Chapter 7
FINN
Finn found the listing on a forum he checked twice a month, the kind that required an invitation code and a verified profile, and the understanding that if you shared the address with anyone who hadn’t been vetted, you didn’t get invited again.
Monthly event. Rotating location. This one was a house in Ann Arbor, which was either convenient or catastrophic depending on how you looked at it.
Finn texted Evan the details and waited for the pushback. The pause, the list of reasons, the measured disassembly of why this was a terrible idea.
What he got was: When is it?
Finn stared at his phone for a full ten seconds. Then typed: Saturday. Nine. I’ll send the address.
Okay.
Two letters. No caveats. No, I don’t think this is a good idea. Just okay.
Finn set the phone down, looked at the ceiling of his apartment, and tried to locate the part of himself that was supposed to be winning.
It wasn’t there. In its place was a tightness behind his ribs that he didn’t recognize and didn’t like.
Finn had been the one pushing. The one saying come with me, trust me, stop running.
And Evan had resisted every time, and the resistance had been part of it, the thing Finn pushed against, the shape of the chase.
Now Evan was saying yes, and Finn didn’t have anything to push against, and the ground under him had shifted without warning.
The house was on a residential street, older homes, nothing about the exterior that would make you look twice. A man at the entrance had a clipboard and a stack of forms. He checked their names, handed each of them a single sheet of paper, and waited while they read and signed.
Consent. Boundaries. The house rules were printed in clean sans-serif font, the language direct and unambiguous.
No meant no. Names were optional. Staff in gray shirts circulated with drinks and would intervene at any request. Designated areas were labeled.
The main floor was social. The upstairs was observation only.
The rooms off the corridor were for participants.
Evan read the form the way he read everything: line by line, his pen tracking down the margin.
His face was doing something Finn had never seen, the professional processing mode applied to a consent form at a sex party, and the disconnect was so absurd that Finn had to press his lips flat to keep from laughing.
“There’s a list,” Evan said, not looking up.
“Welcome to organized hedonism.”
Evan laughed. A real one, short and surprised, the noise pushed out of him before he could catch it. Finn kept that laugh. Stored it next to the evidence that Evan Tremblay was a human being instead of a spreadsheet.
They signed. The man at the entrance nodded them through.
Inside, the furniture had been rearranged to open the main floor.
Candles on surfaces that wouldn’t catch fire, the air dim and golden, music with a bass line that hummed in the floor beneath Finn’s shoes.
Maybe thirty people, drinks in hand, dressed in everything from button-downs to nothing much at all.
The smell was candle wax and wine and skin.
A woman in a gray shirt passed with a tray of glasses and Finn took two, handed one to Evan.
Evan’s palm found the small of Finn’s spine.
Finn went very motionless. Not tense. Aware.
Evan’s palm flat on his lower spine, the pressure steady, a touch that said I’m here and you’re mine and I know where you are in this space.
It was the first time Evan had touched him like that around other people.
Not in a locked film room. Not in a truck with fogged windows.
Here, with thirty strangers and candlelight, Evan’s palm on his spine like he’d been doing it for years.
Finn took a sip of his wine and let the warmth of Evan’s palm radiate through his shirt and did not say a word about it because if he named it, it would break.
But his chest was doing something he couldn’t manage, a loosening, like a fist he’d been clenching for years had finally opened, and what was inside it was not triumph.
It was need. The raw, stupid, dangerous kind that made people do things they couldn’t take back.
They circled the room. Finn did most of the talking, the way he did in any space.
Evan stayed close, his palm dropping from Finn’s spine when they stopped to talk to someone and finding it again when they walked, and the consistency of the gesture, the fact that Evan kept reaching for him without being asked, made Finn’s throat tight in a way he was not prepared to examine.
A woman near the corridor caught Finn’s eye.
Tall, her hair cut to her jaw, a sleeveless top that showed the tattoo running the length of her upper arm, geometric and clean.
She was leaning on the wall with a glass of red wine and the posture of someone who was choosing to be here, not looking for validation.
She caught Finn looking and held the gaze. One eyebrow up. An acknowledgment.
Finn looked at Evan. Evan had tracked his gaze and was looking at the woman with an expression Finn had never seen on him, his fist pressed harder into Finn’s spine.
“You want to,” Evan said. Not a question.
“Do you?”
Evan’s attention came to Finn. His thumb pressed to the base of Finn’s spine. “I want to watch you.”
The words hit Finn low in his gut, a jolt that tightened everything from his navel down. He took a breath. Took another. “Yeah?”
“And then I want to be the one who takes you home.”
Finn’s lips went dry. He finished his wine in one swallow and set the glass on the nearest surface. “Okay.”
Finn crossed to the woman. Up close, she smelled like red wine and rosemary. Her gaze was green and amused.
“I’m with someone,” Finn said.
She glanced past his shoulder at Evan. “I can see that. He’s been staring at you since you walked in.”
“He wants to watch.”
Her expression curved. “I can work with that.”
They talked for two minutes. Enough to establish what she was into, what she wasn’t, what the signals were. She was direct and specific and didn’t apologize for any of it, and Finn liked her immediately. Her name was Rae. She didn’t offer a last name and Finn didn’t ask.
The corridor had a curtained-off area at the end: a wide daybed, the glow amber and low, the curtain pulled but not closed. A few inches of gap. Finn clocked it. Didn’t close it.
Evan sat in the armchair by the wall. Arms crossed, legs apart, his spine to the plaster and his attention on Finn. His jaw was set and his lips pressed flat but his breathing was too fast, and the contrast made Finn’s cock throb.
Finn had done this before. Threesomes, group things, exploratory sex that came with being twenty-one and bi and curious and unashamed.
He had never done it with someone watching from across a room who made his fingers tremble.
Every other time, the other people had been the point.
Tonight Evan was the point, and Rae was the gorgeous, willing frame around it.
Rae kissed Finn first. Her lips were warm and tasted like wine and she kissed with authority, her fingers finding the nape of his neck, her tongue sliding along his.
Finn kissed her and his body responded the way his body always responded to someone confident, his palms finding her waist, pulling her closer.
She was tall enough that the angle was easy.
She bit his lower lip and Finn heard Evan’s breathing change from the armchair.
The noise traveled straight down Finn’s spine.
He was hard before Rae’s fingers got anywhere near his belt.
Rae got it open. Got him out. Wrapped her fingers around him and stroked with a grip that was firm and knowing.
Finn’s head dropped and he made a noise that echoed off the low ceiling, and from the armchair Evan made a noise too, low, involuntary, the creak of the leather as his weight shifted.
Finn kept his attention closed and tracked Evan by ear alone.
The shift of fabric when Evan uncrossed his arms. The leather creaking under him.
The inhale when Rae twisted her wrist on the upstroke.
Every noise Evan made was a line drawn between them, and Finn’s body was tuned to it, every nerve ending pointed at that armchair.
“He’s watching,” Rae said near Finn’s ear. “He hasn’t looked away once.”
“I know.”
She sank to her knees and took him into her throat, and Finn’s fingers went to her hair, threading through the short strands, his hips rocking forward.
She was good, her tongue flat on the underside of his cock, working a drag from base to tip before she closed her lips around the head and sucked.
Finn groaned and his hips pushed forward and she took it, her fist wrapping around the base to cover what her lips couldn’t reach.
She set a rhythm, unhurried and knowing, and her free palm pressed flat to his stomach, holding him in place.
From the armchair, Evan’s breathing had gone audible.
Short inhales through his nose. Finn opened his attention and looked at him.
Evan was white-knuckling the armrests, his legs spread, his cock hard in his slacks, the outline visible in the low glow.
He was watching Rae’s lips on Finn’s cock with his own lips parted, and when Finn’s gaze met his, Evan’s throat bobbed and his weight shifted.
Rae pulled off long enough to lick a stripe from base to tip, her tongue tracing the vein on the underside, then took him deep, her nose brushing the base, her throat working around him.
Finn made a noise that cracked in the middle, and Evan made one too, low from the armchair, and the two noises in the same space at the same time was enough to make Finn’s thighs shake.
Then Evan stood up.
The leather creaked and Finn’s gaze snapped open and every hair on his body stood up. All this chasing, and now Evan was walking toward him without being asked.