Page 25 of Tapped By My Roommate
“Rhett!” Keri waved her hand to get my attention. “Are you gonna help me or not, slacker?”
“Sorry, yeah.”
I quickly clicked accept on a few of them without bothering to read the details and pocketed my phone. I’d been unenthused about hooking up for a while—opting to spend my little free time at the study center on campus since I’d been struggling with a couple of my more advanced computer science courses all semester—but I needed to dosomethingto put my kiss with Ethan in my rearview. If it weren’t for all the weirdness surrounding it, I was sure I’d have already moved on. That kiss with him had been good, sweet, but it wasn’t anything more.
It couldn’t be. Because I didn’t do relationships, much less complicated ones with my roommate. And even if I did, Ethan was straight.
A relationship with me would be the last thing he wanted.
8
ETHAN
HoleWreckr99. BeggingBottom. SwordSwallower. SwordSlayer. Sir_F_a_Lot. Roll_in_my_Hay, EasyLay.
Signing up for Thrust was like purchasing an admission ticket into a whole new world.
After Rhett left, I sat on the futon and scrolled through member profiles on the app. The more I saw, the more my stomach knotted up.
These guys were so forward. Direct about what they wanted. No hearts and flowers for them. Which was a nice change from the subtle flirtation I couldn’t pull off when trying to meet someone in person. But it was alotto take in.
HoleWreckr—seriously?I wouldn’t be letting that guy get close enough to message me, much less wreck my hole. Oh, god. Just the thought made my face flame. And the implications behind that name, that I might offer up…thatpart of my anatomy to a stranger, were more than a little unsettling.
I knew it wasn’t a requirement, of course. I was well read enough to know that some queer couples didn’t have anal sex at all. But that didn’t change the fact that some couplesdid,and that I was opening myself to attention that I might not be ready for.
There were so many labels.Top. Bottom. Verse. Side. Gay. Bisexual. Pansexual. Enby. Not to mention the slang terms: Twink, Bear, Otter, Wolf.
Where did I fit? How should I label myself when I didn’t even know what I wanted? I didn’t see anyone listinggeekas an identity orconfusedas their sexual preference.
And the photos—wow. I’d never seen so many abs and asses and dicks. I wasn’t turned on, despite the pornographic nature of many of the photos. They were body parts, lacking context. I was overwhelmed by the sheer volume of it all. But excited? Not really.
I worried about what that meant. Was I less into men than the kiss with Rhett led me to believe?
I closed the app, heart racing, wondering if I should give up before I got started.
But even after I’d gone to bed, it remained at the edge of my mind, beckoning me to be bolder. To find the answers I needed.
I wanted to understand the nervous flutter of my stomach and the goosebumps that raced over my skin whenever I thought about Rhett in nothing but that towel. The way my hand strayed into my boxers when I was alone, stroking and squeezing while wondering, What if Rhett had touched me with those big hands of his? What if he’d let me touch him?
I tossed and turned that night before sinking into a deep sleep just before dawn. I missed my alarm, waking instead to my phone trilling annoyingly.
A text had come in from Brian, my research partner in my Ecophysiology of Wildlife class.
Where are you, man? We’re supposed to be meeting up.
My gaze flicked to the time. Shit, I was ten minutes late already. I grabbed my laptop and notebooks and shoved everything into a backpack.
I texted Brian back and pulled on a clean T-shirt before racing over to the library. When I got there, he was sitting slouched in a chair, with his arms crossed over his chest and a scowl on his square jaw.
“Took you long enough.”
“Sorry,” I said breathlessly as I collapsed in a seat on the other side of the table from him. “Got held up with something. Should I go over my chapter first?”
We were partnered for a mid-term project, and we’d divided the reading between us. The idea was that we’d each read different chapters and create outlines for our partner, and then write a paper together covering the material. Unfortunately, Brian only did his reading about half the time.
He held out his hand. “Just give me the outline. I don’t need you to rehash it all.”
“But you won’t understand without some context—” He grabbed the outline, yanking it from my hand so suddenly the edge of the paper sliced the side of my palm. “Ouch!”
