Page 36 of A Totally Platonic Thing
“I’m all sweaty. Can I—I need to take a shower.” Had I really been about to ask his permission to take a shower? Yes, yes I had, and I really hoped he’d give it, because I doubted I’d be getting one without his say-so.
“Fine,” Lucas bit out. “But you know I’m not letting you go in there by yourself.”
For a second, I had an insane image in my head of Lucas yanking his shirt over his head and revealing his hard chest and his broad shoulders, pushing his jeans and boxers down his legs and—
“I’m going to keep an eye on you so you don’t cheat,” he continued. “Go on. Shower if you’re going to.”
Half of my brain still had a wavering vision swimming through it of a big, naked Lucas climbing into the shower with me, and if I’d tried to say a single word more I’d have lost it. I fled past him into the bathroom as quickly as my shaky legs would take me, and started to get my clothes off. I left the door open. Lucas didn’t follow me in, still moving around in the main room, so I let myself breathe a sigh of relief. Disappointment? God, what was I doing? My head spun. I was so hard. I wanted him to touch me, kiss me, push me up against the shower wall and put his hands all over me.
My roommate, mystraightroommate. Lucas, for God’s sake. I’d lived with Lucas for more than two years. I loved him like a—well, okay, no. Any way I finished that thought would be a lie. But I’d never jerked off thinking about him, at least.
Not exactly, anyway. When his face and body intruded into my sleepy fantasies, I’d tried to push them away, because yeah, guys jerked off thinking about all kinds of people they knew, but that felt like crossing a line.
Sometimes it happened anyway. And that was normal, right? Not being able to control your brain. Wanting things you couldn’t have and couldn’t admit to yourself you did actually want, or you’d go crazy.
But this wasn’t normal by any standard.
I left my clothes in a heap on the bathroom floor and turned on the shower. Lucas stayed in the next room.
I stepped in, the hot water almost too hot, my whole body going haywire. I stared down at my dick sticking out in front of me, the water beating down on it and teasing my sensitive skin. Maybe one little stroke? To take the edge off? I got my hands all soapy, reached down…and caught movement out of the corner of my eye through the clear shower curtain.
My hands went flailing and I crashed into the side of the shower and barely caught myself before my feet went out from under me.
Lucas had taken up position leaning against the door frame, one knee up with his foot braced against the wall and his arms crossed over his chest.
His arms looked huge. And he looked unimpressed.
“You know the rules,” he said. “Hurry up.”
I gawked at him for a second, still coming down from nearly having a freaking heart attack.
Hurry up? Seriously? And that expression on his face. Like me standing there naked and soapy and wet didn’t interest him at all.
As I watched him, he uncrossed his arms and pulled his phone out of his pocket, lighting up the screen and looking down at it.
Oh my fucking God. Seriously? He had me to look at. Like live porn. He was about to put me on his bed and spank me. He’d had his hand around my neck.
And he was scrolling Facebook or something.
The faint sound of grinding reached me. My own teeth, gritting together in rage and humiliation.
My eyes stung, but luckily the steam from the shower would hide it if a few tears leaked out. I wished I could shut the bathroom door after all, not to jerk off, but to have a minute to freak out in privacy.
Because at that moment, I couldn’t hide from it anymore: I wanted him. I wanted Lucas. I’d maybe kind of sort of wanted him from the minute he’d rescued me from the teenage pretzel jerk. For about two minutes, I’d been convinced he’d been flirting with me, and that bringing me that pretzel had been the precursor to asking me out on a date, kissing me, fucking me stupid, and living happily ever after.
Okay, so sue me, I had grandiose romantic fantasies sometimes.
Instead, he’d acted like the perfect gentleman—the kind who had no interest whatsoever in me.
And I’d tried so hard to suppress anything like that ever since. God, Lucas had been accusing me of having an inappropriate attraction to Aidan, of all people. I mean, sure, Aidan was hotter than ninety-nine percent of men.
But not for me. And I didn’t want him to be.
So freaking ironic. I did want the impossible, just not the impossible option Lucas had thought.
“Chris, you going to get a move on?”
I jumped and refocused on the Lucas right in front of me rather than the Lucas of my imagination.
