Rock N Soul (26 page)

“Brandon,” he said. “
Do
you come here a lot?”

“First time.” I gave him a long look. He was pretty tall, taller than me and even a little taller than Chris, and he had light-blue eyes and a nice square jaw that gave his face character. Good muscles too, from what I could see.

Brandon smiled more brightly. “Then let me buy you a drink.”

A few drinks later, I’d reached that stage of intoxication where I wasn’t drunk, not exactly, but I was feeling extra cheerful and probably shouldn’t attempt to operate any machinery. Brandon was smiling and laughing and telling jokes, and the combination of his attractiveness along with listening to Chris’s stupid damn singing voice belting out some Madonna cover was making me smile and laugh and tell jokes back.

“So,” Brandon said, leaning in a little closer. “Do you have a boyfriend?”

It was a pretty obvious pointed question, and if I hadn’t been buzzed and distracted I would have seen it for what it was, but Chris chose that moment to get bored of singing and start fucking
sauntering
his way over to me, and I hesitated just a second too long before answering.

Brandon gave a low whistle. “Should I back off, then? He’s not going to come in and beat the shit out of me for hitting on you, is he?”

Chris heard that and made a half-laugh-half-choke sound. “Oh my God, this guy’s trying to pick you up. He must be into scrawny twinks.”

Says the guy who called me ripped and would have tried to jump my bones just this morning if he wasn’t see-through
, I thought, but I wasn’t drunk enough to start talking to invisible people in front of someone else, so instead I just shrugged at Brandon and said, “No. He can’t do shit about it, actually.”

“So I’m your boyfriend now?” Chris asked, smirking. “I thought I was an entitled asshole who you wouldn’t touch even if you were in full hazmat gear.”

I tried to shoot him a
shut-the-fuck-up
look without Brandon seeing. Not sure how successful I was, but it made me feel a little better. I mean, Chris
was
an entitled asshole, but that wasn’t why I hadn’t ever touched him, and I was pretty sure that we both knew it.

Also, just last night he’d been telling me he wanted to see me doing the dirty with another guy, and the beer had given me some courage. I let the smile I was aiming at Brandon get a little warmer and reach my eyes a little more as I turned my body even more toward him.

Brandon was talking again, and Chris had moved around behind me, so I met Brandon’s gaze and tried to seem totally engrossed in our conversation just in time to hear him ask, “So should I keep flirting, or . . .?”

“He’s hot,” Chris said. The nape of my neck started to tingle like he was breathing on it, which wasn’t possible but which pissed me off anyway because I just
knew
that the fucker was standing that close behind me, and he needed to step off before I did something stupid like forgetting he wasn’t solid and trying to lean back against his chest.

Not that I would do that. Of course not. I smiled at Brandon. “I’m not saying no, am I?”

Chris must have stepped away from me, because my body’s newfound ghost proximity detector stopped beeping at me. “Wait,” he said. “For real?”

I put my glass of beer down on the counter and stood up. “I’ll be right back, okay? Don’t go anywhere.” Brandon nodded, and I headed for the men’s room with Chris trailing along at my heels.

It was a one-seater with a lock on the door, which was excellent news because I could avoid people seeing my conversation with the air. I locked the door behind me and turned around to look at Chris. “So . . .” I absently reached up and rubbed the back of my neck. Way to seem cool and nonawkward, Tyler. “At the airport, when you said you wanted to watch me grind up on some guy . . .”

Chris had what appeared to be a very carefully constructed blank expression on his face. “Yeah?”

“Were you serious?”

“You’re thinking about fucking that guy?” He looked back out toward the bar even though he couldn’t see it through the bathroom wall. Or at least I assumed he couldn’t. But having x-ray vision seemed like the sort of thing he would have talked about, so I was betting on not.

I shrugged. “He really seems more like a top, which I guess is cool with me. Jumping in with both feet, you know.”

“Wow,” he said. “You come out to LA and you become way less of a prude practically overnight.”

The whole not-being-able-to-punch-him-in-his-stupid-perfect-teeth thing was really starting to grate on me. “I wasn’t a prude in Boston either,” I said. “I just have a problem with having random gay sex with some dude I might run into again later in the line at CVS.”

“So this guy is perfect for you, then,” he said. “Well, you have my blessing. Bone away.”

“Is he somebody you’d like to watch me getting boned by?” The redness in my face was
totally
just about the beer. I’m way too cool to be blushing about sex talk.

Now it was his turn to shrug. “I can give you guys privacy. Wait in the hall or something.”

“That’s very generous of you, but no thanks.” Geez, he wasn’t getting it. Maybe it was intentional. Or maybe he was being a dumbass. I decided to give him one more chance to figure it out before I explained it to him using small words.

“So . . .” He stared at me, the blank expression replaced by one of confusion that was completely not adorable, not at all, why would anyone assume I thought it was adorable? Ugh. This fucker. This. Fucker.

“So I kind of want you to watch,” I said after a moment of incredibly awkward silence.

“You . . . do?” The confusion on his face deepened, and I gave an exasperated sigh.

“Yes, you moron, I do,” I snapped. I mean, really, this wasn’t that hard to understand. “You said it would be hot to watch me doing the nasty with a guy. You said Brandon was hot. We’re both sexually frustrated and judging by how you ogled me shirtless last night I’m guessing you’re horny as hell, so I’m saying I’ll do this guy for
us
if you want me to.” Then I realized how couple-y the emphasized
us
sounded and corrected myself: “For both of us, I mean.”

“You’d do that? For me?” His voice sounded weird, and I decided not to analyze it. Nothing good lay in analyzing Chris’s voice.

“Yeah,” I said, and then because he looked surprisingly floored by this, I added, “I like it when you’re happy. And we could both use a destressor. So . . .”

“So you’re going to bone that guy. While I watch.” He tilted his head. “Do I get to jerk it?”

“Jesus, Chris, I’m not a
monster
.” I offered him a cheeky half smile. “Of course you can. I probably won’t be paying that much attention to you anyway.”

“Cool,” he said. “Well then, you’d better get back out there.”

I walked back out to the bar and sat on my stool, then smiled at Brandon. “So where were we?”

Brandon finished off his beer and a slow smile spread across his face. “I was about to ask you if you wanted to find somewhere less public to talk.”

Which was exactly what I’d been planning on, but I still blushed a little. Mostly because I’d never had sex while someone watched from the sidelines, but also because I hadn’t expected this to move
that
fast. I’d thought it would take a couple more beers at least. But this was better. Less time to get weirded out by the nerves.

“That sounds good.” I smiled extra big to make up for my hesitation.

Brandon gave me a full-body once-over that was even less subtle than mine had been earlier. “Then do you want to get out of here?”

“Oh, fuck yeah.” Chris actually bounced on the balls of his feet. “This is gonna be hot as hell.”

And between the beer, Brandon’s muscles, Chris’s encouragement, and the fact that it had been months since I’d gotten laid, it didn’t take long at all for me to nod in agreement.

“My place or yours?” he asked, sliding off the barstool and turning to face me.

I stood up too and gave his lips a good long gaze. They were full and looked very soft, and I had a flash of what it might feel like to have them on my cock.

“You’re shivering,” Chris said. “You’re already hot for him, aren’t you?”

I took a deep breath and shrugged. “I’m staying in a hotel not far from here. Let’s go there.”

“All right,” Brandon said, and then he slid an arm around my waist and kissed me.

I sighed, let myself relax into it, and raised a hand to his neck. He teased at my lips with his tongue, and I opened them to let him in. He tasted like cinnamon, and I wondered for a second when he’d had time to pop a mint before I realized that it probably had been when I was watching Chris like an obsessed fangirl. Or when I’d been in the bathroom asking Chris if it was okay if I exercised my own sexual freedom like he had any right to have an opinion about that. Probably the latter.

I pulled back and smiled warmly. “Let’s get to my room, yeah?”

He nodded, and we left the bar. I led the way to the hotel as quickly as I could manage without actually breaking into a run. My brain whispered that maybe this wasn’t an ideal way to lose my gay virginity, but my dick didn’t seem to have any such moral qualms, and anybody on the streets who looked too closely would be able to tell what I was thinking about, so speed was of the essence.

There was a little drugstore across the street from the hotel, and I paused briefly before we went into the hotel lobby. “Do I need to run over there?” I asked Brandon, giving the store a pointed glance.

He glanced at the store. “If you don’t have stuff in your room, then yeah.”

Chris gave Brandon a withering death glare. “Seriously? He goes to a bar to pick up dudes and doesn’t make sure he’s packing?”

“Okay,” I said to Brandon, then motioned at a liquor store just down the street. “Why don’t you go grab us a six-pack and I’ll meet you back here in ten?”

“Yeah, sounds good.” Brandon picked up my hand and kissed it with an eyebrow waggle, then headed off toward the liquor store.

“I don’t think people call it ‘packing’ when they’re talking about sex supplies,” I told Chris, turning around and walking quickly across the street and into the drugstore.

“Whatever,” he said. “He should have planned ahead.”

I made my way to the back of the store where they kept the lube and started considering my options. “I didn’t have anything either,” I said. “I should have planned ahead too, I guess.”

Chris shrugged. “You didn’t go out expecting to pick up a piece of ass. He did.”

“Good point.” I motioned at the wide array of lubrication products on the shelf. “You’ve done this before. What do you recommend?”

I felt his eyes on me for an uncomfortably long time. Finally, he looked away and waved his hand at a plain variety. “It’s your first time,” he said, in a husky voice. “Probably best to go with regular.”

“I trust you.” I grabbed the box from the shelf.

“Condoms too,” he reminded me. “Don’t forget them.”

I gave Chris a Look.

“What?” Chris said. “No glove, no love.”

I flipped him off. “Who are you, my high school health teacher?”

“I’m serious, Tyler,” Chris warned, less lighthearted this time. “Tell him to use a rubber or I will haunt the shit out of you forever. And not in a fun way. I mean it.”

“Fuck, dude, calm down.” I reached for a box of regular, no-frills condoms. “Of course I’m going to make him use one. Do I look like a fucking moron?”

“No,” Chris said after a second. “Sorry. I’m kind of an activist.”

I raised an eyebrow at him. “You. Are a safe-sex activist.”

He rolled his eyes. “I’m an intravenous drug user who likes to have indiscriminate sex with strangers. I would have been the poster child for bad things happening when you don’t use condoms,” he said. “So I always,
always
made sure I was safe. Rewatch all my videos if you don’t believe me. That shit’s important.”

“I believe you,” I said, because it actually did seem very
him
to be careful about some things while being shockingly lax with others. Like drug dosages, for example. I carried the boxes up to the counter and gave the cashier an I-dare-you-to-comment glance while she rang me up.