Candy Boys (Hot Candy 1)

“Was I?” The need to touch him, check him, make sure he’s okay is crushing my chest, my mind. I run my hand down his arm. “You’re okay.”

“You were asking…” He swallows hard. “Asking if he’s dead. Who, J?”

I shake my head. “I don’t know. I can’t remember. It was just a dream.” Just a dream, I repeat to myself, though why Jet’s face is so ashen I’m confused. I was the one having a nightmare, right? “What is it?”

“Nothing.” He visibly shakes himself, pulls himself together. I’m obviously missing something, but my mind’s kinda shattered by the dream, and I can’t think straight, not yet. “You’re soaked in sweat. You should take a shower before Candy arrives.”

Candy. Our apartment. Shower.

It all seems like a dream. Like the nightmare I woke up from was the real world.

Fucking creepy, to be honest.

What I’d need now is a moment to myself, to get my limbs back under control—but when Jet starts to get up, I make a grab for him again. Still not ready to let him out of my sight, not after seeing him like that. Even if it was a dream.

Hell.

He seems to sense something, and he doesn’t shrug me off. “Come on,” he says. “I need a shower, too.”

And just like that we’re stumbling into the bathroom together, shoving down our pants, pulling off our shirts. He produces a startled sound when I push him under the spray and run my hands over his shoulders and down his arms.

Yeah, I’m still not over the fright. Still checking to make sure he’s okay.

“You were covered in blood,” I whisper and lift my hands to his face. “You were hurt.”

He sucks in a sharp breath when I touch his cheeks, his jaw, when I push the soaked hair out of his eyes.

“Goddammit, Jet, tell me you were never hurt like that, that you’ve never…” I swallow back the words, because if anything his face has gone paler. “Tell me this didn’t really happen to you.”

“I don’t… I wasn’t.”

Not enough, not when he’s looking like he’s about to fall a

part. With a groan, I wrap my arms around him, crush him to me. “Good. Can’t stand the thought of anything hurting you, man.”

He raises fisted hands to my back. Says nothing.

“Candy said your cousin called. You’d tell me if something was wrong, right? I’ll look out for you. I’ll… Fuck, Jet, I’d do anything for you.”

The water is beating down on us, warm, and his body is slippery and full of angles. His chest is meshed with mine, and his dick is half-hard, poking me in the hip.

I blink. What am I doing?

His eyes are round like saucers when I finally pull away. And I’m sobering up, suddenly confused and lost again. Lost for feeling so many things for Jet, when I shouldn’t.

“J…”

“Gonna grab a towel.” I frown, turning away from him and fumbling half-blindly at the rack, water dripping from my eyelashes. “Order some food, tidy up the living room before—”

“Joel.”

My full name stops me. Can’t remember the last time Jethro called me that. I stay with my back turned to him. “What?”

“The blood wasn’t mine.”

Chapter Twenty One

JETHRO