Pair of Kings Ace High Read online

  That image made Blake smile. “You do realize Travis would make me give them the sex talk?”

  Felix laughed. “Oh, I can picture it. ‘Now, Travvy Junior, remember, when you’re going down on a woman, make sure to angle your head so the camera can see your face and what you’re doing.’”

  Blake snorted then burst into laughter. “I meant more along the lines of, ‘Sex isn’t a big deal. You don’t need to have it. In case you want to, here’s how to do it and here’s a list of films you can watch to get some ideas without bothering your dad.’”

  “See? You’d be a great influence! And whoever snatches up that boy first is going to be glad you were his teacher. Or her.”

  Blake smiled, yet he still had his doubts. “Give me time to think about it, okay? I could do all those things as Uncle Blake. I don’t have to be the godfather, but…maybe. Julie’s brother might turn out to be a good option, too, then it won’t have to be me.”

  Felix hugged him. “Whatever your decision, I’ll support you, but keep in mind that you’re the only one voting no on this so far.”

  “Yeah, well, we’ll see.”

  * * * *

  A few days later, Blake came running to the sound of Felix screaming in alarm. He found his boyfriend at his computer, clapping his hands excitedly.

  “He’s coming here!” Felix exclaimed. “Rami is coming here!”

  “Woah, wait, why?”

  Felix could hardly contain himself. “His younger brother won tickets to the latest Marvel movie premiere over in L.A. in two months, and he says if I want he’ll ask for a few extra days off work and come visit!” He grinned like a kid on Christmas who found out all the gifts under the tree were his.

  Blake rolled his eyes and chuckled. “And what will you two do when he comes to visit?”

  “Uh…” Felix’s smile faded. He ran his fingers nervously around the edge of his laptop. “Um, Blake, you know how when you’re out shopping and you see a big delicious cake sitting in the bakery, and you really really want to try some even though you’re going right home to make dinner? Like, you don’t even know if it’s good cake, but it looks good and you just wanna devour it because—”

  “You want to have sex with Rami.”

  Felix stared, an apologetic blush fading into his cheeks. “I—I mean—”

  “Felix, honey, it’s okay.” Blake sat down next to his embarrassed boyfriend. “I’ve been trying to tell you to go out and have sex for yourself. I understand you get tired of fucking at work, but if there’s someone you really like and are really attracted to, I say go for it.”

  Felix looked down in shame. “This has nothing to do with you,” he said. “You know that, right?”

  “Of course I do. I know how much you love me. I also know that for some people, having sex that’s more intimate is important. I’ve tried to give that to you, and it almost worked, except you didn’t want to push me into doing something against my nature.” Blake gestured at the computer. “Here you have an attractive young man who is a huge fan of yours that’ll be in town long enough for a sexy rendezvous. He lives two states away, so I’m not expecting you to sneak out of the house every night. It’s like you’re an undersexed housewife who wants to fuck the pool boy.”

  “No it isn’t,” Felix said with a pout.

  Blake raised a sarcastic eyebrow. “Really? You’re in a relationship with an asexual man. Rami literally installs pools and hot tubs for a living. You’re undersexed and you want to fuck the pool boy.”

  “I’m far from undersexed.” Felix pouted harder. “And I’m not a housewife,” he grumbled.

  “No. I don’t think either of us is home enough to be considered a house-spouse. We don’t even have a pool.” Blake paused. “Think we could get Rami to bring us one?”

  That made Felix smile again. “I think I’d rather have a hot tub.”

  “Oooh, yeah, and we could invite everyone from Wild Card over for hot tub parties.” Blake’s eyes lit up. “We could film hot tub sex scenes here!”

  Felix laughed. “I don’t think anyone else in our apartment complex would tolerate that.”

  Blake slumped his shoulders. “Aww, but I want hot tub parties…”

  “We have so many friends with hot tubs. That is like, the number one luxury item that most of the people we know have, except for maybe all the actresses who have closets dedicated to their purse collections.” Felix stared into space. “Why do they even have all those purses?” he asked in a mystified whisper.

  “I don’t even know,” Blake replied just as quietly. At normal volume, he said, “So you’re sure Rami can’t bring us a hot tub?”

  Felix’s shoulders heaved in a sigh. “You’d really be okay if he and I, y’know, fooled around while he’s here?”

  Blake gave Felix a hug. “Honey, I watch you fuck men and women on a regular basis.”

  “But that’s for work. I don’t want you to think that I don’t love you anymore.”

  “Is that an issue?”

  Felix nuzzled his head against Blake. “Of course not, but that’s how it looks.”

  Blake shrugged. “Or it looks like you’re missing one thing in your otherwise perfect relationship, and your adoring partner is giving you a free ride to ride someone else until you’re happy.”

  They sat snuggled against each other while Blake waited for Felix’s reply. Instead of speaking, Felix pressed himself harder against Blake. Blake stroked his hair comfortingly. The fact that Felix wasn’t arguing anymore was an answer in itself. He was definitely considering Blake’s offer. That gave Blake an idea.

  “If you have sex with Rami and like it, I’ll agree to be the godfather for Travis’s and Julie’s baby.”

  That did the trick. “Really?” Felix narrowed his eyes. “Wait, didn’t I convince you to do that already?”

  “Depends. Did I convince you to have sex with a guy you like so you can be fulfilled and happy?”

  Felix sighed in exasperation. “I am happy with you.”

  “Good. Then make me happy and trust me on this.”

  After an intense stare-down, Felix said, “Y’know, you might be one of the first boyfriends in history to actively demand that his partner fuck someone else.”

  “Not many other boyfriends in history were asexual.”

  Felix wrapped his arms around Blake again. “That’s because you’re one of a kind, and you’re aaall mine.” He paused for a moment. “I’ll think about it, okay?”

  “Okay.” Blake kissed Felix sweetly. “And remember that whatever you choose, I’ll still be yours.” Then he clapped Felix on the back. “Now come on. You may not want to fuck Rami, but we’ve got about an hour until Emmet will want you fucking two other people for an entire afternoon, so finish getting ready and we’ll talk about this later.”

  Chapter 3

  Felix didn’t even bring up the subject with Rami until Blake had pestered him for two weeks straight. “Tell him it’ll be like a threesome, except I probably won’t do anything. I might cuddle you after you fuck him, but if I participated in any way I’d probably just sit in the corner and watch. I know how much you like that.”

  “I do like fucking with an audience…” Felix sighed and finally wrote up the e-mail, with suggestions from Blake. “It’s still really weird that you’re helping me do this.”

  “That’s my part of the threesome; I’m the foreplay, in that I set you up for the rest of the sex. Now shut up and flirt harder!”

  As usual, Rami didn’t get back to Felix right away. That only made Felix more nervous.

  “What if he doesn’t actually want to fuck me?” Felix said two days later.

  Blake snorted. “Who doesn’t want to fuck you, period? Other than me and the other aces of the world, that is?”

  Felix anxiously browsed from one website to the next, always cycling back to his e-mail and never paying much attention to anything else. “He did mention that he would fuck me if he had the chance, but it was in the context of ‘but that’s not why I’m writing to you.’ I dunno, maybe he was just saying that so it didn’t look weird that he was writing to a porn star for his personality. I mean, you like me for my personality, but that’s because you’re not…” Felix vaguely gestured before returning to his failed distractions.

  “Yes, I don’t get what the big deal about sex is, so I don’t ask for it. However, I do understand that when you want sex sometimes the hardest thing is asking for it. Maybe he figured you already got enough solicitations from the drooling masses and didn’t want to be another one of ‘those guys’ who hit on you non-stop?”

  “Yeah…maybe…” Felix sighed. “It’s not even like I want to wine-and-dine him first. I just wanna fuck him ‘cause he’s hot.” He stopped clicking and his nose wrinkled slightly while the rest of his face drooped. “Do you think porn broke me? Like, am I not capable of having sex for love anymore?”

  “Aww, honey, no. It sounds like you have homosexual aromantic feelings for him.” Blake patted Felix on the shoulder. “It’s like my exact opposite. I’m asexually homoromantic. And it sounds like Rami is plain homosexually homoromantic. What a love triangle!”

  Felix managed a smile. “What if we had a love square with…um…is being asexual and aromantic a thing?”

  “Sure it is.”

  “Then…do they just not date or love anybody or…?”

  Blake rolled his eyes. “They can love people, but not romantically. Some people love their cats as much as they love people, but they don’t want to date their cats.” He paused in thought. “Well, I know a few people who would date their cats if their cats were people, but that’s beside the point.” Blake had been on many asexual forums in his day. A lot of the people who eventually identified as aromantic came there to ask if not h
aving any strong feelings made them “broken.” Fortunately, the internet provided a support system for people who were working out their sexualities, and despite constant questions from friends and family, many of the aromantic people Blake had chatted with lived normal happy lives. Now here was Felix with similar concerns, and Blake would gladly be his support system as well.

  Felix sighed again. “So you think I’m okay?”

  “Of course you’re okay. You still wine-and-dine me sometimes, even though all we do afterward is cuddle or I give you an hour-long massage before you jerk off. We have a balance in our relationship.”

  “Then why do I want to fuck someone else?”

  “Because ‘balanced’ doesn’t always mean ‘full.’ You could have a scale that’s perfectly balanced because there’s nothing on either side, or there’s only a few small things. Our scale is loaded up with emotions and romance, but your personal scale lacks intimate sex.”

  Felix shrugged. “I guess that makes sense.”

  Blake got behind Felix to rub his shoulders. “Tell you what, now that we’ve finished shooting and it’s another couple days until I have to go back in to shoot Diving Downtown, which is going to have me out of the house for fourteen hours a day all week, how about we wine-and-dine to celebrate our personal time? You can put on all your baggiest clothing, I’ll dress up nice and smart, and we’ll eat out at a different place for every meal…just not the way they’re gonna do in Diving Downtown.”

  A smile crept into Felix’s lips. “Can we get breakfast, lunch, and brunch?”

  “Absolutely, though some of our us-time might have to happen at the gym if you decide to stuff yourself with crepes and bagel sandwiches.”

  “Done deal,” Felix said with a grin.

  Blake was happy to put Felix’s mind on other things, but now Felix had him worried about Rami. There was a chance that Blake was pushing Felix into doing something Rami didn’t actually want to do. It would suck big time if Blake went through all this build-up, assuring Felix that having sexual thoughts about another guy didn’t make him a cheater, explaining how sex for fun was good for him, only for Rami to show up and say he wasn’t comfortable sleeping with someone who had a boyfriend.

  While waiting for his turn in the shower, Blake wrote a quick e-mail. Felix had shown him enough messages from Rami that Blake had inadvertently memorized his address. He didn’t know much of what he wanted to say, so he wrote from the heart.

  Hey Rami,

  I’m Blake, Felix’s boyfriend. You haven’t written back to him from his latest e-mail, and he didn’t ask me to send you this, but I wanted you to know I’m seriously okay if that’s what you guys want to do. You did say you would fuck him if you could. Did you only say that casually? Felix thinks you meant it, but now he’s worried that he came on too strong and scared you away. You might be hesitating because he’s in a relationship, but as you probably know, I’m asexual, so he needs someone else to help satisfy his…“cravings.” If you want to be that guy, you have my blessing. If you’d rather not, I understand, but please let Felix down gently. He really likes you as a friend, and I’d hate to see you two lose that because shit got awkward. I might be making this MORE awkward, so sorry.

  Hoping all is well,

  Blake

  Halfway through Blake’s shower, Felix poked his head into the bathroom. “Rami wrote me back!”

  “Oh?”

  “Typical! I was gonna check my e-mail before I got in the shower, but I thought, ‘Nah, if he hasn’t written back already, it can wait half an hour. But guess what? The e-mail came in five minutes before I took my shower!”

  Blake cringed. His own e-mail to Rami could have waited until after he showered, but he didn’t want Felix to know he was sending it. Another twenty minutes and he would have known Rami’s answer. “What did he say?” Blake asked.

  “He said we can talk about it when he gets here.” Felix pouted. “Is that a polite ‘no’ or a hesitant ‘yes’?”

  “Could be either.” Blake took a moment to rinse conditioner out of his hair. “I don’t know him well enough. If it were me, that’d be a ‘yes but…’ because I’d have some guidelines to lay down before I agreed to it. But it could be like Mack, who’s always saying ‘maybe’ because he doesn’t want to seem rude.”

  Felix rolled his eyes. “Even though it’s rude when we think he’s going to do something with us after a shoot and we wait only to find out he slipped out early? Yeah, that’s fucking annoying.” He huffed and put up his hands. “I’m not gonna ask. I want to ask what he meant by that, but I’m not gonna.”

  “Good. Now either hop in or go, but shut the door regardless. You’re letting out all my steam.”

  As soon as Felix was out of the bathroom with the door closed behind him, Blake thunked his head against the wall. He shouldn’t have intervened. All those times he had told Felix that waiting another few hours for a reply wasn’t the end of the world, and yet Blake had been the one to act on impatient impulse.

  There was an e-mail from Rami in Blake’s inbox when he got out of the shower. He feared there would be. Now that he knew it was there he wanted to shut everything down and simply go out to lunch with Felix. Curiosity and chagrin won out. He had to know what Rami said.

  Hey Blake,

  I just sent an e-mail to Felix, guess he didn’t get it yet or tell you. Look, you might be cool with the two of us having sex, but the fact that Felix is in a relationship complicates things for me. Yes, if he were single and he sent me that e-mail, I would have dropped everything and flown out there ASAP with nothing but a toothbrush and a box of condoms. I get that you both work in the porn industry, so it’s not like you care about him having sex with other people, but that’s all pretend. From what Felix has told me about you, he really loves you, and I don’t want to come between that.

  In my e-mail to Felix I said we could talk about it when I get there. Trying to work things out over the internet makes me feel like I’m planning a hook-up through Craigslist or something. Maybe once I meet you in person I’ll feel more comfortable about it. In the meantime, yeah, it’s weird when your favorite porn star writes you to ask for casual sex then his boyfriend writes you to tell you he WANTS you two to have casual sex. I’m still totally down for being his friend though, awkwardness aside.

  See you in a few weeks,

  Rami

  Though Blake cringed at the thought of admitting his actions to Felix, Felix would definitely want to see this. Blake didn’t know the rest of Rami’s e-mail to Felix, but from the sound of it he hadn’t been clear about his feelings. This could provide some answers.

  “Hey, Felix?” Blake called out.

  Felix was there in a few seconds, combing out his hair. “Yeah?”

  “I…um…” Blake explained about his concerns and why he had e-mailed Rami, then turned his computer so Felix could read Rami’s reply. Felix’s eyes darted back and forth, skimming the words. His lips were tight in a pouting frown. Blake shuffled his feet. “So…it’s one of those ‘It’s not you, it’s me’ things, except this time the ‘me’ is…me.”

  “I thought it was something like that,” Felix said with a sigh. “It wouldn’t even be that big of a deal if you weren’t right. The more I think about it, the more I realize I need healthy sex in my life, not pretzel sex or sex where I’m more worried about not cumming for an hour and a half while trying to look my best than I am about whether I’m enjoying myself and pleasing my partner. I mean, I know you’re always up to include a handjob in your ‘full-body massage special,’ but it’s been so long since I had real sex.”

  “Which is what I’ve been trying to tell you.” Blake smiled. “Glad we’re finally on the same page. For now, we know that’s something you can have, but we have to wait until Rami gets here to take the next step, if there is one. Think you can hang in that long?”