Page 5
5
Luke
T his isn’t going to work. I told Brandon as much, but he insists on pushing ahead regardless.
The night after I got that phone call from Cody, Brandon called me into his office to talk. In all honesty, I had been expecting it before then. The talk wasn’t what I had expected.
I remember the scene vividly.
“Luke, please sit down.”
I sit, ready to get the talking-to of my life.
“I’ve already spoken to Cody. I told him that he either has to get okay with being on a team with you, or he can leave. He has decided to work with you and to make amends. I believe he called you last night, but you hung up on him.”
“Of course I hung up on him! Have you seen the way he’s been treating me for the past few weeks? I have no reason to want to talk to him.”
“I understand. However, the fact remains that you are on the same team and you’ll need to learn to get along. Cody has resolved to leave whatever issues he has with you in the past. I suggest you get okay with doing the same quickly, or our performance is just going to suffer like it did in our last match.”
He has a point there, but I don’t know how to just let go of my anger with Cody. He’s bullied, belittled and used me one time too many, and now I can’t stand the sight of the guy.
“I don’t want to talk to Cody. You have no right to try to force me to after the way he’s treated me.”
“Luke, be reasonable here—”
“No! I don’t want to hear it, Brandon. Cody is bad news. You should just kick him off the team and be done with it.”
I know it’s a bad idea and I know I’ll regret it later, but right now the heat of the moment takes me, and I storm out.
Now, he has us on this stupid “team building” retreat that is supposedly for the whole team, but everyone knows it’s really only for Cody and me. As if putting him in a place with no access to cell phones or electricity will make him any more agreeable.
I get onto the team bus with ill grace. The rest of the team seems cheerful, not at all annoyed that what was supposed to be their few weeks off is now going to be hijacked by this nightmare.
If it wasn’t for Cody, I would be looking forward to spending some time with my team, but as things are, I was looking forward to getting away from him for a while.
We sit on opposite ends of the bus and try to ignore each other.
Once we reach the end of the road, we shoulder our backpacks and walk for an hour before reaching the campsite.
There, it becomes impossible to ignore Cody, because Brandon announces that he’s assigning tent-sharing partners, and the bastard puts Cody and me together.
The team exchanges doubtful looks before scurrying away to set up their tents as I advance on Brandon.
“No way am I staying with him.”
“It’s that or sleep outside. Your choice.”
“I’d rather freeze to death than be in a tent with him,” I snarl.
Brandon shrugs. “Your choice, Luke.”
The drive and the hike have taken most of the day. The sun is already setting and it’s getting chilly, but I’m not going to relent on this.
Everyone else sets up their tent. I leave Cody to set up the one assigned to us alone. He looks beautiful and graceful as he does so. I shake my head to free myself from my unwelcome attraction to him. I grab my sleeping bag and set it up on the other side of camp, as far away from Cody as I can get.
An hour later, I’m seriously starting to question my decision. It’s freezing out here. I’m shivering so hard my muscles hurt with it. I suppose I should be grateful for the shivering, because it means my body is still fighting to stay warm. I’m honestly worried that I might get hypothermia staying out here, but no way am I going crawling into Cody’s tent.
A rustling has me looking up. I see Cody walking toward me. His icy hair is slicked back. His blue eyes look kinder than usual. I grimace and turn over.
“Luke, come on, man. It’s icy out here. You can’t seriously want to spend the night in hospital more than just sucking it up and sleeping in the same tent.”
“Yeah, I can.”
Cody raises an eyebrow.
“Fine,” I mutter resentfully. As appealing as the warmth of a hospital would be right now, I don’t exactly fancy the embarrassment of explaining to the doctors how I got totally avoidable hypothermia.
I get to my feet and stumble. My feet are blocks of ice and I can’t feel them. Cody reaches out to stabilize me and hisses in alarm.
“Luke, you’re freezing! Fuck, we need to get you inside right now.”
He grabs my arm and practically drags me to the tent.
It’s warmer in here than outside, but still nowhere warm enough to thaw my frozen body.
Cody seems to agree with this assessment, because he pushes me down and zips open my sleeping bag.
“What are you doing?” I yelp as cold air assaults me.
“Just shut up and let me do this, you idiot. I’m not having your death on my head.”
I watch in bemusement as Cody joins our sleeping bags into one. Then it hits me what he’s doing.
“Oh no. No way. Not a chance.”
“You’re freezing, Luke! You’re not going to warm up on your own. It’s either this, or I wake Brandon and tell him we need to call an ambulance for you.”
Brandon will be so pissed if I ruin his specially planned retreat on the first night, but I can’t stand the thought of Cody bragging to the whole team that he managed to get me into bed on the first night.
Perhaps some of these thoughts show on my face, because Cody hastens to reassure me. “No one has to know. Believe me, I’m not thrilled about this either. It’ll just be tonight, anyway. Tomorrow, you’re sleeping in here from the start, so you won’t get frozen and you won’t have any need to have an emergency bed warmer. Okay?”
“I—okay,” I agree reluctantly.
I don’t regret this decision when a moment later, Cody slips into the joined sleeping bags behind me.
Oh. He’s so warm. When he wraps his arms tentatively around me, it’s all I can do to keep from groaning aloud at the pleasure of the sensation. I shuffle down so that my head is entirely under the sleeping bag and breathe in the quickly warming air. I was a fool to deny myself this. This is wonderful.
In no time at all, I’m asleep.
By the time I wake up the next day, Cody is already out of our joined sleeping bag, and I’m grateful for that. I’m also grateful for the fact that no one comments on seeing me emerge from within the tent, despite my many assertions that I would do no such thing. There are a few smug looks, but nothing more.
“Right, team. There’s a river that runs past here about five minutes away. We’ll need to refill the water cannisters we brought. We can do that upstream, wash midstream and do our business downstream. Today we’ll focus on learning to make a fire with sticks so that we can have a campfire at night.”
That doesn’t sound too bad. We’ll probably be done with that exercise in an hour or so, and I can spend the rest of the day avoiding Cody. Maybe I’ll go for a long walk. This place is pretty enough. Perhaps some time in nature is just what I need to help me forget about him, at least until tonight.
I’m dead wrong about the fire exercise.
Making a fire with sticks is hard . The ground is soon littered with enough broken sticks to make a bonfire, and we have yet to produce a single spark.
“We can do it, team,” Brandon encourages, wincing as he looks at his hands, which are showing the same signs of rubbing that everyone else’s are. “It’s going to be a cold night tonight, and we’ll want that campfire.”
“You know, some of us do have lighters,” Jason points out.
“No, no, that’s against the rules.”
Brandon seems to be having far too much fun with this.
In the end, we only manage to light a fire just as the sun is starting to set. Brandon has us alternate partners all day, and I’m irked beyond belief that it’s Cody and me who finally manage to get some sparks. We nearly lose them, but quick work on Cody’s part, as well as the already abundant supply of wood and kindling lying around us, ensures that we get a fire going.
Everyone cheers and there are various mutters of relief. Brandon starts passing some hand cream around. Cody grins at me, his face is lighter and so much more beautiful and I find myself grinning back before I remember who I’m smiling at.
Today has been different, though. Cody has been… pleasant. It’s like he’s a completely different person.
Well, no, not really. He’s always been like this with the rest of the team, but he’s always treated me so horribly that I feel like I’m going to get whiplash trying to figure it out.
What’s his angle? How long is he going to play nice for Brandon before he realizes that his dislike for me is too strong to overcome via a stern lecture?
Besides, even if he has magically gotten over his problem with me, that doesn’t mean I have to forgive him for everything he put me through.
I remember last night, and how genuinely concerned Cody seemed for me… But he was probably only worried about getting into trouble if I got sick because of our squabble. That has to be it.
When everyone starts going into their tents for the night, I only hesitate for a moment before joining Cody. He has already separated our sleeping bags and pulled his to the opposite side of the tent. I settle down on my side and try to sleep.
Sleep evades me. Was the floor really this hard last night? I was so focused on being freezing, and then on the beautiful warmth that Cody provided, that I didn’t notice. Now, I can’t seem to get comfortable. I also don’t miss that while this is nowhere near as cold as sleeping outside would be, it’s definitely not as warm as when Cody was in the bag with me.
I can hear Cody tossing and turning as well. My breath is misting the air and I wonder if I’m ever going to be able to sleep like this.
We must have been trying for nearly an hour when Cody speaks. “Do you want to… I mean, it’s really cold. If you’re cold as well, I was thinking it might make the most sense to share our body warmth.”
Ugh, why is that suggestion so tempting? I am certain that at least half of the team is already doing so with their tentmates. But they don’t have strong sexual feelings toward said tentmates complicating the matter.
Still, I am cold, and trying to do team-building exercises tomorrow with Cody on little sleep is going to be a nightmare.
“Alright.”
Cody shuffles over and I awkwardly help him join our sleeping bags. Once again, he puts his arms around me. I wriggle around a little, trying to get comfortable on the hard floor. Apparently, I’m wriggling around a bit too much.
I can feel Cody start to get hard behind me. Great.
“I’m sorry,” Cody mutters. “Just ignore it. It’ll go away.”
“You didn’t get hard last night,” I point out resentfully. Why does he have to make things awkward now? As if I wouldn’t be in the same state were our positions reversed, hypocrite that I am.
“Last night I was worried you were going to keel over from hypothermia. Forgive me for having bigger things on my mind than my dick.”
Well, I suppose that makes sense. I can’t help but give my butt a vindictive little wriggle. Cody deserves it after everything he’s done since joining the team.
“Fuck,” Cody mutters. I wait for him to tell me to stop, but he turns the tables on me, grabbing my hips and thrusting his cock against my ass. I imagine what it would feel like if there were no layers of clothes between us and let out a groan of my own.
Cody keeps humping my ass and I let him, enjoying letting him get himself worked up.
“Stop.”
Cody whines softly but stops immediately, removing his hands and pushing himself as far back as he can in the limited space. “Do you want to rearrange our sleeping bags? We don’t have to share if it makes you uncomfortable—”
“Shut up.”
Before Cody can take offense, I turn and reach into his pants. I pull them down and wriggle myself further down in the sleeping bag so that I can reach him with my mouth.
It’s really warm down here and Cody’s cock is the best source of heat. I swallow it eagerly, enjoying how it immediately fills my mouth and hits at the back of my throat. I brace my hands on either side of him to give myself better leverage and start moving up and down along his shaft.
Cody is making small, desperate whimpers and I have a wicked idea. I pull off his cock, causing a moan of protest, but I shush him and crawl out of the sleeping bag. Good thing I brought lube. Not that I expected to be having sex on the retreat, but it’s always more fun to masturbate with a bit of lube.
“Luke, what are you doing?”
“Just be quiet and spread your legs.”
“Oh, fuck yes.”
Cody spreads his legs and tilts his hips up slightly, giving me the access I want. I lube up one finger and slide it easily into his ass. At the same time, I take his cock back into my mouth.
As I work his cock, I search with my finger, curling it inward until Cody lets off a strangled cry that tells me I’ve found his prostate.
I batter it relentlessly as I suck his cock, and less than a minute later, Cody is coming into my mouth. I hadn’t even gotten a chance to add a second finger yet.
I swallow everything before licking his cock clean, sending shudders through him. Cody grabs me by the shoulders and pulls me up, kissing me hard the moment my mouth is in reach. I moan into the kiss and now I am the one who is doing the dry humping, grinding myself into Cody’s knee.
“Give me the lube.”
I surrender it easily and let Cody take my pants off.
“I’m not going to touch your cock,” Cody says quietly. Before I can exclaim in outrage, he continues. “I’m going to give you pleasure through your ass and you’re going to come with your cock untouched.”
“I can’t, Cody. I’ve never done it before.”
“Well, tonight will be a first, then, won’t it? Don’t you dare touch. Hands above your head.”
For some reason, I find myself obeying him. He’s just so hot when he’s like this—hotter than usual, if that’s possible—all sexy and commanding. His white hair flops forward over his forehead. Fuck, he is beautiful.
Cody pushes one finger into my ass, finding my prostate with a few sure strokes. I buck up, bringing my cock into contact with the sleeping bag, but Cody quickly rectifies that problem. He unzips the sleeping bag and throws the top half aside, exposing us to the cold air, but suddenly I’m overheating anyway and don’t care so much about the cold.
What I care about is the burning inferno in my cock. I’ve never been so hard in my life, and I’ve never so desperately wanted to touch myself. I don’t, though. I want to try Cody’s plan. The idea of coming untouched is one I like a lot; I can’t deny that much.
Cody keeps stroking my prostate, driving my slowly wild with desire. I need to come so badly, but I can’t quite get there.
“Cody… I can’t—I need to touch, please…”
“Don’t you dare touch. You’re coming untouched, or you’re not coming at all.”
I moan, those words sending a spike of desire through me. Who knew I was into being ordered around in bed? Certainly not me. I guess you learn something new every day.
“You look hot like this,” Cody murmurs. “So desperate, just from my finger in your ass. Do you want to come, Luke?”
“So much,” I gasp. “Please, Cody.”
“Then come, Luke. Come for me now. ”
He punctuates his words with a particularly hard stroke to my prostate and I come. I cry out as my cock explodes, sending come everywhere, my cock jerking wildly up and down.
Cody keeps stroking my prostate until I go limp and whimper as I become oversensitive. He removes his hand and wipes it on the sleeping bag. I half-expect him to dash out like he did the last time, but where is he going to go? We’ve already established that sleeping outside isn’t an option.
Cody stares at me and I’m struggling to read his expression. Is that… fear? That doesn’t make sense. Why would he be afraid of me, especially after what we just did.
“Cody? Are you alright?”
“Fuck,” he mutters, his head falling into his hands. “Fuck, fuck, fuck.”
I put a tentative hand on his shoulder. “What’s wrong?”
“We shouldn’t have done that.”
“Why not?”
“I—it’s complicated.”
I hesitate. I don’t even like Cody, but he’s obviously in distress and I’m not completely heartless.
“Come here.” I pull him into our joined sleeping bag and slot myself in beside him, pulling him to my chest. “Talk to me. What’s wrong?”
“This is all wrong. I should never have… I should have been stronger…”
Cody sniffs. Is he crying? I have no idea what’s going on and I hate it. I wish I knew how to comfort him, but there’s no way I can do that if he doesn’t tell me what the problem is.
“Use your words, Cody. Tell me what’s going on in your head.”
“It’s a long story,” Cody mumbles.
“Well, we have all night. Tell me.”
Cody takes a deep, shuddering breath. “I was engaged. He hurt me. Not physically, but… Well, he cheated with his best man on the night before the wedding. It just about broke me. I honestly don’t know how I survived. I loved him more than anyone in the world, and he betrayed me.
“After that, I swore I’d never fall in love again. I’m not opening myself up to that kind of hurt. I wouldn’t make it through a second round. The problem is, I can’t seem to separate my feelings from sex. I knew that if I slept with anyone, feelings would ultimately get involved. I had to avoid giving in to such feelings at all costs.”
“That’s why you’ve been so awful to me,” I say slowly. “You were trying to push me away because you’re attracted to me.”
Cody nods miserably. “Lot of good it did me. I’m so sorry, Luke. I don’t really have a problem with you. You’re actually a great guy—which makes this even more dangerous. If we keep doing this and feelings get involved…”
I don’t agree with Cody’s stance on never having feelings for anyone ever again, but it’s not my place to try to change his mind on that. However, that doesn’t mean I can’t speak up about the rest.
“I think you’re overthinking it. So, we’re enjoying each other’s bodies. That doesn’t mean you’re going to wake up tomorrow and suddenly be in love with me. How about we just take things slow. We can be friends with benefits. Many people make that work without ever becoming anything more than friends. If you start to develop feelings you don’t want, we can stop.”
Cody bites his lip, clearly torn.
“I’m not going to force you to do anything you don’t want to do, Cody. If you’re prefer not to do anything physical again, that’s fine. But I hope we can at least drop the animosity.”
I still don’t agree with Cody’s actions, but now that I understand his reasons a bit more, I find that I can’t really be angry with him. He’s not a bad person; he’s just scared. I get that. People do weird things when they’re scared.
“It’s not that I don’t want to. I mean, that was amazing, and not just because I haven’t had sex in ages. I just don’t know if it’s too much of a risk to take.”
“Well, you don’t need to decide right at this moment. I’ll keep my distance for now, and you can let me know what you decide, when you do so. I’ll let you lead, Cody.”
Cody sighs. “You’re too decent for me, Luke. After the way I treated you, I don’t deserve you.”
“Let’s not have any of that. We’re turning a new page in our story, right? The past is the past and neither of us can do anything to change it. We can only worry about the future.”
“Wise as well. You really are…”
I wait to hear what else I am, but I’m greeted by a snore. I chuckle as I squeeze Cody a bit tighter to my chest. He’s fast asleep.
Who would have thought so much would change in the course of one evening? It’s a good change, and one that was long overdue. I snuggle happily into Cody’s body warmth and allow myself to drift off as well.