Frat Boy and Toppy (24 page)

“But do you think you would have figured out how you feel?”

“I don’t know.” And he didn’t really like to think about it. He kissed Brad’s neck. “I know it would have taken me a lot longer to work it out, though.”

Brad ran his index finger down Sebastian’s instep. “How did you figure it out?”

Brad’s neck needed another kiss. Sebastian sighed into his skin and rested his forehead on Brad’s neck again. “Well, first I had most of a six-pack, yeah?”

“Yeah?” Brad whispered, tickling the soles of Sebastian’s feet now.

He nodded. “Then I made a list.”

Silence. Even the fingers stopped. Then Brad reached back and hooked a finger in the top of Sebastian’s sock, pulling it off. “What kinda list?” He pulled off the other sock.

“I wanted to know what being in love was like, yeah? So I thought if I wrote down everything I felt for you and then embellished the feelings, that might tell me.”

Brad’s hands stopped moving. “Embellished them?”

“Like, enhanced them. Magnify them as much as I could.”

“Huh.” Brad’s hands started moving again, fingertips tracing the bones of Sebastian’s feet. Sebastian squeezed Brad tighter.

“So, I made a list. But there wasn’t any way to make the stuff on it
more
. I don’t think it’s possible . . . I mean, I don’t think things get more intense than this, hon. The things on the list . . .”

“Like what?”

Sebastian took a deep breath. “Like when we make love I feel like we’re melting into one person. Like when I imagine you in bed with someone else, I get physically ill. Like if you needed a kidney, I’d give you mine. Like if I could take away the pain I caused you today and suffer it for you, I would.”

“All of that,” Brad whispered. “I feel every one of those things for you.”

Sebastian blinked rapidly, lashes leaving wet trails on Brad’s neck. “Thank God.”

Brad twisted his head and shoulders around to kiss him. He knew it was partly for comfort, but when Brad touched him, he needed him. Needed to be naked and have his hands on Brad, making him cry out his name.

He could barely pull back to speak against Brad’s mouth. “Wanna make love to you,” he panted.

“I want that, too,” Brad breathed, lying back and pulling Sebastian on top of him.

Sebastian’s breath kept hitching in his chest, and his fingers wouldn’t work. He could hardly look Brad in the eyes; he felt too exposed. But Brad stroked Sebastian’s back and got Sebastian’s fly open and his own jeans down his thighs. Squirming a hand between them and holding their shafts together. Holding his jaw and looking at him.

Brad’s hand felt . . . just . . . incomparable around them, holding them together. Sebastian rested his forehead on Brad’s, cupping his face, stroking his cheekbones. Too uncoordinated to move. Unable to catch his breath. Brad’s hand tight around both of them, making Sebastian’s skin vibrate and excitement resonate through his balls and the pit of his stomach and up his back. Taking the ache he’d lived with most of the day and turning it into something else by the judicious application of friction.

“Brad,” he panted. His hips remembered what to do, finally, and he ground against Brad. Brad brought his other hand up to Sebastian’s jaw, tilted his head to the right angle. And then, just like every other time Sebastian had kissed him, Brad opened up for him, let Sebastian have his mouth. Moaned and arched into him when Sebastian swept in with his tongue.

Sebastian planted his knees on the bed and thrust against Brad’s skin, working one hand under Brad to hold him at just the right angle. Forcing Brad’s legs up. Brad’s cockhead rubbed just above Sebastian’s pubic bone, hot and getting slippery, and Brad was making those noises he made. Sebastian gripped him tighter, a finger slipping between Brad’s cheeks. “C’mon honey,” he panted. “Let me hear it, Bradley.”

Brad tilted his head back, eyelids heavy, and Sebastian knew it was all over for him. He drove himself into Brad’s skin once more and came. “Fuck, Brad,” he whispered, “Need you.”

He felt and heard Brad come with one of those cries he made, fingernails in Sebastian’s back, cum on his ribs. Sebastian kissed him, hard and wide open, eating the noises Brad made.

They lay there panting a minute, but it wasn’t enough. Sebastian slid down, pulling Brad’s shirt up farther, over his head, and licked his skin clean.

Brad was still mostly hard, still breathing heavy. Sebastian sucked him into his mouth and gently coaxed him back to full hardness. He watched Brad’s face, then his eyes when Brad shoved a pillow under his head to see Sebastian suck him.

Sebastian took his time, but eventually Brad was rocking his hips, mouth hanging open as he panted, on the edge of writhing. Sebastian massaged Brad’s balls, slid his middle finger down to press on Brad’s hole, and Brad came again, biting his hand to keep quiet.

Sebastian pulled himself back up to sprawl over a completely limp, warm, sated Brad. He kissed him, letting Brad taste himself in Sebastian’s mouth. He pulled back, smiling at Brad’s heavy eyes and flushed face.

He looked debauched, smiling lazily.

“I love you,” Sebastian whispered, not willing to let Brad drift off yet.

Brad’s smile got a lot less lazy. “I love you, too.”

“Are you sure?”

Brad looked startled. “Of course I’m sure. I love you, Sebastian.” He stretched up for a kiss. Sebastian followed him down and rested his head against Brad’s.

“I’m sorry for what I put you through, honey,” Sebastian whispered in his ear.

“I know. It’s okay.” Brad’s arms tightened around him. “Whatever it took for you to figure it out.”

“I believed you; that you loved me. I think I was scared.”

“I was scared too,” Brad whispered.

Sebastian rubbed his cheek against Brad’s, listening to the scritching sound. “I’m sorry,” he repeated because it seemed important. Brad squeezed him even tighter, turning his face to nuzzle his cheek. “If it makes it any better—” Sebastian paused to swallow “—it made me feel amazing when you told me. Nearly the best moment of my life.”

Brad froze, nose against his cheek, chest tensing as he held his breath. Sebastian heard him lick his lips before he asked, “What’s the
best
moment of your life?”

His heart thumped at him, terrified and elated. “This one.”

Brad’s breath escaped in a whoosh against his ear. “Mine too.”

His pounding heart was now accompanied by his tremulous fingers in Brad’s hair. “I have something else to talk to you about,” he said against Brad’s cheek.

“Hmm?”

Even though Brad wasn’t watching him, he still had to squeeze his eyes shut before he could say, “Move in with me.”

Oh, hell
. That might have been better as a question.

Brad pushed himself up on his elbow, dumping Sebastian on the bed, to stare down at him “You want me to live with you?”

Sebastian unscrunched his eyes enough to try to read Brad’s expression. Shock, but not fear. He sucked in a breath and forged on. “Yeah. I really, really want you to move in with me.” He reached with trembling hands to cup Brad’s face. “We’ll just try it for the summer, yeah? See how it goes.”

He could tell Brad later he wasn’t allowed to change his mind.

Brad stared down at him, unblinking, as Sebastian’s heart beat outside of his body, somewhere in the space between them. Brad drew in a shaky breath. “Are you sure? ’Cause I want to, but I don’t know if I’ll ever make myself leave.”

Sebastian swallowed. “I’m sure. Tell me you’ll live with me.”

Brad smiled all at once—beamed at Sebastian, grabbing one of his wrists and holding tight. “Okay. I’ll live with you. I’m staying here this summer. Professor Harris offered me a job. I can move in whenever—”

ohthankGod

“—She asked me a week ago, but I was kind of waiting to tell you. Sebastian?”

Sebastian swallowed. His shaking had built up to nearly seismic proportions when Brad agreed. He probably looked sick to Brad, but he could feel a smile starting to take over his face. A tear he hadn’t even known was there rolled down his temple, and he had to let go of Brad with one hand to swipe at his eyes, making an effort to get himself under control. “Toby will go home for the summer, but he’ll pay rent to keep his room in the apartment. Once I kick Paul out, we’ll have it to ourselves. Then maybe in the fall we can get our own place, yeah?”

“You’re kicking Paul out?”

“Paul’s an asshole to my boyfriend. That’s unacceptable.”

“Can you just do that, though? Kick him out?”

Sebastian shook his head. He didn’t care about “can.” “My name’s on the lease; his isn’t. So, yeah, I think I can. God, Brad, I fucking want you there so much I don’t care. We’ll move now if that asshole won’t. Just live with me.”

Brad leaned his head against Sebastian’s palm, nuzzling it, then cupped one side of Sebastian’s face, thumb tracing his lips. “Think of all the things we can do if we have that place to ourselves.”

“All the time we can spend together. Yeah.” Sebastian couldn’t wait anymore. He pulled Brad down for a kiss. A hard, possessive, possibly frantic kiss. Brad let him get it out—all the emotions he’d worked up in the last few minutes—let Sebastian have his mouth and his tongue and whatever he needed. Giving himself.

Sebastian almost let it get out of control, but he didn’t want to make love in Brad’s frat again. He ended the kiss. “Let’s go home,” he whispered against Brad’s temple.

Brad smiled against his chin. “Yeah. I want that. Let’s go.”

I'd like to thank Dlee, Thorny and the Posse for all their help in shaping this book. A special thanks goes to Taylor V. Donovan for endless support.

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Raised on a steady media diet of Monty Python, classical music, and the visual arts, Anne Tenino rocked the mental health world when she was the first patient diagnosed with Compulsive Romantic Disorder. Since that day, with her trusty psychiatrist by her side, Anne has taken on conquering the M/M world through therapeutic writing. Finding out who those guys having sex in her head are and what to do with them has been extremely liberating.