Page 34 of Flirt
“First,” he continued when Cameron didn’t speak, “are we talking everything?”
Cameron sucked his bottom lip between his teeth and nodded again.
“Kissing is okay?” Since they’d done a lot of that, Asher figured it should be obvious, but he didn’t want to assume.
“Kissing is okay,” Cameron confirmed. “Pretty much any PG-13 stuff.”
“Okay, good to know.” They might have a different definition of PG-13 activities, but they could iron out of the specifics later. “Okay, so why thirty days? Why so specific?”
“Do you want the long version or the short?”
Asher cocked an eyebrow. “I’m a storyteller. What do you think?”
Laughing, he held one hand up in mock surrender. “Okay, so, I was roommates with this guy in college. Biggest manwhore you’ve ever met. Girls, guys, gay, straight, trans, it didn’t matter to him. Marcus was hot enough to have anyone he wanted, and hehadthem in every way imaginable.”
The story could go one of two ways, and Asher prayed that it ended with Cameron telling this Marcus guy to fuck right off. “Manwhore, got it.”
“After an entire semester of him trying to get into my pants, I finally told him that if he swore off sex for an entire month, I’d do it.”
“You mean, dohim.” Asher bit his lip. He hadn’t meant to say that, but he really wanted this story to end.
“Well, yes,” Cameron allowed with a little smirk. “Marcus being Marcus accepts right away. No questions.”
“And did he? Make it the whole month?”
“He did.” A fond smile played over his lips. “I never slept with him, though.”
Asher’s mouth fell open, and his eyes rounded until they actually hurt. “Why not?”
“Once he stopped trying to charm me out of my clothes, he turned out to be a pretty decent guy. He ended up becoming one of my best friends, and we realized that was all we’d ever be. Why fuck up a good thing?”
That hadn’t even been a possible outcome in Asher’s list of scenarios. He still felt like he was missing something, though. “And now, you wait to get physical for the same amount of time because…”
“Because I’m not wired for casual sex. Because you can learn a lot about a person in thirty days.” He sat back in his chair and shrugged. “Because even if we never make it that far, or if we do, and the sex is terrible, then there’s a good chance we can still be friends afterwards.”
The virtual king of casual sex, Asher still didn’t fully understand, but he also didn’t want to pressure Cameron into something he wasn’t ready for yet. Hmm, he wondered if mutual masturbation counted as sex.Probably.
“So, have you always been a relationship-type guy?” he asked instead.
“Pretty much.”
Which wasn’t a yes. “You’ve never—?”
“I have.” Cameron sipped his coffee, but his eyes remained fixed on his knees, his gaze distant, hollow. “Once. About six years ago. It didn’t end well.” He sighed, the sound filled with regret. “I don’t want to talk about it.”
Asher agreed, because if the look on Cameron’s face was any indication, he didn’t think he wanted to talk about it, either.
CHAPTER ELEVEN
Sitting behind his deskon a gorgeous, sunny morning, Cameron smiled when his cell phone buzzed in his pocket.
It had been two weeks since Asher had agreed to take sex off the table until the end of the thirty days. He had, however, convinced Cameron that since neither of them had slept with anyone else since they’d met, they’d technically already been together for a week before the conversation.
Which meant only another six days until the end of his self-imposed celibacy. A date which just happened to fall the week before Halloween and the costume party Asher hosted every year. Cameron hadn’t been to a Halloween party since college, but no way would he miss this one. If everything went well, he’d have a lot to look forward to that night.
Thingshadbeen going well, too.
Between Cameron’s business and Asher’s writing, they didn’t get to see each other during the weekdays, but they spent every weekend together. They hadn’t been back to the club, because according to Asher, he only had so much self-control. Instead, they’d done couple things, like dinner at a fancy restaurant, a picnic at the botanical gardens, andholding hands as they strolled through the nature and science museum.
