Riley grabbed the bars of the headboard and arched his body into the touch. It was so dark. He didn't know if the darkness was because it was night, or if he wore a blindfold. In the midst of overwhelming pleasure, he found he couldn't bring himself to care.
Other than the mouth on the bare flesh of his chest, teasing his aching nipples, there was no touch to his body. Had he given in to a male or female lover? His mind wouldn't concentrate enough to allow him to either remember or find out. A bite, just hard enough, made him arch up again, whimpering at the delicious sensation that burned through him.
Finally, a hand stroked at his hip. How he wanted to see whom that hand belonged to! Its touch didn't help with identification, as it seemed to be covered by a glove of softest silk. Riley tried to twist, to bring his throbbing hardness into the touch, but the anonymous hand held him in place. The pressure of the torturing hand didn't feel very strong and he didn't understand his inability to move.
"Please, touch me! Please! I need...you have to..."
Riley didn't know how much more he could stand. His entire body cried out for satisfaction, sweat dripped from every pore under the cruel torture. The most wonderfully cruel torture that increased as the mouth wandered down his chest towards his navel. Muscles clenched and quivered, anticipating each caress, desperate for more.
He couldn't feel anything but smoothness where the chin made contact with his skin, so he determined his lover was female. The span of the fingers around his hip was wide, indicating the breadth of a man. Confusion reigned until Riley decided he didn't care if the anonymous figure was man or woman, or even one of each. All he wanted was for them – for one of them? – to help him find his release.
The low groan when the roving tongue encountered the pool of pre-cum on his stomach finally answered the question of gender. The person touching and arousing him to previously unknown levels was definitely a man. A man Riley admitted was quite knowledgeable in the art of making love.
Having that confirmation had an unexpected effect on Riley. All his pleasure receptors seemed to freeze up, one by one. It came about gradually, unnoticed by his partner until that one hand left his hip and moved around to his ass. As soon as the fingers began to dip into his crease, Riley launched himself to the side, rolling away with a shout of fear.
The impact with the floor brought Riley awake and he lay there for a moment, blinking in confusion.
What the hell?
It was only a dream. He waited for a moment, lungs laboring to draw breath and skin tingling with arousal, before reaching up for the clock. Damn, he'd only slept for an hour. He remembered now coming home from the meeting with Jacob, and seeing Sara kissing Derek on the street, and falling straight into bed. Cursing and wincing at the slight pain from hitting the floor with his elbow and hip, Riley decided to get a start on opening a file for the Baxter investigation.
He plugged in his earphones and booted up the laptop, settling in at the desk in the living room to begin one of the lists he lived by when working. In spite of the realism of the dream, Riley refused to dwell on it and on what it might mean. It meant nothing. Dreams didn't always have to have some deep meaning that needed to be investigated and analyzed, he reassured himself. They simply were, even if they left him achingly hard in spite of the less than arousing ending.
******
Sara Ward slid into the apartment later that Saturday afternoon and looked around. Riley was sitting at the desk in the living room, headphones on as he listened to music while working. She sighed and walked over to him, gently laying a hand on his shoulder to announce her presence.
He darted a quick look in her direction before saving his work and pulling off the headphones. "Hey, I wasn't expecting you."
"I'm so sorry about earlier, Ry. If I'd known you were going to be there, I would never..."
"It's all right. I should have known that kind of deception wouldn't work for long. It was nice of Derek to go along with it at all."
Sara went to start fixing their dinner and Riley followed her. They'd been rooming together since he started working for her father's agency and they quickly became fast friends. He tried, in the beginning, to keep his distance, but she was very nice and he soon found himself confiding in her.
If there was one thing about Sara, it was that she didn't pull her punches. She told him straight out that he acted like an emotional girl towards Blue. She agreed that Blue hadn't used the best judgment, but he hadn't deserved the way Riley treated him. Her favorite word was 'communicate'. There weren't many problems or disagreements that couldn't be solved by both parties being willing to talk them through.
Riley was actually surprised when Sara agreed to pretend to be his fiancée when he called her after seeing Jacob walking along the sidewalk. She promised to meet him there and act the part, and he'd been happy to see her during his conversation with Jacob. When he asked her about it while they drank their coffee, Sara said that it was his decision what to tell others of his sexuality, and only for that she would help him out.
"What were you meeting with him again for, anyway?" She placed a plate of Irish Stew in front of him and poured out some wine.
"He's the lawyer from Foster, Delaney and Foster I have to work with," he muttered, still having trouble believing his luck. "I lost my temper with him when he said that a private investigator should be '...big and bulky. It can be a dangerous job and a person has to be able to handle himself in any kind of risky situation that might come up'. I almost walked out, but decided against it and things weren't too bad afterwards."
"He said that, did he? I wonder what his reaction would've been if I'd been assigned that case!"
The two of them laughed as they imagined it and dug into their meal. It was their custom not to talk about anything work-related while eating, so they discussed recent movies and where to go out that night. Riley spared a private thought for the work he needed to get done, but decided he would make more progress on most of it if he started fresh Monday morning.
His thoughts turned to Jacob while he dealt with the dishes. He remembered how his breath caught in his chest when he realized Jacob was about to kiss him. If the man had kept quiet, Riley was certain that he would have returned the kiss without a second thought. Thankfully for him, Jacob had to say he was beautiful. It was like a splash of cold water to know his looks alone had attracted Jacob. When would he learn?
It wasn't until later that Riley realized he was just as guilty of going by appearances as Jacob was. Well, maybe not precisely appearances, but Riley certainly hadn't given a thought to Jacob's motives when he'd moved close. No, all he'd thought about was the way Jacob's eyes were drawing nearer, revealing that they weren't quite brown at all, but a mixture of brown and gold. His thoughts were consumed by the image of broad shoulders and long-fingered hands.
After the incident with Hunter, Riley had gone to see a therapist, just as he told Jacob. He wanted help to find a way to make sense of what went wrong. Was there some way to ensure he could connect with a person, without being afraid? Were there signs he could look for to keep his heart safe? In that respect, the therapist, Janet Montgomery, hadn't helped very much. Instead, she wanted to focus on his self-image.
She asked him why he wore the green silk shirt for his appointment that day. Her question baffled him as he looked down and considered. Riley wasn't sure what she wanted to hear, but told her he liked the shirt, had many green shirts because people told him it was his best color. That particular shirt was his favorite and he wore it often.
When Janet pointed out that he took care of his appearance, choosing a color people complimented him on, he simply stared at her. Riley understood what she was trying to say, but it wasn't the same. Yes, he wanted to look good, but that shouldn't be the only consideration when someone wanted to get to know him better. There should be at least some interest in the person behind the clothes, he insisted. She countered that interest had to start somewhere. Many times clothes sparked interest when you saw someone across the room. Other times, when you had time to sit and talk to someone, their opinions and sense of humor could capture attention. It all depended on the situation.
Riley wasn't sure what to make of all that. He pretended to accept what the woman said but he'd simply shunted it off to the back of his mind. From time to time, Riley found himself thinking over her words. He understood up to a point, he really did. Sometimes, however, the first impression people got wasn't changed with prolonged exposure. Just like Hunter.
Hunter had talked with him, asked his opinions and supposedly valued what Riley had to say. Riley believed Hunter took him seriously. In the end, it was a lie, a pretense used to lure Riley into a relationship that benefitted them both in very different ways. For Riley it was love; for Hunter it was convenience.
Enough deep thoughts about things you can't change
, Riley told himself. It was still early, but he went to his room to pick out clothes for going out later that evening. He passed over his many green shirts and sweaters and chose a rather ugly brown shirt, with pink snaps up the front, given to him by his grandmother a few years earlier. There, nobody could say he was putting himself in the best light. It wouldn't be easy to explain to Sara why he was wearing the damned thing, but it was something he needed to do.
******
Riley frowned and went over his notes and files while waiting for Jacob to join him for their Tuesday meeting. He deliberately got to the coffee shop early, needing this time to organize his thoughts and have a little something to eat.
