Chapter 16
OLIVER
The basement of the library has been purgatory for seven days straight, but it turns out the real hell has been waiting for me back at the Hockey House.
“Oh God, Principal Montgomery, yes!” Gerard’s voice carries through the wall between our rooms in surround sound.
I press my pillow over my face and contemplate jumping out of the window. It’s eleven-thirty on a Tuesday night. I have to be back in that dusty archival nightmare in eight hours. And my best friend is getting railed by his boyfriend while apparently still living out his “Breakfast Club” fantasy.
“Detention has never felt so good!”
I groan into the pillow. The walls in the Hockey House are thin—we’ve all accepted this as an unfortunate reality of communal living—but Gerard has the vocal projection of someone who genuinely believes the back row needs to hear every word.
A rhythmic thumping joins the symphony. I abandon the pillow strategy and reach for my phone, jamming my earbuds in. I need to listen to something loud and aggressive that will drown out the sounds of Gerard discovering new positions.
The bass kicks in, pounding through my skull, and for a blessed moment, there’s nothing but drums and distorted guitars.
I crank the volume until my eardrums bleed.
But even with the music maxed out, my brain won’t shut off.
It keeps drifting back to the archives. To Ryan, sitting across from me at that dusty table, the lamplight catching the honey tones in his hazel eyes.
To the way he’d opened up about his mom, his family, his loneliness.
To the confession that he’d never been kissed.
Ryan Abrams, with his vintage clothes, his quiet dignity, and his smile that appears so rarely it’s a gift when it does, has never felt someone else’s lips against his own. Has never experienced that rush of connection, that electric moment when breath mingles and boundaries dissolve.
My hand drifts down my stomach before I consciously decide to move it.
The music continues thumping in my ears, but my mind is elsewhere now. Constructing. Imagining. Building a fantasy from the raw materials of the past week.
I picture the pool. Ryan and I, the water glowing blue around us, moonlight streaming through the glass walls.
In my fantasy, Ryan isn’t hunched with self-consciousness the way he was that night.
He’s confident. Relaxed, even. His lean body cuts through the water as he swims toward me, droplets clinging to his collarbones and glistening like diamonds.
The elastic waistband catches briefly on my hips before sliding down with a soft snap, pooling in a rumpled heap where my feet meet the mattress. The cool air of my bedroom raises goosebumps along newly exposed skin.
“Oliver,” fantasy-Ryan says, his voice low and intimate, nothing like the careful politeness he usually maintains. “I’ve been thinking about you.”
I wrap my fingers around my hardening cock, stroking slowly, while I close the distance between us in my fantasy. The water is warm, lapping against our chests as I cup his face in my hands. His skin is cool from the pool, but his eyes are burning.
“Can I kiss you?” I ask because even in a masturbatory dream, I need his permission. Need to know he wants this as much as I do.
“Please,” he whispers.
The first press of lips is gentle. I imagine the tiny gasp he’d make, the way his fingers would curl against my shoulders as he steadies himself.
He’s never done this before, and I want to make it perfect for him.
Want to show him what it can feel like when someone takes their time, when someone cares.
My grip tightens around my shaft, thumb swiping over the head where precome has already started to gather.
The kiss deepens in my imagination. Ryan’s mouth opens under mine, hesitant at first, then eager. I swallow the small sound he makes—surprise and pleasure tangled together. His body presses against me in the water, slick and warm, and I feel him hard against my thigh.
God, the thought of Ryan hard for me. Wanting me. Letting me be the first person to touch him, to taste him, to make him feel better than good. I stroke faster, my hips lifting off the mattress to meet my fist while my toes curl into the sheets, anchoring me.
The fantasy quickly morphs into something more intense. We’re not in the pool anymore. We’re in my bed, and Ryan is spread out beneath me like an offering. His khakis and button-down are long gone, replaced by nothing but bare skin and flushed cheeks. His hazel eyes have gone dark with want.
“I’ve never—” he starts, and I silence him with another kiss.
“I know,” I murmur against his lips. “I’ll take care of you. I promise.”
My free hand rests on my thigh as the other works my cock with increasing urgency. I’m fully hard now, aching, my balls drawn up tight. The fantasy has taken on a life of its own, playing out behind my closed eyes in vivid detail.
I imagine trailing kisses down Ryan’s neck, feeling his pulse jump under my tongue. He’s been alone for so long, convinced that he’s not worth someone’s time and attention. I’d spend hours proving him wrong. No, days. Whatever it took.
In the fantasy, I take him in my hand, and he arches off the bed with a cry that goes straight to my cock. He’s trembling, overwhelmed, and I slow my strokes to let him adjust. “That’s it,” I whisper. “I’ve got you. Just feel it.”
I twist my wrist on the upstroke, mimicking what I’d do to Ryan, and my legs tremble.
The fantasy fractures, then reforms. Suddenly, I’m thinking about the night after the championship.
The guy who was pounding into me while the party raged below.
We went at it three times, and each time was satisfying and exactly what I needed after nine months of nothing.
But now, in my imagination, it’s not Frat Guy inside me.
It’s Ryan, learning my body with careful attention.
Ryan, whose hands shake slightly as they grip my hips, not from nerves but from the effort of holding back.
Ryan, whose voice breaks when he becomes overwhelmed by the heat and the tightness.
I imagine his moans to be high and desperate. This Ryan is undone, unraveled, and I’m the one who did it to him.
My hand flies over my cock now, chasing the building pressure at the base of my spine. “Come for me,” I imagine telling him. “Want to feel you, buddy. Want to be your first everything.”
The pressure crests. My feet slide off the bed as every muscle tenses. My eyes fly open, and the orgasm tears through me, whiting out my vision. “Oh, God! Ryan!”
His name rips from my throat as I come, spurting hot and thick over my fist, my stomach, my chest. It keeps going, pulse after pulse, until I feel wetness hit my collarbone, before soaring higher and splattering all the way up to my hairline.
Holy fuck.
I lie there gasping, my hand still loosely wrapped around my cock, cum cooling on my skin in streaks that map the force of my release. The music continues to play, incongruous now, too hostile for the boneless satisfaction spreading through my limbs.
I fumble for the tissues on my nightstand, cleaning myself up as best I can.
My hair is going to need washing—there’s definitely cum in it, which is either impressive or concerning depending on your perspective—but that can wait until morning.
I don’t mind rocking the There’s Something About Mary look.
What can’t wait, apparently, is my brain’s insistence on replaying the fantasy in excruciating detail.
Ryan in the pool. Ryan in my bed. Ryan inside me, losing his virginity to someone who actually cares about him, who sees him as more than a conquest or a curiosity.
I want that. I want…him.
I’ve had crushes before, hookups, even a few attempts at something more serious. But this feels different. Bigger. Like the beginning of something that could actually matter.
I pull the earbuds out and set my phone aside, staring at the ceiling in the darkness.
Gerard’s theatrical moaning has finally subsided, replaced by the low murmur of conversation and what sounds like Elliot’s dry laughter.
Good. They’re in the afterglow phase now, which means I might actually get some sleep.
Tomorrow, I’ll see Ryan again. We’ll sort through more dusty archives, face-to-face in that dim corner of the basement. I’ll make him laugh if I can, listen if he wants to talk, simply exist beside him if that’s all he needs.
And I’ll try very, very hard not to think about what I did tonight.