Touch Me Read Online Free PDF Page A

the bathroom. “Can I see you again?” he asked.
    Erik wanted to say yes, he really did. Which is exactly why he said the opposite. “Sorry, I don’t take repeat customers.” That much was true. It was safer not to encourage further relationships with his clients. He had made an exception or two over the years, but he didn’t think it would be safe to do that with Jeremy. The boy brought out something in him. He could easily see himself getting too attached.
    “Oh.” Jeremy’s shoulders drooped. “I guess this is goodbye then.”
    Erik handed him back his coat. “Thanks for coming.”
    Jeremy laughed hollowly. “Coming. Right.”
    Saying goodbye to a client wasn’t normally this difficult. A twinge of guilt nettled Erik. He felt as though he’d started the kid on his journey of self-discovery and then thrown him to the wolves.
    Jeremy was quiet as Erik guided him back down the corridor to the rear entrance. At the door he stopped.
    “Can I like, email you at least?” Those huge brown eyes searched his face. “I-there’s not really anyone I can talk to…”
    Fuck, it was a bad idea. But Erik felt himself caving. He couldn’t let the kid struggle through a sexual identity crises on his own, right? He remembered feeling the same isolation at Jeremy’s age. Besides, what could a few emails hurt? “Okay,” he said.
    Jeremy’s grin was brilliant, a flash of big white teeth. He suddenly threw his arms around Erik and squeezed him tight. He planted a quick kiss on his lips and then he was gone out into the night.
    Erik shivered in the cold, the biting March wind wilting the last of his erection. He shut the door and engaged the deadbolt before heading back to his room.
    He packed away the dildos and toys they’d never gotten to and threw the used towels into the laundry hamper. As he tidied up, he called home. He let it ring. Sometimes Luce was in the middle of something and couldn’t make it to the phone quickly.
    As he waited, he held his breath. This was always the moment when his heart seized. When he worried the worst had happened. That George had been rushed to the hospital. When Luce inevitably picked up, he never knew if he was disappointed or relieved.
    This time, she sounded out of breath. “Sorry,” she said, knowing immediately that it was him calling. Lucy Velasquez was the day nurse they had hired. She was a caring, efficient woman in her late twenties, and Erik had never thought twice about leaving George in her care.
    “No problem. Everything okay?”
    “Fine. I was just getting him settled into the bed.”
    “How was he today?”
    She hesitated. Silence filled the line. Lucy had been with them a year now, since things had become too much for Erik to manage on his own, and she read George almost as well as he did. “He seemed very sad, I think.”
    Erik had thought the same thing himself when he left for work this morning. “I know.”
    “He had trouble breathing again. I think I’ll put him on the ventilator tonight.”
    That wasn’t good. George had begun needing the portable ventilator more and more frequently. He was entering the last stages of the disease. Erik couldn’t bear to think about what that meant. How little time they had left. He heard Luce’s footsteps moving through the house as she carried the phone handset to George.
    “Your man is on the phone,” she said to George. “Okay, you’re on speaker, Erik.”
    “Hey baby.” He forced the cheer into his voice.
    “Good. Session?” George asked. The words were guttural, slurred, barely intelligible to anyone except Erik. They sounded torn from his throat. Like he was speaking with a mouthful of cotton balls. He knew how much effort it cost George just to get them out. As he slowly lost the capability to speak, they had developed their own form of code. But soon, even those few words would be gone. Tears pricked Erik’s eyes.
    “It was… interesting. He was very young. You’d have liked him.” He kept his