Page 40 of Steady Stroke
He was Emmett Westmore, and he very definitely had a crush on Lincoln.
Lincoln took a measured step toward him, closing the gap to a few inches of air. Air suddenly charged with tension that rippled across Emmett’s skin and settled deep in his belly. Instead of smiling or joking, Lincoln kept his intent gaze laser-focused on him. “Are you attracted to me, Emmett?”
“Yes.”
“Does that scare you?”
“Yes.”
“Can you tell me why?”
Emmett had no idea how to explain his fears to Lincoln when he could barely explain them to himself. They wereirrational. They didn’t make logical sense. And yet he couldn’t shake a sense of dread over the idea of anything happening to Aunt Beatrice or Lincoln because Emmett couldn’t control his desires.
He sat on the edge of the couch, hands dangling loosely between his knees. Lincoln joined him, close without actually touching. “My family was very religious,” Emmett said. He could give Lincoln a version of the truth. “We were taught that homosexuality was a choice, and those who chose to live that way would never enter the gates of heaven. So when I began to have homosexual urges in high school, I ignored them. I did everything I could not to think about boys or to notice boys.”
“I can relate to that a little.” Lincoln’s voice was soft and soothing, a balm on Emmett’s exposed nerves. “My parents put a lot of expectations on me to be successful, get married, carry on the family name. All that typical alpha male bullshit that fathers like to put on their sons. When I figured out for sure that I was gay, I expected disappointment, sure, but not the violence I got handed to me. Sometimes you have to make yourself happy, even if it hurts your parents.”
“I thought that, too, near the end. My senior year I was assigned a research project with an openly gay guy in my class. Eric.” Eric Barnes had been everything that Emilio Sharif could not be: open, comfortable with his sexuality, but still popular enough that he avoided too much public harassment. “We spent a lot of time together, first at the library, and then at Eric’s house. I don’t know how he knew, but one day he leaned across the table and kissed me on the mouth.”
Lincoln’s eyebrows furrowed. “Were you okay with that?”
“I was surprised. I wanted to be angry, except it felt good. Not just kissing someone, but kissing a boy. I told him my parents could never know, and he said he understood. We spent the rest of the hour making out.” The genuinely goodmemory of that afternoon, Eric’s long, lean body pinning him to the dining room carpet, spread warmth through his belly. “The project was due the next day, so it became difficult to find time to be together. We texted and used SnapChat a lot. I liked having a secret. It made me feel important, but I also hated lying to my parents. I hated how disappointed they’d be in me for being with a boy.”
Lincoln’s warm hand covered his knee and squeezed. Emmett didn’t hesitate in covering that hand with his own. He also didn’t protest when Lincoln turned his hand so they could lace their fingers together. Palm to palm. Heat from that touch speared him deep inside, and Emmett ignored the way his dick hardened.
From holding hands.
It wasn’t only that, though. It was from the fact that he trusted Lincoln. He was attracted to Lincoln. And Lincoln smelled amazing—a combination of sweat and cologne and sugar from the doughnut shop.
I want him.
“What happened with Eric?” Lincoln asked.
“During Christmas break, it got a little easier to sneak off together. We’d progressed to hand jobs and blow jobs, but I was the one holding back from going further. I think part of my brain kept rationalizing that as long as we didn’t go full-on anal sex, that it didn’t count. That I wasn’t going to hell for my choices.”
“Hey.” Lincoln squeezed his hand. “If either one of us is going to hell, it’s not for who we choose to fuck. God made the gays, just like he made everyone else.”
“I’m getting better about remembering that, but back then I didn’t have anyone to tell me gay-positive messages besides Eric. I had seventeen years of religious upbringing screaming in my head that I was going to hell, and Eric whispering sweetthings to me in the dark.” Emmett’s story seized up at a point that he wasn’t ready to share yet—a dark part of Emilio’s past that had influenced his next choice. “A few days after Christmas, I agreed to try penetration with Eric.”
“Agreed to?”
He didn’t like the fierce look on Lincoln’s face. “He didn’t force me, I promise. He wanted me to penetrate him, and I think I still found a way to tell myself it was less gay than the other way around. His parents were out of town for the day visiting friends, so I went over to Eric’s house and we had sex.”
Emmett pressed his free hand over his tenting shorts, unable to stop his dick from rising as those memories spilled over him. Touching Eric’s rim for the first time. Pushing a lube-slicked finger into intensely tight heat. Rolling on a condom and having so much trouble he tore the first one. Eric being so patient and sweet with him.
Pressing into Eric’s body, into a tight grip of heat and pulsing muscle, and everything in Emmett had screamed at him how right this was. That this, right here, was everything he’d been missing in his life. His hard dick thrusting into a tight ass, hips snapping, skin slapping. He hadn’t lasted long, but he’d orgasmed harder than he’d ever done in his life.
The entire moment had been perfect.
“It was the most intense thing I’d ever felt,” Emmett said once he’d come down from the high of that memory. “Eric even said he loved me, and I didn’t say it back, but it made me adore him all the more. And it made me realize that yes, I was gay. I couldn’t deny it anymore. Eric wanted me to come out, to tell my parents, and I refused. I was too scared to lose their love and support. We argued and I left.”
The phantom smell of smoke filled his nose, and Emmett coughed. “I saw the smoke in the distance on my way home, but I never imagined that the source was my own house.”
Lincoln gasped.
“I ran inside and tried to save them, but I couldn’t. I fell and got burned pretty bad before the firemen rescued me. Later in the hospital, I found out my parents and sister had died.”
“Christ, Em. You know it wasn’t your fault, right?”
