Page 54 of In Plain Sight

My attraction to him had only gotten stronger since that night at his apartment. But nothing had happened, so there was no reason for me to be acting this way.

We’d hung out for a bit after he told me about what was going on with his friends, just listening to music and chatting while we had a second drink. Then I went home.

That was it.

It didn’t matter that seeing him be vulnerable and knowing he trusted me enough to open up had shaken something loose inside me. It made no difference that the night was burned into my consciousness like a core memory. It meant nothing.

He needed someone to listen, but instead of being a friend, I went home and jerked off to thoughts of him in the shower.

I felt so guilty after that I tossed and turned for hours, and I’d spent the next few days stumbling over my words and barely able to make eye contact with him.

I needed to get a grip before I did or said anything that would ruin the tentative friendship we’d started to build.

“I need to get some air,” I said, abruptly pushing my chair back with a loud scrape.

Isaac and Asa glanced at me, but neither was surprised by my announcement. I wasn’t a fan of crowds and noise, and stepping away to decompress for a bit when we were out wasn’t unusual for me.

Only tonight I was escaping because I’d rather not have a front-row seat to Luka’s flirting, and I really didn’t need to see which woman he ended up taking home.

“I won’t be too long,” I said as I stood.

They both nodded. I tossed them a little wave as I hurried away from the table and toward the small hallway at the back of the bar where the bathrooms were, along with a door that led to a makeshift smoking area.

9

ZANDER

Thankfully no onewas around when I slipped outside. I leaned against the building, my eyes closed and the back of my head pressed against the stone facade.

The fall air was cool against my heated skin, the slight breeze ruffling my hair. I breathed in a few times, letting the fresh air fill my lungs as I tried to clear my racing mind.

I shouldn’t have come out tonight. I didn’t handle crowds and noise well on a good day, and even though the bar was relatively chill for a Saturday, everything was just too much tonight.

My mother’s call yesterday had messed me up more than I wanted to admit. Usually I could shrug off her outbursts, but I’d been in weird headspace for the past few weeks, and it was harder to deal with her when I had other stuff going on.

And I had two annoyingly related things currently going on—my crush on Luka and my budding feelings for Sinbin.

How in the world had I gone from never having man troubles to crushing on two guys I couldn’t have?

I probably could have gotten over my distraction with Sinbin if we’d only had the two JOI calls. We hadn’t sexted or gotten offtogether since the last call, but we started exchanging messages a few weeks ago that had nothing to do with our dicks.

I was surprised to find the first message in my inbox on Kinksters about a week after our last call. Sinbin shared a meme of a frazzled cartoon cat with the words “I’m fine. It’s fine. Everything is fine” under it. I sent one back of a wide-eyed and shocked-looking cat with “What do you mean a stress ball isn’t for throwing at people who stress you out?”

That had started our daily message exchanges, and while they were mostly just memes and funny anecdotes, I still got a little thrill every time I saw one of them waiting for me when I logged in to the app.

Sinbin was a mystery. I had no idea what he looked like, what his life was like, or really anything about him other than he liked it when I got my bossy on. I didn’t even know for sure how old he was, if the pics on Kinksters were really him, or if anything he told me was true. But even with all those unknowns, I liked him. I was drawn to him, and not just because we were so sexually compatible.

And if that wasn’t complicated enough, I also couldn’t shake my crush on Luka. I’d hoped that hanging out with him away from the other guys and the shop would help me see him as a friend, but that backfired epically. Especially since hanging out with him at his apartment seemed to lift the last of his reservations around me. Now instead of long silences at work, the time was filled with idle chatter, and I learned that Luka sang softly to himself when he was concentrating.

I liked that he was comfortable enough to let go and be himself, and my lizard brain really liked that I got to see a side of him the other guys didn’t.

Luka wasn’t the first straight guy I’d developed feelings for, and he wouldn’t be the last. My usual method of getting over a crush was to avoid the person until my attraction and feelingswent away, but that was impossible when we spent six days a week together, most of it alone in the back of the shop.

The real problem was that I liked him. He was funny and witty and a genuinely nice person. I enjoyed talking to him, and the pull I felt toward him was impossible to ignore. We were becoming friends, but that wouldn’t happen if I couldn’t stop thinking about those baby blue eyes staring up at me. How his plush lips might look stretched around my cock.

Said cock plumped up, my balls tightening uncomfortably.

“Jesus Christ,” I muttered, trying to will my dick to calm the fuck down.

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