I caught the way Clark was looking at Franklin again, with both respect and joy in his gazes. I felt another surge of pride. Sure, Clark probably had no idea anything was going on with us in the bedroom. But even being associated with Franklin as a worker felt good to me.
We had plans together. Work to do. I’d been to the house Rory and Franklin shared, even met their kid…
“And what are you grinning about?” Franklin asked, tilting his head to the side as he smiled back at me. “Or has the geek talk just gotten to be too much for you?”
“Not at all,” I said, licking my tongue across my top row of teeth and trying my best not to flirt in front of Clark. “I could listen to you two go on all day.”
Clark and Franklin both laughed, then turned back to the comics they were sorting. I went back to the last few tasks on my list, although a part of me was reluctant to finish.
I might not have known the first thing about superheroes and conventions, but I knew what felt good.
And this world? Where Franklin and Rory lived?
This world felt pretty damn sweet.
Chapter Sixteen
Rory
I opened the door of the miniature fridge, then pulled out a couple bottles of beer. A white towel was cinched at my waist, and I was wearing a pair of soft white slippers that had come with the room.
“Two slightly chilled beers,” I said, returning to the main room of the hotel. “Coming right up!”
It wasn’t in my character to splurge on something as indulgent as a hotel room in the same city where I lived, but when I realized some of my credit card points were about to expire, Franklin had convinced me to just go for it. We’d be back to the apartment Asher shared with his sister for our rendezvous soon enough, I knew.
And it wasn’t like Frankie and I regularly picked up younger guys. In fact, I suspected that Asher would be our first and our last for this kind of thing.
Which made it much easier to appreciate him in the time we did have together.
Asher and Frankie were both sitting on the edge of the bed. Asher had worn the button-up shirt he seemed to favor, and when I handed him his beer, the sleeve fell, revealing the dark outlines of his tattoos.
We’d gotten to know him pretty well over the past weeks, but still, a lot of Asher’s life was a mystery.
I sensed he didn’t want us to pry. He seemed to be keeping something close, not so much to hide it, but to protect himself, although I didn’t know from what.
Something stirred in me. I wanted to push, to get him to reveal himself.
We can handle it, I thought. Whatever it is.
“Pretty fancy,” Asher said, looking around the hotel room. “I’ve never been in one of those hotels downtown.”
I took a drink from my beer, then sat in the armchair across from them. On the bed, Frankie cast a slight shadow over Asher, the light shining behind them and the windows that overlooked the water and the cityscape beside.
“Glad you like it,” I said.
Asher turned, and his plump lips turned up in a mischievous smile. “How many other professors…” he teased in a whisper, “do you think are in this hotel right now?”
I chuckled, and something tickled at the base of my balls, a fluttering I didn’t recognize. “How many professors?”
“With their students,” he said with a wink.
Heat flamed my chest, but I held my cool. It’s not like I had forgotten that Asher was twenty years younger than Frankie and me. He was of a different generation, and a part of our time together had been the pleasure of exploring across that distance.
But something about the way he said that reminded me there was something kinky about it, too.
Something that got me hard. And, as it turned out, got Frankie hard, too.
An erection tented his trousers as Asher traced a circle with his finger on his knee. Asher looked to me and bit down on his lip.
I took a drink of my beer and locked him in my eyes. “As far as you should be concerned,” I said, “the only three people in this hotel are sitting in this room.”
Asher collapsed his hand down on Frankie’s knee, like my words struck him. “Okay,” he said, batting his eyelashes. “I’m feeling the vibe.” He reached sideways, his eyes still locked in mine, grasping for his beer. When he found it, though, he only managed to knock it down, spilling it across the desk, sending amber waves gurgling to the carpet.
Asher startled, then swore as he ran to the bathroom to grab a towel. “Fucking beer,” he grumbled on the way.
Frankie and I both chuckled, but tried to hold our laughs in. “What do you think?” I asked quietly. “Should we mess with him a little?”
“Mess with him?” Frankie asked.
“He keeps saying he’s trouble…”
Before I could say more, Asher came back. He tossed the towel onto the spilled beer, soaking it up. When he started to stand back up, Franklin shot his hand out.
“Wait!”
Asher looked to him, then to me.
“Who said you could stand?” I asked.
Asher looked down at the floor, his hands pressed against the carpet. “I can’t stand up?”
“You made a mess,” Frankie answered, then jerked his thumb toward me. “Now you have to deal with Rory.”
I smiled. Yup. That sounds right.
Asher sat back on his legs, then turned to me. The glint in his eyes gave me all the reassurance I needed that we were on the right path. He pouted his lips, then fluttered his eyelashes again. “Please, Daddy Rory?” he asked with a whine that nearly became a moan. “I want to stand up again.”
I parted my legs and felt my cock hardening. We’d barely been in the hotel room twenty minutes, but already, things were boiling over.
Every time we got together with Asher, it seemed, the furnace was hotter.
I took a drink of my beer, then handed it to Frankie to enjoy. “Get me another beer,” I said. “And I’ll think about it.”
Asher looked to me, then turned his head to the mini fridge. Arching his back slightly, he started to crawl his way across the room, his ass wiggling behind him suggestively.
Just like that.
“Anything for you, Daddy Franklin?” he asked, turning to look at us once he’d crossed the room.
Frankie’s fingers tightened against the bed. I could feel the power radiating off of his body. “No, Asher. You be a good boy and get that beer to Rory.”
Asher bit down on his lip, then crawled back across the room, holding the beer above his head the whole way, right up until he was a few inches away.
I stopped him and took his face in my hands. “Do you like this?” I said. “If you need things to slow down, you just say yellow. And if you want them to stop, say red.”
He blinked a few times, then nodded. “Green,” he whispered.
I grinned. “Very good.”
Asher crawled forward, still arching his back, fire burning in his gaze as he stared at me. He sucked in a breath, then pulled himself the last few inches, dragging his legs down the carpet.
Which is when his foot bumped the side table, and he fumbled a second beer, spilling it down the carpet near the first.
“Fucking what the fuck,” Asher cursed, scrambling with the towel and still on all fours.