Chapter 4
“Have you done anything with a boy?” Marcus asked. “I mean, since… back then, when you were a kid?”
“No,” Katt mumbled. He’d lied about blowing his friend, but not the other stuff.
“You’re here,” Marcus said. “So… does that mean you want to try some stuff?”
Katt fidgeted and almost pulled away from the young man, but didn’t. “I don’t know… I guess.” He didn’t, not really, but he was supposed to be here because he was curious. He had to play the part.
“I like holding hands.” Marcus threaded his fingers through Katt’s. “I think it’s sweet.”
“You’re sweet,” Garrett said, squinting at the boy.
“And saucy,” Mickey chimed in with an impish smile.
Marcus squeezed Katt’s hand and hugged his arm, shaking his head. “He’s being silly. He’s the saucy one.”
Lucas snorted. “Why don’t we ask the big guy?” He nodded at Samson. “Who’s sweet, and who’s saucy?”
Chuckling deeply, Samson rubbed his mouth. “They’re both sweet and saucy.”
The two boys giggled. Marcus flexed his fingers around Katt’s hand and gazed up at him, his big blue eyes imploring. “Want to sit on the couch with us?” With his free hand, he toyed with the pool stick. “You can finish your game later.” He glanced sweetly at Lucas. “Can’t he?”
Sighing, Lucas chuckled. “Like I could say no to you two.”
Marcus grinned, pressing his cheek to Katt’s arm. “Want to?” he asked Katt.
Not sure what else to say, Katt nodded. “Uh, yeah. Sure.”
Mickey reattached to his other arm, and the two boys led him across the room. A couple of the young men lounging on the sofa stood to make room for them to sit. Katt sank down, a bit reluctant, between the twins, aware of where this was headed and knowing he couldn’t stop it.
Katt tried to numb his mind, to somehow put himself outside the situation, but it wasn’t working.
Garrett noticed his unease. “You don’t have to do anything you don’t want to do. Just because you’re here doesn’t obligate you to do anything. The whole point of the Curious Boys segment is for you to figure out what appeals to you and what doesn’t. That’s a call only you can make. Not any of us.”
His words would have put Katt at ease—if he were there for legitimate reasons. But he had to do everything, no matter how he felt about it.
Lucas chuffed. “Like I said, cock-blocker.”
Garrett rolled his eyes at the guy, smiled, and shook his head. “You know how this goes, Lucas. We’re allowed to flirt and give him a glimpse of what we have to offer, but we don’t pressure him into anything he isn’t comfortable with.”
Anything he isn’t comfortable with. That would be everything—including holding hands with a guy. At some point, he would have to kiss one of them. What if he inadvertently showed revulsion? It didn’t gross him out to see two guys kiss; he had no issue with that, as long as he wasn’t one of them.
You weren’t repulsed when you did it at thirteen.
Katt fidgeted at the memory. He didn’t like to think about what happened in his brother’s fort years earlier. It didn’t mean anything. They were drunk and goofing off like a couple of stupid kids. Nothing more. They were hardly even teenagers then, and it never happened again. It meant nothing.
“Do you like holding hands?” Marcus rested his chin on Katt’s shoulder and smiled at him, squeezing his hand gently.
“I think you have nice hands.” He loosened his grip and traced a fingertip tenderly along the lines of Katt’s palm, sparking an odd tickle in Katt’s navel. “I bet these are very… talented hands.”
On the opposite side, Mickey began tracing the other palm.
“I agree with Marcus,” he cooed. “These are lovely hands. Soft… but manly.” His deep blue eyes lifted to Katt, radiating a growing warmth.
“Your intro story, about you and your friend… did you like touching him? Did it make you feel good to get him… excited?” He squinted at Marcus, an impish smile tugging at his lips.
“It makes me feel really good to get Marcus excited.”
Marcus bit his lower lip, his big eyes smoldering as he gazed at the other boy. “It makes me feel really good, too.”
“You two are making me horny,” Lucas snorted.
Mickey snickered. “You’re always horny.”
“That’s beside the point.”
The other guys laughed.
“So?” Mickey pressed lightly. “Did it make you feel good?”
“I, uh…” Katt cleared his throat. “I-I don’t really remember. It was a long time ago.”
“But you still think about it, right?” Mickey asked. “That’s what you told Gideon. You said you kind of liked it.”
Katt hadn’t thought about it—until the brotherhood. He had, in fact, deliberately avoided thinking about it until now. What he’d said in the intro about just starting to think about it again and finally admitting he’d liked it… that wasn’t true. But he couldn’t tell these guys the truth.
“Yeah, I… I guess so.” Katt swallowed. Things were about to get real, and he didn’t know if he could handle real.
“How did it make you feel when you kissed him?” Marcus asked softly, seeming genuinely interested. “Did it feel different than kissing a girl?”
Katt fidgeted again. “I-I don’t know,” he mumbled. “I hadn’t kissed a girl yet.”
“But you kissed girls after that?”
“Yeah.” Katt laughed nervously. “A lot of girls.”
“And… fucked them?”
Swallowing hard, Katt nodded. “Yeah… that, too.”
Every eye in the room was on him now, heightening his anxiety.
“Does it feel good… fucking girls?”
Another nervous laugh. “Uh, yeah. It… It feels really good.”
Marcus snuggled closer, caressing his fingertips along Katt’s forearm. “But you still think about fucking boys sometimes, too? Maybe wondering…” A single fingertip mapped the veins of his wrist. “… how good that might feel?”
Katt had no conscious recollection of ever wondering how it would feel to fuck a guy. Maybe right after the fort incident. Maybe. But he didn’t remember much, if anything, of what he’d thought back then.
This “experience”, though, wasn’t about the truth.
“I guess I did,” he said, his voice catching. “Now and then.”
Garrett joined the exchange. “When you think about it,” he asked quietly. “How does it make you feel?”
Katt frowned. “I’m not sure what you…”
“Does it make you feel embarrassed, or… ashamed? Like it’s taboo or forbidden?”
“I, um…” Katt released a shaky breath. “I don’t know. I never really analyzed it. The thought just comes and goes, I don’t try to… think about it too deeply.”
“You told Gideon you didn’t feel satisfied after you fucked girls,” Mickey said softly. “Didn’t that make you wonder if maybe you’d rather… fuck boys?”
“It feels really good,” Marcus whispered in his ear, his breath puffing warmly against the shell. “Boys are… tighter. Boys know what boys want. We know how to please each other better.”
Gideon watched and listened as the scene in the rec room unfolded on the TV monitor. He’d learned early on that some of the best footage was captured in the rec room before the actual shoot, so he began recording it as well.
“Anything interesting yet?” Daniel stepped into the room and shut the door. “A little birdie told me you were shooting another Curious Boys segment today.”
Gideon smiled, always glad to see Daniel, the owner of The Lion’s Den strip club in the city—and Gideon’s new lover. They had been friends for years, but only recently took the next step into a sexual relationship. The “delay” was on Gideon, not Daniel.
“Possibly.” Gideon studied the monitor. “There’s something different about this one.”
“Different how?” Daniel approached and stood beside Gideon, his hand settling on Gideon’s lower back.
“I’m not entirely sure he told the truth in the introduction,” Gideon said. “At least, not the whole truth.”
“What did he say?”
Gideon retold Katt’s story to Daniel. “I’m not sure he’s as curious as he implied.”
“Why would he sign up for it if he wasn’t?”
Gideon shrugged. “Beats me.” He looked at Daniel. “Were you ever… curious?”
Daniel squinted. “Meaning…?”
“Was there ever a time when you weren’t sure about your preferences?”
Daniel chuckled. “No. I knew from the very start. I was chasing boys in kindergarten.”
Gideon laughed, then sighed. “Yeah, I think I always knew, too,” he murmured. “But I kept it to myself until, well… you know the story.”
“I do.” Daniel kissed his cheek, then touched Gideon’s chin and turned his face, kissing him softly on the mouth. “You’ll always have me,” he whispered between kisses. “For as long as you want me.”
Daniel had loved him from the moment they met—and had waited for Gideon for years. The words he spoke now were true. Gideon leaned into the kiss. “I’ll always want you. I promise, I will.”
“Don’t have to promise.” Daniel cupped Gideon’s face and touched foreheads with him. “I know. I’m not worried.”
Gideon wondered whether that was entirely true, but it was a conversation for another time. He turned his attention back to the monitor, and he and Daniel watched the scene continue to unfold in the rec room.