Page 23 of Stepbrothers with Benefits
“Yeah, but, listen, apparently if you order their hotpot to go, they just like...give you the stuff for it. All the veggies and the meat you order, and they give you a bag full of the hot pot itself. You just have to keep it heated at home and cook your stuff that way.”
“That...is an excellent idea. You can cook tomorrow.”
He stepped out, still drying the inside of his thighs, but I noticed he was careful to keep the towel over his groin. It was the most naked I had ever seen him, because of course, he had better luck concealing himself than I did. Then again, I wasn’t the type to wander into a room without warning, so maybe that was on him.
The same curiosity that had welled inside me when he’d talked about occasionally sharing found its way back as my eyes lingered. It was only momentary before I realized I was staring at his crotch and turned my attention elsewhere. The new curiosity had only happened twice in the past ten minutes, but I would really appreciate it if it went and bothered someone else.
It wasn’t like I thought curiosity about the same sex was strange; I’d had a few thoughts myself over the years that had come to absolutely nothing, but they’d happened. Plus, it wasn’t like there wasn’t a chance for things to change. I only had to look at Jace to see that someone once completely straight could be attracted to the right person. Though how Mason, Jace’s eternal nemesis, had been the one who made him realize he liked dick was a mystery I didn’t think I was going to solve.
That wasn’t what was happening here, though, and I pushed the thoughts away before they found root in my mind and decided to give me more trouble than I needed. What I didn’t need was Milo to realize I’d been staring at his dick. The guy could handle a lot, but having me suddenly stare at his junk would have been too weird, even for him. Hell, I could brush it off as just a weird, impulsive curiosity, and I still found it weird as hell. The question that lingered was whether it was weird because it was Milo or because it was another guy.
Of course, I also wondered where that shit was coming from, but I wasn’t going to focus too hard on that.
“Bro.”
I snapped my head up and stared as Milo gave me a disbelieving look. “Err...what?”
“Seriously?” Milo asked, rolling his eyes. “Never mind, someone clearly doesn’t want to be on planet Earth today.”
“I don’t tell you this often enough, but you are incredibly dramatic sometimes.”
“And you don’t know how to pay attention,” he said with an indignant sniff, fluttering the towel about him to cover his waist and tie it tightly. Which, I couldn’t help but notice, did little to cover up the bulge in front and the substantial protrusion of his ass. I’d give him that much, if I were into guys, I would definitely appreciate his ass. Well, I would if he wasn’t my stepbrother...probably.
I wrinkled my nose, wondering where the hellthatthought had come from. Like, sure, it probably wasn’t wrong to think that kind of thing when it was your?—
God, enough!
With a huff, I made sure I was dry before retrieving clean underwear and shorts as Milo walked off, mumbling a song that sounded like Hot Pot to the tune of Yankee Doodle Dandy, weird. He would end up yanking on a pair of shortsand not bothering with underwear, as was his custom most of the time. The guy only insisted on wearing underwear when he was wearing something with a zipper. A particularly nasty and scarring incident had driven that lesson home with uncomfortable force.
Tossing on my shirt, I slipped my feet back into my flip flops and followed him out, where Milo was already dressed and waiting. I grabbed my things and nodded toward the door. “So uh, about last week?—”
He grimaced. “Really? A week later, and now you wanna bring it up?”
“Look,” I said with a laugh, unsure why my brain decided to summon that out of nowhere, considering we’d both been avoiding the subject. “Having something that weird not talked about between us is weird.”
“Not nearly as weird as seeing you butt naked, balls deep,” he muttered quietly, apparently aware that we weren’t alone as we strolled toward the front doors.
“I wasn’t…” I began to protest, feeling my face warm. It had been mortifying for me, though I couldn’t figure out exactly why. Sure, my stepbrother had walked in on me having sex, but hell, there were worse things he could have walked in on. Sure, we’d done our best to keep each other away from that part of our lives, but that begged a few questions of its own...mainly, why?
Just about everything in our lives was shared without hesitation or fear. I’d been the first he’d told when he’d been afraid he’d caught something sleeping around in high school...which turned out to be poison oak he’d brushed against on a school trip and hadn’t realized before using the bathroom. He knew I kept a watch on the weird little mole on the back of his thigh just in case, and he had stayed with me when a nasty stomach bug had made a mess of the bathroom...and had cleaned it up.
I’d known just about everything there was to know about his exes, and I’d shared a lot with him about the women I’d dated. He told me about the stupid and weird shit in his classes, and I mentioned stuff I’d read while I was doing video editing. If he was upset or hurt, he might keep it from others, but he always shared it with me, and I did my best to comfort him. I didn’t like to show my fear or anger, but with him, I could express it without worry because, at the end of the day, he was Milo, and I was Eli, and those kinds of things wouldn’t faze us.
So why was sex off-limits to us? Nudity I understood, being comfortable with your sibling naked was bound to be weird, even though that should have fit the bill perfectly for our relationship, and yet didn’t. But why sex? Neither of us was bothered by the topic; we hadn’t been raised to treat the subject as taboo. From what I’d heard, Milo discussed sex with other people, sharing personal details without batting an eye. And sex didn’t make me squeamish. I could get TMI from others and roll with it.
But he couldn’t talk to me about those things, and I always felt uncomfortable and...restless whenever I learned more about his sex life.
It was a mystery that had popped up before, but I was nowhere near solving it.
“Do wehaveto talk about it?” he asked as we walked toward our shared apartment. “It happened. Hell, like you said, it was bound to happen at some point, and it’s wild that after being up in each other’s space for years, it’s a miracle it took that long. I’m just glad it wasn’t the other way around.”
“What do you mean?”
“I mean, how would you feel if you walked in and found me getting dicked down?”
It was a reasonable question, and a very Milo way of asking. Neither fact stopped me from jerking in surprise at the suddenintrusion of the idea, which had never crossed my mind, though I imagined anyone else would have made the same logical leap Milo had. Why I hadn’t asked that same question of myself could get lumped in with all the other weirdness surrounding me when it came to Milo. There might be an answer for that somewhere along the line, but it wasn’t coming to me now, and I wasn’t going to force it when I had the mental imagery he’d just put in my head.
“I...” Was all I could get out while we walked, suddenly switching our places in my memory. Whatwouldit have been like if I'd walked in and found him...what, stretched out on the couch while someone, probably Raf, was topping him? What if it had been before Raf, and Milo was doing… the doing? Would one be better or worse than the other? Would it matter if it were Raf or someone else I didn’t actively despise?
