Page 46 of Man On

"It's okay to be whoever and however you are. And if you decide that you're curious—if you decide," he adds quickly before I can say anything, "I'm here to talk, or whatever you want. No pressure. You have my number."

CHAPTER 15

NOAH

The entire time I'm in the shower, all I can do is replay everything that's happened in the last hour.

What happened with Lane was...

Really fucking hot. I don't understand it.

I mean, I understand parts of it, or I'm beginning to. I understand that the first time I kissed a guy, I got a hard on. The same thing happened the first time I really made out with a girl, not half an hour later. It was hot and heavy though, not just a simple kiss. I thought maybe my reaction to kissing Lane was just because it was so taboo and forbidden.

I've kissed a guy one other time in my life, when I was barely seventeen, at a party full of unfamiliar people that one of my rec teammates brought me to. I was dancing in the living room with everyone else, feeling high from the tight press of bodies, thumping music, and the heavy cloud of weed that permeated the entire room. I looked up, and there was a guy watching me. He was blonde and had big arms, like another guy I knew. He noticed me watching him back and tipped his head towards a dark hallway before walking away. Before he disappeared, he looked back at me again, confirming that he wanted me to follow him.

No one was paying attention to me. No one knew me. It was my chance to see if what happened with Lane was a fluke. It'd been a couple of years, but I still thought about it. It still burned in the back of my head anytime I made out with a girl. I'd lost my virginity, and it was amazing, but I still couldn't get that one stupid kiss out of my head. That gasp that fell from his lips and made me so hard I couldn’t think.

I walked down the hall, not sure where he’d disappeared to. It was dark, and there were a few doors, but they all seemed to be shut. I almost changed my mind and left, but an arm reached out and grabbed my hand, pulling me into what looked like a little girl's room. My first thought was that we were probably not supposed to be in there, and my second thought was that the guy, now illuminated by the soft pink of a nightlight, was older than I thought. Not too old, or anything, but probably closer to twenty than I was. I think it might have been a college party.

He didn't waste any time, pushing me up against the wall pretty aggressively. His lips weren't nearly as soft as Lane's were, and the way he pushed them against mine was hard and insistent, not at all the way the kiss with Lane had gone. The guy—I'd never gotten his name—invaded my mouth with his tongue, and his thigh pressed between my legs. I could feel his boner against my hip.

Intrigued by the way he grinded it into me, I kissed him back, or at least I opened for him and let it happen. It wasn't bad, but I wasn't hard. I didn't feel that burst of arousal I'd felt when Lane's tongue touched mine and he gasped into my mouth, or when he whimpered as he stroked himself while I stood watching. The guy groaned, and I realized that I'd gotten hard. Because I was thinking about freaking Lane Blakely.

It felt good having him rub his erection against mine, but as soon as I realized I'd been thinking about my stepbrother, I started going soft again. Purely out of curiosity, I tried to imagine the guy was Lane again. But now that I was out of the moment, it wasn't working. Lane wasn't aggressive like this. His kiss had been soft and tentative. I was the aggressor, and I'd liked being the one to push him.

With that in mind, I flipped us, so he was the one against the door. The gasp of surprise he let out reminded me of the sexy sound that came out of Lane, and I fell into the fantasy. I pushed against him and licked deep into his mouth, rolling my pelvis into his with every thrust of my tongue. It was intense, and I was close to coming in my pants the way Lane did the first time we kissed. Just the reminder of that happening made my cock harden even more, and I pushed it into him—but the illusion shattered when the guy groaned out an expletive. Not Lane. No matter how hot he was, it wasn't him. This guy, aside from being a warm body to rub myself on while I pretended he was someone else, just didn't do it for me.

That was when I figured out I wasn't into guys as a whole. Right there, in the middle of a sweaty make-out session, with my tongue down another guy's throat and our boners rubbing against each other. The moment I remembered he wasn’t Lane, I backed away and left him there.

I've spent the past couple of years pretending that I'm not hot for my broody, grouchy, closeted stepbrother. I've played with him, fucked with him, tormented him—but the fucked up part is that I was also tormenting myself. Pretending I wasn't into it, that I was just fucking with him, or that I'm above it and just trying to help him.

But then today...

Goddamn it.

Losing my virginity didn't feel as good as that. Every single interaction I've ever had that involved my dick has not felt as good as that.

He didn't even touch me. He was just there, lying beneath me and watching me with those deep blue eyes, afraid and wanting it just as bad as I was. What would have happened if we'd touched each other?

I've been fucking kidding myself, pretending like I don't want him. I don't want to want him. He's an asshole most of the time. When he's not, he's okay. But he's also my stepbrother.

This is entirely fucked.

Actually…I bet that's exactly it. I don't really want him. I just think I do, because I can't have him. People always want what they can't have.

All I need to do is get it out of my system. And, okay, yeah, that sounds fucked up, too. But I can help him in the process.

Lane is gay, there's no way around it. Maybe he's bi or something, although I've never seen him show any interest in girls. I've only ever seen him show an interest in me, actually. Although he might be into Danny if he gave him a chance.

Hmm. Nope, I don’t like that, so I put Danny out of my mind and pretend he doesn’t exist.

I know he wants me, at least on some level, so his closeted little brain is somewhere on the train of letters that I can’t keep up with. He's fighting against admitting it, but we both know the truth.

An idea occurs to me that maybe I can help him overcome his fear of accepting who he is, and he can help me get over this little problem of mine. I'll get him out of my system, and he'll associate good feelings instead of religious bullshit with getting his dick played with.

It's a win-win.

Bursting out of the bathroom, I drip water everywhere because I can't be bothered to dry myself off. I need to talk to him now while my dick is hard and I'm feeling brave. I've barely closed the towel around my waist when I knock on his door.

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