The Other Man (Starting Over Book 2) Read online

  Kevin: Yeah well your family is another spamcan. Whole aisle of them.

  Me: They done with the cat?

  Kevin: Cat’s done with them.

  Kevin: Aled loves you. He was bound to ask eventually, with or without the Michael BS. Don’t overthink it.

  Me: What if it goes wrong?

  His heart picked up. What if Aled turned out not to be the man Gabriel thought he was? What if they stopped loving each other? What if another regular—a real regular, like Kevin—came along? What then? What would they—

  Kevin: Then it started off right.

  Kevin: Don’t go sabotaging it in your head without giving it a chance first.

  Kevin: And you know you’re not stuck.

  Kevin: If it goes wrong, then you get out. You know we’d have you in a heartbeat.

  Gabriel started to ask about Judith but was cut off before he could even send it.

  Kevin: Me and Judith are talking about getting a bigger place now Gabby’s arrived, and we were talking about somewhere with a flat or an annexe for you. It wouldn’t upset her agoraphobia, but you’d be home where you belong.

  The lump in Gabriel’s throat came back.

  Kevin: I think this will go right for you.

  Kevin: I think Aled’s will become home.

  Kevin: I don’t think it will go wrong.

  Kevin: But if it does—IF—it’s not your only home. He’s not your only family.

  Kevin: You already have one.

  Gabriel swallowed thickly. A hot tear escaped and rolled down his face.

  Me: YOU MADE ME CRY

  Kevin: Hey, check it out! I still give no fucks! :D

  Me: Son of an unmarried woman.

  Kevin: While technically true, you’ve earned yourself a smacking for that.

  Gabriel winced. Oops.

  Kevin: You going back to Aled’s tonight?

  Me: Yeah, why?

  Kevin: The spamcan.

  Kevin: Don’t worry about it.

  Kevin: I’ll sort him.

  Gabriel blinked, and the tears evaporated.

  Oh.

  Well.

  Me: So Michael may not be a problem anymore…

  Aled: ?

  Me: Kevin’s going to sort him out.

  Aled: …

  Aled: OUCH.

  Chapter Thirteen

  Aled paused with the front door open and the key still in the lock.

  “Gabriel!”

  “Yeah?”

  “What are you cooking?”

  “Meatballs!”

  Aled rolled his eyes and slammed the door. “Did you not fancy mince and dumplings then?”

  Gabriel materialised halfway up the stairs, leaning over to peer down at Aled. He was towelling his hair dry and was dressed in a pair of boxers. The silent red, for when he didn’t even want to be asked to play a game. Aled made a mental note and hung up his jacket.

  “They’re spicy cheese meatballs.”

  “If you say so,” Aled said. “Want me to put some spaghetti on to go with them?”

  “No, you have these with salad.”

  Aled screwed up his face. “Salad? Urgh.”

  Gabriel was visibly more relaxed than last night, despite the boxers. He cosied up for a cuddle, getting Aled’s suit shirt damp. He smelled of lime shower gel and his neck was hot and tempting. Aled buried his nose there for a moment, then extracted himself when his cock took an interest in proceedings. Hugging Gabriel was dangerous at the best of times. Damp and naked was just asking for trouble.

  “I want to talk,” Gabriel said.

  “Okay…”

  “I want us to set out the new rules.”

  Aled blinked. “For—”

  “For living together.”

  “I figured we’d wait until the two-week trial is done.”

  “I want to do it now. Or we’re not having any sex for two weeks.”

  Aled laughed. “Okay, deal. But dinner first? I was held in a meeting through lunch so I’m starving.”

  “You dish up, I’ll get the rulebook?”

  “Deal.”

  Aled was surprised. He’d expected Gabriel to insist on either really violent games for the fortnight, or so-vanilla-it’s-milk sex instead. He hadn’t expected him to want to change their rulebook to fit the new situation, not given how skittish he’d been about the new situation even existing in the first place.

  The rulebook appeared on the coffee table before they ate in the front of the TV, but it was ignored until dinner was over. The news was playing the latest scandal to rock Parliament. Gabriel was entirely uninterested in politics, which made watching the news with him hilarious—he was either laughably ignorant or spent the whole time criticising someone’s hair. It was so relaxing that Aled almost wanted to waylay the discussion.

  But then Gabriel took the empty plates into the kitchen, disappeared briefly upstairs and reappeared in his dressing gown.

  Armour.

  Made of cotton, but armour all the same.

  He sat on the footstool instead of the sofa at Aled’s hip and pulled the rulebook into his lap. It was nothing more or less than a small red book, filled with lined sheets and every rule written out in Aled’s meticulous handwriting. He'd insisted on it, rather than Gabriel. Gabriel never wrote anything down, but Aled had wanted something tangible. Everything was in there. Their traffic light code on the first page—red for stop, yellow for pause, green for go. A list of banned terms on the second. Aled’s own name, crossed out in violent blood-red as something never to be uttered in a scene under any circumstances. Details of a breathplay game that they’d tried once—and only once—which had driven Aled into a complete meltdown.

  It creaked when Gabriel opened it, because the simple truth was that they didn’t need it often. Their kinks by and large matched up, and they had both long since memorised the right and wrong language. It usually opened these days when they tried something new that didn’t work and the last time had been in March.

  But Gabriel flicked to the end and handed it over with a pen.

  Carefully, Aled wrote a new title—Rules for Living Together—and set book and pen on his knee.

  “Okay,” he said. “Let’s do this.”

  Gabriel breathed out and nodded. “Okay.”

  A slightly awkward silence descended. Aled fought back the urge to nervously smile. It felt oddly like they were starting all over again.

  “You want to start?”

  “Um. I don’t—I have nothing that permanently needs to change, but—”

  The fumbling eased Aled's nerves. Cool control settled over him. Dominants didn't dither. They made decisions. And if Gabriel couldn't get the words out, then Aled needed to step in.

  “They’re always up for renegotiation. And when you’re all right for us to abandon a rule, just tell me. But what do you need, right now, to feel safe with me?”

  Gabriel frowned. “I don’t not feel safe with you.”

  “You’re uneasy about this. That’s not the same as safe. And I’m not blaming you for it, you can’t help the way you feel. I just want to help ease you back down to safe, as soon as possible. So what rules would help with that?”

  Aled kept his voice soft and patient, and watched Gabriel’s fidgeting slowly ease until he finally said, “Money.”

  “Sorry?”

  “You can’t use money as a hold over me.”

  “Such as?” Aled prompted.

  “Such as, you pay all the bills, so I owe you something. Such as, you’re putting a roof over my head, so I should be opening my legs when you say so. Such as, you fund my lifestyle so you own my lifestyle.”

  “Ah,” Aled said. “I get it. Okay.”

  He added it as the first bullet point, and the scratch of the pen on paper was soothing in the quiet room.

  “Aled…”

  “Mm?”

  “Right now, I don’t even think I can deal with you paying for dinner so I owe you sex.”

  It had been on
e of their early no-go rules, but swayed by some of the best scenes they’d ever played as they’d gotten used to each other. Now, it was almost an entry into a scene itself. If Aled insisted on paying and Gabriel didn’t veto it with a safeword, then he would be taken home and subjected to some seriously hot play.

  No more. Aled shrugged.

  “All right. We’ll put that on hold. Tell you what—if you feel comfortable with it, you tell me to pay and you’ll do something in return. How’s that?”

  “Okay.”

  “Then we’ll both know if it’s safe. And I’ll leave the living situation out of it entirely until you tell me otherwise.”

  Gabriel nodded, and blinked when Aled reached out to squeeze his ankle.

  “What else?”

  “No locking me in or out. It’s—it’s hard enough to think that I live here too. You can’t control when I come or go.”

  Aled cocked his head. “What about punishment?”

  During the summer, Gabriel had had most weekdays off while Aled was at work. And they had developed a game around it—Aled had punished him for an infraction by locking him in the flat and coming over twice a day to feed and fuck him. Like a housebound pet. It had been hot as hell and Aled had been entertaining the thought of doing it again in the New Year and maybe trying it out for a whole week instead of just a couple of days.

  But Gabriel hesitated, and it was all the answer that Aled needed.

  “I’ll put it down—”

  “Wait.”

  He paused.

  “I like those punishments.”

  Aled waited, chewing on his lip uncertainly as Gabriel mulled it over.

  “Maybe…maybe if you—if you didn’t leave me there…”

  “If I stayed in the house, you mean?”

  “Yeah. And if—if I had a way out…”

  “That defeats the point of locking you in,” Aled pointed out.

  “No, I mean, a way of—of safewording it.”

  “Ah,” Aled said. He tapped his knee. “Well, we could use the bathroom, and put down a rule that if we’re playing that, then I have to stay in the house with you. I could put the cord back on the safety alarm, so you could pull it if you wanted out.”

  “Okay,” Gabriel said. “If you’re home, and there’s an alarm, then you can lock me in a room, but no other time. And you can’t lock me out.”

  “I wouldn’t lock you out of your own home,” Aled said flatly as he wrote the amended rule down. “I might lock you in, but I’d never lock you out.”

  “I think—I think that’s it.”

  “Okay,” Aled said. “I’ve got one of my own that we need to talk about.”

  “What’s that?”

  “No men in my house that I don’t agree to.”

  Gabriel frowned. “You can’t control who I sleep with!”

  “I’m not trying to,” Aled said, equally sharply. “I’m saying I’m not comfortable with you bringing them home unless I’m involved somehow. It’s—it might be something we can work towards together, but I can’t be in a position where I come home and just find some guy fucking you in here.”

  Gabriel cocked his head. The flash of anger had subsided and he looked a little anxious.

  “What happened?”

  “Exactly that,” Aled said. “I came home from work and found a stranger balls-deep in my wife.”

  He hadn’t been expecting it. And at thirty-four, instead of the twenty-four he’d been at the time, Aled could rationalise it better. He’d been surprised, and that was the problem. He’d seen people he knew fuck his wife. He’d had threesomes with his wife. But to just come home and find it happening with a complete stranger…

  He wasn’t proud of his furious reaction, and it had become a rule on the back of the whole sorry affair.

  “I might be all right if I’m forewarned, or I know the guy involved,” he said. “But I don’t know and I don’t want us to just crash into that issue. So for the moment, no other men in my house. You can go round to theirs, or go to hotels—I will even pay for the hotel room if you’ll let me, because it’s safer—but I’m just not okay with other men in my house right now.”

  Gabriel chewed on his lip.

  “Promise we can try and work it out better?” he said eventually.

  “Yes. I promise.”

  “Then okay.”

  “Yeah?”

  “Yeah. But you’re not paying for my hotel rooms. That’ll make me feel like you’re renting me out to them,” Gabriel added quickly and tapped the book. “Add that.”

  Aled made a faint noise of disgust. “All right. Agreed? No other men in my house unless I’m involved in the fuck somehow, but I won’t pay for you to take them elsewhere.”

  “Agreed,” Gabriel said, then tilted his head. Slowly, he crawled from the footstool onto the sofa and ended up straddling Aled’s thigh. “What do you mean, unless you’re involved in the fuck?”

  Aled shrugged, his hand falling naturally into Gabriel’s lower back. “You know, threesomes, voyeurism, that sort of thing.”

  “You want to?”

  “Maybe. I like the videos your Kevin sends back with you. No different to being there.”

  “You’d want to watch someone fuck me, then have your turn?”

  “Maybe,” Aled repeated, and grinned. “You need to change the PIN on your phone. I’ve looked through several of your conquests.”

  “Yeah? Any catch your eye?”

  “Not yet. I’ll let you know if a likely one comes along.”

  Gabriel grinned and leaned down to kiss him. “Okay. But I get to choose them first. You can only pick in the scene, not in reality.”

  “Yeah, I know. Always your choice, you know that,” Aled replied softly, then tapped his cheek sharply. “Stop changing the subject. We’ve got no using the financial situation, no locking you out, no other men in my house, and no paying for your hotel rooms. Anything else?”

  Gabriel slowly sifted his fingers through Aled’s hair and shook his head. “I don’t think so.”

  Aled hummed and caught at his fingers, stilling them. “What about cameras?”

  “Sorry?”

  “Could I set up the cameras at home to watch you?”

  Gabriel bit his lip. Aled simply waited. They’d talked about it once, but never done it. Aled knew that Kevin filmed Gabriel—in fact, Kevin's dungeon was covered in CCTV—but Gabriel's rules with Kevin were unlike his rules with anyone else, Aled included. Aled couldn't necessarily do what Kevin could.

  Most of the time, he didn't want to.

  But he quite like the idea of being able to watch Gabriel at home while Aled was away. Order him around via phone calls and text messages. Maybe get a little show on his lunch break. When they’d talked about it before, it had been vetoed not by Gabriel's feelings on the matter, but that it wasn't possible to hook up sufficient cameras in his flat without altering the plastering and pissing off his grumpy landlord.

  Now, of course, Aled was the grumpy landlord.

  But the circumstances had changed.

  “I think I need some private space, at least at first,” Gabriel said slowly. “But me and Kevin do that sometimes and it’s awesome. So I don’t want to say no.”

  Aled hummed. “Well, for now, we won't do anything. But in the future, what if I put them in the bedrooms, halls and kitchen, but I left you the living room, conservatory and bathroom?”

  Gabriel mulled it over, chewing absently on his lip. Eventually, he nodded. “Okay.”

  “And I’ll leave the cables exposed for a little bit so if you really don’t like it and want them off, you can just pull the wire out of the back and deactivate it. Just text me if you do so I don’t lose my shit at work and think something’s happened, yeah?”

  Gabriel chuckled and nosed at Aled’s cheek before kissing him, their mouths askew.

  “Yeah,” he murmured messily against Aled’s tongue. “That’s it, I think.”

  “Okay.” Aled smoothed both hands
down Gabriel’s back, ghosting gently over his backside before clasping at his thighs and dragging him—off and onto the cushions.

  “Hey!”

  “You’re getting indecent in your boxers.”

  “I can take them off.”

  “If you want to go any further then you’ll have to.”

  Gabriel laughed at him. The twitchy mood had eased and Aled was glad for it even as he was suspicious of the change from the anxiety last night. He sat back and raised his eyebrows imperiously as the book was removed to the coffee table and the boxers to the lampshade.

  “And what exactly do you want me to do with that?” he asked when Gabriel planted his naked backside firmly on Aled’s thigh.

  Hands wound into his collar and began to pick at the buttons. A tongue played at his lips and a low whisper wound its way between his teeth.

  “I want to ride your dick like it’s what I’m built for.”

  Aled stretched both arms out along the back of the sofa. He was still in his suit trousers and shirt, and his cock wasn’t even half-hard, despite Gabriel straddling his lap.

  “Get on with it then,” he snapped. “I haven’t got all night.”

  The kiss was hungry. Desperate. Wanting.

  But Aled heard the thanks and the trust behind it all the same.

  Chapter Fourteen

  Me: I need to fuck.

  It was five minutes until the end of his shift and even the spotty manager didn’t give a damn anymore. It was snowing out. Heavily. Gabriel knew full well he’d have to ring someone for a lift back to Aled’s.

  Aled: No change there then.

  Me: No, seriously. I really need to fuck. Like a proper violent aggressive angry fuck.