Chapter 3 #2
When he was two feet away from me, we both stopped.
My heart thundered as Seth’s mouth relaxed, and the corners of his lips trembled before he cracked a smile.
“The devil himself,” he shouted over the music.
I read his lips as much as I heard his voice.
“I’m not even surprised to find you in this hellhole. ”
“I’m surprised to find you,” I said. “What are you doing here?”
“Same as you,” Seth said.
I shook my head. “Impossible.”
“Why is it impossible?” A look of defiance came over his face, as if to say, I can be just like you.
I laughed, not replying to that. The reply was way too close to the heart to say aloud.
The crowd pushed me closer to Seth, but he stepped back each time I moved toward him. Step by step, and we were out of the deepest circle of hell, moving steadily toward the slightly quieter side of the room.
“Look at you!” The voice cut through the noise. The twink stormed our corner and thrust a drink into Seth’s hand. “Right for the big prize. I didn’t think you had it in you.”
Seth laughed, clearly familiar with the little demon. “Silas,” Seth said. “This is an old enemy.”
Silas looked at me, took my measure, then nodded. “You’re off the hook, big guy. My roommate’s calling dibs.”
I’d never felt more like a sex toy than just now. It was an oddly liberating sensation. I simply nodded.
Silas peeled away from us, catching the rhythm and dancing toward a couple of topless, beefed-up guys with pierced nipples and tattooed arms and chests. I didn’t need to look to know how his night would end.
“Your friend is…something,” I said, lifting my right arm and leaning against the bare concrete wall behind Seth.
As I inhaled, underneath the staleness and sweat of the basement, there was the freshness of jasmine and hyacinth that launched me back into the summer memory.
I fought against being swept away by its potency.
“He’s my roommate,” Seth said. “Not sure about being friends yet.”
“What is this?” I asked, pushing aside my own attempt at chitchat. We had never known how to have a fun conversation. Why pretend? “You’ve got a roommate on my campus, Seth. Did you transfer?”
“Damon, don’t be a bore,” he said, a twinkle of his old fire glimmering in his big eyes. “Let’s dance.”
I barked a laugh and shook my head. “You don’t know how to dance.”
“You’ll teach me.”
He pressed an open palm against my chest, and fire filled my body like I’d been struck by lightning.
I stepped back just as he stepped forward, pushing me closer to the dancing crowd.
I narrowed my eyes and took his measure.
He wasn’t kidding. He wanted to dance the way all these people danced.
It was hardly a skill. Rather, it was an expression of lust and ecstasy, of the way they ravaged your body and made you move, made you incapable of standing still.
It was the frustration and the path to soothing it.
It was a ritual of half people and half animals, and Seth wanted it without a shred of doubt.
I stood my ground. “Alright,” I said. “But you’ll need to drink that first.”
The challenge made his nostrils flare. He would prove he could keep up with the rest of us. And that was my fault entirely. But I encouraged him anyway and waited as he drank the cheap whiskey and tossed the cup aside.
Both hands pressed on my chest, he pushed up into the throng where the beat alone made you move simply because you feared that it would fray your skin and muscles if you stood still.
The lights flashed rapidly, making the entire room feel like a storm of nightmares.
The heat of bodies and poor ventilation made me sweat through my shirt as I yanked Seth closer to me, shoving everyone who dared touch him.
I was no longer playing by the basement rules.
Had it been anyone else, I’d have gladly shared them, but not this guy.
I wasn’t letting Seth descend into the same depravity and madness that filled my nights.
If he wanted it, he would get it, but only as much as I decided was good for him. Because he’d always wanted to be like me. Since we were kids in our shitty little town, Seth had wanted to be me, which never sat well with Nick, the picture-perfect role model that he had always been.
Seth’s hands dragged over my torso. He jumped in the rhythm I set.
He swung the way I did. He copied my moves with barely any delay, catching up and leaning as quickly as ever.
He had learned to kiss just as quickly. He had learned a lot more than that the summer after.
He had always wanted to prove himself, and in that, he had always been the cutest trouble I’d ever had to deal with.
We danced this performative thing like everyone around us, arms lifting to my head, elbows bending, biceps bulging, hair turning into a mess of matting locks and sweat, the press of bodies keeping you low-key horny until it was freaking buzzing inside your ears with the constant need to go further.
Seth was almost a head shorter, but that didn’t stop him from being just as engaged with me as anyone. He was strong, well-shaped for a science nerd, compact and muscled in all the right ways. Shaggy hair and dark eyes and deep dimples, he was my reckoning.
He placed his hands on my hips and pulled us together, making my heart thunder as he let his abdomen press against my crotch, making me hard in an instant. Though I couldn’t hear him snicker, I could see it in his eyes, the delight at being naughty and off the leash.
What had Illinois State done to him? Where was the innocence of that clumsy, self-conscious guy I’d known all my life? He’d been shedding it the last time we’d crossed paths, but the guy before me was a whole new level of dirty and demanding.
Seth glanced around, taking in the sins and pleasures of the basement and joining the ranks of the doomed and desolate. His hand moved off my hip and between my legs.
I gave in to him. I had never had a choice. He had always been the eye of the horizon, the gravitational pull that made me orbit him, and the bull’s-eye I never missed. Innocent or not, he had always been this. And I couldn’t make myself step back.
The willowy twink, Silas, continued to dance between the two jocks, all intimacy, hands, fingers, touches. He was just next to us, a wolfish smile touching his lips when he looked at Seth, who met his gaze, then grew more stubborn.
I felt like a tool in a competition when Seth spun away from me and leaned back, trusting I would be there to lean on, to catch him, to hold him as he thrust his ass hard against my crotch.
Silas shouted something affirming, but Seth was long gone, lost in the fantasy, unleashing his most desperate self.
He wanted to pretend we were strangers hooking up at a party, but I knew I had to draw a line somewhere. Not yet, but eventually. Tonight, or just before the dawn, or just after he asked me to take him someplace quiet.
When the music changed into a hyper-dancey remix of a song that sounded familiar, Seth spun back to face me.
His fingers moved up my torso and undid the top button of my shirt, baring my chest more and more with each button he solved.
His teeth closed around his lower lip, gaze moving down my body as he revealed my flesh.
I was hard enough to explode, horny enough to not think for the rest of the night, and elated in a way I hadn’t been in over a year.
Not once since we had gone our separate ways had I felt anything close to this magnetic pull of attraction.
His proximity made my brain short-circuit, made me forget all about rights and wrongs, grudges and forgiveness.
He made me forget what even a memory of restraint was.
He drove me mad in all the best ways, so I let him undress me in the center of a crowd.
Anyone could see us here, though few wanted to speak about a place like this, and fewer still wanted to admit they’d been here. We were far from Nick’s watchful eyes, and Seth’s hands were hot on my bare torso, my shirt on the floor, trampled and ruined.
I pulled him in, rough and dominant in a way that made his lips part and a fascinated smile play across his mouth.
“You have no idea what you’re doing,” I said.
His eyes flashed with defiance. “Show me.” His fingers dug deeper into my body, sinking through the muscle and poking me in the ribcage.
He looked up at me, waiting, moving, rubbing himself against me, and I knew what he expected. I knew that because I expected it, too. Even as I told myself not to make this mistake, I was leaning in, lips hovering over Seth’s, his breath still smelling like mint with a note of whiskey.
And when I surrendered to the torrent that led me to him, I crushed his mouth with mine, kissing him with the force that had torn apart all the straps of restraint that had been holding me at a decent distance for all of twenty minutes.
Twenty minutes was all it took for Seth to ruin me, to cull me, to wreck the simple life of mindless pleasure and cheap thrills I’d enjoyed for a whole year.
Twenty minutes was all it took to give myself to him.
I kissed him with hunger and lust, my tongue in his mouth, his arms around my body, hands on my back. He thrust himself closer to me, his dick rubbing against my leg like shameless proof that he wanted this as much as I did.
And when my hand slipped under his black T-shirt, the heat of his body spread up my arm, crawling into my heart, and I kissed him harder.
Seth bit my lip in revenge for something, anything—God knew we had plenty to choose from—and I replied by pulling back and burying my face in his neck, kissing him where I knew he was the most sensitive. He pulled me in closer, holding on to me as the sensation ravaged him.