by Vicki Tharp
He scrolled down the list of results. The kid had a freaking Wikipedia page. Seriously? Looked like Sebastian knew something the rest of them didn’t.
Slowly, Elijah scanned the Wiki page. It talked about Alex’s high school baseball career. Talked about him being the number one draft pick his junior year of college after helping take his team to the College World Series in Omaha.
Elijah continued to scroll down. After Alex had been drafted by the Los Angeles Grizzlies, the team had started him immediately with the San Fernando Hawks Double-A baseball team. According to the scouts, Alex was a phenom and had been expected to rise through the ranks of Minor League Baseball in record time.
And Alex’s signing bonus, in the neighborhood of six million dollars, reflected the Grizzlies’ faith in their draft pick.
Almost six million dollars.
Elijah couldn’t even wrap his mind around that kind of money. And with a signing bonus that high, what the hell was Alex doing at Black Stallion?
Elijah continued to read. The page had been populated with photos. Alex in high school. Alex’s team lifting him up in victory after a win in Omaha. But it was the last photo that made Elijah’s gut churn. It was a photo from Alex’s Major League debut. But Alex wasn’t smiling. A grimace etched his face, his jaw clenched as he clutched his right elbow. Jesus Christ.
Elijah caught movement out of the corner of his eye a fraction of a second before Alex slammed his hand down on Elijah’s laptop lid. “What the fuck are you doing?”
Alex had his hands on his hips, a towel wrapped low around his waist, his face red. But the heat on Alex’s face wasn’t from taking a hot shower. His hair was damp, and beads of water dripped down his chest and disappeared beneath the towel. Elijah did his best not to follow the drops down.
With his hands held up in surrender, Elijah said, “Hey, man. I’m sorry. I didn’t mean anything by it.”
Alex scrubbed his hands through his hair scattering droplets of water onto the tiled floor. He blew out a deep breath. “No, man, it’s okay. I—”
Dropping down on the corner of his bed, Alex continued, “That wasn’t a very good time in my life. And if you have questions about it, I’d prefer you asked me instead of reading about it online. There’s so much bullshit out there that isn’t even close to being true.”
Elijah swiveled in the desk chair, the springs creaking and complaining as he leaned back. “What are you doing here when you had a six million dollar signing bonus? I mean, I saw your car. The Challenger is nice, but it’s not a Lambo. How could you blow through that much money in so little time?”
The color drained from Alex’s face, and the spark died in front of Elijah’s eyes. Asshole question? Yeah. What Alex had done with his money was none of Elijah’s damn business.
“Scratch that. Forget I said anything. You don’t owe me an explanation.”
Alex stood and lifted his duffel bag onto his bed and started scrounging around for some clothes. “It’s okay. I shouldn’t get worked up about it. What happened to the money is no secret. If I’d have let you read any farther, you would have found out that my agent embezzled from me. I’m fighting him in court. At this point, I’m pretty sure the only people who are going to come out ahead are the lawyers.”
Onto the bed, Alex dropped a pair of boxer briefs and athletic shorts. Then in the next moment, his towel fell to the floor and Elijah stared at the most magnificent, muscular, munchable ass he’d ever laid eyes on. He should look away. Really. Before he got caught ogling his straight roommate.
“You should warn a guy before you drop trou,” Elijah said, mainly because he thought that’s what a totally straight guy would say.
Over his shoulder, Alex glanced at Elijah with a stupid smile on his face as he stepped into his underwear. “You shy, Eli?”
Eli. A squeamish shiver ran down Elijah’s spine. It kinda squicked him out to have a hot man use that name. “Only my mom calls me that.”
Instead of an apology, that stupid grin pitched a tent and camped out on Alex’s face. “Don’t tell me you’ve never seen a man naked.”
That pulled a laugh out of Elijah he hadn’t known lurked near the surface. “I was in the military. Trust me, I’ve probably seen more dick and ass than all these gay porn stars combined.”
“I grew up in locker rooms. I don’t even think about it anymore. If it’s a problem—”
“No,” Elijah said, probably a little faster than he should have. A straight guy would have probably let the man finish his sentence. Heat rose up the back of his neck and he tried to ignore it. What did he really have to be embarrassed about? “I mean, do what you want. It’s not like I’m not going to see you naked tomorrow. And then some.”
Alex turned and Elijah watched as Alex adjusted the waistband of his shorts, admiring the V of hard muscle that arrowed beneath the elastic. It was then that Elijah felt Alex’s eyes on him. Slowly, he looked up.
He’d expected embarrassment on Alex’s face. Or perhaps anger. But when he looked into Alex’s eyes, that’s not what he saw. Alex’s gaze heated and his focus flicked down to Elijah’s lips and back again. “Yeah,” Alex said at last. “And then some.”
If Alex were a woman, Elijah would have taken him up on the blatant invitation. But this was his roommate. His straight roommate. Or maybe, like him, Alex had a touch of the bi.
Elijah broke eye contact first. He reopened the lid on his laptop and said, “I’ve got some homework I need to work on. Is this going to bug you? I could take it out to the lounge area.”
“Not gonna bother me.” Alex plugged in his phone charger, fluffed one of the pillows, and plopped down on top of the covers, his athletic shorts did little to hide what the man packed beneath it.
Jesus Christ, Maddox. Get your shit together, before everyone notices you’re much too eager to shoot that extra scene with Alex than any straight guy should be.
The last thing Elijah needed was to be kicked off set before he got his first paycheck. Elijah closed the Wikipedia page, signed into his professor’s class, and downloaded his homework. He pulled the textbook out of his backpack and turned to chapter five and got to work.
Elijah didn’t know how long he’d been at it when Alex said, “You awake over there?”
Elijah glanced over his shoulder. Alex was propped up on the bed, one knee raised with an arm behind his head as he scrolled on his phone. Elijah made sure his gaze didn’t drift down the long expanse of Alex’s torso and all those long, lean muscles. “Yeah, why do you ask?”
“It’s been twenty minutes, and you haven’t even turned the first page. You dyslexic or something?”
Not dyslexic. Distracted. And the semi he’d been sporting behind his sweats ever since Alex dropped his towel hadn’t helped either.
“No.” Elijah closed his book. He wasn’t getting anything done tonight, and he damn well knew it. “I guess I’ve got some things on my mind. Might as well go to bed. Seven is going to come early. Mind if I cut the lights?”
Alex laid his phone on the bedside table and scooted farther down the bed. “Go ahead. I could use the sleep as well.”
Elijah turned out the lights, pitching the room into near darkness. The outside security lights shone through the slats of the blinds casting the room in a dull glow. “Want me to close the blinds?”
“Leave them.”
Turning back the covers, Elijah crawled into bed. He settled back as the exhaustion kicked in. Not so much physical, but emotional exhaustion. The few weeks leading up to this trip to Black Stallion had been nerve-racking and had required a bit of soul searching. He hadn’t been this on-edge about a new phase of his life since the night before he’d left for boot camp.
Eventually, Alex’s breathing grew slow and even. Elijah stared out the window as a light mist dripped past the security light. His anxiety made the skin on his scalp tight, and if he were anywhere else, he’d do something proactive about the stiffy in his shorts.
If it wasn’t for hou
se rule number three: no jacking off before the shoot.
“Are you nervous?” Drowsiness thickened Alex’s voice. Elijah had thought he was asleep.
Elijah rolled onto his side and looked over at his future scene mate. The dim light highlighted Alex’s cheeks and his strong jawline, but the rest of his body remained in shadows.
“If I said I wasn’t, I’d be lying. How about you?”
“On the nervousness scale, this hits somewhere between waiting to see where my name would fall in the draft and standing up on that mound in the big leagues for the first time. My heart feels like it’s jacked up on speed, and my gut feels like I’ve eaten about two pounds of putrid pork.”
“I’d definitely never imagined myself signing up to do porn.”
Alex chuckled, low and rueful. “You can say that again, bro.”
They fell into silence, but Elijah knew Alex hadn’t fallen asleep. Not only because of the way Alex’s foot bounced up and down, but by the nervous energy sparking off him like firecrackers on the Fourth of July.
Finally, Alex cleared his throat and said, “You ever kiss a guy?”
Where was Alex going with this? Elijah waited a beat before saying anything, not sure if he should answer with the partial truth, which was a no.
Or the whole truth.
That over the years he’d thought about it. A lot. But as much as he didn’t want to hide who he really was, his marketability, his income, with Black Stallion required discretion. “No. Never.”
“I don’t know what I’m worried about more, kissing a guy, or kissing a guy and then freaking the fuck out on camera.”
Alex didn’t strike Elijah as homophobic, a guy would have to have some sort of open-mindedness to do gay porn to begin with. But the guy had initially signed up for a solo jack-off scene, not a scene with another guy, so, who knew.
“Look,” Elijah said. “If you want to back out of our scene—”
“It’s not that.” Alex sat up, his legs coming over the edge of the bed to rest on the floor. “What do you think... Maybe we could...” Alex ran his hands through his hair and down his face. “Fuuuck.” His word came out quiet and subdued.
Alex stared across the room at Elijah, but in the shadows, his expression proved difficult to read. Again, Elijah had the feeling that Alex was one wrong word away from bolting, yet at the same time, it felt like Alex had reached out.
“I’ve got a solution.” Elijah’s dick said solution. His conscience said self-serving construct.
“What’s that?” Alex sounded relieved, if not a tad skeptical.
“We could kiss. You know, kind of like a practice run. If after that, you want out, you can let Sebastian know in the morning.”
Alex hesitated what under normal circumstances might have been a beat or two before answering, but with the way Elijah’s pulse raced, the wait could have topped a hundred. “Okay.”
If the house hadn’t been so silent, if air had been blowing through the vents, Elijah wouldn’t have heard him.
Alex didn’t move. Neither did Elijah. Had Alex said ‘Okay?’ Or had Elijah’s hearing of the word been dickful thinking?
They both stood at the same time. Alex smiled, slow and shy and sexy as hell. They met in the middle, halfway between this-is-a-good-idea and this-could-go-oh-so-bad.
What if Alex didn’t like it?
What if he didn’t like it?
Would that mean Elijah wasn’t really into men? Or not into this man.
Yeah, and that semi you’re sporting is because you find Dynamic Systems homework so sexy.
They stopped, inches apart. Alex’s breathing coarse, halting, haphazard.
“This really what you want?” Elijah had to ask.
“Yes.” Alex ducked his head, his hand reaching for Elijah’s face, stopping short of contact.
At that moment, Elijah decided to go for what he wanted. He wrapped his fingers around Alex’s neck, the tiny bristles from where it had been shaved from a recent haircut pricking his skin. Elijah’s thumb trailed through the short stubble on Alex’s jawline. The hair on Elijah’s arms stood up, from excitement, not fear.
Alex inched closer and brushed his lips against Elijah’s. Not a peck—a touch, a taste, before pulling back a fraction to gauge both of their reactions. Alex didn’t run screaming from the room, so Elijah pulled him in for proper kiss.
Alex’s lips were soft, yet firm and the scrape of Alex’s scruff against Elijah’s skin sent a zing down his spine and made his junk heavier.
More than anything, Elijah wanted to close the gap between them, to grind against Alex’s muscled thigh, to reach a hand down and cup the man before him.
Which kind of negated the supposition that maybe Elijah wasn’t into men.
But he didn’t dare.
He wanted Alex to come to him.
Elijah opened his mouth a fraction, inviting Alex in. Alex sucked in a breath through his nose, his tongue snaking out and touching Elijah’s.
Elijah tamped down on the groan building at the back of his throat, refusing to let it free. Shifting, he angled his head to take the kiss deeper. Alex hissed in a breath. Whether it was from the way Elijah’s tongue had invaded Alex’s mouth or the way Elijah’s erection brushed against Alex’s thigh, Elijah couldn’t be sure.
What Elijah did know for certain was that he wanted more.
Much more.
Of this.
Of Alex.
Elijah leaned into the kiss. One second Alex was there, the nape of his neck in Elijah’s hand, his tongue in Elijah’s mouth, his thigh pressed against Elijah’s cock.
And then... nothing.
Alex had spun away, and Elijah took a step forward to catch his balance.
Alex leaned against the bedroom door, his hands covering his face in what Elijah could only read as a holy-shit-what-have-I-done kind of move.
“Hey, man... you okay?”
Elijah wanted to step closer, but that would have made him feel like the predator on the scent of injured prey.
Alex blew out a harsh lungful of air then straightened and took a step away from the door. “Yeah. I’m good. Um...” He made a motion with his hand between the two of them that Elijah assumed referred to them kissing. “Thanks.”
“So... you good for tomorrow or do we need to talk to Sebastian?”
“No. I’m not going to pussy out.”
“Scrote out.” Elijah corrected.
“What?”
“Scrotums are weak. One wrong touch and they drop you to your knees. Pussies are tough. They swallow up sperm and spit out babies. So, if you’re going to chicken out—”
Alex held up his hands and laughed. “I’m not scroting out.”
“This from the guy who ran from a kiss.”
“I didn’t run.”
Elijah raised his brows. In the low light, Alex probably couldn’t see them well. Elijah’s silence spoke well enough, all but calling him on it.
“I needed a second to wrap my head around it, is all.” Alex brushed past Elijah and plopped down on his bed.
“You didn’t like it?”
Alex’s cheeks puffed out, and he blew out an exasperated breath. “I didn’t not like it. And I have no idea what that means.”
5
Alex had been too exhausted the night before to spiral into some existential crisis about what it meant that not only had he not been repulsed by kissing Elijah, he quite liked it, if he admitted the truth only to himself. That existential crisis would have to wait until he got back home. There was so much other stuff going on at Black Stallion that gobbled up all of his emotional bandwidth.
From the time he’d woken up that morning, he and Elijah both pretended things weren’t awkward, which only made things even more awkward. Breakfast had been quiet with the other men still in bed.
At the ass crack of dawn, they were showered and shaved per Niko’s request, and he and Elijah had found their way to the studios in the basement of the performers’ wing of
the building.
Below ground, they were issued robes and instructed to change and head to hair and makeup, where both of their faces were powdered and their hair gelled and styled.
Besides the makeup room and the four stage areas for shooting scenes, there were two other rooms. A dressing room complete with showers for clean up after shoots, and the ‘Ready room,’ which was another name for a place full of straight porn, both in magazines and online. Something to get the blood pumping and the cocks hard.
Sebastian walked into makeup as Cat, a petite brunette complete with a brow piercing, tattoos, and a healthy dose of sass, made the finishing touches on Alex’s hair.
“Okay, hotness,” Cat said to Alex, “show those boys what you’ve got.”
Sebastian glanced down at the clipboard in his hand, all business and no fangirling besides the flush that ran up the man’s neck. “Alex, Niko has your scene first, then Elijah, then you two will have a break while Grant, Reyes, and Darius do a scene, then it will be back to you two. Sound good?”
“Sure.” Alex tried hiding the note of panic in his voice. It wasn’t that he wanted to back out of his solo scene, but if he’d had his choice, he would have liked to have Elijah go first, to see how it all went. But he wasn’t a puss—scrote. He’d go first if that’s what Niko wanted.
“Fine by me,” Elijah said as Cat washed her hands and went to get started on his hair.
“Alex, you’re with me,” Sebastian said, “Niko’s ready.”
Sebastian led Alex down the hall to one of the stages that was all lit up with bright lights. The set consisted of three walls, the fourth one open for lighting and filming. Inside, sat a beige leather couch, a side table with a lamp, and a nondescript carpet in front.
Which pretty much looked like the set of most jack-off porn he’d seen.
Niko didn’t waste time on pleasantries. When Alex arrived on set, Niko introduced the cameraman. “Vin, this is Alex. Alex, Vin.”
Alex would have shaken the man’s hand, but Vin’s were full with a camera and other gear. “Nice to meet you, man.”