Page 36 of New Hope

“Well, clearly,” he stated.

I pushed off the counter and took a step toward him, my voice low. “I had two shots.” I took another step. “And three beers.” The next step placed me right in front of him, close enough to hear the slight hitch in his breathing. “It was enough to give me a nice buzz, but not enough to get me drunk.”

His eyes darted down to my mouth. His warm breath ghosted across my face as he spoke. Mint with a trace of coffee. “It wasn’t?”

“Not even close. What happened in your car, happened because I wanted it to.” I paused. “But if you don’t want that, if you’re not feeling it too—”

The rest of what I was going to say got lost in a tangle of lips and teeth and tongues as he grabbed me and began kissing me. He kissed me until I was breathless, until my head was spinning, and I couldn’t even remember my own name. Finally, we broke apart, gasping for air as we stared at one another in awe.

“What the hell is happening? This isn’t possible. You were married to a woman. You’re straight.”

“Does this feel the way a straight man would respond if another man kissed him?” My hands landed on his hips, yanking him toward me so he could feel the extent of my arousal. He was hard too, and we both groaned as our erections rubbed against each other for the first time.

We both looked down, watching the prominent bulge behind his zipper as it brushed against the steel rod trying to poke its way out of my sweats. But then his eyes flitted to mine and I saw the questions swimming there. As much as I wanted to continue getting each other off, I needed to do this the right way. River was too important to me, and he deserved more of an explanation.

I took a couple of steps back to clear my head, staring at the floor as I willed my body to settle down. When I finally looked up, I groaned. River made quite a stunning picture, standing there with his shirt untucked and his hair all a mess, his lips still puffy from our kiss. “You’re not making this easy,” I muttered under my breath.

“What?”

“Nothing.” I walked over to the table and sat down. “You have questions. Understandably. So, what would you like to know?”

“Everything. But I guess, we should start with are you straight?” He followed me over and sank down in a chair.

“No. I’m not.”

“But…”

I huffed out a small laugh. “Yeah, I know what it seemed like. I was married to a woman for years. I also dated several girls before that. But I was never straight. I liked guys too, had my fair share of crushes on them. I just never told anyone. I don’t know why I didn’t. Fear maybe? Not about my parents. I knew they’d accept me and love me no matter what, but fear of rejection, of looking like a fool.”

I shrugged. “Or maybe I just never found anyone worth coming out for. So, I dated girls all through high school and then I met Connie while I was going through the academy. She was waiting tables at a nearby coffee shop, and I thought she was pretty. We got to talking and seemed to really hit it off. It wasn’t long before we fell in love and got married.”

“Have you ever been with a guy before?”

I felt my cheeks heat as I answered. “No. Last night was the first time I ever kissed a guy.” River chewed at his lip the way he did whenever he was nervous about something. “Tell me what you’re thinking. Please.”

He leaned back in his chair, rubbing a hand over his jaw. “I don’t know. I guess I’m just wondering how you know you’ll like it if you’ve never been with a man before.”

I shrugged. “The same way I knew I liked girls before I dated one or the how I knew you’d be a good kisser. Of course, I was dead wrong about that last one.”

River looked stunned. “You were?”

I leveled my gaze to his mouth, remembering the way he’d tasted. “Hell yeah. Good doesn’t even come close to describing the way you kiss. It’s like you’re reaching right down into my soul, discovering all my secrets, and touching every erogenous zone on my body at the same time. I can’t even think when your mouth is on mine.”

His voice was husky when he responded. “Maybe we should give it another try. Just to be sure.”

I groaned, reaching down to adjust my newly awakened cock. “As much as I want that, I think you may have a few more questions.”

“Just one. For now. Why me? I mean, not that I’m not happy, but why, after all these years, did you finally decide to kiss a man, kiss me?”

I stared down at my finger, tracing the wood grain in the top of the table. “I’m not sure exactly. I think it was a culmination of things really. First of all, I’m not married anymore. While I was married, I never even looked at another person, male or female. The last year, I’ve been free to do so, but no one has caught my attention. Then I moved here and met you, and you’re so nice and we have fun together. You’re a great guy and you’re sweet with Ellie. I trust you a hundred percent and you know that isn’t easy for me.”

“Yeah, I know,” he whispered. Like two magnets being pulled together, we both leaned forward towards each other.

“All of that stuff helped us become friends, but it’s more than just that. It’s also the way you look, the way you make me feel…”

“How do I look?” River’s face moved in closer to mine, his eyes drowning in lust, his lids at half-mast.

“You’re fucking sexy whether you’re in your pristine little lab coat or jumping into a pile of leaves with our girls.”

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