Shane leaned toward me and rested his head on my shoulder. Nobody knew us here. We were just two guys watching a movie. There was no pesky research project, no ethical conundrums, and no teasing from my teammates. It didn’t matter if someone saw us smooching in the corner or holding hands.
Instead of holding hands, mine rested on Shane’s knee, and it moved a little higher as the movie progressed. He didn’t seem to mind it. And though we were doing a lot of things a lot of the time to one another, I could shake off this feeling of nervous excitement. Whenever I touched him, my body reacted the same way. It always felt like the first, risky time.
Except for one big difference.
I didn’t see myself freaking out and bailing on him. Hell no. I was going to stick around. I was going to be his roguish lover boy.
For as long as he wanted me.
The thought, oddly enough, didn’t fill me with fear. I didn’t think he would stop wanting me soon. Sometimes, it just felt right. Sometimes, you just knew a good thing when it landed in your lap and kissed you on the lips.
So if there was a worm of fear boring into my heart somewhere deep down and undetected, I failed to see it. And if I considered it a reward rather than a sudden burst of fearful jealousy, I would; I pressed thePULSEbutton again, making Shane grab the armrest and my forearm, digging his nails into my flesh and twisting his back in wild ways.
I could feel it, too. In my imagination, here in the dark, I could feel that provocative, unscratchable itch traversing his body and the desperate need to move and shake it off.
Three seconds passed, and Shane settled down, exhaling a nearly silent “Fuck.”
The other function that the remote offered was just as fun, especially while Shane’s lips closed around the paper straw dipping into his milkshake in the diner across from the cinema. He sat in the red, faux-leather, retro booth across from me while Elvis sang about falling in love with you from an old jukebox that had legit vinyl records and a crackling sound of the needle moving through their microscopic valleys.
Shane slammed the thick glass of frothy, creamy milkshake on the smooth surface of the table and pressed his back painfully against the back of the booth. His lips parted, but he held back the sounds, and I adored the expression he made. That pleasured, tormented wave of heat that made his cheeks redden and the shudder that ricked his chest. “Fuck,” he said when the intensifying wave of vibration I’d sent into his plug passed. It had lasted a solid eight seconds. The trick was to hold the button and let the current grow. “I never should have given you so much power.”
I took his milkshake. “Don’t lie. You love it.” My lips closed around his straw and sucked a mouthful. It was very sweet, but it couldn’t compare to what I was going to suck on in an hour. The thought amused me as I pushed the milkshake back across the table and folded my arms.
Shane had a slightly embarrassed, heated look on his face, and I knew he loved it even more than he was willing to say.
It was another hour before we went to his place. Climbing up the stairs behind Shane and giving him sudden waves of vibration pulses was a kind of joy I hadn’t thought existed. It was hard to imagine being with anyone else, and not only because Shane was so eager to push the boundaries of what was allowed but because he did it at the same rate as I. We matched. It was as easy as that.
When I undressed him, he shivered under my hands. And when we went to bed, he held me with such shameless neediness that it filled a hole in my chest where happiness should have been all my life.
We kissed and wrestled, doing a kind of passionate dance girls had never been thrilled about. The worship Shane had mentioned had never been so delicious.
And when I pressed my thumb against the button that sent a continuous current of tingles and vibration through Shane’sbody, speeding up and strengthening to an incredible climax, I made sure my lips were tight around his cock because I wanted to have every last drop of him.
Our days were busy, but our nights went on forever. I lived for them.
It caught me unaware that all I did on any given day was just a way to pass the time. What I really ate for, what I played for, what I worked out for, were the hours I got to spend with Shane in the privacy of our rooms.
By the end of November, Elio had all but moved in with Jaxon.
And I hadn’t quite moved in with Shane, but it was getting there.
It crept up on me in the little ways. A toothbrush on his sink, a clean T-shirt in his drawer, his hoodie clinging to my chair like it belonged there. I wasn’t staying the night every night, but it was enough that the space between us never lasted long.
Late November brought a cold wind through the city, the kind that made you grateful for warm beds and warmer bodies. After practice, after studying, after the team dinners and the casual beers and the chaos of the locker room, it was Shane I found myself drifting toward.
There was a night, maybe a week ago, when we’d gone for a walk through Lincoln Park. Shane had insisted the lights on the paths were atmospheric. It was freezing, but I didn’t complain. He had this ridiculous wool hat pulled down over his ears, and I could see the outline of his glasses fogging with every exhale.
We passed a guy playing guitar under a bridge. Shane stopped to listen. Just stood there, watching him with this thoughtful tilt of his head. I stood beside him, closer than necessary, our shoulders brushing. He didn’t move away. That night, he kissed me outside my dorm before I could invite him in, and it knocked the air out of me for a full five seconds.
Another night, he came over to help me with a paper. We sat on my bed with our laptops open, but somewhere along the way, I lost my place in the textbook and started tracing patterns on the back of his hand. He let me, not even looking up. He just smiled and leaned into my side.
We didn’t ask ourselves what we were or where this was going.
We didn’t have to.
And it wasn’t always deep talks and hand-holding, either. Sometimes, it was him giggling in the middle of a kiss because I was tickling his ribs by accident. Sometimes, it was the way he rolled his eyes at my texts but still answered every one. Sometimes, it was him stealing my hoodie and pretending it was for research purposes.
He was still shadowing me. Still scribbling in those notebooks sometimes, but not always. He asked questions and measured things. And when he left in the morning, I watched him go with a strange ache in my chest that hadn’t been there before.
