“Why, Leo? You’re beautiful, don’t you know that?”

Leo blushed a little less and met Grant’s eyes a little more. “How would I, Grant? No one’s ever told me that before.”

“Well you are,” Grant insisted, his voice soft but serious. “I knew it the minute I first saw you. I hate to admit, but I’ve thought of nothing else since.”

You and me both, Leo thought to himself, thickening all the more in his borrowed boxer shorts.

“Why?” he croaked out loud, voice struggling to keep out all the emotions he was feeling, here in this strange house. Here in the middle of the night.

“Why what?”

“Why do you hate to admit it?” Leo pressed.

Grant shrugged, as if surprised by the question. “I’m trying to behave myself here,” he insisted.

“Could have fooled me,” Leo blurted, remembering the way Grant had aroused him in 4,962 ways since he’d woken up on the couch that very morning.

“I said trying,” Grant insisted. “You’re a guest here. In my house. I want you to feel comfortable, not ... pressured into anything.”

Leo shook his head. “The only pressure I’m feeling right now, Grant, is the knot in my belly whenever I’m around you.”

Grant brightened, smile widening beneath the pale moonlight. “You feel that, too?”

Leo seemed to sag against the door jam, as if all the resolve had just been drained from his taut, wiry body. “I’ve felt it all my life, actually. Or, at least, since I started liking ...”

“Other guys?” Grant prodded.

Leo merely nodded, no longer afraid to be himself. Here, alone in the dark with Grant. “It’s so hard, when you can’t be yourself. When you’re afraid all the time, of someone finding out. Of the guy you’re crushing on not ... not playing for the same team as you. Of finding out and telling everyone and ... not being able to share who you are with someone like you.”

“It’s just me tonight, Leo. Just me and you. I’m here for as much or as little as you want.”

“I want it all,” Leo insisted. “Every experience I’ve denied myself for so long.”

“So long?” Grant chuffed, as if he hadn’t been listening to Leo. At all. “You’re still just a kid.”

“Nineteen,” Leo huffed. “Twenty in a few months. I’m not a kid, Grant. And I’m here. Like you said. I came to you. I made the choice. I want this ... more than you know. I’ve wanted it all my life.”

“So what’s so different now?”

“I feel safe here,” Leo insisted, as if to himself. “Here, alone, with you.”

Grant nodded, the room growing quiet as his eyes roved up and down Leo’s body. “I want you to feel safe, Leo. If this is going to happen, for you, for me, you should feel safe. Secure. Free to be who you really are, with someone who sees you for who you really are.”

Leo nodded, wriggling against the door opening. “Speaking of seeing me,” he murmured, admiring the way Grant admired him. He’d never felt so seen before, so watched or coveted or, to hear Grant tell it, even adored. “Tell me what you saw this morning. On the couch.”

Grant smiled, as if noting the challenge in Leo’s tremulous voice. In reply, he let his eyes drift up and down Leo’s body, and not for the first time. “I saw a young man, smooth and pale and soft, so soft I couldn’t wait to run my fingers all over him ...”

Leo swallowed. Hard. And got even harder where it counted the most. “Damn, okay ...”

“I kept waiting for your eyes to flutter open and catch me standing there,” Grant confessed, voice still soft and low to match the dreamy, moonlit mood in his bedroom. “But the longer you stayed asleep, the longer I just stood there, watching you, studying you, every inch of you ...”

Leo remained where he stood, heart pounding so loud he was surprised he could hear Grant’s tumbling, flattering words. “I’m right here, Grant.”