My eyes hold his, and something crackles between us.
I reach out, thumb brushing a strand of wet hair from his cheek. His skin is fevered, though we’re both drenched. He leans into the touch, eyes half-lidded, and the air between us thickens, the intense silence louder than thethunder outside. My gaze drops to his mouth, parted and glistening.
“Noah.” He says my name. At least I think he does. My thoughts are so loud, my desires are blaring and I can’t be sure of up or down anymore. “I was being an asshole earlier but I wasn’t lying,” I tell him, adding, “I’m not gay.”
The hesitancy that sweeps his face, the confusion that is left between his eyebrows—I want to take it away. More than anything, I want to make Cade Mercer feel good, I want to be the one that unravels him and pieces him back together, makes him happy, makes him hot, sees him in every way there is to be seen.
“I know,” he says quietly, his tender tone almost getting lost in the storm. “I’ve seen you with women.”
I swallow against the unexpected nerves in my throat. Maybe I like him more than I think. I lick my lips and force my eyes to stay on his. “I’m bisexual, Cade. I like men and women.” I swallow, and lay it all on the line in the privacy of my tiny car amidst a random spring storm. “I like you.”
Cade stares at me as if I’ve just announced I have three heads. But I don’t flinch. I was prepared for the worst of reactions, and this only falls somewhere in the middle. Silence I can handle. And Cade does stay silent.
The downpour reaches its peak, further isolating us. No one else exists right now, it’s just Cade and me in this car, with all of the feelings we’ve never shared. “Tell me you feel it too,” I whisper, though the whisper isn’t intentional, my voice comes out husky and hushed all on its own.
Cade says nothing, but turns his face away, tugging his glasses off to stare out the window. Reaching out, I place my palm against this thigh, watching his face as I do. His eyes snap shut, his head thunks against the headrest, and a choked noise rattles around his chest.
I smooth my palm down his inner thigh and stop. He tips his head forward, and my eyes follow his until we’re both staring at the impressive erection tenting his soaked running shorts. Those little running shorts that had me hard not more than an hour ago.
He doesn’t try to hide it. He doesn’t do anything but slowly turn and face me, sliding his glasses back on, still spotted with rain.
I take my hand away and start the car. “I’ll drive you home, so you don’t have to walk in this.”
He nods, and we stare at one another, and I don’t hide it when I cut my eyes away a few times to check the status of his cock. Still hard, still tenting his shorts. My own cock gets hard, and I don’t know if he looks, because I focus on the road, and getting him home. Just a few minutes from the campus, I pull up to his house and throw my car in park.
Cade opens the door, but doesn’t move.
“If you want to come by tonight, I’ll be home. All night.”
Still, he doesn’t look at me, he just stares at my dashboard, a drop of water slipping off his elbow onto the center console. “I hope to see you tonight.”
He doesn’t even give me a second look when he gets out, closes the door, and wanders to his house.
I drive home soaked with a raging hard-on, wondering if I’ve gone too far this time, or gone just far enough.
Only time will tell.
CHAPTER
TWELVE
CADE
The rainfrom earlier has left the night air heavy and electric. I pour myself a drink, because it feels like the exact situation that calls for one.
The whiskey burns pleasantly on the way down, a slow heat that I keep feeding as the evening drags on. I sit at my kitchen table surrounded by student essays, red pen in one hand, glass in the other. Every few minutes my mind slips back to the rain, to Noah's hand wrapped around my thigh, our chests heaving. The memory makes my cock twitch against my thigh again. I shift in the chair and take another sip.
My phone rings. It’s my sister, Kat, and her now-wife, Zennie. I answer on speaker, keeping my voice casual while I pretend to focus on the paper in front of me. “Hey, you two.”
We talk about nothing important—Kat’s latest showing in downtown San Francisco, Zennie’s newest attempt at croissants (which are apparently quite complicated to make). I laugh in all the right places, but my mind is completely elsewhere. Noah’s fingertips on my thigh earlier today keep replaying on a loop. The way he looked at me in the rain, like he wanted to devour me. The admission—that he likes men, too, and that specifically likesme.
I’m hard again just thinking about it.
By the time we hang up, it’s after nine. I try to grade more papers, but nothing makes sense. The words blur. The jeans I put on after my hot shower when I got home feel too tight. I keep remembering the slick heat of his palm, the low growl in his voice when he admitted his feelings to me. Fuck. I’m so hard now, aching, my cock pressing into my zipper like it never has before.
At ten o’clock I can’t take it anymore. I grab my keys before I can talk myself out of it and drive across town, heart hammering the whole way. Rain from earlier has left the streets glossy and dark. When I pull up in front of Noah’s house, doubt crashes over me like ice water.
This is a mistake.
