Page 36 of Mating of Convenience
“I could sleep on the couch in the corner,” I suggested as I watched him pull a pair of light blue pajamas out of his small suitcase. There was a leather couch by the window that looked like it might be comfortable enough for a few nights.
“Don’t be ridiculous,” Raph waved me off. Was it just my imagination or was he getting grumpy? “You’ll survive sharing a bed with me for a few nights. I already told you I’m not going to try anything.”
“That’s not what I’m worried about.”
“What are you worried about then?” Raph looked up from his suitcase, pajamas and toothbrush in hand.
“I don’t know,” I lied. In reality, I knew exactly what I had to be worried about. What if I kissed him again like I had the other day? What if he then saw it as an invitation to do more and I couldn’t break away?
“Then get ready for bed, tur--“ He stopped himself before the full pet name could pass his lips. For a moment, we stood in silence, neither of us acknowledging what he’d almost said. Then Raph shook his head at himself--or our situation?--and vanished into the bathroom to get changed.
Well, at least he wasn’t acting all upbeat anymore.
While he was busy in the bathroom, I opened my own suitcase. I didn’t have to search, though. Everything I needed for the night was neatly tucked away in a bag in the upper left corner of the suitcase. By the time Raph was done in the bathroom, I was changed and ready to brush my teeth, wash my face and hopefully fall asleep and put an end to this day.
When I stepped back into the bedroom after washing up, Raph had already claimed the right side of the bed for himself. He was leafing through the tourist guide I’d been reading on the plane. I sat on the edge of the bed. “Find anything interesting?”
“I don’t know. It’s a lot. We only have two days so I’m not sure how much we can do.”
Well, at least he didn’t seem to be grumpy anymore. I slid under the sheets and crossed my arms behind my head on the pillow. “I saw a few interesting things when I was reading it before. Actually, there was one thing that immediately made me think of you.”
“Yeah?” Raph cocked an eyebrow at me. “What was that? A cool tattoo place? Actually I wouldn’t mind getting a tattoo. What to get though?” He looked at me. “How about the Eiffel Tower? Too cliché? Yeah, it’s totally too cliché. Imagine getting the Eiffel Tower tattooed on your dick, though.”
To be honest, just the thought made me cringe. And it wasn’t only that I didn’t think it would look good. “Wouldn’t that hurt?” All those needles… I didn’t want those anywhere near my dick.
“I know this is going to be hard for you to believe, but some people actually enjoy that sort of thing.” He waggled his eyebrows at me as if willing me to understand his meaning.
I cringed even harder. “Don’t tell me people actually get off on that.”
Raph only grinned.
“Oh God.”
“Don’t be such a prude, Nate.”
“I’m not being a prude, I am being normal. No normal person enjoys getting needles stuck in their dick.”
“You would be surprised.”
“Don’t tell me you’ve actually… Holy shit, you have, haven’t you? You’ve tattooed someone’s dick!”
“You better believe I have. Charged extra for it too. Dick-holding comes at a price.” Raph tried to keep a straight face, but after a second or two he burst out laughing. “Man, if you could see your face right now. I don’t know if you’re jealous that I touched someone else’s dick or if you’re simply completely horrified at the image, but either way it’s hilarious.”
The weirdest thing was, that I was a little jealous. I didn’t want Raph to tattoo my private parts, but at the same time I didn’t want him to tattoo anyone else’s private parts either. It didn’t really make a lot of sense, but to me it did. How closely did he have to look at this person’s dick if he was tattooing it?
I really needed a change of topic. Especially if I was going to be sleeping in one bed with Raph after this conversation. “Anyway,” I said raising my voice a little bit to be heard over Raph’s laughter, “What I saw wasn’t a tattoo place. They call it the catacombs. It’s a sort of dungeon, I thought you might enjoy going there.”
“Dungeon?” That seemed to pique his interest. “Since when do you go for that kind of thing?”
“I don’t, but I would go with you. I think you’d love it. It has all these skulls and bones of war victims. They had so many, that they couldn’t bury them all in regular graves.”
“That does sound pretty cool. But isn’t that little bit too scary for you? I remember how you wanted to sleep over at my place after we’d watched that one horror movie and you didn’t want to walk home by yourself.”
“I wasn’t scared. That wasn’t the reason I didn’t want to go home. I just didn’t know how else to tell you that I wanted to stay.” We hadn’t yet been a couple at the time, and I had been pretty hopeless in my attempts at elevating our friendship to the next level. I used to find this embarrassing, but honestly, I was over it.
“Oh.” Raph turned on his side and put the book away. “That does sound like something you would do.” He gave a little laugh. “My silly alpha.”
How often had he called me that? I met his gaze. Lying here with him, like this, I almost felt like a teen again.
