Because…there he was, in front of me. Sure, he was joking about presenting himself, but I would not pretend the joke hadn’t fallen flat, and instead I was taking it all too seriously. I was doing my best to look him in the face, but I was left to fight like hell to keep it at the neckline. Which wasn’t ideal, because he had a rather prominent collarbone, and I was surprised to find it attractive.
“Hey, you’re the one who gave me shit and acted like I was behaving like a cheap hooker,” he said, squinting at me. “And ifI’m going to be called one, I might as well find out if I’m good at acting like one, so you tell me?”
“Am I supposed to be the expert on this sort of thing?”
“I don’t know, I’m not sure what you get up to in your spare time when I’m not around to keep an eye on you. Hell, I didn’t even know you’d fooled around with guys in college before last week.”
“Not just college,” I said, and wished I’d swallowed the words because he leaned back in surprise, one of his hands clasping his shorts and drawing them with him to show his thighs again. At this rate, I was going to be swamped with dreams of well-built, pale thighs for days.
“When?” he wondered.
“Between the official separation and now,” I said quickly. “Would you please get your butt off my desk?”
“Why?” he asked with a quirk of his brow and a laugh. “Is ittoodistracting for you?”
“Or I don’t like your butt on my desk, as I’ve told you before,” I said, and this time I could all too clearly hear the thickness in my voice. It didn’t help that right as he’d finished talking, he spread his legs further and I caught a momentary glimpse of the skin where his leg and his hip connected. A stupid, pointless thing really, but it was a part of him I’d never seen before, and I wondered if he would squirm if I placed my mouth there and sucked firmly.
“Yeah, yeah,” he said, then stopped. “You sure you’re okay?”
“The answer isn’t going to change if you keep asking,” I told him and tried to ignore his fingers flexing against his shorts on the other side, drawing them up slightly, but my eyes darted in that direction anyway.
“I…” he began, and I looked up at the choked sound of surprise in his voice. Our eyes met and his blue ones widened impossibly as he managed in a soft voice. “I…isit distracting?”
I knew what he was asking, and he knew I knew. Here we were, him trying to be his normal, playful self to loosen me up and not take everything so seriously, and I was no longer getting turned on but was full on worried that if he looked down, he would see the answer to his question.
Yet all I needed to save my embarrassment was to choke back my honesty, drive down the arousal curling in my groin and threatening to take over my thoughts, steel my features and tell him that no, it wasn’t like that. No, I wasn’t ‘distracted’ by him, because despite being attracted to men, I could lie and say that didn’t count with him. That our years of friendship built upon him being the widower of my late best friend meant there was a wall inside my head that prevented me from being aroused by him, because he was Reggie, and he was more than a pair of nice thighs, a great ass, and a collarbone that was weirdly distracting.
“Yes,” I answered hoarsely, not because I was turned on, but the truth had to force itself from my lips, because the rest of me was fighting like hell to keep it contained. “I guess you are.”
He stared at me with a blank expression, and I knew from experience that meant he was thinking way too hard and way too fast to do something as simple as make a facial expression someone else could read. After a few pounding heartbeats, I watched his expression tighten into a soft frown as he stared at me with…curiosity?
“Question for you,” he began and swallowed thickly. “How…much of me did you see the other week?”
“When you?—”
“Didn’t realize you were there and jerked off, yeah.”
“Reggie—”
“It was longer than just a second or two, wasn’t it?” he asked, and he didn’t sound horrified or repulsed; almost amazed. “Did you watch the whole thing? Did you watch me from start to…finish? Or did you just come in at the…finish?”
It wasn’t often someone had enough of an advantage to make me uncomfortable and nervous, but Reggie was managing just fine. I was trying not to squirm in my seat because there we were, facing down my shame, not over what he’d done, but for being a willing and eager witness to it.
I cleared my throat. “I saw…enough.”
He watched me and shook his head. “Enough for what? To turn you on?”
“Reggie,” I began, because that was not how the conversation was supposed to go. He wasn’t supposed to find out what I’d done, let alone interrogate me, and for what? To satisfy his own curiosity, as he was prone to do when something caught his interest? “I understand if you feel a little curious, but I would rather…not go into detail, and if we could avoid any awkwardness, that would be wonderful.”
Normally, that would be the exact moment Reggie would snap out of it, realize he was homing in on a sensitive subject, dial it back and get himself under control. Reggie never meant harm when he was asking probing questions, but he sometimes forgot that people didn’t like having someone poke around in their thoughts. I was pretty accepting when he did it to me, but the few times, like now, when I pointed out I was uncomfortable, he would back off.
To my surprise, he leaned back and, to my shock, reached down and grabbed himself. It was then I realized that while we were talking, he had been growing hard and now the evidence was literally in the palm of his hand. For a moment, the flash of arousal that lit through me was enough to wipe away the discomfort and guilt I had been feeling as I realized…I was not alone in being turned on.
“Is this awkward too?” he asked, and I swear he seemed almost as surprised as I was at his reaction. Yet he didn’t pull his hand away, and his voice didn’t shake; he kept staring at me,and I realized there was a fire in his eyes I’d never seen before. “Because if you tell me right now that you watched me, that youlikedwatching me jerk off, I’ll be honest with you, impulsive or not, I’ll give you another show. This time with eye contact, and you won’t have to hide in the bathroom afterward.”
“Fuck off,” I muttered, but there was no actual heat to it, and my eyes were locked onto what he was doing. “Yes, okay? I watched it. I came out of the bathroom and you were just getting started. I told myself to walk away and not be strange by watching you.”
“But,” he said, and his hand slid down his covered shaft, and my heart raced faster as his fingers found the band of his shorts and slipped under it with ease. “You didn’t. You stayed and watched me jerk off until I came all over myself.”
