Chapter Two #3
After they finished, Luca cleared away the plates. Breezy tried to help, but Luca glared him into submission. “Think of it as the beginning of my making it worth your while to let me live here.”
“I don’t let you live here. I want you here. I like living with you.”
Luca swallowed around nothing and forced himself to stare into the dishwasher.
The alternative was crawling onto Breezy’s lap, which he would never live down.
He didn’t answer, what could he possibly say?
I love living here. Please let me stay forever?
If you want, I will happily pay rent in blowjobs and cuddles?
He took the time spent scrubbing the pasta pot to get himself under control.
“I got you something,” Luca finally said, when he could be sure he wouldn’t sound like a sexual predator.
Breezy perked up and set down his phone, which he’d been scrolling through idly. “A present? For me?”
“Nothing big,” Luca warned. “Call it a household contribution.”
“I thought that was doing the dishes.”
“I did them because you cooked.”
“I always cook.”
“Then I will always do the dishes.”
“You don’t have to—”
This man. Luca was going to kiss him. Or strangle him. “Will you just let me do something?”
Breezy subsided. “All right. What did you get me?”
Luca shut off the water, set the pot on the drying rack, and dried off his hands. He debated explaining himself, but decided there was no way he could without giving away how much he wanted to make Breezy feel so good that he’d never again date a blonde girl with vaguely Italian heritage.
Instead, he ducked into the bathroom for the tub of arnica gel he’d received in the mail last week.
“I, uh…” He showed Breezy the gel in its cardboard packaging with flowy cursive Italian script. “I figured you would be as sore as I am. Lie on the couch. I’ll rub you down.”
Breezy’s eyes went round and wide. “Did you bring that from Rome?”
“Yes.” Luca lied to avoid admitting he had asked his mother to send it to him and wired her twenty Euros for the postage.
He knew, in the privacy of his own mind, how ridiculous it was to purchase an item in Italy that was available in any pharmacy in the States.
But seeing those big eyes shining with excitement at unpacking an Italian product made any number of indignities worthwhile.
“Luca, you’re the best roommate. How do you want me?”
Luca nearly swallowed his own tongue. “You should take off anything you don’t want getting covered in this.”
Breezy stripped off his shirt and pants easy as anything, leaving him in his socks and novelty boxer briefs.
Little bottles of hot sauce and flames covered his underwear, and as he lay on his stomach on the couch, the swell of his ass was so generous Luca couldn’t even disagree with the stupid boxers. He was hot. Burning hot.
If Luca straddled Breezy, he’d have no chance of not getting aroused.
Instead, he kneeled beside Breezy and popped the lid of the jar. “I will start with your back,” he announced, which left him with no alternative but to touch Breezy.
For once, Breezy didn’t talk, and Luca entered a meditative state in the quiet room, the only sound the whisper of his hands moving across Breezy’s warm skin.
The sharp medicinal scent of the cream kept Luca focused on what he was meant to be doing, pressing hard into the lines of muscle and working the cream in deep.
When he reached the knots in Breezy’s lumbar region, tense from low-down drills that had kept him bent at the waist, Breezy groaned.
Luca smirked to himself. “Good?”
“Mm,” Breezy agreed, and burrowed his face deeper into his arms, relaxing under Luca’s hands.
It was adorable. Adorable, Luca could work with. Adorable made him want to hold Breezy in his arms forever, not fuck him into a sweaty mess. Small progress.
“Hey, could you get my legs too? My quads are fucking killing me.”
Not as much as Luca would kill him out of pure frustration. “Sure,” he said through gritted teeth and reached for more salve.
Breezy had massive thighs. Tree trunks, easily, muscle all the way around to the softer, fleshy inner sides. Luca wouldn’t mind having his face trapped between them, and he wouldn’t care whether his mouth was on Breezy’s cock or his ass while he did it.
He took a deep, steadying breath. He would not make this weird. It was a friendly sports massage.
He set his hands on Breezy’s thighs and began to rub the ointment in.
Breezy’s legs spread minutely.
Luca dug his thumbs in, and Breezy made a soft, satisfied sound in his throat.
Heat swamped Luca, making his cock thicken and his head swim. He dug deep with his thumbs, then pressed down as he ran his palms along the length of Breezy’s thighs, from the line of his ridiculous underwear to the backs of his knees.
“Oh God, that feels so good.” Breezy’s arms muffled his voice, which didn’t make his words any less soul-destroying.
Luca bit down hard on his lower lip to stop any response from escaping.
He kept massaging, slow and hard and perhaps a little too sensually for a casual interaction between friends.
There was no way he could stop himself from stroking gently with his thumbs as he used the heels of his hands to get the tension out, no earthly measure with which he could resist dipping his fingertips into the soft crease between Breezy’s legs as he worked his way in and out.
The sounds Breezy made were obscene. He wasn’t trying to be sexy, but the rumble of his voice, lowered from exhaustion and, Luca flattered himself, pleasure was more erotic than any porn soundtrack.
Not to mention the praise he kept mumbling, telling Luca how perfect his hands were and how good Luca made him feel.
By the time he’d worked in all the salve, Luca was hard as a rock and about two minutes from coming in his sweatpants.
That would have been a low point for any man, but more so for one who had managed to last a full forty-five minutes literally inside a very attractive law school student on the team’s road trip to Denver last year. Luca prided himself on his stamina as well as his sophisticated taste in partners.
Of course, Breezy would be the anomaly in both Luca’s taste and, apparently, his staying power.
He moaned when Luca took his hands off him. The sound sent molten lava through Luca’s belly. His cock twitched and leaked.
“You should be a massage therapist if the hockey thing doesn’t work out.” Breezy twisted his head, and his eyes blinked open slowly.
Luca scrambled into a cross-legged position, allowing the generous cut of his sweatpants to hide the swell of his erection.
He could do nothing about the spot where precome had seeped through the fabric.
Hopefully, Breezy wouldn’t notice or mistake it for the salve, or water, or anything but what it was.
“You want me to get you back?”
The thought of Breezy’s big hands all over him nearly made Luca salivate.
He’d give anything to lie face down in the couch with those hands firm on his skin everywhere he ached from a week of rough practices.
He could grind his hips into the soft give of the cushions when it got to be too much, let himself go and come and—
His cock throbbed in time with his heartbeat, dripping more precome onto his thigh.
“No,” Luca said as firmly as he could. He scrambled to his feet and turned away, hoping again Breezy hadn’t seen anything.
The bathroom was the first door on the left, closer than either of their bedrooms, but not close enough.
He stumbled over his own feet, unable to concentrate on anything but the brutal stiffness of his cock. If he could touch—just for a second—
He got the door closed behind himself and flicked the tap on in the hope it would give him at least a little plausible deniability.
Then, he pulled down his sweats. The fabric of the waistband glanced along the shaft of his dick, and that was it.
He doubled over, pleasure coring him like a knife, and barely managed to get his hand cupped around the head before he sprayed come all over the bathroom floor.
Movement sounded from the living room, and the sudden specter of Breezy knocking on the door and catching him sent panic down Luca’s spine—so sharp his body mistook it for arousal, forcing a final jet of come out of him.
It took him a long moment to catch his breath, to push away from the door and wash his hands. In the mirror, his face was flushed and his pupils dilated.
This had been a mistake. He needed to find less horrifically intimate ways of contributing to this household. Taking another deep breath, Luca returned to the living room.
Breezy sat on the couch, upright instead of reclined as Luca had left him.
He’d put his shirt on again, but he still wore nothing but his novelty boxer briefs.
He’d gotten up to retrieve two nonalcoholic beers from the fridge—more refreshing and lower-calorie than sports drinks—and he’d put on football.
He looked up with a broad smile. “No Champion’s League today. But Rome is playing. Your hometown team, eh?”
Luca fell into place beside Breezy and took a deep sip of his beer. “By that logic, you should support Montreal in hockey.”
Breezy blew a long, wet raspberry.
The air smelled of arnica.
Their elbows brushed together when Luca set his beer on the coffee table.
Luca’s traitorous heart thumped and thumped and thumped in his chest.