Touch Me (One Night with Sole Regret 4)

“I could sample a few choice pies for you and let you know which tastes best,” Owen offered, only half joking. He enjoyed pleasuring a woman with his mouth, and he knew how much Kelly got off on the act. Or he had. Until last Christmas.

Fuck. Owen vowed to never give anyone a thoughtful gift ever again. It would be tube socks and neckties all around this year.

One corner of Kelly’s mouth rose. “I’m not sure we have the same discriminating palate, dude.”

“If you need me to—” Owen glanced pointedly at Kelly’s crotch. Owen longed for the days when they’d pleasured women together. Especially the part when they’d given each other amazing hand jobs. But ever since Owen had given Kelly that cuff, Kelly had remained distant. He no longer helped Owen entertain women, and he wouldn’t touch him anymore. At all. The truly confusing part of this shift in their relationship was that Owen couldn’t stop thinking about his best friend’s hand. Before Kelly had backed away, their brief sexual contact hadn’t meant anything to Owen. He hadn’t even considered it sexual contact. It wasn’t as if he was attracted to Kelly or anything. He just liked the way Kelly tugged his c**k just right. But now that they no longer touched each other—at Kelly’s insistence—Owen couldn’t get the feel of the man’s perfect grip out of his head.

Owen absently stroked the thick strings of his bass guitar. Those orgasms couldn’t have been as great as Owen’s memory served. His mind had a way of making the things he couldn’t have seem so much better than they actually were. He knew how his head worked, but the truth didn’t stop him from fixating on something best left in the past. He had to get over his bizarre obsession. Kelly certainly had. Whenever Owen brought up their brief brushes with intimacy, Kelly looked uncomfortable and hedged his way out of the conversation. But maybe if they had just one more go at it, Owen could move on. He could stop thinking about how much fun they had pleasing a woman in tandem and how those interludes had culminated.

Kelly had turned off like a light switch six months before and hadn’t turned back on since. Owen glanced at him again. It wasn’t healthy for a man to be so, well… celibate.

“I told you we aren’t doing that anymore,” Kelly said.

“Oh, I know. It’s not like it’s a big deal. You just look a little tense.” If an over-tightened guitar string was considered a little tense.

“I am tense, but I’ll take care of it. Unlike you, I don’t need a different girl every other night to get off.”

Of course. Why would Kelly seek the company of a woman when he had a perfectly good hand at his disposal? If Owen had that particular hand at his disposal, he might not be so anxious to hook up with some stranger either.

Memories of Sara had done this to Kelly; Owen just didn’t understand why his friend was faithful to a dead girl. After Sara had passed, it had taken Kelly a couple of years to even touch another woman. Then he’d progressed to eating them out as long as they were restrained and Owen had been there with him. Now Kelly wouldn’t do anything sexual with anyone, no matter how many times Owen agreed to give him a hand or any other body part he wanted to utilize.

When Owen had given Kelly the cuff, he’d hoped it would be another step forward. He’d wanted the bracelet to remind Kelly of how stupid he was being—that no matter how much he wanted Sara back, it was impossible. She was gone. But the constant reminder of her on Kelly’s wrist had only managed to solidify his dedication to abstinence. He hadn’t merely taken a step back; he’d fallen off the ladder. Sure, Kelly went to Tony’s sex clubs with the rest of them, but he never did anything. Comparatively speaking.

“Don’t you think it’s time to take off that cuff?”

“Not yet,” Kelly said. “But I am a little horny.”

“A little? Dude, your balls are so blue, you should start your own Blue Man Group.”

Kelly laughed. “And you know that how?”

“Gabe was checking you out in the shower. He told me you’re suffering from a colorful condition.”

Owen had noticed their drummer standing in the shadows—you couldn’t miss that eight-inch-high, red and black mohawk of his—but didn’t know if Gabe was listening in or not. Hard to tell with Gabe—the dude was often lost in thought. A person could carry on an entire one-sided conversation with him, and he didn’t hear a word. He was, however, paying attention tonight.

“They were a little blue,” Gabe said. “I don’t think they’re quite up to Blue Man standards. Better luck next time, Kellen.”

“Hopes, dreams, and aspirations dashed again,” Kelly said. “One day they’ll be blue enough, you wait and see.”

Gabe chuckled and shook his head.

“Hey,” Owen said, grabbing Kelly’s arm and leaning close, trying to look earnest, “you’re not allowed to leave the band for the Vegas spotlight. I don’t care how blue they get.”

“I thought you, of all people, would be supportive of my desire to attain permanent blue balls. Surely you recognize my need to find others of my kind.” Kelly said this with such conviction that anyone who didn’t know him would have thought he was serious and offered him a cash donation for his cause.

Owen tried to keep a straight face, but snorted as a laugh escaped him.

“God, will you two knock it off?” Adam said. His ever-expanding collection of chains rattled in the semi-darkness to Owen’s left. “You act like a couple of prepubescent boys when you’re together. If I wanted kids, I wouldn’t have made an appointment to get a vasectomy.”

“As much as I joke about my balls,” Kelly said, “I’d never let anyone come at ’em with a scalpel. Ever.”

“And that’s why you’ll end up paying child support someday.” Adam crossed his arms to rest on the body of his guitar and lifted a dark eyebrow at Kelly. “Some gold-digger will poke pinholes in your condoms and whoops, there’s a two-million-dollar mistake.”

“Does your girlfriend know you’re getting snipped?” Owen asked. “She seems like the type who’d want kids.”

“That’s why I’m getting them snipped.”

“You don’t trust her?”

“Of course I trust her. I just lose my head around her. She’d say the word and I’d be doing my damnedest to knock her up. I don’t have any business fathering a child. Look at the example I had to follow.”