Page 22 of Protector

What the...? I stare at him, and I swear I see his cheeks turn red.

“I don’t know what I am. And I don’t know how to explain it. I think I’m just...”—he sighs deeply—“nothing.”

“Nothing?” I ask because he’s for sure not nothing. He’s everything. But I can feel his confusion.

“I don’t think about sex.” My eyes must widen as much as it feels like they do because he grins and shoves my shoulder. “I mean, not all the time. Not really. I hear everyone obsessing about sex all the time. Talking about it. Television. Movies. School. The locker room. But I just...”

I mean, yeah. Sex is everywhere.God knows it’s always on my mind. Well, I mean like 80 percent of the time anyway. I wanted to have sex... just not with a woman. It’s my turn to blush because goddamn, how much time do I spend thinking about sex and sex-like things with Adam?

Whether I feel guilty about it or not, the thoughts pop up.

“You just what?” I force myself to ask.

“I don’t really think about sex with anyone else. Or sex all that often.”

“So you’ve like never...” Shit, what exactly am I asking? I’m an asshole, I now realize, because I always just assumed he’s had sex but was just being Adam and his normal private, respectful self. Not talking about it.

“Never what?”

Okay, we can do this. We can talk like mature adults. “Had sex?” My voice squeaks when I ask, and so much for talking like an adult.

He smiles, but he doesn’t give me a hard time. “No. I’ve never wanted to.”

Holy shit. I rack my brain, trying to figure out if I’ve heard about this before. He’s not broken. I know that much. But a teenage guy who doesn’t want to have sex at all? Yeah, I don’t know if I’ve ever heard of that.

“So...” I clear my throat, chickening out. “Have you never...?” Shit. Yeah, I can’t ask this. I swear, just lying here next to him, saying words likesexhas my dick wanting to poke through the damn sleeping bag.

“Never what?” he asks calmly and far more maturely than I’ve managed. “You can ask me anything, Zachary. You know that. The only reason I’ve never brought it up is because I don’t understand it myself. Not at all. I don’t know the words or how to express it. It’s confusing as fuck. I know I’m supposed to feel a certain way, but I just don’t.”

“First of all,”—yay, look at me, my tone is back to serious—“fuck what society says you’re supposed to feel. They don’t get to decide that. And second of all, you can talk to me too. This friendship isn’t one-sided. If you want me to talk to you about my...”—I struggle with the word becausegaynessprobably isn’t right—“stuff?” He grins. “Then you have to talk to me.”

“About my stuff?” He’s smiling again, and damn it, his whole gorgeous face lights up when he does that. My dick is hard, and my body is thrumming with want. I scoot back from him a little bit in what I hope is a subtle move, but I doubt it is.

This is a serious conversation. No hard-ons allowed.

I try to school my dick, but it won’t listen.

“Go ahead and ask me what you wanted to.” Adam’s deep voice pulls my focus from my dick to him.

“Okay...” I try to keep my voice totally serious and focus. “You like, don’t...”

He’s nearly laughing now, I can feel it. And damn it, I hope I can get through this conversation. “Just ask me.”

“Fine. So your dick doesn’t get hard?” There. Totally normal question. See? I can do this.

He finally does laugh, and he shakes his head at me like I’m fucking ridiculous. Which right now, I feel like I am. “My dick works, asshole. It’s my mind that’s a mess.”

I frown. “What does that mean?”

“See?” He waves his hand before tucking it back under his head. “This is why I never brought it up because I don’t know.”

I bite my bottom lip, hating his frustration and feeling it myself. “We can talk about this. We can figure it out,” I say to both of us as I roll to my back again, looking head-on at him is almost too much. “So your dick works. And you like,”—ah, fuck it—“you jerk off, I’m assuming?”

A startled laugh leaves him, and I hear him shifting onto his back too. “This is so weird.”

I want to laugh and cry at the same time. Because yeah, it kind of is. We’ve gone from never talking about sex to talking about sexuality and some pretty serious things over the past week or so. “It doesn’t have to be. Look, I’m gay and totally attracted to guys. Women just don’t do it for me. I mean, I can see feminine beauty, and I know they’re pretty, but I don’t want to fuck them. Guys... phew. There are some hot men in this world. And a lot of them make my dick hard as steel.”

“Is that so?” He sounds amused. “And I’m in that hot category?”

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