“Your call, gorgeous,” he said, not wanting to push her, but knowing that if Keats dialed up the charm, Georgia might find him hard to resist. Colby clearly wasn’t doing well with that particular temptation, and Keats had been anything but charming toward him. Plus, he had a feeling that Georgia had watched Colby’s threesomes with more than a passing interest.
She sighed. “You’ve got my head spinning, Colby Wilkes.”
“Good.” He tugged on one of her curls. “Come over for dinner tonight.”
“Don’t you think you and Keats need to talk this out? I’ll be in the way.”
He grimaced.
She poked him in the chest again. “Don’t be such a man. The guy just had his first boy-on-boy kiss. And you made out with your former student. That stuff needs to be discussed, or he’s going to end up running away again. He might be packing his bags already.”
Colby looked to the sky, feeling the weight of all of it. “I’ll handle it.”
Though he wasn’t sure what he was more afraid of finding once he got back to his house—Keats regretting the kiss and backtracking.
Or Keats not . . .
TWENTY
Keats was sitting on the living room couch with his head back and arm over his eyes when he heard Colby walk back in. He felt sick to his stomach and couldn’t stop bouncing his knee. It’d taken everything he had to sit here and not to jump on his bike and bail.
“You okay?” Colby asked, his deep voice uncharacteristically quiet.
Keats didn’t ope
n his eyes. “Did I mess things up for you with Georgia?”
“No. Not at all.”
He lowered his arm at that. “You’re kidding, right?”
Colby leaned against the wall. He’d put on a shirt before coming in here. Maybe he’d wanted the protection since Keats had basically mauled him in the kitchen.
“She’s watched me through my bedroom window for a year. Seeing me with someone else wasn’t that shocking to her. And she’s been very up-front that she’s not looking for a serious relationship. So we’re good.”
Keats shook his head. “Even if she’s okay with you seeing other people, she doesn’t care that you’re bi? Doesn’t that freak women out?”
“Sure, it can freak some women out. A lot of women, actually. But Georgia already knew that about me. She thinks it’s kind of hot.”
Keats stared at him for a second, processing that. “Unbelievable. Where do you find women like her?”
“Next door, apparently.”
Keats snorted. “Lucky you.”
“Yes. Lucky. Georgia is a special woman with a very open mind. She’s not judging anybody. Including you.”
“Right.”
Quiet crept in between them even though their gazes held, and Keats’s stomach twisted again.
Colby rubbed a hand over the back of his head. “Well, if you’re all right, I need to grab a shower, so—”
“I’m really sorry about, you know, everything. I don’t know what I was thinking.” He wiped his damp palms on his jeans. “I wasn’t thinking.”
He’d never planned to kiss Colby. He’d only wanted to ask if he could go to the resort Colby worked for to figure shit out. But when he’d realized Colby was shutting him out, trying to set him up with some stranger, he’d reacted on instinct, wanting to show Colby he wasn’t scared. Keats had needed to know if the urges he was feeling were real. And unlike the last time he’d performed a sneak attack on his former teacher, this time he’d known what he was doing—at least in theory. Colby’s beard and the aggressive edge to the kiss had been an altogether different sensation than kissing the soft, pliant mouth of a woman, but the way Keats’s body had responded had been far too familiar.
And when he’d felt Colby get hard against his thigh, his thoughts had smashed into a ten-car pileup in his head. He’d never had the desire to touch any dick but his own until that moment. His hand had flexed, itching to slide between them and see what it’d be like to touch Colby that way. But chasing that desire was also a deep, cold fear of what was on the other side of that line. Was he really ready to go there? Kissing a guy, even touching one—those things he could probably write off as experimentation or misguided moments. But what Colby would want if Keats started something with him would leave no room for Keats to rationalize. He had no doubt who would be the one getting fucked in that scenario.