Page 38 of Freeze Frame

“Just some things for us to do while we listen to that playlist of yours.”

His eyes flashed and then his mouth was on mine in a kiss that felt possessive, claiming. Like he could mark me as his if he kissed me hard enough, deep enough.

And maybe he could.

NINETEEN

DAVID

I’d been achingfor days to get my hands on Josh again, and it started to seem like the universe was conspiring against us. Ever since I woke up alone, I’d craved him, and since then it was one thing after another to keep me away from him. If the universe was trying to tell me something, I wasn’t listening.

Josh stayed close while I dealt with the dogs, letting them out and then turning the TV on for them. “I do it when I leave Wally by himself. I like to think it keeps him company.”

Josh towed me to my bedroom, the ominous black bag in one hand, my trembling fingers in the other. It wasn’t that I was inexperienced—I wasn’t. Or that Josh had so much more experience than I did. It wasn’t even about measuring up to all the people I’d watched him with. It was that anticipation overloaded my senses, turning me into a jittering mess of a man. What if the universe had been trying to tell me something by throwing up all these roadblocks?

“What’s wrong?” Josh asked. Setting his bag on the bed, he turned to face me. Looping his arms around my waist, hestepped in close to me pressing his bulge against me. His… bulge?

I looked down then up at his face. My confusion must have been obvious because he laughed. “It’s a packer, David. I didn’t sprout a dick overnight.”

Heat flamed my cheeks. “I feel like I should have known that. Sorry if I just made things weird.”

“Unless you’ve had a lot of trans lovers, or a lot of exposure to trans guys, you probably didn’t know about packers. Some guys love them, some guys don’t. It’s a personal preference thing.” Josh ghosted a kiss against my lips. “And nothing is weird. You’re fine.” Josh pulled his head back and looked up at me. “Are you fine? You seem nervous.”

“I have to admit I’m a bit intimidated by what might be in that bag.”

He responded by rucking my shirt up, pushing it up my body, and tugging it off over my head. “There’s nothing to be worried about. The bag is here to help me take care of you.” Josh slid his hands down my chest, using his blunt nails to spark trails of heat as he dragged them down my skin, pressing them into my flesh.

I was beginning to understand that there wasn’t a single thing Josh could do that I wouldn’t like.

“You promised to tell me about the playlist,” he reminded me. Slipping hands into my back pockets, he retrieved my phone and used my face to unlock it. “The first song is a bit… bouncy… it might kill the mood.”

Josh skipped ahead to a cover of Cold Play’s songYellow. It was performed by a guy with the voice of an angel, playing his acoustic guitar. Josh listened to the first few lines of the song, then looked up at me with a funny expression.

“I don’t even like this song. Not usually.”

“There’s a lot of cover songs on the playlist because some songs aren’t bad—they were just being sung by the wrong person.”

Josh set my phone on the dresser and let the song play. The next time he kissed me, I could feel it down to my toes. The way he held me close like I was too precious to let out of his grip. The way his kiss was soft at first, then steadily more insistent as he ground himself against me. I sank my hands into his hair and kissed him deep, licking my way into his mouth.

Before I registered what was happening, Josh had my pants undone and was fishing my cock out of my briefs. His touch nearly made my knees buckle and Josh must have realized it because he laughed into the kiss, breaking the intensity of it. The heat dialed back enough for me to breathe, to think, and then Josh was guiding me to the bed.

“Pants off,” he said, shoving them down past my ass before planting his hand in the center of my chest and pushing me down to sit on the edge of the bed. My pants were down around my knees, my shirt was gone, my dick stood straight up in the air, twitching and bobbing.

After he helped me out of my pants, he straightened to his full height, rolling his shoulders back as he smirked at me. “Did you still want to see what’s in the bag? You can say no to any of it. You can always say no.”

The laugh that spilled out of me was weak and dry. Rasping like a man dying of thirst, I said, “No is the last thing I want to say.”

Instead of reaching for his bag, Josh stripped his shirt off. I stared at him with naked appreciation. The pink scars of his top surgery had faded some, but they were still there.

“God, you’re so fucking hot,” I told him, not holding back anything. I let how I felt pour into every word.

Josh slid his hands over his chest. “It took me a long time to be okay with my body.” It wasn’t some dark secret he was confessing. It was him stating a fact. And then he gave me another. “My job was part of that. It’s hard to explain.”

He brought his hands to his waistband and pushed it down, leaving his briefs behind.

“You don’t have to explain anything you don’t want to.”

“Maybe that’s why I want to.” Josh’s smile was soft and warm. “You demand nothing. You ask for nothing. You take me at face value. Sometimes, the way people look at me, it makes me feel like they’re trying to dissect me. Like they’re trying to picture what I looked like before.” Josh’s sweats fell to the floor and he kicked them aside.