Ian Chambers has a problem: his new roommate is the hottest guy he’s ever met. He’s also, quite possibly, the straightest guy on earth. He also insists on wearing boxer shorts a size too big, perpetually sagging down his perfectly-sculpted waist and showing off his miraculous tan lines. When a friend suggests maybe he’s doing it on purpose, Ian can’t get the thought out of his mind. But he can’t hit on a straight guy, can he?
Beau Collins has never lived with a gay man before, but he certainly can’t deny his attraction to his sexy new roommate. Ian is small, pale, slight, and beguiling, but Beau must admit he has a huge boy crush. He just isn’t sure what to do with it or how to propose doing something about it.
When he finally does, Ian takes it wrong and the whole thing goes astray. Or does it? Will two boys with broken hearts, trust issues and a boat load of baggage finally find a home in each other? Or will their burgeoning love story fade faster than a summer tan?
“To the living room, obviously.”
Beau watched him slink away, Ian keenly aware of the big lug’s eyes watching his every move. It made him feel self-conscious about his pale, soft body, and not for the first time. Which was odd, because sweet, sexy Beau had never made him feel anything other than, well ... sweet and sexy himself.
Still, he thought to himself, inching into the living room. Old habits and such.
Beau’s voice called out from the kitchen, sounding vulnerable, even wounded. “But ... I thought ...”
“I know.” Ian’s voice was a leaden croak, to match the knot of desire cinching in his taut belly. “I just ... maybe if we slow things down, we can come to our senses before we do something you might regret later?”
Beau nodded, following him into the living room and noting the blue and white striped Boxer Bros delivery bag from the day before. Jesus, Ian mused as they stood on opposite sides of the coffee table. Had it only been one day since he’d fallen head over heels for his straight-as-nails roommate?
“I have my senses,” Beau insisted, tearing the package open and yanking out the pair of boxers nestled carefully inside. “All of them, on full lock and load at this very moment.”
“Well, I don’t,” Ian croaked, watching as Ian dragged the towel from his shoulder and cinched it, ever so loosely, around his lean, rippled waist. “Not even a little, so ... a breather for me then?”
“Fine,” Beau said with a curt little nod, wriggling beneath the towel until his baggies slithered down his long, shapely legs, disrobing the way surfers might at a beach access, hovering around the trunk of their car. “Let’s take a breather and get our wits about us before Phase 2, okay?”
He unfurled the boxers, a soft shade of pink covered in little brown circles. Bending over at the waist, Ian watched, mesmerized, as Beau wriggled and danced and rose again, the boxers sliding on just as the towel fell off. In the brief moment of transition, towel down, boxers (almost) up, Ian nearly gulped aloud at the swath of almost shocking white tan line that emerged, interrupted only by the base of a smooth, fat cock topped by the furry bush of an almost primal jock.
He turned, as if the scene was too intimate, reaching for the terry cloth robe he’d slung over the shoulder of his chair after discarding it on the way to the pool earlier that night. Cinching it loosely around his waist he, too, slid his baggies down and wriggled until he turned, semi-dressed across from his sagging-pants roommate.
“Hockey pucks?” Ian asked, picking his beer back up and waving it at Beau as he sank onto the edge of the couch across from him. “On your boxers, I mean?”
Beau’s face crumpled adorably until he glanced down at his lap and smiled once more. “Donuts, silly,” he explained, pointing to several of the little brown circles nestled atop his thigh. “Chocolate frosted, naturally.”
Ian chuckled too hard, too long, too loudly as he wriggled back into his beat-up recliner. It felt deliciously wicked to sit this way, naked under the robe, semi-hard and fully horny, the soft, furry robe clinging to his fevered flesh. “Of course they’re donuts.”
“What?” Beau teased, sinking back into his own chair before quaffing a sip of his beer distractedly. “You don’t approve?”
“I’ve always approved,” Ian admitted, ignoring the warmth of the sudden blush that rose to his face or the twitch of his low hanging blue balls. “Of your saggy ass boxer shorts.”
“Could have fooled me,” Beau groused, tossing one arm casually across the back of the couch to reveal the soft, chocolate brown wisps of damp hair that had been hiding underneath.
“Beau, honestly?” Ian heard himself say, pulling his eyes from the sexy strip of armpit to meet Beau’s playfully scowling eyes. “Just because you’ve tapped into your inner Horn Dog all of a sudden doesn’t mean I knew what you wanted going into all this.”
“You had to suspect, Ian,” Beau blurted. “With me strutting around with half my ass showing before bed every night.”
“Beau, you say that now but if I’d hit on you rather than the other way around, you would have run screaming!”
Beau blushed, nodding agreeably. “Maybe that first night, sure. I was uncertain, afraid of ...”
“Me?” Ian blurted, hardly believing a big lug like Beau could be scared of a pasty ass nerd like himself. Or anyone, for that matter.
“Not of you, in particular,” Beau assured him, belly flat and endless atop the waistband of his charming pink boxers, sagging predictably as if clinically designed to tease him with that soft, pale strip of tan line just beneath. “But afraid of the way you made me feel.”
“Made you feel?” Ian was incredulous. “You barely looked at me until ... until last night, as I recall?”
“You’ve never heard of playing hard to get?”
“Hard? Yes. Impossible? Never.”
