Another Believer Read online

  “Absolutely. You’ll have—” Jonah was kissing his throat and massaging his dick, which was getting harder by the second. “—classes. Papers to write. Research to do.”

  “That all sounds… God, I love the way you taste.” After rolling David onto his back, Jonah was working his shirt up again, kissing his stomach and tonguing his navel. All the while he was pressing the palm of one hand to David’s groin, putting the most excruciatingly wonderful pressure on David’s cock. “And that all sounds hideous. The only way I’ll make it through is if I know I have you to help me.”

  “You, uh… You’re a friendly guy.” Jonah’s mouth was dangerously close to David’s dick, and already he’d memorized the feeling of that first glorious slide into Jonah’s mouth. His unruly body was arching and squirming, trying to make the connection that made that unmistakable sensation possible. “You’ll make friends.”

  “Not like you, though. You’re different.” Jonah tugged aside the waistband of David’s shorts and sucked on the exposed pelvic bone, scraping his teeth along the skin there so that David was twisting, trying to evade Jonah’s restraining hand, all the better to make real contact.

  “Jonah… Please.” David was whimpering now, not sure if he could possibly withstand one more orgasm, but hoping like crazy to find out. Maybe it was for the best that he wouldn’t see Jonah after they arrived in Portland. He wasn’t sure how much more he could take.

  It’d be wicked awesome to find out, though.

  “I want us to room together after we get there. Who do we talk to, to make that happen?” Tiny little baby kisses, feathered across David’s abdomen, had him moaning, in between long, shuddering breaths. “David? Do you know?”

  Jonah’s mouth.

  He wanted Jonah’s mouth on him.

  No. He wanted to be fucked—to be ridden, long and slow. With Jonah’s hand on his cock, squeezing him.

  He wanted—

  “David, can you hear me?”

  “Huh? Yeah, yeah. Oh, yeah. Can you just do that a little to the left?” Hot breath tickled his balls and then a warm, slick tongue lapped at first one, then the other. For a few brief moments moist heat enveloped them both as—holy shit—Jonah mouthed them. Sucked them in and played with them.

  He was savoring the feeling, marveling at how something that felt so amazing could be happening to him for the first time, when it suddenly all went away.

  A few seconds of perfect heaven… then nothing.

  “David, talk to me. I put in for a single room in the on-campus housing. But I should be able to trade that in for a double, don’t you think? David?”

  “What? Sure, I guess.” Prying his eyes open, David’s gaze flitted instantly to Jonah’s face.

  Long strands of streaked auburn hair obscured one eye, but the other was gazing back at David steadily. Jonah’s tongue swiped at slightly puffy lips—lips that had just moments ago been caressing David like he’d never been caressed before. That astonishing chest was rising and falling regularly, as Jonah sat and waited. “Do you, really?”

  “Sure. Why not? Were you going to… like, um… finish?”

  “Eventually, yeah.”

  “Eventually?” Pushing himself up onto his elbows, David tried for the same steady gaze back, but the ghost of his own high-pitched wail seemed to echo around the room. “What’s that mean?”

  “It means I want a real answer, not a say-whatever-it-takes-to-get-off answer.”

  Jonah’s expression was serious, no question. He still had that gorgeous, all American, buff athlete look about him, but for the first time David saw through it to the strength of will behind it all. Jonah wasn’t going to settle for bullshit and David realized that the ride was over. The Portland station might be two hours away, but the magical world that had existed on this train, where a good-looking guy like Jonah might really be interested in an everyday science nerd like him, was at an end.

  David looked down for a moment, trying to find the nerve to say what needed to be said. The hardest part was that he really didn’t want to say it. He’d liked living in his make-believe world, and he didn’t want to do or say anything that would make it end one minute sooner than it absolutely had to.

  He looked up at Jonah’s face again and knew that the option had been taken away from him. Jonah was waiting and he was going to have to tell the truth, half-naked pathetic spectacle that he’d made of himself or not.

  “Yeah, I think you could probably tell them you’d like to trade down to a two-person unit and get about a hundred takers on the spot. You could probably even sell it and make enough to pay for your books for an entire semester. I don’t even want to know what you had to do to get one in the first place, but they’re in demand, for sure.”

  “Excellent.”

  “Yeah.”

  “So, do we just tell them we want to room together? How does that part work?” Jonah was beginning to crack a smile again and David knew he’d carry that picture in his head for a long time. His beautiful man, stripped to the waist and smiling at him. His for a little while, anyway.

  Crap.

  David pinched the bridge of his nose hard and looked away, blinking and willing himself all the while not to cry. He’d known going in that this moment would come. He just hadn’t anticipated how fast the time would go, or how much it would hurt when it was all gone.

  “David? Do you know? Oh, well, it doesn’t matter. We’ll figure it out.”

  “Would you just stop?” David couldn’t stand it anymore. If it was over, let it be over. “You don’t have to pretend. Can we just admit what it is and let it go?”

  “Admit what what is?” Jonah was scratching an itch low on his side and the way his arm reached across his body made his pecs bunch up and it was so not fair of him. No one should be allowed to be so overwhelmingly attractive in the exact moment that David was having to explain why it would never work between them.

  In fact, it was beginning to piss David off that Jonah was making him actually go through the exercise. They both knew, didn’t they? So why put him through the torture of having to say the words?

  “Admit that it was just…” Jonah just stared at him, waiting for who knew what? “That you were just bored; looking for something to pass the time. I don’t know!”

  “Really? Is this what you do when you’re bored? Boy, all I can say is O.C. guys get a bad rap, then.”

  “Oh, come on, Simpson. You’re seriously telling me that you’d have looked twice at me if this had been just another day at school? What? You scoped me out at the station and paid someone off to get the seat next to me? Come on. I’ve spent my whole life being blown off by guys who look like you. Funnily enough, unless they’re looking for help with their science project, vertically challenged science nerds aren’t usually the hot guys’ first choice.”

  Instead of backing off like David had expected, Jonah crossed his arms and dug in, as though he was settling in for a protracted battle. “Is that right? Well, maybe I know something they don’t, Sato.”

  “And what would that be?”

  “Like maybe that I like a guy with a little something going on upstairs. Like what’s between the ears is just as important as what’s between the legs.” At that, Jonah’s gaze dropped to the second area under discussion. “Not that I have anything against that particular bit of geography. I’m especially fond of it, as it turns out. But I’ve dated enough guys who think having a good outside jumper and knowing how to defend a pick-and-roll are the keys to life.”

  Relaxing a bit, Jonah reached out and let his hand rest on David’s thigh. Resting, his fingers spanned David’s thigh, but he drew them together, tantalizing David’s nerve endings along the way. “So when I meet a guy who flips my switch in a major way and he’s got a brain in his head, you’d better believe I’m all over it.”

  God knew he wanted to believe what Jonah was saying, but a lifetime of experience was telling David that Jonah was only saying what he thought David w
anted to hear. Maybe he wanted a regular hook-up, a sure thing, while he got settled in at Mt. Scott. And how much more brutal would it be to get dumped at school, where everyone on the tiny campus would witness his humiliation?

  “You don’t believe me?”

  “Well, let’s just say I’d have an easier time explaining string theory than you and me together.”

  “David.” Jonah leaned over and kissed him. Sweet and… sincere. How a kiss could be sincere, David didn’t know, but he knew what he felt. “I know your secret, Sato, and it’s just too bad for you.”

  Instantly suspicious, David eyed Jonah warily. “What?”

  “You want to believe.” Jonah kissed him again, lingeringly this time. “And you will. Just wait and see.”

  “Jonah?”

  “Yeah?”

  “What’s a pick-and-roll?”

  “Move over so I can lie down, and I’ll explain it to you.”

  End.

  If you liked this book you might like: Jumping the Fence, Crossing the Line, Absolutely You.