And Greg practically growled as he scraped teeth along Marsh’s neck. He was the one doing the fucking here. He gave a sharp slap at Marsh’s side, and Marsh leaned into it.
“I’ll fuck you…how I wanna fuck you.” Greg reached up and threaded his fingers into Marsh’s hair. “You gonna take it?”
“Aren’t I?” And it was still too much cheek.
Greg yanked and Marsh gasped. “Yeah,” Greg said. “Take it like a pro.”
How many other people do you take it from this way?
“Fuck yeah, I do.” The way he said it, it wasn’t just sex, wasn’t just pride at the way his ass clenched and flexed, and the way he moved and let Greg have what he wanted from him. It was something darker. It lit the possessive flame inside Greg’s chest and stoked it hotter, made him drive into Marsh harder.
Marsh grunted, but he was still pushing into Greg’s strokes, still asking for more.
“You like that?” Greg asked.
“Yeah. God, yeah.”
“Because I love it.” Greg could hardly believe the words coming out of him. Shit, this was just like last night all over again. Even if he wasn’t sick with pain, he was aching, and asking for things. Things he shouldn’t want and shouldn’t be saying out loud. He snapped his hips against the unbearable pressure in his balls and in his heart and in his lungs. He closed his eyes and buried his face against Marsh’s skin. “I love it,” he confessed again. “I love fucking you. Love touching you. Love your ass and your arms and your—”
And Greg clamped his jaw shut, because he couldn’t love Marsh. He could do this—could take what he could get and do it willingly, could settle for just the scraps he got when he wanted everything, but he couldn’t love him, too. It was too much to bear.
And so he
wouldn’t
bear it. He groaned and reached under Marsh’s body, curled a sweat-slick hand around his cock and jerked it in hard, punishing strokes. He needed to make Marsh feel this. Needed to leave something of himself, even if it was only a memory for when Marsh went out into the world and was amazing and incredible and everything Greg wasn’t.
Without acknowledging the sudden desperation in Greg’s touch or the brutal pace of his cock, Marsh pushed into the circle of Greg’s fist. His head snapped up, and his spine arched in one bright, long, beautiful line.
“Greg!” Marsh cried out, and fuck, fuck, his dick spasmed and pulsed, hot fluid flowing over Greg’s fingers and dripping on his wrist.
Greg let go. Braced himself on the bed and on Marsh’s shoulder and yanked him hard into his thrust. All he could hear was his own name in that warm, thick voice, all he could feel was Marsh’s body surrounding him, Marsh fucking himself back onto his cock. Greg pressed forward another stroke, a dozen, and then he was stifling his scream in Marsh’s neck as he came like a storm, like a whiteout.
As he came hard enough to forget he didn’t get to keep this.
Almost.
As soon as he could think straight, he pulled out and collapsed to the side. Marsh dropped to his stomach and flailed an arm out toward him. Rested a hand over his still-thundering heart, and Greg settled his own atop it. He held on.
It took a minute for the world to slide out from under him and for his throat to start to close. He squeezed his eyes shut tight. Marsh wasn’t his, and he wasn’t the pathetic little boy who got used by men who were cooler and bigger than him. He wasn’t the kid who needed taking care of, like he had been. He was his own, and he was making it all right on his own. This was a distraction—one he could indulge in, because when it wasn’t making him feel so incredibly alone, it made him feel good, and that was all right.
But there were things he couldn’t afford to be distracted from. His life, his work, always his work—that was his ticket to making it out and making good. To making his parents proud. And it didn’t matter that he wanted to lie there forever, sated and held and pressed up, skin to skin, against a beautiful man.
Greg grasped Marsh’s hand in a crushing grip, and then he let go.
He slipped out from beneath the arm slung heavy across his chest. Focusing on the task, he dealt with the condom, stomach turning at the wet slap as it hit the bottom of the waste bin. He picked up his clothes and pulled them on. He’d go clean up and find some food or at least make some coffee, then he’d chase Ronnie down and see what he’d been on about. After that, he’d have time to figure out those graphs and grade those quizzes and finish up his presentation.
The sound of sheets rustling came from the bed. “You’re off then?” Marsh asked, voice neutral, and Greg hated that. It burned him, how Marsh always seemed so unaffected, even as Greg was pushing everything down inside himself to make only a piss-poor attempt at the same kind of detachment.
“Yeah.”
“I don’t have to be at the gym for another hour. You hungry?”
Starved. “Nah. I’ve got—”
“Work to do, yeah.”
“Yeah.”
Greg looked over at Marsh, draped out, naked, across that bed, and he wanted nothing more than to crawl in after him and kiss his mouth. He could see it—lazy nights eating takeout in bed and watching action flicks and fucking into the night and curling up together to sleep. Maybe someday, with somebody more like himself, he’d be able to have that.
“You do make time to eat occasionally, right?”
Greg stopped short, diverting his gaze up to Marsh’s face. It was just an idle question. Teasing, probably. He’d heard it all before.
Don’t you do anything but study, nerd?
“Occasionally,” he replied, desert-dry.
Marsh’s brow furrowed. “Okay, well. If you say so.”
“I just did.”
“Whatever.” With that, Marsh’s expression smoothed back out, and he sat up, gathering the sheet around his waist, and it felt exactly like the dismissal it was.
Whatever, indeed. “See you around,” Greg gritted out. He headed for the door and was about to yank it open, but then remembered. He eased the door just a crack and peeked. Coast was clear. “Later.”
“Later,” Marsh echoed.
Scooping his bag up off the ground, Greg let himself out. Bile burned, and he shut the door behind him with as close to a slam as he could bring himself to. He glanced down the hall, one way and then the other. His stomach churned with hunger and discontent, and he couldn’t bring himself to feed either. The thought of standing in the kitchen, making food, knowing Marsh was possibly still naked right through that one thin wall…
Fuck it, warm Mountain Dew and an energy bar it was. Greg hoisted his book bag onto his shoulder. He took the stairs up to his room two at a time.
He had real work to do.
Chapter Eight
“Coward. Come on.” Marsh mumbled the words low under his breath as he hovered on the third step from the top. He’d been hovering there for a while now. Because he was a coward. Damn it all.
He cursed himself again beneath his breath, resolving to just do it already. He took one more step before retreating. This was ridiculous. “It’s not that fucking hard. Just go over there and…”
And put himself out there. Crap, he hated this.
For what had to be the hundredth time, he glanced at the crack of light spilling out from beneath Greg’s door and took a deep breath. This wasn’t a big deal. He’d done this how many times now? Gone up to that door and knocked and given a leer, and Greg had always invited him in. Even that once when it had just been to let Marsh run his hands through his hair. He’d never turned Marsh away, but it was different today.
Because the thing was, Marsh had been keeping track. All the signs had been there, the entire time they’d been fucking around like this. Greg worked like he was possessed, only stopping when his body forced him to. Only pausing when Marsh came by, offering a few minutes of stress relief and heat and the chance to thrust, hard and fast into his mouth or ass. The chance to kiss and touch and make it all go away for a little while.
It was such a little while, though, and ever since that night with the migraine, ever since that blindingly hot, possessive fuck the next day, it had been getting worse. A week had passed, and the circles under Greg’s eyes had been darkening. The moments when he’d taken time to come down Marsh’s throat had gotten briefer.
And he wasn’t eating.
Marsh punched his thigh and tried to get his nerve up again. He was going to go over there, and he was going to make an offer, but it wasn’t going to be his body. It was going to be something different, something Greg had only accepted the once. And he didn’t know what he was going to do when Greg told him to fuck off.
The sound of a door opening farther down the hall finally kicked Marsh out of his stalemate with himself. Swearing silently, he jogged down a couple of steps only to course right back up them, turning the corner at the top of the landing to see Jason stepping out of his room.
“Hey!” Jason did a little double take, as if surprised to see him there. Marsh didn’t know how anyone was still surprised to see him ducking in and out of Greg’s room.
He smiled anyway. “Hey, man.” He strode right past Greg’s door as if he didn’t care, as if all his concentration hadn’t been on that single spot for the last ten minutes, and held out his hand.
Jason gripped it, and Marsh gave his palm a quick clasp before letting go. “Haven’t seen you around much.”
Jason had been Marsh’s only real link here when he’d first moved in. A former athlete himself, he’d at least spoken the same language Marsh did, even if he also happened to be fluent in geek.
“Been keeping busy. Practices and classes and stuff,” Marsh eyed Greg’s door, then forced his gaze away. “You heading out?”
“Yeah, gotta check on an experiment. Probably gonna swing by Wendy’s on the way back though, if you want something?”
“Nah. I…got plans.”
For the first time, Jason had that knowing look everyone seemed to get. “Cool. Catch you later.”
Marsh stepped aside to let him go, and the jig was up now. Greg would’ve had to have been cranking his music pretty loud to have missed any of that, and Marsh didn’t have any other excuse to be up here.
Time to man up.
Jason headed to the stairs, and way too cognizant of his audience, Marsh moved to stand in front of Greg’s door. He gave himself the time for one big, deep breath before knocking, the same three quick little raps he used every time.
“Yeah?” Greg’s voice was pinched, and the nervous energy in Marsh’s gut solidified.
He pushed the door open anyway and plastered on an easy smile. “Hey.”
Greg was sitting at his desk the way he always seemed to be these days, those sexy, nerdy little glasses sitting low on his nose, and his hair was sticking up like he’d been running his hands through it, and—Marsh’s smile faded a little. It’d been a couple of days since he’d been up here, and had there been as many soda cans and papers strewn around the last time?
Mumbling something under his breath, Greg slid the glasses off his face and folded them up, one hand going up to his hair. Marsh wanted to walk right up to him and do it for him, slide his fingers through unruly strands and press them down where they belonged. Or maybe mess them up a little worse. He could never decide.
“Sorry.” Greg rolled his chair away from his desk a little. His gaze shifted from his laptop screen to Marsh and back. “It’s really not a good time.” His eyes drifted lower, and the muscles in his jaw flexed. “Not that I don’t want to but—”
“No, no.” And hell yes, Marsh
wanted to
, but that wasn’t why he was here. Even if that was all Greg really saw him as. He didn’t twitch when Greg’s shoulders dropped a little, like it was a relief that he wasn’t going to have to fuck him, and God. What the hell was Marsh doing here?
“I just—I was.” This wasn’t that fucking hard. Marsh jabbed the heel of his hand into his thigh. “I was gonna order something. Chinese, maybe?”
Greg was already shaking his head, gesturing to the couple of wrappers next to one of the cans of soda as if protein bars were an acceptable substitute for actual food. Marsh lifted his chin and braced his arm on the door.
He’d come here for a reason, and it didn’t have anything to do with himself. No matter what they were to each other, no way in hell Marsh was watching someone he…cared about self-destruct. Not this bad, and not when it was in his power to do something about it.
He lifted one eyebrow. “Are you seriously about to try and tell me that those things are a meal?”
“They got me through undergrad.”
Christ. “Um, no. Look, when’s the last time you took a break? Like, a real one?”
“I don’t have time—”
“Bullshit.” Because Marsh had played that game. Back his first year when he’d been trying so hard to make the starting lineup and not fail even the bullshit jock classes he was taking for his gen-ed requirements, he’d pulled this crap. “You’re going to make yourself sick like this.”
“I’ll be fine.”
“Just like you were fine last week when you couldn’t stand to have the lights on?”
And fuck. Greg’s face went hard all at once, and wow, Marsh did not have the right to say any of that. He didn’t have the right to say anything. But he was going to say it anyway.
“I’m sorry you had to see that,” Greg started, mouth pinched, but his ears were red, and screw it. Maybe this was about Marsh overstepping, and maybe it was some BS instinct on Greg’s part to keep up some kind of image, but whatever.