Because you’re wearing lace panties that match your hair. Because you’re too beautiful to be lonely. Because I’m tired of keeping this part of myself locked up.But that’s too much, way too soon, so I settle for a smaller piece of honesty: “Because I find you fascinating.”
He blinks, a slow sweep of sandy lashes, and brings his arms up to circle my neck. “Good answer.”
“Ooh, I love that.” Sadie nods in my peripheral vision, then squints down at her camera screen. “Can you move your hands to his hips, Ollie? If that’s okay with Fen?”
Fen flashes her a quicksilver grin.
“Should we exchange our safe words?”
“Regular words are fine.” She answers his smile with her own. “We’re all adults here.”
“I would absolutely love to have your hands on my hips, Ollie.”
“Okay,” I breathe, and then there’s lace under my fingers, and warm skin, and I angle my body away so Sadie doesn’t catch my dick filling on camera. Fen’s thumbs stroke the short hairs at the back of my neck, making a mockery of my struggle to keep my own hands still.
“How’d you end up in Carbondale?” I ask, grasping for a safer subject. I half expect him to tell me he fell through a portal from the Feywild. Creatures like him don’t belong in backwater places like Illinois.
“I came for school. Same as you, I’m guessing.”
“What are you studying?” It’s hard to imagine him doing anything as mundane as walking the halls of the science building or taking notes on a laptop.
“Dance.” He does a little seated shimmy that brings me closer to his body. “Turns out, I’m not totally musically incompetent as long as no one is asking me tocreatethe music.”
“That makes even less sense.” When his brow furrows, I hasten to explain: “They must have better performing arts schools in New York or LA. Somewhere with more—”
“Queer people?”
“Well, yes, but also culture? Opportunity? This place seems so…small for you. Did you grow up around here?”
“Do you want the long version or the short version?”
“I want everything you’re willing to tell me about yourself,” I admit. Surprise sparks across his features, and my hands tighten instinctively on his hips when he leans back to study me.
“Why, Oliver Earhart. That’s the nicest thing anyone’s ever said to me.” The words are playfully pitched, but genuine wonder shines in his smile. I duck my head to hide another blush, and catch Sadie’s delighted expression out of the corner of my eye.
“I’m loving this,” she says, “and I hate to interrupt. But I’d like to try another spot before we get sucked into Fen’s life story.”
Fen slides off the railing, bringing his body flush with mine. Sadie snaps a few more quick shots while I stammer and back away, then sends us to the porch swing. She has me sit first, then asks Fen if he’s comfortable snuggling in at my side. Instead, he throws himself down on the seat with his head in my lap and his feet propped on the opposite chain.
“How about this?” he asks, while I beg my dick to behave.
“Gorgeous. You good, Ollie?”
I manage a helpless nod. Fen rolls his head to grin up at me, and I lose the battle with my blood flow.
“Careful,” I warn, and slip my hand into his hair to hold him still. His eyes flash, the camera clicks, and my breath shudders out of me in surrender.
“I was born in LA,” he says, picking up the thread of our conversation with all the satisfied nonchalance of a cat who’s discovered the cream. “I moved to the Midwest with my mom when she got tired of my father’s string of mistresses. Her family is out here.” His tone warns me not to pick at the parental thread, so I stick to the script we agreed on.
“That must have been quite the culture shock.”
He shrugs, jostling my thigh, and my fingers tighten in his hair.
“I was only eleven and still a good boy back then.” With a flutter of lashes, he bites his lower lip, and I shake my head and fight to keep my hips from shifting.I’mnot going to be able to stand up until Sadie leaves.“Maybe I would have come out sooner if I’d stayed in LA, but high school in good ol’ Hayward wasn’t that bad.”
Hayward is an even smaller town than the one I grew up in. I remember my brother, Ellis, defiant in the dining room, facing our parents, and squaring off against bullies with his back to a row of lockers while I sprinted down the hall to reach his side.
“Really? When did you come out? I mean, if you want to tell me.”
