Jesus. No one, not even Ian, has ever sucked my cock as enthusiastically as Michael did. I don’t even want to know what Steve did to take that away from him, but I have a feeling I’ll find out sooner or later.
“I’ll follow your lead.” I smooth his hair. “Anything you want, it’s yours.”
He wipes his eyes and then searches mine. “Why are you doing this?”
“Because you’re my best friend.”
“This is a little above and beyond for a friend, isn’t it?”
“Would you do the same for me?”
Michael tenses, and for a second, I’m afraid of the answer. But then he says, “If anyone ever did to you what Steve did to me—” He cuts himself off and shakes his head, and then he pulls me in closer. Just before our lips meet, he murmurs, “He’d be a dead man,” and then we’re kissing again, and alongside that hunger for contact and affection, there’s a taste of that passion he’d always had when we’d slept together in the past. That fierceness that came out in the form of desire, resulting in me getting pinned down and ridden hard, but could also come out as protectiveness.
“He ever hurts you,” Michael once warned me about one of my questionable boyfriends, “he’ll have me to answer to.”
“Do it again,” he once growled to a guy who wouldn’t back off in a club. “I fucking dare you.”
Michael breaks the kiss. Against my lips, he whispers, “To answer your question, yes. I’d do the same for you.”
“I know you would.” I kiss him again.
He draws back and swallows. “This is still a lot to handle. Up until just now, I hadn’t even kissed anyone in years.”
“There’s no reason to rush any of it. We can take it a little at a time. Whatever you’re comfortable with.”
He’s searching my eyes again. Then, tentatively, he pulls me into another kiss. Long, deep, just like the first one, as if the assurance that we can take all the time in the world has given him the confidence to have it all right now.
Anything you want, Michael. Anything.
He slides his hand down my back and draws me even closer, until our hips are almost touching, and I’m about to come unglued.
Jesus, I didn’t think we’d get beyond a conversation tonight, but now this.
His fingers press into my back. His erection brushes mine. Oh God. I want him so fucking—
“Shit.” Michael jerks away and pushes me back, breaking the kiss, breaking the embrace, breaking contact. “I’m sorry, I—”
“What’s wrong?” I give him some space instead of pinning him to the counter. “Did I do something—”
“No, no, no.” He shakes his head and paces across the linoleum. “No. You didn’t do anything wrong.”
I watch him, at a loss for what to say. When his back is to me for a second, I quickly adjust the tight front of my jeans, but even alleviating that discomfort doesn’t help much.
Michael stops, and he slumps against the counter across from me. “I think I need…” He rubs his hands over his face. “Fuck. I don’t know what I need.”
“Maybe some time. To get your head around everything.”
“Maybe.” He sighs. “Probably.”
“Do you want me to go?”
He folds his arms tightly across his chest, as if he can’t get warm. “I don’t want you to go, no.”
I study him, trying to read between the lines. “Should I go?”
At that, Michael deflates. He cups his elbow and lets his face fall into his hand. “Fuck. Probably. I don’t know.” Rubbing his eyes, he mutters, “I’m such a goddamned basket case.”
“We’re going to fix that. Together.”
He lowers his hand, meeting my gaze. “Would you be offended if I said I was skeptical that I can be fixed?”
“Offended, no. But I disagree. You’ve come a long way in the last few years, and you didn’t think you’d get that far.”
His lips tighten, and he avoids my eyes as he shrugs. “I guess we’ll see what happens.”
“We don’t have to—”
“I want to,” he says quickly and quietly. “I can’t even tell you how much it means that you’re willing to do this, and I want to. I’m just…”
“Not sure how much it’ll help?”
He nods.
“Only one way to find out.”
He tenses again, flinching slightly.
“It doesn’t have to be tonight.” I curl my fingers at my sides, desperately wanting to reach for him, but afraid to make contact again. It’s so weird, hesitating to touch him after we were just wrapped up in a long kiss. “If you need some time, I can go.”
He nods but doesn’t speak.
“Call me tomorrow. Even if you’re not ready to talk, just, you know, let me know you’re doing all right.”
“Okay. I will.”
My keys jingle as I pull them from my pocket. There’s got to be something I can say right now, but I’m drawing almost as much of a blank as I did when I broached this subject with Michael in the first place. So I just murmur, “I’m gonna go.”
He nods again.
I spin my keys around my finger, and I still don’t have a clue what to say, so I wish him a good night and head out of the kitchen.
I’m halfway down the hall when Michael says, “Josh.”
I turn around, eyebrows up.
He hesitates, then meets my eyes from the kitchen doorway, and the subtlest ghost of a smile flickers across his lips. “Thank you.”
Chapter Four