By the time Sunday night came around, Tom was grateful he didn’t get pulled over for doing a hundred on the Mass Pike all the way back to campus.
He’d refused to get on the phone with Reese during the drive back.
“Me ending up a giant smear of blood and come on the highway is not the way this weekend is gonna end. I’m hanging up now. See you in an hour.”
He bounced through the radio spectrum, taking out his excess energy and sexual tension with ADHD hopping about, from alt country to some heavy electronica, to the 50s and 60s classics his dad had loved. Until that last made him blink and soften up and he cranked it back to the heavy bass of dubstep, whose mechanical shuffling, thumping beat kept his edge until he slid off the highway, through the side streets and into the perfect karma of a parking spot around the corner from Perkins House.
Legs pumping, he bounded up the stairs two and three at a time and his heart was racing when he hit their room, shutting the door with a click behind him and leaning back against it with his hands on the knob behind him.
“Hey.”
Reese was seated at his desk, head propped on one fist, elbow on the desk, as he angled back and watched Tom come through the door.
“Hey.”
Books sprawled across the desk, battling for space with scribbled-upon notebook paper and an aggressive number of pens, but Tom would have bet a hundred bucks that his roommate couldn’t have described the last page he’d read.
He was getting good at picking up on a nervous Reese via nonverbal cues.
The lip biting. The staring up at him through the eyelashes. The digging of one hand into a back jeans pocket, pushing down a little so the waistband gaped at the small of his back, just calling for a hand to be snuck down there until fingers grabbed the top of his ass…
Okay, maybe that part was his imagination.
“I should mention that, although I talk a really good game, I maybe crossed some lines last night.” Yup. There was no denying Reese’s nerves. He wasn’t quite lion tamer behind the chair again, but that might have been strictly a willpower triumph. Tom forced his hands to release the doorknob and hang casually at his sides, instead of ripping his own T-shirt off over his head and stripping his pants off immediately thereafter.
“Reese, I can’t even count the number of lines we’ve crossed. Think you can be more specific?”
“Umm, about the whole sex thing?”
Yeeeah, that didn’t bode well for his evening.
Focus.
Listen to Reese, not your dick, asshole.
“If sex is off the table, I’m gonna cry. Just saying.” He winked at Reese and immediately felt like a total creep. “I’m kidding, of course. I mean, really, just kidding. God, that sounded like I wanted to pressure you into sex or a blowjob or something. It’s totally okay if you want a break. Or you know, to not do it. Ever. Again.”
Seriously with the crying, though.
Reese flushed.
“Don’t be stupid. If I could’ve sucked your dick through the phone last night, I would’ve. I just can’t, you know, throw down. Like, I don’t know, some kind of sex fiend or something.”
“Dude, you are totally a sex fiend.”
The compliment distracted Reese for a moment. He planted a hand on his hip and cocked his head to the side, eyebrows flying up.
“I know, right? But you know what I mean. I still need to…” He trailed off, biting his lip and tilting his chin down while looking up at Tom in a way that he already read as tentative flirtation. The contrast with the gritty, filthy words that had streamed through his phone like a heroin hit to his brain made his skin hum and tighten. He held himself in place, the door hard and cold beneath his shoulders.
“Do things your way. I got it. No worries.” He nodded, gripping his own wrists behind his back so hard that he wondered if he’d leave bruises. “Whatever works for you. I’m down.” He cleared his throat after another moment of silent staring from Reese, sitting at the desk and wide-eyeing him. “What, um, works for you?”
“Not looming over me from across the room would be good.” Reese frowned at him as he stood up and took a step forward.
Tom’s knees shook a little, catching him off guard. He put a hand up to the corner edge of the wall just past their closets, almost all the way in their room, but still holding back.
“Tell me what to do and I’ll do it.” His laugh was short. “Shit. There isn’t a goddamn thing you couldn’t tell me to do right now that I wouldn’t do.”
He didn’t think Reese’s eyes could get any bigger. He was wrong. When they narrowed, Tom’s heart started racing so fast he could barely hear Reese over the rushing sound in his ears.
“Lie down on your bed.”
He jumped to obey, kicking off his shoes on the way. Once on his back, though, he didn’t know what to do with his hands, lacing them awkwardly on his stomach, like a school kid in church.
Not the image he wanted in his mind right now.
“Take your pants off.”
It was harder than it sounded. His hands fumbled with his zipper and he struggled to get his jeans past his hips. Struggled until they were finally at his thighs and he could push them off, tucking his knees up to his chest to do it, aware the entire time of Reese watching him, eyes on his stiffening dick or his ass.
Reese didn’t tell him to take his shirt off and lying there partially dressed heightened the feeling of exposure until his hands started to tremble. Flipping their dynamic, being the one who was watched after all this time of being the one who did the watching, made him shiver. He didn’t know how Reese could stand it. The tension, the suspense, feeling someone’s eyes on you and not knowing what was going through their head.
Being able to do this either made Reese the bravest or the most fucked up guy he knew. Maybe both.
The overhead light was shining in his eyes until Reese’s shadow fell across him as he moved to the side of the bed, looking down at Tom with a calm face. He’d slipped into that place he went to with the boys he picked up and brought back to their room and for a moment Tom almost said something. Almost sat up and tried to change the mood until it felt more like Friday night had, when the two of them had tipped over the edge together.
But he’d meant it when he’d told Reese that there wasn’t anything Reese couldn’t tell him to do right now and a part of him wanted to experience it again, that total surrender of control he’d handed to Reese the night he’d burned his arm. He knew that the control was a way for Reese to handle his own fears, to keep himself in the now instead of sliding back to memories of a night that paralyzed him when he couldn’t block it out, but Tom also had his own reasons for giving up control. For loosening, if only for a little while, that tight grip he had on his every hour, thought and deed, everything so precisely organized to allow him this chance at clawing a little bit of normalcy back into his life by finishing school. Normalcy and the lock on his future, that thing that had always been vaguely golden and sturdy, until the day he’d watched it shimmer and disappear like a mirage. When he’d finally woken up and realized that there was no one, no one who would help him, no one to provide that safety net, he’d gone on lockdown. Every dollar, every hour, of vital importance, no time allowed to be wasted on fear, frustration, loneliness, any of the things he felt in the months of high-end homelessness he’d made it through on his way back here. Here, to this room, where he’d planned on holing up and shutting out the world until he graduated.
This room, where he’d found his wreck of a boy, battling his way out from under his own demon and watching him now with eyes that narrowed and gleamed.
“Touch yourself.”
He dropped his hands immediately to his dick, only to have Reese swat them away with a glancing blow that made his dick bounce and harden further. He gasped in surprise.
“Not your dick. Not yet. Just touch yourself. S
how me what feels good.”
Awkwardness swirled in his belly as he flushed, feeling like an idiot. What felt good? Shit. He didn’t even know any more what felt good, other than Reese touching him, which wasn’t happening yet, but he hoped would soon.
He closed his eyes, because he wasn’t brave enough to do this with them open. Dropped his hands to his chest and tried to remember if he liked to be touched there. His hands were jerking across his stomach, the least sexy caress ever, when the light still glowing through his eyelids dimmed further and lips brushed against his forehead.
“Hey, relax.”
It was easier to talk with his eyes shut. Easier to be honest in the little bit of dark he made for himself.
“I feel like an idiot.”
Reese’s breath ghosted over his face as he huffed a laugh. “You look fucking hot. And watching your dick get hard without you touching it is going to be even hotter.” Tom felt those words like a hot lick from his base to his crown, and his dick was definitely on board with this game. “Go with it.”
Inhaling slowly, he filled his lungs and held that breath for one long moment before blowing the air out, the rise and fall of his stomach under his hands becoming self-soothing. Reese’s fingers were tracing the lines of his face, skimming over his eyebrows and down the side of his face until Tom turned his head and caught at a finger with his teeth, nipping gently and slicking his tongue over the tip until Reese tugged it free.
Reese rubbed the damp finger against Tom’s bottom lip, dragging it open and pressing his mouth against Tom’s briefly, his breath hot and damp, their tongues tangling for a minute as Reese kissed him right out of self-consciousness. Tom didn’t even realize he’d snaked a hand up behind Reese’s neck until Reese tugged that hand back down to Tom’s chest and then bumped his own fingers down the ladder of Tom’s ribs to skim along his hip, leaving a sensitized streak down Tom’s body.
“Go on. Show me.”
Nothing had ever been so sure of itself as that voice. Tom scraped his fingernails across the front of his shirt, dragging them back and forth across the tips of his nipples until the nubs hardened and he was almost plucking them as they caught against his fingernails. Pleasure shot from his nipples to his crotch, tickling his balls until they pulled up and tightened. He felt himself growing hard and heavy, the throb of his pulse beating in his palms, the soles of his feet, the still tingling skin of his hip.
Suddenly he needed to see Reese. To know that this wasn’t some manipulative game. A trick to make him look foolish. He didn’t believe it, but he couldn’t shake the nerves, the fear that once again he was being watched by someone hoping to see him fail.
He opened his eyes.
Reese didn’t even notice, his gaze focused like a laser on Tom’s body, roving hungrily from Tom’s dick to his hands to his face again at last. Reese’s own hand rested in his lap, cupped over his groin, holding himself. He didn’t smile, but his eyes were steady and open, his want shining out of him. He was burning up with it, eyes dilated until they were black, a flush on his cheeks, biting at his own lip. His breathing was shallow.
“Show me.”
Tom left one hand on his chest and dragged the other down, down. He felt the edge of his pubes, rough and lighting up nerves as he ruffled his fingers through them, skating close enough to his dick to make it twitch.
A drop of pre-come hit his stomach. He smelled the scent of his own sex rising. The need to grab himself and stroke was building in pressure, sparking from his hands to his hips until he jerked and thrust up into the air. He slid his hand lower, curving his fingers but not touching his balls, waiting for something. For permission.
“Can I?” His voice was harsh.
Reese’s breath caught, a hitch Tom heard like a mouth on his skin. His dick lifted off his stomach, twitching with another throb of pleasure.
“Yes.”
He moved his fingers a fraction of an inch, so deep into the moment now that he barely allowed himself to do more than tease. He brushed his balls, feeling them tighten up further, the thin skin wrinkling and tingling under his hand until he shivered. His hips were rocking, his asshole clenching and releasing on nothing, pulsing in time with the heartbeat that pulsed in his dick. He pinched one stiff nipple hard enough to make himself gasp. Moaned out loud and let the shame of that sound drive his need higher.
His cock was drooling on his stomach now, a stiff length of wanting, wanting, wanting Reese to touch him so badly.
“Now. Do it, Tom.”
The sob that almost ripped out of him as he finally slicked his hand over the head of his dick and down, gripping so hard it hurt, burned in his chest.
“Fuck.” Reese spoke over his panting breath, the slick crackle of pre-come greasing his hand as it slid up and back down again. “You’re so fucking hot. So hard it looks like it hurts.”
“Unh.” Tom flung his free hand up, hung on to the railing at his head until his arm muscles bulged and ached, while he jerked himself as hard as he could. The heat boiled in his balls.
The dip of the mattress as weight shifted was his only warning before Reese’s hands wrapped around his own on his dick, holding him hard and in place at the base. And even knowing it was coming, the hot, wet slide of Reese’s mouth over his dick had him crying out so loudly he knew people could hear, but he couldn’t stop, couldn’t lock down the stream of pleases.
“God, Reese, please. Please. Don’t…” Anything. He would say anything. Do anything. Just don’t let it stop.
He could map the inside of Reese’s mouth with the tip of his dick. The hard, bumpy roof of his mouth. The sleek muscled curl of his tongue. The yielding cushion of his soft palate and the tight, squeezing hollow of his throat. Reese leaned his full weight against Tom’s stomach and thighs, an arm braced on each to hold him still as he struggled to snap his hips, the white hot heat of a magnesium flare shooting up his spine to arch his back and tense every muscle in his chest until he couldn’t breathe. Could only throw his head back and cry out as he came, pouring himself into Reese’s mouth and gasping, at last, for air to fill his battered lungs.
The creak of the mattress as Reese moved, the shuffle of his feet in socks on the floor, barely registered as sounds while Tom’s bones melted into the mattress. He could feel the slow throb of his pulse in his toes and in lingering twitches of his dick. Consciousness swirled in dizzy spirals until it sank back into his brain via the blown off top of his skull. The light disappeared with a snap as Reese flipped the switch by the closets. Tom could see him hesitate in the middle of the room as he returned, halfway between their two beds, his head turned toward his own bed, his body angled toward Tom, who struggled to pull words together in something resembling a coherent sentence.
“Shit. Wait.”
Not exactly coherent.
“What?” Reese’s voice was snappish, but Tom heard it for what it was. The uncertainty, intolerable for this boy who never for a moment let loose the reins of control in his sexual encounters, of not knowing what came next.
This was the difference between him and the boys Reese dominated. Tom wasn’t heading out the door thirty seconds after coming his brains out, although he had no doubt that Reese was thinking that might be easier.
Tough. Tom had no intention of this being the end of the dick-sucking either.
He might need a moment to reassemble his skull first, though.
“C’mere.” He struggled to sit up, dragging the pillow from under his head to the edge of the bed. He’d planned this for hours in his cab, imagining how it would happen and trying to figure out a way that he could be sure he wouldn’t do anything—on accident but that wouldn’t matter—to bring the bad feelings to the surface. All he knew was that he was going to be fucking nervous enough doing this for the first time without worrying that he was gonna trigger some flashback that would leave Reese trembling and scared.
> On his knees had seemed like the best choice.
The soft thwap of the pillow hitting the floor hit Reese like a gunshot, jerking him back a step and bringing his arms up to cross over his chest.
“Why?”
Tom wished there was enough light in the room for Reese to see the raised eyebrows look on Tom’s face. He thought maybe he could have sparked a giggle in the slender shadow facing him but still too far away.
“You’re kind of regretting that now, huh?” He hadn’t meant to bring that into the light of actual words, but if he was having a hard time with the whiplash of their sexual tension, he could only imagine the roiling chaos going on in Reese’s brain right now.
For a moment, a moment that sank like a cold stone in his stomach, he knew Reese was going to agree with him. Then he heard Reese sigh, a slow exhale that dropped his shoulders and sapped the tension from his crossed arms, one hand drifting down to rest a palm against the side of Tom’s face. He leaned into that hand a little.
“No.”
“But it’s weird that I don’t go away after.”
“Yes.”
“Think you can come here?” He held out a hand, the motion, at least, visible in the dark room. “Just to hang on. For a moment.”
The hand Reese placed in his trembled. Tom pressed it lightly between his own palms until it stilled, then braced his own elbows on his thighs and dropped his head to rest against their linked hands.
“What we just did? That was the single hottest fucking thing I’ve ever done.” Reese’s hand turned until his fingers flexed against Tom’s skull, who shook his head a little, back and forth, rubbing his forehead against Reese’s palm. “But that can’t be all we do. You know that, right?”
Their breathing synchronized in the silence.
“You’re a hot mess. And fuck me if that doesn’t turn my crank, the things you do to keep a grip.” His eyes were adjusting to the darkness, until he could make out the shape of their feet as he stared down at the floor. Thank God for the dark. No way could he have had this conversation in the light. “But I’m trying not to be an asshole here, Reese. And you’ve gotta let me—” He fumbled for the right words. Came up empty. “You’ve gotta let me. Okay?”
Off Campus Page 16