Naughty November

Chapter 1

ONE

FLETCHER

I’d grumbled about it when my brother, Everett, asked me to swing by his place to feed and pet his cat while he went to some conference for work, but given that I was the one still lounging on his couch two hours after having completed that daily duty, flipping through my phone with one hand while I petted Lucy, his scrawny one-eyed rescue cat, as she sprawled on my lap, even I would have to admit that all that grumbling had mostly been for show.

“Maybe I should get a cat, too,” I told Lucy, flipping my phone around so she could see the adorable Siamese kitten from the local rescue shelter on my screen.

She flicked an ear, then batted my phone away.

“You’re right, princess. She doesn’t hold a candle to you.”

And now I was talking to a cat.

I’d moved back to my hometown three months ago after a nasty breakup where it had been easier to walk away than fight my ex for the rent-controlled apartment we’d scored two years back, but given that it had been ten years since I left my home town, a lot had changed.

For one thing, just like me, all my friends had fled for greener pastures after high school, so the only people I still knew in town were my own family.

In a word, I was fucking lonely. And I didn’t just mean in the sex-deprived way, although absolutely that, too.

Lucy meowed at me in sympathy.

“I know,” I muttered to her, scratching under her chin until the sound turned to contented purring again. “But I had to delete Grindr when I found my former football coach’s profile on there. You understand, right?”

She did a slow blink at me that I took as a yes. Even if I’d been into older men, which I wasn’t, the idea of banging Coach Niles after how much time I’d spent doing burpees for him when I’d been a teenager felt vaguely incestuous.

Lucy head-butted me.

“Fine, you caught me.” I grinned down at her, not minding the one-sided conversation at all. “It wasn’t just that. I’ll be the first to admit that I have a type, and he’s just not pretty enough for me.”

Not to mention there’s no way I could imagine a man like that giving up the kind of control I liked to take in the bedroom.

Lucy stared at me silently for a few seconds, then stood up, turned around a couple of times, and lifted her tail, presenting me with her asshole.

I winced, dropping my head back and staring at the ceiling instead. “No offense, beautiful, but I’m not that hard up.”

And I really wasn’t. I did need to put a little more effort into getting a social life if I was going to stick around—by which I absolutely meant I needed to get laid—but honestly, finding Coach Niles’ profile on Grindr hadn’t been the only reason I’d deleted the app almost as soon as I installed it. I wanted more, and I wasn’t just talking about someone open to being a little kinky.

I didn’t miss Brian, the ex I’d moved away from, but I did miss being part of a couple. Hookups had been fine in my early twenties, maybe even preferred, but now that I was pushing thirty and had weathered a few real relationships, what I really wanted was someone of my own again.

Preferably someone sweet, pretty, and submissive. Someone smaller, on the more delicate end of the scale, who liked it when I took the lead. I did have a type, after all, and that was the kind of man my dick had always responded to. But the next time around, I wanted to find a deeper connection, too.

I wanted someone I could actually fall in love with.

“And that getting-to-know-each-other shit takes time,” I murmured to the ceiling. “It’s not like the perfect man is going to just?—”

The doorbell rang.

“ Fuck ,” I grunted as Lucy yowled and dug her claws into my thigh, then took off like a shot—taking scraps of both flesh and denim with her—when the ringing was immediately followed by frantic-sounding knocking.

I frowned, getting to my feet and hurrying toward the door.

My brother’s place was one half of a duplex, and my first thought was that the little old lady who rented out the other side must be having some kind of emergency.

My second thought was that Everett had come home a few days early, but that idea was stupid enough that I huffed out a laugh at myself. It was his place. He wouldn’t need to try and take down the front door with his fists like this. And even if he’d lost his key, he’d have seen my car in the driveway and just called out or texted me like a normal person.

But my very last thought, as in the one that didn’t even cross my mind, was that I’d fling open the door to find Everett’s life-long best friend, Holden Sinclair, standing on his doorstep.

Standing there and looking utterly scrumptious.

My dick instantly perked up, because holy shit, that “type” I’d mentioned having? It was more than eager to remind me exactly what that looked like, and that it was very, very happy to see sweet little Holden again.

My dick had clearly also forgotten that the kid was completely straight and had always been off limits to even fantasize about, since he’d still been jailbait the last time I lived in town.

Wait, not “kid.” Not anymore. Holden was Everett’s age, which made him a grown-ass man now even if he was, presumably, still a straight one .

But at least that made it okay to look.

“Hey there, button,” I said with a grin, leaning against the doorframe as I took in his flushed cheeks, dark, tousled hair, and big, wide, honey-colored eyes that looked like they belonged on an anime character.

Holden stared up at me in shock, his fist still raised to pound on the door like he’d been frozen to the spot.

I grinned down at him—looked like he’d never gotten any extra growth spurts after I left, so he was still just a tiny slip of a thing—and idly wondered if he was still dating Cindy Jensen, the way Ev had mentioned a while ago.

I hadn’t given it much thought when Ev had passed on that bit of news, but now it struck me what a mismatch it seemed. Cindy had been one grade below me in school, which made her three years older than Everett and Holden. But she’d also been a bona fide pain in the ass back when we’d all been in school.

I just didn’t get it. Holden had always been the sweetest little thing. So either Cindy had changed, or else the boy I remembered had grown up to like the kind of woman who walked all over him.

I frowned, not liking that thought at all.

The frown seemed to jolt Holden out of his shock, because he blushed even harder—something I honestly hadn’t known was possible—and finally lowered his raised fist, tucking both hands behind his back.

Then bringing them around to shove in his pockets.

Then pulling them out again, where he wrung them together in front of himself as he shuffled his feet and blinked up at me.

“Fletch? What, um, what are you doing here?” he asked, sounding unaccountably breathless.

Shit, he was nervous about something, I could tell. And just like that, the same protective instincts he used to inspire in me back when he was tagging around with my little brother reared up their heads like they’d just awoken from hibernation.

“Is something wrong?”

“Is, um, is Ev home?” he asked instead of answering me, swallowing hard as he shifted like he was trying to see around me so he could peer into my brother’s house.

“No,” I said, not even a little bit apologetic about how demanding my voice got when I added, “Tell me what’s going on, Holden.”

He blinked up at me, biting his lip for a second. Then his shoulders slumped, and he scuffed his foot, staring down at the porch. “Nothing.”

I smirked, reaching out to lift his chin so he couldn’t dodge my eyes like that. “Don’t lie to me, button.”

“No one calls me that anymore,” he mumbled, blushing again.

I grinned at him. “But it’s still true.”

It had been my grandmother who’d pinched his cheeks and called him “cute as a button” the first time Everett had brought him home, and the nickname had stuck.

Or at least, for me it had.

At the time, I’d still been a few years away from realizing I was gay, but it wasn’t until I was today-years-old that it occurred to me that just maybe I hadn’t kept the nickname alive just to tease him. Maybe I’d always had a type.

Damn, I really did like the way he blushed and squirmed when I called him that.

“Are you still dating Cindy?” I asked out of nowhere, the question catching me off guard just as much as it apparently did him.

Because, shit. Holden went from pink-cheeked and adorable to pale and shrinking in on himself the minute I asked it.

I didn’t like that. Not at fucking all.

“Button?”

He shook his head, looking down. “No, um, she… well, she broke up with me, I guess?”

A hot, primal sense of satisfaction flashed through me. Which immediately made me feel like an ass, since he was obviously upset about it.

I crossed my arms over my chest so I wouldn’t tug him against me for a comforting hug. “So, she really is still as dumb as I remember.”

His eyes jerked up to mine, going wide again as a hint of color finally came back to his face. “What? ”

I grinned. “I said what I said. But anyone letting you go? Big mistake. Huuuuge.”

His mouth dropped open in a perfect O of surprise, giving me all sorts of dirty ideas I definitely shouldn’t be having about him. “Did you… Did you just quote Pretty Woman at me?”

I grinned a little harder. “Did you just recognize a quote from Pretty Woman , straight boy?”

“It’s a classic,” he mumbled, blushing again.

“Agreed,” I said. “Now, why don’t you tell me what’s going on?”

He started shaking his head before I even finished talking, holding his hands up like he was trying to ward me off. “No, um, that’s okay. Really, it’s… it’s fine? I’ll just wait for Ev to get back. Will he… um, will he be home soon?”

I frowned. “No. Don’t you guys still keep in touch? Everett made it sound like you two were still close. He’s out of town for the whole week.”

“Oh, right,” Holden said, his shoulders slumping. “I forgot. The conference thing, right? He asked me to feed Lucy, but Cindy wouldn’t let me.”

Those words failed to compute for a minute. But then, when I finally made sense of them, I saw red. “She wouldn’t let you?” I growled. “What the fuck does that mean?”

“Oh, um,” he mumbled, his hands fluttering like they didn’t know where to settle, “I don’t, uh, it’s… it’s all over now. We’re over. She dumped me, so I just need to, um… you know what? I can wait for Everett to get home. It was really nice to see you, Fletcher, but I should just go.”

He started to turn away, and my hand lashed out without my consent, wrapping around his wrist and yanking him against my chest.

“Oh, hell no. Tell me what you needed from my brother.”

“I can’t,” he breathed out, staring up at me wide-eyed and quivering in a way that made me all too aware of just how long it had been since I’d had someone in my arms like this.

I pushed that thought aside. It wasn’t in the cards, and rampant libido or not, he was too flustered for me not to try and make whatever had him so jittery right again .

“Try again, button.”

Oh fuck, that blush. He looked down, dodging my eyes again. “I, um, I don’t want to.”

I tipped his chin right back up, and not just for an excuse to touch him.

“Because?”

“It’s… it’s embarrassing.”

I grinned. “I’ve known you since you still needed a booster seat to sit at the dinner table. I have incriminating pictures of you wearing nothing but Scooby-Doo underwear and a cape at Ev’s eighth birthday party. I remember you refusing to eat pancakes at our house after my mom cut them into cookie cutter shapes because you thought she was hurting them, and I’ve seen you cry over Ev killing a spider instead of taking it outside. If you honestly think anything you tell me as an adult will top all those embarrassing moments, you’re sorely mistaken, Holden James Sinclair.”

He ducked his head, but not before I saw him smile.

“Oh my God, you’re not actually making me feel any better, you know.”

I tipped his chin up again. “Liar.”

He chewed on that lip of his again, then grinned so brightly that it did something funny to my heart. “Okay, maybe a little. I guess you do know all my secrets.” Then his face fell again, and he sighed. “Well, not all of them. And this really is embarrassing.”

We were still standing in Ev’s doorway, and while I still wanted to help out with whatever it was he’d come over for, I suddenly didn’t want to let him get him away for reasons that had nothing at all to do with that, either.

I tugged him over the threshold and shut the door behind him. “Please tell me if I can help you with whatever you came over for. I honestly don’t care how embarrassing it is. You’ve been my brother’s best friend long enough that I’m pretty sure I get to claim big brother privileges with you, too. You’re… family.”

My dick twitched as if to point out that even if I’d felt a bit protective toward him when I saw how upset he was, I definitely wouldn’t classify that feeling as “brotherly. ”

I cleared my throat. “ Practically family,” I corrected myself. “And I know you and I haven’t kept in touch, but you know I’ve always cared about you, right?”

He stared up at me for a minute, his blush deepening with every passing second. Then, finally, he gave me a single, tremulous smile.

“Okay. I really don’t know who else to ask since Everett isn’t around, so, um, thank you,” he whispered, his hands shaking as he reached for the waistband of his pants, unsnapped them, and started to lower the zipper. “It will be easier if I just show you.”

My brain short-circuited for a moment, all that protective, big-brother, let-me-help shit I’d just been feeling fried to ashes by the heat that raced through me. Because a pretty twink wanting to show me what was in his pants? Oh hell yeah.

But then I remembered that this wasn’t actually a pretty little twink. It was Holden Sinclair. Shaken up, embarrassed, and completely straight.

I had no idea what was happening right now, but I hadn’t been lying about caring about him. I liked Holden. Always had, and always would. And the best way to prove that right now would be to keep my dick in check, my mouth shut, and find out what he needed from me.

And then move heaven and earth to give it to him.