The Roommate Situation (11 page)

Closing my eyes, I bite his shoulder through his shirt, wanting more than this. Groaning as Derek makes his way into my open fly.

I fight with the waistband of his briefs. My fingers tangle in his hair, coarse and warm, and then I find the source of the heat, the hard rod pushed sideways in his jeans. I dig my fingers under the rough cotton and tug his cock upward so I can wrap my hand around it.

His breath catches as my thumb slides through the hot wetness leaking out of him.

He pushes my hip down, rolling me onto my back, jamming me against the wall. The arm under my head pulls tight against the cuff holding it, reminding me I’m locked to the bed. I moan and push my hips up as he drags down the waistband of my underwear. My cock pops free, fresh air a shock over the heat of newly exposed skin.

His mouth finds mine, his tongue pushing in. I groan around it, clutching his dick. Already the inevitable’s on its way. He breaks the kiss to catch his breath, and I push my face into the crook of his neck. The orgasm’s rising from the bottoms of my feet, pulling the ocean behind it. I clench my trapped hand and pull until the leather bites my wrist. The feeling wells like a tsunami. My other hand is still moving—faster and faster—but it’s a dislocated feeling, like jerking myself off, but the rhythm’s off from what my cock is feeling. It’s strange and off-kilter and amazing. I’ve never experienced anything like this. My cheek scrapes his jaw as I tip my head back, the scratchiness of stubble a prickling heat, like the licking of flames. My breath catches, and everything goes white as release breaks through me.

When I come to myself, I’m panting in his ear with his jaw pressed hard against mine, his hand still clutching my cock. My hand is still moving, somehow, and I tighten my grip and focus on it, his shaft rigid and hot in my grip.

He moves his hand to my leg, gripping. His hips push and pull, matching my rhythm, quickening into jerks, and his breath comes in jerks too. Heat catches in my hand, spilling between my fingers. He keeps pumping, clutching my side, sliding through the slick wetness.

He slows and finally drops back on the mattress, his hand cupping my jaw.

“Well.” He’s out of breath. “That was unexpected,” he says. The rasp at the edge of his voice is more pronounced.

“You’re telling me.” Unexpected that he was up for it. Unexpected that I made a move to begin with. The collar of his shirt tickles my nose. I move my head back.

He pushes up on an arm. “Hope I can find that key. I’d ask you to help, but you threw it all the way over there.”

“Whoops. Hand me that towel?” The one from my shower hangs over the top of my locker door. I stretch my free hand in that direction, my fingers already turning sticky. My own jizz cools on my stomach. I’m going to need another shower.

He drops the towel over my arm. One-handed, cleanup is awkward, but I clutch the towel and give it my best while Derek tucks himself in, then crouches to feel around on the floor for the key. All the lamps are pointed in my direction. He’s crawling around in the shadows.

“Got it,” he says, rising.

I scoot down the bed so he can get to the cuff, and I look at his shoulders while he does it. At the line of his back. I clutch the towel in my hand and marvel over the fact that we’ve just done what we’ve done.

“Sorry about the mess,” he says when my wrist is free and I have two hands to clean up with.

“Sorry about the unexpected interruption of the photo shoot.”

“Oh, hey, no problem.”

“I hope you got some good pictures.”

“I think I did.”

“You gonna go list them?”

“Might as well, after all this work.” He flashes a smile.

“I’m gonna go shower,” I say.

It feels strange, walking to the shower with a clean towel and my chill pants bundled under my arm. I don’t feel different—yet I do. My body’s the same, yet as I run soap over it, it feels like unfamiliar territory.

I can still feel the scrape of his stubble on my face.

The grip of his fingers around my cock.

Back in the room, I pull a T-shirt over my still-damp skin before balling up the dirty towel and stuffing it in the laundry basket.

“Done,” he says from his side of the room.

I walk around the locker and look at him sitting on his bed, his back against my locker, his legs stretched out.

I just slept with this guy.

I say, “Let me see.”

He turns the laptop toward me. He’s used one of the single-cuff pictures for the listing, one with my fist clenched. The fifty-dollar cuffs are now, adding in my cut and the straps, sixty-dollar cuffs. Competing with the high-end ones. We’re definitely going to have to do a shoot with those so we can raise the price.

“Looks good,” I say.

“Here’s to many sales.”

“Here’s to ’em.” I pull back to my own side. My phone sits on the edge of my desk. Maybe it’s a day for doing unexpected, stupid things and having them work out well. I open my messaging app and start typing.

I hear him moving around on the other side as I hit Send. He appears with an unlit cigarette in his mouth, his boots and jacket on. “What’re you doing?” he says.

“Sending a text to the band guy.”

“About fucking time.”

The phone screen shines in my face, silent. I exchange it for my laptop so I can work on my speech assignment. Derek heads out the door; I catch a last glimpse of his backside before the door shuts.

I climb onto the bed with the laptop.

My phone stays silent.

The thought that I just had sex right here on this bed buoys into my brain, crowding out the speech I should be working on.

I just had
sex.

Derek comes back, eventually, and within a few minutes he’s immersed in his own stuff on his side of the room.

I just had
sex
. I have never done that before.

Eventually I have to give up. There’s no room for speech in my brain tonight. I slide the laptop under my bed and crawl under the covers.

Chapter Eleven

When I open my eyes, it’s late morning, and Derek’s not in the room. I want to stay in bed, but my bladder says it’s urgent I crawl out from under the warm covers and subject myself to the cold tiles of the communal restroom. After I relieve myself, I scrub my teeth, then pad back to the room, scratching my hair. The bed beckons wantonly the moment I open the door, the comforter invitingly rumpled. I have a class at two, though, so I try to ignore it.

I check my phone. One message. From Jason.

My heart kicks up a beat.

And then I read the text:
We JUST filled that position. Sorry dude.

So that’s that. I drop the phone on the desk and crawl into bed, then lie on my stomach, my arms under the pillow. I’m staring at the middle of the room, at nothing.

Shit.

I’d had all that time to get in touch with the guy, and I’d dragged my fucking feet.

I bury my face and stretch my arms, grab hold of the bedposts.

Memories of the night before hit my brain and my cock with a thud.

I would much rather think about
that
than my missed opportunity.

Had I actually done that?

Letting go of the headboard, I move my wrists higher, touching the cool metal, like they’re tethered there.

I shift my hips. Pleasure ripples, encouraging more.

And Derek—his mouth, the grip of his hand, the scrape of his jaw. The catch of breath when I gripped his cock.

Jesus.

I rub myself against the mattress.

Jesus.

Jesus.

I push up and crawl around so that I’m sitting in the corner, hemmed in by the wall and Derek’s locker. What did it mean? Would we do it again? Was he going to act like it hadn’t happened? Was he going to be weird about it?

Would we do it again?

The lock snicks.

I look up as the door swings open.

“Morning, sunshine,” he says, walking in, his laptop under his arm, a book bag sliding off his shoulder. “I knocked over my box of tools this morning, and you sawed logs right through it, sleeping like the dead.”

“I snored?”

“More like breathing loud.”

“Sorry.”

“I’m not complaining.” He drops his stuff on his desk. “I’m just saying you were out. Aren’t you supposed to be heading to class?”

“Yeah.”

He stands between the lockers, bracing a hand on one. “Everything okay?”

“The band already found a guitarist.”

“Shit,” he says. “I’m sorry.”

“It’s my own fault. And, honestly, what would have been the point of getting the gig—if I
had
gotten the gig—and then not actually having anything to play?”

“You’d have thought of something.” He disappears into his end of the room, the rustle of him stripping out of his jacket a familiar sound now.

“Hey, uh…last night,” I say.

“Yeah?”

“Was that strictly a one-time thing, or do you want to do that again?”

He reappears. He’d shaved, I notice, his jaw smooth. He says, “What, like, now?”

I give it a few seconds’ thought. That’s really all it takes. “I could do it now.”

His eyebrows rise, but he takes the toothpick out of his mouth and sets it on the edge of my desk. I press into the corner, watching him strip off his shirt in broad daylight, the lean muscles in his back shifting under his skin. He still has his scuffed boots on, his Levi’s that could have been the same pair he was wearing the night before. My gaze climbs to his face as he turns long enough to walk to the bed and turn again, then drops onto its side to pull off his boots.

My chest rises quickly, part excitement, part anxiety. What if last night had been a fluke? What if had been because of the cuffs?

I stare at his back, remembering the press of his body from last night, the heat and eagerness of his mouth.

Could we actually do this, as a thing? Could it be as easy as this?

As he lets go of his second boot, I come out of the corner, reaching for his neck, and he’s turning toward me already, his arm coming around my back. The world surges, the two of us in the eye of a hurricane, time stopping as we taste each other, and it’s the same taste as last night, the same desperate need rushing up, making me clutch his neck.

He grabs me by the hips and yanks me onto my back. I clasp the headboard over my head, watching his face, the lock of hair falling over his forehead, the line of his cheek, the way his lips part as he lays himself on top of me. His weight is every bit as good as I remembered it, pinning me to the bed. I push my hands into his hair and pull him against my mouth again. His cock digs into me through the layers of denim and cotton. With a tilt of his hips, he rubs his body on mine, and I grind right back.

His back is warm from the shirt he was wearing. His mouth tastes like tobacco, and underneath that it tastes like Derek. Despite the clean shave, a ghost of stubble grinds against my chin. I want more of it, more of the prickly burn from last night. I push his face into the crook of my neck, lifting my chin to give him full access. The trippy Black Angels poster over my bed seems to pulse until I close my eyes at the bite of his teeth.

The dry humping’s almost too much, Derek grinding relentlessly, his warm breaths puffing across my jaw. Enough of this and I’m going to come, and I don’t want that. I want to come in his hand, with my fist around his cock.

I roll, pushing him against the wall. While he reaches between us, kneading—
oh God
—I have to put my thoughts elsewhere. Astronomy. The principles of microeconomics. Just even thinking those words helps. I get his buckle undone and my hand inside his jeans, pushing my fingers into the heat until I find what I’m after.

His eyelids skim down. His lips part.

His fingertips, finding their way under the elastic of my waistband, are a shock of pleasure, skin on skin.

We don’t kiss so much as breathe with our mouths against each other as we jerk each other off, using nothing but precum for lube. Jesus,
this
. This is what I want. And I want it to go on forever, just stay in this bed getting each other off until graduation. Until we have our graduate degrees. Until they’re kicking us out. Until the muscles in our arms burn and we can’t go on any longer—but it’s only a moment later that my voice is catching in my throat, an orgasm pulling through me, my body shuddering as it takes me.

And damn Derek for lasting longer again. I put my free hand on his chest and push away a little so I can look down at my other hand, working his cock. Get a real look at it for the first time. It’s not a lot different from my own, maybe a little thinner, maybe a little longer. The color is the most difference we have, and the darkness of the hairs curling from his open fly.

The side of my fist pats the denim, and I realize he’s watching me watch him.

Embarrassed and turned on, I press against him again, burying my face in his neck, where it smells like soap and aftershave and cigarette smoke.
Ha. Yeah Mom, I
can
smell the smoke on him
. I close my mouth around the muscle at the side of his throat and taste everything, cigarette smoke and all.

Derek’s breaths quicken. His hand grips my hip.

With a half-choked sound, he tips his hip forward and comes on both of us.

Breathing just as heavily as he is, I back my upper body up a little so I can lay my head on the pillow. I keep my fingers curled around his softening cock, feeling it recede little by little in my grip. My thumb rests in his come.

“Well,” he breathes, “that was unexpected.”

“That’s what you said last night.” I close my eyes. I don’t want to move. If I could spend the rest of the day right here like this, it might make up for the missed opportunity with Jason’s band.

“Well, I was telling the truth both times,” he says.

“Are we okay doing this?”

“I’m not having a problem with it.”

“I don’t think I am either.” I uncurl my fingers, letting him go, leaving my hand lying on his hip.

A soft touch at my chin nudges me to lift it. His lips touch mine, soft, just for a second before pulling away. “Are you going to class?” he asks, pushing his fingers into my hair.