Selfie (26 page)

He hissed and held still, closing his eyes. “Sure you want to—”

I wrapped my fingers around him—they couldn’t entirely touch—and stroked slowly from base to tip and back again. The muscles in his legs trembled, and I scooted over and tugged him gently.

Awkwardly, because I wasn’t letting go, he pushed himself up onto the bed and lay with his head near my knees and his cock even with my chest. I rolled to my side and started to stroke him off with one hand, while with my other hand, I simply . . . stroked
him
. Palmed the smooth dark skin of his hips, his thighs, his muscular ass. I filled my hands up with the touch of another man, and with every pass I shuddered and got harder.

I opened my mouth and stretched out my tongue to touch his cock, but he reached down and grabbed my hair.

“Connor,” he said sharply, “aren’t you even going to ask?”

I shook my head. “No.”
Vinnie and me and the condoms, and yes condom meant he’d cheated and no condom meant he hadn’t
—I wasn’t going to ask. Yes, I was risking my health, but God, after thinking I was dead for the better part of a year? I didn’t care.

I thrust my head forward, and Noah grunted, locking my head in place with his hand knotted in my hair. “I’m clear,” he said, irritated. “I know
you’re
clear.” Well, yes—trips to the doctor’s office, it came out. “But you can’t do this with anyone else without asking!”

I scowled at him. “I’m not doing this with anyone else,” I snapped, stung by the very idea. “I’m only doing this with you.”

His mouth parted, and the hard, commanding thing he’d done with his face to keep me from self-destructing slipped completely away. His hand in my hair softened, caressed me, and slid to my cheek, which he stroked.

“I’m only doing this with you too,” he said. “Suck my cock as much as you want, sweetheart, I’m not going to stop you.”

I clung to it, one hand around the shaft, one hand cupping his balls, fondling, and lowered my head, stuffing it as far back into my mouth as I could get it.

He moaned, and the sound anchored me. I wanted
more
of that sound, so I pushed my head forward another inch, another, until my nose touched his coarse, curly hair and I couldn’t breathe. He tugged gently on me, and I backed off, and then thrust forward again, and again, and again.

He groaned, and he was ramped so high, I could tell he was close. But when he took my cock back into his mouth, I was surprised at how close
I
was, how badly I wanted him all over again. I propped my knee up, inviting him again, and this time I was relaxed and needy. His wet fingers skated over my asshole, and then probed, and then thrust, and to my shame I let him drop out of my mouth because I was shaking too hard to hold him.

“Noah,” I panted, stunned by how much I needed him again. “God, Noah . . . could you . . . I’m going to—”

I wasn’t usually this inconsiderate, damn it. I tried, grabbing his cock again, just stroking, but he spat on his hand and thrust another finger up my backside and I was lost. I squeezed him sporadically, licked him when I could, but I was filled, not entirely, but enough, enough to remember the taste of possession, to crave it, to need it from
this man
who was stretching me almost to the point of pain.

“Noah . . .” I sobbed. “Oh God . . .”

He pulled back enough to say, “Shh . . . I’ve still got you.” And then he thrust his head forward and his three fingers to the hilt, until it hurt—

And I came. I shot cum until I cried out, tender, and he pulled away, leaving me limp and still twitching, his cock leaking pre-cum onto my face as I lay helpless.

“Connor, hold still.” His hand, covered in spit and cum, moved down and grasped his own shaft. Up close, I watched him squeeze himself, stroke himself, his head leaking more and more pre-cum onto my cheek, my lips, my chin. I closed my eyes and stuck out my tongue and waited, listening to his breathing, his gasps, the irritated grunts he made as he got closer, and closer and—

“
Coming
!”

I felt it shooting across my cheek, striping my tongue, falling across my eyes. Thank God they were shut.

Again, and more, until my face was dripping, and still I swallowed, licking around my mouth, my chin, tasting as much of it as I could.

His whole body went limp as the last of the orgasm twitched out, and then he scooted around on the bed. The roughness of the towel on my face practically lulled me to sleep.

“Good?” he asked gently.

“Yeah,” I said, eyes still closed. “So good.”

“Glad to hear it.” The towel swiped my eyes a couple more times for good measure, and then his mouth slanted over mine, and I opened for him.

He possessed me easily, like I’d always been his, and I kissed him slowly, desultorily, until I fell back asleep, naked and sweaty, and still coated in cum, both his and mine.

And oddly weightless, dreamy, floating in an unfamiliar space.

Oh God.

Vinnie, I’m sorry. Please tell me it’s okay.

But he didn’t reply.

Vinnie, I sort of remember this. I remember feeling like this with you. Is that okay, Vinnie? Please—I need to know!

If Vinnie stayed to watch me come in another man’s arms, he wasn’t around to answer me when I needed him most.

Bastard.

Well, fuck.

Just as well. Noah was rangy, but his chest was wide, and there was really only enough room in the bed for two.

I woke up to a note on the bed:
Gone to get doughnuts (now that we’ve glazed a few). If you have a preference, text me.

I blinked and thought about it. Pulled out my phone and texted,
Savory with sweet? It’s almost noon.
Then,
Thank you.

Yeah, okay. And coffee.

Excellent. I’ll shower.

Wait until I get home.

I stared at the text, not sure what that meant.

Then:
Yes, I’m being a dominating sexy pervert. Do you mind?

I smiled slowly, blushing down to my toes.

No. I don’t mind. Any other orders?

Any plans for the day?

I thought about it. Mostly, my plans had been to sleep in and get something to bring to his family’s house the next day.

Birthday shopping for your gran?

You are a very nice man. We’ll get something tomorrow on the way. I’ll ask her what she wants when I stop and get clothes.

I paused for a moment, mouth dry.

Connor? Is that okay?

He was staying the night again. In my bed. I tried to talk to Vinnie in my head to see if that was okay, but all I got was static.

Connor?

Is fine
, I typed.
Is awesome!
That last one was stretching it—I couldn’t decide, really, if it was awesome or heinous or something in between. But Noah . . . Noah deserved “awesome.”

The phone rang in my hand, and I answered it warily. “What?”

“This isn’t going to work if you try to ‘act’ your way through the stuff you don’t know,” he said crisply.

I grunted. “I actually really do want you to stay the night.” Something in me settled—I was speaking the truth. I ignored the sulky, unfinished business that was Vinnie glaring at me from the corner of my mind. “Again. I just hadn’t thought about it, and it took me a minute.”

“Okay, then,” he said, and I had to smile.

“Okay, then,” I told him softly. “How close are you? Because I really do want to shower.”

He laughed. “Yeah, okay. The leaving the sex toy on the counter while you were in the shower was the idea, but we don’t have to do that.”

“You didn’t invite me with you to shop?” I mock whined.

What he said next wasn’t playful, and it wasn’t funny, and it was, in fact, the thing that would make or break us, right out there on the table.

“Baby, you are
not
out. It’s one thing for
me
to shop—the whole town knows I’m gay. But if you and I walk into Red Hot Bluewater together, you are going to be in the tabloids whether you plan it or not!”

Oh. Oh yeah. He was right. The whole world had not reshaped itself because I had my little tantrum at Vinnie. I was still a closeted actor, and I still had a choice to make.

“Connor? You there?”

“Yeah,” I said, feeling curiously empty. “Yeah. Just—”

“You are not coming out for me,” he said flatly.

Well, of course not. It was too soon. It was “Gee, aren’t we lucky I hadn’t called out Vinnie’s name in orgasm!” too soon.

But I hadn’t—so coming out wasn’t beyond the realm of possibility.

“No,” I said, still . . . vacant. “No—not for you.” I remembered everything that Jillian had been trying to say, her last day here, during our last phone call. “Just . . . just for me.” The truth—it was happening. “It’s an idea, okay?”

“Well, wait until I get back to talk about it some more.”

He hung up and left me alone with Vinnie and the elephant penis in the room. I had permission from my agent now—but even if I hadn’t? There was nobody else whose career hinged on this stupid personal fact—nobody but me.

Connor! My parents! What will they think?

Vinnie, who cares? I’m not going to go explicit with our sex lives. I’m just going to come out.
Oh God, really? I was going to come out? I could come out, right?

But people will know!

People KNOW!
“People know, Vinnie! Everybody you cheated on me with—they knew. Simon Conklin—he knows. The barista at our first coffee shop—she fucking knows and now she’s someone the press gives a shit about. People fucking
know
!”

Don’t yell!

I was more than yelling. I was yelling out loud, not in my head. I’d thought I was done with the anger, but apparently it had lived too long, too deep, for me to be done with it.

I’m pissed! Damn it, if you had lived, I would have fucking done it for you, as long as you needed me to. But you
didn’t
live,
did
you? You fucking
died
on me, and guess what?

You can do anything you want now, can’t you! No matter how many people you hurt—

I’m not telling your parents about us, Vinnie. I’m telling the world about
me
.

And then I got out of bed, still covered in Noah’s cum, and stalked to the bathroom.

Pretty proud of yourself, aren’t you! You fucked some other guy now, got back at me for—

Stop it right there. Noah and me—we’ve got nothing to do with you and me.

He’s a boy.

He’s more a man than you ever were.

I ignored the wounded silence in my head and turned on the shower. It was true. Noah—he was as self-possessed a person as I’d ever seen. He didn’t need to prove a damned thing. When he’d held me down, given me orders, it was because he had a plan—and I . . . hadn’t. I’d been lost and flailing and uncertain—I’d damned near forgotten how to have sex, and once I used to think it was the
only
thing I could do.

But Noah had never lied about himself, didn’t become someone else for a living, wouldn’t know how to be anyone
but
Noah Dakers if he tried. You couldn’t master someone else if you hadn’t mastered yourself—wasn’t that how the saying went?

Well, Noah had obviously mastered himself—and I didn’t know if I ever would.

Not with that much certainty—it wasn’t in my nature. I wanted to please people so badly—didn’t most actors? And when I became somebody on the set, on the screen, could I really do that if the barrier between myself and a character was hard and fast?

No. That’s why I’d called Vinnie every night when I’d been away—I’d needed to remind myself of who I was.

And that’s why Vinnie had been so lost on his own—because I hadn’t been there to remind him either. He’d come out of a role just as confused, just as disassociated as I’d been, and there hadn’t been a soul on the set he could trust.

It was a horrible thing to do to ourselves, Vinnie.

I held my face to the spray so I didn’t have to think about how badly we’d both needed somebody, how hard we’d made it on ourselves because we couldn’t have that person on the set, couldn’t have a PA or a friend or anybody to just walk up to us with a tissue and some coffee and remind us what it was like to eat, drink, and poop as real people and not the person doing lines on stage.

Yeah. It was.

And he didn’t have to say anything more. It was so much easier to find a fuck buddy than a friend you could trust, wasn’t it? So much easier to swear a guy to secrecy when you were pounding his ass. And Hollywood didn’t out each other—we kept each other’s big gay secrets if we were part of the big gay population. Simon Conklin may have been out himself, but he wouldn’t have outed Vinnie to anybody if he hadn’t known I’d been part of it.

The water was scalding, and I turned my back to it, let it parboil me into some semblance of normal.