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“You can leave that on if you’re feeling modest,” Chad offered. “Like one of those paper gowns at the doctor’s office.”

Hank considered it for one second, then pulled the oxford over his head and tossed it. “Modesty has left the building.”

He sat back down, fully naked, in his own living room, with a beautiful man kneeling between his legs, and experienced a brief, vertiginous moment of who is this person and what has he done with Henry Fortner?

Then Chad’s mouth closed around him again, and the question became academic.

Chad took him deep—lips tight at the base, tongue working the underside—and Hank felt the brush against the back of Chad’s throat and made a sound he would later pretend he hadn’t made.

His hands went to Chad’s head. Reflexive, not planned. He held it as it moved, learning the rhythm, adding the slightest pressure downward before catching himself.

“Is that all right? I don’t want to⁠—”

“Mm-hmm.” Chad nodded without breaking stride.

A few more strokes—agonizing, thorough—and Hank found himself holding Chad there. Just holding. Keeping him in place while the pressure built to something unbearable, then easing off. He did it again. And again.

Chad pulled back and looked up at him. Lips swollen, eyes bright. “You know exactly what you want.”

“I’m not hurting you?”

“Not even close.”

Chad squeezed him, and they both watched a bead of clear fluid well up and spill over.

“Can’t get enough of this,” Chad murmured, and licked it clean.

“I think there’s more where that came from.” Who was this person? The Georgia boy who’d spent twenty years performing heterosexuality was suddenly producing lines, and the terrifying part was that he meant every word.

“Are you teasing me, Mr. Fortner?”

“No. Take whatever you need.”

Chad’s eyes went dark. “Yes, sir.”

He went down again—once, twice—and Hank’s hands gripped his head, holding him. The primal override was finally winning out over the part of his brain that composed press releases.

“You want to make me come,” Hank heard himself say. Not a question.

Chad moaned agreement, and the vibration traveled through Hank’s entire infrastructure.

On his next upstroke, Chad fisted the base so only the head remained in his mouth—concentrated suction, devastating focus—while his free hand rolled Hank’s balls with exactly the right pressure, and Hank lost language. Just sound. Guttural, graceless, honest sound.

Then something else. Chad’s middle finger sliding between Hank’s body and the cushion. Searching. Finding. The slightest circling pressure.

“Oh, God⁠—”

The orgasm hit with a violence that caught him off guard—not just release but something giving way, years of suppression letting go all at once. He heard Chad moan as he pulsed into his mouth, felt Chad swallowing, unhurried, steady.

When the aftershocks subsided, Hank was staring at the ceiling again. Sweating. Wrecked. The Chopin had moved on to something else, or maybe it was the same piece. He had no idea. He wasn’t even sure he knew his middle name.

He looked down. Chad was grinning up at him with an expression that said, very clearly: Look what I did.

“Are you okay?” Hank asked.

“Why wouldn’t I be?”

“I just—I may have been—” Aggressive? Loud? Unrecognizable to himself? “—enthusiastic.”