Page 32 of Touch In Excess

“Sloth and Lust,” Skye said. He moved his hands up, stroking his thumbs along the sides of Rami’s neck. “You’ll meet everyone. I think we should do them one by one at first. The dinners can be a little…hectic.”

Rami nodded. “I’d prefer it. I don’t like being in situations I’m unfamiliar with.” His hands danced restlessly at his sides. “But I really liked Hen. As long as he wasn’t hitting on me.”

“He wasn’t. He only has eyes for King and always has. The two of them are very, very in love.”

“I like the idea of being in love. I think I’ll like it when it happens to me,” Rami said.

Skye leaned in close. “I hope so.”

Rami met his gaze for a second, then closed his eyes and leaned in. Their lips met—soft, slow, careful, heavy with promise of what a future between them could look like. Rami’s tongue touched him, and Skye groaned softly.

“Can we start over?” Rami asked for the second time that day.

Except, this time, Skye knew he meant something else. He meant the thing Skye wanted to hear. To touch and be touched. “Whatever you’re ready for.”

“You,” Rami murmured. “Your lips. Your hands. Please?”

“Yes,” Skye said. He stepped back and took Rami’s fingers, tangling them with his own. “Come inside?”

Rami bowed his head, nodded, then let Skye lead him to the door.

Nine

He was shaking with nerves.Not because he was a stranger to anything sexual, but because for the first time in his life, he was doing this with someone he liked. Someone he wanted. Someone he knew wanted him back. There was no chance—at least none in the calculations he was able to run—that Skye was in this for any other reason except he wanted to be there.

It was the first time Rami felt safe.

A pulse of regret began to beat in his chest like a second heart as they walked through the door. He wasn’t changing his mind about Skye, but he wished their circumstances were different. No matter how many dates they went on or how hard either of them fell, Rami’s situation would remain the same.

He was doing well enough and was going to pay off the taxes on time, but it was still going to be a while before he could let Skye have all of him. And the fact that Skye would be the first—couldn’t be the first—was starting to eat at him.

He wasn’t sure Skye would care…but Rami still hadn’t told him his full plan. His endgame was to auction his virginity off to the highest bidder in hopes he could pay the rest of the bill with some left over to store away so he wouldn’t find himself in this position again.

He would have to tell Skye, of course. He had to come clean so they could both make the right and most informed decision on if they wanted to go forward with all this. But Rami was going to let himself have this one selfish moment.

There were still no promises between them. There were no labels, no rules, and the only boundaries were the ones set by Rami.

“Does it matter to you that I’m a virgin?” he found himself asking as Skye led him through the bedroom door. His bed was large and covered in more pillows than Rami liked to sleep with. His comforter was a slate grey, and it looked very, very soft. His fingers itched to touch it, but he turned and touched Skye’s shirt instead.

Skye smiled at him. “No. Would you like it to?”

“No,” Rami said. He licked his lips. “Would you get angry if I slept with another person after we did…um. This.”

Skye’s face did something complicated, and then he took a deep breath and said, “That would make me a terrible hypocrite, wouldn’t it?”

“You’re allowed to want what you want,” Rami said.

Skye’s mouth softened into something like a smile. He pressed his front against Rami’s and took his hands. “I think I would be hurt if you dated someone else. I can’t set rules like that on you because I have sex for a living, and that’s not going to stop anytime soon. You should probably know that, sweetheart. If you and I decide we want more than this right here, you’ll have to be okay with what I do.”

“I’m okay with it,” Rami said. He didn’t really know if it was a good thing or a bad thing that he could categorize something like sex into work, pleasure, and relationships, but to him, it made sense. Work was work. It didn’t matter what you did. You performed some act or service, you got paid, you went home.

There was an invisible wall in his mind between him on his channel and the man who was standing in Skye’s bedroom. But he didn’t know how to say that in words Skye would understand.

“Then I suppose I feel the same way. If you did it on your channel, I wouldn’t mind. But if you were dating, I think it would bother me.”

Rami let out a sigh of relief. He did understand. “I don’t want to date anyone except you. I don’t really like people very much.”

Skye laughed and swooped in to kiss him. “Neither do I,” he said when he broke away. Rami could feel the echo of his lips—the warmth of them and the tender way Skye held him, not like he was breakable, but like he was precious.

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