Chapter 18 #3
But Sam still drags me to the gym, and there’s this part of me that wants to be angry with him, wants to be pissed off, wants to be grumpy.
It’s hard, though, because all it takes is about five minutes of watching him for me to forget how shit everything else has been.
He’s a fanatic about tracking everything.
He’s got this packet he carries around with him—regular copy paper, with a workout tracker he’s printed off his computer at home, and he folds it up into eighths to fit it into the tiny pocket on his tiny shorts.
He carries around a pencil too. Not a regular pencil.
One of those little stubby things. A golf pencil.
God only knows where he got it, but he’s got it with him every time we’re at the gym, and after every set, he takes out that little pencil and his packet and he makes a note, and then he sticks that pencil behind his ear and God help me, I am weak for this nerdy White boy.
I find myself wondering if he’d be even hotter in glasses.
When we finish working out, I’m not sporting a semi; I’m horny as fuck. All that bad mojo is trying to find an outlet, and apparently, it’s my dick, and I follow Sam’s tight ass to his truck.
He’s asking me something about dinner, and then he stops and looks around and says, “Wait, where’d you park?”
I give the handle on the back door a few suggestive tugs and say, “Open up.”
“Why?”
“Sam.” I tug on the handle a few more times. “Come on.”
He presses a button on the fob, and I climb into the back and call for him to follow. A moment later, Sam’s getting in next to me, a goofy grin on his face like he’s starting to suspect where this is going.
I barely give him time to shut the door before I’m pressed up against him, kissing him, kissing a line down his neck, rucking up his shirt so I can get my hands on his body. He’s laughing a little, squirming a little, saying my name.
“You drive me fucking crazy,” I say and then I attack his ear. Sam makes that little noise and melts under me. “God, even that stupid pencil. How the fuck do you make me so horny with that stupid pencil?”
“What pencil?” he tries to ask, but the words get cut off when I start playing with his nipples. I’m straddling him, and that big dick is starting to get hard. His breathing is rougher, and he’s not laughing anymore. When I bite his collarbone, he jolts, and then he moans.
It’s so good. It’s so easy. All that bad shit is draining out of me because for the next few minutes, I’m with somebody who likes me, who wants me, and that makes me feel so fucking good.
It’s a red light.
I don’t care.
When I slide into the footwell, Sam gives me a goggle-eyed look like he hasn’t quite caught up with the world. I hook my fingers under his waistband and try to urge his ass up from the seat.
He closes a hand over mine. “Gray.” A nervous laugh. He looks around.
“It’s fine,” I say. “We’ll be fast.”
He’s still not moving his ass, so I try to drag the shorts off by sheer force, but he pulls at my hands again. “We’re in public.”
“We’re at the back of the lot. It’s dark. Nobody will see. Fuck, Sam, I am so fucking hard for you right now. I need your dick for, like, five minutes, tops.”
“Gray,” Sam says. I’m pulling at his shorts again. A hint of his bush appears. “Gray, stop!”
I let go. I sit back as far as I can, which isn’t much. The air smells close, like our bodies and that post-workout funk. We’re both breathing hard, asynchronous, out of rhythm.
“We could get arrested,” Sam says, half-defensive, half-apologetic as he pulls the shorts up.
It’s the apology in his voice that wakes me up. Like he’s doing something wrong and he knows I’m not happy. Which is cosmically fucked up, since, well, you know.
I reach for the handle, but Sam stops me.
“I’m sorry,” I say. The words are rough, and I can’t quite get them out cleanly. “God, I don’t know—”
“Hey, hold on. Where are you going? I’m sorry. I just—I’m not comfortable.”
I want to laugh. Or cry. I don’t know. But he won’t let me out of the truck, and so I do the childish thing and drop my head, because I can’t look at him.
He runs his fingers through my hair and says in a small voice, “I’m sorry.”
Now I do laugh: short, a tumbling-down sound, my face pressed into the upholstery between his legs. “God, Sam, please don’t apologize. I’m the one who should be sorry. I’m the one who fucked up. Who is fucked up.”
He plays with my hair for a while. The smell of him is stronger here, and I guess even in the midst of fucking up everything in my life, I can still get turned on by him.
“What’s going on?” Sam finally asks.
“I was totally out of line,” I say. I lift my head and reach for the door again. “And I’m going to get out of here and leave you alone—”
“I don’t want you to leave me alone,” Sam says, and he’s got one hand over the handle so I can’t open it. “I want you to talk to me.”
This is Bossy Sammy. And, as usual, it works.
“Uh, right, so—” I have to stop. “You know how I have, um, some issues with attention and validation and all that shit? Well, I—I don’t know, Sam.
I had this fucked-up day, and I wasn’t lying about how everything about you turns me on, but I also wanted to…
feel good, I guess. I like being with you.
I have all these toxic patterns, attention-seeking and needing validation, all kinds of insane bullshit, even though I am seriously trying to do better.
And I like—Jesus Christ, I am literally going to die from this—I like when you pay attention to me.
” Honesty compels me to add, “Especially when we fuck.”
For some reason that makes him smile, but it’s sideways, and it makes him look older. And insanely hot. And then he says, “Is that all?”
“Uh, yes. That bundle of crazy is officially everything. So, if you’ll let me out of the truck—”
“Why didn’t you tell me?”
The sound I make isn’t really a response, but it’s kind of a question.
“Of course I want to pay attention to you,” Sam says like this is the most obvious thing in the world. Like we’re—like we’re discussing a fucking grocery list or something. “You just need to tell me.”
Literally the only thing I can think to say is “Uh, okay.”
“Is there anything special you want me to do when you need attention?”
“Uh.” That sound keeps escaping me. “No. I don’t know. Nobody’s ever asked me.”
“Do you still want some attention?”
My face is hot, and I can’t say it. Saying it would be too much. But I nod.
His smile grows, and he touches my cheek, and he says, “I can do that.”
Sammy’s idea of giving me attention is a shower back at my apartment.
Together. We take our time, and he’s touching me constantly, watching me with those dark eyes.
It’s not like we haven’t touched before.
It’s not like we haven’t been naked before.
And it’s not like Sammy hasn’t looked before.
But it’s different this time, somehow. It’s different when we stand there, his arms around my neck, skin slick against mine, the spray needling us, and he’s touching his mouth to my shoulder over and over again in little angel kisses.
And the next day, I decide it’s time.
It’s a Friday. I call Robin and let him know I won’t be coming into WISP tonight.
Robin doesn’t like that, but since I’m the boss—or what passes for one—he doesn’t have much of a choice.
I text Sammy and ask him if he wants to watch a movie tonight, and big surprise, the answer is yes.
After work, I clean up the apartment, not that it’s dirty, but it doesn’t hurt to straighten up.
And then I do another kind of cleaning up.
It’s the same principle—it doesn’t hurt to make sure everything is spic and span.
I shower, and I’m in a pair of joggers and a tee when Sam knocks on the door.
He’s in his “staples”—the quality shorts, the expensive-and-great-fitting tee, and he smells like a spring night: cool air, the crabapples in bloom, the heat rising off his skin.
I give him a kiss at the door, and we end up on the sofa, and at first, it’s like every other time we’ve gotten together.
He asks me about my day, and I tell him the little stuff, about serving a warrant, about watching Norman and Gross pick over the pastries Ruthie Bates brought in, about a meth lab Palomo and I are still trying to wrap up.
He tells me about his day too—and a day on patrol is always wild, so I get to hear about the guy with his shorts around his ankles who was doing a one-man “Chicken March” down the middle of the street in Smithfield.
And then I grab a blanket for us to share, and I turn down the lights, and we start the movie.
I don’t even know what it is. Something with lasers. Sammy picks it.
At first, I’m leaning against him: contact, but casual.
A little too much for regular straight guys, but it’s not like I’m in his lap.
But as the movie goes on, I snuggle into his chest. He’s such a gentleman that he pats my shoulder and puts his arm on the back of the sofa like he’s trying to get comfortable without being in my way.
So, I take matters into my own hands and move his arm so it’s wrapped around me, and he’s holding me against his chest.
When I look up, his eyes have a question, but he seems okay, and so we stay like that. He’s warm. I like how his chest rises and falls when he breathes.