Love Me Like A Rock (2 page)

Dude. You can’t see that. Stop thinking about his balls.

Seriously, he was going to have to come back later in the week when there was a female model for the nighttime session, so he could wrestle his brain back into the non-sexual visual appreciation of the naked body. This was just disturbing.

He blamed Vinnie. And Austin’s own absent-minded obsession with a new project over the summer that had distracted him from doing even a minimal amount of whoring around with his hometown friends. He’d kept telling himself that he was going to see Vinnie when he got back to school, and had hunkered down over the weird-ass work that had sucked in all his free time over the summer.

When he’d shown up in their suite during those first few days before class started, he’d been ready to jump Vinnie that very weekend, figuring he’d get his toe in the door before the semester’s work took over and Vinnie lost himself to his eternal studying.

But Vinnie had gotten roped into organizing some back-to-school Model United Nations events—a mock UN session, and a dinner and a party, although what Vinnie was going to add other than a domineering attitude and constant scolding, Austin didn’t know.

That’s not fair. You know he just shuts up and does whatever needs doing when they ask him for help.

It was one of the truly annoying things about Vinnie, how he was such an honorable guy, despite being the least charismatic person ever. Made it almost impossible to stay annoyed with him, even when Austin’s plans for a round of welcome-back sex had been unceremoniously tossed out the window before he’d had a chance to lure Vinnie into them.

By the time classes had started, Vinnie had already felt behind, what with not having had time to do most of the semester’s worth of reading before the first day. Stressed out, Vinnie disappeared into the library or his room and wouldn’t be seen again until he’d wrapped up at least one major paper, at which point he’d be ready for cocktails and cock, in that order.

Austin sighed. He’d had such high hopes.

Mindless sex with a random hookup it is. There will still be plenty of parties this weekend. We’re only a couple of weeks into the semester. Nobody except our uptight friend Vincent is too stressed out to party yet.

When Knapp wrapped up the session with thanks to the model—Sean—and a reminder to the students that the next life drawing session was scheduled for two nights later, Austin was relieved, for the first time ever, to be heading out of a drawing studio. Normally he lingered, but between his perving on the naked dude in front of the class and his pissy mood, he’d just as soon book it back to their suite and fire up the tail end of the joint he’d smoked the night before.

But before he had a chance to pack up, the professor was calling him over.

“Hey, Austin, can you give me a hand?”

Foiled in his race for the exit, Austin suppressed a sigh and followed Knapp over to where she needed some help returning the furniture they’d used during their session to its regular place along the walls of the studio. He liked Knapp, and would generally have been happy to help anyone who asked, but he especially wasn’t going to risk offending any art professor. Not after what the department had just set him up with the previous week.

God forbid he did something to piss off a department professor and they rescinded their offer to give him his own show in the art museum right before Thanksgiving.

After a couple of beers, or on the rare occasion when he smoked the whole joint, Austin might have admitted that he’d hoped to be one of the select juniors to get a solo show. But even drunk or high he wouldn’t have laid a hopeful claim to any expectation beyond getting squeezed in at the tail end of the year.

That he’d been offered a spot in November made his heart swell with pride and his head grow dizzy with an unfamiliar anxiety that flooded back into his system whenever he put mental effort into figuring out what he wanted to show. He had an ongoing series of works in sculpture and oils that might do, but a gnawing in his stomach kicked in whenever he tried to imagine either of those scenarios.

Let it go. This is supposed to be your chill time. You have got to unwind.

“Did you see the op-ed in the
Clarion
last week, Professor Knapp?” he asked while carefully maneuvering his end of the sturdy table in a backward walk.

“Don’t get me started,” Knapp growled. She gave up her grizzly-bear-on-the-attack face and smiled when he laughed, caught off guard by her vehemence. “Those people make me crazy.”

“I don’t know. They keep things interesting,” he said, knowing he was baiting her.

The op-ed had gone on at length about an imaginary mashup between the lecture given in the previous spring by a visiting professor on the history of pornography and the figure model drawing sessions. One of the models who’d been popular in the spring had been a very conventionally attractive young woman whose exhibitionist tendencies had led to a role in a film student’s senior project that had later been revealed to be pornography.

Arty, protest pornography about the repression of gender roles, but any film with pegging in it was not going to go over well with the administration. The student hadn’t been rehired for any further figure modeling sessions, but the number of students on campus with nude drawings of her was…plenty.

In any case, all of those different events had gotten mashed up in the op-ed author’s tiny little brain, and the small but vocal conservative contingent on campus had taken up the anti-obscenity cause with relish.

“God, I’d hoped it would die down over the summer. As if life drawing sessions are even vaguely controversial. Artists have been using them to learn for hundreds, thousands of years! And that guy is the pervert for sexualizing them. He should check his own motivation for showing up to creep on some poor model who’s probably just working for beer money.”

Now Austin felt distinctly uncomfortable, because he’d definitely been doing some perving of his own during their session tonight.

The model did it first!

Oh great. Austin had a hard enough time keeping his inner five-year-old from running the show on the outside. He had no chance against him inside his head.

The model looking at you was not a sign he wanted you. Or that it was okay to stare at his dick for an hour.

He wasn’t going to feel bad about this for long. Austin didn’t believe in flogging himself for shit his brain thought. He wouldn’t have time for anything else in that case. If it stayed inside his head, he let it go without much more than a mild
oh, Austin
—a phrase that was surely a leftover from a childhood full of scoldings for making yet another mess somewhere he wasn’t supposed to.

“I can’t believe he was encouraging students to show up and protest our sessions for being obscene. Total nonsense.”

“College students. Always up for a protest.” Austin rolled his eyes with exaggerated effect until Knapp laughed at him. “Just say the word and I’ll show up with my boyfriend and give them something really obscene to look at.”

Which was more wishful thinking than anything, because Vinnie wasn’t his boyfriend and hadn’t shown any sign in the seven years they’d been friends of wanting to be, but it made Knapp laugh.

The soft slap of a pile of fabric caught his attention as Knapp waved to him on her way out the door. The heavy terry robe the models were given had fallen off the corner of the screen where Sean must have hung it up.

He tried to keep his footsteps silent as he went over to retrieve the robe, because there was nothing creepier than hearing someone you didn’t know walk up to the angled M of the privacy screen when you were naked behind it.

“Hello?” Sean’s voice filled the room from behind the screen, bigger than Austin would have imagined now that the room was empty of everyone except the two of them.

Whoops.

Nothing creepier than hearing someone walk up on you except maybe hearing someone trying to do it with sneaky silence.

Chapter Two

“Just gonna grab the robe. Hang it up.” He kept his voice brisk. Not husky. Not thick with the wondering just how naked the model still was, a couple of feet away. He could smell something pepperminty and warm and wondered if it was Sean.

“Sorry.” Sean’s voice was a low rumble that Austin felt in his balls.

“No worries,” Austin said, and left the robe hanging on the wall hook meant for it. He didn’t even try to peek around the edge of the privacy screen, which was a triumph of frigging willpower if he’d ever had one.

Get your shit and go. This is only revving your motor because Vinnie’s been such a distant prick lately.

Which wasn’t exactly fair, because his best friend was almost always a distant prick, which was how Austin automatically defined someone who didn’t pay enough attention to him when he wanted. And between crew practice and races, the eternal stick up Vinnie’s butt about studying, and the pressure from his parents, Vinnie rarely had enough free time to pay as much attention to him as Austin wanted.

It wasn’t Vinnie’s fault necessarily, but Austin didn’t feel like being generous when he’d been back on campus for a month without getting laid.

“Lock the door when you head out, okay?” he called and hustled to the far side of the room without listening to hear if Sean answered him.

But at his easel, his packing up was postponed by the mess his laughing, long-haired neighbor had left on the floor beneath her own work station.

“Oh, for Christ’s sake…”

He squatted and swept up bits and pieces of charcoal sticks with his fingers. His hands were a filthy mess already that he’d need to wash before touching anything. The crumped sheets of newsprint the girl hadn’t bothered to pick up were pitched into the nearest trash bin.

By the time he left her station as neat as it had been when she’d arrived—making a mental note to point the girl out to Knapp next time, because a lecture about studio manners from Austin didn’t carry nearly the same weight as a stern look and half dozen sharp words from Knapp—Austin already knew he’d missed his window for a discreet departure.

“Can I see?”

Austin didn’t need to turn to know who it was standing behind him. He could damn near feel the body heat radiating off the guy, and that voice was drilled into his bones after only a handful of words. But with his mind still insisting on imagining Sean naked, it was imperative he turn around and stamp the image of the man in clothes on his sex-obsessed little brain.

Except…fuck.

“See what?” he asked after clearing his throat, because Sean hadn’t gotten dressed yet and was just standing there with his feet bare under the hem of the navy robe.

“I figure there’s gotta be about seventeen sketches of my dick in there,” Sean said, lifting his chin at the newsprint pad, that damn hint of smile back on his beardy face.

Austin shook his head, his curls bouncing enough that he could feel it. “No way.”

Sean arched an eyebrow.

“Seven or eight. Tops,” Austin drawled out, flipping the used pages and the cover over the top of his easel without pausing to show off any of his drawings.

“I’m Sean Campbell,” the mostly naked dude said, holding out his hand until Austin gave in and shook it. Sean’s hands were broad, his palms rough. Not like rowers’ hands, which were always ripped to shit from the oars, but like he used his hands for more than typing on a computer or jerking off, like most students.

“Austin.”

“I know. I asked Knapp.” Sean’s quick smile was a flash of white.

“About me?” Why did that give him a thrill?

Because it’s flattering, knowing he asked about you? This is not rocket science.

“Yeah. After the first time I saw you at one of these.”

“Last month?”

“No,” Sean said, full-on grinning now. “Last year.”

“Last year?” Austin heard his voice rise to a squeak and winced inside. Being the little guy in almost every crowd had made him hypersensitive about things he could control, like the tone of his voice. He lowered it out of dolphin-range. “When last year?”

“I don’t remember. In the spring, maybe? You were here a few weeks in a row. Then I didn’t see you again before summer break, and I was bummed I’d missed my chance.”

“Yeah, I spent most of my studio time last semester working on a sculpture project.” He’d been really excited by his insectoid portraits of friends and other people. Irritation with Vinnie had sparked the first idea—irritation with Vinnie sparked lots of things in Austin—but the end result had been a much more introspective set of pieces than he’d anticipated. “Plus, once the spring racing season gets going, I’m on the water almost every day. I don’t usually have time for much studio work. Crew is pretty time-consuming. But it’s worth it. Pretty exciting stuff.”

“I know. I watched you guys.”

“You did?” Spectators at the local races were usually limited to BFFs and people who were currently sleeping with one of the rowers. Except for the Head of the Charles, crew didn’t exactly have the draw that football or basketball, or hell, even rugby, did.

But apparently aspirational lovers—
fuck buddies or hookups, don’t get ahead of yourself
—showed up from time to time too.

Huh. Wish I’d known.

Not that he would have done anything on the bank of the river, with Vinnie and the guys all standing right there, but it would have been cool to know that someone was cheering just for him. Some of his art department friends showed up when they could, and he knew Denny’s cousin Cash and his friends rooted for the whole team, but having someone on the riverbank screaming encouragement just for you felt different than all that.

Made him kind of wistful to think he’d missed that.

“So have you made it to any of the fall races yet?” he asked casually, shoving his charcoals back in his art box, not meeting Sean’s eyes.

“Not yet. Think I should go?”

“I hear the JV boat is doing pretty fucking fantastic,” Austin said lightly, and smiled when Sean laughed.

“Is that so?”

“Yeah, their cox is a real pain in the ass, but it’s worth it.”

“That what they say?”

Done playing, he slung his backpack over his shoulder and turned to face Sean, letting his gaze drift down over the gaping wrap and loose belt of his robe. “Nah. They say they’re going to dump me in the river if I don’t lighten up.”

“But if you’re winning…” Sean drew out the phrase like a question.

“They’re happy as hell to have me yelling at them.”

Sean leaned his hips against the table and crossed his bare feet at the ankles. Austin couldn’t help looking down to see the man’s big feet up close.

“Man, your feet are jacked up,” he said before he could stop the words.
Way to insult the guy, asshole.
He glanced up worriedly to check if steam was shooting out Sean’s ears yet. “Sorry.”

“Nah, they’re totally jacked. I’m a grad student in geology. Spent the summer measuring glacier movements in Greenland and the hike between our sets was brutal. My toenails are still recovering.”

“Wow. Sounds cool.”

Way more exciting than the three months Austin had spent plugged into his computer working on his insane project that would never see the light of day. He shook his head to banish the thought. What was one wasted summer anyway? Just because his professors anticipated an entire show’s worth of new work in a couple of months was no reason to panic.

No reason.

“Sure I can’t see?” Sean reached out with one bare foot and poked Austin’s jeans until he found leg.

“They’re just sketches.”

“I could buy you a drink. See if I can change your mind.” And it wasn’t his imagination this time either as Sean took a step forward, crowding into Austin’s personal space, a move that normally bothered him because most guys were tall enough to tower over him and pushing up on him always felt like a power move.

But Sean’s face was only a couple inches above his and he was leaning back as he moved in—leading with his dick, as it were—which made the whole thing feel more like an invitation than a demand.

Sean smelled warm and fresh and smoky, like a campfire in the woods, and Vinnie’s never-ending distancing was a cold room to live in.

Parking himself at the foot of a roaring fire, because he was pretty sure Sean could make him go up like a torch in a heartbeat, sounded like the best idea ever all of a sudden.

“One drink.”

Sean’s eyes lit up. “I’ll put my pants on first.”

“If you insist.”

And yeah, now he was flirting. More than flirting, if he had to admit it. More like issuing an open-to-fuck invitation with his eyes, because screw it. This guy was hot and wanted him. Had wanted him for most of a year, which was the kind of flattering that ignited a warm glow in a guy’s chest. And maybe it was time to admit that Vinnie and he were never going to be a thing. Had never really been a thing.

Admitting it didn’t mean getting over it like flipping a light switch off. Austin didn’t have any illusions about his ability to stop being hung up on Vinnie just because he’d finally realized they were never going to be a real couple.

He’d gone through plenty of phases of thinking he was over Vinnie, at last, but they never lasted. Every time Vinnie crooked a tipsy finger at him or simply headed back to his own room after slew of scathing comments meant to push Austin’s top buttons, Austin fell in line like an eager puppy. The next time that happened, Austin was putting Vinnie face down, ass up, and then jerking himself off all over Vinnie without returning the favor. Leaving Vinnie hanging sexually would make up for him leaving Austin hanging in every other way.

His dick was certainly happy with the change of imagery though, subbing in Sean’s shorter, wider body for Vinnie’s tall, muscular one and voting yes.

Austin dragged his eyes away from the drape of Sean’s robe over his furred chest. The silence of the studio swelled between them, surging outward to fill the room, empty now of all the other people.

They were alone in the room.

Alone in the room.
Maybe alone in the building, given that it was after nine p.m. and the only people roaming around the building at this hour had either been here for the session or were pulling all-nighters.

Pretty early in the semester to have a lot of late-night action in the studio.

Austin didn’t let himself think about why it could possibly matter that the building probably only held a handful of uber-committed students.

He cleared his throat. “I can get the lights. Get ready to lock up. If you want to change.”

Without looking at Sean again, because damn, that guy was distracting, he turned and headed blindly to the door. But maybe his ability to hear had been compromised by the sudden rush of blood to his dick, because after he flicked off most of the lights and turned around, he jumped at the sight of Sean right behind him.

His dick pulsed when Sean smiled. “It’s crazy dark in here with the lights off.”

“You scared?” He tried to keep his voice to a tease, but it still sounded thick and throaty.

“Not scared. Just worried I’ll trip over something on my way back to my stuff. Show me the way?”

There was nothing that appealed faster to Austin’s, well…everything, than someone who asked him to be in charge.

He’s just talking about not breaking his neck in the dark, asshole. Not fucking.

But maybe Sean could be talking about fucking.

Austin didn’t need to lead in bed. Not always.

Most of the time.

He was pretty comfortable being versatile, but some guys—guys who saw him as little and cute—brought the top out of him like whoa.

He’d lived in this studio for most of the past couple years. Starlight through the windows illuminated table edges and other objects to be avoided. The room smelled of charcoal dust and paper and that lingering peppermint smell that followed Sean around. Snagging Sean’s rough hand in his own, Austin tugged him across the floor until they were behind the privacy screen.

Austin bumped into the stool holding Sean’s things, spilling them to the floor against the wall.

“You were doing so perfectly up until then. I was starting to wonder if you could see in the dark,” Sean said as he bent down to retrieve his clothes.

Yeah, he wouldn’t be needing those, Austin decided on the spot.

“Leave ’em.”

He tugged Sean up and pressed him against the wall, kissing him with an open mouth until he was dizzy and wanted nothing more than to climb inside Sean’s body and feel him from the inside out.

The moon shone in through a window directly over them, milky white light fading in and out as clouds passed over it. He slid his hands inside the open front of the robe and pushed it off Sean’s shoulders. Wearing his shirt was suddenly unbearable. He stepped back to strip it off and drop it, stopping at the sight of Sean waiting for him.

The robe was only barely hanging on to Sean at the curve of his elbows, the belt falling loose at his knees.

“Guh.”

Austin didn’t know what it was. Maybe he’d developed some kind of sudden attraction to bears, and not the kind you found in the woods. Or maybe it was something about how tactile he was and the way he imagined Sean’s body would feel under his hands, furry and warm.

“I’m gonna climb you like a fucking tree,” he muttered as the light faded again and he walked his body into Sean’s, backing him up until they slammed into the wall.

His hands battled with Sean’s as they pushed the robe to the floor and then raced to strip Austin’s jeans and briefs down around his feet. He kicked off his shoes, then the clothes, palming himself as he stared at Sean’s naked body. Not for drawing now, and with a cock that hardened under his gaze. Austin’s eyes must have adjusted completely to the dark, because he could see everything. Sean opened his mouth but Austin didn’t need any more conversation.

Sean’s chest was hot against Austin’s mouth. He wrapped one hand around Sean’s length and found a flat pink nipple buried in all that chest hair with the other, licking it until it tightened against his tongue.