37. Will
WILL
We were just polishing off the first bottle of champagne when the door to Theo’s suite swung open and James backed into the room, arms loaded. “Don’t tell Miles, but I got you—”
“Those better not be fucking donuts,” Miles said.
James nearly dropped the Tim Hortons box, but managed to wedge it in the doorframe.
I couldn’t believe my eyes, or pull back the grin stretching across my face. James was back, with donuts no less. And coffee!
“Of course not.” He set the box on the table. “These are rice cakes and kale chips.” He placed the coffees beside the box. “And these are definitely not mochas. They’re distilled water, I think.”
His eyebrows arched as he took in our bedtop picnic, the three of us sipping mimosas around a bowl of discarded lobster shells.
“You’re talking about me, aren’t you?” he said.
My heart somersaulted in my chest as he flopped onto the mattress next to me and plucked the mimosa from my fingers.
“You know you’re supposed to put more than just a drop of OJ in here, right? It’s not just for color.” He handed the glass back, then shifted to remove the pad of hotel stationery from under him. His eyes widened when he saw the first sketch.
He recovered quickly enough, though, and flipped through the rest. “Fifth one is probably the closest,” he said, tossing the pad to Miles.
“Interesting.” Miles plucked the pencil from behind his ear and circled the fifth cock. “Now, tell me, when was the last time you bottomed?”
“Jesus.” I would’ve smacked Miles, but I didn’t want to spill my mimosa.
“I must be drunker than I thought,” Tiffany said. “I’m not finding this the least bit awkward.”
I leaned close to James. “Don’t answer him. Feeding the bears is never a good idea.”
Miles snapped the pad shut. “Fine, but in two days, I’m going to ask again, and if you don’t say something like ‘Last night,’ or ‘Two days ago,’ we’re going to have problems. Will’s too timid to say anything, but he’s not a total bottom, like you probably think. He’s actually a vers-top.”
Tiffany tapped her glass with long, manicured nails. “Okay, I changed my mind. This is actually super awkward.”
She wasn’t wrong, yet I’d never felt happier. If I could turn this bed into a raft and float the four of us to Mexico, I would.
“Well, maybe if you guys got the fuck out of our bed, we could get to work on that,” James said before helping himself to another gulp of my mimosa.
“Good answer.” Miles rose and offered Tiffany a hand up. “Just go easy on him, okay? Virgin daddies are a delicate breed. It takes forever to break one in. Trust me, I know.”
That earned Miles a pillow to the face, but James was smiling, even as Miles chucked it back twice as hard.
When we were alone again, he pushed the lobster carcasses aside, propped the pillow behind his back, and leveled an accusatory glare at me. “You thought I ran away, didn’t you?”
“No.”
Despite having just gotten comfortable, he turned and pounced on me, pinning my arms above my head. “Don’t lie.”
I could’ve easily thrown him off, but I didn’t want to. “Well, maybe I considered it, but—”
The lie died in my throat as he pushed my wrists together and held them in place with one hand, freeing his other to yank loose the knot in my robe.
“I’m not technically a virgin, but I’ve only bottomed for one guy before,” he said, wrapping his hand around my shaft and tugging, like he was pulling weeds.
“And that was ages ago. Plus, he wasn’t quite so well endowed.
” He released my wrists to add a second hand around my cock, like it was a particularly stubborn weed—a dandelion, perhaps.
“Don’t listen to Miles. He likes to think he knows what he’s talking about, but he doesn’t.” It was true I normally preferred topping, but I liked bottoming, too, especially for James.
Still gripping me with both hands, he bent over and swept his mustache across the tip of my cock, which was both unpleasant and hot as fuck. “I know. But what if I wanna bottom? You made it look awfully fun last night.”
I swallowed the baseball-sized lump in my throat. “Then . . . we can make it happen. There’s no rush, though.”
He grinned as he released me and hopped off the bed. “Give me fifteen minutes.”
Thirty minutes later, I was kneeling behind James, mesmerized by the sheen of sweat on his back and the two little dimples just above his virgin daddy ass.
“I can do this, I swear,” he said, fingers clawing the bedspread. “Just shove it in there.”
I caught his gaze in the mirror and shook my head. “I don’t want to hurt you.”
“You won’t. And if you do, it’ll only be for a sec. You just gotta break me in, that’s all.”
I thought Miles was joking with his whole “delicate daddies” comment, but nope. Watching James try to bottom was like watching my students try to tie their shoes. “That’s not how this works,” I said, holding back a laugh.
He slumped headfirst into the mattress, his cheek smooshing up like a bulldog. “Let’s try missionary. This was probably just the wrong angle.”
“I have a better idea.” I slid the condom off and collapsed onto the bed next to him. “Let’s talk.”
“No, I wanna do this. I probably just need to smoke a bowl or something.”
I couldn’t help laughing. Confident James was hot as hell, but flustered James was downright adorable.
“Actually, I have an even better idea, one that doesn’t involve any talking whatsoever.
” I sat up, eager to finally try this out.
According to Tiffany, who’d found the clickbait article, “It’s intense, but really works. ”
He turned a hopeful eye my way. “Blowjobs?”
“Close, but no.” I pushed the pillows aside and sat cross-legged, facing him. “We’re going to stare at each other for five minutes straight without talking.”
He lifted his head from the mattress, his hair a dented, sweaty mess. “You wanna have a staring competition?”
“Not exactly. You can blink all you want. You just can’t talk. And you can’t look away.”
“Can I eat a donut?”
I shook my head. “Nope, no eating or drinking.”
“Maybe we can ask Miles for some poppers. Those help, right?”
I reached for my phone and opened my most-used app, the timer app. “No poppers. This will be better, trust me. It’s from the internet.”
“Oh, well, in that case . . .” He took a deep breath and tried to sit cross-legged opposite me, but he was comically inflexible. Even when I pushed his knees down, they just popped back up again.
“You don’t have to sit cross-legged, but you really should stretch more. Right now, though, just get comfortable. This is going to be the longest five minutes of your life.”
“Wow,” he said, switching to a kneeling position, “you’re really selling this.”
I bit back a smile and rose to my knees, too. “Okay, no talking and no looking away until the timer goes off. Got it?”
“Yes, master.”
That was half the problem right there. James thought bottoming meant surrender, instead of connection, like he had to give something up rather than accept something in, which was ironic. I would’ve said as much, but the timer was running.
James lasted a whole thirty seconds before his eyes started to water and his chest started to shake with laughter. I was tempted to join him—this was pretty silly—but I held steady, knowing if I gave in, too, we’d be cooked.
The article this exercise was based on was called something stupid like “How to Fall in Love in Thirty-six Questions.” I couldn’t remember a single question, but I remembered this part.
I thought it might make a nice icebreaker, but I was beginning to see what Tiffany meant about it being “really intense.” It was like the time Miles and I took mushrooms, the way reality shifted.
Though perhaps “shifted” wasn’t the right word.
It was more like reality was undressing, shedding its layers like a stripper.
In college, I read an article that claimed babies and small children experience the world more accurately than adults because they’ve yet to develop the same efficiencies.
Apparently, our “mature” brains filter out tons of information without us knowing it.
We might not even hear that bird chirping because our brains have already dismissed it as “not a threat,” whereas a baby will be like, “What the fuck was that?” Conversely, we might not realize we turned a block early because our brains subconsciously clocked a sea of red brake lights in the distance.
That was how I felt now, like my filters had been peeled away, and everything just seemed . . . more. It was kind of overwhelming. But maybe that was the point. Maybe love is one of the things we filter out more and more as we age, a danger we avoid instinctively.
The timer went off—the same one I used every day at center time—and like a Pavlovian dog, I yelled, “Rotate.”
“What?” James blinked rapidly, like he’d been staring at the sun.
“Sorry, ignore me.”
“You’re crying,” he said, swiping a tear from my cheek.
“Shit, sorry.” I pressed my palms to my eyes to stem the flow. “I’m fine. I just have terrible ideas.”
He pulled my hands away. “No, you don’t, and it’s okay to cry.”
“Right, because who doesn’t love a weepy top?”
James laughed. “I don’t know. It’s gotta be someone’s kink, right?”
“God, I hope not,” I said, blinking away the remainder of my tears.
“Did you know that would happen?”
I wasn’t sure what he was referring to and doubted his experience had been the same as mine, but my answer was the same either way. “No, not really. That was kind of intense, huh?”
“That’s the understatement of the year.” James stood and offered me his hand. “Come on. I’ll suck you off in the shower, and then, when we get home later, I’ll do some research. I mean, bottoming isn’t rocket science, right?”
“No, it’s cock-it science.”
“Wow, tears and a dad joke. Where have you been all my life?”