Total pages in book: 76
Estimated words: 73174 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 366(@200wpm)___ 293(@250wpm)___ 244(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 73174 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 366(@200wpm)___ 293(@250wpm)___ 244(@300wpm)
“You don’t even like men,” I told him, a now-familiar ache building in my chest. “Why are you doing this? Why are you here?”
“Why not?” he said back to me before leaning in and kissing me again, with a lot more tongue than he had in real life. “I just want to play.”
My cock throbbed.
My brain protested.
I’m not your toy, I thought, but I opened my mouth to his. Greedy and desperate. Pulling him up close against me in the bed, grinding up against his thigh, grasping for any inch of skin on skin I could get until my cock felt like it was going to explode—
I woke up again, sitting up in bed, this time.
“Christ,” I muttered softly. “I fucking hate you.”
Was I going to push my hard-on up against the mattress like some hormone-laden teenager, or was I just going to get it over with, already? I wrapped my hand around my cock and started to pump it in my fist.
I was almost angry with how good it felt. Finally relieving something that had been building up all night. Building up since I’d met Storm, maybe.
He’s just eye candy, and you’re only human.
I tried to think about anything else as I got myself off. The hottest porn videos I’d ever seen. Thoughts of stripping guys out of fancy suits. Fantasies about professors and students. Anything generically hot.
But the memories of my dreams were burnished into my mind like a bruise.
I gripped my cock, the image of Storm’s stupid naked photos flashing through my mind. I’d barely let myself look at them, but that memory was a permanent part of my mind now.
And the thought of what Storm had done to me earlier tonight—in real life—was on me forever now, too, like a fucking tattoo.
His possessive kiss.
The fact that he’d had zero hesitation.
I hate you, I thought.
But on top of it was another, quieter thought, too: I want you to do it again.
I felt a wave crashing down on me and before I could stop myself, I was coming, thinking only of how Storm’s lips had felt in real life. Hating how much I’d liked it. Wishing I wasn’t so desperate, yet craving him like a drug.
“God,” I muttered under my breath as I breathed heavy, floating back down to reality.
I’d gotten it out of my system. I’d let myself think about the stereotypically hot muscular guy with the stereotypically hot body, and now I could regain some shred of sanity. I cleaned myself up and when I stopped to look out my back windows, there was no one outside on Storm’s lawn anymore.
Tomorrow, I was going to be back to myself.
Back to my priorities.
No more fucking around.
For a few days, it felt like my plans were working. I plunged deep into wrapping up a few former marketing clients in the Lux Marketing offices. I held a meeting with Walter Cutmore and a former client who was running a granola bar startup company, and it felt like a return to who I knew I could be.
The meeting went smoothly. Everyone acted professional and businesslike. Veronica, the woman who owned the granola company, certainly hadn’t ever been a red flag or problematic in any way, and Cutmore approved of her.
“That’s the kind of client I like to work with,” he said after she left that morning. “She’s a good family woman, too. Devoted to her husband. Three kids. Good churchgoing family.”
I clenched my jaw. “It’s always a beautiful thing when people are devoted to what they care about.”
I meant what I said—Veronica was wonderful, and I always respected people who cared deeply about their own faith.
But after years of working for Cutmore, I knew the implications behind his words. Once, over a few glasses of scotch, he had said a few things to me that I’d never forgotten in my life.
“There will come a time when you need to grow up, Emmett,” he’d said to me, his gruff face forming a stern expression. “I know your father is too soft-hearted to tell you, but you need to end up with a woman one day. Now I’m not anti-gay, or whatever the media would label me. But the only proper place for a man of business is with a true family.”
It was the closest I’d ever been to quitting Lux Marketing.
I’d gone to my father the next day, telling him what Cutmore had said. My father had always known that he was on the conservative side, but he’d never expressed any opinions about trying to make me end up straight, before. Or maybe he just wanted me to fake being straight for the public, which was even worse.
“What does he expect me to do, marry a woman and just pretend I’m attracted to her?” I told Dad. “How cruel would that be to the woman? To my damn children, if I had any?”