Balance

degraded.”
    Cooper shuddered theatrically.
    “I better leave,” Nando announced.

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    Just like earlier, Cooper pulled him back. “Don’t. It’s the middle of the night. I drove you here, and I don’t feel much like getting up and driving you back, and like you said, the shop isn’t the best of neighborhoods in the middle of the night. This is a big bed. Even if you want to sleep on your side of it, this is better than getting up. Surely.”
    “I don’t usually sleep over,” Nando murmured.
    Cooper didn’t think Nando was all that comfortable, but he remained in his bed, yet again staring at the ceiling.
    Cooper curled up next to him, staying close without touching him, hoping Nando wouldn’t feel threatened by it.

    NANDO felt Cooper sneak out of bed, but he pretended not to notice and feigned sleep. He never slept over because he didn’t like the confrontation with a one-night stand in the first morning light. If it hadn’t been for Cooper’s gentle plea to stay, he would have been at home, sleeping in his own bed. If he were honest with himself, Nando would have admitted that it felt good to sleep next to a warm body.
    Cooper was a beautiful if somewhat ordinary man, but a master in the power of persuasion. He’d been beyond patient with what Nando knew was a childish tactic of his to get the man to turn away from him, but Cooper hadn’t. Instead, Cooper had taken him home and then fucked him until Nando had seen stars.
    As soon as Nando heard the front door close, signaling that Cooper had left for work, he rolled over onto Cooper’s side of the bed and buried his face in Cooper’s pillow, Balance | Zahra Owens
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    inhaling his scent. Maybe that was it. Maybe he just liked the way Cooper smelled? It was a clean smell with slightly musky overtones; nothing overt like cologne or strong aftershave, yet distinctively male. He’d smelled it the first time, at the shop, when he’d stood behind Cooper pointing out the fire escape at the back, and again that night at the club. Cooper’s scent then had been mixed with fear, and how it had aroused Nando. It had instantly made him hard.
    Then Cooper added to the turn-on by asking Nando to fuck his mouth.
    This morning Nando’s arousal was more a force of nature. He wrapped his hand around his erection and fisted it a few times; then he rolled his hips so he could fuck his clenched fist. He was sore in the best possible way, helping him recall last night’s exercise, and with his free hand, he reached behind his back to finger his hole. It took just a single finger for Nando to come, shooting his spunk through his fingers to the bedding below. He rolled over to his back again, closing his eyes and drifting off to sleep amidst dreams of fucking Cooper after tying him up with coarse rope.
    Nando woke up a little while later from the sun shining through the half-closed blinds. He vaguely remembered Cooper telling him to feel free to take a shower, so he did.
    When he returned, a towel around his hips for his own modesty and nobody else’s, he noticed the rumpled bed sheets and figured that soiling them twice in the last ten hours or so was enough to warrant a wash, so he ripped the sheets off the bed and went in search of a washing machine.

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    While the sheets were soaking, he wandered into the kitchen and found a note from Cooper near the half-full coffee pot.
    “Didn’t want to wake you. Help yourself to breakfast and coffee. Take the money for cab fare.” There was twenty dollars next to it, and Nando eyed it sharply. All of a sudden he felt dirty, although he knew the shower had done its job.
    “Sheets are in the washing machine,” he wrote under it, before getting dressed in a hurry and rushing out the door, leaving the money untouched. He took the bus instead and was at the shop even before Paulina arrived. She gave him a questioning look, since he was never there before her, but she had the good judgment not to ask.
    A good day’s work was the best way for Nando to get his mind in order, and by evening time, he was smiling and joking with the clients again. Somewhere after ten, the steady stream of patrons dried up, and Nando was restocking the workbenches when Cooper walked through the front door.
    Instinctively, Nando turned away from him, opening one of the drawers to refill it with tissues. He didn’t want to be confronted by the man he’d slept with, not after all that