Fourth.The hiccup. The fucking way he looked at me.
I curse softly, my forehead dropping against the tile with a dull thunk.
And that ass.
That fuckingass.
My hand slides down my body without permission. I’m already half-hard, and I hate myself for it. I don’t even know whether I want this or just want to feel something sharp enough to make the rest go quiet.
My fist closes around my length almost of its own accord and takes a long, experimental stroke. I press my forehead harder against the tile.
My breath stutters, not from pleasure, but from confusion. From the sick, molten shame that rises like bile.
Another stroke.
This time, I can’t stop the image ofPetitCrews, gasping under me. His voice breaking on a hiccup, his finger curling in my hair as I bite down on his shoulder.
“Merde!” I gasp, jerking my hand back like it burned me.
I brace both palms against the tile and bow my head, heart pounding, water still scalding.
“Non.”
This isn’t happening.
This can’t be happening.
I slam the water off and stumble out, the silence crashing down louder than the spray ever was.
The mirror is fogged, but that’s a mercy. I don’t want to see the look on my face right now. I grab a towel and scrub myself roughly, then wrap it around my hips.
My entire body shakes, not from the cold, but from the sheer velocity of panic ripping through my chest.
This isn’t just a racing fuckup.
This is everything else cracking all at once.
Toulouse is still in his hammock when I walk out, licking his paws, completely oblivious to my bi panic under the spray nozzle.
“I’m going to figure this out,” I tell him like a vow. My voice sounds steadier than I feel. “We’re doing research.”
He looks utterly unconcerned.
“Yeah, maybe you’re right.” I grab my towel from where I’d slung it, eye the cage, and toss it over the top like a curtain. “You don’t need to see this. I’m not paying your therapy bills,mon fils.”
I sit on the bed and flip open my laptop, my legs splayed like I’m not seconds from falling apart. My fingers feel numb as they hit the keys.
Gay porn.
The wordslook wrong on my screen, a dare I didn’t mean to accept, but I hit search anyway.
Thumbnails blur past—twinks, jocks, leather, sweet, rough, different bodies, positions, and dynamics. Some of it even looks good. I can see why people would like it. Hell, I can evenimaginemyself in some of those scenes. Bent over a couch with a body beneath me. Knees spread on a hotel mattress. Pushing him up against a wall.
But only if it’shim.
I click. A video loads. Another. Then another. I try to settle into one, to let it happen, tofeelsomething, and find whatever it is that’s tearing through my chest and name it, but it’s all just noise, like I’m watching through glass. Nothing stirs, not really. There’s just this hollow ache and a strange, creeping sense of distance from my skin.
Then one thumbnail flashes by. On it is a tanned, broody, pretty boy with tousled hair and that same quiet, coiled fire Payne carries around. The kind that sits in his shoulders, his eyes, the way he never lets himself soften.
