a very selfish part of me likes having you all to myself,” he said, finally seeing the crinkle around Josh’s eyes.
“You’re so hot, and if other people don’t see that, that’s their loss.
If I was in charge, you’d be named the sexiest guy alive. ”
He could practically see the weight fall from Josh’s shoulders as he smiled at Riley.
A buzzing broke the moment, his thoughts stymied by the interruption as he saw Garrett’s name flash on his phone.
GARRETT: We need to talk.