Melting - Sean Ashcroft Page 0,15

and a little off-balance.

I turned and walked away without another word, gravel crunching under my feet, dick doing the equivalent of a puppy-like head-tilt, confused and about to be sorely disappointed.

8

Hayden

I was an idiot.

How could I just kiss Wes like that? What the hell made me think he wanted me to?

He didn’t exactly object, a tiny voice pointed out.

I rolled over in bed, still trying to will my half-hard cock into submission.

I couldn’t get the thought of how he felt against me out of my head. Had it really been that long?

A year. Over a year.

No, longer than that. Aaron had lost interest in me long before we broke up.

So yeah, it’d been a while. Which explained why I’d pounced on the first person who seemed like he might be even slightly interested.

Marissa was right. I needed to get laid.

She was also maybe right about the praying mantis thing, judging by the way I’d jumped on Wes.

He’d asked me not to apologize, but I knew I needed to. Maybe there was something I could do for him?

If a little more of my blood was in my brain and a little less in my cock, I’d probably be able to think of something.

I grabbed my phone to check the time—a little after midnight—and saw a notification from the hookup app Marissa had installed for me, prompting me to set up my profile.

She was right. I did need to get laid. I’d feel guilty going home before I did, at this point.

I tapped on the notification, stomach clenching at the thought of putting myself out there in front of all those potential strangers.

But I was on vacation. This was anonymous. I could go back to New York whenever I wanted and none of them ever had to see me again.

Yeah. Yeah, this would be fine. I could do this.

Okay. Profile.

Hmm.

I wasn’t the kind of person who had a whole roll of selfies—not that there was anything wrong with that, I just wasn’t sold on the need to record my own face for posterity. I scrolled back, and back, and back through picture after picture of beautifully-plated dishes and other’s people’s dogs and photos I’d taken of any hippopotamus figure, picture, card or t-shirt I’d seen in the last three years, all to send to Marissa. She loved hippos.

I’d have to see if I could pick something up for her while I was here. Maybe I’d sift through some of those antique dealers I’d been talking about with Mark and Andre earlier.

The picture I finally came to made my stomach sink.

Me and Aaron. Taken by Marissa, I thought, outside Pleasure. On opening day.

I tapped on it, hesitated, and then cropped everything but my own face out, trying to look at Aaron’s as little as possible.

Okay, the photo was old. Did that matter?

I decided it didn’t, and uploaded the cropped version. There was room for more, but I’d struggled enough to find that one.

What else?

The bio box taunted me. I’d only had to write a few of them in my life—always professional—and I’d hated it. I never knew what to say.

I didn’t know what kind of thing I was supposed to put, either.

Chef

Great start.

Pastry chef

Oh, that was much better. People would care a lot about what I did for a living, that was the main thing they looked for in a practically anonymous hookup. A stable career.

I don’t know what to put here but I promise I’m slightly more fun in person.

That might’ve been an outright lie, but it was as good as I was going to get.

I uploaded the whole thing before I could change my mind, wincing as my own profile came up. Yeah. That… wasn’t exactly going to attract anyone.

My eyes were blurry and my cock had gotten bored and settled down, at least. Maybe I could sleep.

The sound of my phone buzzing woke me after what felt like five minutes, but the sun was streaming through my window and there was a bird singing outside, so it’d probably been… a little longer.

I grabbed the phone—almost ten a.m., I’d slept in—and immediately saw what had made it buzz.

A message.

On the hookup app.

My heart leapt into my throat. Really. Really?

At ten o’clock in the morning?

Something between excitement and nervousness welled up in my chest as I opened it. Someone wanted to talk to me, at this time of the morning?

For sex?

Maybe this whole hookup thing wouldn’t be so bad if it made me feel this wanted.

OverEasy: Good morning

Good morning?

As opening lines went