Page 22 of Not Your Golden Boy

Nikky frowned as he scrolled through comments and all the pics. He looked thoroughly debauched in nearly every image splattered all over the internet. He wasn’t the happy, shiny, gracious, good boy that he couldn’t help but mold himself into any time a camera was pointed at him. He looked out of control and sinful.

He did kind of look cool, though.

“That wasn’t the point,” he sighed, scrolling through a few more pics and reading more comments.

The point had been to tarnish his image to the degree where people recoiled and pushed him aside. The point was to tank his image so the fans and paparazzi would lay off him.

But there it was. Nikky didn’t even have to look hard to find it. The comment he dreaded most was near the top of one of the more salacious pics of him dancing.

“I always knew you were a very bad boy. Thanks for proving me right. We can work with this.”

Nikky didn’t stare at the comment as much as he stared at Holberg’s name beside it. A sick chill swept through him, and he closed the app and tossed his phone aside like it was burning. Then he covered his face with his hands and tried in vain to breathe.

Of course Holberg would see the pictures. Of course he would make that kind of comment. Holberg was just sick enough to think Nikky had gone to the club specifically to bait him.

A much more terrifying thought struck him. Holberg would know where he was now. The club had been identified in a few of the posts. Not that it would have been difficult for Holberg to tap his sources to find out Nikky was recording in London, but having his location splashed out all over social media made it that much easier for Holberg to track him down.

The man wouldn’t fly all the way out to London just to menace him, would he? Following him constantly in L.A. and trying to force his way into being the source point for any and all gossip about Nikky was one thing. Stalking him across the Atlantic in his continued bid to be the one to bring down the golden boy was just creepy.

A gentle knocking followed by Harry pushing the cracked bedroom door open all the way and stepping into the room with a gentle, “Hey,” surprised Nikky to the point where he nearly jumped out of his skin.

“Oh, God,” Nikky replied, dropping his hands from his face and looking forlornly up at Harry as he came all the way into the room.

Harry laughed softly. “Yeah, the morning after can make you feel that way,” he said, assuming, probably correctly, that he knew everything Nikky was feeling.

Nikky sank down in the bed, hiding his face and his throbbing head behind his hands again. “I’m so sorry.”

Harry chuckled and came to sit on the side of the bed. He had a glass of water in one hand and what turned out to be a couple tablets, hopefully paracetamol, in the other. “You’re not the first twenty-five-year-old guy to get drunk in a club,” he said, resting a hand on Nikky’s knee under the covers.

A zing of electricity coursed its way up Nikky’s leg, settling in his groin and causing his already plump cock to twitch. That was absolutely the last thing he needed. It also made him lower his hands until one covered his mouth for a second as he stared at Harry, a horrible suspicion filling him.

“We didn’t—you know,” he asked, lowering his hands all the way and clutching at the bedcovers, ready to throw them over his head and hide, depending on Harry’s answer.

Harry seemed entirely too amused by everything. “No, absolutely not,” he laughed, thankfully not teasing Nikky by pretending maybe they had. “I’m not that kind of guy.”

Nikky let out a breath of relief. It was true. Harry wasn’t the kind of guy who would take advantage of someone who was drunk. Nikky had definitely known men like that. He was still upset about losing his virginity to a guy exactly like that, who had mistaken drunken giddiness for consent back in high school.

Too much silence passed between them before Harry reached for the glass of water and tablets. “Here,” he said. “You’ll probably need these.”

Nikky pushed himself to sit up enough to take the water and pills. He exposed his entire torso as he did and noticed Harry staring at his chest as he swallowed the tablets and as much of the glass of water as he could get down with his stomach twisted in knots.

A teasing, tempting grin turned Harry’s mouth into a sensual thing of beauty. “So you liked the nipple clamps, eh?” He nodded to Nikky’s bright red nipples.

Part of Nikky wanted to hunch in on himself and hide the evidence of his wild night from Harry. Another, weird part of him wanted to puff his chest out and show off just how much he actually had liked the experience.

And to be praised for it.

“It was…different,” he said lamely. It would take longer than one night and a sliver of the next morning for him to process everything he’d felt about the emotions the clamps and the club in general had sparked in him.

Harry took the mostly empty water glass back from Nikky and nodded to the phone discarded in the sheets. “I take it you saw the pics?”

Nikky swallowed and leaned back against the pillows and headboard. He nodded.

“They’re all over the place this morning,” Harry went on with a wicked, charming smile. “And I haven’t even posted the ones I took yet. I can if you want to, along with an explanation, or I can just let everyone else who posted do their thing. Either way, mission accomplished, right?”

Nikky lowered his eyes from Harry’s astoundingly handsome face, his dark, teasing eyes, the thick stubble that looked amazing on him, to his phone. “Have you read the comments?” he asked, his heart beating hard against his ribs.

“I have,” Harry said with a considering nod. “They’re actually pretty good.”