He blinked. “Huh.”
“What?”
“Were you trying to make a point?”
“About you?”
“Yeah.”
“No, but,” I began, and then stopped. “Huh. So, uh?—”
“No,” he said, narrowing his eyes, and I laughed.
“One step at a time,” I said, ignoring his growl. “If it makes you feel any better. I don’t blame you for struggling with this.”
“Really?” he asked doubtfully.
“Really,” I said, giving him a curious look.
“I mean…you went through some shit…obviously, to be comfortable like you are,” he said. “Didn’t think you’d be all that patient with me…not being that comfortable.”
I laughed. “From the moment you were aware of being attracted to people, you were attracted to women and like that your whole life. And then you meet me and suddenly you have to deal with the fact that you’re into, maybe not guys overall, but at least one guy. I can’t say I would be jumping on the ‘I’m okay with this’ train immediately after being strictly dickly my whole life.”
“Strictly…” he began, and shook his head with a sigh. “You’d probably deal with it better than me.”
“I mean, probably,” I had to admit. “You’re a lot more…rigid than me. But it’s one of those things where, as a gay man, I’ve had to face issues with my sexuality in a way a straight person never has to. So if I were suddenly attracted to a woman, it wouldbe weird, but I already had to face down how weird my sexuality is to the rest of the world. So it makes it a little easier.”
“Huh, never thought about it like that,” he admitted thoughtfully.
We were standing close, and I couldn’t resist the urge to wrap an arm around his waist and breathe deeply of his scent: soap, wet earth, and the thick smoke of his cigar. He grunted in what was probably supposed to be annoyance, but I couldn’t help smiling as I felt the rumble of the sound against my face.
“Rottweiler,” I blurted, and laughed when he gave me a puzzled expression. “I just remembered a dog I had as a kid. He was a Rottie, and he used to scare the shit out of people. Even when they’d pet him, he’d make these low noises in his throat that sounded like the angriest snarls, except they were happy boy noises. And you just did the same thing.”
“Fuck off,” he growled and scowled harder when I laughed.
“Shut up,” I told him softly, pulling him down to kiss me. There was a moment of resistance as I felt his attention shift everywhere, and I fought the urge to be offended. He didn’t want to get caught, that was all, but…he kissed me back.
It was gentle, gentler than any kiss we’d shared before, and a flash of warmth that was neither heated nor urgent passed through me when I heard him give a soft sigh. We were pushing against one another and I could feel his dick stiffening against my waist, but eh, I knew how it went. My dick still got hard if I held a guy’s hand sometimes. Plus, if a gentle kiss was enough to turn him on, that was fine by me. I wasn’t going to be annoyed, maybe because I was just a horny person, but I understood you could enjoy tenderness with someone while still being turned on by it.
He sighed, bowing his head and pulling away from the kiss. It stung a little to see his regret, but Rome wasn’t built overnight. I couldn’t expect him to transition into being comfortable withanother guy just because he’d discovered the joys of gay sex. If anything, it was easier to be into someone sexually than it was to be tender or affectionate with them.
Xander eyed me. “What?”
“Nothing,” I said with a shrug. “I am having a random thought, though.”
“I probably don’t wanna know,” he grumbled as he plopped back down on the tree, tilting his face up into the sunlight and taking a deep breath. “Fine, what was your thought?”
“More like a hypothetical question,” I said, grinning as I plopped down onto his lap without warning.
He grunted, snapping his head to glare at me. “Seriously?”
I ran my hand up his thigh and cupped his groin. I couldn’t help but snicker when I saw his irritation flicker into a different heat that I knew damn well he would not follow through on at the moment. It was one thing to kiss me or let me grope him in a potentially open area; it was something else entirely to have sex. That would be a lot harder to conceal quickly.
“You’re totally thinking about what you wish you could do to me right now, aren’t you?” I asked.
“Might be considerin’ one day finding somewhere away from these fuckheads and bending you over something,” he admitted in a rough voice that went straight to my groin. “Now ask your stupid ass question.”
“Kinda taking a gamble here, hoping it’s going to cheer you up a little,” I said and hurried on when I could see him losing patience. “It just popped into my head…what your wife, or soon-to-be-ex-wife, would think if she could see you right now.”