Page 11 of Summer Skin
“TRY NOT TOmake too much noise,” Aven whispered, punching in a few numbers on the alarm panel. “Don’t want my mom waking out of her Xanax slumber to question our life choices.”
“She pretty strict?”
“She’s a lawyer. Thinks everything needs to be argued over.”
Chase couldn’t say the same about his own mom, who let him and Brooklyn get away with practically anything on account of naming self-expression as her personal god.
Aven led them up the stairs, quiet, taking it one step at a time. In the bedroom doorway, Chase paused, gaze locked on Aven’s bed. Maybe it wasn’t too late to change his mind and say he needed a ride to his place. But Aven shuffled them inside, sealing their fate with a soft click of the door.
“So,” he said, turning to Chase with his eyebrows raised, “pillow fight?”
“You’d lose,” Chase threatened. “Big time.”
“Tough talk for a man with no weapon in his hand.”
Chase’s eyes darted to the pillows stacked on the bed and then back to Aven. “Don’t even,” Aven muttered, and they both dove for the mattress, nearly knocking their heads together.
As soon as his hand shot out for a pillow, Aven was there, latching onto him and twisting Chase’s arm up behind his back.
“Ow!” Chase squawked, maybe a little too enthusiastically for it being one in the morning with Aven’s parents sleeping down the hall.
“Cry baby,” Aven goaded.
“Whatever.” Chase struggled to find a way out of Aven’s hawk-like grip. “Should have known you’d fight dirty.”
“Yeah, baby,” Aven said, his voice pitched low and amused. “Anything to win.”
“Okay.”
“Okay to what? Me winning?”
“No,” Chase told him, lowering his face to rest against the mattress, giving him use of his free hand. “Okay to anything.”
With two quick moves he had Aven on his back, squirming beneath him, and before he could manage to get the upper hand again, Chase locked him between his thighs and tickled his torso, merciless.
“Stop!” Aven yelped. “Holy shit, Matthews, knock it off, you villain!”
But he was laughing freely, bucking wildly under Chase’s thighs, and even though he knew they should keep quiet, settle it down, Chase dug into the other boy’s ribs one more time for good measure before pinning Aven’s wrists high above his head.
“What the hell,” Aven said, testing the hold Chase had around him. His chest rose and fell with swift breaths. He was still wearing that goddamn dress, and he looked so good all laid out like this. Irresistible, even.
“Say uncle,” Chase demanded, a little desperate to put an end to this, and Aven wet his lips.
“Make me,” he said, his voice confident and certain, even straining against the tight grip Chase had around his wrists.
His lips were glossy with spit, pupils dilated from the kick of adrenaline. A warm, inviting flush crept up his neck, calling taste me. And if Chase didn’t move off him right now, he was going to kiss Aven Sinclair. Right on his smug, beautiful mouth.
Seconds went by, their gazes locked in a way that felt an awful lot like a challenge. Breathing each other’s air, waiting for the other to fold. Aven’s body tensed as he bucked his hips a little, testing Chase’s weight. And, god. A certainty tingled to life, alerting Chase to immediately break contact or else pop a boner right there on Aven’s lap.
“You’re such an asshole,” he grumbled, shoving off Aven and rolling onto the other side of the bed, hand over his heart to calm the frantic beat.
Aven shifted, tapping a foot against Chase’s ankle. “Ha,” he said, with all the arrogance of a man who hadn’t let another man best him due to the threat of an untimely hard-on. “I win.”
Arm tossed over his eyes, Chase tried to dial back the urges their play had stirred up beneath his skin. If he kept playing with fire this way, he was going to ruin their friendship.
For good.
And despite his inability to deny wanting Aven in ways that were most definitely not platonic, their growing friendship was something important to him. Something to protect. Playing music with Aven gave Chase an outlet and made him feel less alone. The close attention Aven gave him made moving here less painful.
And all of that could end very badly, if he let it.
Putting an end to their horseplay, he turned on his side to face Aven. “Do you have some mouthwash? A towel to wash my face?”
Aven studied him, his eyes moving over Chase’s face for a second longer than felt comfortable. “Sure,” he answered after a beat. “I’ll show you.”
The bathroom off Aven’s bedroom was nearly as big as a few of the apartments Chase had lived in as a child. His shower could easily fit six people. There was a jetted bathtub in front of textured glass windows. Chase hadn’t taken a bath since the old Victorian they stayed in one summer in San Fransisco. An older male patron of his mom’s let their family board for free, and the creaky house had been a favorite with Brooklyn for hide-and-seek, until they had to flee very suddenly when his mom woke up in the middle of the night to find the man in bed with her, looking for more than a full-length portrait.
Cue to move to a whole new life.
Chase followed Aven over to the sinks and noticed warmth beneath his feet. “Heated floors?”
“Yeah, it gets cold on bare feet.”
“But you have all these fluffy rugs.”
“Right, but on the way from the sink back to my room …” Aven shrugged, the corner of his mouth twitching like he knew damn well the floors deserved to be called out.
“Okay, lil’ Prince.”
“What can I say, I’m a man with champagne tastes.”
Well, that definitely counted Chase out. He was anything but money.
Standing side-by-side at the double sinks, Aven said, “Here,” handing over an electric toothbrush. “You can use mine.”
“But what about—”
“Your cooties? Believe me, I’ve had worse.”
“Piper?” he wondered out loud.
“Hell no.” Aven waved an appreciative hand over his body. “I want to live and Andi would have me killed in cold blood. Her friend group is totally off-limits to my dick. Twist,” he added, tilting Chase’s wrist just so to squirt a stripe of toothpaste onto the brush. It was weird to experience someone else do this for him. No one had taken care of him like this since he was a child.
“Now brush,” Aven told him, his eyes finding Chase in the mirror over the sinks.
“I will,” Chase promised, “once you stop staring at me.”
“Fine. I’ll brush too.”
He popped open a drawer, digging around until he came back with a travel toothbrush in his hand.
“You have a vacation brush? Why didn’t you just have me use that one?”
“You ever think I might want to catch your cooties, Matthews?” He winked at Chase through the reflection of the glass, and Chase blushed in a way that embarrassed him through and through, and he quickly shoved the toothbrush into his mouth.
His gaze darted to meet Aven’s in the mirror. The other boy crossed his eyes at Chase and stuck the toothbrush into his mouth.
Aven performed a comically over-exaggerated brushing routine, as though he was trying to make Chase crack out a laugh and make a mess of himself with toothpaste. An obligatory eyeroll was served, and then Chase looked away, trying not to think about the inviting pink of Aven’s mouth.
And how badly he wanted to kiss him.
The toothbrush session came vibrating to an end, Chase spitting into the sink, rinsing the toothbrush off and fitting it back onto its stand.
He reached for a plush, fluffy towel hanging from the rack. “Sinclair, even your towels are heated? Just how much is your electric bill every month? Ever heard of climate change?”
“I recycle,” Aven protested.
“Sure. That will totally offset all of these bougie rich-boy luxuries.”
Aven gave him a sheepish grin.“My dad comes from old money. My parents think this is normal.”
“It is for you, isn’t it?”
“Hey,” Aven said, a little hurried, a little imploring, “just because I come from it, doesn’t mean it’s the life I want.”
“What would you want instead?”
“Something simple.” He lifts a shoulder. “Where I can create something that feels real.”
“You want to move to a farmhouse and milk some cows?”
That made him laugh. “No, more like I want to create some art.”
“Music?”
“Yeah,” Aven answered, a hint of a smile on his lips, and then he asked in a soft tone, “Ready?” with a tilt of his head toward the bedroom.