Page 32 of Not Your Golden Boy

“Please do,” Rudy said.

They exchanged goodbyes, Harry tossed his phone on the sofa, then went to answer the door.

A tense and slightly pale Nikky waited for him on the other side, buzzing like an electric fence.

“Hey,” Harry said, the energy within him from Rudy’s call bursting into something close to joy as he smiled. “I was waiting for your call.”

As serious and intense as a judge, Nikky marched into the flat, clenching and unclenching his fists a couple times as he did, then turned to face Harry and said, “We need to make a sex tape, and we need to make it right now.”

For the second time in less than half an hour, but for an entirely different reason, Harry could have been knocked over with a feather. His mouth dropped open as he finished shutting and locking the door, then turned to Nikky. His blood pumped hard through his body, going straight to the part of him that wanted to agree with Nikky’s demand without question.

Lucky for him, his brain hadn’t gone entirely offline.

“Okay,” he said as calmly and measuredly as he could. “Right now?”

Nikky let out a heavy breath and rubbed his face with both hands. “That came out wrong.”

“I’m not sure there’s a right way to suggest making a sex tape with someone,” Harry replied, trying to make the moment lighter than it was.

Because it was absolutely a heavy moment. Heavy because of the seriousness of what Nikky was suggesting and because every hot, horny instinct within him wanted to shout, “Hell, yeah!” and get Nikky naked in his bed immediately.

Nikky dropped his hands and started to pace the room. “It’s the only way,” he said, not meeting Harry’s eyes as he tore up the carpet with quick, frantic strides. “I’m never going to be able to break out of this—” he gestured wildly, “—this cage everyone wants to put me in unless I do something extreme.”

Harry’s protective instincts kicked fully into gear. “Which was the whole reason you contacted Rent-A-Boyfriend to begin with, right?”

“Yes,” Nikky said, still not looking at him as he paced. “I needed you to make everyone see I’m not who they think I am.” He stopped and stared right at Harry. “I need you.”

Harry sucked in a breath. Those last three words came from an entirely different place than everything else Nikky had said. They were the hook where everything else until that point had been the verses leading up to it.

“Okay,” he said slowly, moving to the sofa. “Come and sit down and talk to me. What’s going on?”

He sat first and was a little surprised when Nikky joined him immediately instead of pacing more or letting the energy that was clearly coiled way too tightly inside him send him running from the flat.

“I need to change things,” Nikky said, folding one leg under him and almost pleading with Harry in a way that made him look far younger than he was. “I don’t know how I got stuck in this life, and I don’t know how to get out of it.”

“And you think sleeping with me and recording it will set you free somehow?” Harry asked the question honestly.

“I don’t know,” Nikky sighed, lowering his head. “I don’t know what to do about anything right now.” Harry thought he would stop there, but Nikky was only getting started. “I know I’m supposed to be some precocious, wise beyond my years celebrity who everyone can look up to and who always makes the right decisions about everything, but I’m not. I don’t know what I’m doing. Life isn’t as easy as people make it out to be. Just because I beat the odds and booked the right job at the right time to make me famous doesn’t mean I have the first clue how to be a successful adult who knows what he wants. I don’t. Life is hard, and the only thing I’ve ever learned about it is that if you don’t make people happy all the time, if you don’t live up to their expectations, then you end up alone and abandoned.”

Harry felt like he’d been punched in the gut. Not only because Nikky had revealed things about himself that he might never have actually vocalized before, but because the pain behind those words felt so close to the demons he himself had wrestled with for so long that it stung.

“Hey, hey,” he said, scooting closer to Nikky and reaching for him. “I get it,” he said, pulling Nikky into his arms. The younger man felt damn good tucked against him, especially when he managed to half wrap himself around Harry, even in their awkward positions, and rest his forehead against Harry’s shoulder.

“You’re right,” Harry went on, rubbing Nikky’s back slowly. “Life is hard, and a lot of the time it sucks. And it doesn’t come with an instruction manual. But, yeah, everyone expects us to know what we’re doing and to have it all together.”

“I don’t,” Nikky said, the words muffled against Harry’s shoulder. “I don’t know how to do any of this, and it scares me.”

Fuck, just when Harry thought his heart was as soft as it could be for Nikky, he went and said something like that.

“I’ve got you,” he said, turning his head so he could kiss the side of Nikky’s.

The kiss didn’t stop there. He shifted so he could kiss Nikky’s temple, then moved more so he could clasp Nikky’s head firmly in his hands. He kissed his forehead and his cheek, then brushed his thumbs over Nikky’s cheeks while checking in his eyes to see what sort of signals were there.

Nikky gazed back at him with half-lidded, slightly glassy eyes, like he didn’t know whether he wanted to cry on Harry’s shoulder or dive down to suck his cock. Maybe it made him a terrible human being, but Harry’s pulse kicked up at both possibilities.

He leaned in, brushing his lips carefully against Nikky’s, eager to see how the young man would react. If he pushed Harry away and put distance between them, Harry wouldn’t take things any further.

Nikky sucked in a breath and grabbed Harry’s sides, digging his fingertips into Harry’s flesh under his shirt. He surged in and slanted his mouth over Harry’s in a kiss that was every bit as powerful as the one at the club, despite Nikky being stone sober.