Chapter 8

8

DAWSON

Was he dead?

I looked down at Jem, whose body seemed to have gone completely slack, and realized he’d fallen mostly asleep.

I stared at him in surprise before I remembered one time at least six months ago when a member of the crew had found Jem asleep in the back of a wardrobe closet between shows. When he’d come stumbling out, rubbing the sleep out of his eyes, he’d apologized to the stage manager with a sheepish grin. “I could win awards for sleeping. And I can fall asleep anywhere,” he’d said.

Jem Sinclair was hot as fuck, especially naked in my bed and covered with the remnants of our sex together. When I pulled out of him slowly and noticed him wince, I murmured for him to stay still and let me clean him up. He vaguely nodded without opening his eyes.

I cleaned him up like I was some kind of specialty body attendant, enjoying caressing every inch of him with the warm, damp cloth until he was practically as clean as if he’d taken a bath. If I hadn’t been so tired myself, I might have gotten fully hard again simply from looking at him and touching him.

Even though he was pretty much asleep, I spoke to him in a soft voice, forcing myself to be truthful. Maybe I felt safer thinking there was a chance he wouldn’t remember this tomorrow. “You’re so fucking beautiful. Do you have any idea how many times I’ve dreamed of this? Of your body bare like this and me having the time to look at you and touch you?”

“Dawson,” he whispered.

“Go to sleep, baby,” I said, rolling him under the blankets and climbing in beside him.

“Don’t want to leave.”

“You’re not going anywhere,” I assured him before pulling him into my chest and wrapping my arms around him.

“My sister’s okay. She wasn’t before, but now she is.”

I grinned and kissed his hair. “Thank you for telling me. I was worried something had happened to her. I know the two of you are close.”

He shifted, moving one leg over mine and wrapping his arm around my middle. “She’s having a baby,” he said sleepily. “I’m going to be an uncle.”

“You’ll be a great one. You’re fun and funny and smart.”

Jem was quiet for a long time before he murmured, “I like kissing you.”

I let out a soft snort. “I guess that’s a good thing since it’s basically what you do for a living.”

“No. I mean… I mean having you all to myself. Kissing you here. Alone. Dawson and Jem, not Lucky and Trigger.”

Could my heart hold this much joy and affection? And what happened if Jem didn’t return my feelings? What if he didn’t want this to be a real thing?

I fell asleep torn between worry and happiness. Thankfully, I didn’t dream. If I had, my brain would have probably sent me down a bizarre rabbit warren of strange images and emotions. I only woke once, and it was when Jem’s hot mouth wrapped around my dick in the middle of the night. After a quick, shared orgasm, we settled in to talk sleepily even later into the night.

I didn’t remember falling asleep again, but I must have. When I awoke, I realized I wasn’t alone.

Jem.

His naked body was plastered against my side, and his messy hair tickled my nose. The feeling of happy relief I felt realizing he was still here was indescribable. I’d wanted him for so long, and now he was in my bed.

I reached out and ran my fingers through his curls the way I’d always wanted to, wrapping one around my index finger before letting it go to spring back into place.

He shifted and opened one eye. For a moment, he stayed relaxed. Until realizing he wasn’t at home in his own bed.

Jem shot up and stared at me with wide-eyed surprise.

“Hi,” I said, crossing my fingers under the sheets in desperate hope he wouldn’t freak out.

“We fucked.”

I winced at his word choice. It had been a little more special to me than that, but he was technically correct. I nodded.

His eyes roamed over my skin like a caress, and his body language eased. “It was good.”

I bit back a laugh. “I’d say it was a little better than good, but yes.”

“And we talked for a really long time too,” he added with a soft smile, as if remembering some of the intimate thoughts we’d shared.

“We did,” I agreed.

Jem’s eyes narrowed. “Why are you being weird? Say something more than two words.”

Truth time. “I’m scared I’m going to say or do something foolish and you’re going to walk away again,” I admitted, pushing myself up to sit against the wooden headboard and carefully clasping my hands together over the sheet on my lap to keep from grabbing him. “And I really don’t want you to.”

Jem studied me for another minute as if assessing his choices. Finally, he crawled closer and threw a leg over mine to straddle me. The thin sheet separated our bodies, but I could feel the warmth of him enough to make my dick take notice. His palms moved up my bare chest to loosely grip the sides of my neck. I closed my eyes to savor the feel of him, to appreciate every extra second he gave me.

His lips were warm and soft on mine. The sharp scratch of his morning whiskers teased my chin and cheeks as he explored my mouth and face with his kisses. I couldn’t keep my hands to myself any longer, so I reached around to grasp his bare ass and squeeze it, pulling him tighter against me.

“Stay,” I breathed, temporarily forgetting I had an important meeting later this morning.

“We’re back to just one word, huh?” His smile was teasing and affectionate. “Mm. Can’t. I promised I’d go see my sister at the hospital. Garret—her fiancé—has a job thing today.” He moved his mouth down to my neck and then my chest. “But I have time first to make sure you don’t forget about me while I’m gone.”

Jem looked up at me with a cheeky grin, the kind that was full of the dimples I coveted. My heart tripped. When he moved down my body and pulled the sheet away from my hard cock, I ran my fingers through his hair again. How did I get this lucky?

The blowjob turned into an unexpectedly athletic sixty-nine again, like the one in the dressing room had been, only this time we ended up hanging halfway off the bed, tangled tightly in the unmoored fitted sheet.

After we both came, we hung there gasping until Jem began laughing hard enough to tumble us all the way onto the cold floor. I looked over at his sleepy, sated, laughing face and thought I would be the luckiest fucker ever if he’d just give me a chance with him.

“Have dinner with me after tonight’s show,” I blurted.

His laughter died. “I would but…”

My stomach dropped, and I opened my mouth to spout a throwaway lie like “Oh, no problem. It’s fine” when he finished his sentence.

“We have the cast party, remember?”

The cast party. I’d completely forgotten tonight was the year anniversary of our opening show. The cast and crew had planned to go to the Retro after tonight’s show to celebrate.

“Yeah. Yeah, okay. But…”

Jem’s eyes danced, and his dimples popped. “Maybe I’ll get lucky and go home with some guy after.”

I climbed on top of him, ignoring the damp, sticky body parts between us. “It better be me,” I growled before kissing him hard on the lips.

When he came up for air, he looked a little dazed. “You make a solid point,” he breathed.

By the time he left my apartment, we’d shared a shower and another orgasm. My legs felt boneless and my heart easy until I remembered what my appointment was about.

Daniel Diggs’s assistant had called me in to discuss an offer on Pillow Talk.

The news still hadn’t hit me even though I’d gotten the call two days ago. Even if the offer wasn’t for a lead role, it would still be an incredible opportunity. Actors all over the city would kill for the chance to work with Daniel Diggs.

My stomach twisted in knots as I dressed for the meeting and finished my breakfast. When my phone rang with a call from my mom, I answered it on speaker at my kitchen table.

“Hey, Mom.”

“There you are. I tried calling you last night, but you must have been onstage.”

I grinned at her familiar phrase. She loved telling people her son was a “very busy” Broadway actor. Even though she’d originally discouraged my love of theater in hopes I’d grow up to become a doctor or an attorney, she’d quickly embraced it when I’d landed the lead in the high school play and she’d watched me sing “Miracle of Miracles” in Fiddler on the Roof.

“Yeah, sorry about that. How did Grandma’s doctor’s appointment go?”

I could hear the smile in her voice. “Oh, fine. They said she’s healing up normally from the cataract surgery. But you should have heard her brag about you to anyone who would listen. We watched your interview before we left, so she walked into the doctor’s office like a celebrity. ‘Did you catch Wendy Goodley’s show this morning? That was my grandson.’ She even said something to the man in the parking booth about it.”

I swallowed my coffee before speaking. “She loves the play.”

“She does. Even though she doesn’t quite understand how you can kiss your friend like that onstage. ‘It must mean he’s a good actor,’ she always says to me.” My mom’s laugh was comfortingly familiar. “No matter how many times I try to tell her kissing a cute boy isn’t exactly a hardship for you, she still can’t quite wrap her head around it.”

It was true. Grandma was very accepting of my sexuality in general, but she often forgot I was gay unless we were specifically talking about relationships and my dating men. Considering I rarely got to the stage of dating someone enough to mention them to my family, it was understandable she still wasn’t used to seeing me with another man.

“Definitely not a hardship,” I muttered through a grin.

“I wonder if they’ll have you kissing someone in the new show,” she mused. “And what if it’s Andrew Rannells or…” She gasped. “What if it’s someone even more famous like Neil Patrick Harris or Matt Bomer?”

I didn’t mind the idea of kissing someone else onstage. Kissing another actor was part of the job. But the reminder I would no longer be kissing Jem onstage sat like a lead brick in my gut.

“They’re probably casting someone a little younger than those guys, Mom.”

“Aunt Catherine wants to know if you already know the name of the other lead and you’re just not telling us.”

I laughed. “No. I don’t know who it is, I promise, but even if I did, I couldn’t tell you because you’d tell Catherine and she’d tell Grandma, and Grandma would tell everyone she knows.”

Mom sighed. “Is it going to be hard to say goodbye to your friends at the show?”

“You’re talking about it like it’s a sure thing.”

“He said the meeting was about going over an offer, didn’t he?”

I stood and took my dishes to the sink. “Yes, but that doesn’t mean I’m going to accept the offer. I have a lot of questions.” And I don’t want to leave Jem.

It wasn’t just Jem who’d be hard to leave. I loved the entire cast and crew of Not My Alfred. Every day was different and exciting. The show was fast-paced and engaging. The buzz growing around it in the media was causing our already sold-out tickets to be even more in demand.

“Dawson,” Mom began in her mom-tone. “You know what’s most important when considering these big decisions in life?”

“Fame and stacks of cash?” I teased.

“Your happiness. Don’t ever forget that.”

I grabbed my water bottle off the table and slid it into the side pocket of my backpack before grabbing my keys. “I think I’d be plenty happy with a lead role on Broadway, Mom.”

She laughed softly. “Agreed. But make sure you’re taking it for the right reasons.”

I thought of how the new role could shape my future in theater and the opportunities I would encounter simply by working with Daniel Diggs. Career growth, learning opportunity, networking. All of those were great reasons to take the role on Pillow Talk. And maybe I could come home every night to a Jem in my bed. The best of both worlds. “I will. I promise.”

I strode out of the apartment building and into the sun. Whatever the day ahead of me held, it would end in the very best way.

With Jem Sinclair in my arms.