Page 28 of A Totally Platonic Thing
Only Lucas wouldn’t be getting me off later, or in the morning, or whenever he’d decided I’d been suitably punished.
He was my roommate. My friend.
My straight roommate and friend. So we were closer than most people were to their roommates and friends, but it worked for us. Lucas might be a lot more openminded than a typical straight guy, but that didn’t mean he wanted to touch me like that.
“I’m going to break my promise,” Lucas said softly, rubbing his cheek against my hair. I snuggled closer, and he obligingly held me even tighter. The hand on my back had strayed down a little lower until it rested only a couple of inches from where he’d made me writhe and burn and bite back all the pleas and desperate begging that had been on the tip of my tongue the whole time, so it took a second for that to compute.
“What?”
“My promise. To yell at you. Because I don’t think that’s the best way to deal with you anymore. Been there, done that, it didn’t work.”
He smoothed his hand all the way up my back. God, that felt so good. And then he stroked all the way back down again until his fingers brushed the top swell of my ass, and left his hand there.
“Deal with me?” I knew he’d been furious with me tonight and hadn’t been happy with the way I’d been living my life, but that was…well, it might’ve been offensive if I hadn’t been too content, too relieved to be in his arms where I knew he cared, to feel the offense strongly. I didn’t needdealing with. Maybe I needed a nudge sometimes, and…in a specific context. But I didn’t need or want to be treated like a kid. “I don’t need dealing with,” I finally said, after a few seconds of trying to find a better way to put it.
Lucas went a little tense against me. No, I didn’t want that! I nuzzled into the warmth of his chest and got my hand all the way between us so I could pet his stomach. He didn’t quite have a six-pack, but damn, getting close. I stroked him, but it didn’t seem to make him relax.
“Okay,” he said, sounding a little strained. “Fine. You don’t need dealing with. I get it, you’re a grown-ass man. But Chris.” He swallowed, and I felt it rather than hearing it. “You can do whatever you want. And I can’t—I mean, I can’t say there’s going to be consequences, that’s not my job. That’s not anyone’s job. But if you keep this up, I can’t keep coming running every time. If you fuck up your friendship with Sebastian, or piss off Aidan for getting him in trouble at work, or if you can’t get yourself home and need a ride. Or if you’re failing your classes because you never go to them. I can’t. I have my own shit to deal with. I have to prioritize that.”
Under any other circumstances than curled up in Lucas’s arms, I’d have gotten really defensive, because the implication that Lucas was going to abandon me, that he’d stop caring, felt like someone had stuck an ice pick in my chest. Or maybe an icicle, the cold spreading through me like poison at the thought.
Hadn’t he said earlier that I’d never need to worry about that?
Well, I couldn’t help worrying about it. Because what he’d told me a second ago sounded a lot like being done with me.
So I might worry, but oddly I wasn’t getting defensive again. I’d been curled up in Lucas’s arms then, too, when I’d had that reaction. But that had been different.
That had been before he made me go all quiet inside.
Had I really gotten that bad, that irresponsible? I’d been spending way more money than I ought to on going out, for sure. And I knew Aidan was getting sick of my shenanigans. I remembered what he’d said to Lucas the other night about his boss not being so thrilled with my drunk ass hanging around after closing. And Sebastian would get upset about it eventually, no matter how much he knew Aidan loved him. Sebastian had this weird idea that I was more attractive than him, even though he was all tall and willowy and blond and gorgeous.
And my classes…that made my stomach tense up with dread. I wanted to shy away from those thoughts, press them down, ignore them.
But I would be failing at least one class if I didn’t shape up. And then I might not graduate, at least not on time. And with the money from my grandfather’s inheritance I’d been blowing, paying for another quarter to repeat my classes…I swallowed down bile.
Shit. Denial could only go so far before it failed me, and it looked like now was the time.
“I’m going to fail my senior seminar, Lucas,” I mumbled into his chest. “I’m really afraid it’s too late to pull that grade out.”
His arms tightened again, and he threw a leg over both of mine, surrounding me and enclosing me. Oh, God. He shouldn’t feel so damn good.
“You’re so fucking smart, Chris. I have faith. Start tomorrow. Catch up on your reading. I’ll hang out and get some work done here for moral support instead of going to the lab. Okay?” Another tight squeeze, this one almost enough to crack my ribs. I squeaked and he laughed. “It’ll be okay. You don’t need anyone to make you do what you need to do, right? You just need to do it.”
That warmed me as much as his big body wrapped around mine, except that my heart sank at the same time. He had faith in me. But he also wasn’t going to make me do it. He meant to leave it up to me.
I didn’t have faith in me. And I needed Lucas to help. But I’d just told him I specifically didn’t want him “dealing with” me, which had on some level been bullshit, but how could I say that? How could I ask him to do exactly what I’d already asked him not to do without sounding like a complete moron?
Or desperate for another spanking?
Oh,God.
I let out a little groan, rubbing my face into his perfect, slightly muscley but not all lumpy chest, and Lucas shushed me, held me, touched me, whispered to me that everything would be fine.
I would never have thought I’d be able to go to sleep, not after that rollercoaster ride of a night. Not when I still had a half-hard dick and so much on my mind.
But I fell asleep with Lucas running his fingers through my hair, and I didn’t even dream.
I hadn’t dreamed at all the night before, but Saturday sure did feel like one from start to finish. Sunday too.
