The Charm Offensive(43)

Charlie Winshaw tastes better than mint Oreos, and Dev definitely wants this. Which is why he has to stop.

“I’m sorry.” Charlie exhales as soon as their mouths fall apart.

“Charlie, you’re drunk.” It’s almost impossible to get those words out, especially with Charlie six inches away, mouth half open. Dev clings to all his logical reasons for not doing this. The moral questionability of kissing your straight friend when he’s drunk. Not being a straight boy’s experiment at twenty-eight. Losing his job. “You don’t want to do this.”

“Dev,” Charlie slurs. “I really want to do this.” And he grabs him by the back of the neck again. There’s nothing soft about the way he shoves them back together, teeth first, and then tongue, and then hands. Heat—messy, sloppy heat. Charlie’s fingernails scrape the small hairs on the back of his neck, and even as Dev’s body dissolves at the touch, his mind gets stuck on an important thought: Charlie hates kissing.

Charlie hates kissing, so why is he kissing Dev like his whole life depends on it?

Charlie is straight, so why would he want to kiss Dev?

Charlie is Charlie—beautiful, brilliant, carefully guarded Charlie—so why would he want to kiss Dev?

Dev needs to push him away again. Dev is going to push Charlie away again. In, like, five seconds, he will totally stop this.

But then Charlie grinds his hips against Dev’s, and Dev can feel Charlie harden through his shorts, and nope. Dev’s not going to do a damn thing. He’s going to live and die in this moment. He’ll happily quit Ever After in shame and never work in Hollywood again if it means one more minute against this brick wall with Charlie Winshaw.

And once he determines this kiss is worth destroying his entire life for, he decides to make it count. He grabs a fistful of Charlie’s curls—and he knows with absolute certainty every time he grabbed Charlie’s hair before now, this is what he really wanted—and he snaps him around so that Charlie’s back is against the wall.

Once Dev’s running the show, there are more hands and more teeth. What Charlie lacks in skill and experience, he eclipses with raw enthusiasm. Charlie’s hands find his ass, the inseam of his pants, his stomach beneath his shirt. Charlie touches Dev like he doesn’t know where to start, like he’s overwhelmed by his options; Dev touches Charlie like he knows this is his only chance. He touches Charlie like Charlie is going to disappear at any second.

Dev runs his teeth along Charlie’s strong jaw until he arrives at the chin dimple and bites, and Charlie shivers in response. Dev feels that shiver in every inch of his body, the want gathering in him like something dangerous, until he hooks his leg behind Charlie’s and grinds down against him. Charlie exhales a shy moan into Dev’s mouth, and Dev fills his lungs with the sound of Charlie wanting him.

All at once, he comes to his senses. They’re in public, on a street in New Orleans, where anyone could stumble upon the star of Ever After kissing a man.

He pulls away. Beneath him, Charlie slumps against the wall, breathing heavily, his cheeks pink.

“Thank you,” Charlie eventually whispers into the space between them.

“Did you just thank me for kissing you?”

Charlie presses two fingers to the corner of Dev’s smile. “I did.”

Dev shakes his head and laughs. “That is a little weird.”

“I think you like that I’m a little weird,” Charlie says in a new, confident voice—a voice that scrapes along his skin like Charlie’s fingernails did before—and Dev has to kiss him one more time, one last time before he can never kiss him again. Dev grabs Charlie’s chin, and Charlie meets him so gently, his hands hooking around the back of Dev’s neck, his thumbs on the side of his jaw. Charlie sucks on Dev’s bottom lip, and Dev wishes he could keep this moment somehow. He wishes he could preserve it in the grooves of a vinyl record and fall asleep listening to the song on repeat.

“Dev, last night…” Charlie’s mouth finds his ear. “In the bathroom. Were you hard for me?”

Dev groans in embarrassment. He’s already decided to destroy his entire life, so he says, “Yes, Charlie. God, yes.”

Charlie melts against him.

The door to the club opens twenty feet away, and “Telephone” streams outside. Charlie jerks away.

“Skylar, come on.” Jules’s voice is so clear through the chaos of the night, it feels like a sobering bolt of lightning tearing through everything else. “Those drunk idiots could be dead somewhere!”

By the time Jules spots them on the sidewalk, Charlie is five feet away from him, and Dev’s not openly panting anymore. “Hey, we found you,” Skylar says. “And look, Jules. They’re not dead.”

Dev isn’t convinced this is true.

“What are you guys doing?”

“Nothing,” Dev says too quickly, avoiding Charlie’s gaze at all cost. If he looks at Charlie for even a second, Skylar will know. If Dev looks at Charlie, his face will telegraph every damn feeling competing for room inside his chest, and everyone will know.

“Charlie,” Skylar says, “you don’t look so good.”

“Um…”

Dev turns toward Charlie then, to see if he’s okay. He gets a brief glimpse of Charlie’s expression—an expression he should recognize from night one—before Charlie hunches over and vomits all over Dev’s legs. Just like he did on night one.