Page 45 of A Cold Hard Truth

“You’re not inspiring confidence.”

“It’s not the sex you’re worried about,” Jace said, and Remington’s cheeks warmed. He looked away, staring at a point on the wall that held no particular interest at all. “What do you mean?”

“It’s the other.”

Remington made a choked sound.

“If you think I don’t hear the kind of porn you watch, Rem…”

“Oh, God.” Remington covered his face.

There were things about himself he’d struggled for years to make sense of. He didn’t always understand how one misguided kiss with someone who didn’t deserve his attention could have set him down the road of being a nearly thirty year-old virgin, and he’d long ago stopped trying to make sense of it. The experience in college had been awkward and horrifying, but it had taken longer than he’d be willing to admit to shake off the jumbled mess of feelings that surrounded the encounter.

He wouldn’t go as far as to say his interests in dominance sprang out of that miserable encounter, but things with Marston did make it clear to him that Remington didn’t want to be passive. He wanted to kiss, to touch, to fuck, but he wanted to drive it, to control it. Thinking about kissing Sebastian made him hard, thinking about kissing Sebastian with knees red from rug burn made him leak.

Remington didn’t need to have experienced dominance in the flesh to know it turned him on, just like he didn’t have to have sex to know he’d enjoy it. Eventually. He worried his celibacy had gotten too far out of hand, but things with him had always been that way. Since high school, he’d thrown himself at books, and since Marston, he’d thrown himself at his PhD. Remington allowed his job to consume him because it was safe, and he knew if he were to lay himself bare with another man… that would be far from safe.

He never knew if it was because of all the reading he’d done growing up, all the romance he’d found between the pages of cracked and well-worn covers tucked into corners of libraries, but what he read about was what he wanted. What he expected. A quick and true love, eclipsing everyone who’d come before. Just in his case, no one had come before.

The online games he’d played with Sebastian had given him a chance to prove to himself the things he thought he wanted were real, and when he locked himself in his room to jack off over the fact Sebastian ate a salad with chicken one day like Remington had told him, he knew he was a goner.

There could be no half measures.

“Do you want my opinion?” Jace asked, breaking him out of his thoughts.

“No,” he groaned.

“If it doesn’t come natural, it won’t come,” Jace said anyway. “It’s one thing to be nervous, but you should know how it feels or how it makes you feel.”

“I love you, but I don’t want to have this talk with you,” Remington said, not wanting to tell Jace that it had already come and it was natural. It was easy, like breathing.

Jace reached up and pinched his nipple, laughing when Remington smacked him away. Remington stood up, and Jace rolled off his lap onto the floor, still laughing.

“I can’t believe you’re laughing at me. I thought you were my friend.”

“I am.” Jace sat up and brushed himself off. “Sebastian is a good man. You are a good man. What else is there?”

“We were doing it online,” he finally admitted, turning his back from Jace’s knowing smile. “It was fine.”

“Then keep doing it online.”

Remington looked over his shoulder. “What?”

“If you’re not ready to do it in person, do it online.”

“Isn’t that kind of ridiculous?” he asked.

“Have you talked to Sebastian about it? What does he think?”

“Not specifically,” Remington said. “But the idea is absurd.”

“I’m going to Callahan’s.” Jace stood up.

“What?”

“Sebastian did this to Callahan once, and I’m doing it to you.” Jace gathered his wallet and keys from the counter, shooting a disapproving look in his direction.

“Did what?”