Page 36 of These Secret Years

I’m not prepared for him to turn and face me. One second, we’re both looking at the lake, and now he’s on his left hip, his long body stretched out next to mine. “I think about you sometimes, too.”

Maybe this is the secret to talking to him. Maybe if you wait around long enough, he finishes all the conversations he seemed to be avoiding before. Maybe he wasn’t avoiding them at all. Maybe he was just waiting for the right time.

I don’t turn my head. I can tell how close he is—how close our faces would be if I did turn. It’s not for lack of wanting to. I want to do it so much I’m afraid I’ll start twitching with the effort not to. But I don’t trust myself. “What about?” I ask quietly.

“Well, like…I wonder how you keep the girls away, or if you bother to. I wonder if there’s someone you’re interested in. But mainly I guess I wonder who’s getting to suck your dick these days.”

I’m holding my breath, and letting it out doesn’t go smoothly. Once again, I’m getting hard, and these shorts won’t do shit to hide it if he bothers looking, and I’m pretty sure he will look.

“No one,” I say.

“Is that an honest answer?”

“I ignore the girls. There’s someone I’m sort of interested in. But yeah. You were the first and last person to do that other thing.”

“Who’s the guy? Someone on the team?”

Staring straight ahead even as my vision gets blurry with a thick haze of lust, I say, “No.”

My eyes shut as his hand lands on my half-hard cock. He squeezes it gently, and it goes rigid with the next few rapid beats of my heart. I don’t say anything. I don’t want to ask him why or threaten this moment in any way. I don’t care if he has a girlfriend or trauma, or if he’s had a few beers. For whatever reason, the fact that his hand is on me feels more important than all of that combined.

He rubs me through my shorts while I try to keep my breaths deep and even. “This okay?”

“Mmhm.”

“I could really use the help with algebra.”

“Yeah, sure,” I choke out.

“I don’t have many ways to pay you, though.”

“You don’t have to worry about that.”

“I’m not worried. I’m just showing you one of the ways we could work it out.”

My hips roll slightly, not on purpose. I don’t ask questions as he slips his fingers behind my waistband and grips me through my underwear. Moaning softly and dying to touch him, I bite my lower lip and force myself to keep my hands on the deck.

He gets even closer, nestling his face against my neck where his breath ghosts across my skin breaking me out in a sheet of chills and making my dick throb. “You’re not like…ace are you?”

“No,” I say. “Definitely not.”

“You like this?” he asks.

“Yes.”

“You want my mouth?”

Don’t fucking make me say it. And don’t make me have to ask about the fucking girlfriend. I want nothing to do with his decision-making process, but I do want to come. Really fucking bad. So bad, I might actually cry, but I blame that more on repression and the stupid hope that surged in my chest the moment I saw him in this house.

“You’re not gonna answer?” he asks but doesn’t stop stroking me. My dick is leaking now. Spilling what feels like a bucket of precum in my briefs. He smells amazing. Like mahogany, dust motes, and something warm like vanilla or cashmere.

“I’m not stopping you,” I say, which is a decent enough middle ground to land in. It keeps his options open and me relatively innocent.

He finally pulls my cock out. “Something about you makes me so fucking horny.”

I watch as his hand moves up and down the length of my shaft, his long fingers able to manage the girth without issue. God, I fucking love the way his hand looks there. Pale and perfect around my ruddy, brutal-looking erection. I’m so used to seeing my own hand on it, tan and big, manhandling myself roughly. He’s firm but slow, deliberate. Almost like I’m a new instrument he’s figuring out.

“It’s you,” I blurt. “You’re the one I’m interested in.”