Page 77 of Poolside

The people he wanted to respect him. Tolikehim.

But now that Tommy was here, he couldn’t shake the way Rick had looked at him when he’d introduced Chuck as his boyfriend. As if the fact that Tommy had shown up with a man somehow made him a different person.

He thought about Chuck, who had hidden his sexual orientation from the world for years.Fuck, what had that been like for him? It was painful to think about. Now, suddenly, Tommy was on the outside looking in. The surprising thing, though, was that he didn’t mind. He didn’t mind one fucking bit, not if the cost of belonging was hiding the way he felt about Chuck from the world.

“You good?”

Tommy blinked up at Chuck, who stood above him with a hand held to shield his eyes from the bright afternoon sun.

“Yeah,” Tommy said, running his hand up the outside of Chuck’s denim-covered thigh.

* * *

After a formal dinner in the estate’s opulent dining room, the guests dispersed. Many were going back to the patio for another round of drinks, while others were heading to the glass-walled pool house to play poker.

Tommy caught a few confused looks when he excused himself and Chuck from the invitations to join in, but he blamed it on wanting to rest up for the events of the next day.

With their bags in tow, Tommy led the way up the wide staircase, Chuck’s footsteps sure and steady behind him. He followed Marcy’s directions down a long hallway until they reached a door with a small, carved wood anchor hanging from the knob.

Tommy pushed the door open and stepped aside so Chuck could go in ahead of him.

The room was a modest size, the double bed dressed with decorative pillows in varying shades of blue against its dark wood headboard. A desk was tucked into one corner, and finely upholstered wing-back chairs stood on either side of a small table that was topped with an arrangement of blue hydrangeas.

Tommy placed their bags on the bed and then turned to Chuck. “My boss was weird about us, wasn’t he?”

“He was,” Chuck said, his smile apologetic. “I tried to warn you?—”

Tommy shook his head. “Don’t do that. I’m in this, Chuck. I can’t explain why it took me so long, or why it’s happening now, but I know that this is real and it’s wortheverythingto me. Introducing you to Rick as my boyfriend was the easiest and most honest thing I’ve ever done.”

There was a brief flash of something on Chuck’s face, but before Tommy could ask about it Chuck’s eyes darkened with unmistakable yearning and he crowded Tommy’s body with his own. “Get on the bed, T,” he whispered, his breath brushing against the sensitive skin of Tommy’s ear.

A part of Tommy wanted to pause, to go back to the split second where something that almost looked like devastation had twisted Chuck’s face, but the lure of Chuck’s body and the intoxicating newness of their relationship had him working the buttons of his shirt free.

Chuck was frantic, mouth open and eager as he kissed him, hands tugging his own clothing off before joining Tommy’s hands as they fumbled with his belt. They tumbled back onto the bed, noses bumping and hips brought together by their tangled legs.

It was still so new: the feeling of sliding his hard dick against another throbbing erection, the rasp of stubble against his cheeks, the flat, freckled chest that pressed against him. It was new and different andvibrant, each touch and kiss changing everything he thought he knew about himself and the world.

Today, he’d been reminded that, to many people, what he was experiencing was something to be feared. It was something that changed the way people looked at him, something that meant he was someone completely new.

But he understood now that all of it was bullshit. He’d never been as much himself as he had been since he’d discovered his feelings for Chuck. He’d never been so honest, so sincere. He’d never imagined how it could be to share the deepest, most tender parts of himself with someone else. That it could feel like the deepest friendship and the most electric chemistry collided in one person.

Tonight, Chuck rode him with his head thrown back, exposing his long, freckled neck as he bounced on Tommy’s lap. There was a frantic energy to him, an urgency to his movements like he was racing to the finish line.

But there was no hurry. Tommy grabbed Chuck’s hips firmly enough that his movements stilled, his inner walls clenching around Tommy’s length. Chuck looked down at him, eyes wide and desperate. His cock bobbed, hard and flushed between them.

Gingerly, Tommy trailed his fingers up and over the quivering planes of Chuck’s abdomen. “Slow down,” he murmured, even as his own dick throbbed with arousal where he was fully seated in Chuck’s body. “There’s no hurry. None at all. Just you and me here, yeah? Just you and me.”

Above him, Chuck’s expression softened, his lips parting as his shoulders relaxed. Needing to erase any space between them, Tommy tugged him down into a deep, commanding kiss that he hoped communicated all of the feelings he hadn’t yet figured out how to put into words.

Slowly, they began to move again. Their rhythm was perfectly staggered, Chuck rolling his hips forward just as Tommy drew his back. Chuck’s body gripped him, and based on the vibrant pink that stained Chuck’s freckled cheeks and the steady drip of precum from his hard, untouched cock, whatever Tommy was doing was working.

There was still so much he didn’t know about Chuck, about who he was when he was naked and untethered like this, butfuckhe wanted to know everything. He wanted to know how to take him apart one touch at a time, how to make him lose his mind with pleasure, how to make him come so hard his legs were unsteady afterwards. To hold him close in the haze of the afterglow.

He wanted to know the soft, unguarded version of the man he’d known for years as just his friend.

Tommy wanted to know his heart.

“I’m close,” Tommy grunted, fingers digging into Chuck’s hips like maybe it would help him hold off from coming so soon.

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