Page 54 of A Series of Rooms
“Get lost on the way up?” Nathan greeted him, leaning casually to one side with a hand braced against the door frame.
Jonah’s reaction, whatever it might have looked like from Nathan’s point of view, must have been the one he was hoping for, because Nathan’s smile quirked to one side. His appraisal made Jonah feel like he was wearing much less than the t-shirt and jeans he had on.
He had, of course, worn less in front of Nathan before.
“Come in,” Nathan said, stepping back.
Stunned, Jonah stepped through the narrow margin between Nathan’s body and the door frame. The proximity was just on the wrong side of subtle, giving Jonah no choice but to brush against him as he passed.
When the door clicked shut, Jonah realized he was shaking. He jumped at Nathan’s sudden presence behind him when he stopped at the mouth of the short entryway, but Nathan only lingered long enough to scoot around him.
“Jumpy,” he noted with a smirk.
Jonah was very aware that he had yet to utter a word. He backed himself against the wall as subtly as he could, watching Nathan’s every movement.
“Want a drink?” Nathan crossed to the dresser beside the window, picking up a glass of amber liquid. Beside it was a bottle with nearly a third of its contents already drained.
Jonah shook his head.
“Not very chatty tonight.” Nathan laughed. He took a long swig, barely making a face at the burn. “Cassidy probably does enough talking for both of you when you’re together. Do you charge extra for the ‘boyfriend experience?’ I should have guessed that dinner and hometown visits would be more his taste.”
Something in Jonah rose to the defensive at the way he talked about Liam, but he forced it down. “Did he ask you to come here?” he couldn’t help asking. “To talk to me?”
Nathan paused with the glass halfway to his mouth, eyes narrowed. “Why wouldn’t he come see you himself?”
Jonah swallowed, suddenly feeling like he had revealed more than he should.
“I don’t know.” He blinked, trying to recover, but fear was filling in all the blank spaces in his mind like cold water flooding a sinking ship. “I just thought—”
His words were cut off by a swallow as Nathan took a step toward him. He laughed again, raising his palms in a placating gesture, even as he continued his saunter toward him.
“Relax, Leo. Or, sorry, is itJonah?” He took another step forward. “What have you told him about us?”
Jonah cringed at the word choice, biting back the impulse to tell Nathan that there was nousin their arrangement, and there never had been. Nathan had only ever been another forgettable face in a sea of plenty, notable only for a repeat string of visits over the summer while he was interning in the city.
Jonah hadn’t seen him for months after that. Not until the night in October when Jonah had been called to the bar for a particularly aggressive hookup in a bathroom stall. It had only made sense later, why Nathan had been so adamant about bolting the bathroom door. Liam would have only missed walking in on them by minutes.
“I haven’t told him anything,” Jonah said honestly.
“Nothing? Really?” The corners of his smile were dangerously sharp as he moved closer. “You didn’t mention me at all?”
“No.”
“No?”
Jonah regretted backing himself into a wall, becausethere was no more room to shrink away when Nathan raised a hand, grazing the back of his knuckles down Jonah’s cheek.
“So, you’re not going to tell him aboutthis?”
Any lingering threads of hope that Nathan was here under nobler intentions were snapped the second he pressed forward, covering Jonah’s mouth with his own.
His faint noise of protest was swallowed up like it was nothing. Jonah’s hands curled into fists at his sides, survival instinct telling him not to raise them, not to push him away, not to fight back.
But this was different. This was Liam’sfriend.
Keeping Nathan’s secret from Liam all these months out of some misguided ethical code had weighed on him enough, but the idea of going along with what Nathan wanted tonight felt like too big a betrayal. Jonah couldn’t do it.
“Stop.” He jerked his head back hard enough to smack into the wall. His hands came up to push against Nathan’s chest, but he quickly found himself flattened, pinned by a knee between his legs, fingers digging into his hips.
