“Jesus Christ, no,” I said. “That’s not what I meant. We’re going to have to do the immersion therapy.”
His eyes went wide. “Perry, if you’re about to suggest anything that involves me handling or even looking at a tarantula, I don’t care how fucked up my ankle is, I will kick your ass.”
“No,” I said.
I sucked in a long breath of air, realizing I’d been frozen in place for God knew how long.
“Good. Then what do you mean?” he said.
“You’re going to have to kiss me.”
7
Rock
Kiss him. Perry wanted me to kiss him.
Perry Erickson—shy, awkward, total introvert—had asked me to kiss him, even though he seemed scared to ask for anything. It was strange, but in that moment, what I felt most was that I was proud of him. He was probably nervous as hell right now, having asked me to do it. Hell, he deserved a fucking medal just for having the balls to ask.
So I leaned in close and pressed my lips to Perry’s, without a second thought.
I kept my lips against his for a moment, realizing all at once that I was still squeezing his hand, and now he was squeezing mine really, really tight. The kiss was dry and chaste—it sure as hell wasn’t like anybody was using any tongue.
But my heart was still slamming in my chest.
My adrenaline surged as I leaned back, staring directly at Perry. He looked as pale as the cream white sheets on the bed.
“Okay, you were definitely right,” I said.
“Wh—what?”
My lips were still hot from the kiss. My entire body felt like it was on fire, actually.
“You were right,” I continued. “We need to do this kind of stuff behind closed doors first. To get the… awkwardness out of the way.”
I saw his Adam’s apple bob as he swallowed hard. He nodded. “I know you’re not used to kissing guys.”
It felt different knowing that I had been kissing a man, but in another way it also just felt… good.
Like kisses do.
It was just a pair of lips, after all, and kissing had always been one of my favorite things in the damn world. It had been too long since I’d been able to do it.
Even if nothing else worked out, at least this whole fake boyfriend thing would let me get to kiss someone while I was idling away in this town.
“Not gonna lie,” I said, pulling in a sharp breath. “It is a little weird.”
“Tell me about it,” he said, bringing his fingertips up to his lips, running them along the skin like he still couldn’t believe it had happened. He seemed to suddenly remember he was grasping my hand and he let go, pulling back and running his hands through his hair.
“Not weird in a bad way,” I clarified.
“I didn’t know you were going to do it right now,” he said quickly, glancing up at me again with his baby blue eyes. “You caught me off guard, and I wasn’t really prepared—”
“I’m sorry,” I said. “It was impulse more than anything. Maybe we should slow down.”
“Maybe we should do it again,” he said.
My heart skipped a beat.
“Are you sure that’s how you really feel?”
“Immersion therapy,” he said. “It’s never going to feel normal unless…”
I leaned in again, claiming his lips before he finished the sentence. I kissed more firmly than before, leaning forward a little and closing some of the space between us on the bed.
His body was even warmer than mine, which seemed impossible.
I parted my lips slightly, letting my tongue gently drag across his lower lip. He let out a quiet groan as I did it, and I knew I may have gone too far.
I slowly pulled away even though I wanted to keep going.
Fuck.
I had definitely gone too far. I was hard as a rock under my pants. As hard as I usually got when I was kissing a woman, before we had sex. I knew it was just because I liked kissing in general and because I’d been in a mini dry spell, but I still felt like I was floating somewhere above my body at the moment while my lips and hands and cock had minds of their own.
In another moment Perry leaned in, pressing one more small kiss to my lips. My cock jumped at the contact, and when he got up and walked over to his suitcase at the edge of the bedroom, I couldn’t help but feel a wave of disappointment wash over me.
Was I disappointed that he wasn’t going to kiss me more?
He cleared his throat. “I think that will work,” he said as he started taking shirts out of the suitcase and tossing them into the small set of drawers in the closet.
“It’ll work?”
He nodded. “I think it felt less awkward, by the end,” he said.
I was silent. I was starting to think it got more awkward by the end, but maybe that’s because I was trying to hide the growing tent in my pants.