Free Shawn's Law by Renae Kaye Page B

was walking a knife-edge of uncertainty. Swimming with Harley would mean that more of my not-so-muscly body was on display. I knew what was attractive in men. Not only was I gay and attracted to the masculinity of the male body, I also painted nude and seminude men as a hobby. The pale, flabby, hairy bodies of shorter-than-average, not-quite-middle-aged men weren’t sexy.
    The upside of swimming with Harley would be that he’d take his shirt off again. Now that I was more relaxed around him, I didn’t know how to suggest that he remove the shirt he’d put on. Purely for his sake, of course. My eyes having a perv would be secondary.
    “Trunks?” Harley questioned. “Trunks belong on elephants.”
    And without warning he yanked the knot of his sarong and dropped the material on the ground. As I had predicted, there was no underwear gracing his body, so when he pulled his shirt over his head, he was standing in front of me completely nude.
    The blood in my body headed south.
    He didn’t have the body of someone who religiously worked out in the gym on a daily basis. He was simply lean from a good diet and active lifestyle. His belly was flat and he had only a sprinkling of light brown hair across his pecs. His legs were long and attractively toned, and—my favorite—not a single tan line crisscrossed his body. Yes. This man had done plenty of nude sunbathing.
    “C’mon,” he called as he walked unselfconsciously to the water’s edge. “Don’t be shy.” He arched a perfect dive into the pool, barely making a splash as he entered. He disappeared from sight but that was one image engraved in my memory banks forever.
    If Kris wanted me to draw an anatomically correct picture of Harley, I now could.
    I now would. Just as soon as you can stand up and walk out that front door without embarrassing yourself .
    Harley surfaced with a flick of his head and turned back toward me. “C’mon, Shawn. It’s absolutely gorgeous in.”
    “Ahh….”
    Maybe the Alzheimer’s gene had been passed on to me, because I had certainly lost the ability to speak.
    “Don’t be shy. You don’t have anything I haven’t seen before.”
    Harley’s smile wasn’t helping my erection issue. I leaned forward and placed my elbows on my knees, hoping to hide my reaction from him. “I don’t think—”
    “Please?” he pleaded. “I’ll keep to my end of the pool if you want me to, but can you please give a guy a little teaser?”
    My sluggish brain struggled to make sense of that. I looked at him with shocked eyes and blurted, “You mean you want to see me naked?”
    That beautiful smile widened even further. “Shit, yeah. Of course I do.”
    “But—why?” I was aghast.
    Laughter greeted my reaction. “Because I’m gay,” Harley chuckled. “Because I’m attracted to you. Because you make me horny. Because you’ve been driving me nuts for months.”
    “But—why?” I could’ve slapped myself for sounding like a broken record. That is, if I had the power to move my own hand. My body seemed to be frozen.
    More laughter floated across the water. “If you get in the pool I’ll tell you,” he promised me with a throaty growl.
    Get in. Pool. Without clothes. Erection.
    That could be a problem.
    “Ahh… maybe in a bit,” I hedged. “I think I need to digest my meal a bit more.”
    One of the problems with being gay is you can’t hide things. Literally.
    Harley was still smiling and laughing at me. “Do you think I don’t know what your problem is? Why do you think I got in the pool first? I’m just thinking about you getting naked and I’m half-hard.”
    That wasn’t helping. “Telling me you’re hard is not going to help my problem go away, now is it?” I said through gritted teeth.
    But he was earthy and honest. “I don’t want your ‘problem’ to go away,” he admitted. “Thanks to a not-so-attractive flasher the other night, I didn’t get to meet your ‘problem’ so I got shortchanged. Now hurry up,