Free Look Closer: No Safe Words Here 1-4 out of 5. Boxed Set by Mercy Walker

erection, I clasped my hand around the base of his throat and squeezed.
    Not hard enough to cut off his air supply and asphyxiate him…nowhere even close…but with enough pressure that I could feel every labored breath he drew into his lovely lungs.
    And yes, god dam it, Tom Sherwood was the loveliest, most beautiful man I had ever met…
    And a sad sinking feeling squirmed up into my chest.  A knowledge, dark and true and brutal, that no matter how many times I was with Tom, or how many times we said we loved each other, he would never be completely mine.
    He was hiding too well.  And the town of Tempe needed him too much to risk coming out publically.
    I watched breathlessly as Tom came, his hips thrusting madly up into me as he filled the condom stuffed deep up my ass.
    I slid bonelessly sideways off his lap, his cock sliding out roughly from my well worn butt.  I fell over on my back, my arm crossed over his, and I groaned, sated and heartbroken.
    He would never truly be mine…
    He rolled over, his torso pinning me on my back as he slowly kissed me, our lips parting and caressing, our tongues rubbing and searching.  When he pulled back from the kiss, I was even more breathless than when I’d shot my load, and he had this possessive, wolf-like grin on his face.
    He hadn’t gotten the memo: he considered me his, body and soul.
    It was a pretty lie.
     
     
     
     
    Chapter Eleven
    Michael
     
     
    I knelt by my bedroom window, lost in shadows, and watched my neighbor ass fuck the boy I was in love with.  It sucked, but I wouldn’t have missed it for the world.  I hated Tom Sherwood because he got to have sex with Marcus Wilkes more often than I got to jack off…but I was hard, and I’d been jacking myself off to the sight of them screwing their brains out for the last hour.
    I’d shot my load against the robin’s egg blue semi-gloss that had adorned my room since I was twelve.
    Shit, what I was feeling right then was a dichotomy of lethal emotions.
    It might have helped if I’d ever dated before, had ever kissed another boy, or had ever even gotten to first, second or third base.  But I was as virgin as virgin got.  Capital “V” virgin.  And with the way I was hiding what I was, and that I wanted the best friend I’d ever had to be my boyfriend…well, I wasn’t changing that whole virgin thing any time soon.
    I blame it on Cynthia Hyatt, who worked at Shaw and Locke Jewelers when I was nine years old.  I was in the store with my mother—she was picking up her engagement ring from being cleaned earlier that week. Cynthia was an old friend of mom’s, and they were chatting for at least ten minutes when the woman saw that I was zoned out and staring like a zombie at a cluster of topaz and diamond rings.
    “When were you born?” the robust red head asked.
    I raised my head proudly and raddled off my birthday: “August Thirtieth.  I’m a Leo.” Just like my mom.  Mom was forged out of iron, and appreciatively referred to as a bitch to those who crossed her.
    Cynthia clucked her tongue and folded her arms under her ample bosom, all the while shaking her head piteously.
    “Then you’re not a Leo, Mikey.”
    I fucking hated being called Mikey, by anyone—it was even spelled out in glitter on my Christmas stocking.
    My mother looked down at me, disapproval clear in her expression.  “Well what the hell is he then?”
    A leading question if I’d ever heard one…if not a rather good one.  Later on in my short, bitter life, I would soon figure out I was gay—not bi-sexual, or gay adjacent, nor hetero-flexible (whatever all that bullshit meant). 
    I was gay gay.  I was gay to the tenth power, to the ump degree.
    And I was a freaking Virgo. 
    Cynthia had trotted over to the key chain display and plucked one from the horoscope section.  She daintily held it out to my mother, who took it, examined it, silently lip reading what it said to herself, before frowning and tersely shoving the