Well, that was the last thing I expected to see when I walked through the door.
And I can’t say I hated it.
The sight of Beau sprawled out across his couch hit me with a sack of lust so hard I feel like I have a concussion. It has to be the only damn reason I stood there ogling him like a creep. All I know is it took herculean effort to turn away, and then he’d said that one word, husky and deep and so fucking turned on it made it impossible to argue with. When he asked me to stay, my self-control snapped. There was no walking away.
There was no closing my eyes.
I stood there and took in every expression that crossed his face as he gave himself what looked like the greatest hand job in history.
Damn I wanted in on it.
There’s no doubt if Beau wasn’t the person standing between me and being back on the couch at Marty’s, if he wasn’t my little brother’s best friend, if he wasn’t someone I legitimately like and want to be friends with, I would have closed the distance between us and had my way with him.
God fucking damn that was one sexy show.
In my defense, it’s been a long time since I’ve had anything resembling decent sex, and after what that fucker did, I thought it would take me a while to ease back into that side of my life.
But apparently, nope.
All it took was Beau with his cock in his hand, and I’m already ready to get back out there.
Specifically, out there. In the living room. With my cock in Beau’s mouth.
I go to bed, determined to ignore my dick’s need to jerk off to what I saw. No need for things to get even more mixed up in my head than they already are, and I know if I touch myself, it’ll be Beau’s dick I’m thinking about.
That long, pale, mouthwatering dick …
No! Nope.
I roll onto my side and deny myself anything even close to friction. All I need is to sleep it off, then tomorrow, everything will be back to normal.
Except next morning, there’s nothing normal about the way Beau’s entire face flushes when he sees me.
And if I needed anything to break the tension, it’s the mortified expression he’s wearing.
I crack up laughing.
“Guess we’re not pretending it didn’t happen, then,” he says.
“Bit hard to forget.”
He scowls.
I poke his shoulder on my way to the toaster. “You’re bright red. Feeling hot?”
“Here I was thinking I’d have to apologize.”
“Apologize?” I snort. “For what? Giving me an eyeful of the goods?”
“Making things … weird.”
“Oh, come on. I’d be a jerk to get weird over that.”
“Payne …”
I slide my bread into the toaster. “It’s fine. Really.” If he’s ignoring the way I got hard over watching him, I can ignore the way he … fuck. It’s going to take some time to get his O face out of my mind.
“You don’t … you’re not feeling awkward?”
I shrug. “Who hasn’t been caught by their roommate while jerking off?” I know that isn’t the awkward part he was referring to, but I’m set on forgetting about it. Apparently, Beau is too, and who could blame him? He might have asked me to stay in the heat of the moment, but no one wants their friend’s brother eye-fucking them. Talk about creepy.
“I can’t say I make a habit of it,” he says.
“Different strokes.”
“You can stop now.” He pins me with a dry look.
I laugh. “Maybe I shouldn’t say this, but if you weren’t, you know, you, and I wasn’t me, that would have been hot as hell to come home to. I’m surprised no guy has locked all that up already.”
“The thing about finding someone is you have to actually leave the house.”
“Good point.” My toast pops up, and I cover it in peanut butter. “Why don’t you come out with me today?”
His stare immediately flicks to his desk, and I hold back a chuckle. He has to be the biggest workaholic I know. “Where are you going?”
“Not sure yet. Out. The place has changed a lot since I lived here last, so I thought I’d get reacquainted with it.”
He cringes as his eyes stray back to his desk.
“Let me rephrase. Are you planning on working on your book today or something else?”
“Ah …”
“That’s my answer. Go get dressed.”
“You don’t understand. I have to follow my muse.”
“Oh yeah?” I give him a blank look. “Was it also your muse that told you to get your cock out last night?”
His eyes widen. “You couldn’t pretend to let me forget, could you?”
“Nope.” I spin him around, then slap him on the ass for good measure. “Get dressed. You’re coming with me.”
Our eyes lock for a moment, and I realize that I took it one pun too far. The way that sounded … the sight of his dick flashes through my mind along with filthy ideas on how he actually can come with me, and I force a laugh to ease whatever this tension is between us.
“Coming for a drive,” I clarify like I could possibly mean anything else.
Way to make things awkward.
Luckily, Beau is as intent as I am to pretend the whole thing never happened.
He grumbles the whole way down the hall to his bedroom but doesn’t try to fight me on it. When we’re both dressed, we head out, still with no clue on where we’re going.
“Okay, where would you say has changed the most in the last twenty years?” I ask on the way to the car.
“Take your pick. Pretty much everywhere.”
Hmm, well, we don’t have time to see everywhere. “In that case, where will be the best place to go to kick that muse of yours into gear?”
“My muse?”
“Yeah, you said you’re struggling to write. Maybe you just need to, what’s it called? Where you find inspiration again?”
“You think I’m lacking inspiration?”
I unlock the car and wait for him to climb in beside me before I answer. “You’re not stuck for words—those are happening. It’s your book that you’re holding back on.”
“True.”
“So, what do you write?”
He shifts in his seat. “Fantasy, mostly, with some heavy romance throughout.”
“Romance?”
“Don’t ‘romance’ me.” He pins me with a look. “Men can like love too.”
My laugh fills the car as I turn it on and get moving. “Of course they do. Why do you think I got married? It’s the fantasy stuff that has you stuck at the moment though, right? With the fortress?”
“Right.”
“Okay, I know where we can start.”
Thankfully, he doesn’t try to get it out of me, clearly content to come along for the ride. I make a mental note to attempt to get him out of the house more often while I’m living with him, because the farther we get from the apartment, the more tense he gets.
“You can’t stand to be away from your work, can you?”
“Am I that obvious?”
“Would you prefer I lie and tell you I’m really good at reading people?”
He nods. “That would work.”
“Why are you such a workaholic?”
“I’m not.” After I cut him a look, he continues. “Usually. The deadline is what’s stressing me out. I’m used to planning my time in a way that I can do small amounts each day, but the closer the deadline gets, the more work I need to do, and it stresses me to the point where I can’t do a single thing.”
It’s no surprise he’s so on edge all the time. Working under that kind of pressure would be enough to make me freeze up too. “I know it will be hard, but can you try—just for the day—to forget it and pretend to enjoy spending time with me?”
He scoffs, and I grin his way. “Can’t make any promises.”
“It’ll be a real struggle, I’m sure.”
“I’ll do my best not to cock it up.”
I bark out a laugh, and whatever lingering tension there was between us completely disappears. This Beau is one I can get on board with. Now if only I can forget what he looks like as he comes, we might be able to nail the position of world’s greatest roommates.
It takes twenty minutes for us to get to the ghost town on the outskirts of Kilborough. The whole place is a tourist trap. Ticket prices, tours, and souvenirs, plus the expensive themed motels. Locals rarely come out here because during tourist season it’s busier here than in town, and the only time I’ve ever been to Kill Pen was on a high school field trip. I’d be willing to bet Beau’s the same.
My suspicions are confirmed when I pull into the parking lot and he whistles. “The prison? Really?”
“It was supposed to be inescapable. That’s your fortress.”
He gives me this weird puzzling look, but I jump out of the car instead of sticking around to try and decipher it. Because the second I start thinking about the looks he’s giving me and what they mean is the second I start thinking about other looks I’ve seen on his face and then other body parts that caused those looks. And I really, really don’t want to be the creep who keeps picturing what Beau must look like naked.
He’s Marty’s friend and my roommate—those lines are clear, and the best thing I can do is not blur them.
Even if he does have a pretty fucking cock.
“I’ll pay,” Beau says before we reach the ticket booth. Since it’s still early in the season, it’s busy but not ridiculously so.
“Why? This was my idea, and I have money.”
“I didn’t say you didn’t. But I have more money than I know what to do with, so let me spend some of it.”
I wave him ahead of me. “You won’t hear me arguing.”
We pay for entry and a tour, then make our way through the ghost town toward the prison at the base of the hill. There are people running tours through the tunnels underground, shops selling souvenirs, tourists exploring the abandoned buildings, and brightly colored signs everywhere with reenactment schedules on them.
Everything is themed too. The costumes, the food and drinks being sold, the site maps, and the signage to stop people from getting lost.
It’s old and intimidating. The front of the prison is surrounded by a stone wall, housing a courtyard and front entrance, then when we pass through there, we reach the main compound. It looks exactly like I remember it but less menacing than when I was a teenager. Barbed wire tops the heavy, metal fences, and the gates to enter are thick steel and at least fifteen feet tall.
Our tour guide is a grumpy, balding man with missing teeth who was a resident of Kill Pen back in the day. He goes over the history of the place, why it was built, and the reason they closed and shows us through the high-security wings.
Beau and I walk side by side, arms bumping against each other. I’m listening to the guy up front, but we’ve clearly lost Beau. He’s studying everything with interest, and when we pass through cells and into common areas, I can tell he’s cataloguing every detail. He hasn’t picked up that I’m watching him, and the more I watch him, the less interested in the prison I am. His expressions are constantly shifting, light eyebrows drawing together, eyes glazed behind his glasses, lips silently repeating certain facts, and it’s almost as though I’m getting a glimpse at the conversations taking place inside his head. It’s … different. I can’t look away.
“And this is the main guard booth for the high-security floor. The CCTV systems were replaced shortly before the closure, and as you can see on each of those screens, they had every cell covered. No such thing as privacy in them days.”
We wait for the rest of the tour group to pass us and then take our turn inside. Beau immediately drops into the chair and starts inspecting … everything. The screens, the desk setup … I watch him and his constant energy.
The voice of our guide begins again outside the booth, and I watch through the glass as our group moves on.
“Ready to—”
I turn back to Beau and …
He’s on the floor, chest flat to the ground as he peers under a bank of drawers.
“What are you doing?” I ask.
“Looking.”
“Uh-huh.” I lean against the desk. “See what you’re after?”
He searches for a bit, wriggles under the desk and out again a moment later, then straightens and sits back on his heels. “It’s all wired in. No good.” Beau looks so serious, I have to remind myself not to laugh. If I was a dick, I’d point out to him that this is the kind of thing that might weird some guys out. But I’m not “some guys,” and it’s kind of fun to see someone with a complete lack of awareness on how they’re perceived.
Instead, I play along.
“The … CCTV?”
“Yep. I need something else.”
“Your fantasy world has electricity, then?”
“Of course.” He tilts his head. “It’s a semi-contemporary setting on earth, but instead of the world having a huge focus on technology, it’s on magic.”
“That sounds fun.”
“It’s the world I wish we lived in.”
There’s a longing in his voice that makes me curious. I hold out my hand to help him to his feet. Unlike the last time I tried it at Marty’s, he takes it. “What’s so great about this world of yours?”
“Are you saying you’ve never read one of my books? Should I be offended?” There’s a mischievous spark in his eyes that I like.
My mouth drops. “Are you teasing me, Bo-Bo?”
“Wouldn’t dream of it.”
I pretend to narrow my eyes. “I’m onto you. And I’m also well aware you’re deflecting.” But if he doesn’t want to tell me what’s so great about his world, I won’t push.
“I have no idea what you mean.” He smiles angelically as we leave to catch up with the rest of the group.
And fine. Maybe he doesn’t want to tell me right now. But hopefully he will, because I want him to feel comfortable confiding in me, exactly the way I’ve been doing with him.
