“You’re really good with the guitar. I’m Curtis.” He held out his hand, and even his fingers were tattooed. He was not the type of man Nate should’ve been befriending. But he so very much wanted to.
“Nate,” he whispered back, hugging the guitar. “Do you play?”
Curtis nodded, and only then Nate noticed that their hands hadn’t parted for way too long. “Bass. I enjoy providing the rhythmical framework to music. We should jam.” His gaze seared Nate on the spot, and he could already feel the flames of Hell licking the soles of his feet.
Nate let out an awkward chuckle and glanced toward the girls, but Paula was the only one still waiting for him. She frowned and gestured for him to come back. As if. “You… yes, I’d like some pointers. You must be… more experienced,” he said, feeling a hot flush spread over his face.
Curtis's smile became positively wolfish, showing off the canines Nate was dying to feel against his skin. Never before had a man talked to him this way. “Speaking of experience, show me some ID. I only teach music to adults,” he said and let go of Nate’s hand.
Nate was on the verge of hyperventilating, but he didn’t question the fact that a perfect stranger wanted to see his ID, and handed him his driving licence, lost in a fuzzy world where anything beyond the two of them was just background noise.
Curtis was still smiling when he looked between Nate and the card. “What’s your Zodiac sign?”
Nate blinked, stupefied by the absurdity of that question. His family’s stance on horoscopes was that they were a step toward the occult and thus—eternal damnation. But he’d checked his many times. “Virgo. W-what is yours?”
Curtis snorted and handed Nate back the ID. “Did you say ‘virgin’?”
Nate was on fire, his throat so tight he was getting lightheaded. “I… there are people here,” he said, protectively squeezing the guitar to his chest.
Was this flirting? Or was he being mocked by a guy who’d somehow guessed his secret?
When Curtis’s gaze softened, Nate became a puddle of goo melting into the carpet. “Sorry, Scorpio’s can be vexing. I’m in room 205 if you’re up for it.”
“When?” Nate asked, even though he still didn’t know whether Curtis was asking about playing guitar together or… doing something much less innocent. He’d be up for both, even if he’d never as much as kissed a man.
To be fair, he’d never kissed anybody on the lips.
Curtis poked the side of Nate’s sneaker with his steel-toed boot. “Now.”
The touch sent a flash of arousal up Nate’s leg and pulled at his cock so intensely he needed two seconds to answer. “I… will come over very soon,” he said, remembering that he wasn’t alone, and that people could report his conduct to his parents once they all arrived home.
“Don’t make me wait too long, Nate.” Curtis gave him a short nod, and when he turned around and walked off, Nate couldn’t take his eyes off the man’s back and ass.
What had just happened?
He’d come to the hotel in hopes of sneaking out to a concert. Would he instead fulfill his dreams of forbidden closeness? He’d imagined many times that he would go to college and only spread his wings there. Meet a cool guy who would become his boyfriend, and they’d explore sexuality together. Curtis was nothing like the man Nate had planned to have his first experience with, even if he was everything Nate dreamed of. Older, experienced, with heaps of confidence, and unbothered by Nate’s stuttering.
The real deal.
He was still breathless when he found Paula at the entrance of the corridor that led to all the rooms used for the Christian Youth Music convention. “He promised not to bother you again,” he said, getting to his knees and placing the guitar in its case, just so that he wouldn’t have to meet her eyes when his mind was in such chaos.
Would he have those tattooed hands on him soon?
“Aw, thank you, Nathaniel. I hoped so much that you’d be coming to this trip. You’re the best guy I know,” Paula said with a smile, and when Nate stood, he could’ve sworn an extra button was undone on her shirt.
He smiled at her, shivering when one of the rooms down the corridor ahead erupted in loud music. Perhaps he would have enjoyed it if he didn’t know the song was about rapture. “I think I might lie down for now. I’ve got a bit of a headache, and I want to be ready for later tonight,” he lied with so much ease he was almost ashamed of it.
Almost.
Because the promise of Curtis naked and all over him made his vision blurry, let alone his morals.
Paula sighed loudly. “Oh no… I was hoping we could get to know each other better. You know how it is with parents around. They think we’re still kids.”