Love Me Like A Rock (4 page)

Worth a shot. His face was hot and he knew from experience that meant his cheeks were flying pink flags of embarrassment. He confessed his stupid thoughts to Sean, and the jerk had the nerve to laugh at him.

And then pin him flat when Austin tried to sit up and leave the bed.

“Austin, you are one hundred percent the fuckable one to me. I promise you that.” Sean’s eyes were intent, staring down at him, as if he could force the words into Austin’s brain directly through his skull with that laser-like gaze.

He had to look away, because if Sean saw his face clearly, he’d know exactly how stupidly happy Austin was to hear those words.

So, so stupid.

Austin cleared his throat. “So if we’re not going out, what do we do now?”

Sean wrapped an arm around him. The man was seriously into the cuddling thing. “I’m thinking delivery pizza and Netflix. I think you fucked the motivation out of me.”

“I’m in training.” Austin shook his head regretfully. “Pizza isn’t really on the menu for me.” The smaller the better for coxes. Junk food was for the off-season.

Sean’s forehead wrinkled. “But we were going to go get…”

“Yeah, but that pizza isn’t real food, plus I never finish it because halfway through I realize I’m eating something that isn’t actually cheese. Or meat. Real pizza is too delicious to stop.”

“Easy cheese and extra veggies? Sausage on half, because I’m not in training and I’m not shooting for your six-pack abs,” Sean suggested, slapping his own stomach with one hand.

“I like your abs,” Austin said, and slouched down in the bed to rub his face on Sean’s stomach, which was soft over hard muscle. And no, Sean’s body wasn’t as awesome as those of the rowers who surrounded Austin six days out of seven, but the one thing Sean’s body was, was comfortable. Welcoming. Sean was generous and open with his body in the way of someone whose body served their needs, rather than him serving his body.

It was disturbingly easy to settle back against Sean’s chest, to play with the red-gold curls on his thick forearms, and watch Daniel Craig as James Bond looking all hot and shit, stepping out of the ocean in those clinging, wet trunks. To eat pizza and let Sean lick the grease off his fingertips instead of using the cheap paper napkins.

Easy to roll over after the credits ran and sink down over Sean’s cock with his mouth until they were both hard and groaning and Austin could rise up and seat himself on Sean’s condom-covered dick without even reaching for the lube because he didn’t want to wait. And he wanted it to hurt, at least a little, though Sean scolded him when Austin couldn’t keep from scrunching up his face.

But sometimes you wanted it to burn. To hurt. To make it real and less than perfect, because if you let yourself start thinking things felt pretty fucking perfect…

That way lay danger.

After he came, jerking himself off in a tight huddle while Sean fucked up into him like he’d never stop, Austin collapsed at Sean’s side and opened his mouth before their sweat had time to cool.

“You know this isn’t anything serious, right?”

The look Sean turned on him made Austin want to bite his tongue off.

Awkward conversation starter while your asshole is still returning to its normal size. “Sorry. That was…”

“Fine,” Sean said calmly. “I heard what you said about that guy. If that was a deal-breaker for me, that you’re hung up on someone else, then I would’ve kicked you out of bed hours ago.”

“Yeah, sure you would.” He snorted.

“You’re the fuckable one, Austin, but I’m a grown-up. I try not to let my dick make all the decisions.”

“Yeah? So what happened to going out for coffee?” Austin drawled, sweeping the room with a glance that called out their clothes-scattered trail across the linoleum floor.

“I didn’t say I never let it make any decisions,” Sean said, and rolled over Austin until he was on his elbows above him.

Part of Austin wanted them to stay right there like that, all smushed up against each other, for the rest of the night.

The rest of him was planning what he’d say to Vinnie—late night at the studio—when Vinnie asked, as he almost certainly would at practice the next morning, what Austin had been up to so late the evening before.

“I just don’t want to give you the wrong idea.”

“You’re not available for anything serious, got it. Check.” But Sean leaned down and bit the edge of Austin’s jaw, scraping his teeth against the stubble that was growing in there after a couple of days of Austin not bothering to shave his handful of chin fuzz. “But maybe for something not so serious?”

“If I get fucked boneless instead of going out for coffee? Yeah, that I’m available for,” Austin said, grinning as he pulled Sean’s face down to his.

Nothing wrong with being casual. It would take his mind off of Vinnie for a night or two, and maybe that wasn’t a bad thing.

Chapter Four

A night or two had turned into two weeks of sexting and hookups and having excellent intentions about going out to do things—because Sean had turned out to be a surprisingly cool person to hang out with even when not fucking—but getting trapped by the black hole that was Sean’s bed.

Austin had taken to swinging by Sean’s room after evening practice every couple of days, after texting first to remind himself whether or not Sean had headed out with his pup tent and a compass, stuck on TA babysitting duties with the newbie students in his department.

Camping was apparently a thing you had to be into if you were going to be a geologist. Austin might have argued that surely all the interesting rocks had to be within a couple hours’ drive of a decent hotel, but Sean had laughed at him and blown raspberries on his stomach at the idea.

Whatever. The geology department had made a whole ritual out of their rock-geek love of sleeping on the ground and pissing in the woods, and Sean was one of the TAs in charge of taking out the various classes each fall and spring for overnight field expeditions.

Austin wasn’t sure how much of an expedition a hike counted as if your phone battery wasn’t at risk of dying before you got back, but he let that one slide.

In any case, there were nights where Sean wasn’t available, but he always managed to drop that information into a text or an email to Austin beforehand, which meant Austin was never left hanging, wondering if he was going to have plans for the evening or not. It was reassuringly consistent, which Austin liked. It was also way too easy to compare to the hit-or-miss tendencies of his hookups with Vinnie, with negative consequence to the latter, which Austin didn’t like.

The photos Sean Instagrammed were damn cool though. Austin spotted more than one geology major, the boys and the girls, taking pics with their TA and giving him the lustful eye. He reminded himself that what he and Sean had going on wasn’t an exclusive thing, to begin with, and certainly wasn’t anywhere near the point of jealousy being an acceptable response to a tall, scruffy blond dude taking a selfie with his arm slung around his TA, bright grins slashing across their faces.

With the brand new Instagram account he’d opened, Austin took a semi-sexy selfie of himself half covered by a sheet in bed, but otherwise naked and sleepy looking, and tagged Sean.

His phone had blown up immediately with a series of text messages.

No tagging the teacher in your borderline dick pics, okay?

I have students following on this account. Also, my boss.

Also, you’re fucking hot.

Austin Googled privacy settings on Instagram and shot off his reply in less than five minutes.

That’s not a dick pic. This is a dick pic. <3

And if tagging a photo private wasn’t as secure as Instagram claimed, life was too short to give a damn.

Especially when Sean left him a six-minute voicemail message, recording the sounds of jerking himself off and groaning Austin’s name as he came.

Austin had to lock himself in his room for most of an afternoon, playing that message over and over again, because his friends could tell by the look on his face that he was hearing something dirty when he listened to it in front of them.

Seriously. Austin had never been so attached to his phone in his entire life. He was starting to understand why it pained Vinnie so much on the rare occasion that he forgot to bring his phone with him. Austin still mislaid his own from time to time, and for the first time ever, that kind of absent-mindedness bothered him.

He’d also maybe never been so attached to one particular naked person like this.

It’s just fun. And hot. And he knows I’m not available, except for sex.

But it turned out that having all the sex, all the time, was fucking awesome.

Austin had felt awkward at first, like fucking Sean had turned him into some kind of sex-starved stalker who showed up every time the man turned around.

“I was going to go back to my room and get this stupid art history paper done, but I got distracted by the sight of your dorm,” he admitted, while sitting on Sean’s butt and digging his hands into the thick muscles of the back that stretched out in front of him, rosy gold and heavily freckled.

Someone had forgotten to bring something called a Thermarest with him on his overnighter of the day before and was still moaning about a stiff back.

Austin had tried to bite his tongue on the brutal puns about which body parts were the only ones he hoped to find stiff on the aching, slow-moving Sean. He really had.

“I’m glad you got distracted,” Sean had said into his pillow, pulling one hand out from under where his cheek rested to reach back and squeeze Austin’s knee.

“You can always just send me away if I show up at an inconvenient time, you know. Or if you’re not interested.”

Austin was starting to feel like he’d turned into some kind of sex addict. If he wasn’t balls-deep in a painting or on the river with his rowers, he was doing the math on how many hours it was until he’d see Sean again.

Man, Vinnie always growled at him if he suggested they hook up more frequently than their monthly deal. Sean had to be getting fucking sick of finding Austin on his doorstep, puppy-dog eyes wide and tongue hanging out.

The man in question rolled over between Austin’s knees and grabbed Austin’s hips with both hands.

“Hey, if I’m not busy or my dick isn’t sore already from fucking you, I’m interested,” Sean said, sneaking his thumbs under Austin’s T-shirt and rubbing them back and forth right above his jeans. “I promise you that. You don’t really gotta ask.”

Which made Austin’s face heat up even faster than his dick went from zero to sixty.

“That is, like, the hottest thing ever.”

“What is?”

“How much you want me?” His voice rose at the end of that sentence without Austin’s permission, making him sound tentative when he was shooting for sex god.

Sean laughed, mouth splitting that dark red scruff, white teeth all sexy shining, and pulled Austin forward until their dicks lined up through his jeans. Austin fell forward and let his arms brace against Sean’s shoulders, smiling down at him until he had to bite his lip to stop it. The massage oil reeked of tea tree oil—and it was going to be all over Sean’s sheets—which was now going to be permanently wired to trip his need-to-fuck switch, along with the peppermint.

“So much,” Sean groaned as he rolled his hips, mashing them together. “I want you so much. All the time.”

Being wanted was definitely Austin’s new favorite thing.

The sex that afternoon had been hotter than ever.

He hadn’t realized how much hotter things would be, how much wilder he could let himself get, in bed with someone whose number one goal at all times was to get him there. It probably should have been a no-brainer, but Austin was apparently as oblivious about sex stuff as he was about relationship stuff.

I mean, I figured one day down the line, maybe after grad school, Vinnie would be able to lighten up and relax a little more and that would be fun, but whooeee…

He’d had no idea.

No idea that being wanted would make him want all kinds of other things too. Would make him want to be tied up or blindfolded. Would make him want to push Sean’s knees up around his ears so Austin could rim him until Sean begged to be fucked. Would make Austin consider showing Sean exactly what he liked to do with the dildo he kept in the box of off-season clothes under his bed.

It was sort of embarrassing, realizing that no matter how grown up and experienced he’d thought himself to be, in reality, he’d barely dipped his toe in the water. He might have started having sex when he was fifteen—because even Vinnie had wanted to know what getting his dick sucked felt like and trading occasional blowjobs had been their entrée to sex—but he hadn’t advanced much further down the road of sexual exploration than the end of his driveway.

And he’d thought he was content with his own sex life. Aside from the too-occasional nature of their hookups, Austin, if asked, would have said they’d been having pretty good sex over the years, even if most of it was at least slightly tipsy sex. Or drunk sex, if Austin wanted a hope of getting Vinnie to fuck him.

Oh, how wrong he’d been.

* * * * *

“Where are you going?”

Vinnie snapping at him was nothing new, especially when Vinnie was stressing about having a paper due. As smart as he was, writing didn’t come easy to Vinnie, and he worked long hours over his paper to make sure he didn’t sound like, as he put it, “a high-school sophomore who forgot what his essay topic was thirty-seven paragraphs ago.”

So Austin didn’t take it personally when Vinnie wrinkled up his nose and grilled him about the tail end of the conversation Austin and Rafi had been having when Vinnie returned late one night from another long library session.

“Camping.”

“Camping? With who? When?”

He couldn’t have said why he didn’t just answer with Sean’s name. Maybe because Vinnie clearly had the red-hot poker of nosiness up his ass at the moment, and Austin didn’t feel like getting grilled about
who the hell is Sean?
for the next half hour.

“Art department outing. Soon.”

When Rafi stared at him, Austin shook his head. He’d already mentioned Sean to Rafi, and the lie lifted his friend’s eyebrows high.

Vinnie’s snort of disbelief spoke volumes about his opinion of the camping skills of a bunch of artists. As if Austin wasn’t capable of whipping any group into shape in ten minutes or less.

Austin made a mental note to take it out on Vinnie during practice tomorrow morning.

“Don’t get lost,” was Vinnie’s parting shot as he closed the door to his room.

“I didn’t want to get into it with him,” Austin said, waving his hand at Vinnie’s bedroom door. “You know how he gets.”

“A yard and a half up your asshole? Yeah, I know that feeling,” Rafi said ruefully. Vinnie’s dislike of conflict in the boat meant that any time Rafi and Denny were irritated with each other, Vinnie was the busybody who demanded they work it out before driving everyone else crazy.

That everyone else rolled their eyes harder at Vinnie’s nosiness than they did at Rafi and Denny’s occasional bickering was one of those things that slid right by Vincent in his one-track-mind focus on building his professional credentials before graduation.

“Yeah, well, I don’t feel like getting into it right now.”

“Don’t blame you.” Rafi settled back into the corner of the couch, head propped on a pillow, book on his chest. When he spoke again, it was clear that he was only pretending to read. “So. Sean.”

Austin stared up at the ceiling and heaved a put-upon sigh.

“Yes. Sean.”

Five minutes later.

“Been seeing a lot of that guy lately.”

“No comment.”

Ten minutes after that.

“I’m just saying…”

Before Rafi could say whatever he was “just saying”, Austin caved, whipping his paintbrush to the floor, leaving a smear of Payne’s gray that was going to provoke another lecture from Vinnie if he didn’t wipe it up before it dried.

“Oh my God, this is my least favorite trait you picked up from us,” he snapped at Rafi, who grinned back. “Yes, I am sleeping with him. No, it’s not serious. And no, I don’t want Vinnie to know about it.”

“Why not? Might make him get his head out of his ass.”

“Trust me. I know from experience that is not the case.”

He’d tried the jealousy thing with Vinnie twice now. Once in high school, once last year, when their on-again, off-again hookups had seemed to settle into a more regular pattern and he’d hoped that a burst of jealousy might encourage Vinnie to make things official.

The worst thing about trying to make Vinnie jealous was that he didn’t notice.

If Austin wasn’t available for Vinnie’s once-a-month stress-meltdown-slash-boozy hookup, Vinnie would just do without. A spring coiled too tight, Vinnie veered between total denial of any such urges and random wild fucking that damn near straightened Austin’s curls with the electricity of it. Always after drinking, which meant Austin was having sober sex himself for the first time since high school.

He liked it.

Bob was the next roommate to drag him into a conversation about Sean, although in Bob’s case it was really more Austin hinting around until Bob gave in and asked him what was going on with the geologist.

After several nights during which they never managed to make it out of Sean’s dorm room, Austin had finally met up with Sean and some of his department friends at the Chinese dive on the far side of the open-air shopping center bordering the west side of campus.

Sean had given him a peculiar look when Austin had asked why they weren’t eating at the way nicer Chinese restaurant across town where the tables weren’t sticky and the servers actually paid attention to their tables.

“Because we’re all broke. It’s dives and holes-in-the-wall all around. Nobody’s got fifty bucks to blow on dinner.”

A year of living with Rafi, whose reaction to this kind of thing was way less subtle than Sean’s, had mostly cured Austin of acting as if everyone had his family’s kind of money. Slipping up with Sean was embarrassing as hell, and apologizing felt like making an even bigger deal about it, but Austin did it anyway.

Sean just shook his head and laughed, saying he envied Austin his illusions.

Strange as it was to sit at a table with a couple of assistant professors, two TAs and some grad students, he had enjoyed himself. Seeing Sean with his friends had been an eye-opening experience. It hadn’t been until the meal was almost over, Sean’s hand resting on his thigh for half the time, that Austin realized none of the other men or women were gay.

He couldn’t remember the last time he’d hung out with a big group of straight people. Thinking about it back in their suite while Bob finished some homework on the couch, he realized his one straight roommate lived the opposite scenario all the time. How curious.

“Is it ever weird? You know, living and hanging out with a bunch of gay guys?” he asked after pondering the matter for a while.