He was doing this, and despite his nerves, there was no way he was backing out now.
Chapter Ten
Simon
This was not a good idea. No one had to tell Simon that there was danger here, no matter what Ray said. Because maybe Ray wasn’t interested in a relationship, but Simon found that, more and more, Ray was casting his spell on Simon. Weaving a net around him, a net that Simon wasn’t even sure he wanted to get out of.
Of course, he had always known how he was. He kept people away because, if they got too close, Simon knew that he tended to care too much. It was easier to keep things light and casual. Which meant that the more time that passed, the less it seemed like Ray trying to turn things serious was the actual threat. It was more of a worry that Simon, despite all his care, was going to get his heart broken.
But even that fear wasn’t enough to make him turn this down. There was this gorgeous man in his bed throwing himself at him, and he was only human. Besides, if he did something stupid and fell for Ray, so what? Honestly, he had the sense that that was happening already, so he might as well have these memories of Ray to keep him warm at night as he tried to get over the man.
Basically, it was better to have sex and a broken heart than just sex.
He looked down at Ray, seeing the nervousness in his eyes, but no sign that he was going to back out of this. God, was this beautiful virgin going to do this? It seemed like this had to be some incredibly intense wet dream, but if it was, it was the most vivid that he’d ever felt.
“Have you ever done anything before?” Simon asked, meeting Ray’s eyes. “With a guy? Do you even know what you want to do?”
Ray shook his head, which Simon had been expecting, and Simon nodded a little. He was going to have to take the lead on this one, and that was fine. He would have to be careful, go slow …
And just as he thought that, he felt a hand sneak down between their bodies, felt the warm, determined grip of chilly fingers on his dick, saw the little smirk and the gleam of mischief in the other man’s eyes.
“Ray, goddamn, that’s cold,” Simon groaned, finding the chill against his rigid, hot erection to be incredibly fascinating, almost unbearable and utterly irresistible. And the smug look on Ray’s impossibly gorgeous face made it all too clear that he was enjoying himself.
“Oh, sorry, did you want me to stop?” Ray purred back and made as if to release Simon and pull away. Without even thinking about it—as rare an event as that was for Simon—he found himself grabbing Ray’s hand and forcing it right back to where it belonged, doing his best to ignore the chuckle of triumph that he got in return.
He got his revenge for that, though. He got to see that chuckle fade to nothing as he reached down and gripped Ray right back. Ray might have gotten the element of surprise working for him, but Simon had experience, and he used every single thing he had ever learned to try to make Ray make those helpless, sexy little moans again.
And it worked. Ray’s cheeks flushed, and his lips parted around his incredibly arousing little gasps of pleasure, all while Simon got to watch. He felt burning hot precome seeping into his palm as he stroked that beautiful cock, base to tip, then back down again.
Somehow, he was lucky enough that he got to watch as this man went to pieces for him. He had been so excited to get to be the person who got to show Ray the sights of Paris, but this was on a whole other level. It had been a long time since jerking another man off had gotten him going this much.
“You have to tell me if you want me to stop,” Simon remembered to ask. He was getting more and more lost in the intense eroticism, and while he was trying to watch for signs from Ray that he wasn’t into it, he was starting to think that he wasn’t going to be able to think past the overwhelming pleasure for very long.
“I will, but I don’t think it’ll happen,” Ray said, and his voice was reassuringly husky and filled with need.
They kissed again, and Simon did something that he so rarely allowed himself to do. He relaxed. He surrendered. He let himself feel what he was feeling and let himself enjoy it. Let himself melt into the simmering heat, which danced along his nerve endings, the growing tightness in his body as Ray’s hand worked its magic.
Objectively, maybe Ray wasn’t the best at what he was doing. He was so new to it. But he was also a fast learner, and Simon found completely genuine groans and whimpers of pleasure falling from his lips as he kissed the other man over and over.
It all got a little messy between them as they got more desperate for each other. The way they were positioned, with Simon on top of Ray, their dicks were pressed right up close together so that as they jerked each other, they slid together, and they were both oozing precome. It was all so needy and desperate, not the sort of thing that Simon usually allowed himself to get into, but that only made it that much more intense.
He was going to humiliate himself utterly. He knew it, fully and completely, and yet there was nothing that he could do, nothing that he could make himself do, to stop it. All he could do was hold off as long as he could, and hope against hope that he was somehow having the same impact on Ray as Ray was on him.
As it turned out, he was lucky. Ray was starting to thrash under him, to moan, to rub his body up against Simon’s, and Simon was able to hold off just long enough so that when he finally had no choice but to surrender, to let the climax rip through him and leave him panting and gasping, covered with his sweat, it was at the same time as Ray was doing the same thing. Somehow, Simon managed to keep it together enough to kiss Ray right as their shared pleasure hit them so that the cries and groans were muffled in between their lips.
It was just a handjob. It shouldn’t have been that big of a deal to Simon. It was more the sort of thing horny teenagers would get up to, and that wasn’t a description that fit Simon at all.
So, with that being the case, why had it felt so good? Was it possible that it was just because it was Ray? Surely he wouldn’t be a big enough idiot to let that happen.
“What happened with you and Ashley’s mother?”
Simon had been curious, of course, but if anyone had asked him, he would have told them that he would never say those words to Ray. The last thing he needed was to get more invested in this man’s life. He already adored Ashley and was coming to think he could quite easily fall for Ray if he let himself. Asking personal questions like he just had was not only rude but also not something that he wanted to know.
For a long moment, Simon was sure that Ray was going to tell him off. Or, if not that, give a little laugh and change the subject, since Ray, at least, had some idea how to be tactful.
“Ashley’s mother and I were never really together. She wanted to be. I didn’t. When she got pregnant, I did my best, but we just weren’t compatible.”
As Simon digested this, he got out of bed, fetched a cloth from the bathroom, and cleaned himself and Ray both up. It gave him a few seconds, much needed, to pull himself together. He nodded, showing that he had heard and understood, but Ray wasn’t done. Maybe he’d been waiting just for someone to ask him that exact question, and now he had a chance to answer.
