Blowing my load with him on a dimly-lit dance floor would probably make it harder to focus on teaching him this week.
“The dance floor is your time to shine, little butterfly,” I laughed breathlessly when he was at arm’s length, my hands on his shoulders. “You see someone you like and you dance like you just did? You’ll be in like a shot.”
Tom licked his lips slowly, like he was thinking through his next words. And my heart soared with hope—I couldn’t deny it.
Maybe… maybe he did see someone he liked. And maybe he wasn’t so wrapped up in what we should do that he’d ignore what was thick in the air between us.
I might be getting a little bit too into him. But I’d never been wrong about the chemistry I felt with a man on the dance floor. It always translated into hot sex.
Damnit, it had been way too long since I’d let a stranger into my bed. And Tom wasn’t exactly a stranger, right?
“I see,” Tom said, hoarse and low with unmistakable arousal. His eyes were dark and his lips wet and parted. “Thank you for… everything you’re teaching me, Rusty.”
“It’s my pleasure, beautiful.” It was crossing a line, I knew, but my hand did it almost without my permission. My fingertips ran from his shoulder, brushing along the bare skin of his neck.
“I can almost believe you,” he murmured, standing still. “I’ve never felt more beautiful.”
“Good,” I said simply.
Tom shivered, his eyes closing for a few moments in a beautiful flutter of lashes until I cupped his cheek, rough and warm in my palm.
Then he opened his eyes again, and at last there was something certain and determined in them. “Would you like to go for coffee, Rusty?”
I didn’t know if he meant coffee at his house, euphemistically, or right now at some diner, or later. I didn’t care which he meant, because the answer to all three was the same.
“Yes,” I whispered, all my attention on him. I slowly ran my thumb along his jaw, stealing far more than I should have been permitted, and then glided my palms down his chest. “I’d love that.”
Tom’s lips parted, and I couldn’t miss the way his hips bucked forward, like he wanted those hands to go elsewhere.
So do I, baby, I thought as I took his hands and swayed with him again.
Tom gulped. “Okay. There’s a diner open right now. Or…”
My attention caught, I stopped dead and watched him eagerly. “Or?” I couldn’t keep the hope from my voice.
“Or, I have a damned good coffee machine and it’s not eight bucks a cup. Damn hipsters.”
I burst out laughing, but not in a mean-spirited way. It was the last way I’d expected to be propositioned, yet one of the most interesting. I’d never had a pickup line like that.
“Is that the wrong thing to say?” Tom grinned sheepishly at me.
No, it’s not. Not even slightly. I grinned at him and shook my head. “It’s the perfect thing,” I told him, tugging him toward the door of the bar. “Show me your damned good coffee machine, Tom.”
And everything else, starting with the cock you’ve been teasing me with all night.
Tonight couldn’t have taken a better turn. God only knew how tomorrow would turn out—or the rest of the week—but I knew what my heart said.
No hookups had been my rule for years now. But sticking rigidly to my rules meant missing out on life. I’d gone on dates that ended in terrible sex, and look where that had gotten me.
I wanted Tom to have fun—and selfishly, I really, really wanted to be the one to have that fun with him.
We could figure out tomorrow when it came. Or, since it was probably already tomorrow, after we came.
But as we stood close together in a feverish heat outside, and he called a taxi, I let another grin spread over my face and my hand wander from his shoulder down to the small of his back.
Tom smiled back at me, slow and confident, like he knew exactly what he was doing. My heart jumped. What the rest of the night held was anyone’s guess, but I sure had hopes.
Chapter Three
What the hell am I doing?
Tom, day 0
The facts were clear:
I was bringing a man back to my house.
I’d almost definitely promised him sex.
And I had no idea how to navigate this encounter, nor what he wanted from it. Nor, even, what I wanted.
Was that something I was just supposed to know? Like I’d been supposed to magically know I was gay, instead of trying to be straight all those years ago and only realizing it wasn’t working when it was too late?
I had to face it: my track record was not good.
Rusty actually talked to the taxi driver for most of the trip, which blew my mind. I only talked to particularly nice drivers who needed a real conversation, or particularly scary drivers who needed reminding that we were both mortal.
But Rusty laughed away, telling bad jokes and listening to the driver talk about his night. All the while he held my hand, just the tips of our fingers laced as our hands lay on the middle seat between us.
When we reached my house and I’d handed over the fare, I scooted out of the car and held the door for Rusty.
“Why, thank you,” he giggled and pretended to curtsey as I shut the car door behind him.
I grinned at him and patted down my pockets for my keys as we walked up the short path to my front door.
My breath was short and my pulse fluttered in my throat. I had no idea what I was doing, and I had very little time left to figure it out.
“Hey,” Rusty said softly, brushing my shoulder as the sharp points of my keys scraped against the pads of my fingers. “It’s okay, baby. We don’t have to do anything. We can just have coffee, literally.”
Embarrassment flooded me as I looked at him. “I’m that obvious, huh?” I sighed and let us in, opening the door and standing aside again for Rusty to go through.
Rusty didn’t walk through yet. He stopped there and put his hand on my shoulder, squeezing slightly. “No,” he murmured. “I can just read you well.”
I swallowed hard, my mouth suddenly dry with nervousness. He wasn’t wrong. I got the sense he’d been quietly monitoring my nervous laughs and clenched fingers all evening.
“It’s not a total turnoff that I’m a clueless geek and not some… suave Don Juan?” I laughed, self-deprecation coming easier to me than I’d realized.
“Exactly the opposite.” Rusty kissed my cheek and stepped inside while I figured out what he meant.
That casual brush of intimacy made me suddenly hungry for more. Head to toe, my nerves fizzed like pop. “Oh,” I whispered to myself, pretty goddamned close to swooning.
This intimacy, man-to-man, was what I’d been craving for years—decades. I’d always felt incomplete, like I was breathing with only one lung.
My body had learned to live on half the oxygen, powered by my family’s love and my adoration of Chrissy and Beth. But all of a sudden, with Rusty’s lips on my cheeks, I’d discovered the missing part of me. A sudden rush of oxygen pumped through me, and I felt both dizzy and superpowered. Maybe I could fly, if I tried.