Finding Love: Gay Romance Collection

Dustin Hanson sprawled out on the unforgiving mattress in his dorm room. A notebook with doodles in the margin lay open by his hand. "Did I already read this part?" he asked himself aloud as he stared at his Western World Literature textbook. The words all seemed jumbled together like a bowl of alphabet soup.

Dustin sighed as he wondered why he, the guy with the 3.95 GPA, couldn't come up with a decent answer as to why the Pardoner in Chaucer's Canterbury Tales was the most controversial of the pilgrims. He remembered the professor saying in class, "Some scholars claim the text asserts that the Pardoner character is gay or bisexual."

He could use that! Surely, being gay would have been controversial in medieval Europe, just slightly more so than it was back in his small-town high school in Oklahoma!

He eagerly wrote a few words in his notebook and then stretched his neck. When his eyes glanced up at the bottom of the unoccupied bunk bed above him, his concentration flew out the window. That explained why he couldn't focus on his homework—all Dustin could think about was Jeff Ridgewood, the blond-haired, blue-eyed god that slept on top of him!

Well, Jeff didn't sleep on top of him (Dustin only wished) so much as above him in the upper bunk. Dustin would lay in bed at night letting his hand wander below his waistline while he stared up at the way his roommate's ass sagged in the cheap, college-issued mattress. His mind imagined what it would be like if the mattress, as well as Jeff's clothes, magically disappeared giving him a full view of…

"Ouch!" Dustin pinched his own hand to stop the daydream and brought himself abruptly back to reality. How could he, the studious geek who worked in the college library and said words like "gosh" and "darn" ever hope to get it on with a stud—even a gay one, like Jeff?

Jeff played on several college sports teams, worked out like a fiend, and even partied with the straight frat boys! Instead of being the token gay guy hanging around their crowd so the frat could claim its annual required brownie points with the College Diversity Office, Jeff was actually the sought after "cool gay guy" on campus. The frat dudes all went to him for advice like on that old show Queer Eye for the Straight Guy.

Dustin loved to watch Jeff in action. Jeff would advise a macho frat guy, practically reduced to tears, on how to get back in the good graces of a pissed off girlfriend. He even had to explain to the frat guys how to ask out a special girl in the first place. Imagine, the hottest straight guys on campus went to gay Jeff to learn how to treat a woman!

"It's not their fault that society doesn't teach those straight boys common sense and manners," Jeff would say to Dustin with a wink as the latest frat hunk would stroll out of their dorm room with a new-found confidence to put his love life in order.

Dustin absently doodled in his notebook. If only he could get up the nerve to ask Jeff for some advice himself, namely on how to get the gay guy of his dreams—the one right in front of his face, yet hopelessly out of his reach.

"Hey, Little Dude," Jeff called out as he entered the dorm room using his nickname for Dustin. Since Jeff stood several inches taller and dozens of pounds heavier in comparison, the moniker fit perfectly. It also allowed Jeff as the older roommate to assert his status as a junior as opposed to Dustin's status as a freshman.

The two young men had been paired as roommates by the Student Life Office's pilot program of mixing grade levels in the dormitories. The fact that they were both gay was just a convenient coincidence.

Jeff covered his eyes with his baseball glove. "You're not jerking off in here or doing anything else you don't want me to see, are ya?"

Dustin longed to point out that in some ways he did indeed want Jeff to see him pleasuring himself! Nonetheless, he laughed off Jeff's teasing and said, "You can open your eyes, I'm just working on some English homework. Fully clothed!"

Jeff dropped his baseball glove on the desk. He chewed his gum as he eyed his roommate up and down with a smirk. "Maybe I'm just a bit disappointed I didn't catch ya doin' the one-handed tango."

Dustin lowered his glasses and peered over the top rims. "Did you just call masturbation the, um, one-handed tango?"

Jeff shrugged and snapped his gum.

"So, how was practice?" Dustin asked more as an attempt to change the subject than anything else. He didn't really know the difference between line drives and fly balls. His knowledge of baseball pretty much began and ended with the sexual position euphemisms of "pitcher" and "catcher."

"I fooled two guys in a rundown and stole home base."

"That's good, right?"

Jeff smiled. "Yeah, that's good. So, what are you doing here on a Thursday evening? Why aren't you working at the library?"

Dustin didn't realize that Jeff paid that much attention to his schedule. He wondered if his roommate was getting blown by hot guys in their room while he was shelving books and shushing people in the library every Thursday evening. "Oh, the library had a couple rooms painted because of the water leak from the big storm last week. Then, the ventilation system was malfunctioning, so they closed down the building because of the paint fumes."

"Their loss. My gain."

"How's that?"

"I know just what you need, Little Dude," the athlete announced.

Dustin's throat went dry. "You do?" he croaked out.

"Yeah. I've got a big surprise for you!"

"Surprise? For me?"

"What are you, an echo chamber all of a sudden? I've just got to get out of these clothes first." Jeff grabbed the hem of his jersey with one hand and whipped it over his head.

Even though it happened so fast, Dustin's perception altered the movement to slow motion. It felt like watching a sculptor rip the sheet off his latest masterpiece, which turned out to be the perfectly sculpted upper torso of a Greek god. Dustin stopped breathing for a second when Jeff wiped the shirt across his sweaty and lightly hairy pecs.

How could he bother to breathe when he was about to make love to the only man he'd wanted since the day he laid eyes on him? Dustin remembered it all too well. He'd walked into the dorm room on that late August day and saw Jeff casually lounging on the bed with his head resting on his bulging bicep.

He couldn't believe how lucky he was to have a hot roommate like that. Jeff soon told him that he was gay. Instead of telling Jeff about his own sexuality and finally coming out to someone, Dustin had kept it all bottled up inside. Somehow it was just easier to fantasize about Jeff than admit his feelings for his roommate and risk rejection.

In the eight months since that fateful day, Dustin had spent all his free time daydreaming about Jeff—even though Jeff thought of him only as a friend. Well, until now, apparently. That thought, not to mention the half-naked hunk in front of him, put a smile on Dustin's face and sent a wave of excitement between his legs.

Jeff unbuckled his belt with his other hand. "I'm gonna hop in the shower and when I get back, we'll pick out something for you to wear."

"Wear?"

"You're killing me with the whole parrot thing today, man." Jeff playfully tossed his sweat-soaked jersey across the room.

It landed smack dab on Dustin's face. The young man felt his cheeks flush warm. He closed his eyes and breathed in his roommate's musky after-practice scent. Dustin reluctantly lowered the shirt. His only motivation to do so was the anticipation of seeing Jeff strip down completely.

Jeff, still clothed from the waist down, had just started to walk through the bathroom door when Dustin opened his eyes. The shirtless stud looked back over his shoulder. "Oh, and lose the glasses. Put your contacts in. You're gonna want perfect vision for where we're going tonight."

The bathroom door closed, and Jeff disappeared behind it. Dustin waited a moment until he heard the baseball uniform pants drop to the floor with the quiet clang of the belt buckle against the tile. A few seconds later, he heard the water splashing against the shower wall.

Dustin sat on his bed, alone, feeling like a complete fool. Thank goodness he hadn't said anything to let Jeff know what he had been thinking! The gorgeous jock probably would have laughed him right out of the dorm room and off the campus grounds entirely.

Dustin's mind raced. So, Jeff didn't want to make love to him after all. But the question remained, what exactly were Jeff's plans for the two of them?