“Being into it is nothing to be ashamed of,” Tierney said when Dalton had quieted down. He was still hanging over him, bodily maintaining the cocoon of security and trust they’d created. “It doesn’t mean you won’t someday be able to find someone who wants you, but can also, like, feed your kink.” He grinned quickly, then got serious again. “And stop with the beating yourself up about it. The trophy boy statute of limitations expired a long time ago. It’s been five years, and you changed things when you realized you weren’t being true to yourself.”
Lifting his head, Dalton pressed a kiss on Tierney’s lips. “Thank you.” He wasn’t ready to claim he felt all clean inside, but knowing someone else thought his kink wasn’t that horrible helped more than he would have guessed. None of those men would have worked this hard to comfort him—Tierney really was nothing like them, was he?
“Welcome.” Tierney’s mischievous smile flirted with his mouth. “And just so you know, if you ever want to play boy toy, I can totally help you out with that.”
Dalton’s pulse suddenly made itself felt everywhere in his body, but especially his dick. “Ohhhh.”
He bit his lip a second, trying to decide. While Tierney may be caring and thoughtful in a way none of those exes had been, he still shared some of the very qualities Dalton had found to be a turn-on. Was it really so shameful that he was into the important-businessman schtick? Especially if it was just a game they both knew they were playing?
He gave in to the pull of desire in his gut. “Yeah, we could do that.”
“Sweet.” Tierney smiled, but his eyes were intent as he shifted, bringing his body further on top of Dalton’s and sliding his hard dick up the inside of Dalton’s thigh. “How about now?”
In answer, he wrapped his legs around Tierney’s and kissed him.
The next morning, standing in Tierney’s kitchen, Dalton caught himself mesmerized by the coffee he was stirring, reliving that boy toy conversation, not to mention what happened afterward. Trying not to wonder what it meant that he trusted Tierney this much. “Want some coffee?” he called toward the living room.
“Eh.” Tierney was sitting on the couch in his very nice, trés sexy designer suit, staring pensively into midair.
As Dalton walked through the dining area and got closer, he revised “pensive” to “pouting.” Tierney was in classic sullen mode, lip out, brows pulled together in a V, and hands fisted on his legs.
“What’s wrong?” Dalton patted him on the thigh as he sat next to him.
“I don’t wanna have to see a therapist.”
“It’s not abnormal or anything.” He nudged Tierney’s shoulder with his own, but got no response, verbal or otherwise. “I used to see one.” No change in the man’s expression whatsoever. Dalton stifled a sigh. Tierney may like him, but he didn’t think of them as being similar. Setting his mug on the coffee table, he straddled Tierney’s lap so he had to pay attention. And Tierney did, looking up questioningly, hands automatically unclenching and cupping Dalton’s ass. “You had lots of therapy in rehab, right?”
“But I’m done with rehab,” Tierney said, half-whining and giving Dalton puppy dog eyes. “I wanna be done with therapy too.”
“Didn’t the therapy at Dunthorpe help?”
He sighed and admitted, “Yes.”
“Just because you’re a guy doesn’t mean you have to think therapy is some kind of crutch.”
“I don’t think it’s weak or unmasculine or anything,” Tierney objected far too quickly.
Dalton needed a stronger argument. Grasping Tierney’s shoulders in his hands, he pushed on them to emphasize his words. “Ian sees a therapist.”
“I know.” He nodded. “He told you?”
“My boss is one of those people who thinks that, if he’s on the phone, no one can hear him even if he’s standing in the middle of the office half shouting.”
Tierney snorted. “True. I guess, if Ian sees one . . .”
“Exactly.” Dalton kissed him. “Now, I have to get going.”
“Me too.” Tierney patted his butt as Dalton stood, but was obviously still preoccupied.
So was Dalton, after that. He spent his whole drive to work wondering how he could have forgotten about Ian. Or rather, about what Tierney might feel for Ian. In spite of telling himself to shut up multiple times, he also wondered how those feelings stacked up against whatever Tierney felt for him.
Since Tierney’d never been in a friends-with-benefits relationship before, he couldn’t know whether what he had with Dalton was a typical one or not.
That was his story, and he was sticking to it.
Once he got to work, he didn’t spend the morning pacing around his office, dwelling on whether it was normal for just friends to touch as much as they did, even when not having sex, or whether he’d want to spend all his free time with someone he only had lustful and/or platonic feelings for. Probably, in his case, it was normal because he had a lot of lost opportunities to catch up on. That was why he’d like to keep Dalton naked, someplace private for the next week, and why he’d broken his personal best record for coming in a twenty-four-hour period last night.
Except, he and lust were old friends, and what he felt for Dalton may have lust in the mix, but it went deeper. More substantial, something beyond the shell. Except this was what they’d warned him about at Dunthorpe—people who were emotionally needy tended to fool themselves into thinking that whatever they had was, like, right. It, whatever that was. Could that be what drove his feelings for Dalton now?
Was he willing to stop being friends with Dalton, just in case?
Don’t wanna.
He stopped not thinking about their friendship when Gina appeared in his open office doorway and said, “You have the monthly quality care meeting in fifteen minutes, you know.”
“Uh-huh,” he nodded, pretending to be absorbed in something on his desktop. Until what she said sunk in. “Wait, what?” Fuck, he hadn’t put it into his personal calendar—he never did, because it happened the same time every month. “Christ, I have a doctor’s appointment at ten.”
“You forget about it all the time.” She lifted a superior eyebrow. “And I suppose you need me to reschedule your doctor’s appointment while you prep for the meeting?”