It was worse when they actually spoke.
Fuck, he loved Dom’s voice. Warm, scratchy, and always tinged with humor. The kind of voice that made him think of sweat-pants Sundays, curled up on the couch in front of an action movie. Or low, gritty murmurs and moans of pleasure in a dark room.
As usual, whenever he let his mind go there, he lost track of anything else he was doing. He had a feeling that voice would sound so good in the dark, it would make him lose his mind. He blinked at the wall, desperate to swing his imagination away from that.
Why the hell had he agreed to go to Dom’s house? His home!
Abe snatched the towel off his shoulder and wiped at the sweat over his brow. The late-June heat was making the humid air thick. He began unplugging tools in his garage. If he was going to continue to work here, he should probably think about putting in air conditioning. He’d taken up creating hand-carved chairs as a hobby, then moved into whimsical window frames after a neighbor had commissioned one for his daughter’s eighth birthday. Nearly every parent who’d attended the little girl’s party had called to order more, and several had gone on to order chairs as well. Word had spread.
At this rate, he could quit the accounting he did part-time altogether.
Though that was his profession, he hadn’t truly enjoyed it since the financial world had gone to shit in 2008.
With his workshop put to rights, he walked through his house for a shower, telling himself with every step that he was just getting clean to be polite after sweating his ass off in his garage most of the day. He wasn’t hoping that Dom would put his hands on his clean skin. Or press his face into his clean neck. Or nibble his way along his jaw to his lips while sliding his hands down his chest to his…fuck, he was going to need to take care of something else while he was in the shower.
Still calling himself a liar forty minutes later, his headlights lit up the cute white brick house he’d been to only once before. The place had surprised him. He’d expected to find Dom in an apartment or an in-town rental. Instead, Dom had invested in an older fixer-upper with lots of personality. Just like the man himself.
Set back in the trees, the house offered privacy on the quaint, heavily wooded street in Mount Airy, not far from the Mount Airy Forest. Dom had told him he bought the place for the old brick-arched doorway leading to the deck and for the backyard full of trees.
Dom surprised him every time he saw him. He came off as a jokester, but there were layers to the man Abe ached to explore.
He parked in the driveway and sat for another moment to mentally put up thick walls around his heart. Tonight, it would be more difficult than usual because Abe had a big birthday coming up. The dreaded five-oh. He’d been dealing with a lot of deep thoughts about his life and where it was going. With his son happily settled down, he felt like he was drifting, and he wasn’t sure why. He had everything he could possibly want. Happy son. A home. A fulfilling hobby. Steady income. What more could he possibly need?
His restlessness was at an all-time high, and Dom’s determination to move beyond friendship was starting to wear him down. Not that he was that resistant—he wasn’t—it was just…he couldn’t get why someone as insanely hot as Dominic Walsh wanted him so badly.
A lot of those deep thoughts lately had been the “What would naked with Dom be like?” kind.…
Fuck, he didn’t know what to do about Dom. His own flip-flopping thoughts were driving him nuts. Dom was a player. No doubt about it. Abe had enjoyed a few one-night stands following his divorce from his wife years ago, but he wasn’t interested in hooking up these days. He’d never really enjoyed casual sex. He liked having an emotional attachment to the person. To wake up the next morning and smile to see them lying on the other pillow, just waiting to make plans to see each other again.
But being in a near-constant state of arousal around Dom was driving him insane. Of course, this state wasn’t new—not since Dom had spent a few days guarding him last year. Dom didn’t seem to feel shirts were always necessary, and his years of training and martial arts had honed his body into a ripped fighting machine.
Attraction to men wasn’t a new experience for Abe either. His first boner had arrived in the boys’ gym locker room, his second while watching cheerleaders practicing the very next day. He’d known he was bisexual before a lot of people believed it was a real sexuality.