“You’re so ridiculous, you know that?” Patrick said, his torso glowing under the reading lamp’s subdued light. “I’m not gonna bullshit you about how annoying it is to work to keep up the physique. I’m sick of guys who do that ’cause it’s all crap anyway. If they were sick, they’d quit. It’s pity talk. I’m proud to look the way I do.”
I nodded.
Patrick’s gaze sharpened as he examined my face. “I’m an athlete. I need whatever is gonna give me the edge against my opponent. Otherwise, that little shit Titan would have run me over before we even hit the boards last week. But it’s not a standard of beauty, Shane. I couldn’t care less if you were ripped, curvy, or skinny. And, more to the point,youshouldn’t care what I think.”
“I bet you always took home the hottest girl,” I teased, or tried to. It came out a little flat, a little accusatory.
“Didn’t go home with freaking bodybuilders, I’ll tell you that,” Patrick said. “I have enough of that in the rink.”
I laughed at the nonchalant way he said that. “You’re right. And I think I’m getting better at keeping it in mind.” I glanced down. “And I’m not fussing about the size.”
“Sure you’re not,” Patrick teased.
He was incredulous. But he was also just a little right. Not that I would want him to know that. “Let’s put it this way: if I were any bigger, you’d be in a lot of trouble.”
“Oh yeah?” he asked, lifting himself up and grabbing the pillow from under my arms. “How so?”
“You think your virgin ass could survive it?” I asked, trying to catch the pillow.
“Yours did,” Patrick said, pulling the pillow just out of reach.
“I’ve had years of practice with unspeakable objects, and you’ve never even had a finger,” I said, yanking the corner of it and tugging it back.
Patrick wasn’t parting ways with the pillow. “Empty threats from a bottom.”
“Verse,” I shot back.
“I heard that’s what bottoms say to other bottoms, hoping it would turn the other one into a top,” Patrick said and snatched the pillow from my hand, then tossed it in my face again.
I was laughing too hard to notice. “Where the hell did you hear that?”
“So, you’re saying it’s not true,” Patrick said, skepticism so strong in his voice that I picked up on the underlying sarcasm.
“I’m definitely verse,” I said and shrugged. “I just let you fuck me because I don’t wanna scare you. Yet.”
And sure enough, Patrick was getting hard again.
“Mm, you’re not so much of a top as you thought,” I said.
“You can try scaring me,” Patrick said, his voice a little more airy now. “Next time.” Then, as an afterthought, he said, “I’ll need to look up a manual.”
I licked my lips and swallowed the words that had nearly left my lips.
Patrick cocked his head and looked at me. “What?”
“Nothing.”Busted.
“You didn’t say something,” Patrick said. “What is it?”
My pulse hurried. “It’s just…I’ve been thinking.”
“Oh boy,” Patrick said.
I threw the pillow at him, but he caught it before it did any intended damage. “I wanna start taking pills so we can…” I chuckled. Some things were still hard to talk about, even with him.
“So we can raw-dog it?” he asked.
My nose wrinkled, and I laughed. “If you wanna put it that way.”
