Page 47 of A Series of Rooms
That...decidedly didn’t feel like a real answer, but he could feel Jonah closing up on him, and he didn’t want to push. Nathan and Ben had no place here tonight.
“You know,” Liam said, sinking down onto the side of his bed, “I probably have a lot to apologize for from that night. I was so awkward. I—” He broke off into a startled laugh at the memory. “I mean, shirtless and rambling in the bathroom was not a stellar first impression, but then I really doubled down in the hotel room. Could I have handled that any worse?”
“You could have.” Jonah turned back to him, an easy smile back in place. He walked over to the bed and sat nextto Liam. “I got the impression you didn’t make a regular habit of hiring rent boys.”
“I don’t know where you got that idea.” Liam leaned sideways to bump shoulders. The brush of contact felt more charged than usual inside this room. He pulled back. “I don’t have anything against making money from it, you know. When it’s safe and consensual and...” He stopped himself before he could venture too far down that path. “It was purely amething. I’m.. . I’ve never...”
“Paid for it?”
Why had he brought this up?“Anything,” Liam said, face heating. “All of it. I’m...”
“A virgin?”
Liam covered his face. “Does the energy just radiate from my pores?”
“They may have mentioned it,” Jonah said. “When they set me up with you.”
Liam wanted to melt into his bedsheets. “Of course they did,” he said. “Whywouldn’tthey find a way to make the whole thing even more humiliating.”
“It’s nothing to be ashamed of,” Jonah said.
Liam brought his head up to look at him. “I’m twenty-one.”
“You were also raised religious,” Jonah pointed out. “And even if you weren’t, so what? Even if you never wanted to, it’s nobody’s business. Definitely not theirs.”
“I do,” Liam said, a little more quickly than he intended. “Want to, I mean. Eventually, with the right person orwhatever. It’s not like I’m waiting for marriage or anything. I may be a hopeless romantic, but I’m hardly a traditionalist.”
“Have you ever kissed a guy?”
Liam was busy twisting a loose thread from his pillowcase around his finger when Jonah asked the question. It snapped free, the blood flow rushing back to his fingertip. He looked up at Jonah, who was looking back at him, his whole body angled in Liam’s direction.
“You haven’t, have you?”
Liam swallowed. “No,” he admitted.
Jonah placed his hand on the mattress between them, inching toward Liam without making contact. “Do you want to?”
He couldn’t put words to the shift that happened then, the buzz in the air that seemed to intensify from his words. He couldn’t say who leaned in first, but they were definitely closer than they had been moments before. Jonah’s eyes were the first to twitch downward to his lips, and Liam felt a bolt of electricity thrum from his scalp to his fingertips.
“Jonah,” Liam whispered. “I’m not...I didn't bring you here with any expectation of...”
Jonah inched back, watching him carefully. “Is that a no?”
Liam was shaking his head before he could even finish processing the question. “It’s not a no,” he said. He reached down and covered Jonah’s hand, turning it over to fold their fingers together. “I’m just very aware of... I never want you to feel obligated.”
“It’s not like that,” he promised. “Not with you.”
They were close enough now that he could feel Jonah’s breath against his lips. Jonah raised a hand to cup Liam’s cheek, rough fingertips sliding over the stubble on his jaw. Liam closed his eyes.
“Ask me,” Jonah whispered.
Liam’s swallow was loud enough to puncture the quiet. “Can I kiss you?”
Jonah answered by pushing forward to close the distance. The first graze of their lips was so subtle he almost thought he’d imagined it. It wouldn’t have been the first time.
The second kiss, though, was unmistakable.
CHAPTER 21
