Page 11 of Playing with Fire

Or was it that he couldn't provide it? The memory of that kiss, of the barely disguised hunger in his eyes afterward, suggested the boundaries between us might be more fluid than I'd believed.

"What if they try again?" I asked, partially to distract myself.

"Let them try. Nobody gets past my security. Nobody touches what's mine. I can't... the thought of losing you tonight..." He stopped, looking almost surprised by the emotion in his own voice. "Just try to sleep, okay?"

There was that word again. Mine. He'd been saying it all night, each time with more intensity. Each time making my cock throb with need, sending another surge of blood to my already painful erection. I pressed my thighs together, trying to create friction, trying to relieve some of the pressure without being obvious. Fuck, I was the worst kind of disaster. My home had just burned down, someone had tried to kill me, and all I could think about was how much I wanted him to pin me to this mattress and show me exactly what being his meant.

My abuela would be crossing herself in horror. This was pure lust, one of the seven deadly sins, consuming me from the inside out.

"Is this weird for you?" I whispered. "Us, like this?"

Xavier was quiet for so long, I thought he might have ignored the question. "No," he finally said. "Which is the strange part. It should be weird. I don't do this with anyone else. Never have." His fingers stilled on the keyboard, his profile silhouetted against the blue glow of his monitors. "I'm not good at explaining this shit, Leo. I just know that with you, things are... different."

"Different how?"

"I'm still figuring that out," he admitted, the confession more intimate than the kiss we'd shared. "Give me time."

His honesty—the rare glimpse of uncertainty from someone who always seemed to know exactly what he was doing—made my heart race faster than his touch had. This was Xavier showing me something he'd never shown anyone else: doubt.

"Try to sleep," he said, his voice gentler than before. "I'll be right here."

"I don't know if I can sleep," I admitted. Every time I closed my eyes, I saw flames. But more than that, I couldn't stop thinking about him. About how he'd looked on his motorcycle. How his hands had felt positioning my body against his. How possessive his voice got when he said 'mine.'

"Want me to put on that lo-fi coding playlist you like?"

I nodded, grateful for the distraction. Soft beats filled the room, familiar and soothing. But even that reminded me of all the nights we'd spent coding together, me sneaking glances at him while pretending to focus on my screen. Watching the way his pupils dilated when he solved a particularly elegant exploit. The way his fingers moved across the keyboard like a pianist, creating digital symphonies of broken security protocols.

The bedsheets rustled as I tried to find a comfortable position that wouldn't be awkward later. One that wouldn't make it obvious how much I wanted him. How many times I'd imagined him pushing me down into these same sheets, marking me, claiming me, making me his in every way possible.

"Stop overthinking," Xavier said. "I can hear your brain spinning from here."

Fuck, if he only knew what I was actually thinking about. What kind of friend was I, perving over someone who'd never want me that way?

But that kiss... that wasn't the action of someone entirely disinterested.

"If you're not asleep in ten minutes..." He paused, uncertainty flickering across his face as I watched his reflection in the dark monitor screen. "I don't know if this is crossing a line, but I'm coming to bed. I need to know you're okay. That you're still breathing."

My breath caught, heart suddenly jumping into my throat. "What happened to hunting?"

"The scripts are running. Nothing more we can do tonight." He glanced over his shoulder, and even in the dim light I could see the possessive edge in his expression, but now it seemed tempered with something almost vulnerable. "Besides, you think I'm letting you lie there having a panic attack by yourself?"

"I'm not having a panic attack," I protested, but my voice came out shakier than intended. Truth was, I didn't know what I was having. Fear and desire tangled up in my head, making it hard to tell where the trauma ended, and my regular Xavier-induced sexual crisis began. A crisis that had only intensified after that kiss, after experiencing firsthand the control I'd only imagined before.

"Right." He hit a few more keys, then turned back to his screen.

Ten minutes. I had ten minutes to get my body under control before Xavier would slide into bed next to me. Ten minutes to kill the increasingly persistent erection that refused to understand that its owner was in crisis. I glanced at the clock on the nightstand, watching the minutes tick by with mounting panic.

Think unsexy thoughts. Think unsexy thoughts.

I tried picturing my old professor, Dr. Weiskopf, with his perpetually sweat-stained shirts and tendency to speak through a mouthful of tuna sandwich. That helped for approximately thirty seconds until my traitorous brain remembered Xavier's lips crushing mine and we were back to square one.

Listen, we need to calm down. This is NOT the time. He's asexual, remember? He doesn't want this. We don't DO this.

My traitorous cock responded by twitching eagerly and starting to leak pre-cum into Xavier's borrowed sweatpants.

Was I seriously having an argument with my own dick? And losing? What the fuck?

I switched tactics, trying to name every character from Evangelion in chronological order of appearance. I got as far as Shinji, Misato, and Rei before my brain short-circuited with the realization that Xavier had the same cold, calculating intensity as Gendo Ikari, and somehow that was doing it for me. Dios mio, was I really lusting after someone who reminded me of the most toxic anime father figure ever? I was officially beyond help.

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