Kaz had the feeling Will would’ve crawled into one of their suitcases if they’d let him. He recognized the feeling. He’d had a serious case of hero worship on one of the embassy’s Consulars when he’d been thirteen. Either the man had never noticed Kaz mooning around, or he’d been too polite or too kind to acknowledge it. Eventually Kaz had met a Brazilian boy at his school who’d let their gazes catch and linger a little bit longer than usual, and his crush on the Consular had been replaced by a sudden need to learn Portuguese and drink caipirinhas.
The steady forward march of the bus slowed noticeably and they lurched in their seats as the bus changed lanes, heading for a brightly lit travel plaza on an overpass. They were stopping for a bathroom break. Probably a good thing, because Kaz was super uncomfortable with how much it got under his skin to hear Will talking about this Jack and Miguel.
“I better give people the heads up,” he said, standing up and gesturing for Will to let him out. “We probably won’t stop again until we’re back at campus, so if you want to stretch your legs, now’s your chance.”
Then he started down the aisle, keeping his voice low for those who didn’t want to wake up, but letting students know they’d have fifteen minutes to pee and grab snacks if they wanted them.
As for Kaz himself, he needed some fresh air like whoa. Maybe it would clear his head, because he was sinking dangerously deep into the kind of late night coziness with Will that needed to be discouraged, not encouraged. Even if—especially if—he absolutely wanted it.
CHAPTER 6
“I t’s not about the fighting.”
Kaz shot him a look. He and Will had been going back and forth about this for hours, and the debate had spiraled into the thirty-third round of rehashing the points they’d already made over and over again. Neither of them were likely to budge at this point. But that didn’t mean he’d let Will get away with a bullshit statement like that one.
Will rolled his eyes and sighed. “Fine. It’s not about the fighting for everyone. My problems are my own to deal with. It’s about denying them a platform. I told you. You can’t let them normalize their hatred. It shifts the Overton window and all of a sudden everyone’s thinking it okay to say things like all Muslims are terrorists out loud.”
Kaz didn’t miss Will’s glance at him, like Will wasn’t sure if he was being a good ally or if he’d crossed a line with that last example. Hell, Will probably didn’t know even know for sure if Kaz was Muslim. Kaz had never thought of himself as being particularly religious, but in recent years he’d felt the urge to belong to his community and his faith deepen in reaction to the rising bigotry around him. Even insulated from the worst of it by the liberal New England college campus where he lived and worked and studied, he was intensely aware of the worsening public discourse and talking with sheltered white students like Will was sometimes too draining for words.
There have always been people who think it’s okay to say that out loud. You just weren’t paying attention.
Still, he was impressed a college sophomore knew what the Overton window was and could use the words correctly in a sentence. Kaz was pretty sure he hadn’t learned the phrase until he was in grad school. But Will’s ability to grasp theory about the shifting range of ideas that are seen as normal by the public was heavily compromised, in Kaz’s opinion, by his attraction to punching Nazis.
“But why violence? If it’s not about fighting—if it’s truly about resisting neo-Nazis and other white supremacists—why not, I don’t know . . . drown them out with a three hundred person flashmob dance or choir? Or just ignore them?” He tried to finish his thought, but a massive yawn interrupted him, his jaw cracking with the stretch. His brain was foggy with lack of sleep and he knew he was making a shitty argument he would phrase better if he weren’t so tired. “When the Westboro Church comes to town, protesting them gives them the TV airtime they want.”
“Not responding isn’t acceptable.” Will was adamant on this point. Kaz hadn’t been able to convince him for a moment that the attention his group brought to the assholes was half the problem.
“Fine. But which is better, brawling? Or having a disco party wearing boxers and bathrobes, with a s’mores roasting station and a charity fundraiser?” At Will’s wrinkled forehead, Kaz explained, “That’s how the University of Chicago students and seminarians responded to a WBC protest.”
“And you know about because it got on the news, who no doubt interviewed someone from the church and they got their airtime anyway.”
“So, fine. Then make a better . . . argument”—he stumbled, searching for the right word and losing it to a yawn, knowing he was making shitty arguments out of sleepiness—“and show people why what you believe is better than what the other side believes.”
“It’s not about making a case for our side. They’re not interested in making a case for their side. They’re not arguing in good faith to win people over to their point of view.” Will scraped blunt, black fingernails through his hair, mussing it up until it stood out in all directions. The wrinkles between his eyebrows looked set to take up permanent residence. “All they want is a platform to spew their dog whistle bigotry and hate for their followers, to convince people that everything is a lie and nothing matters except whose hate makes you feel good. I know you know this. I know you don’t think they’re actually participating in some kind of political symposium for the public good, so I don’t know why you’re arguing with me.”
With a final huff, Will unscrewed his water bottle cap and took a swig.
The words came out of Kaz’s mouth before he could bite them back. Maybe he was delirious with lack of sleep, or maybe Will had some weird kind of effect on his self-control. “Because you’re really fucking hot when you’re angry.”
Water, spewed.
“Jesus. What?”
“You’re really hot when you’re pissed off.” It was true. Will’s eyes got bright and his cheeks flushed and his hands flew through the air when his emotions ran high, all of it combining to radiate an angry energy that was a total turn-on. Maybe because Kaz was envious of Will’s freedom to be angry and to express it so freely. Kaz was never not aware of the need to be approachable and calm and not scare the white people. He both resented Will’s passion and rage and found it incredibly hot.
“Now you say that? After”—Will wave his hands to encompass their seats and the past six hours of arguing—“everything?”
“What can I say?” Kaz said, yawning again and slipping deeper into a slump in his seat. “I’ve barely slept in two and half days. My filter is gone.”
Will narrowed his eyes. “How gone?”
Kaz laughed, feeling a little loopy and delirious. “Not gone enough to have sex on the back of a bus full of students I’ve got to face first thing Monday morning.”
“Gone enough to share a blanket?”
“Sure.” God, he needed sleep.
Not until Will’s hands hit his zipper under cover of the blanket he’d draped over both their laps after pushing up the armrest between them did Kaz realize how very seriously he’d misunderstood the nature of share a blanket.
Kaz sucked in a breath like his lungs were trying to steal every molecule of oxygen from the interior of the coach. Good luck breathing, kids, I need all the air.
He shoved his own hands beneath the blanket, intending to grab Will and push him away, but somehow Will grabbed him instead, pulling Kaz’s hands to the outline of Will’s erect cock. And then Kaz was unbuttoning and unzipping and wrapping his fingers around the hot, hard length of him as they leaned into each other.
He could only think of one thing to say. “Commando?”
Will snuffled a laugh against his neck, and a wave of such unbearable fondness swept over Kaz, he foundered in it. For every one of the million reasons he shouldn’t touch Will—he was a twenty-year-old sophomore who didn’t know shit about the real world, he was a student in one of Kaz’s sections, he was an antifa brawler who used his fists more
than his brain—there was a story Will had told Kaz in the past six hours that made him want to shove those reasons out the window and leave them a hundred miles behind.
Will’s childhood had been way less privileged than Kaz’s own. Will’s brain wasn’t at all disengaged from his brawling, and he was refreshingly open to other points of view, agreeing on their merits when he found them even if they didn’t change his mind about his choices.
And then there were the intense blue eyes, and the fucking hot guyliner, the lip ring and what Kaz suspected were some seriously interesting tattoos beneath Will’s clothes, the wiry muscles of his wrists and shoulders. None of which should matter, but Kaz was human and Will was fucking hot as hell in that goth punk rocker way that got under his skin and made Kaz sweat just picturing what that body would look like stretched out naked and writhing across his bed. Especially as Will snaked Kaz’s zipper down and stroked him with teasing fingertips until Kaz shuddered.
There was no question about wanting to fuck Will. That had been true from the first moment he’d seen him, and Kaz didn’t believe in lying to himself about the obvious. He’d wanted Will when he was nothing but the hot, fuckable undergrad in the back of the lecture hall and even that would have been hard to resist once Will got his hands on Kaz’s dick.
But then Will said something like, “No way could I spend another twenty-four hours in those boxers,” while giggling into Kaz’s neck and swiping his thumb across the slippery wet head of Kaz’s dick and all bets were off, because Kaz’s heart and his dick both were a Greek chorus of bad ideas drowning out his brain at the moment.
At all the moments, if he were totally honest with himself.
The low-grade desire that had annoyed him since the first day of class—when Will’s glance had drifted over him and then stuttered as he’d sat up straight in his seat, leaning forward as if to get as near to Kaz from the back row of a hundred and sixty-seat auditorium as possible—had exploded into a conflagration of want from the moment he’d realized just who it was who’d kissed him and damn near come all over him up against a motorcycle.
And don’t pretend the memory of that isn’t the hottest fucking thing you get to relive over—and over—again.
But even more than the need he felt to put his hands all over Will’s slim, muscled body, to dig his fingers into the solid curve of his ass, to drag his mouth across the bony length of his shoulder and bite at every bump and knob he mapped with his teeth and tongue . . . More than all that, he wanted to take Will home with him. Wrap him up in a blanket with some hot chai and hold him tight until he wasn’t so angry anymore. Until he didn’t need to go looking for fights because he’d never been able to fight back against all the people who’d hurt him for so many years growing up.
Kaz didn’t take care of anyone. He saved all his caretaking urges for his students and kept his personal life simple and, well, impersonal. He didn’t want to know about any of his casual bed partners’ emotional needs. He’d spent a lifetime catering to others’ needs: host countries cultural standards that needed to be respected, home country’s reputation that needed to be upheld with honor, parental expectations of disciplined studies and proper behavior.
Some diplomats’ kids went wild in rebellion, acting out in any of a million ways; being privileged visitors, frequently with money and an untouchable legal status, could bring out the worst in people. But Kaz never had. As much as his parents’ unwavering belief in his excellence wore at his nerves, he respected them—their traditions, their work ethic, their firm belief in the power of diplomacy to save the world from the worst of its own nature—too much ever to want to disappoint them truly.
So he found his selfishness where he could, and if that meant mostly not letting any of his hookups become the kind of thing where you worried about the other person’s emotional needs and took care of them—beyond just making sure they came too before you crashed into sleep and they, hopefully, took off for home before you woke up—that was fine.
Fine was enough. Or had been.
But now . . . now he wanted. Was suddenly overcome with want and need and didn’t give a fuck about anything else. Under the blanket, Will had pushed his briefs down until the elastic caught under his balls, setting his cock free under the small blanket, and was holding him, staring into his eyes as if waiting for some kind of official go signal.
“Okay,” Kaz breathed, the word barely loud enough to carry. “Okay.”
Will’s smile was fierce and gone in an instant, his eyebrows pulling together and lower lip sticking out as he dropped his gaze to stare at the motion of his hands under the blanket and concentrated. Kaz braced his feet against the base of the seat in front of them and struggled to keep his mouth shut and his eyes open as pleasure pulled his skin tight over his straining muscles.
The heat of Will’s hands could have burned him. And every time Will lifted a palm to his mouth and spit into it, returning it to his hidden handjob even wetter and slipperier than before, Kaz shuddered with the lewdness of the sounds he hoped only they could hear. Slick, wet sounds that verged on the obscene.
Kaz had been turned on since Will had grabbed onto him during their Jason Bourne stunt ride. In an embarrassingly short time, he was moments from coming.
To be fair, that motorcycle ride had kicked off a long time ago.
“Will,” he managed to get out before a gasp caught him off guard.
“Let me see,” Will said, his voice low and rough. “I need to see you.”
He wanted it. Didn’t care about the risk. Wanted Will to see him, so hard it hurt, his cock pulsing in Will’s hands. He nodded, and Will pushed the blanket away with his knee, cool air rushing against Kaz’s wet cock. He was utterly exposed. It felt like porn, the very best kind of porn, where you were sure the performers weren’t faking it because they were mesmerized by each other.
Will cupped one hand around Kaz’s balls, rubbing his thumb across the tight skin there as his other hand twisted up and down Kaz’s shaft until Kaz couldn’t think. Couldn’t watch. Could only turn himself over to Will’s strong hands and trust him to push Kaz’s need higher and higher until pleasure danced on the edge of pain.
Keeping his eyes open was impossible. He tumbled into the roar of ecstasy that shouted through him as he came, teeth clenched against letting that shout out and waking the motorcoach. Will’s hands stroked him firmly through his climax, working his come into the slickness, squeezing him from base to tip as if determined to push every last drop out of him. When one last spurt dribbled out of his cock, Kaz was sure Will had.
Kaz tipped his head back against his seat, panting and shaking and trying to pull himself together. “Let me clean off and—”
Will stared him in the eyes as he licked Kaz’s come off his hand, open mouth against his palm, lips wrapped around each finger as he sucked them into his mouth.
Kaz’s dick pulsed in a vain effort to get hard again. He thought he might have made a sound like guh but wasn’t sure. How could he want this much when he’d already spent himself dry? By the time Will swiped at the rest of the come with the blanket, Kaz knew exactly what he wanted to do.
He sucked a fierce kiss from Will’s mouth, sliding his hands under the blanket still covering Will’s lap and wrapping them around the achingly hard cock waiting for him there. “Keep your eyes open for visitors, or I’ll kill you.”
Will smothered laughter on a gasp as Kaz ducked beneath the blanket and swallowed him down with one deep bob. “Oh . . . god. I mean, okay. Yes. Can do. Jesus.”
Everything was stuffy and hot and Kaz’s blood rushed in his ears so loudly he couldn’t have heard anyone approaching if his life depended on it. And his academic one certainly did. But Will’s cock was slim and rock hard and leaking in his mouth, and Kaz was ready to set his job on fire if it meant he got to suck on Will until his thighs quaked under Kaz’s bracing hand.
A weight landed on his shoulder, moved to his head, then back again. Light, hesitant, like Will wa
nted to grab but was too polite to do so. Yet.
Kaz prepared to break down every ounce of politeness with brutal ruthlessness.
After one last swallow in the back of his throat, he pulled off for a moment, letting himself play in the slippery mess of spit and precome, jacking Will with one hand while bracing himself with the other. He wished he could see better, because he wanted to know if Will’s cock was more pinkish or purple. Wanted to etch every visual detail deep into his brain so he’d never forget this wild and wonderful day.
He slipped his mouth over the head, swirling his tongue around the rim and sucking lightly at Will’s slit until his mouth flooded with precome. Plucking at that sensitive string of flesh at the top of Will’s shaft, he listened to and felt for every reaction, memorizing the smothered sounds and clenching muscles under his mouth and hands.
The rumble of the bus’s motion was enough to cover his hum of happiness, a hum that made Will’s hips jerk as Kaz’s mouth vibrated around his cock. Kaz reached above the blanket, searching. When he found Will’s hand, he pulled it to the back of his head and pressed it there. Suggesting.
The flash of pain as Will’s fingers spasmed in his hair only made Kaz’s blood sing louder. If he hadn’t just come his brains out, that bright flare would have pushed him right off the cliff of his own orgasm.
Hesitant at first, Will only held him gently. Kaz had to squeeze his hand a second time, pressing it flat to his head, to encourage him. And even then, he could feel Will’s restraint in the way his fingers trembled against Kaz’s skull even as he pressed gently down, pressing deep into Kaz’s throat with his perfectly average, perfectly exquisite cock.
“Kaz—” Will’s throat shut on the rest of his words, but his meaning was clear.
Bobbing even deeper and holding himself there, swallowing around the fullness in his throat, his lungs burning, Kaz pushed the moment to the razor edge of need and pleasure. The groan that ripped out of Will as he came wasn’t quiet enough, but Kaz didn’t care. He lifted up in time to catch the last lash of Will’s semen on his tongue, briny and thick.
Rogue Desire: A Romance Anthology (The Rogue Series) Page 16