CHAPTER 14
Murphy
“Ouch!” My shoulder bashes into the wall as Jesse shoves past me like a bull in a china shop.
I can’t even escape him long enough to jerk off in anger—alone. Someone up above seriously has it in for me down here.
I let the door slam shut because with the way my luck is going, Philip will happen by and invite himself in, too. Freaking cruises. Never again.
“What do you think you’re doing?” I demand, tromping over to my nightstand to set down the scotch.
“I’m not leaving you alone to stew or get accosted by someone. If you want to watch porn, let’s do it. It’s not like we haven’t before. Remember that one I borrowed from Jordy Freeman that we watched at my house when my parents went to that grower’s convention?”
“No,” I lie.
Of course, I remember it. It was right after the first rodeo my dad took me to see. Hearing the sound of another guy coming solidified any remaining doubt that I might have had about me being gay.
“Oh, my gosh. You forget everything. I think you need to start taking ginkgo balboa supplements.” Flopping his ass down on my bed, he nods to my nightstand. “Come on. Bust open that bottle.”
I stare at him for ten long seconds as he sets his glass down on the opposite nightstand and then fluffs one of my pillows like he’s intent on getting comfortable. Goldilocks has landed. He cannot be serious.
Wait a minute…
Of course, he’s serious. I bet a hundred bucks he has no clue what kind of porn I watch.
Game on, Jesse. Game fucking on.
I’m sick of holding back. I’m sick of being the one to get offended and upset. I was so worried about him freaking out over me being gay, but maybe that’s what I need to see right now. Let him freak out. Let him run off and act awkward. Let him be the bad guy. I bet that will cure my stupid crush.
“Fine,” I huff, kicking off my shoes, but out of spite, I add, “It’s ginkgo biloba.”
“That’s what I said.”
He did not. The stubborn ass. It’s not cute. It’s absolutely not cute. It’s… annoying as fuck.
“Get your shoes off my bed,” I grunt, starting on the button of my pants.
His gaze zeroes in on my fly, making me wonder if he thought this entire thing through. There’s a flicker of surprise on his face, like he didn’t realize I intended to rub one out, but then he hops up, schooling his features like the competitive dork he is. Undoing the button on his shorts, he kicks off his shoes and lets his khakis slip to the floor. I look away when he settles back down on the bed.
Moving to the small entertainment center where I hooked my laptop up to the television—so I could watch the episodes of Breathless I downloaded—I bring up my porn file. I debate on the level of graphicness, my instinct telling me to take it easy on him and go for something vanilla. But I hear his palms slap. Glancing over my shoulder, I watch him rub them together with a mischievous grin on his face.
“Pick something good, Baloney. I haven’t gotten off in forever.”
Oh, really?
I don’t know what his definition of ‘forever’ is, but the sight of the thickening girth in his boxers has me feeling a bit sadistic. I am one hundred percent getting off tonight—room invader or not. Jesse can walk around hard up for the rest of this cruise as payback for hijacking my vacation for all I care.
The filthiest video I have, it is. Hitting play, I flick the room light off on my way back to my side of the bed. My side—what a joke.
It’s your freaking bed, Murphy. Quit letting him manipulate you.
Grabbing the lube from my nightstand drawer, I settle back against the headboard, determined to pretend I’m alone. I don’t care if he runs out of here thinking I’m lewd. He wants to be my friend? He wants to jerk off together? Then he’s going to get the real deal.
Purposely, I squeeze the bottle before all the liquid has run down to the opening, letting out a filthy squirt sound. I can feel his eyes on me as I dribble the liquid into my palm. Reaching underneath the elastic of my boxer briefs, I let out a loud sigh and glide my hand up my cock.
I can feel his body heat next to me on the bed. I can see his bright red boxers in my peripheral, but don’t dare take my eyes off the screen. I want to teach him a lesson, not get accused of perving on him. This was his idea, after all.
When I catch movement, I’m pretty sure it’s his hand cupping over the top of himself, giving himself a squeeze. There’s nothing risqué on the screen right now, just the two main characters chatting at a hotel reception desk. Anyone who didn’t know it’s gay porn wouldn’t have a clue what’s about to happen. I’m guessing the anticipation is his encouragement.
Reaching over, I swipe the bottle of scotch up and pin it under my elbow, so I can get a grip on the cap. Trying to appear casual, I take a draw off the bottle, and then hold it out for Jesse. His fingers brush against mine as he takes it, making my cock twitch from that brief contact.
It’s certainly nowhere near the fantasies I’ve had about him, but it’s surreal to have him in my bed while I’m touching myself. I’m trembling, only half-hard because of stage fright. It’s taking everything in me to keep my breathing under control as I wait for the actors to go into the one guy’s hotel room.
“Are you sure this is porn?” Jesse asks, his lips making a slurp sound as he draws off the bottle. “Where’s the chick?”
Exactly as I thought. My stomach does a flip, second-guessing myself. This might be the act that single-handedly kills our friendship once and for all, but I don’t make a move other than to retrieve the bottle when he hands it back.
The scene cuts to the men on the bed, both fully naked now. Gotta love the promptness of porn. I swear all the air has been sucked out of my cabin. I feel Jesse go still next to me. One actor gets on all fours, and the other makes his way around behind him.
“Here we go,” I croon like I’m excited for the epic rimming that’s about to begin.
My hand is practically shaking on my dick, but I give it a slow stroke underneath the fabric of my shorts, so that it’ll be obvious in case Jesse sees. The volume on the TV is loud enough that I can hear the slurps and alternating moans of pleasure as the guy starts going to town on the other’s hole.
I keep up my lazy strokes as long as I can, even shifting my hips a few times into my grip for show, but I can’t take the silence anymore. Turning my head, I find Jesse with his hand gripping tight over a bulge, staring slack-jawed. He’s not staring at the TV, though. He’s staring… at me. And then he swallows like there’s a lump in his throat the size of an apple as his gaze flicks down to my crotch.
Was he… watching me?
I swear he’s hard. Now is not the time to see what I want to see.
“Did you just come in here to watch me jerk off? This was your idea,” I remind him.
My dare does exactly what I imagined it would, yet I never fathomed I would see what I’m seeing. Lips pressed together tight in defiance, he reaches in his shorts and draws out his cock like the full reveal is supposed to one-up me. My heart slams against my ribs.
His cock is hard and thick, the veins in it looking like they’re about to burst. He’s hard.
Jesse’s hard.
In my bed.
What is happening?
Choking down a mouthful of saliva, I tear my gaze away, directing it back to the TV. It suddenly feels like this dare backfired on me.
When is he going to freak out and leave? Why is he still here? Why is he hard?
Tugging the elastic of my shorts down over my hips, I draw my cock out to keep up in this stupid competition. The men have changed positions now. The giver is on his back getting one hell of a blowjob from the hotel receptionist. My stage fright took a backseat the second I saw Jesse’s perfect cock. I could come any minute given all the static swirling around my balls, but the fear of the unknown has my body holding back just enough to keep me in an agonizing limbo.
Can I really come in front of my best friend? We’re not dumb kids anymore. We’re… dumb adults. I didn’t think this would go this far.
“Yeah,” I rasp, deciding that narrating might make it too real for Jesse. He’s probably over there thinking about the damn titty bar or something, and I’m being a fucking idiot imagining this is some kind of sign of latent bisexuality in him. “Watch how he deepthroats him here. Fucking hot as hell.”
“Lube,” he croaks.
“What?” I pant, allowing myself to look over at him.
That was the wrong thing to do. Holy shit.
Cheeks flushed, chest arched, knees spread, he’s an absolute vision. Cock standing proud and upright in his grip, he whispers urgently, “Give me the lube.”
I can’t take my eyes off his dick. Not the deep angry red of it, not the ooze of precum from his tip. I want it in my mouth. I want to taste it, swallow it, and hear him scream my name.
Something wicked, and selfish, and obsessed, and super horny makes me speak my next words without mercy. “It’s all gone.”
The soul-crushed look he flashes me is so damn beautiful, I’ll never forget it—Jesse, needing to come. Jesse needing to come while he’s only inches away from me.
Switching my grip on my dick to my other hand, I bring my lube-slathered palm up to my mouth and spit. His brows flinch and furrow at the sound, but then he follows the path of my hand as I reach for him.
My lungs are on fire, holding my breath as the damp dome of his cockhead kisses my palm. Swirling my offering around, I feel his cock twitch against my skin and hear him gasp, sending a zing to my nuts.
“There,” I rasp, nearly swallowing my tongue as I force my gaze back to the TV and try to pretend my face isn’t burning over my bold move or his reaction to it.
The pounding of my heartbeat in my ears has overtaken the sounds from the porn flick, but then another sound breaks through, and the mattress shifts underneath me. The repetitive schick noises to my right pair up with the slow jiggling of the bed, inspiring me to stop holding back.
He’s stroking himself. In earnest. He’s into it, or me, or something. I don’t even care what at this point. I catch little puffs of breath escaping his lungs, the kind he makes in my fantasies, and I can’t keep silent any longer.
“Yes,” I whisper in approval, making my face burn, but then I realize it probably sounds like I’m just into the film. When I hear him grunt, however, I can’t help but repeat with more vigor, “Yes.”
I want to learn all his noises. I have no idea what will happen after this is over, or if I drank that entire bottle of scotch and am just passed out, hallucinating, but I’m putting every gasp to memory. It might be the last memory I get of him, but it’ll be enough to live off for a lifetime without him.
The receptionist sinks into the guest up to his pubic bone, giving me ideas I don’t need. He does it over and over. It’s just skin slapping against skin at this point.
The stifled noises coming from Jesse have me wanting to glance over at him so badly, but I’m terrified doing so will shatter whatever has him participating in this surreal bonding. He’s still working himself, though, right along with me. We sound like we’re giving a lurid applause with each urgent squelch of our strokes. And the thought of my spit around his cock is making me want to tackle him to the floor.
“Shit,” he gasps.
The prospect of him coming because of something from my world has me feral. I can feel him squirm against the mattress, fighting it. So, I do what any good friend would do, offer encouragement.
“Uhn, I’m going to come,” I grunt. It’s not a far-off truth, but I don’t want to miss Jesse’s moment.
Shifting my hips up, I reach for my balls and roll them. I don’t know why, but I want him to see more of me. I’ve never thought I was anything physically great, nothing worth showing off, but what I have, I want him to see. I want him to leave here with visions of me, just as my visions of him will haunt me.
“Fuck,” he whispers and lets out a strangled cry.
I could swallow that sound, and I do—at least with my ears and my eyes, watching his eyes slam shut as he convulses. Seeing his cock flex and spurt his release onto his stomach sends me over. I doubt he got here because of me, but it’s all the motivation I need to make me come undone. I grunt a painful sound because as much as it’s sweet relief, it’s also agony. Even though he’s here, it’s just another fantasy. I know it.
I can tell by his silence as we sit here panting in the aftermath. I can tell by the way his feet are fidgeting and his clean hand is toying with the sheet on the bed.
Maybe I’m a coward or a glutton, but I don’t want to deal with his freak-out right now, after all. I just want to bask in the sweet part of the agony and go to sleep with the illusion that this meant something. So, I speak in a language he best understands—bro humor.
“I guess you’re going to try stealing this now like you do all my movies.”
He lets out a breathless snort. “That was… nuts. I’m freaking lightheaded. Shit.”
Blinking, I glance over, waiting for some kind of denial, some kind of excuse as to why he came that has nothing to do with men. He’s not even refusing my veiled offer of borrowing my porn.
“Surprised you enjoyed man-on-man?” I venture casually, pulling up my shorts and averting my gaze.
A chuckle. “I don’t know. It’s… skin on skin, like those guys at the strip show. It’s…”
When he doesn’t finish, I have to look back. I need to know. He needs to finish that freaking sentence. Is it possible? How is he not freaking out?
“It’s what?”
Shrugging, he awkwardly tugs his shirt over his head and then wipes his hand on it. I should get up and get him a towel, but I don’t want to interrupt the conversation, nor do I mind seeing him mark up his clothing with what we did.
“It’s… I don’t know. I was horny. Okay? I’ve been horny. I’m always horny, and… well, watching a bunch of people run around the last few days, touching each other, and then the guys dancing and everyone having fun and being cool with it, it just… instills more horniness, I guess. Like there’s sex everywhere. This is a sex ship. It makes you think about sex, you know?”
How do I even dissect that? Because there is so much to dissect.
“Yeah,” I concur dumbly, because I don’t know what else to say.
“Right?” he laughs.
It feels like the moment, if there even was one, has slipped through my grasp now that he’s laughing it off. Skin on skin, even between two men, made him think of sex? I want it to mean more than what he implied, but I have the feeling we’re back to the regularly scheduled programming of our friendship.
Getting up, I duck into the bathroom and clean myself up. The longer I stand on the cool floor tiles, the more they pull me back to reality, leaving me cursing myself. I was right—this will make things awkward, but once again, it’ll be because of me, not Jesse.
When I finally force myself to emerge from the bathroom, I half-expect to find him with his shoes on, ready to make his exit. I do a double take when I locate him still in my bed. Why is he tucked under the covers?
“Dude, what in the Sam Hill is this?” he asks before I can even ask him the same thing.
I track his gaze to the TV. You’d think I’d have had this reaction to him seeing my porn, but it’s worse, so much worse. Why is an episode of Breathless playing? Fuck my life.
“It’s a soap opera that Mom watches,” I explain, moving to my laptop to stop it.
“Don’t shut it off!” he protests. “I was just getting into it.”
“Are you serious?”
“Yeah. This Rodrigo guy said he’s going off on some mission to the Amazon, but the other guy was just looking at rings. He was just window-shopping, staring at them through the glass, but it’s like it was implied that he was thinking about it, you know? But now Rodrigo’s going to leave.”
Unbelievable. He likes Breathless. I hate to tell him it’s going to be some long cold months for Barrett before Rodrigo comes back, but then snap myself the fuck out of it. I cannot let myself be further sucked in by his boyish charm just because some skin on skin got him off when he was horny.
“Um, you going to head to your room? I’m probably going to hit the hay.”
“No way.” He shakes his head without breaking his gaze from the TV.
Rolling my eyes, I pull the sheet back on my side. Wait. No.
Your bed, Murph. Your entire fucking bed. Stop it.
“I’ll let you borrow it. Get out. I’m going to sleep.”
Going to sleep so I can wallow in my idiocy and the memory of the sounds you made while you came.
“I’m not leaving you,” he says firmly, tugging the sheet tighter to his chest. “I know you. If I do, you’ll act all weird tomorrow.”
“What? What are you talking about?”
Shrugging, he just keeps staring at the damn TV. I don’t miss the way he’s chewing the inside of his lip, though. He does that shit when he’s feeling vulnerable, but doesn’t want to admit it.
“Jesse. Why would I be weird?”
“Because I watched your porn with you. You get all mad when I try to talk about gay stuff with you, and you think you can’t share stuff with me, so… I’m not leaving, or you’ll be embarrassed about jerking off to porn in front of me.”
I can’t even speak. I’ll be embarrassed?
Okay, fine. I am a little bit embarrassed. Not about the jerking off part, but about the ‘what-I-was-thinking-about-when-I-jerked-off’ part. He doesn’t know that, though. I thought he’d be the one to be embarrassed.
“That’s ridiculous. I’m not embarrassed. I jerk off all the time.”
We exchange awkward looks as I realize just how embarrassing that cocky admission was. But then he shrugs.
“So do I.”
Okay. That’s not helpful.
“So, Mr. Not Embarrassed,” he taunts. “Go to sleep then. I want to find out what happens to Rodrigo. We’ll get breakfast in the morning when you’re still not embarrassed. That way, you can’t run away from me and pretend like you enjoy going to the gym for three hours.”
I hate him. I really kind of hate him.
I hate how much he knows me, but doesn’t know the one thing I want him to know and reciprocate it. And I really hate how much lack of sleep I’m getting on this damn vacation.
Slipping into bed, purposely without any grace, I settle onto my side with my back facing him. Fluffing my pillow with more force than necessary, I pinch my eyes shut and try to will away my focus on the potency of his scent. If I kept insisting he leave, I’d just end up making an ass of myself and looking like I am embarrassed over the jerk session.
“If you dick-stab me in the back of the thigh again in the morning, I’m going to throat punch you,” I warn him because I refuse to be the only person in this bed who feels humiliated over their behavior.
Now, all I can think about is the five seconds I had the tip of his dick in my hand. Fuck.
“Liar. No one is that hostile after getting off.”
He has no idea. I hate me. I really kind of hate me, not him.