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7. Shane

7

SHANE

“I’m definitely going to put in an up-close shot of your face in that moment,” Rowen told me.

Both of us were sitting in front of his computer, editing the video to send to the Fixer Brothers. We each had a glass of whiskey ginger in front of us, and I’d been watching as Rowen proved he was a complete fucking wizard with the video editing software. I could barely figure out how to clip up videos with my phone, let alone use software like this.

Right now, he was zoomed in on a freeze-frame of my face, right as he’d popped a kiss on my cheek.

“Don’t go up close on me during that moment,” I groaned. “I look so embarrassed.”

“That’s what I like about it,” he said, giving me a little shove. “Just a little kiss and instantly you get all blushy. So cute.”

I gave him a little shove back, but my hand just ended up resting on his arm. I didn’t want to pull it away. How long was it okay to touch him?

I dropped my hand away a few moments later, my thoughts looping in on themselves and threatening to make me overthink every part of this whole fake-boyfriend thing.

“If you think that shot will be good for the video, then do it,” I said. “Even though I’ll cringe internally every time I see it.”

We watched through the whole video one more time. A slight smile spread over Rowen’s face as he saw the part where he kissed me, and in the glow of the laptop screen, I loved seeing his face light up.

It made him happy. So I was kind of starting to like it, too.

“If the Fixer Brothers don’t like this video, I don’t know what’s wrong with them,” Rowen said afterward.

“I’m never going to stop nitpicking myself, so I’m going to go with your judgment on this one,” I said. I pulled in a slow breath. “I just want it to be perfect.”

He squeezed my shoulder. “You did great. Once you finally got used to me kissing you.”

“They were just kisses. Really not that big of a deal,” I said, knowing damn well that I was full of it.

Rowen seemed equally aware that I was bluffing. Something twinkled in his eyes and already I felt my heart rate ticking up from having his gaze on me.

“After we kissed a few times that night, it did seem like you started to get more comfortable next to me on camera.”

“It made me feel better, sure,” I admitted.

He held up his glass. “Want to call this video done?”

I raised my glass to his, clinking them together. “Let’s submit it.”

I navigated to the application website, where I’d already had all of the other information ready to go for days now. All I had to do was log in, upload the video, and press send .

I breathed deep, going through the steps as Rowen leaned back near me, perfectly calm while I was like a fireworks show inside.

“I’m going to do it,” I said once the video was uploaded. “My finger is literally shaking above this submit button, but I’m going to do it.”

Rowen reached over, gently putting his palm on top of my hand. He moved it downward, and then in one quick motion, pressed my hand down and clicked the button.

It was done.

My fate was in the hands of the Fixer Brothers now. And within a few weeks, I’d know if I’d won the contest.

“Holy fuck,” I said.

“Fuck yes, Shane,” Rowen said.

My heart was pounding. “I feel like I’m going to jump out of my skin and straight up into the atmosphere,” I said. “Wow. Fuck.”

“You did it.”

I leaned back on the couch, looking up at the multicolored shadows on the ceiling, cast from the lights strung around Rowen’s Christmas tree.

This was real now.

So, so fucking real. Kind of like I was going to get totally wigged out if I kept thinking about it for too long.

I thought of what my grandma said the first time I’d shown her an episode of the Fixer Brothers TV show.

“You’d be so perfect for this show,” Gram had said. “They’d love you, Shaney.”

“I don’t know about that,” I’d told her.

She’d just waved a hand through the air, chuckling. “Just give ‘em a good blue-eyed wink and a Tennessee yee-haw , and they’ll put you on the show in an instant.”

My heart twisted in my chest like someone was wringing it out.

“You good, Shane?” Rowen asked, and I realized I was still just staring up at the ceiling, my gaze lost in the glow of the Christmas lights.

“I need something to distract me,” I said, looking back down at him.

“I’m game. Want me to bust out Trivial Pursuit? I will fuck your ass up in that game, just so you know, but I’m always down.”

I shifted on the couch, turning toward him. “Let’s talk about you for once, Rowen. Tell me everything about you.”

He shut his laptop and leaned back on his couch, giving me a doubtful look. “Me? Not interesting.”

“I beg to differ,” I said. “I think you’re the most interesting thing in this room right now.”

He snorted. “Now that’s just an insult to my tree ornaments,” he protested. “Come on. I have one that literally changes color based on the temperature. That’s pretty damn interesting.”

“I do like that one,” I said. “But I’ve wanted to know more about you since the moment I met you, and I feel like you’ve told me nothing.”

Rowen gave me a dubious look, then glanced down at his pants.

Was he actually looking a little insecure?

What on Earth could he have to be unsure about, though? He was pretty much perfect, as far as I could tell, handsome and charming and well-off and—

“Wanted to be an actor since I was a kid, moved to New York for acting school, still trying to make it happen. Done,” he said quickly, like he was trying to shoo off a fly.

I bit the inside of my cheek.

He really didn’t like talking about himself, apparently.

“No, no, no,” I protested. I got comfortable on the couch, looking over at him. “I already know that stuff. I want to know about the real you.”

“The real me ,” he said, pushing back. Something changed in his eyes.

“Yeah. What was your childhood like? What do you do out in New York? What are you going to do when you go back?”

He picked up his glass, tossing back a big gulp of whiskey ginger. “Who knows. Go to more auditions until I can’t take it anymore, I guess. What are you going to do after the New Year?”

I shook my head. “No. I’m tired of talking about me. You’re going to get to know my whole family, too, at this Christmas party—God help you. For now, I just want to focus on you.”

He bit his lower lip. Something about the way he looked made me want to pull him in and tell him everything was going to be okay, even though I couldn’t put my finger on why, exactly.

“I… like the holidays,” he said, “but I guess you already know that, too. I like… Italian food. And doughnuts.”

“...and long walks on the beach?” I teased him.

I was mostly joking around, hoping for a way to get my mind off of submitting the damn video, but I realized that it was really true that Rowen was very uncomfortable talking about his life.

I was a shy guy, and Rowen wasn’t—but when any conversation turned to me asking him questions about himself, he deflected. Normally it would have been a red flag for me when I was making a friend. But there wasn’t anything really suspicious about Rowen, either. My intuition told me that he was a good person, but… that there was something else beneath the surface.

“I can tell you one thing I’ve been keeping secret,” Rowen finally said. He looked over at me, and something in his eyes had softened.

My heart skipped a beat.

Truthfully, Rowen had never looked better. The soft light from the Christmas tree only made his cheekbones more prominent, and that same urge to get close to him came back in full force.

“Okay. Tell me,” I said.

He looked at my mouth. “It feels good to kiss you,” he said.

Something in my chest went a little molten. “You’ve already told me that one, too,” I challenged him, but in reality he could tell me that a thousand times and I’d never get sick of it. “It feels good for me, too.”

He took a swig of his drink and set the glass down. “Your lips, Shane…”

Fuck . I knew he was deflecting again, but when he looked at me like that, it went straight to my cock in a way that I had very little control over. All I could do was look at his half-lidded eyes like I was some feral animal, craving his closeness.

Screw it.

My breath caught in my throat. I licked my lips, a sudden streak of confidence rolling through me.

I reached out, dragging my thumb across his jaw. “Tell me why you won’t talk about yourself.”

I looked from his eyes to his lips and back again.

He pulled in a sharp breath, turning his head to one side. “Not really my style.”

“Is that right?” I said. “Maybe it’s my turn to call bullshit.”

My thumb grazed his lower lip and his eyes flared wide, just for a moment. I’d gotten that reaction out of him.

He moved to draw my thumb between his lips, sucking on it. And if I’d been getting hard already, now I was at full fucking mast beneath my pants.

“I promise you, Shane,” he said, letting my thumb go, “you don’t want to hear about my life.”

“Wrong.”

I pushed him downward until his back was on the couch. I was above him now, my heart pounding about a million times a minute as I pinned him below me. His shoulder was warm beneath my palm.

What the fuck was I doing?

I watched as a slow smile spread across Rowen’s face, though, and his gaze trailed over my face. He liked this. And he liked that he’d gotten this reaction out of me , too. His hands landed on my thighs and he dragged them upward, inching toward my cock.

I had to feel more. To know more. To get closer to him, somehow, even though he felt like he was always one step farther than I wished he would be.

“Come here,” I said softly.

If he wouldn’t open up to me, I knew I could open up to him. To show him exactly how interesting he really was, if he’d just give me a chance.

I leaned in and pressed my lips to his.

He tasted sweet. There was the hint of whiskey ginger on his mouth, but it was also just him —he was unlike anyone I’d ever kissed before.

He kissed like he was still trying to distract me from my questions, and the problem was that it was working. He was giving me everything with his tongue. Wet heat slid out against my tongue gently at first and then a little more insistently, making my cock throb.

His fingers dig into my thigh, grasping for more.

“Still think I’m afraid to kiss a guy?” he murmured against my lips.

“No. Think you’re afraid to talk about yourself, though,” I said back to him, lifting an eyebrow as I held his gaze, steadfast.

“You really want to know about me?” he asked, searching my face.

I leaned down again and took his lower lip between my teeth. “Obviously,” I said, but even now I was distracted by his soft moan.

“And what do you want to know, pretty boy?”

“Don’t call me that,” I growled even though when he’d said it, my cock had throbbed all over again.

He pulled in a slow breath, his eyes looking lower. His lashes were so dark, and when he looked away from me, I wanted to just keep staring at him for hours like he was a painting.

“The truth is that I ended up hating my life in New York City. Okay?” he said, glancing back up to me. “I don’t like talking about it because it makes me feel really bad.”

“Oh,” I said, surprised by his sudden burst of honesty. “I’m sorry.”

Maybe he was the one who was a lot sadder than he seemed.

He reached a hand up, running it along my hair and the side of my face. “You’re sweet. It’s okay, Shane. When I’m with you, I don’t think about my past as much. I really like that. So thank you.”

I bit the inside of my cheek. “Buttering me up.”

“Little bit,” he said, a glimmer in his eyes.

I leaned down and kissed him again, finally letting myself relax into it and trust him.

I wanted to know more. But if he wasn’t going to offer it up, I wasn’t going to try and wrestle blood from a stone.

He felt good.

And it wasn’t as if any of this was serious to begin with.

When he let his palm come up to cup the outline of my dick, I groaned deeply, unable to hide exactly how much I wanted it.

I pulled off of his mouth, looking him dead in the eye.

“Don’t tease me.”

“I’m not,” he said, but his eyes were full of fire. “I want to try sucking cock.”

I swallowed hard as my cock very obviously twitched under his palm.

I’d long been a fan of videos online where guys claimed to be first-time cock suckers , but even when I got off to those videos, I knew most of them must have been fake. I’d never actually been with a guy who had never done it before.

And I’d been fucking craving it for as long as I could remember.

The idea of being Rowen’s first time…

“You, uh, you could try it out,” I said, failing miserably at my attempt to remain calm. “See if you like it.”

He dragged his fingertips along my cock’s outline again, and suddenly I felt like he was putting me into some lust-fueled trance.

At this point, I’d do anything with him.

“Will you give me tips?” he asked coyly, as if he’d started to figure out just how much of a turn-on this was to me. “Be my teacher, kind of thing?”

Heat flooded every inch of me.

“I can do that for you,” I said, as if he hadn’t essentially just told me that I was winning the goddamn lottery.

“I just have one question,” he said.

“Ask me anything,” I said, swallowing.

His eyes glittered. “Why are your pants still on?”

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