Touch And Go - Aiden Bates Page 0,31

Potomac, like his body was heavy with sludge from the river instead of alive with my touch.

“Fuck.” He paced the bathroom with a deep scowl and rubbed his mouth like he was smearing away my kiss as his clothes dripped a trail across the tile floor. “I’m so sorry. I shouldn’t have—”

“It’s okay.” My voice was small, and I didn’t feel okay. I felt empty again.

He stopped and a puddle of water pooled below him. He dragged his eyes up to meet mine, and his throat bobbed before he spoke in a terse voice. Doctor mode. “It never should have happened, and it won’t happen again. Fuck. I’m so sorry. It was an accident.”

The hollowness swallowed me, and I snorted. “Right. You accidentally shoved your tongue down my throat. Sure, that happens all the time.”

Of course, someone like Dr. Dish with his perfect home and his scented-candle lifestyle would regret kissing someone like me.

“Seb. I… Fuck. I’m sorry.” He left as quickly as he’d burst in, a slosh of water on the floor and an emptiness that seemed to echo around me the only indication it hadn’t been a vivid fantasy conjured by my imagination. I switched off the shower and threw a couple of his excessively soft towels on the floor to soak up the evidence of my unfinished dream come true.

The reflection in the bathroom mirror was foggy, but I could make out a weedy little guy with a dour expression and a still rock-hard cock, despite the humiliation it had just caused.

I took my dick in my hand and gave it a disciplinary shake. “You need to just chill from now on. Okay?”

No answer. Just a dull, unsatisfied throbbing in my balls and, if I was being honest, deep in my chest too.

11

Derek

The sensation of wet socks in leather boots wasn’t as bad as the feeling of betraying the confidence of a young man in my care, so I threw on the footwear and raced out of the apartment. I made it about three paces into the foyer before I collided, headfirst, with the twins coming out of their apartment.

“Well.” Matt looked me over like he wasn’t surprised to see me soaked and dripping my way across the tile.

“Showering in your clothes?” Sean raised his eyebrows and crossed his arms over his huge chest.

“I’m cutting out that laundry middleman.” I couldn’t manage a smile so I sounded like an asshole.

Matt stared me up and down. When his eyes landed on my face, he blinked and his mouth curled into a knowing smile. Intuitive prick. “He fucked the twink. Already.”

I growled and held my ground without taking the step back I wanted, as my head hadn’t quite stopped spinning since my bathroom foray into taking advantage of someone who needed more from me than anything my dick could provide. “He’s not a twink, and I did not fuck him.” Close didn’t count here.

They shared a look.

“Then what’s going on with him? We were just on our way over to get answers from you.” Sean looked over my shoulder towards the door of my apartment, always ready for information.

Matt’s frown deepened and his voice took on a gruff edge that had always made me feel like I was the youngest person in the room. “What’s this about Eli kidnapping him?”

“I don’t know much more than you do.” Except what he looked like naked, what his mouth tasted like, and that his pale skin was as soft as it looked. My dick strained against my zipper. “He came into the ER for a wrist sprain, then the next night he showed up as a John Doe Owen’s team pulled out of the Potomac near Arlington Memorial.”

“Jumper.” Matt sounded like he’d already decided. He didn’t turn to Sean, didn’t do more than nod.

“John Doe? ID lost in the jump?” Sean watched me, never wavering in his inspection of my reactions. He didn’t look without leaping, act without thinking. I probably could’ve taken a quick lesson from him.

“Maybe. But he had his keys on him. Wallet would have survived the fall if his keys did, right?”

“Hm. Maybe. Depends on the pocket he had each one in, how he landed.” He shrugged. “There are variables.”

Sean glanced at Matt, as though his twin brother might know something I didn’t. Now that Matt had discharged from the Marines, none of us really knew what he did for cash—just that he had plenty of it, that he was using the spare apartment as an office. Even