Unless he was reading this wrong? “What’s a bad idea?”
“This.” Dalton shifted behind him, muscles tensing and releasing, rolling his hips until his hard prick was snug against Tierney’s ass.
Tierney gasped before croaking, “I dunno, I kinda like it.”
Dalton didn’t answer. He just lay there, plastered along Tierney’s body, arm tensed around Tierney’s ribs, with his palm flat against Tierney’s chest. Breathing unevenly against Tierney’s neck.
Rendering Tierney not much more than a human-shaped, throbbing mass of desire.
The smart thing would be to move. Roll off the couch and stand up, apologize to Dalton, and then tell the guy where the extra bed was. But his horny self guarded that info like a missile silo was concealed under the guest room’s nightstand.
Dalton moved, though, starting to push himself up, like he was going to climb over Tierney. “I’m sorry, I shouldn’t have done—”
“Huh-uh.” Turning, Tierney cursed his impatience. He just couldn’t wait to see how things panned out, could he? No. “This is going to keep happening. Every time we get together . . .”
“We end up like this.” Dalton swallowed, eyes searching Tierney’s. “What do we do about it, then?”
“I don’t know. This is the first time I’ve ever had this happen.”
Dalton smiled, a quick rush of amused relief, as if Tierney had somehow normalized the situation. “Another one of your firsts?”
His firsts? Oh yeah. Like Dalton being the first guy he’d kissed, or the first guy he’d blown or whose name he knew before being blown. The first guy who’d slept in his bed. “All my firsts are with you,” he said absently, caught up in the heat and atmosphere swirling between them.
“You have a lot more firsts coming,” Dalton whispered. “Not all of them have to—will be with me.”
The way Dalton’s glance flickered away from and then returned to his flooded Tierney with hope and possibility. All the things he’d been craving last time, when he’d kissed Dalton, lying on this couch, seemed so attainable. Like two parallel worlds had collided, but the wormhole between them would only be open for a brief time, so he had to act. Ask for what he desired or lose the opportunity. “What if I want another first time with you?” He brushed back Dalton’s bangs, so he could see those blue eyes clearly.
“What kind of—” Dalton’s breath hitched. “What kind of first?”
“Uhhh . . .” Christ, he didn’t even know how to say it. Well, he knew how, but his mouth wouldn’t form the words.
“And what would we be?”
“Huh?”
“To each other,” Dalton said. “I mean, we’re friends, now, right? So, if we, um, have sex, are we still simple friends? Or is there more?”
“What do you want?” Tierney asked over the thump of his heart in his ears.
“I want what’s best for you.” Dalton looked at him a moment longer, then stretched forward for a kiss. A simple kiss, just his lips brushing Tierney’s. “I don’t want to jeopardize your recov—”
“Benefits,” Tierney blurted, sensing the moment slipping away. The divergence of their two worlds.
Dalton stared.
“We’re friends now, but we already have kissing benefits, right?”
Dalton licked his lip, then pulled it into his mouth with his teeth before letting it pop back out, wet and reddened. “Yeah.”
“So we can have other benefits, if we agree to some, I don’t know, boundaries.”
The long silence made Tierney nervous, but the way Dalton’s fingers kept combing through the hair at his nape seemed hopeful.
“Boundaries like, ‘This is just helping out a friend’?”
Sure, what the hell. Tierney nodded quickly.
Dalton sucked in a breath and held it a second before, “I can agree to that,” burst out of him.
Tierney lunged, his chest surging upward against Dalton’s, adjusting until they could get that perfect angle. He kissed with so much more intent than that accidental, hormone-driven one the last time Dalton had been here. Consciously pulling and pushing until they could touch everywhere, his hard dick grinding into Dalton’s hip, rocking them together.
Then Dalton drew away, gripping Tierney’s shoulders as if he had to forcibly hold him off—which he probably did.
“What first?” Dalton sucked in a huge breath of air, like he’d been running a marathon. “What first do you want?”
He froze, because here he was again. He had to say the words, or he might wimp out and never do it, and then what kind of guy would he be? The dude who could stand on a table and announce he was queer in public but could never fully be it in private. “Um . . .” Say it, you pansy. “I want you to fuck me.”
And, oh Christ, Dalton seemed dumbstruck, eyes wide. Like he couldn’t believe what Tierney was asking for, or he didn’t do that, or maybe he was grossed out—totally repulsed by the idea of sticking his dick inside him. Just when Tierney was at the point where he was about to start spewing out all kinds of shit, probably about not meaning it, or not being good enough, Dalton asked, “Do you have any condoms?”
“Yeah.” He nodded vigorously, putting all his relief into it. “My father gave me some.” I can’t believe you said that.
“Do you have lube?”
“Uh, Father prolly didn’t know I’d need it.” You fucking dork, shut up with the father thing.
“It’s okay,” Dalton said, swallowing. “I, um, I threw some in my pack before I came over. Just, you know”—he shrugged one shoulder—“in case.”
All the noise in Tierney’s head died. The crackling surge of hormones and the thump of his pulse and the desperate whispering, hoping—it all froze up, letting the words sink in. Dalton brought lube “in case.”
In case something happened, and Tierney didn’t have lube.
“So you actually want to do this?” he asked under his breath, afraid to say it louder.
Dalton’s smile broke out all over his face. “I do.”
Everything unfroze inside him. A tidal wave of sound and hormones and surging blood propelled Tierney off the couch, all of it urging him to make this happen. He stood and held out his hand to Dalton. “Let’s go, then.”
The full weight of doubt hit Tierney while he was in the shower. If they’d just been able to fall into bed and start going at it, things might have been easier, but they couldn’t, could they? Cleaning up had seemed necessary, not only for hygienic reasons, but also because he had this weird, unshakeable sense that he was about to partake in some kind of sacred ritual. Ablutions were, like, mandatory before all rites of passage or whatever.