Page 42 of Single Player

“Nope, I’m a night owl, generally.” He strolled over to the row of games and picked out another cartridge. “Here we go. Mortal Kombat. And we’re going to play the Sega Genesis version, because the Nintendo version took out all the blood.” He took the gray controllers away and returned with two black ones, also wireless, but with smoother edges that fit nicely in Silas’s hand.

“I like these controllers.” Silas rubbed his hands over them. “They’re easier to hold.”

Matthew snorted. “Yeah, Nintendo took longer to catch on to that than Sega did. Most people were either Nintendo or Sega, no crossing over, but I like everything.” He gestured at the wall. “As you can see from the collection.”

Silas could count several hundred games just in the first two shelves. “So you play all these?”

“Not anymore, no, but I collect them.” Matthew turned the system on and the game started to load. “You know, craigslist, eBay, garage sales, whatever. I love modern games, but you can’t beat old school sometimes.” The dark red title screen appeared, gold letters in an archaic font spelling MORTAL KOMBAT across the large flat-screen television.

“How do I play?” Silas looked down at the controller in his hand.

“First you’re going to choose your character, and then it’s mostly button mashing.” Matthew started the game.

Silas got the hang of it soon enough, after Matthew’s character killed his character in a few horrifying ways.

“Did you just rip off my head?” He looked at Matthew, incredulous, while Matthew laughed.

“Yep. Better get on it, or I’m going to do it again.”

Silas narrowed his eyes and turned back to the screen. He managed to win the next game, then the next.

In the pause between games, Matthew set his controller down and gave Silas a devilish grin. “So, are you a betting man, Silas?”

Silas had a sense of where this was going. “Not usually,” he said truthfully, “but I could be persuaded. What do you have in mind? Strip gaming?”

Matthew frowned. “You figured that out too fast. I was going to flirt my way into asking.”

Silas smiled. “You’re not that hard to read, Matthew. Even for me.” On impulse, he reached out and tugged at the collar of Matthew’s T-shirt. “You don’t have to lose a bunch of games to get naked in front of me, you know. You can just take off your clothes.”

Matthew smirked, raising one eyebrow. “Oh yeah? That’s how you want to be?”

“Yeah, that’s how I want to be.” Silas leaned over and kissed a surprised Matthew on the lips. He was feeling loose and flirtatious and successful, even though his success was due to something as silly as gaming, but he wanted to ride that good feeling as far as it would go. Right now, it was going directly toward sex, and he was fine with that, too.

Matthew kissed back, openmouthed and filthy, and they almost didn’t get back to gaming because Silas was about to pull him down onto the couch and ask for more. But Matthew eventually broke the kiss, sooner than Silas was ready, and dragged his tongue over his upper lip in a way that lit up all the nerve endings down Silas’s body. “Get ready to lose, pretty boy,” Matthew said, his voice low and dangerous.

Silas did, in fact, lose the first game, and his shirt in the process. The next game he won, and Matthew took his shirt off as well, slowly pulling it up and over his head, then tossed it aside. Silas was pretty sure he didn’t need to play any more rounds of this game, and wanted to get into the bedroom right now.

“You know, this is a pretty brutal game to use as foreplay.” Silas looked over at Matthew. “Isn’t there a game with flowers or unicorns or something?”

“I’m sure there is, but the brutality is supposed to trigger our caveman impulses.” He started a new game. “Come on. I want to see those pants come off, next.”

They were evenly matched on Mortal Kombat, which meant a steady progress of clothing loss for both of them. Finally, they were both down to their underwear, and Silas was feeling giddy with the combination of gaming and sexual tension. It was like being buzzed.

“Okay, last game.” Matthew looked over at him. “You ready?”

Silas nodded, making his face into a serious expression. “I’ve put my game face on.”

Matthew just grinned in reply. “Yeah, I see that. Come on, Game Face.”

Silas lost, his character pummeled into nothing by Matthew’s character in what he still thought was the least sexy foreplay game ever, but that all dissolved when Matthew tossed the controller aside and turned to face him with a devious look. Knowing what he expected, Silas hooked his thumbs in the waistband of his boxers, but Matthew held up a hand.

“Nuh-uh. Stand up. In front of me.” Matthew tapped the floor in front of him with one bare foot.

Silas got up and moved in front of Matthew, feeling ridiculous as he did so, the blush creeping up his entire body. Matthew didn’t look at him with disdain, though, eyeing him like he was the most delicious thing he’d ever seen. Matthew beckoned Silas a bit closer, then put his hands on Silas’s hips and began to slide his boxers down.

Silas hadn’t been fully hard before, but the touch of Matthew’s hands on his body got him there in no time, his erection rising almost embarrassingly fast.

“There we go.” Matthew was face-to-face with Silas’s cock. He leaned forward and sucked Silas’s tip into his mouth with a warm wetness that made Silas’s legs buckle. He had to support himself with a hand on Matthew’s shoulder.