FIVE EZRA
FIVE
EZRA
My phone flashed with Tristan’s name, and my belly flip-flopped. Even after a decade of knowing him, I still got a thrill every time we talked.
“Hey, Tris. How are you?”
“I’m good. You?”
“Yeah,” I murmured. There was something about Tristan that drew me to him.
We’d hooked up the first night we’d met at a gay bar, both of us needing someone for the night.
It was, no doubt, one of the hottest experiences of my life.
We’d clicked. Our chemistry had been off the charts.
Life had gotten in the way, and we’d never hooked up again after that, but we’d kept in touch, talking often.
“You free tonight?” he asked.
“Why?” I prompted with a smile, knowing what his answer would be. I loved the way he changed up how he propositioned me every time we spoke.
“I could give you a massage, work out some of the kinks.”
I sighed. Fuck, I wanted that. I’d wanted it ever since that night. And I was tempted—so very tempted—to say yes. Giving in was on the tip of my tongue, torturing me with how good I knew we’d been together. Desire raged inside me, begging for relief.
But I couldn’t.
From the moment at the ball when Ry had slid his hand over Zali’s breast, cupping her there in public, I’d been hard.
I stopped for a drink with Ry and Flynn after the charity ball, wanting to make sure Ry had calmed down.
He was fine, so I decided to head home, but I stopped to use the bathroom before I left.
I heard Zali in her room down the hall, moaning as she came.
I suspected that’s where she’d gone when she stripped off her dress the moment Ry set her down, but neither he nor Flynn had mentioned it.
So I hadn’t either. It had taken every ounce of my strength not to barge into her room and help her.
She was the sexiest woman I’d ever seen, and that dress…
. It was obscene in the hottest kind of way.
I was so hard that I’d jacked off in the bathroom just to be able to walk straight.
I came so quickly, it was embarrassing. Then I’d gone home and done it again.
I was acting like a horny teenager, but I couldn’t help it.
There were a million reasons why I couldn’t be with Zali, why I couldn’t cross that line with her.
Or the two men she spent most of her time with.
Put simply, I was tied up over four people. The fact that I’d need to choose meant I couldn’t have any of them—they all deserved better than me only being able to give them part of my heart.
I was still strung out days later. Every time I thought about the way Ry’s big hand looked on her breast, I got hard.
Then I would picture Flynn, the boy who’d loved her since he was a kid, standing next to them.
He was biting his lip and trying to subtly adjust his erection.
It did me in every time—I was as hard as nails.
Add in the memories of Zali’s breathless moans, and I’d explode like a firework.
Yeah, I needed to work out some serious kinks, and I knew Tristan would look after me. He’d leave me so sated, I’d be floating on cloud nine after he finished.
But how could I do that to him?
It wasn’t fair to Tris for me to use him like that. It was especially unfair when I knew he’d wanted me for so long. The feeling was mutual, but our history complicated our relationship—so much so that I suspected our time had passed.
Tris made his desire obvious. He’d asked me semi-regularly to fuck for nearly as long as I’d known him.
He was persistent, but not in a gross kind of way.
We both thought of it as a private running joke.
But I’d known him long enough to realize when he was hiding something too.
Every now and then, I’d see a flash of vulnerability revealing what was truly in his heart.
That was what held me back.
“It’s a no again, isn’t it?” He sighed dramatically, but it still broke my heart because I wanted him too. I’d wanted him for almost a decade. But like I said… history got in the way. How could I say yes when my head was so fucked up?
“Yeah.”
“One day you’ll say yes,” he joked.
“Tris—” I said gently.
“Ez,” he snapped, then sighed and added much more quietly, “I know, okay? You don’t need to say it.”
“You deserve someone who’ll love you wholeheartedly. I can’t do that.”
“Who said I want to fall in love? I just want to suck your dick,” he quipped, but he was deflecting, erecting walls around his heart to stop me from hurting him again and again.
“You deserve better.”