Play by the Rules Page 5

  Joe looked so smug right then and there, like he’d just caught a prize-winning fish, or something. “Yeah, they exist, you know. I’m one. Although I’m more of an equal opportunity lay, I can’t help but be attracted to what some people call “renaissance sexy.” I used to think I was just slutty, but apparently not.”

  I couldn’t help but smile at that. “So, is that why you were eye-fucking me earlier?” I asked. That was probably a lot more confidence than I should have displayed, but sue me.

  I was piqued.

  “Eye-fucking seems like a pretty wild, imaginative, and definitely inappropriate term for what I was doing,” Joe replied, smiling. “But you’re right. I was checking you out.”

  “You know, there’s no shame in being slutty. Being unhinged is what makes the world a better place,” I said. Maybe I was just trying to deflect the fact that a six-foot-four ex-quarterback who could tackle me and break every bone in my body had actually been checking me out. I wasn’t absorbing it. Hell, I couldn’t. I was interested, and I was going to lie if I said I didn’t find Joe Kaminski attractive, but I just couldn’t put two and two together. I was like a computer, one error away from malfunctioning.

  I didn’t know if I could handle the pressure of someone—anyone—finding me attractive. It was ironic, given the fact that I wanted to be in some form of a relationship.

  “Oh, I know that,” Joe responded airily. “I’m not trying to shame anyone. But I am telling you that I find you attractive. Maybe you’d be even hotter if you were more confident.”

  I really didn’t know how to respond to that. So, I went with being my usual sarcastic self.

  “Thanks for the advice, I guess?” I said after a few moments. I appreciated the candor. But at the same time, I disliked the brusqueness, the forwardness, of his words. Maybe I just wasn’t used to the straightforward way he spoke.

  And it wasn’t even that I disliked what he’d said, exactly, it was just that I didn’t know what to do with what he said. It was completely out of my league, and nowhere near my level of expertise.

  “Well, you’ve interviewed me for the past hour or so, and it’s only eleven in the morning. You think you might be interested in staying in and talking a little bit more? I’ve got absolutely nothing planned today,” he said, leaning back against the chair and crossing his arms behind his head all-relaxed looking. “I can whip us up something quick and easy for brunch or something, if you haven’t eaten yet.”

  My stomach was the one that answered for me. It gurgled in response.

  Joe smiled. There was that kind of self-assured confidence that seemed to permeate his every action, and I couldn’t help but respond to it by looking away.

  Damn, he was right about me. He was a hundred percent right.

  “I’ll make us some frittatas, then. You’re not allergic to eggs, are you?” he asked.

  I immediately stood up and said something to the tune of, “No, I’m not, but you really don’t have to do that, it’s fine, I—"

  But it was met with a shake of Joe’s head and another confident smirk. “I insist.”

  Was this…a date?

  You know how they say that when it rains, it pours? I was beginning to believe that there was some kind of karmic balance out there in the world and it was telling me that this was my reward for putting myself out there, for finally getting out of my little one bedroom, kind-of-a-studio apartment. I mean, it could have been worse.

  I could have fallen in love with yet another straight guy.

  At least, for all intents and purposes, Joe Kaminski was an out and proud gay man. That meant he actually enjoyed the romantic company of other guys. And as my friends told me, fucking straight guys wasn’t all it’s cracked up to be. Hot in porn, but not quite in real life.

  Chase described it such that at the end of it, you’re sitting there with a stomach full of cum and you’re still hungry because you haven’t eaten since nine in the morning, but you have to not eat because who wants a brown-colored accident while they’re having sex, right? Not that they’ll pay attention to the prep, because you’re just a pump-and-dump chump to them. But then again, the experience is great in and of itself, if you consider a tepid experience “good.”

  I tended to defer to him on matters that pertained to the sexual, especially as he was the foremost expert among my friends. And it wasn’t as though I was about to ask some of my lady friends if they allowed their man to perform butt stuff on them. Rather than dwell on these things, I shuffled about, putting my things into my bag, checking my recording to see that the audio was good.

  Maybe it was just a few moments later when I heard Joe’s voice pipe up from the periphery, and I simply nodded in response. I hadn’t even realized he’d already called me to the dinner table. Had I really been blanked out for that long, or did Joe really whip up a frittata in like, no time at all?

  I ambled over from where I sat, offered as best of a smile as I could in spite of how awkward I felt, and positioned myself right in front of the plate Joe had set in front me. He sat right in front of me. I barely registered how nice and clean the kitchen looked, because my hungry mind had zoomed in on the plate of food right in front of us.

  “Dig in. Sorry it took so long. I didn’t want to fuck up the recipe,” he said. “I still think I did.”

  I shook my head. “No, this is so nice of you, actually. I didn’t think you’d do all of this for me.”

  I cut into the simple cheese frittata that he’d whipped up in less than fifteen minutes, and even sprinkled some freshly-chopped parsley on top so that it was basically ready for any social media picture-taking. It was so pretty, it basically needed its own hashtag.

  Needless to say, my mind was on full alert now. If it wasn’t earlier, it was now, because I was absolutely sure there was bound to be something horrible about Joe. I hadn’t been paying attention to the entire cooking process. Would he roofie me? Was I stupid for thinking he would?

  Was I being too cautious, maybe to the point of paranoia?

  Overthinking had always been my worst enemy, and today was no different.

  I was probably overthinking everything. I was probably being overly cautious, and I was probably being incredibly paranoid. But even then, I couldn’t help but admire Joe’s self-confidence and ease. He just offered to make a stranger breakfast—well, brunch—and he had been quite open on the onset about his attraction for me. He was honest about the fact that he liked rubenesque men, for a lack of better word. Chubby chaser just sounded so amateur.

  He was looking at me with those deep, soulful brown eyes of his. The five o’clock shadow on his face perked up ever so slightly as he smiled at me.

  Even if only out of hunger and a sense of deep shame if I didn’t, I took a bite out of the frittata, and nodded. It was good. Not restaurant-quality good, but it was good enough to dig into. I guess if I had been nitpicking for a weakness, the fact that the man could cook but that he was just a fair culinarian was one thing I could hold onto.

  I smiled. He smiled. We both smiled…and then it turned awkward, as it was wont to do, when there was a silence that settled between two people.

  I chuckled as lightly as I could. “Thank you. This is delicious,” I said. It was the truth. It was good.

  Joe’s smile became even larger. “Yeah? Thank you. I’m not sure this is a frittata, exactly, but it seemed like we were both hungry. And I wanted to get to know you a little better.”

  Maybe that was just a polite way of saying he heard my stomach growl and he found it amusing. I nodded and took another bite. He regarded me and tilted his head.

  “You’re cute, you know that?” he said.

  If I’d had food in my mouth, I was sure I would have choked on it. “Excuse me, what now?” I said, trying my hardest not to seem like I had been caught off-guard.

  Not that it mattered, he definitely did catch me unaware. I’d almost dropped my fork.

  He smiled at me and nodded, as though he just said so
mething totally normal.

  “Yup, definitely cute,” he said.

  “You’re shitting me, right?” I asked. “I mean no disrespect, of course. I just…I mean…really? Me? Are you serious? You don’t really mean this, right? You’re just being nice?”

  I don’t know how many iterations of “Is this a joke?” came into my head, but I was sure it was a lot of different ways.

  “No, I definitely mean what I said,” Joe said. “You’re really cute.”

  My heart thundered in my chest. Being in such close proximity to a guy like this was dangerous. He was brusque, to-the-point, and said what he wanted to say without thinking about the repercussions of his words. He was confident, knew what he wanted, and he exuded sexiness like it was nothing. I thought I would be turned off by his cockiness, but instead, I found myself being attracted to it. He was everything I thought a self-assured gay man could be. Those were in definite short supply.

  I didn’t know if I could handle it.

  But, I suppose, I was about to find out.

  Chapter Six

  Shit.

  I don’t know how we got here.

  Well, that was an absolute lie. I knew exactly why we were here, in Joe’s bathroom.

  Naked.

  And it wasn’t roofies. I know. I was cognizant all throughout…except for my confusion as to how we were now in closed-quarters, as we were, here in the shower.

  Joe’s lips were on mine, and our tongues were entwined. I wrapped my arms weakly around his neck. He was leaning down so low, he was basically bent over just to kiss me. Still, his warmth was delicious. His tongue tasted of clean, fresh male, even though we’d just had brunch. There was still the tiniest tang of mint in his breath. His body was strong, and hard, and everything I thought was attractive about masculinity.

  A little part of me hated how perfect he was, physically, and all his self-assured and confident bravado just told me that he probably had life quite easy except for the fact that he was gay and now he was living out. But a little part of me was intoxicated by the power and the sheer magnetism of his being. I was probably being a little melodramatic, but it felt like the truth.

  After all, he’d just called me cute and minutes later, maybe half an hour, tops, here we were, with his tongue down my throat, in his shower…naked.

  Joe’s arms were strong as they wrapped around me, and he hoisted me up like I weighed absolutely nothing, and pressed me to the wall of his shower, bracing my weight on his thighs. I felt so petite, but maybe he was just really strong. The groomed and lightly prickly hairs on his lower body tickled my inner thighs, and his cock pressed against mine almost too perfectly.

  Either way, I was really aroused. My cock was standing at full mast, and those times had gotten rarer recently. I had just been too focused on being sad and anxious that I had forgotten to do a little self-care and a little self-love.

  But Joe was helping me past all that. At least, it felt like it.

  He grabbed me like I was the only thing that mattered. We were silent, and the only thing I could hear was the hitched breathing between the two of us and the gentle pitter-patter of the shower against our bodies and all around us. It was frantic, it was unlike anything I’d ever felt before. Even as the water sluiced down our bodies, between the two of us, nothing dampened this primal, animalistic feeling that was overtaking my mind.

  Holy shit. This was supposed to be a professional interview and instead, here I was, with a very strong, very solid man pressed up against me… in his shower. Also, he was grabbing my chest—or should I say tits? Is it even politically correct to say tits—like I was a girl in a really bad porn. Curse my chubby body, I guess. Or bless it, if Joe Kaminski was interested in me solely because of my body’s curvature. I’d never been kissed that way before. Hell, I’d never been kissed, unless you count a soft peck on the lips from a guy back in college.

  I grabbed his hands even though they were on my chest, pressing it a little bit inward to form a little furrow of cleavage in between them. I was always afraid of my chubbiness, especially for a guy. I could get downright feminine with how my body looked sometimes, if a guy were to press things in different places or to push the chubbier parts of me together. But he didn’t seem to care about any of that.

  He moaned, and an undercurrent of arousal thrummed through my body.

  I guess whatever the case, I was the only one feeling insecure.

  I bit down on my lower lip and hissed out softly. His hands remained there on my chest, though his pointer fingers were making little concentric circles around my nipples and making the buds harden outward. Then, he leaned forward, and I felt his bearded face kiss the crook of my neck.

  His body wrapped around me like I was dainty. God, he was so tall, and his arms were so long that I felt absolutely petite in his hands. I was already short by most standards, but damn if I didn’t feel it today. He brought me back down until my feet were firmly on the ground. When his cock slid up against my stomach, I could feel the spongy tip of his penis press against my navel, and all the thoughts in my mind seemed to cease for a moment.

  This felt…really good. This was how it felt like to be held by another man. Now I know why people liked having sex. He wasn’t even inside me and already I was responding so luridly. I wondered how it would feel sliding up into my rear. I knew it was going to hurt, but somehow, it didn’t seem so important.

  We were gasping and panting, and all through it I could feel Joe’s breath against my neck. He was rocking his hips into me, his body pressed up against mine. Soapy fingers clutched at my chest, kneading there, before those palms moved down towards my belly, and up my shoulders, and then to my back as I tried my hardest to keep cool, to keep calm, and to be there in the moment.

  It was basic, it was instinctual, it was raw and real and it felt as natural as breathing, the way it seemed like I knew what to do. I urged myself down to my knees right in front of him, and Joe’s breath hitched as he looked down at me while the showerhead continued to cascade water all over our bodies.

  As I moved myself down his chest, I traced my tongue down the furrow between his pectorals, down his abs, and towards his navel. I went through the coarse hairs that wrapped around his cock, and encircled my tongue around his thickness. I took a moment to lean back just to see exactly what I was dealing with.

  And holy fuck, was it ever something to deal with.

  Now, when my author friends write about how a cock is like silk-covered steel I know exactly what they mean. Joe’s cock was ramrod stiff and had an inward curve to it like an eight-inch parenthesis mark—well, it certainly looked eight inches at least, it could have been more—and it looked kind of intimidating.

  But I was up for the challenge.

  So much so, in fact, that I took the tip into my mouth and hollowed out my cheeks, and heard Joe’s breath hitch just as he placed both his hands on either side of my head.

  “That’s it,” he cooed. “That feels good.”

  I didn’t know if I was awkward at that moment, but hell, I didn’t quite know if I cared. The taste of lightly salty, but clean skin was delicious. I licked and toyed with the dome-like tip of Joe’s cock for a moment, sliding my tongue around it and then dipping the tip of my tongue into the slit before looking up into Joe’s eyes. Or I tried to, at least, what with the water from the shower getting into my eyes.

  From what I could see, Joe’s gorgeous brown gaze was aimed down at me while his lips were agape and he was panting. That made me want to try and please him even more.

  So, I surged down with my mouth and lips until I had about half of Joe’s cock in my mouth. I gagged and sputtered a bit from the sheer weight and largeness of it. My eyes teared up, but the groan that came out of Joe’s lips were like a reward for a job well done.

  This wasn’t even his entire cock inside my mouth yet.

  “Are you sure you’re new at this?” he asked, his voice sounding just a little bit strained.

  I pulled fre
e with a loud, lewd pop. “Does it seem like I’m not?”

  Joe looked down at me and his eyes glimmered. His lips quirked into a lopsided smirk. “Well, you’re definitely not an expert, but you’re good.”

  I smirked at that, as best as I could, given I had the weight of Joe’s erection in my mouth. I pulled off of him and slowly stroked him for a moment. “Jerk,” I said, then wrapped my lips around his manhood. I cradled the tip of his shaft underneath my tongue afterward and lightly swiped around it. “You really shouldn’t tease someone who has your dick in their mouth, you know.”

  His laughter clipped into a moan as soon as I gave a right good slurp. I tried to smile, but the heft of cock in one’s mouth didn’t really make that look appealing. “Noted,” he groaned, and it just made my cock harder, twitching to life.

  I don’t know what came over me. I tried my hardest to please him, bobbing my face forward, trying to take even more as the solid weight of his cock pressed into my throat. He grasped my hair and pulled me back and forth along his shaft.

  “Fuck, that feels good,” he moaned out when I pulled free and started licking at the crown of his cock. “I don’t think I was this good when I first started. You’re a natural, Emmett.”

  It was cheesy to hear, and maybe just a little bit creepy, but at that particular moment in time it sounded like a compliment. It kind of made me feel good to have his fingers lock into my hair, and those eyes train down at me as I bobbed my head forward and back. This was a new feeling. The hands clutching my head were becoming a little heavier, and I was being pushed down more and more…until the entirety of my mouth was wrapped around Joe’s cock. I could feel the hairs that surrounded his cock—trimmed as they were—press against my mouth.

  He groaned. As he pulled back, fucking my face the way he was, I could taste a slightly salty, gentle taste—almost like tears, if the tears were just a little bit more viscous and sticky—and I recognized it immediately as pre-cum. It was surprisingly salty when compared to mine, although it’s not as though I made a habit of licking my own seed. I swirled the tip against my tongue before Joe pushed in once more and quelled any thoughts I had by making me gag.