Page 19 of Fire Me Up
I swallowed hard. Had Gael clocked the left/right thing correctly?
“I’ll skip it,” I squeaked, my eyes dropping to Gael’s thickly rounded ass. If he was a bottom, I was so fucked.
Then again, he’d never even hooked up with a man, so how could he know, really?
A petite person with rainbow hair applied the temporary tattoo to the back of Gael’s left hand with a wide, flirty smile. The orange bandana design was small but visible, and I wondered if it would give people ideas.
“Drink first, or straight to dancing?” I asked, raising my voice over the music.
Gael glanced toward the bar, then at the dance floor. “Dancing. I think I need to jump in before I lose my nerve.”
I grinned, grabbing his hand and pulling him toward the floor. The contact sent electricity up my arm, but I ignored it, weaving us through the crowd until we found a spot with enough room to move.
The song was something with a driving beat that made it impossible to stand still. I let the music take over, rolling my shoulders and moving my hips, feeling the familiar rush ofletting go. Dancing was one of the few times I could shut off my brain.
The club was warm, bodies pressed close together, and within minutes I was sweating. Without thinking, I grabbed the hem of my tank and pulled it over my head, stuffing it into my back pocket. Half the guys on the floor were shirtless anyway—it was practically expected.
When I turned back to Gael, he was staring at my chest with an expression that made my cock twitch. His eyes traced the lines of my tattoos, lingering on the geometric design that wrapped around my ribs.
“Your turn,” I said, nodding at his shirt.
Gael’s cheeks flushed, but he didn’t hesitate. He grabbed his T-shirt and pulled it off in one smooth motion, revealing a torso that made my mouth go dry.
Motherfucker.
I’d known he was built, but seeing him bare-chested was something else entirely. His shoulders were broad, his chest defined, with thickly muscled pecs and a trail of dark hair disappearing into his jeans. His abs weren’t magazine-perfect, but they were close. And they were real—the kind that came from actual physical work rather than gym vanity.
And then I saw the scar.
It was small, puckered pink against his golden skin, maybe two inches below his left collarbone. The sight of it hit me like a physical blow, reminding me that this beautiful man had been shot. Had bled. Had almost died doing his job.
I reached out before I could stop myself, fingertips tracing the edge of the scar tissue. “Does it still hurt?”
Gael’s breath caught at my touch, but he didn’t pull away. “Only if I move a certain way, like yesterday when I crashed into that desk. I’m still dealing with scar tissue and range-of-motionissues. The PT wants me to stop babying it and do a lot of movement, so consider this therapy!”
The music pounded around us, but I barely heard it. All I could focus on was the warmth of his skin under my fingers, the way his chest rose and fell with each breath as worry pressed hard at the back of my throat.
“I’m okay, Dylan. Really.” A new song started, something with a heavier beat, and Gael grinned, stepping back and starting to move. “Come on, I thought you were going to show me how this works.”
I forced myself to focus on the music, on the reason we were here. Gael was an excellent dancer, and I could see his Latin heritage in the way he moved his hips—clearly someone, somewhere along the line, had taught him salsa.
He was uninhibited in a way that was incredibly sexy. He moved with a natural rhythm, occasionally throwing in moves that were more silly than smooth, making me laugh despite the tension coiled in my gut.
He started off a little stiff with me, like he was afraid to take up too much space, but the thump of the bass and the slow, inevitable gravity of my hands on his hips loosened him up fast. For the first ten minutes, we let the music do most of the talking, but every time our bodies bumped or brushed together, it set off this tiny chain reaction—a flash of heat, then a ripple of restraint, then heat again. Each time Gael’s hand landed on my waist and slid lower, I lost another IQ point. I was going to leave this club a goddamn vegetable if I wasn’t careful.
When a slow song started—something with a synthy, smoldering build—he hesitated for a fraction of a beat. Some of the couples in the crowd broke away to get drinks or keep things moving, but Gael stayed. I didn’t give him a chance to bail; I reeled him in and closed the gap, pressing us chest-to-chest. If there was a prayer of keeping things friendly, it was already lost.
He was tall as fuck, but I fit right under his chin, so close I could feel every inhale. There wasn’t enough air in the room for how much of him I wanted to breathe in. Sweat slicked his skin, and the scent was this wild, masculine blend of cologne and soap and pure, raw Gael.
He was all muscle under my hands, and I drank in the heat radiating off his bare skin. The tempo was slow, but the tension wasn’t; there was a constant push and pull at our hips, an intimate friction that had me half-hard in seconds.
“Is this how you do it?” he said—half a laugh, half a groan—as I rolled against him. His voice was low, but I heard every syllable over the beat.
“Pretty much,” I said, my mouth too close to his ear. “You’re a natural.” I lingered just a little too long, lips grazing the edge of his jaw before I pulled back.
He shivered, and at the same time I felt him—fuck me, Gael was hard, pressed right against my thigh and not even trying to hide it. I should’ve felt victorious or smug, but mostly I just wanted to see if I could get him to beg. I rocked my hips, testing the limits, and his breath caught in his throat.
I tried to remind myself I was here to be a mentor. A buddy. At most, a tour guide to Denver gay nightlife. But it was getting harder to remember that with every inch of him glued to me.
