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“Does Randy know?” I hedge, my curiosity and surprise getting the better of me.
Scoffing, he shoots me a look like I’m the ridiculous one here. “No. No way. I haven’t told anyone. Well, there’s a guy I chat with online for…moral support, I guess—Brice—but other than him, I haven’t told anyone.”
“Not your father?”
“God, no.” He laughs bitterly, shaking his head. His knee stops bouncing. Head hung, he stares at his unopened water, tracing the letters on the label with his thumb and adds softly, “I could never tell him. I honestly think he doesn’t know anything about me.”
Some of the tension leaves my shoulders, watching his crumpled form. Grudgingly, I believe everything he’s just said, even though it’s not what I expected. Something’s got to give, though. Why would he come to an absolute stranger in his father’s company?
“So, what’s your plan, then? Screw your way through his staff behind his back for not understanding you?”
“What?” His head snaps up, a look of horror on his youthful face at my merciless accusation. “No! God, no. Who would do something like that?”
Swallowing against the lump in my throat, I have the urge to tap my wrists together, a nervous tick I do when I feel like I’ve lost control of a situation. I’ve offended him. I never purposely offend anyone, but playing a little hardball is a necessity for getting to the bottom of this. My probe for dishonesty, however, gnaws at me after seeing his reaction, knowing that what I’m doing is far worse. I can practically feel my cameras boring into my skin, but I’m certainly not going to shut them off in front of him.
“I’m not here for him,” he explains. “This isn’t because of him. It’s about me. It’s for me. I don’t care what he’d think. I…I can’t care anymore.”
The palpable agony in his tone makes my throat close up. I can’t take joy in his evident misery even if he is a Fairway.
“I’m twenty-five years old,” he continues, his pleading gaze connecting with mine. “I want to start being me. I want to…”
I wait to hear the destination of this painful path he’s drawn in my mind, but his mouth just hangs open, silent. The worry lines around his eyes don’t belong on someone so young. For the first time, I’m not annoyed by an incomplete sentence. I’m too intrigued by the missing blank.
“What?” I prod, but it comes out as a breathy whisper due to the way he’s left me on the edge of my proverbial seat.
His Adam’s apple undulates as the tip of his tongue wets his lips. Great. Now I’m peeping at his mouth. I gave him a bottle of water. If he’s parched, he could just drink the damn thing. My assumption is derailed, though, as his gaze makes a curious perusal of me from head to toe, and his cheeks go crimson.
“I want to…touch a man, if I feel like touching a man.”
Liquid heat dribbles from my scalp all the way down my limbs as though someone is pouring a bucket of warm water over me. He…
I think he means he wants to touch…me.
I completely dismissed his confession at my office today; too hung up on Randy’s fuckery. It comes back to me now, however, in Technicolor as I take in his flush face and the vulnerability in his eyes. He said he wanted someone to be his first ‘anything’ with a man. Cameron Fairway is asking me to be that man?
Trying to wrap my head around that fact has me frozen in place, stupefied. Unfortunately, that leaves him to do that thing again where he doesn’t shut up, overtaking my silence and planting images in my brain I never imagined would manifest there.
“I want to be touched by him and taste him. I want to feel his chest rise and fall against mine and know it’s because of these desires I’ve only fathomed can exist. I want to hold his hand, go out to dinner, and stop giving a damn about what my family would think about it.”
Holy hell.
The question tumbles out of my mouth before I can decide if I really want clarification. “Taste him?”
A new wash of rose spreads across his cheekbones, telling me my answer. My breath catches in my lungs, putting together his meaning, but he mustn’t know I’ve received the message. Biting his lower lip, his gaze flicks to my crotch and then back up at me. Parting his lips, he nods just once. I feel the weight of that single nod to my core. I feel it in the pit of my stomach and even as it spreads lower.
Never in my life have I seen such a vivid request for permission. I can’t possibly be right. Of the lovers I’ve had in my life, not a one ever looked at me the way Cameron Fairway is right now—silently begging for my cock like it’s a meal of forbidden fruit he can’t resist.
I can feel my blood warming at the prospect of that level of worship, of being wanted the most out of everyone else who someone must come into contact in their world. I’m not gay or bisexual, so it makes absolutely no sense.
I’ve silently acknowledged that other men are attractive, but it’s never been a powerful enough discovery that it made me contemplate engaging in the activities with them he just described. However, as we stare at each other, his passionately honest speech hanging in the air between us like a flattering gift, a stark thread of honesty pierces my thoughts. Have I just never been wanted enough by someone to ignite something reciprocal in me? Has he just found my Achilles Heel?
When Lauren, my ex-fiancé, amicably ended our relationship four years ago, I cut my losses without much grief. I’d made it far enough into a relationship to achieve an engagement. That was more than I ever hoped for, finding someone who was pleasant enough that they could tolerate my hang-ups as much as I could tolerate our differences. She was a workaholic, just like me. I thought that was about as perfect a match for me as there ever could be.
When she said we had probably made a mistake due to our lack of passion, I was a bit surprised at first. We had sex about once every two weeks. I thought that was healthy and regular. She had never made complaints about my performance, never made demands for more variety or creativity, like some of my previous girlfriends. It was the most normal I have ever felt in a relationship, the most accepted, but when she delivered her news, I realized that feeling of normalcy and life achievement is what I would miss—not us.
As Cameron’s wary, yet hopeful, blue eyes bore into mine like he’s begging to worship me, my sense of realism turns my awe into agitation. I wasn’t built for passion. I accepted that a long time ago. There is no way the flame flickering inside of me can be some latent emotion I didn’t know I possessed. I know myself. And there’s no way someone could want me in the way I just imagined I witnessed in his eyes.
If I couldn’t read Lauren’s discontent after two years of dating and a year of living together, why would I be able to read Cameron after ten minutes of conversation? He’s a fucking Fairway, no matter what his big, starry eyes say or how they always seem to draw me in. Men’s eyes have never drawn me in. It’s got to be an act. There’s no way he’d suck another man’s cock. That would be repulsive to a Fairway, even if some surprising part of me is hoping it isn’t. I respected the idea of him being brave enough to seek what he wanted and buck his father’s conventions. Maybe that was the turn on.
