Date: Wed, 28 Dec 2016 23:11:18 -0500
From: Xavier Stewart Belle <excessbelle@gmail.com>
Subject: An Open Door

When I got home the first thing I smelled was his soap--a rosemary chemical
tang that hung in the damp air and collapsed over me as I stepped through
the door. I breathed in as the door closed behind me, letting the smell
ghost over my tongue and fill my mouth the way it filled the room.

Jared's smells had settled into the air of my condo almost as soon as he'd
moved in. His old sneakers greeted me at the door. His shower gel dominated
the bathroom. The stale smell of dirty laundry rolled into the kitchen
every time he left his bedroom door open. After a few weeks, the traces he
left in the air began to tell me more about him, about his habits, his
pleasures, his laziness, than any of our brief conversations.

As I filled my lungs again I wondered why he was in the shower. Was he on
his way out, or had he just gotten in? I scanned the darkened living room
for clues, but I found nothing. Everything remained as I had left it that
morning.

I wondered how he'd spent his day. Working? Drinking? Sleeping? Absently, I
pulled again at the soapy smell and my mind conjured one possible
explanation: Jared on the soccer field, his tight waist hugged by a sweat
darkened jersey, nylon shorts revealing the dark hair of his thighs.

I hung my computer bag in the closet and tried to remember whether it had
been a work day for him. On an off day he might have spent the day playing
pick up games, but after a day of road work, of gathering brown smudges on
his jeans, his arms, his face, sweat and the rich smell under his arms
would have driven him into the shower as soon as he got home. But I didn't
see his boots by the door, slumped where I had always kept my black leather
shoes. Had he stomped with them down to his room again? Maybe. Probably. A
small miracle I couldn't smell them from the door.

On my way down the hall I glanced into the open door of the bathroom, drawn
by the light and the sound of running water. If I hadn't been preoccupied
by the likelihood of a trail of mud in the hallway, I might have wondered
what he was doing in there while the water ran and the door stood
open. Clipping his nails or brushing his teeth, maybe, or shaving before a
night out. But I didn't wonder. My mind was already filled with images of
him, of the disarray that followed in his wake, and I was completely
unprepared for what I saw.

The glass door was mostly clear, too much steam having escaped the room to
settle and turn it opaque. Jared stood behind it, facing me, his legs
planted wide apart. His hips were thrust forward slightly, his shoulders
hunched. The water that had rinsed the lower half of him clean cascaded
down his stomach to glide in sheets over his legs. The rest of him was
slicked over with foam. It clung to him in mounds and streaks, the skin of
his arms visible, the hair on his chest obscured, and I could see where his
hands had passed through the suds, leaving valleys the size of fingers.

But it wasn't his chest that commanded my attention. It was the hand that
gripped his shaft while the other cupped his balls. His knuckles glistened
in the fluorescent light, shifting, tightening, rising. When they slid back
down they revealed his dick--long and hard, rising out of a thick mat of
dark hair.

That glimpse could have been the end of it. If he hadn't seen me I could
have walked away with an illicit peek to savor during quiet moments
alone. But I was too slow, or he was too fast, and just before I passed by
and that thrilling moment became a secret snapshot, mine and mine alone, he
looked up.

The expression on his face was calm, unconcerned. It told me he was in no
hurry--not to close the door, not to cover himself, not to finish--and the
frisson of that moment, of seeing while being seen, etched every detail of
the scene into my mind. Above the mirror I saw the dark bulb he said he
would replace. I saw his brown towel hanging on the radiator. I saw his
clothes heaped next to his boots, the whole pile soaking sludge into the
green bathmat. I saw the hair slicked down on his chest and the haphazard
curls suspended in white foam on his head. I saw the way the fluorescent
lights gilded his muscles with silver. I saw the stubble along his jaw. I
saw his open mouth. And then, in the fraction of a moment before my
momentum carried me past the door, I saw him look up, and his eyes,
unblinking, caught mine.

When I reached my room I closed the door firmly behind me and stood in the
dark, filled with the terror of discovery. Jared and I were cordial
roommates, but we didn't share much of ourselves. He paid his rent on time
and I used the money to chip away at the mortgage and my student loans. We
didn't mix socially. We didn't drink together in the living room and share
our worldly ambitions or our sexual conquests. If there was any intimacy
between us it was one-sided, built on my appreciation of the way Jared's
body filled the air we shared, the way I breathed it in and savored it. It
was an offering he didn't know he made and one I accepted as my due, an
appropriate entre into his person that mirrored his intrusion into my home.

But this was different.

I hid in my room, standing in the dark amid the private smell of dirty
clothes and my unmade bed, nervous energy hovering in my chest. I shifted
from one foot to the other, my mind a welter of images, my dick throbbing,
until I heard the pipes in the wall shudder and stop. Moments later, the
sound of heels on hardwood approached from down the hall. I waited for a
knock on my door, an angry voice, accusations, but they didn't
come. Finally, after the silence in my ears had become a roar, the door
across from mine opened and closed.

I sagged in on myself. The thrill in my chest devolved into relief, then
soured into anger. I wondered what he might have said to me if I'd been
there in the hallway. Would he have been embarrassed? Angry? He didn't have
the right. He'd been the reckless one, the one too thoughtless to close the
door.

But I wondered. I remembered his unconcerned gaze, the way he hadn't seemed
surprised to find my eyes on him.

I shoved angrily at the steel hard erection straining against the front of
my pants. The idea that he'd intended to be discovered excited me and
stoked my anger all at once. All my recollections of him, his smells, his
appearance, burned with a new intensity. How many times had he passed me a
rent check with a hand that had just been hard at work? How many times had
he finished just before I got home? How many times had he slipped into his
room for a quick release while I stood in the kitchen?

These thoughts thrilled me, made my dick jump, but the anger remained. With
this brazen act, his invasion of my home seemed more complete. How long
until I existed only on the edges of our shared space, embarrassed for both
of us while he stripped at the door after a game or lounged naked in the
living room after work?

But no. It wasn't possible. He'd lost track of time. He thought I'd be
working late, like I sometimes did, and he thought he could jump in and out
of the shower before I got home.

Stupid, then, to stop and jerk off.

Finally less angry than aroused, still wondering how often he'd stroked off
in the open bathroom while I was out, I considered what to do about my hard
on. I couldn't leave my room as I was, but neither could I take care of it
in the obvious way, as much as I wanted to. If he hadn't seen me watching
him I could have pushed my pants down past my ass and stroked to a toe
curling finish there in the safety of my room. But he'd looked up, he'd
seen me, and as I gripped the mound between my legs I couldn't separate the
sight of him from the anxiety of being seen. Each time I thought of his
dick I felt his eyes on me, watching, and I felt exposed.

So I changed out of my suit and lay on my bed. I read the news. I answered
emails. Only when I finally felt sure my anatomy wouldn't betray me did I
go out into the kitchen to make dinner.

Jared's door opened as I filled a pot with water. He wore cargo shorts that
hung low on his hips and a threadbare t-shirt that clung to his stomach.

"You were home early today," he said.

Behind me he opened a cabinet. The small city kitchen kept us close and if
I extended my arm I could have stroked a finger down his spine.

"No," I said, keeping my voice steady as I lowered my pot of water onto the
stove. "That was the normal time."

He made a noise, a distracted grunt, and pulled a jar of peanut butter from
the cabinet.

I waited for him to apologize, to make a joke, to accuse me of spying on
him, but he didn't say anything. He just opened the fridge, closed it
again, then slid a jar of raspberry jelly across the counter to collide
gently with the peanut butter.

"How was your day?" he asked.

I watched him pull bread from above of the microwave, sure that if I waited
he would say what needed to be said. Instead he stabbed a knife into the
peanut butter, scooped a glob of it into his mouth, then put the knife back
into the jar. He stirred it around a few times before turning the jar on
its side and pouring a wide, hesitant flow out onto a slice of white bread.

"Work was work," I said, turning back to the stove. The hiss of the gas
flame filled the kitchen while his knife clattered around inside the jelly
jar. "Yours?"

"Miserable," he said.

I turned in time to see him flip the sandwich closed and raise it to his
mouth.

"Hit ninety today," he said.

His lips closed over a wide corner of the sandwich and I gritted my teeth
as I listened to him chew. When he swallowed I could almost feel the lump
in my throat.

"Sounds awful," I said.

"New guy on the crew," he said. "Idiot. High school kid. Almost passed out
from the heat." He paused to cram another wad of sandwich into his
mouth. "Didn't drink enough."

I listened as he catalogued the new kid's failings, talking and eating
until he had one last lump of peanut butter mounded in his left cheek.

I opened a box of pasta. Maybe it was better this way, I thought. Maybe if
we didn't talk about it we could pretend it never happened.

But as he moved on to the other members of the crew and their most recent
fuck ups, my mind drifted. I wondered if he'd gotten off after I'd seen
him. Had he been close when I walked by? Did he finish? What had it looked
like?

Maybe he was a shooter like me and he had finished all over his own
chest. Or maybe it bubbled up out of him in a thick flow and then slid down
his knuckles to drip, drip, drip down with the water to circle the
drain. Or maybe he hadn't finished. Maybe his shorts didn't hide a member
nestled sedately between his legs, soft and spent, but curled half-hard
against his briefs. Maybe my gaze had frustrated him, had gone through him
and stuck in his mind's eye the way his had burrowed into me.

I snuck an appraising look at the front of his shorts as he made another
sandwich. I couldn't see a mound between his legs, but as I turned to him,
intending only a glance, he reached up to a high shelf for a plate. The hem
of his shirt lifted as he stretched and his shorts slipped down to reveal
the top of a mound of coarse hair. My heart thudded. My dick hardened. I
imagined going to my knees before him, bringing my face close to the heat
between his legs and inhaling, filling my nose with the scent of his shower
gel, his clean skin, his damp hair.

When Jared's shirt slipped back down over that crescent of skin I returned
to myself. His plate hit the counter and I looked up. Our eyes met. As he
watched me, unmoving, I realized that my mouth was open. I'd let my lips
part unconsciously as I anticipated the taste of him, of his scent filling
my nose and rolling over my tongue.

Neither of us said anything. I turned back to the stove and Jared passed
behind me, another sandwich on his plate, to sit at the kitchen table. He
ate in silence while I stood at the stove stirring my pasta. I could feel
his eyes on me, like a physical presence against my back. The longer he
sat, the heavier it grew, slowly boring through me to stare down into my
pants where my dick throbbed. He knew. He had to.

When Jared finally stood and went to drop his plate in the sink, I felt
light headed. I jumped when he spoke.

"So," he said.

My heart hammered.

"You gonna watch tv?"

"No," I said. I wondered if he could see my shoulders wilt in relief. "All
yours."

Without another word he passed behind me, close enough to touch. I waited
for the sound of the tv in the living room before I stepped away from the
stove and adjusted myself with a quick tug. With my erection now pointing
more discretely up toward my left hip, I moved quickly across the kitchen
to pour out the pasta I'd stirred into mush. Setting a new pot of water on
the stove, I prayed I could boil pasta and retreat to my room before Jared
came back for another sandwich.

It wasn't until late, as I hovered at the edge of sleep, after project
planning and work emails had given me distance from the excitement of the
afternoon, that I let myself return to the scene in the bathroom.

I gripped myself beneath my sheets and began to stroke. I traced the
drifting mounds of the soap that clung to his chest and imagined digging my
fingers into his hair, the foam gliding beneath my hand while he worked
both his fists between his legs. As I imagined him standing there pumping
his dick, I could feel the tension of a climax tightening inside me. In my
mind's eye I stepped back, wanting to see all of him, both his total
nakedness and the thrill of his long dick, as I finished.

It was a mistake. When I stepped back to take him all in, I felt his eyes
bore into me. Something lurched in my chest. Fighting the desire to
retreat, trying to recapture the moment, I tried a closer view and focused
on his narrow hips, his hairy stomach, the round head of his dick. It
didn't work. He'd seen me again and his phantom moved into my room,
exposing me.

I stopped, then I pushed him away. Too close to finishing to roll over and
sleep, too sleepily aroused to fall into anger, I reached for something
different. I had plenty of other faces, plenty of other bodies to call on
when I needed release, so I reached for an old favorite.

But as I pulled it forward, first one, then many, I found that Jared's
self-possession had infected all of my familiar play things. In their faces
I saw his eyes and each of them knew that I used them.

The man with the chiseled face who waited at my bus stop every morning knew
that I wondered what it would be like to reach into his jacket and open his
starched shirt. He knew that, if it were possible to strike the other
passengers blind, I would get on my knees there in the aisle of the bus and
take him into my throat.

At the office, the VP of sales knew that sometimes I followed him to the
cafeteria just so I could watch the way his body moved beneath the thin
fabric of his suits. He knew that I wanted to take him into a bathroom to
explore the hard body beneath those designer fabrics, to feel the heat of
his muscles soaking into my hands through the cloth.

My boss knew that I imagined what it would be like to hide under his desk
during meetings, to feel the heat of his crotch on my face, to take him
into my mouth while his deep voice filled the room. He knew that I wanted
to feel him explode against the back of my throat while everyone in the
room watched him, listening, wondering why his voice deepened,
inexplicably, just for a moment.

These secret fantasy men turned on me, saw me watching, and their gazes
paralyzed me. I didn't know what to do, didn't know how to posses their
bodies when they knew that I wanted them, so I pushed them all into the
back of my mind where Jared lurked, his naked body covered in soap and dark
hair.

As I lay in bed with my hand between my legs, still lingering in the ruins
of my office fantasies, I drifted in a new direction. Hiding from the
imaginary, accusatory stares of my boss, I ducked into a copy room. There I
found a young man, entry level, maybe an intern, standing in front of the
door with his pants around his ankles.

I didn't bother to fine tune the image. I let the door close behind me and
I put the intern on his knees. Using both hands, I pulled his head forward
and let my pants slip down over my thighs. I pushed myself into his mouth,
over his tongue. I watched as his lips slid all the way down to the base of
my dick. I tangled both fists in his hair and began thrusting. I fucked his
mouth, my balls slapping against his face until his chin grew slick. He
made little choked sounds of lust and abandon and clung to my hips with
both hands to steady himself. As my climax neared, he shot without touching
himself, jetting white lines of heat against my legs. I imagined the wet
warmth gluing my pants to my shins as I dragged his mouth up and down the
length of my dick.

And then my climax wiped the scene away. I threw back the covers with my
free arm and my dick started pulsing. After my pleasure had peaked, I lay
naked in my bed with warm lines stretching from my stomach to my chin. My
mind pleasantly blank, I fell asleep just as warm beads began to roll from
my chest down my sides to the bed.

Work and Jared's social schedule kept us from meeting in the apartment for
the next two days. During that time I imagined what I would say if he
happened to mention our encounter. I decided that if he brought it into
casual conversation I would strike a balance between casual indifference
and gentle reproof. I was no prude, I'd make that clear, but we were adults
and we ought to respect each other's privacy.

But it never came up. On the third day after our encounter, a Friday, we
both spent the night at home. He watched TV and I read in my room. He moved
through the apartment the way he always had, casually possessing everything
he touched, every space he occupied. When I hovered for a few minutes in
the doorway to the living room to see what he was watching, I saw that he
had removed his socks and left them under the coffee table. Later, when I
went for a glass of water, I looked down the hall to see that he was bare
chested, his shirt crumpled on the back of the couch. As I drank my water
in the dark kitchen I wondered if he still had his shorts on. Was he in his
underwear, or were those gone too? What intoxicating smells were his wide
flung arms leaving on the couch?

I went back to my room and turned out the light. I slipped out of my
clothes and conjured an image of my eager intern. I imagined a company
shower room at the office and I took him there. While I pressed his face
against the shower wall and pushed my way into him from behind, I lectured
him about his indecent exposures around the office. Members of upper
management had caught him in lewd and compromising situations, I told
him. He'd become a distraction and it was my job to help him control his
impulses before he threw away a promising career. No more jerking off in
the copy room, I told him. No more stripping down in the elevator at the
end of the day to walk naked through the parking garage. No more following
the VP of sales to the gym across the street to undress in front of him in
the locker room. If you ever feel yourself losing control, I told him, you
come find me. I'll help you work through your urges. You can perform for me
here. Or we can book a conference room. You can undress in front of the
windows. No one will look up from the street while I fuck you until you
come against the glass. No one will know if you sit naked under the table
and swallow me once, twice, while I take a conference call.

And so it went, my intern gratefully accepting my attention, until I came
with a shudder that threatened to double me over.

The next day was hot, windless, and filled with an urban humidity that made
going outside a special kind of ordeal. I pulled on a t shirt and a pair of
old shorts and settled in the living room to enjoy a day of reading in
front of a fan.

Jared didn't emerge from his room until almost noon. I heard him pour a
bowl of cereal in the kitchen then crunch his way down the hall. He said
nothing as he sat down on the couch opposite me. In only a thin pair of
basketball shorts that sat low on his hips, he reclined and held his cereal
bowl close to his chest. I tried to ignore him as he chewed and clattered
his way through breakfast. When he finished, he set the bowl on the coffee
table, pulled up the legs of his shorts to expose the dark hair of his
thighs, then lay back with his hands tucked behind his head. After a few
long minutes of silence I glanced up from my book. His eyes were
closed. They were still closed when I looked again a few pages later. His
chest rose and fell in a slow, steady rhythm.

I read the same paragraph three times, then gave up. I turned to face
him. When I heard a little rumble come from behind his nose, I let my book
settle into my lap.

We'd had plenty of hot days since Jared had moved in and more than once I'd
had the chance to see his lean, muscled torso. I knew, generally, the
pattern of hair that began in the middle of his chest and flared out to
cover his stomach. I knew that the same dark hair covered his legs and
filled his underarms. I knew that his back was smooth, tanned, and tapered
down to a narrow waist and a full ass. But I'd never had the opportunity to
study the planes of his face or the angles of his body with any leisure.

I found that I liked the arrangement of his body in that moment. Asleep
with his arms upraised and his thighs uncovered, he looked open, exposed. I
let my gaze slide slowly over each limb before falling into his lap,
running along his stomach, then up over his chest. I enjoyed every inch of
him, each whorl of hair and every smooth, curving muscle. I savored the
ridges of his hips and the pale, rarely seen skin of his thighs. I admired
his mounded biceps. I considered the contours of his Adam's apple. I
studied the shape of his lips.

I don't know his long I had been watching him before I realized his eyes
had opened into dark slivers. When I did, my heart turned over and my body
went cold. Suddenly ridged, I became aware of my posture: reclined against
the arm of the couch, book in my lap, turned to face him. No way to pretend
I hadn't turned to give his body my full attention. I waited for his face
to cloud over when he realized I'd been watching him sleep.

But he remained placid. He stretched and his eyes squeezed shut under a
yawn.

"Fucking hot out today," he said, and he rubbed at his face with both
hands.

He didn't look at me as he stood and stretched, his tight, hairy stomach
arching toward me. After he let his arms fall to his sides he leaned down
to scoop up his cereal bowl. He drank from it while he dug behind the
waistband of his shorts with his other hand. He didn't seem to care that
they slipped low enough to reveal the thick patch of curly hair just above
his dick. I stared, unable to move, until he wiped his mouth, sighed, and
walked around the couch to disappear down the hall.

I listened to the sound of his bowl clattering into the sink, then the
sound of the drawers in his bedroom opening and closing. My heart began to
hammer again as I heard his foot steps coming back down the hall.

He stopped by the door, naked except for a pair of tiny white bikini briefs
that barely contained him. The sheer fabric outlined the shape of his dick
and the waistband stopped well below his hips. He tossed a shirt and a pair
of shorts onto the back of the couch.

"Heading out to a game," he said. He used an open palm to adjust himself,
then ran a thumb inside the waistband of his underwear in a futile attempt
to tuck away the curls that were peaking out. "You gonna be around later?"

I nodded, unsure where to look, unable to look away.

"Cool," he said. He bent over to step into his shorts then grabbed his
cleats from the mat by the door. "See you then."

He stood, slipped into sneakers, and was out the door before I could
respond.

Bent at the waist so that the mound of my hard on couldn't be seen from the
street, I rushed to the window to watch him walk down the side walk,
entranced by the way his ass rolled beneath the clinging fabric of his
shorts. After he disappeared around the corner, I retreated to the couch.

A clean, simple truth occurred to me then: Jared liked to have eyes on
him. It had occurred to me before that Jared might have a taste for
exhibitionism, but married to the suspicion had been a vague
contempt. Exhibitionism, I was sure, was motivated either by insecurity or
a boorish conviction that his body, his mere presence, was a gift to those
around him.

But what Jared needed, it seemed to me, was different. What he wanted was
both more casual and more intimate. It was the inverse of the need that
drove me into quiet isolation more often than into the company of
others. When I was alone, I unfolded. My mind ran in clean, untroubled
lines. I could concentrate, think, and dream. I was sure of my body, of its
value and its beauty. But where I needed solitude, maybe Jared needed
verification. The gaze that had so unsettled me, looking out from the
shower days before and then from the couch just minutes earlier, wasn't the
penetrating, invasive thing I'd imagined. He wasn't gauging his effect on
me, wasn't interrogating my reactions or demanding appreciation. He was
looking only to verify that he was being watched. It was the watching that
mattered, that gave him what he needed.

And then a second realization washed over me: I wanted desperately to be
the intimate observer who looked in on his life and verified it's edges,
its hidden places, its little intimacies. I wanted to explore him, to dig
into him, to know him in his most private moments.

I looked around the room. After four years of living in that condo I had
never once jerked off anywhere but in the shower or in my bed. I'd never
considered it a thrill to reveal myself to an empty room intended for other
things. But in that moment I saw the living room not as I knew it, but as I
imagined Jared saw it: another place to be seen and revealed. The entire
space, the couches, the windows, the hallway, they all carried Jared's
charge. So I unzipped my fly, pushed my shorts down to the middle of my
thighs, and let my dick spring into the warm air.

Using the body burned into my memory, I positioned Jared, casually naked,
in front of one of the windows. I imagined him soft at first, looking down
into the street as if he hadn't realized he could be seen, but growing hard
when a middle aged man in a window across the street leaned out to get a
better look at him. I imagined Jared taking a step back to sit on the arm
of the couch, still fully illuminated by the window, to start stroking. He
began slowly, running his fist up and down his shaft, taking his time until
a clear little drop appeared on the head. Then he began to pump more
aggressively. The muscles in his arm and his shoulder strained. His dick
grew red and steel hard. Then he stopped, threw his head back, and
convulsed once, twice. His balls tightened and a milky white fountain shot
from his dick to splatter against the window, blocking the man across the
street from view.

I positioned Jared on the couch next. I imagined myself in the kitchen
where I'd been three days earlier, anxiously stirring pasta. He pulled his
dick out during a commercial and stroked until he finished what he'd begun
in the shower. As I strained spaghetti, he exploded, soaking the front of
his shirt while his grunts were swallowed up by the noise from the tv. I
imagined the wetness that would have covered Jared's fist, the way it would
have slid down into the hair between his legs and mingled with the smell of
his body. I grunted and shot against my own chin, then my neck, as I
imagined that wetness clinging to him for the rest of the night after he
tucked himself back into his shorts.

I lay back on the couch, trying to catch my breath as the mess I'd made
melted into my shirt. I was still half hard as I dozed off in the summer
heat, the fan's hum the only noise to disturb the quiet of the house.

By chance, I woke only a few minutes before Jared got home. I'd just zipped
up my shorts and had been contemplating a shower when the front door opened
and Jared stomped in.

"Fuck," he said. "It's too. Fucking. Hot."

Still shirtless, or shirtless again, sweat made his whole body shine. He
remained in view for only a moment as he leaned against the wall to kick
off his sneakers. He tossed his cleats on top of them then disappeared down
the hall. I heard the sound of nylon shorts rustling, then the squeak of
the shower turning on.

I waited for the sound of the bathroom door closing. When it didn't, my
dick twitched and began to harden again.

Tucking my hard on up into my waistband, I walked around the couch to look
down the hallway toward the bathroom. If I wanted to, I had plenty of
reasons to justify walking by that open door. I could be on my way to the
kitchen for a snack, or to lay down on my bed and check emails. Maybe I
needed to do laundry. Maybe I was heading to the gym. In any case, it
wasn't my fault he'd left that door open when I needed to get to the other
end of the apartment.

I squared my shoulders and strode forward purposefully, but as soon as I
entered the hallway my excuses crumbled and I slowed almost to a stop. My
timidity felt ridiculous. Jared wanted me to look and I wanted to see. Why
should I pretend otherwise?

I stopped and took a breath. Then, after checking that my hard on was
discretely positioned, I stepped into the bathroom doorway.

Jared was less brazen in his display this time, facing the jet of water
rather than the door, but when he caught me out of the corner of his eye he
turned to face me. An electric surge radiated out from the center of my
chest as he met my eye and continued stroking. He wore the same calm,
unconcerned expression he'd had the first time I'd seen him. I held his
gaze for the bravest moment of my life, then let my eyes travel down to his
pumping fist. He watched me for a fraction of a second longer, then looked
down as well.

And then I moved on.

It had been a ten second interaction, maybe shorter, but it had felt ages
longer than the first. Flushed with a feeling of triumph, I continued on to
my room as I had days earlier, but this time I didn't resist the pleasure
that had coiled at the root of my dick. I let my shorts drop to the floor,
pulled my shirt off, and began stroking. I pictured Jared's long body
glistening under the water, his sinewed arms flexing and bunching as he
pumped his dick. I imagined the hard plane of his stomach, ridged and
tense. I imagined his heavy breathing, his grunting as he came closer to a
climax. I remembered the way he'd positioned himself on the couch, open and
exposed, for my inspection. But it was the memory of that steady gaze, the
confidence in his eyes as they met mine, that pushed me to the edge. The
pressure began to build behind my balls. I let my head fall back as it
increased. My mouth fell open. My breath caught in my throat.

And then the pipes shuddered in the wall and I heard the shower stop. I
would have continued, would have flown past the point of no return, if
Jared's voice hadn't come to me through the door.

"Hey, can you bring me a towel?"

I froze.

Naked, my dick throbbing, an orgasm a few intense moments away, I waited.

His voice came again.

"I think there's one in my closet. And the shorts on my bed."

I ground my teeth. I couldn't finish. If I did, I was convinced he'd know
what I'd been up to. How could he not? He might not have cared, might
actually have encouraged it, but even if I'd come to appreciated his
exhibitionism, I didn't share it. I didn't want to stand in front of him
while my body wound down from a surge of pleasure.

So I pulled my shorts up and shrugged my shirt back on, hoping he wouldn't
see the faint white streaks from my earlier orgasm. I tucked my dick up
into a discrete position in my waist band and opened my door.

I had to move carefully as I crossed the few steps to Jared's room. Caught
between the warm skin of my hip and the band of my shorts, my dick rubbed
and twitched, threatening to explode. I stopped at the foot of the bed and
took a deep breath, hoping the pause would help me gain control, but the
smell of his body flooded my nose and sent a wave of pleasure from my balls
up to the head of my dick. I held my breath and waited. When the wave
receded, I moved to the closet and carefully pulled a towel from the top
shelf.

I studied the floor as I walked down the hallway. I would get in and out. I
had to. If I lingered, he'd read everything on my face and I couldn't bear
the thought of standing open before him that way. I'd throw the towel at
him and leave.

When I stepped through the door of the bathroom I expected to be greeted by
clouds of steam that would obscure us both. I should have known better,
should have remembered from just minutes ago that the air had been clear,
but I was preoccupied by my condition and unable to account for the reality
of anything beyond the throbbing against my hip.

Jared stood waiting behind the clear glass, naked, dripping, and semi
hard. The sight of him standing there, unconcerned by his nudity and his
obvious arousal, hit me in the pit of my stomach. My dick twitched and I
stopped just inside the door. I stared, drinking him in.

"Thanks," Jared said. He slid the door open a crack and put a hand out to
take the towel.

I took another step forward and held the towel out to him. As he leaned
forward to take it, as his warm fingers grazed against the back of my hand,
I noticed for the first time the milky white streaks that clung to the
inside of the glass in front of his stomach.

And that was too much. With a shudder that made my abs contract
reflexively, I came. Hot little jets coated my hip with warmth and
plastered my shirt to my side. My breath caught in my throat and my feet
went numb. I gripped the cold radiator for support as tremors rolled
through my body.

The pleasure was only just fading when Jared spoke.

"Jesus, dude. Did you just come?"

Mortified, I said nothing. I tried to collect myself.

Jared laughed.

"Man, it looked like a good one. Better than mine."

I unfastened my stare from the edge of the tub and looked up at him. He
brought the towel to his face and began rubbing the water from his hair. In
just a few seconds he'd toweled off from head to toe and opened the glass
door to step out onto the bath mat just inches in front of me. His hard,
damp, fragrant body radiated heat against mine.

I stared at his chest and felt him glance at my face, then look down at the
sticky mess soaking into my shirt.

"You grab my shorts?"

"Oh," I said. While I had been attempting to keep my orgasm at bay in his
room, his second request had slipped from my mind. "No."

I looked down at his dick, still half hard there between us, then shrugged
and looked up.

"It's too hot out anyway, isn't it?"

Jared smiled, searched my face for a few moments, then smiled wider.

"Yeah," he said. "You're probably right. Here."

He pressed the damp towel against the widening circle over my hip and I
jumped, startled by the contact and the pressure against my dick.

"Looks like you could use a shower," he said.

I caught the towel as he pushed past me, breaking my grip on the
radiator. He didn't seem to mind that my forearm slid across his stomach or
that the back of my hand grazed his warm dick and the coarse hair above it.

I turned as I heard him grab the doorknob and begin to pull the bathroom
door closed behind him.

"Leave it open," I said.

He paused and turned to look at me.

"Yeah?"

"Yeah," I said. Then I pointed toward the white streaks on the inside of
the shower door. "You have another one of these in you today?"

Jared glanced at the shower door, then shrugged.

"One at least."

I paused, then nodded.

"I'm looking forward to it."


_____

Thanks for reading! If you liked this story I think you'll like the others
I have in the pipeline. You can follow me on tumblr at xsbelle.tumblr.com
where I post pictures I like and where I'll be making announcements about
other fiction projects. Thanks again, and feel free to shoot me an email if
you'd like to say hi! (excessbelle@gmail.com)

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