Saugatuck Summer (Saugatuck, #1)(28)

“Oh, no . . .” I breathed, horrified and fascinated and, God help me, exultant in the same instant.

He wanted me.

It could never happen. It could never happen. I couldn’t hurt Mo like that, couldn’t betray her kindness, his kindness. I couldn’t encourage him to do something he would regret for the rest of his life, however much a part of me yearned for it.

But sweet baby Jesus save me, I was responding to the heat in that look he fixed on me, growing hard and aching despite my terror and confusion. I’d spent the week feeling alone and unwanted and cut adrift, and he looked like an anchor. The fact that he wanted me made me feel less alone.

Now, more than ever, I needed to man up and walk away. What had been a harmless situation had just become even more f*cked up. By several orders of magnitude.

He caught my hand as I tried to snatch it from his shoulder, where I’d rested it when I’d tried so innocuously to offer him comfort and reassurance. Now that small contact seared me, and his hand around mine felt like a band of fire, his skin blazing.

His eyes were so hungry and his face so tormented. He didn’t want to want this, no more than I’d wanted my infatuation with him. I’d been so, so wrong in my analysis of the situation. The awareness that had been thrust upon him wasn’t of the potential scandal we might stir up, however innocently. It was of all the non-innocent things we could do to fully warrant that scandal.

Oh shit, oh shit, oh shit. Walk away, Topher. Walk away now while you still can.

Why wasn’t he walking away?

He wasn’t. He stepped closer.

“Topher . . .” he whispered, just that soft brush of my name filled with anguish and need. He didn’t really want to do this, except he did, and his hand around mine shook so f*cking hard.

Why couldn’t I pull away? Why couldn’t he? It was every imaginable sort of wrong and we both knew it and why wasn’t that enough to stop us? I don’t know, and then it didn’t matter. One of us took that final step forward—I truly have no idea who—and our lips pressed together. We exhaled in the same instant, our breath exploding between us.

I was shaking too, I realized at that first tentative touch. Yet my mouth opened without any forethought and my tongue stroked his bottom lip. That was the moment I escalated things. I didn’t mean to do it. I would hate myself forever for it, but I did it. I upped the ante.

Are we really doing this? some appalled part of my brain asked. My conscience said no, but my body—and perhaps some confused part of my heart that wanted to take all the kindness and understanding he’d offered me these last few weeks and make it into something more—said yes.

Why shouldn’t I have this? If the world was going to damn me and think awful things about me anyway, no matter how good I was, why shouldn’t I have at least one thing, one moment, I wanted?

Still, perhaps my conscience would have won out in that final standoff if his lips hadn’t parted, if his tongue hadn’t met mine, if his hands hadn’t drawn me close and pressed me against the erection beneath his flannel pajama bottoms.

If he hadn’t taken control of that kiss and turned fear and hesitation into demand and hunger.

Once he did that, there was no going back.





When the shaking stopped

We were left in dust and flames

Buried our heads in shame

How did we let it come to this?

—Casey Stratton, “Nailed to the Cross”

It was wrong. It was wrong. Wrong in every possible, conceivable way.

It was wrong and it would always be wrong and we needed to stop because Mo and Brendan’s wife and . . .

At that point, the appalled part of my brain just up and dissociated, looking on in horror and revulsion at what we were doing. But it was drowned out by an unreasoning, unfathomable need that just didn’t give a Technicolor f*ck about right or wrong.

So there I was, naked on Brendan’s bed, with the light of the moon riding over the waves of Lake Michigan spilling across my skin, and Brendan’s fevered body bearing down on me.

I could have opened my mouth and said something. He would stop, I knew he would, if I told him to. And if I had, we could have backed off, found sanity again, ended this before it went from unwise to completely f*cking disastrous.

I could have said stop. But I didn’t.

“Topher . . .” he panted against my jaw, his lips and hands trying to cover every square inch of skin. He was maddened, totally beyond restraint. Sucking, biting, gripping, groping. His breath was a little sour with wine, but I didn’t care. I didn’t f*cking care. I met those crazed kisses with equal madness, my mouth clashing against his, my fingers raking down his back. I gripped his ass and jerked him closer and spread my thighs to let the flannel covering his cock rub against mine.

My conscience screamed hysterically at me, but I tuned it out and lifted my hips, grinding against him.

His hands abandoned me to shove his pajamas and boxers down his hips with frantic pushes. And he was hard and thick and silky and slick and perfect, rutting against my belly, sliding alongside my cock in the sweaty space between us.

“Topher, please . . . I want . . . I want . . .” His groan sounded agonized, near tears. He might have been, for all I knew. God knew I was. But he was straight. He’d never been with a guy, had no clue what he was doing.

We didn’t have any condoms or lube. They were upstairs in my room. If I stopped to go get them, which I knew I should do, it would have been over, and that was unacceptable. I could have given him a handjob, sucked him off, frotted against him until we both came. But I didn’t want that. Because he was Brendan and he was sweet and kind and he treated me well and made me feel good, made me feel like I had value.