AllFreeNovel
Share Us
Victor
All fifteen or whatever the hell of my suitcases are zipped up and piled together, taking up most of my bedroom floor. I tried to remember the old days, what I packed for a trip and what I left behind, but today I felt the panicked need to bring everything I own. It’s all part of an intricate system for keeping myself safe and sane, and I don’t know how to let go of any of it, even for a week.
I should be dressed in something beyond a Hard Rock Cafe t-shirt and briefs, but instead I crawl over the bags and into my rat’s nest of a bed, a bare mattress topped with a mountain of blankets and pillows. I wedge my way underneath them and take out my phone. Nothing but a text from Gray—Ten minutes away. Be ready this time.
Sorry, buddy.
Chewing on a hangnail, I flick open the comeVa app. Ethan doesn’t have social media—one of the reasons they hired him—but something told me to poke around in the app and yesterday I found him in a masterful piece of detective work, under the name Carter Lowe. Must be his middle name.
I open his profile again.24, gay, loves animals and ultimate frisbee, secretly good at jigsaw puzzles. I rub my fingers in my eyes and groan. He’ssoboring. God got halfway done making him, saidgood enough, and shat him out.
There’s just that one thing, that niggling instinct in my gut, the question he refused to answer in the club last week. I want to pull him open and find out if there’s anything hiding inside.
The first couple of pictures are typical crap—posing in front of the Space Needle, a selfie with some aunt’s cousin’s sister’s dog.
In the last photo, he’s leaning on a tree after a jog, clothes clinging to his damp body, his free hand tucked up under his shirt to show a hint of abs. He has one eye closed under his sweaty tousle of hair, the other squinting at the camera, and a half grin.
Squirming out of the blankets, I stretch onto my back and slide down the front of my briefs. I prop his photo on the windowsill where I can see it and hold the hem of my shirt in my teeth, my nipples hardening from even the barest breath of cool air on my chest.
And I just touch myself, persistently, aimlessly. I run my fingers around my navel, out to my hips, down the flare of my ass. I bounce my balls gently in my hand, run my thumb up the top of my hardening shaft. I rest my cock in my palm and squeeze it, rub the head. I’m half asleep and barely trying, just chasing what feels good, but my cock starts to thrum, thickening, my balls heavy and tight.
My body’s an insatiable slut; it’s so easy to turn on, any time, any way. Guys love it, but it’s really a nightmare. I can’t control my own body and the things it wants, the things it asks for, and I can’t tell the difference anymore between fear and lust.
My head’s just empty as I stare at the picture of him, alone in my room, sliding my hand between my legs to find my hole. Quiet, unconscious sounds slip from my throat as I play with it the way he probably could if I taught him.
Abruptly, I give up and curl into a ball, underwear around my knees, and close my eyes until Gray bangs on the door.
I pull on a pair of leggings and running shorts and a hoodie as he slots my bags into the car like a game of Tetris. He informs me that we need to pick up Ethan on the way to the airport, like we’re operating a shuttle bus. “My father owns more than one car,” I gripe, slouching in the front seat and breaking open the iced Frappuccino bottle he brought me.
Propping my sneakers on the dashboard, I stare out the window as we creep into a frumpy little neighborhood full of old trees and cheap cars and recycling bins lined up on the curb. Ethan’s tiny brick house has a half-dead crabapple tree in the yard and a moss-covered roof.
“Go fetch him,” Gray orders, taking away my coffee.
“You’re kidding me.”
“That’s your punishment for making us late.”
“Fuck you.” I unfold from the car and limp up the driveway, avoiding the weeds and sugar ant trails.
The doorbell doesn’t seem to work, so I open the storm door and kick the red-painted front door. I hop from one foot to the other, stressing out. I haven’t visited someone’s house in so long that I don't remember how it works.
A woman in her fifties opens the door. Her brown hair is braided and she’s wearing a sweatshirt with cartoon cats sailing a boat. She beams at me. “You’re here for Ethan, right?” For a second, I think she’s going to recognize me, but nothing happens. I guess it’s that thing, whatever’s wrong with her. “Come in!”
“I—” I point mutely at the idling SUV at the curb, but she just waves me inside.
“He’s almost ready.”
I’m hit with that smell he had at the hotel. Old person soap and potpourri. There’s a jumble of shoes in the entry, under a cross-stitch that saysCats welcome, people tolerated. In the living room, a puffy couch faces a brick fireplace and a TV playing some cooking show on mute. There’s a huge table by the back door with a half-finished puzzle of a lighthouse.
“Can I get you a drink?” This woman smiles a lot, but she has sad eyes. I pictured a little old lady raving in a wheelchair, but she’s just a normal person.
“Are you a model, too?” she asks, refusing to leave me alone.
“A model?” My lips twitch. “Is that what he told you?”
“Hey,” Ethan half-shouts, like he’s trying to stop a dog from pissing on a couch rather than greeting someone. He shoves his suitcase between his mother and me. I raise my eyebrows at him and enjoy the horror on his face from seeing me in his precious house.
Something warm tickles my legs, and I jump. The something mews and looks up at me with big, green eyes. “Uh, hi.”
