Chapter 9 #2
“Yeah,” Ren said, even though just a few days ago he’d claimed that the opposite was true, “yeah, I think he might be.”
Now, Ren thought, now he’s going to kiss you. And it’s going to be perfect, just like one of your favorite movies.
He’d never wanted any of that for himself, before. This was a first. But then Seth was completely unlike any of those other guys. There was something about him—a solid steadfastness—that Ren had never felt before.
But Seth didn’t lean in. Didn’t kiss him.
Instead, he reached over, and cupped Ren’s knee, his palm hot against the bare skin exposed by the tear in the fabric. Ren felt the skin-to-skin contact up and down, from the top of his head, down through his cock, and all the way to his toes.
“Why don’t you pick your favorite?” Seth asked. “And you tell me why it’s your favorite.”
“Really? You want to watch one of these?” Ren told himself not to be skeptical, but he heard it in the tone of his voice anyway.
“Normally, I wouldn’t care either way, but if you enjoy them . . .” Seth shrugged. “Makes me want to.”
“Okay,” Ren said, and before he could change his mind, clicked on the last one he’d watched.
“The difference,” he said, as the credits began to play, “between a good romantic comedy and a bad one, is if it’s in on the joke. It can’t take itself too seriously.”
“And this one doesn’t?” Seth gestured at the screen.
“Nope,” Ren said, and found himself smiling, unexpectedly. Actually excited to watch Seth watching one of his favorite movies.
“So,” Seth said tossing a few kernels of popcorn into his mouth, “the terrible boss is a standard romantic comedy thing?”
Halfway through, right when Charlie and Harper had climbed up the fire escape with the pizza and Seth had laughed out loud, completely delighted by the hijinks on the screen, Ren had gotten them two more beers and had popped a couple of bags of popcorn.
When he’d returned to the couch with their snacks, Seth’s arm had naturally wound around his shoulders, and Ren, who had never been interested in cuddling a single day in his entire life, discovered he actually really enjoyed settling into the warm, cozy side of Seth’s body.
“Yes, totally,” Ren said. More thrilled than he probably should’ve been that not only had Seth not hated the movie, but had actually enjoyed it enough that he’d wanted to sit here after and discuss it with him.
“And the special joke is that they were both shitty bosses, right?” Seth asked.
“Exactly, though my favorite part is the way Harper plays goofy off Charlie’s straight man.
Plus they have just dynamite chemistry. You can’t fake that, even with a good script.
Like Billy Crystal and Meg Ryan? You believe that they’re meant to be together because they make you feel it.
Or when they tried to remake Overboard? How did they ever think they could get even close to the way Kurt Russell and Goldie Hawn clashed? ”
Seth scrunched his nose. “I don’t think I’ve ever seen that one. I thought I’d seen most of Kurt Russell’s movies, but apparently not.”
“A Kurt Russell fan, huh?” Ren teased, nudging Seth with an elbow. Seth just chuckled. “I bet he was responsible for your sexual awakening, wasn’t he? Was Snake Plissken in all his post-apocalyptic glory the subject of your jerkoff fantasies?”
Seth laughed. “A little bit, yeah,” he admitted.
“You’ll like Overboard, then,” Ren said. “We’ll watch it next time.”
“Next time, huh?” Seth said.
Ren glanced up at him, and felt pinned in place by the heat in his gaze. “Well, uh, I assumed . . .”
“That any man with sense and taste will take as much of you as they can get?” Seth chuckled. “You’re not wrong.”
“Even though I love romantic comedies and not . . . like serious dramas or silly sitcoms or important documentaries?”
Seth shrugged. “I don’t want my idea of you, I want you.”
Now, Ren thought, now, and nearly leaned over and did it himself.
But before he could, Seth removed his arm from Ren’s shoulders and sat up.
Ren immediately felt the loss of his warmth—and something else that he couldn’t quite name.
“It’s late, we both work early,” he said, standing up and stretching, exposing a tantalizing little glimpse of bare torso before it was gone again.
Ren had never felt so fucking teased in his whole life. Nobody had ever dared, that much was true.
“You’re leaving?” Ren demanded, watching as he picked up his coat and then trailing after him as he walked towards the door. “Right now?”
Seth smiled, like he knew exactly what Ren was so affronted by, and goddamn him, he probably did. “I know you have to get up early. It’s late.”
“Yeah, I know it’s late,” Ren said, and pushed himself into Seth’s space before he could put his coat on. “Does that really matter when we . . .” He swallowed hard. “When we . . .”
“Don’t worry, Lorenzo, I wasn’t going to leave without doing this,” Seth said, and leaned down, and finally, finally kissed him.
It would’ve been a slow assault on Ren’s defenses, except that Seth couldn’t have known that Ren’s defenses were completely gone already, and that he’d been thinking about it from the moment Seth had come over, over two hours ago.
Or that when their lips finally touched, Ren would feel himself going up in flames like a match touching bone-dry kindling.
He poured himself into the kiss, framing Seth’s face, fingertips stroking the soft scruff of his beard, tongue stroking in and out of Seth’s mouth, until it felt like he could feel the beat of his pulse in his head and his heart and definitely everywhere else.
“Goddamn it,” Seth muttered savagely, and then Ren found himself pushed against the door, and this time it was Seth losing himself to the fierce power of it, grinding their hips together with a fluidity and a confidence that left Ren weak-kneed and his cock as hard as it had ever been in his entire life.
This was the passion he’d known was buried inside all that easy, casual frankness—the complicated fire that burned deep inside Seth that he hid from the world. Except he couldn’t hide it from Ren anymore. Ren had always seen it and now he could finally feel it.
Seth slid a hand down his back, and right over the curve of his ass, biting down on his bottom lip hard enough to draw blood, and oh, that was both unexpected and unbelievably sexy that he could get rough when he got riled up.
Because Ren intended to rile him up plenty.
But before he could, suddenly he was gone.
For a single second, full of blind hope, Ren believed that he’d be back and maybe he’d be naked, but when he finally gave up on that and opened up his eyes, there was a wry tilt to Seth’s red, swollen lips and he was unfortunately still completely clothed.
What was it going to take for Ren to get this man naked?
“I . . .” Seth flicked out his tongue and tasted the blood on his bottom lip. Okay, they’d both gotten a little rough. But there was only so much teasing and tantalizing that Ren could take. Not when he knew exactly what he wanted. “I suppose that was inevitable, wasn’t it?”
“A long time coming,” Ren agreed. Already knowing—and hating—that in a minute, Seth was going to be leaving out the front door.
Without Ren.
It was infuriating and frustrating and Ren almost respected the guy for his determination.
But nobody was more determined than Ren when there was something he wanted.
“I can’t even say I regret it.” Seth’s voice was low and rough. “Only how hard it’s going to be to leave, now.”
“Then, don’t.” Ren stayed pressed against the door. Knowing that if he reached for Seth again and he still walked away, his pride would definitely be stung.
But he knew how he looked. Cock hard against the zipper of his jeans, hair mussed, lips red and wet from Seth’s own.
Not many men could leave him like this, only partially debauched.
But the fact that Seth could?
Definitely a good and a bad thing.
Because when he gave in, finally, it was going to be the best sex of Ren’s life.
He already knew it.
And that sharpened the edge of anticipation even keener.
“You know I should, that I have to,” Seth said. At least he sounded as regretful as Ren felt—and as horny, too.
“Yeah, but I wouldn’t be me if I didn’t try to convince you to stay,” Ren said.
Seth laughed. “Don’t worry,” he said, reaching for him, and to Ren’s surprise, pulling him into a surprisingly tight hug. A sweet hug. A hug that Ren enjoyed almost as much as the hot-as-fuck make-out session against the door. “Don’t worry, you made it plenty tough on me.”
“Thanks, I think?”
Seth let him go, and this time Ren didn’t try to stop him as he shrugged on his coat, and unlocked the door.
“I’ll talk to you tomorrow?” Ren asked. Hearing the hope in his own voice.
“Absolutely,” Seth said, and even though he was halfway out the door, he leaned in and gave Ren one more taste of what he wasn’t going to be getting tonight.
The kiss was short and fierce and like Seth’s hug, surprisingly sweet.
Like it wasn’t just a goodbye, but a hello, too.
It was only a short walk home from Ren’s loft, but to work off all the sexual energy they’d generated together, Seth knew nothing else would do but a hard, punishing run.
You could just go back there and tell him you changed your mind, his brain supplied unhelpfully. Pin him to the door again and kiss him until neither of you can stand up.
He could—and it was inevitable that he would, at some point.
When it felt right, he added, thinking as he walked down the street that he ironically sounded a lot like one of Ren’s romantic comedies.
His phone buzzed in his pocket, and he pulled it out, glancing at the screen. It could be Lennox—checking in to see how their “hangout” went—or it could be Ren.
Seth knew he was falling in deep by just how much he’d wanted it to be Ren.
And here I thought, the message read, that I was the biggest cocktease on the planet.
Accompanying the text was a picture that made Seth—with his ironclad nerves—nearly fumble the phone and come to a complete stop in the middle of the sidewalk.
It was a selfie, with Ren lying, shirtless, in bed, his olive-toned skin glowing with the dim light against the white of his sheets.
It could’ve been a happy accident that the photo cut off right where Seth wanted to see most—right where the sparse trail of dark hair started right under his belly button, a punctuation in his toned stomach—but Seth knew it wasn’t.
The message though truncated, was clear enough.
Seth bit his bottom lip, tasting blood again.
Because it wasn’t the expanse of skin that had him so tempted. No, it was the look in Ren’s dark eyes, the fucking yearning in them.
What was he doing, turning away from that?
He hesitated, almost deciding to go back.
If anyone was going to get Lorenzo Moretti off tonight, it was definitely going to be him.
And yet, Seth thought of the way he’d opened up to him, even if he hadn’t exactly wanted to at the beginning. If they’d spent the evening in bed, he might know what made Ren moan and then scream, but he didn’t think he’d have learned what made Ren happy.
Maybe, eventually, when they finally burnt the sexual energy out of their bodies, but with how all-consuming it felt, Seth wasn’t sure they’d be getting there anytime soon.
No, he decided, no matter how impossible it felt, it was right to wait.
Until the time felt right.
Still, his fingers shook as he texted Ren back.
It was looking at that goddamn picture—it was like looking at the thing he wanted to see for the rest of his life.
Somehow I doubt there’s any more teasing happening.
Ren didn’t answer right away, and by the time Seth reached his house, he was a shaking, horny mess.
It wasn’t like Seth didn’t objectively know that Ren got himself off.
But he was doing it right fucking now, and it took all the self-control Seth had not to turn around and go help him.
He typed in the wrong code to the front door twice, and then took a deep breath, and finally got it right, shutting it behind him with a pained exhale.
Shedding his jacket and then his shirt as he moved through his house, he barely made it to the edge of his bedroom, bracing himself against the doorframe, before he was unzipping his pants, groaning as he palmed his cock.
Just the pressure of his hand where he needed it so badly was enough to send a pulse of pleasure zinging through him.
Seth’s head thumped back against the doorframe, and he finally let his mind go.
Ren . . . lying in his bed.
Ren . . . laughing.
Ren . . . kissing him.
Ren . . . touching him with those dark eyes, full of lust and passion and affection.
It might have been embarrassing how quickly it took, with the right motivation, for Seth to hit the edge, his hand working his cock in slow insistent pulls as he imagined that it wasn’t his hand at all that was tugging him inexorably towards orgasm.
Then his phone dinged again, and he fumbled with the hand that wasn’t occupied, and the picture—just the fucking picture—that Ren sent, was enough to send him right over.
Ren lay in bed, in the same position as before, but now his eyes drooped, sleepy with satisfaction, and oh yeah, there was definitely come splattered up his chest.
A text came in right after it, right as Seth was hovering right on the cusp of coming his brains out, and he absolutely shouldn’t have come that hard from just a message.
But it was Ren—so much fucking Ren—condensed into one sentence.
In case you need some extra motivation, he said.
Lights flashed behind Seth’s eyes, and the phone dropped to the ground as he shuddered through his orgasm.
It wasn’t quite the afterglow he’d have experienced with Ren, lying in that bed with him, but Seth made himself clean up anyway, throwing on a pair of loose pajama pants. He picked up his phone and it wasn’t hard to figure out exactly what he wanted to say in return.
Next time, he typed, we do that together.
Oh, Ren replied instantly, you want me to come over tomorrow morning? Show up in your bed, while you’re still half-asleep? Or join you in the shower?
Ren . . . wet and slick . . . pressed up against the tiles . . . oh, Seth liked that idea a lot, and he had every intention of fulfilling the fantasy sooner rather than later.
A little horny? he teased.
Oh, nothing about it is little, Ren texted back.
Seth’s head hit the pillow. He couldn’t figure out if he wanted to wring Ren’s neck for being such a goddamn tease, or smile.
Maybe both.