The Straight Guy Loophole (Hard Men (straight to gay first time mm short romance stories) #7)

1

“I just don’t count it as the same thing at all,” Lexi said, giggling.

She dragged a hand through her long, straightened honey-blonde hair, trying to maintain a fa?ade of indifference.

The effort didn’t last. She began teasing her bangs and winding the soft ends around her fingers, her nervous energy betraying her.

Finally, she broke into laughter and turned toward her friend Audrey, who wore the same sheepish grin.

The girls’ faces turned red as they laughed, neither of them able to look directly at their boyfriends for a moment. Hunter and Cody sat across from them in the curved restaurant booth, watching the whole display with obvious amusement.

It was graduation night, and the quartet of eighteen-year-olds was finally free from the bondage of high school.

They were free to do whatever they pleased—or at least, that was how it felt to Lexi, Audrey, Hunter, and Cody.

The ceremony was over, their families had taken their photographs, and the future suddenly felt wide open.

Maybe it was that sense of exuberant freedom that had pushed their conversation in such a sexual direction.

The meetup had started innocently enough, with the four of them discussing graduation, college plans, and what they imagined the next few years would look like.

Before long, however, they seemed unable to talk about anything except sex.

Of course, the tension that had been growing between them was no real secret. At least, it wasn’t to Cody. He watched his three friends closely as the girls squirmed against the vinyl booth with childish laughter and Hunter wore a cheesy, satisfied grin across his face.

“Sounds like our girlfriends wanna bang, bro,” Hunter said to his buddy.

Cody’s cheeks warmed as he glanced at his girlfriend, Lexi, and then at Audrey.

“What?” Lexi said with a dramatic gasp. “Just because we’re talking about this doesn’t mean we want to have sex.” The blonde looked pointedly at her friend, though the color in her cheeks made the denial less than convincing.

Cody and Hunter stared at their girlfriends, envious of the complete lack of tension between them. The girls could so easily talk—or joke, anyway—about the prospect of having sex with each other without the slightest hint that the possibility might genuinely embarrass them.

“And besides, it isn’t called ‘banging’ when girls do it. There’s nothing to bang, thank goodness,” Audrey said.

The brunette chuckled and rolled her eyes as Lexi gave her a playful shove on the upper arm.

“Come on, babe. Let’s bang,” the blonde said, imitating a man’s low, exaggerated voice.

Both girls dissolved into hysterics again.

The hypothetical conversation that had initially left them blushing had become personal, yet they seemed so confident in their sexuality that joking about it barely bothered them.

They could flirt with the idea, laugh it away, and move on without appearing to question what any of it might mean.

“So, I take it we aren’t going to get to watch you guys go down on each other later?” Hunter asked.

Audrey grabbed a tortilla chip from the basket and tossed it at her boyfriend. It struck his shirt and dropped onto the table.

“Ugh, you perv,” she said.

“Hey, there’s nothing wrong with two girls having sex with each other,” the cocky jock said.

He straightened in his seat and tipped his chin upward as though he’d suddenly become the moral authority on the subject.

The wide-shouldered eighteen-year-old shifted his brown eyes from side to side and smirked.

“Maybe you’re both repressing what you really want.”

“Oh, please,” Audrey said, rolling her eyes. “Don’t even try to lecture us on homophobia, okay? We’re perfectly comfortable with all forms of sexuality. Girls are always more accepting of that sort of thing.”

Her statement drew immediate looks of skepticism from Hunter and Cody. The boys glanced at each other, sharing a brief moment of silent agreement.

“Oh, okay.” Audrey’s eyes suddenly brightened. “If you’re so progressive, why don’t you and Cody have sex? Lexi and I will watch.”

“Mm, gladly,” Lexi said.

Both girls giggled and shifted excitedly in their seats, clearly pleased to have turned the conversation back on the boys.

“Okay, sure,” Hunter said. “Since, according to you, it’s not cheating or anything.”

He dragged a hand through his cinder-brown hair and reclined against the booth, looking as though he believed he’d finally cornered his girlfriend in their little game of logic.

“I mean, I don’t know,” Audrey said, hesitating. “If a dick goes inside a hole, it feels like cheating.”

She giggled as soon as the words left her mouth.

“Oh, so when girls do it, it’s not cheating, but when guys do it, it is? Interesting,” Hunter said.

“Oh, stop. Like you’re ever going to be in a situation where you’d do anything with another guy, anyway,” his girlfriend chided. “And no, I guess it’s not cheating. At least, I wouldn’t consider it cheating. So go on—go ahead and let Cody suck your dick.”

She laughed, obviously treating the whole thing as nothing more than a ridiculous joke.

Cody could only sit there across from Lexi, far enough away from Audrey that the restaurant’s dim lighting kept her from fully detecting the embarrassment and frustration burning in red patches across his face.

He might’ve found Audrey’s assumption—that he would be the one sucking Hunter’s cock rather than the other way around—insulting if the suggestion hadn’t left him hiding an erection beneath the table.

His cock was stiff as a plank of wood, cramped painfully inside his jeans.

The pressure of the denim made every small shift in the booth feel risky, but luckily, the darkness beneath the table concealed his body from the others.

He kept his posture rigid and his hands above the tabletop, terrified that any unnecessary movement might expose exactly how strongly the conversation had affected him.

He could only wonder whether Hunter had gotten just as hard from the filthy discussion. If Cody had to guess, however, he would’ve assumed Hunter was as straight as they came. He figured he knew enough about his buddy after two years of friendship to know that much.

“What do ya say, bro?” Hunter asked, turning toward Cody with a shit-eating grin stretched across his lips.

“Cut it out,” Cody said, laughing as he shoved his friend.

He could only hope that would be the end of the conversation. Talking about graduation, the football team, and their upcoming college years had been far more comfortable than sitting there while his friends unknowingly poked at the most confusing parts of his sexuality.

Yet the conversation had steered straight into controversial and surprisingly personal territory, almost as though the other three knew exactly what kind of sexual frustration had been plaguing him and had deliberately decided to turn the screw.

“Guess you’re going to have to find another guy to have sex with,” Lexi said, sticking her tongue out at Hunter. “My boyfriend is straight.”

“Hey, I never said I wasn’t straight,” Hunter said, throwing his hands up in mock defense. “It’s just that maybe I find a guy to do the things Audrey won’t do.”

The cocky jock laughed, clearly pleased with himself. Cody could tell both girls were getting slightly embarrassed now, their earlier confidence beginning to crack.

“Come on, bro. Cut it out already,” he quickly interrupted.

Cody followed it with a less-than-ideal segue. “So, um, what do you guys think college is going to be like, anyway?”

Almost immediately, he could tell he’d bored the other three. They’d all been enjoying the spicier conversation, even when it left the girls squirming and feeling far too self-conscious. Now their energy seemed to flatten, as though Cody had shut off the most interesting part of the night.

He felt like an impostor trying to steer the conversation into safer, more puritanical waters, considering he’d probably become more aroused by it than anyone else at the table.

Cody turned his blue eyes to the side and glanced down at Hunter’s lap.

The shadows beneath the table gave him no real view of his buddy’s crotch, certainly not enough to tell whether Hunter was sporting a hard-on just like he was.

It would’ve been difficult to know whether another guy was hard even if the lighting had been better.

Jeans hid plenty unless someone was practically staring.

And Cody should know. He’d stolen a glance or two in the football locker room.

Watching the other guys peel themselves out of their tight football leggings was always the worst.

The thin, stretchy fabric left plenty visible whenever Cody risked sneaking his eyes toward their bulges.

Since most of the guys refused to wear the athletic cups their coaches insisted on, Cody could usually make out the heavy outline of a cock or two pressed against the material.

Sometimes he could see enough to tell when one of them was at least half-hard, the shape too thick and defined to mistake for anything else.

But Cody never dared look once everyone started stripping completely.

That was usually when he became more concerned with hiding his own erection.

He’d pretend to be busy with a stuck zipper or some problem with his helmet—anything that might delay his obligation to join the others in the showers.

He kept his eyes lowered and his body turned away, trying not to look nervous while the room filled with the slap of locker doors, damp towels, and naked bodies moving around him.

As he’d managed to do for the previous two years, Cody would keep himself out of the showers until everyone else had already washed and changed into their regular clothes.

Only once the locker room was nearly empty—right around the time the coaches began making their final rounds—would he quickly undress and slip toward the showers with a towel bunched tightly over his hard cock.

Hunter, on the other hand, was the complete opposite.

He didn’t seem to care who saw him naked in the locker room. He was always bragging about his size to the other guys, carrying himself with the same loud confidence he showed everywhere else. That was one boast Cody had never worked up the courage to validate.

Instead, he kept his distance and counted himself lucky that he and Hunter had lockers on completely opposite ends of the dressing area. Cody didn’t even want to imagine what kind of misery he might’ve ended up in if Hunter’s locker had been beside his.

Come on, bro. Let’s whip ’em out and see who’s bigger. Bro, why are you rock hard? Are all these guys turning you on? Dude, what the fuck is wrong with you?

Cody’s thoughts went on like that endlessly, inventing fictional situations in which Hunter noticed his erection and confronted him in front of everyone. Yet somehow, he’d made it through his final football season and all the way to graduation without anyone discovering the truth.

Now Cody had other things to worry about, like whether college would be any different.

Unlike Hunter, Cody had decided not to continue playing football at the university.

Although they’d be attending the same school that fall, Cody would be pursuing a degree in biochemistry.

He was perfectly content to sit in the stands and watch his friend—the team’s star wide receiver—take the field and enjoy all the added attention that came with it.

Cody had never understood why Hunter wanted to be his friend in the first place. Hunter was his complete opposite: cocky, brave, and reckless. He spoke before he thought, took whatever he wanted, and never seemed embarrassed by anything.

The girls loved him for it.

Cody, on the other hand, was timid and far too self-conscious for his own good. He’d only ended up with Lexi because Hunter and Audrey had gotten tired of going out alone and pushed the two of them together.

Although Cody was happy enough with the cute blonde, he knew their relationship would probably end that summer when she left for a different college. That was just as well. He didn’t think she liked him all that much anyway.

That was probably why she’d helped steer the conversation in such a naughty direction. She was bored with her shy, inexperienced boyfriend. Lexi had already done all sorts of things, at least if her late-night phone calls to Cody were any indication.

“We just fucked right there on top of the hood of his car, right in his parents’ driveway,” she’d told him once over the phone, giggling. “I mean, we were pretty drunk, though.”

Cody often wondered whether Lexi had ever done anything with Hunter. The way she looked at him sometimes suggested that she either had or desperately wanted to. Neither possibility was particularly comforting.

Still, considering Cody hadn’t done much of anything with his girlfriend of four months, he couldn’t have blamed Lexi if she had.

They’d made out a few times, with Lexi showing obvious interest in going further. She would press herself against him and eventually slide her hand down over his cock. The sensation was nice at first—the warmth of her palm, the pressure through his jeans—but something about it always felt wrong.

His body seemed to know before he did.

Instead of getting harder beneath her hand, Cody would begin losing his erection.

He’d feel himself softening and panic, suddenly too aware of every movement she made and every second she kept touching him.

It didn’t make him hard the way watching the guys in the locker room did.

It didn’t make him hard the way thinking about his buddy Hunter did.

And thinking about Hunter made him very hard.

“I’m still holding out hope that the two of you do something,” Hunter said.

The remark broke through Cody’s thoughts and dragged him back into the restaurant booth.

“Maybe we should get a six-pack and see what happens. You girls always want to do stuff with each other when you’re drunk.” Hunter smirked.

“Whatever,” Lexi said, rolling her eyes.

Annoyance was written plainly in her glare, but laughter still slipped from her lips, leaving Cody confused about what she really thought of the idea.

“You guys want to go back to my parents’ house? They’re out of town again. Hawaii or Tahiti or something,” Audrey said.

The four of them nodded in agreement and climbed out of the booth to pay their bill. Cody quickly excused himself to the bathroom, keeping his hands low in front of his jeans as he walked and hoping no one noticed the bulge he was trying to hide.

By the time he came out of the restaurant, Audrey, Lexi, and Hunter were already waiting in Hunter’s sports car.

Hunter revved the engine and grinned. Through the windshield, Cody could faintly see Audrey in the front passenger seat, slapping her boyfriend’s arm in an effort to make him stop the obnoxious showing-off.

“It’s about time, bro. What were you doing in there, jerking off?” Hunter asked as Cody climbed into the back seat.

“Whatever,” Cody said, rolling his eyes.