The Flame Read Online Free PDF Page B

found Cassidy and some blond guy sitting together on the green, play wrestling and joking around with such casual intimacy he thought they might be boyfriend and girlfriend and he’d just come within inches of making an ass of himself.
    But he wasn’t sure, so he took a seat a few yards away and pretended to read Slaughterhouse Five while he studied them.
    After a while, he thought they might be brother and sister. Twins, even, given their tendency to move in synch with one another. Suddenly, the guy sprawled out, hands raised skyward so Cassidy could grab on to them both while she tried to kick her legs up into the air behind her. Their giggling attempt at flight ended when her delicate body thumped down onto his lanky one. Entwined like rag dolls, Cassidy and Shane laughed so hard they briefly drowned out the repetitive strumming of the amateur guitarist a few yards away.
    Then, as they righted themselves and brushed the grass off their clothes, Shane flicked both wrists before running his hands slowly through his soft, blond hair with the luxuriant tenderness of a woman showering in a shampoo commercial. That dude’s gay, even if she doesn’t know it yet. Even if he doesn’t know it, Andrew thought. I’m in!
    And then they both looked at him for the first time, the same look that would laser through him years later over Memorial Day weekend.
    Their half-smiles fading as desire consumed their amusement, their eyes widening with lust as they examined him shamelessly from head to toe. And in that moment, they radiated a kind of oneness that suspended everything he knew to be true about labels or gender.
    He had trouble putting a name to it, which was a shame, because he knew if he could name it, he’d be able to dismiss it, and if he could dismiss it, everything would be simpler. But there was no forgetting the way it made him feel; rock hard in his briefs, so hard he wanted to reach down and adjust himself—he couldn’t; the back of his neck so hot suddenly he thought he might have moved into direct sunlight without realizing it—he hadn’t. And then there was that delicious, anticipatory pressure in his temples, like a head massage from a guardian angel, the same anticipatory pressure he feels whenever Cassidy whispers something naughty in his ear during a stolen moment at dinner with his colleagues.
    Sometimes he compares it to that scene in Ghostbusters when they all crossed the streams of their ray guns to defeat the evil spirit living atop that old New York apartment building. Only he was no monster, and the raw hunger their combined gaze filled him with was nothing like defeat. It made him feel powerless, for sure, and helpless before a desire he couldn’t name. But not defeated.
    Defeated is how he feels now, as he drip-dries in the cooling air outside the shower stall, willing his cock to go down.
    He’s not gay. There's no doubt about that. Sure, there’d been those late nights of sleepover experimentation with Danny Sullivan back in high school. But that was different. They’d been best friends since they were kids. And yes, parts of it had been fun, even hot. Mostly the parts where Danny’s racing heart and shivering body made it clear he’d always wanted to explore Andrew’s body more than he’d let on. In those moments, making Danny happy had made him happy, happy enough to get him hard. And keep him hard. And really, how hard was it to get a man hard anyway?
    He’d shared all of this with Cassidy during the full-disclosure period of their engagement. When she wasn’t shocked, he was shocked. He was even more shocked when she told him every guy she’d been serious with had eventually admitted to fooling around with another guy at some point in his life. But none of that mattered now. What mattered was that nothing about his late nights with Danny Sullivan had left Andrew with a burning desire for other men. In fact, he couldn’t remember a single moment when he’d laid eyes on a strange