“Really? You want to watch with me?” Ulrich’s gaze flitted between Alex’s face and the bulge in his shorts. He appeared to find nothing wrong with the way Alex’s shaft attempted to escape his jersey pants.
Alex probably shouldn’t. If his mother… But she was dead and he was curious. “Okay.”
Uli pounded his feather pillows to make them comfortable for Alex. He always fluffed them when Alex joined him in his bed. The gesture made Alex feel special.
After grabbing the laptop, Uli clicked away and input a password. The screen filled with two men. Uli pulled the headphone plug from the jack. Sparse dialogue filled the room. Alex could do this. He was an adult.
If Uli’s doing it, it can’t be wrong, can it?
The scene opened with two men going into a locker room. The muscular actors tossed their football helmets into their lockers and started to undress. Within two minutes, the actors’ uniforms lay scattered across the floor, leaving them naked and heading for the shower Alex didn’t think they’d ever get to take. The stars on the computer were handsome, but Alex’s attention remained on the blond next to him who hadn’t taken a shower yet. He smelled delicious. Ulrich’s breathing quickened as the actors started horsing around with each other on the way to the shower.
A noisy kiss drew Alex’s attention to the screen but out of the corner of his eye, he could see Uli lick his full lips as if he were wetting them in preparation for a kiss. The two men onscreen continued to kiss and touch under the shower spray. The scene dizzied Alex.
He didn’t live under a rock, especially here in the sexually charged environment of Club Zombie, but he did his best to avoid uncomfortable situations. Alex had never allowed himself to watch two men kiss and fondle each other. Even when it happened on TV shows or movies, he would change the channel, or if he were with Ulrich, he’d just zone out.
What would it feel like to press his lips against Uli’s? Would Uli let him? He wondered what Ulrich’s lips would taste like. Would they taste sweet like the opened soda next to Ulrich bed, or had he brushed his teeth already this morning? Would Uli’s lips be as soft and gentle as he imagined, because Uli was always tender with him.
Uli started to squirm, making his erect penis slap his abdomen. As he shifted and pushed his ass against the bed, his hips ground in small circles.
The action onscreen mesmerized Alex as one of the men breached the other’s backside. His cock? Going up where? Oh my God! How would it fit? And that grimace! Was the guy in pain, or was that from pleasure? Or was that pain morphing into pleasure? That was a fascinating concept.
“Um, do you mind if I…” Uli was asking if he could touch himself.
Dear God.
“You can too if you…”
“No. I mean, no, but you go ahead.”
With a soft sigh, Ulrich wrapped his fist around his penis just like before.
Alex should go.
Oh God
.
“Okay. This won’t take long. I’m really horny.” Uli pumped his length in fast strokes. The computer on his lap made his movements awkward. Amid puffs of breath and the swish of his hand, he asked, “Can you get me the lube off the nightstand?”
Alex turned to snatch the bottle to present it to Uli.
“Could you put some in my hand?”
Alex’s “Oh” came out deep and breathy. Shame washed over him for participating in what his mother had deemed wicked. But Uli wasn’t evil. Her reproach battled with
the excitement zinging through him. The guy would never do anything bad. Alex forced his mother’s judgment out of his head. She had been wrong.
When Uli didn’t reach for the bottle, Alex clicked the top open and tipped the bottle over Uli’s busy hand.
“Mm, thanks.” Ulrich shivered as the slick rolled between his fist and erection. He turned his head, panting as he stared at Alex.
At Uli’s obvious enjoyment, Alex’s insides did somersaults. Since neither of them watched the movie anymore, Ulrich turned off the sound and pushed aside the computer.
Alex tried to focus on something other then the sexy sounds of Ulrich’s fist and pleasured noises. He asked, “Does it, um, feel good?” He rolled a bit closer.
Uli groaned. “So good. Gonna come soon.” His quick breaths washed over Alex’s face. His mouth opened in a gasp.
Alex tried to control his body. Anticipation for the final moment made him tremble. He’d never wanted to sin so badly before. Was it a sin? He still wasn’t comfortable thinking past what his mother beat into him about masturbation. But if he didn’t think what Uli was doing was dirty or bad maybe he needed to rethink everything. Later. Right now he fixated on the stunning vision in front of him.
Uli’s bright blue eyes were riveted to his gaze and the attention made him shiver. The bed trembled with Ulrich’s hand motion.
“Kiss me,” Uli begged.
Yes!
Without pause, Alex leaned forward to push his lips to Uli’s in his first kiss. The touch of Ulrich’s lips to his was more than he’d ever hoped or dreamed would be possible. Warm, moist lips softly touched his mouth in a perfect kiss.
His body throbbed with need as his kiss muffled the gasps of Uli’s completion. Their lips pressed for an eternity until Alex’s lower half started to spasm and throb.
“I have to shower.” Alex jumped off the bed, ran to the bathroom, and locked the door. He stripped off his clothing, turned the cold-water knob to freezing, and jumped under the spray.
The icy water burned his body. He hurt, but the cold stopped his penis from trying to erupt. His mother’s cranky voice fought to the surface.
That’s what happens when little boys are bad. That’s God’s way of reminding you not to have those kinds of thoughts.
He tried to block the sweet kiss out of his mind.
A part of him still believed his mother was right. He’d taken too many beatings for the belief to disappear completely, but another part knew she wasn’t correct. The therapist Beau arranged for him to see every week helped him understand. He’d never been able to bring himself to agree his body could be used for enjoyment. But after spending time with Uli this morning, everything was being called into question. The things she had been helping him work through now had a framework.
Ulrich tapped at the door. “You okay?”
“Yeah, fine. Be out in a minute.” Relief washed over Alex as he stepped out of the icy water and into the cool air of the bathroom. He dried off and wrapped himself in his big terrycloth robe he kept on one of the hooks behind the door.
“You okay?” Uli asked again. “I mean, I didn’t mean to make you kiss me or anything. I don’t understand why I asked.”
Alex sighed. Of course Uli wasn’t interested in him. He’d been caught up in the moment. Uli liked Cutter. Alex knew that.
“It’s okay.” Alex stepped around Uli and stomped over to the fridge. “I’ll make breakfast.”
“Okay.” Uli went into the bathroom and closed the door. “Fuck!” came floating through the door. Alex heard some shuffling and then the door popped open. “Did you take an ice shower?”
“Yeah.”
“Why?”
“I always take cold showers. It helps.”
Uli shook his head, clearly not understanding. “Helps with what? Catching pneumonia?”
“No. When it gets, you know, hard.” Embarrassment heated his face. He wasn’t used to sharing these details.
Ulrich’s mouth opened and closed several times, like he was a new breed of handsome man fish. He grumbled something and almost tripped as he retreated back into the bathroom.
Once Uli came out of the shower, they prepared breakfast in the tiny kitchen. Alex turned on the radio to their favorite alternative rock station. He started mouthing the words to one of Ulrich’s favorite Tokio Hotel’s songs. He handed over the silverware from the drawer that his body blocked from Ulrich’s reach.
“Thanks.” Ulrich pushed past him to set the forks and spoons at their bistro-style table as he sang the final words to “The World Behind My Wall”. Ulrich cheered with glee when the announcer said the station was playing a double block of Tokio Hotel.
Ulrich held up one of the forks as a microphone and jumped up onto the padded chair. He began to sing along to the earliest recorded version of “Monsoon”, which was in Ulrich’s native German. He swayed and gestured with his hands as his guttural accent echoed the words through their small space.
Alex couldn’t resist and let his tenor harmonize with Ulrich’s soulful deeper tones. Happiness erupted in Ulrich’s expression as he let Alex sing several lines solo before joining him again in chorus.
When the song drew to a close, Ulrich tapped Alex on the shoulder before finishing setting the table. “I love that you know the lyrics in German.”
“How could I not?” Seeing the flash of confusion cross over Ulrich’s face, Alex justified his statement. “What self-respecting Tokio Hotel fan doesn’t know the lyrics in German?”
Ulrich snickered as he poured orange juice for himself with a splash of cranberry juice, and cranberry juice for Alex with just a splash of orange juice. Alex brought platefuls of eggs and sausage to the table.
The slice of normalcy allowed Alex to put this morning into perspective. The entire bedroom episode was a fluke. It had to be. Best to pretend it didn’t happen.
Apparently, Uli didn’t get the agenda. He rubbed his hands over Alex’s shoulders as he passed him to sit. As soon as his butt hit the chair, he asked, “So you take cold showers, and you really don’t jerk off?”
Blushing at the direct question, Alex tried to answer him but could only get out, “Right.”
“Aren’t you out of your mind horny?”
Alex shrugged. What did he know? He’d always had nervous energy ready to burn. His privates ached, but he couldn’t force himself to play with his body. Even without his mother ready to beat the crap out of him, the guilt at just thinking about touching himself had never been worth it. But after today…
“Do you want sausage?” Alex held up another link, trying to change the subject.
Uli muttered something like, “I might ask you the same thing,” but he nodded and accepted the link.
Alex found the way the sausage link slid over Ulrich’s lips more erotic than the dirty movie had been. Ignoring that fact, he changed the subject. “So did you finish
The DaVinci Code
?” Ulrich was reading popular books in English to improve his fluency.
“Apple. Screw you. You could have given me a hint.”
Alex chuckled. Ulrich begged him for hints on the riddles within the story, but Alex frustrated him by making him puzzle them out for himself.
Ulrich tried to glare but his eyes sparkled in amusement. “After my transition and it’s safe for us to travel, we’ve got to go to Europe. I want to see the Louvre and we should hit Scotland at the same time. I’ve got see the
Pillar
!”
A pain stabbed Alex but he forced a smiled. “You definitely should go with Cutter…after you’re mated.”
Uli blinked at Alex. “Um, yeah. But…” He hesitated. “I want you there too.”
Chapter Two
What the hell is wrong with me?
The question circled through Uli’s head as he wandered the expansive grounds of the Club Zombie estate. Why did he have such strong feelings for Alex? They were just friends.
He’d been here almost a year now. South Carolina was very green and usually much hotter than Ostringen, Germany, but between his cousin Kai and Alex, he’d not had a moment of homesickness.
Alex was terrific. Of course, when he first met his shy apartment-mate, he’d almost swallowed his tongue. He’d never seen such beauty in a man before. Uli had always found the androgynous look sexy. He quickly found out Alex wasn’t just a pretty face. The man was smart but not a show-off. He was kind, patient, and never laughed when Uli made linguistic errors. Alex’s innocence made Uli want to protect him from others who didn’t appreciate him as a person.
He stared at the pond as the male ducks chased interlopers from their mates. Sometimes, that’s what he felt like. Everyone seemed to be after Alex for his own selfish reasons. No one seemed to look past his model-like appearance. They seemed to get stuck on his long, dark blond hair and classical features that were on the feminine side and never got to his infinitely sweet, innocent soul.
Guilt surfaced. He and Cutter Morgan hadn’t even kissed, and they weren’t even boyfriends yet. He had left for treatment and cell phones were against the facilities rules so they hadn’t even talked in weeks. He knew Cutter was his mate, but Ulrich couldn’t stop feeling a loss at not being Alex’s. And why the hell had he asked for a kiss?
The beautiful boy had quickly become the best friend Uli had ever had, even closer than his cousin Kai. Uli told Alex things he dared not tell anyone else. They had a lot in common. Both enjoyed horror movies, Guitar Hero 5, and the same alternative rock bands. Alex understood him completely.
Maybe they were kindred spirits because they both grew up in abusive households. Back in Germany, Ulrich’s father abused him verbally. After the estate’s owners, Beau and Lafayette, retrieved Kai from Ostrigen, Uli’s father became physically violent too. Pushes and shoves escalated into slaps and smacks. Following the last bout of abuse, the zombies relocated Uli ahead of schedule. If those bruises were the price of freedom, he’d readily pay the fee again.
But poor Alex had suffered much more. Uli didn’t realize how deeply Alex’s scars ran until this morning. The depth of his mother’s insanity was unimaginable, and Alex hadn’t had a Kai to counteract the negativity; he’d absorbed it. Uli’s cousin had protected him from most of his father’s abuse. Alex had had no one.
Uli just wanted to heal Alex and make everything better, but it wasn’t his place.
Frustration erupted within his chest. Why couldn’t he set aside his desire for his apartment-mate? His affection bordered on disloyalty to Cutter.
Cutter and he had shared an instant bond, and Uli had known right away they belonged together. He’d even seen the pairing with his vision, the psychic sense he sometimes had about what fate would bring. His vision never led him astray.