Page 49 of Shroom for Improvement

The smell of him. Warm, clean, spiced, and doing things to my anatomy that ought not happen while we were sharing a bed. Subtly, I ran a hand over that area to ensure it was level and nothing was creating a tent of shame. At the same time, I peeled my eyes open and rolled to my side, unsure how I felt about seeing Sonny’s face first thing in the morning.

Nervous? Was I nervous? Shit, maybe I was excited?

I needn’t have worried. The space next to me on the bed was empty. Cold. Flat. The smell of him came from the pillows. I pushed them away from me and fell onto my back again.

What a strange night last night had been. No, scratch that, the entire day. From the second I found out Professor Daye was Sonny, until the moment he lulled me into the most peaceful, restful sleep I’d had in years—decades even. The whole twenty-four hours had been bananas. And now I was lying alone in my bed, breathing in his smell, with raging morning wood.

My hand still rested on my dick, so I took it away, and immediately missed the minuscule amount of relief it brought me.

But no, it was wrong to think about Sonny with my hand... there. Wrong. We’d shared a bed because he’d had no other option. And until yesterday, I was pretty sure neither of us liked the other. Pretty sure that was still the case. That we were both saving face and getting along for the sake of uncovering mushroom-magic secrets.

I was sure once we’d figured it out, Sonny would go back to Remy, attempt to write up his paper, and when that never materialised, he’d hate me forever. Never speak to me again. Which I would wholeheartedly deserve.

It was definitely wrong to rock the heel of my palm against the head of my cock whilst remembering the contours of Sonny’s face partially illuminated by the dim light from the moons. The curve of his Adam’s apple as it bobbed up and down with his speech. His breath occasionally tickling the side of my neck and my cheek. The way he would almost physically glow when he spoke about something he loved.

I didn’t even know what half of his words meant. Stakes and nets and cloches, and I was pretty sure I’d misheard him when he’d mentioned pee-bales, but he’d been so full of joy, I hadn’t wanted to interrupt the moment.

Had I ever found that much happiness in something? Something so seemingly unimportant to the rest of the world? Maybe once upon a long time ago. When I first started working at U-Rail, when the city was new to me, and everything was a million miles away from the middle-of-nowhere, fae-only village I grew up in.

Yet Sonny was alive with love for what he did. At once it made me jealous that I didn’t have an equivalent in my life, and blessed to have been the one to bask in his moments of sunshine.

He was beautiful. Absurdly attractive. A mesmeric oddity. But he was beautiful on the inside, too. Pickpocketing aside, he was one of those pure-of-heart, do-gooder, live for the moment types. An optimist.

And I was a cantankerous, grumbling, sour old jerk with no noble life goals—except to get a bigger telly and fancier chai tea—humping his own hand to the lingering scent of a man who probably hated him.

Awesome.

I threw the covers off and jumped out of bed. I needed a shower. A cold one.

I set the water temperature as low as I could bear, stripped off, and stepped inside, sucking in a quick, hard breath at the shock. If this didn’t scare my boner away, I wasn’t sure what would. After washing my face, my hair because I hadn’t washed it last night, and the rest of my body, I glanced down.

Still hard. Despite the sub-zero conditions of the water.

“Please go down,” I whispered.

How about you get rid of me using the old-fashioned method?It seemed to whisper back.

“No, I’m not doing that,” I said, not entirely sure why I was still talking aloud to my cock. No way was I wanking to the mental images of Sonny. Again, that was.

But we have new images. What about his muddy hands? Why don’t you pretend yours are his?

“Nuh-uh.” It just felt wrong, to think about Sonny in that way, but I couldn’t quite pinpoint why. “I’m gonna wash you now. Don’t enjoy this, okay?”

But the second I wrapped my soap-slicked hands around the base of my cock, I knew I’d reached one of those too-late-to-turn-back moments. My other hand shot out to brace myself against the glass door and a groan slipped from my throat, resonating off the tiles.

Oh, the sweet, delicious friction. I slid my hand up my length and down, and up, no longer lying to myself that I would simply wash and get out. That ship had sailed ages ago. Perhaps the moment I invited him into my bed and accepted the inevitability of breathing in his scent all night.

Besides, it wouldn’t take long. I was already teetering dangerously close to the edge. And nobody but me would ever have to know I’d stroked myself again to the thought of Sonny. The guilt was mine alone. Perhaps I could atone for it somehow.

Gods, it felt good. Wrong, but so, so fucking good. My pace quickened, my fist speeding up. I tried to bat away the images of Sonny’s bare thighs poking out the bottom of his scruffy tee, the newly conjured image of my fingertips digging into his muscles.

Faster still.

Of his pert lips. What they would feel like trailing hot little paths down my chest.

Faster.

Of those thick, feminine lashes. How they’d tickle the underside of his brows when he’d roll his eyes up and gasp in a breath at the moment of sweet oblivion.

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