It disconnected.
Leaning over the bed to see the screen, when it didn’t flash with another call, I knew it hadn’t been Dad, and I picked it up and redialed.
It rang for a long time, long enough that I almost put it down, but I didn’t.
I was glad I persevered.
“Hello.”
Devlin.
“Hey,” I replied huskily, surprised that he was calling me. Surprised he even had my number.
He was the last person I thought I’d be hearing from tonight—just because it was out of the blue, didn’t mean I wasn’t ecstatic.
I was.
I could hear his breathing down the line—it wasn’t rough or anything. Heavy. Just, audible. Like he wasn’t sure what to say, how to be. I knew how that felt, but I’d been playing a part all my life so it was easy for me to fill in the gaps.
“I was just thinking of how you tasted,” I told him, my voice so husky that I didn’t recognize it as my own.
I had the feeling he was one foot in the closet and one foot out. Maybe he was bi, I didn’t know, or maybe he was just gay and hiding it with a string of girlfriends, but my impression was that he wasn’t comfortable with men.
Not in the light of day, anyway.
Knowing that opening gambit could scare him away didn’t stop me from making it.
I wasn’t about to push him into anything, but neither was I going to ignore the elephant in the room. Not when I wanted him—badly.
A sharp sigh escaped him, and my eyes fluttered to a close as I remembered the gentle gust of that against my ear, down along the sinews of my throat where it raked up gooseflesh. As if my body already knew how to react to him, the small hairs down my nape stood to attention like he was here in the room, his hands on me—how I wished they were.
“Did you like it?” was his careful response.
“I did. Very much. I-I’ve never tasted someone else’s cum before.”
“You’ve always used a condom? You should anyway. What we did in the dark room wasn’t safe—”
My lips quirked up in a smile. “Isn’t that like trying to shut the stable door when the horse has already bolted?”
“Maybe.” He sighed again. “I just—they’re not really safe spaces.”
“No. I assume that’s half the fun for you.” When he just gave a non-committal hum, I told him, “I’ve never been with a guy before.”
A choked gasp escaped him. “I’m your first?”
“First guy,” I corrected, amused by his response. “I’m not a virgin.”
“Your ass is though.” He grunted. “Jesus, I didn’t need to know that right now.”
Flopping onto my back, I arched a brow at my stained ceiling. “Why not?”
“Because I don’t need a boner when you’re wherever you are in the city.”
Immediately, arousal sucked my breath away.
He wanted me again.
Thank God!
“There’s always Uber,” I remarked.
“If I’m your first, then I’d like you to know that I’m clean. I was tested recently, and I haven’t been with anyone since then.”
Taken aback, even if I appreciated his honesty, I told him, “Okay. Thanks for telling me.”
“You should ask for certificates or whatever,” he muttered, and I heard the slightest rushing sound of liquid against ice.
Even as I wondered what he was drinking, I strained to hear what other noises I could discern. What I found didn’t come as a surprise, not when I knew he was an Astley.
Silence.
Dead silence.
In Manhattan, that was almost more priceless than space.
“You should ask for proof,” he repeated, his tone firmer this time. “In—” He grunted.
It was interesting that he didn’t finish that statement.
In the future.
He was right.
I knew I should. Even though that wasn’t the point of dark rooms, was it? To go in there with a list of your ailments wasn’t exactly sexy. And last night hadn’t been planned.
Well, not by me.
Rachel had been the one to cook up the scheme because I sure as hell didn’t carry around condoms and lube with me on the off chance of a hook-up.
Though I’d fucked my way through the women of Manhattan, it hadn’t come easily to me. Not with my background, at any rate. Sex outside of marriage? A gross sin.
But when I was trying to figure out who and what I was, it had seemed like the thing to do. But repeating that with guys was just something I’d never been able to follow through with. Maybe, in time, that discomfort would ease up some, but not now. I was too new to being free. Too nervous.
Apart from with him.
The thought had me covering my eyes with my forearm.
Maybe now I knew what I was, who I was, I was looking for that one person who’d be mine forever.
Like that wasn’t a disaster waiting to happen…
“What do you want, Devlin?” I rasped edgily, my thoughts making me antsy, even as I tasted his name on my lips, savoring it like I’d savored him earlier.
He didn’t answer for the longest time, but I heard him swallow, so I knew he’d taken a sip of his drink. “I don’t know.”
Knowing who he was, maybe I shouldn’t have been so frank with him, but I couldn’t stop the words from spilling out, “Bullshit. No one takes that long to think about an answer without knowing exactly what the hell they want to say.”
A sharp laugh echoed down the line. “Is that right?”
“You know it is. If you don’t want to say, then that’s another matter entirely. But don’t waste either of our time by lying.”
“How old are you, Micah?”
“You’ve read my file by now so you already know. I’m twenty-two.”
“I was twenty-two sixteen years ago. That’s not only a massive age difference, that’s a—” He grunted. “You were raised in a different world than me.”
Before he could carry on, and disregarding who he was to me because he wasn’t my boss at that moment, I snapped, “More bullshit? Change the record, Devlin. Raised in a different world? Yeah, that’s why my father won’t talk to me and is trying to scare me straight by cutting me off from the family. That sound like someone who was raised in a tolerant background?”
“No.” His voice was muted, and I knew I’d shocked him. “When did you come out?”
“At the end of last year. I finally figured out what I was in my third year of college.” I rubbed at my eyes where tears were brewing. Not from sadness or sorrow, but from annoyance.
Not just with my dad but Devlin as well.
Like any gay man had an easy time with coming out.
Even if, in the aftermath, the family accepted him, there were still months, maybe years’ worth of terror in the buildup to sharing that massive secret with the ones who were supposed to accept you no matter what.
Was there a bigger betrayal than that type of rejection?
Of having your father drag you to church to have the Pentecostal minister glare at you beneath beetle-like eyebrows as they tried to make you what you weren’t? Condemning you to hell and brimstone because you wanted to love men and not women?
My voice was more than just husky as I ground out, “It took me three years of being here to actually accept that I could do this. Don’t try to make out that this isn’t hard for everyone, Devlin.”