Chapter Seven

Two Half-Naked Men Grappling and Writhing Around Together on a Mat

Rafe

I knew there was a reason I hated wrestling.

I just didn't think it was this specific reason.

I kept my head lowered, perched on a rickety stool in the arena, hunched over my laptop as I stared, transfixed, at the screen. My face was on fire, pulse pounding in my ears. My body felt too hot.

And my dick was hard.

I couldn't tear my eyes away from the live stream being fed to my laptop. I knew it was so totally wrong of me to be turned on by this, because they were just doing their jobs. Being professional. Rehearsing.

But they were still two half-naked men grappling and writhing around together on a mat.

And one of them was Ewen.

And apparently, I was really into both of those things.

It was making me incredibly flustered. All I wanted to do was get up and go hide in my office, but I couldn't. Because of the hard dick in my pants. Everyone would see it the moment I stood up.

My breath caught when Ewen stood and pushed back his hair. He'd ditched his shirt, and his stomach gleamed with sweat. I stared intently at his abdominal muscles as they flexed with his movements, fresh heat creeping up my throat.

I was just… admiring his physique. He clearly worked hard on it. It was only polite to take the time to appreciate the effort.

Chewing anxiously on my thumbnail, I watched the screen as he gestured for Vince to come at him again. The ghoul shook out his hands and bounced on the balls of his feet a few times before running at him.

Effortlessly, Dan looped an arm between Vince's legs and flung him into the air, using his own momentum to send him flying over his shoulder to land on his back with a loud boom that echoed through the empty arena.

I winced. Didn't that hurt? How did they do it without hurting themselves?

It was actually more impressive than I'd realised, I begrudgingly admitted to myself.

Vince jumped to his feet with a grin, completely uninjured.

"Perfect," he said as they slapped palms. "So then, while your back is still turned and you're showboating a bit, I'll try and get you in a headlock."

"Yep. I know the drill." Ewen turned his back on Vince, who immediately lunged forward and wrapped his arm around Ewen's neck.

Ewen quickly reached up and grabbed his head, launching it high into the air as the rest of him ducked and escaped Vince's hold. My eyes flared with alarm when Vince lifted his foot and placed it on Ewen's ass to shove him away, sending his body stumbling into the ropes. Then he deftly caught Ewen's head as it dropped back down, before holding it in front of his groin and thrusting his hips toward it.

My spine snapped straight.

What the fuck?

"And that's when you bite my dick," he said casually, and my nostrils flared with outrage.

What the fuck ?

Ewen was laughing as his body wandered over to grab his head, shoving it back on his shoulders. "Nice and hard, right?"

"Don't you dare, asshole." Vince snickered and punched his shoulder good-naturedly. "Gently, like you're teasing a cock you can't wait to suck. I know you know how to do that."

I stiffened, my face tight. Did he? Did Vince know that? Had firsthand experience, did he?

When I noticed on the screen that Ewen had glanced toward the camera, I hunched back over my laptop and kept my head bent, breathing faster.

"Oh yeah," I heard him say, and saw him smirk onscreen in my direction. "I know how to do that."

—

This was getting out of hand.

I had to stop.

I couldn't keep doing this.

I don't even like him! I thought miserably as I shuddered hard and my fist stuttered around my cock, the image of my dickhead neighbour Dan Ewen fucking his own mouth still filling my brain.

I squeezed my eyes shut as I came. Hard. For the fourth night in a row. After once again seeing Ewen giving himself head through his living room window.

It's not my fault , I rationalised as I lay there panting, my vision a little spotty when I blinked my eyes open and stared up at the dark ceiling. He keeps doing it without closing the blinds. It's like he wants me to see.

Fresh heat prickled over my skin, and I sat up quickly to wipe away the cum cooling on my belly as guilt made it churn.

I really shouldn't have been doing this.

It was wrong on so many levels.

Somehow, I had become the pervert neighbour. Somehow, I had found myself spending every evening tense and jumpy with anticipation that I refused to acknowledge, my dick already half-hard, until it was an acceptable time for bed and I had the excuse of going upstairs and ‘casually' glancing out of the window that looked down onto Ewen's living room.

Somehow, I found myself doing that repeatedly until I finally caught him sitting there naked, his stupidly muscular body stretched out in a languid pose, his severed head clasped between his hands. His dick in his own mouth.

Somehow, I found myself standing there for a few long seconds, staring at him from the dark like the ghoul I was. Watching, my cock swelling and growing stiff and aching, until I once again realised what I was doing and backed away hurriedly.

Night after night, I found myself getting straight into bed and making myself come while the mental image of it was still fresh. While he was still next door doing it.

Then, without fail, every night, I found myself justifying it all after the fact.

It's just because it's been so long since you've been sucked off.

It's just because you've been watching the same porn lately and it's gotten boring.

It's just because Ewen looks like he's really, really good at sucking dick.

It's just because it's so shocking.

I cycled through all the excuses each night as I got up, wiped off and padded downstairs on shaky legs to get a drink, then took a deep breath before stepping out onto the back deck.

Because that was the other part of my new, perverted routine.

Sitting outside with Ewen after.

After spying on him through the window.

After stroking myself off, after seeing him on his couch sucking his own cock.

There's something seriously wrong with you , I thought as I filled a glass with water and took a sip, my belly already jumping with that stupid anticipation again as I eyed the back door.

Was he already out there? He usually was by the time I got outside.

Probably because he was so fucking good at sucking dick that he finished way before me.

I had to stop doing this. All of it. Every part of it was wrong. The spying. The jerking off. The clandestine-esque meetings on our back decks in the dark after we were both done, when he had no idea that I'd just seen him. Watched him. Used him as jerk-off fodder.

It wasn't the fact that I was masturbating over a guy—no, that wasn't what was making me feel weird. It was the fact that it was him. Dan fucking Ewen. The asshole neighbour. The thorn in my side for the last three years.

The guy who still hadn't fixed my fucking fence.

I didn't like him. If I was going to have a sexual awakening in my late twenties, I didn't want it to be because of him , for fuck's sake. He was an asshole. A cocky, inconsiderate and frankly weird asshole. I mean, honestly, who sucked their own dick every night without closing their blinds? Didn't he care that I could potentially see him?

He was the weird one here, I resolutely decided as I reached for the door handle. Not me. He was the one slobbing his own knob in front of a window. I wasn't doing anything weird—I was just going about my usual nightly routine, trying to enjoy the view from my window and instead being walloped in the face with the visual of a slutty cowboy wrestler going to town on himself.

The jerking off after the fact was totally unrelated.

I sighed in defeat as I stepped out into the cool night. I was self-aware enough to know what I was doing, and that I had convinced myself of all the same things the night before. And the night before that.

Didn't stop me from continuing this new and fucked-up cycle, though.

"Howdy, neighbour."

His voice sent a shiver up my spine, not an unpleasant one, and I wasn't sure at what point over the last few days it had begun to elicit that reaction from me.

I hated it. Asshole, making me feel shivers. What was his fucking problem?

My cock was still tingling, and it twitched in my sweats, so like clockwork, I got tense and edgy, almost wanting to blame him for it. Even though no one had forced me to come out here. No one was forcing me onto my back deck each night. No one was forcing me to speak to him. No one was forcing me to do any of it.

But I couldn't stop myself. And it pissed me off.

"You still haven't fixed my fence," I rasped, as if that was the only reason I'd come out here, clutching my glass tight and standing awkwardly by my open door.

Ewen was sprawled in his usual deck chair, wearing only sweats and holding a steaming mug of something. He chuckled and sipped from it as he glanced over, and my porch light reflected in his eyes. "And deprive you of this view?"

I automatically scowled in derision and stomped over to my seat, though my belly dipped at the feel of his eyes on me. "You said you'd do it."

"And I will. Eventually." He snickered, but sobered a few seconds later when I sighed wearily and said nothing instead of snarking back like I usually did. "Hey, I'm…" He paused awkwardly. "That was a joke. Sorry. I'm not trying to be a shitty neighbour, by the way. I'm just pretty terrible at time management. I'm sorry about the fence."

A croaky grunt left me in response, because I had no idea what to say. I was so used to being pissed at Ewen, and him being a cocky dick back, that this show of sincerity from him was weirding me out.

"I promise I'll fix it this weekend," he added.

Another grunt from me.

He chuckled, as if my ire amused him, and shifted in his seat. "Made you a hot cocoa."

"What?" My head whipped up.

He nodded and leaned over to pick up a second mug from beside his chair. "It's just the really cheap powder stuff. It's what I had as a kid, so I still get it. Didn't have any marshmallows though, sorry." He held the mug out.

I stared at it in silence from my own back deck. He'd made me a hot chocolate? Why?

Was it rude to ask why?

As if he knew I was wondering that exact thing, Ewen chuckled and stood up to amble across the fallen fence and onto my deck. "Made it just in case you didn't deviate from our new routine and came out to join me. Figured you might get jealous when you saw mine."

My cheeks flushed and my belly warmed. "Our" routine. That was weird, right? That I now had a routine with the neighbour I didn't even like? With the guy I'd been secretly spying on and jerking off over?

"Uh… thanks," I finally mumbled, automatically accepting the mug he held out. "I… um… I like hot chocolate."

"That's lucky," Ewen said casually as he dropped into the other chair on my deck with a sigh. "Gonna be a long weekend for you, I bet."

It was. We were going to be running test streams of the shows each night, getting ready to launch pay-per-view next weekend. Tonight had been stressful already because of the inevitable teething problems that kept cropping up, and I knew I was going to be exhausted by the time the last show was over for the week on Sunday night.

I should've been asleep already, should've come home and gone straight to bed. But obviously I hadn't, and hadn't all week. I'd stayed up and waited to see whether Ewen would appear on his couch through the living room window after we both got home from work…

"All ready for the launch?" he asked when I didn't say anything.

But I was still fixating on the hot chocolate he'd made for me. I brought the mug up to my lips and blew on it, then took a hesitant sip. It was watery and mild and overly sweet—just the kind I liked too.

"This tastes like the stuff my parents used to get as well." I looked up and found myself grinning at him. "I remember the first time I had the fancy stuff made with real chocolate. I thought it tasted like shit."

Ewen laughed. "Me too. Moved to the big city and went into this pretentious little café near my apartment. I was feelin' homesick so I ordered a hot chocolate, and they brought out this tiny little mug filled with what looked like melted chocolate and nothin' else. It was too dark and rich."

"Right?" I chuckled. "Mine was at college. My friend Teresa got it for me. I wasn't expecting it, and I'm not great with surprises. She cracked up because she said my expression was like she'd handed me a cup of liquid shit."

Ewen burst out laughing. "I can imagine."

I tensed, my automatic response to get defensive and snarky rising up, but I forced myself to push it back down and take a few seconds. I didn't think he meant it how my brain wanted to immediately assume—‘I can imagine you acting like that.' ‘I can imagine you being a dick about it.' ‘I can imagine you being weird.' I was pretty sure he was just… making conversation. With me.

And I still didn't really know what to do about that. We'd been doing this for almost a week now—coming out here and sitting on our back decks in the middle of the night, making small talk until I inevitably got pissed at something he said and stormed back inside—and I still felt awkward and uncomfortable and almost a little shy around him. I'd put it down largely to the fact that I was secretly getting off to the sight of him fellating himself, but it wasn't just that.

Something about Dan Ewen just set me on edge, and always had.