Free Bowl Full of Cherries by Raine O'Tierney

did. Guys jerked off. But why? Just casually aroused or…? Rell couldn’t have been affected by the massage earlier, could he? He’d seemed so calm about it, continuing to rub Crowley’s back with professional hands. And it had been hours since it had happened.
    After Rell had finished the massage, Crowley continued to lie on his stomach, pretending that he was sleepy. He really just didn’t want to roll over.
    Rell’s hands had been even better than he could have possibly imagined. No one had ever touched him like that. No one had ever felt his bare skin like that. For just a moment, he let himself slip into a fantasy where Rell enjoyed giving the massage, where he was turned on by Crowley’s back, his warmth, his skin….
    He rolled over, felt the cool metal casing of his phone against his arm, and dug it out. He didn’t mean to check. If there was anything that could make his mood any worse, it was checking his cell. But it was habit now. New messages from Tyler: he was lamenting the snow, telling Crowley where the cool parts of Susset were, and there were three different messages cursing Rell. There was nothing from his mother, though.
    What did it matter? Even if she’d changed her mind, tomorrow was two days until Christmas. Even with his flight credit, all the planes would be full. And would he want to go?
    He sighed at the thought.
    He loved her. Of course he wanted to go.
    Of course…?
    The Lang household was fun and full of bustling energy. The kids made certain everyone on the block knew they owned the house. Running up and down the stairs, shouting at each other, laughing loudly, playing. They were high on sugar and an impending visit from Santa Claus. And despite no less than four different adults shouting at them to “Settle!” they carried on.
    Earlier in the day, when Rell showed him around the house, the youngest of the kids had walked right up to Crowley and shoved his mother’s iPhone into Crowley’s face.
    “Can you beat this level for me?” he asked earnestly.
    Crowley had looked down at the phone. The screen was smudged with fingerprints.
    “Sure,” he said and sat down beside the small child and showed him what to do.
    The last man had just fallen when the boy grabbed the phone and shouted to his siblings in the next room, “I beat it!”
    Now, Crowley shuffled his phone from palm to palm and closed his eyes. Doubts assaulted him mercilessly. Doubts about his family, doubts about Rell, and doubts about himself.
    He shouldn’t have freaked out in the kitchen.
    If there was a glimmer of a speck of hope that Rell would ever think Crowley could be anything but his brother’s friend, he couldn’t go off like that. Crowley cringed. The feel of Rell’s legs around him. Tight. Pulling. Mindlessly playful. Thank God the sandwich had made him a little nauseous, otherwise he might have stumbled forward and grabbed Rell into a kiss. That would have been a million times worse.
    He could never admit it out loud, not even to Tyler, but Crowley Fredericks, at twenty-two, hadn’t actually ever kissed anyone before. Stumbling into Rell in the kitchen, stealing a playful kiss at the sink, wouldn’t have been a bad first time. He wondered what Rell would have done? Kissed him back? Taught him how to move his lips, what to do with his tongue? Grabbed him and twined his fingers up in Crowley’s hair? Jesus, the thought of their lips touching, moving, melding together…. It was enough to get a guy hard, which—as the bedroom door came open—Crowley realized he was. Years of inopportune hard-ons had given him the reflexes of a cat. He rolled over on his side, facing the upper trundle mattress.
    There was a moment of silence, no movement in the room at all. And then he heard the door close and felt Rell step on the edge of his trundle to climb up into bed.
    God, he would have given anything to be the fantasy that moved Rell’s hand.

Chapter 8

     
    T HE PHONE rang ten separate times the next