Chapter 10
Mike isn’t home when I get back from spending the day with Ryan, an attempt to make up for being the biggest flake on earth. He pretended he wasn’t upset, but I could see it, the way he was carrying himself, that he was.
And I don’t blame him, but it still has me on edge.
Jason wasn’t quiet in his anger, I remind myself. If he was upset, I would know.
I would have the bruises to prove it.
Instead of wallowing in anxiety, I decide to be productive. It takes me the rest of the day, but when I’m done, I’m all caught up on homework for the week.
The clock on my laptop reads eleven at night, and I can’t stop the disappointment from creeping in.
I don’t know what I was expecting.
I shouldn’t have expected anything. But the way Mike talked this morning, it seemed like he wanted to do something.
Finish where we left off.
My brain reminds me that I have zero interest in going beyond what we did last night. The thought of touching another dick after everything with Jason makes me physically sick.
Even my own, sometimes.
It’s not like I have anything to offer Mike.
I’m starting to think I should probably go to bed and forget about it because I’m probably the worst candidate for a hook-up to ever exist, when there’s a knock on my bedroom door.
What I should do is ignore it and pretend I’m asleep.
That’s not what I do.
“Hey, roomie,” he says, a big smile already spreading across that stupidly handsome face.
“Hey,” I respond with much less enthusiasm, letting him in anyway.
He strolls in like he owns the place, which he does, but he looks around the room now, categorizing all of my stuff scattered around. “You did your homework,” he observes, nodding at the stack of textbooks on my desk.
“Yep. Finished for the week.”
“Oh, I didn’t realize you were a nerd.”
“You’re doing a master’s degree, how am I the nerd?”
“In music. That’s cool.”
He looks up at me, easy and unbothered, and something about having him in my bedroom is making it impossible to remember all of the reasons I shouldn’t want him.
“I got called in for a shift. That’s why I wasn’t home. But I’m back now,” he informs me, like he knows it was bothering me. I don’t let him see that it does.
“I figured you weren’t coming back.”
“My shifts don’t last all night.”
I cross my arms. He hardly ever comes home until morning when he has to work. “Could’ve fooled me.”
Amusement fills his eyes, making them crinkle at the sides. “Are you keeping tabs on me now?”
“No.”
“Seems like you are.”
“I’m not—” Why is he in here again? “I thought— you never come home after.”
“True,” he agrees, tilting his head. “Does that make you jealous?”
I hadn’t thought about it like that. I don’t know shit about bar hours. I figured he was staying to clean up. But I guess it makes sense, he’s going home with people.
It does make me jealous if I linger on it too long, so I don’t. That’s not what this is.
“I’m not jealous, Mike.”
He’s smiling even wider now, and I get the feeling that he’s making fun of me. “So why do you care when I come home?”
I don’t have an answer for that, but it doesn’t matter, because he’s crossing the room until he’s right in front of me, pinning me in place with a stare that has to mean something, and I couldn’t talk if I wanted to. “You wanna know why I came home tonight?”
I nod.
“No one’s better than my roommate with the massive cock.” He says it like he’s telling me the weather. Making a comment on something mildly boring. Not talking about that.
It’s not that big,” I mumble, my face prickling with heat when he raises his eyebrows. “It’s normal-sized.”
“As someone who has extensive research in that area, it’s not.” He reaches up to my neck, pulling me down to him. “Come on, I missed it,” he says against my mouth, kissing me before I can tell him that’s really fucking weird.
My hands find his hips again, and he takes that as an invitation to move back to the bed, pulling me by my shirt until we’re lying on the mattress, with me hovering above him.
“Take your shirt off,” he says, pulling back from my lips.
“What?” I ask, light-headed, fighting the urge to chase his lips. I thought this feeling was the weed, but now, I’m not so sure.
It might just be him.
“Your shirt. Off,” he says slowly. “Last night, you never took off your shirt. I can’t believe I had my mouth on your dick and I didn’t even get to see those abs I love so much.”
How does this dude exist?
I pull my shirt off, letting him stare to his heart’s content. And he does, reaching up, running a hand across my chest, down my torso until he gets to the waistband of my sweatpants. “Fuck, you’re hot.”
“You talk so much,” I say, shaking my head.
He laughs, pulling me down, and we’re kissing again. His hands are everywhere, moving over my back, my shoulders, into my hair, everywhere at once, while I try to keep up with this. I think I manage, but I’m not one hundred percent sure of anything right now.
He rolls us so I’m on my back, and I let it happen, too far gone already to think about what that could mean. He detaches his lips from mine, and I let out a little sound, a protest, and he shushes me.
That should piss me off, but it makes me even harder, my cock straining against my pants.
His lips move down to my neck, planting light kisses down my chest, down my abs that he spends forever on.
“Mike, focus,” I pant out, arching up for pressure on my cock, but he still doesn’t touch me.
“Have some patience,” he says, licking a long strip up my stomach that somehow feels amazing.
“I can’t,” My voice cracks, and he must decide to take pity on me because he abandons his work, licking every inch of my torso, and scoots back to pull my pants down enough to make my dick pop out.
“Fuck,” Mike groans, wrapping his hand around my desperate cock, already leaking, and all we’ve done is kiss. “Look at you.” He strokes me slowly, too slow for my liking, but his grip is just right, and it’s another man touching me and—
I’ve never been this turned on before in my fucking life. Other than last night. It’s all so much. His hand on me, the weight of him straddling my legs, his face watching a bead of pre-cum sliding down my cock.
I’m already close, letting out these helpless breaths, there’s no chance of me holding in, and I’m hit with the desperate need to see him, too.
I reach for his pants, pulling on the waistband, but he shakes his head. “Let me see you come first.”
“What—” I start to say, to beg him to let me see his fucking cock already, but he twists his wrist, and that’s it. He’s holding me down with his weight so I can’t move, forced to stay still while he strokes me through it, gripping his hips so hard my nails dig in.
When he gets the final drop of come out of me, he lets me go, and I sink back into the bed with a whimper.
“Fuck, you’re hot,” Mike says, pulling his own shirt off and unzipping his jeans enough to take his dick out.
I watch, barely present, as he strokes himself quickly to completion, nowhere near the time he spent on me.
I want to tell him to stop, to give me a second to let me help, but I’m mesmerized.
He’s angelic, I think in my post orgasm haze. All that pale skin, his cock, smaller than mine, but not by much. The perfect size. He doesn’t look away from me the entire time, even when he reaches his peak, come landing on my stomach, mixing with mine.
It’s the most beautiful thing I’ve ever seen.
Mike collapses on top of me, breathing heavy into my neck, and all I know to do is wrap my arms around his back. “Fuck,” he says, muffled against me.
“You okay?”
“Mhm. You’re comfy.”
“You squished our come between us.”
He pushes himself up, scrunching his nose up at the feeling. “I’m realizing that.”
I grab his back and flip us over, startling a yelp out of him. “Hey!” The look on his face makes me laugh, and he laughs too, and I have to kiss him again.
Once the come between us becomes something I can’t ignore, I pull back with a final peck and find him watching me. “I’m gonna grab a towel, be right back.”
Something passes over his face then, a little frown, but he gets rid of it before it means anything. Once I’ve got my sweatpants back on and I’ve started into the hallway, I hear a quiet, “okay,” from my bed.
Weird.
That’s what we do, more nights than not.
Mike comes into my room and sucks my dick or gives me a hand job or some combination of the two. Sometimes he gets off, sometimes he doesn’t.
And I feel bad about that, I really do. I haven’t offered to do anything. I could probably give him a decent blowjob. I’ve done it many times.
Some part of me wants to, I think.
Every inch of him is the most beautiful thing I’ve ever seen, including his dick. Nothing can compare to him.
It’s just—
I like this. Him. What we’re doing. If I go and ruin it by freaking out, I would never forgive myself.
So I don’t ask for anything, accept what he wants to give, and bask in the light that is Mike Pierce for as long as he’ll have me.
Until I shut down.
I don’t intend to. I thought I was doing okay. I haven’t had a bad episode since that one over the summer where I thought I saw Jason, even though I know he’s in prison and—
Yeah. Anyway. I thought I was fine.
But it’s almost Halloween.
Sometimes in life, there are things that fundamentally change you. Take things you used to love and rewrite them into something you can no longer stand to look at. I’ve had a few too many of those. Most involving Jason.
Halloween is one of those things.
It started innocent enough. Mike asked if I wanted to go grocery shopping with him, and I said yes. I wanted to hang out with him, and I didn’t know it was getting so close.
And then he makes me go into the Halloween section.
“Alex.”
“Alex.”
“Hellooo, Alex,” he waves in front of my face, and I focus back on him, but I’m not fully back. “Where’d you go?”