Page 33 of The Kiss Principle

I groaned. I heard myself, and even high, I was shocked at the noise I made. But not shocked enough to stop. Because it felt good. It felt so good. It had been—God, I didn’t want tothink about how long it had been since someone had touched me like this, more than accidental contact or—rarely—a hug from Augustus.

“How does that feel?” Zé asked in his quiet way.

“How the fuck do you think it feels?”

He laughed. “I guess the other Fernando is still in there.”

“There’s me,” I said as he continued to move his hands lightly over my back. Another moan escaped me. “I’m me.”

Zé made a considering noise. “I think there’s a lot to Fernando Lopez that I don’t know. Maybe nobody knows.”

For a while, neither of us said anything. The light, soothing touches made my body light up in ways that I’d almost forgotten—a rush sensation and pleasure that, combined with the weed, turned me into putty. Then the movement of his hands changed. He kneaded my muscles, applying more pressure, lifting and pulling at sore muscles. I groaned again at the pleasurable discomfort of it. His hands were so strong, and he was so quiet and calm, and I thought about how his face looked in the morning, the light coming in through the kitchen window, the stark clarity of it: his jaw, his mouth, the brown of his eyes, that stupid hair that somehow managed to look windswept when he hadn’t been anywhere but bed.

His hands moved lower. He said something under his breath, and he gripped me by the sides, fingers curling around me to press against my belly, and he adjusted me on the towel. And it happened. It fucking happened, okay? One minute, I was lying there, half-asleep as the pain in my back faded. And the next, I was wide awake, feeling like I was sixteen again, my dick hardening. It was trapped between my thigh and the mattress, and now it seemed to have a mind of its own. Every time Zé touched me, I got harder—or that’s what it felt like, anyway. And he was constantly touching me. Years ago, weed used to make me horny, but for a long time now it had had the opposite effect.Maybe we’ve come full circle, I thought. Maybe we’re back where we started.

“What are you mumbling about?” Zé asked.

Please God, a tiny part of me thought. Please, if there is a God, please do not let me talk about my boner.

Somehow, I managed to slur, “Feels good.”

“It’s supposed to feel good. How’s your back?”

I didn’t trust myself to open my mouth, so I groaned again, and Zé laughed.

My situation didn’t improve. He was so strong, and he was touching me, and he was so gentle. I thought about how careful he was with Igz, but that only made things worse. I told myself not to think about anything, and instead, I saw him, those mornings I’d walked in on his yoga, and seen him doing downward dog, seen his ass in those tiny shorts pointing up in the air. I thought about how he looked when he fell asleep on the couch, how long his eyelashes were, about the time when we’d both been moving in the kitchen, dancing around each other, and he’d put an arm around my waist without even seeming to think about it. It had only lasted a heartbeat, long enough for him to keep me out of his way while he got a bowl out of a cabinet, but it had been—well, I remembered it, didn’t I? It had been something I’d never had. The casual intimacy of people who shared a space with no inhibitions.

And now, every time he pressed and rubbed and pulled, my body shifted in tiny increments against the mattress, and I realized, with a kind of growing horror, that I might actually be able to get off like this.

“Okay,” I said, the word syrupy in my mouth as I raised my head. Drool made a shining strand from my lips to the pillow, and I wiped it away, but I was sure he’d already seen. “That’s good. My back feels better.”

“I just started.”

“Yeah, yeah, I’m good—”

“Knock it off. Jeez, why are you so tense?”

He pushed, and he was strong—I let him force me down, his hand flat between my shoulder blades. I had seen that move before. All he had to do was bring my hips up, spread my legs, curl his fingers around my nape. His fingers probed my back again, and I whimpered.

Once again, his technique changed. He dug into sore, tight muscles with fingers and thumbs, and now the discomfort bordered on pain. It was like walking a tightrope, and somehow, Zé seemed to know exactly how to balance between too much and not enough. I still embarrassed myself a few times with grunts and little, shocked noises, but the intensity was actually a relief—my dick went down to a semi, and I didn’t appear to be in danger of messing my shorts in the immediate future.

“We should do this more often,” Zé said as he worked. “You have to be consistent with massages or you’re right back where you started.”

I would die. If we ever did this again, I would die. Hell, at this point, I’d probably die if I ever had to be in the same room with him again.

After a while, he returned to those long, gentle strokes. The bulldog in my pocket perked right up again. Then Zé shifted his weight, and the mattress moved under me, and I wanted to groan because it wasn’t fair. But I was so caught up in my determination not to hump the mattress like a teenager that I didn’t notice, until it was too late, Zé swinging one leg over to straddle me.

He weighed more than I expected. And I was painfully aware of how our bodies lined up. If I hadn’t been hard before, I was ready to drill down to China now. The new position must have given him a better angle because now he ran his hands from my shoulders to the small of my back.

When he broke the silence, it startled me, and I flinched. “You realize these are the straightest of straight guy underwear, right?”

And then, before I could process what was happening, he slid a slick finger under the elastic of my boxers and snapped it.

If you thought I’d flinched before.

But Zé didn’t seem to notice. He sounded amused as he said, “Blue plaid, Fernando? Seriously?”

I mumbled something.

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