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THE SOUND OF TRAFFIC woke Bo up, which was unusual, because all traffic in his neighborhood wound slowly up and down the hill, making sure not to sideswipe parked cars. Then something soft and entirely pleasant wiggled against his morning wood and Bo realized his left arm was pinned.
His right arm was pinned too.
Another wiggle. And the smell of sex. A car horn honked obnoxiously downstairs. That too was weird. His neighbors knew better than that.
He cracked his eyes open, fighting against the haze of fatigue and the bits of goo that normally dried into the proverbial sand in his eyes.
He focused on the white popcorn ceiling with derision. Only cheap rentals had popcorn ceilings. That, or the dreaded acoustic tiles. The walls were beige, and the one window had a bright-colored, silky fabric hanging off the curtain rod. More fabric was pinned to the walls around him with thumbtacks. Long rectangles arranged into fanciful shapes and dyed to match all the colors of the rainbow, plus all the ones in-between. Some had a running strip of gold that shimmered in the morning light.
The shimmer reminded him of the curious, girly-shit sparkly top Eli Winkler wore to the club the night before. And then it hit him like a sledge-hammer.
He was in Eli’s bed.
Eli was rubbing his ass against his dick.
Worse, he was spooning Eli like he was a cherished lover, and Eli was holding his hand to his chest.
Memories of rain-wet clothes, hot kisses, and pleasure poured in all at once. Bo was in bed with the sexy nerd from work. The sexy nerd who danced like a dream, the one who was way out of Bo’s league. This was heartbreak waiting to happen, which was why Bo wasn’t getting involved. Not on that level, no siree.
And he had to piss.
“Sorry,” he whispered. He was so close he could smell Eli’s skin, a fact that reminded him of Eli’s amazing and incredible kink for his armpits. Just thinking that brought Bo’s lips closer to Eli’s naked shoulder, and closer still – until he realized he was about to kiss him like it mattered.
And he had already established he wasn’t getting involved.
“Gotta piss,” Bo rasped. Eli let go of him, Bo slid his right arm from under Eli’s head and slid off the bed.
“Where’s the bathroom?”
“Across the hall.” Eli turned toward him. He looked up to him with a sweet smile and eyes that were warm and brown, like molten milk chocolate. Eli’s gaze slid down Bo’s body, then back up again. “That looks promising.”
“Be right back.” Bo escaped Eli’s scrutiny, found the little bathroom, and did his business. It wasn’t easy and he had to back away from the john and aim. How much did he have to drink last night that he had ended up in Eli’s bed?
He stood there, draining his lizard, and counting. He had a beer with dinner, but that was just a Bud. Then there was water before the gig, water during the gig, lots of ice-cold, blue Gatorade that Eli had brought for them, and that ginger ale with bitters.
He’d been stone cold sober, and he still ended up in Eli’s bed.
Was he crazy?
He shook his head and flushed. Crazy. Only when he was washing his hands he noticed this weird impression in his forearm. It was round and semi-circular, but not really round. More like... squished in a regular sort of way.
“Can I come in?” Eli said as he knocked on the door. “I gotta go, too.”
“Yeah,” Bo said, still checking out the new feature on his arm, wondering where it came from, when Eli slipped in behind him and proceeded to take a leak.
“What’s wrong with your arm?” Eli finished up, flushed, and peeked over to see Bo run his finger over the inside of his forearm. So he showed him.
“Oh, cute! I left an ear print on you.” He rubbed his shoulder, frowned, and angled toward the mirror to have a better look. “Better than biting you, I guess. Wow, you sure left your mark!”
It was a bite, no doubt about it, and it was bruising quite nicely. “Shit, did I do that?”
“Yeah,” Eli said.
“I’m sorry,” Bo said, frowning hard. “I don’t remember.”
“You came real hard.” Mischievous smile lit up Eli’s features.
“I remember that.” Oh boy, did he ever. And now he felt bad. “Does it hurt?”
Eli shrugged and rubbed it.
“It does, huh?” Damn. Now what? He wasn’t getting involved. He wasn’t kissing it all better – and why was that the first thing that came to his mind? “So... what can I do to help with that?” Ice. Definitely ice. Maybe some ibuprofen.
“Come back to bed, and we’ll figure something out.” Eli leaned up and kissed his cheek. “I didn’t even get to suck you.”
How could he say no to that?
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AFTER A MOST SATISFYING frolic and mutual exploration, Eli plopped back into his pillows with a long sigh. “That was sublime. Except for the purple fuzz part. If I could undo anything about what happened since last night, it would be contaminating my white bed with purple towel fuzz.” He turned toward Bo and propped himself up on his elbow. “Sorry about that. I just never bought new towels before, and I didn’t expect that.”
Bo slid him a glance that was both languid and amused. “How could you never buy towels?”
“My mom. She got me all set up with their old ones. They were used just for guests, so they were practically new. Except for the fuzz.”
“And they wore out, and you went shopping,” Bo deadpanned.
“No. She got me white. Every time I showered I felt like I was in a hospital! I like purple. And red. Orange, too. Blue... you know, I absolutely love those blue airport runway lights we make. Every time I fly from now on, I’ll be thinking of you gathering glass and dropping the gob into the mold, and the guys pressing it, making it pretty.”
Huh. Bo’s eyebrows went up at this unexpected interpretation of his job. They way Eli said it, he sounded almost admiring. He was tempted to ask about that, but figured that would be pushing his luck.
Eli’s love of color, though. “So you like working at Zimm’s because the colors of the glass are pretty?” He tried to say it in a teasing tone, but the question came out as entirely serious. Bo had been known to stick around afterhours with one of the older guys, just to mess around with blowing glass vases and bowls and overweight Christmas ornaments. Glass was beyond pretty. It was fickle, fascinating, beautiful.
“That’s one reason,” Eli said. “There’s also this one gatherer who’s really good about putting his punty in the glory hole.”
Ugh. And they didn’t even get that far. Too bad, because Bo would’ve loved a chance to fuck Eli. Or get fucked. Since he wasn’t getting involved, though, he was out of luck. Time to divert.
“So since you like color, you have all this fabric on the walls?”
“They’re all silk I brought back from Asia. Thailand, mostly. I only passed through, but it was awesome.”
“Really? Tell me about it.” Bo was surprised to find he was genuinely interested. Travel, foreign lands, the work that was required to set up a Cambodian village with running water, or just clean water. Or just water.
Then there was the taking of a shower – together, to save water, which they didn’t – and a lunch afterward.
Bo didn’t make it home till almost dinnertime.
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BO WAS PERFECT. ELI was floating on a cloud of pheromones and happiness. He hadn’t felt like that with anyone, ever. Not with Matt and Jeff (separately or together.) Not with his high school boyfriend, his two college boyfriends and the dance-scene hook-ups between them. Asia was just Matt and Jeff, of course, but afterwards, in the lab, there was this older PhD he kept company for a few weeks – but that wasn’t the same. Too left-brained.
Bo was shy and bold, sensitive and tough, smart and physical. He barely spoke a word at work, but he was a powerful presence on stage. The dichotomy of his personality fascinated Eli, but that was only half of it. Bo didn’t assume Eli’s ass was the main course just because Eli was a dancer. Eli hated that assumption. Liking pretty colors and glamorous bling on his stage clothes had nothing to do with bending over. His artistic expression was entirely separate from all that, and had he not hurt his hip flexor in his junior year of college, he might have been a performing arts major and chemistry minor, instead of the other way around.
Bo had stayed over. He didn’t run screaming from Eli’s prized collection of silks, he had turned the purple towel fuzz incident into Easter candy jokes, and he ate Eli’s lunch with genuine appreciation.
And Eli let him stay as long as he wanted. He’d even skipped his Pilates class at PBT, and the Pittsburg Ballet Theatre school had a kickass series of open floor classes, and a professional gym with all the equipment for private Pilates lessons. Considering how hard it had been to even enter another dance school – let alone PBT – after his years away from dance, Eli knew staying home to feed Bo lunch was a major sacrifice.
But worth it.
Bo wanted to know everything about Eli, and Eli shared what he thought was relevant. He wanted to know more about Bo, too, but there was something magical about having Bo’s gaze fixed on him in utter fascination, and all those old stories of Cambodian monsoon season and Thai markets and the horrors of Vietnamese garment factories spilled out like water.
Bo had smelled perfect, too. Eli’s shoulders tensed at the memory of his scent in an effort to suppress a shudder. Then he put away the last lunch dishes and ran off to the bedroom, where the bed was still unmade and smelling of sex and pleasure and Bo.
Eli picked up Bo’s pillow, pressed his face into it, and inhaled.
It was still there.
Traces of heat, like the glass-melting furnace. Soft, like his skin with its salty tang under Eli’s tongue. Musky. The muskiness was the best part. Eli had been called a cat before, for reasons both good and bad, and he’d learned to own his cattiness with pride. But if he was a cat, then Bo was his catnip.
And then it struck him. “Bo.” Like, B-O. Body Odor.
He giggled into the pillow. What kind of a name was Bo, anyway? He’d ask Bo on Monday. Today he’d just go for a short run and follow up with a core workout at home. Tomorrow he’d explore Pittsburgh. Now that he found Bo, he’d resolved to make the quirky small city his home.