Genital Herpes

So my partner has some spots on the shaft of his penis. One came the other day and was kind of like a yellow scab, then today he has another tiny little bump that looks like a super tiny blister.  He was complaining about being itchy. We are refraining from sex and going to wait a few days and see how it looks. Maybe it's some sort of pimple or ingrown hair. It doesn't look like the pictures on the Internet, not such a big cluster. So we are going to keep an eye on it.
We have been together about 3 years, maybe 2.5 of those we have been exclusive. If it is herpes, is it possible it lay dormant all this time we've been dating? And he's just getting an outbreak now, or......