“YOU WERE right about the bath,” Jason said, his voice thick and his muscles relaxed.
After a delicious and filling dinner, they climbed to the third floor, which housed the master suite, and got in the shower, where Abe washed him with painstaking tenderness. Then he left Jason to enjoy the warm spray, stepped out of the shower, and filled the separate tub for the first time in the five years Jason had owned the townhouse. When the bath was brimming with hot water and vanilla-and-lavender-scented bubbles, Abe came back and led him over. He helped Jason settle in before climbing in behind him, wrapping his legs around his torso, and massaging the tension out of every muscle in his back, shoulders, and neck.
“I haven’t taken a bath since I was a kid,” Abe said. He shifted slightly, and his soft nuts and cock rubbed against Jason’s back.
“Mmm, me either.” Jason laid his head against Abe’s shoulder. “This is way better than I remember.”
“It is.” Abe lifted his hands and drizzled warm water onto Jason’s neck and upper chest. “Are you ready to talk about earlier?”
“If I turn around and fuck you so hard you scream, will you forget about it?” That strategy had been effective on more than one occasion.
“Probably, so let’s put that on hold.”
Jason grunted.
“What happened?”
“Nothing,” Jason said. “I was tired, hungry, stressed, and horny. Before, I would have taken care of it by going online or to a bar and hooking up. Done and done. But now I can’t, so I snapped.”
“And the reason you can’t is because you get off on watching yourself cum in my mouth?”
“You get off on it too,” Jason said defensively.
“No question about that,” Abe said with a chuckle as he rocked his hips and moved his hardening dick against Jason’s back. “Just talking about it revs me up.” He paused. “But I don’t think this was about a couple of weeks with no sex.”
Making excuses to Abe was easy because Jason had been using the same ones with himself, but deep down he knew there was more on his mind than sexual frustration.
“What happened earlier?” Abe whispered as he ran his palms over Jason’s chest.
With Abe’s hands over his heart, he almost certainly felt Jason’s heart rate speed up. “I haven’t fucked anyone but you since December.”
“Is that a long time for you?”
“Four months?” Jason said incredulously. “Yeah, it’s a long time—it’s longer than I’ve gone since I first fucked a guy, and I was married for most of the years since then.”
“You haven’t exactly been celibate during the last four months,” Abe reminded him.
“I know. I’m not saying that. I’m just….”
“What?” Abe ran his lips over the perimeter of Jason’s ear. “Talk to me.”
“I haven’t wanted to be with anyone else.” And that was the crux of the problem. “I’ve seen good-looking guys and had the usual ‘what does he look like naked’ or ‘how fast can I get him on his knees’ thoughts, but nothing more than quick flashes. Nothing I’ve wanted to act on.”
“And that scares you?”
“No,” Jason said reflexively. He sighed. “Maybe. This was supposed to be a one-off.”
“I remember,” Abe said. “I told myself you were my birthday present. One night to be spontaneous and do whatever I wanted, repercussions be damned.” Jason could hear the smile in Abe’s voice. “Best present I ever got.”
“It’s been way more than one night.”
“It has. And for me, at least, it keeps getting better the more time we spend together.”
“For me too, baby.” Jason covered Abe’s hands with his own, tilted his head back, and kissed the bottom of Abe’s chin. “But this isn’t what we expected. Doesn’t that scare you?”
“Well.” Abe paused and silently caressed Jason’s chest, presumably thinking the question over. “I guess the way I see it, whenever I start dating someone, I’m either taking the first step toward a breakup or the first step toward forever. Both of those prospects are scary, right?”
“That’s just it,” Jason said. “We didn’t start out dating. It was supposed to be a hookup.”
“The first time,” Abe said. “It was supposed to be a hookup the first time. Maybe the second time too. But after that….” Abe let the comment trail off.
“You knew I was hoping to run into you in that coffee shop?” Jason said, suddenly realizing he hadn’t been as subtle as he’d thought.
“Not at first, no. But I go to the Roasted Bean a fair bit, and when I went in one time after we met up there, a barista told me you’d asked about me.”
“I wanted to see you again and I remembered you saying you went there a lot, so I thought it’d be a good place to run into you,” Jason admitted.
“I’m glad.”
Jason sighed. “The first step toward a breakup or the first step toward forever, huh?”