The Other Man (Starting Over Book 2) Read online

  He held up the phone and felt it plucked from his fingers. Didn’t see, because Aled had blindfolded him the minute he’d started the call.

  “Everything okay?”

  Sure. Grandpa wasn't the sentimental type to really care if Gabriel visited or not, and he wasn't especially close to his uncles. They'd done him a favour years ago, and he repaid it by visiting sometimes and helping out with Grandpa. That was all. A relative-free Christmas was a nice prospect for all involved.

  “Yep.”

  His lips were teased apart by Aled’s in a damp kiss, and Gabriel lifted his head for more.

  “Ah-ah. You just lie there. I’m going to watch my Christmas present and explore the other.”

  They had swapped presents—a jumper for Gabriel, the latest superhero film on DVD for Aled—then had sex on the living room floor. Then Aled had plugged him with a screwed-up ball of wrapping paper, and told him not to leak on his way upstairs.

  And so here he was. Blinded and lying naked on the sheets, feet on the pillows and head at the bottom of the bed. Wedged painfully open with silver wrapping paper and drifting in a sea of cotton that dipped as Aled perched on the edge of the mattress.

  “You want any restraints?”

  Gabriel shook his head. He sensed Aled come closer, then a kiss was pressed to the inside of each wrist.

  “If you want to get off while I’m doing this, go ahead.”

  “Okay.”

  “I’ll suck you off if you want, too, but no prick.”

  “‘Kay.”

  He earned himself another one of those coaxing, wet kisses, then one leg was lifted and the bed dipped as Aled settled between his ankles. The TV was switched on. The DVD menu beeped gently to itself and some dramatic music for presumably undramatic studio logos started up in the quiet bedroom.

  “Seriously?”

  “I’m going to take my time,” Aled said.

  Gabriel flexed his toes, then his cunt as the paper was worked free. He grumbled and Aled laughed gently.

  “Want me to kiss it better?”

  “Yes, please.”

  The first kiss on his labia was a chaste mockery of the ones to his wrists, but teeth and tongue soon began to tweak his lips and pussy. He was still in a post-orgasmic haze from the fuck on the rug downstairs and whined when Aled began to suck. It was over quickly.

  Then, before his breathing had even settled, Aled began to finger him.

  If Aled’s cock was good and his mouth was sinful, his hands had once belonged to Satan. Getting fingerfucked by Aled could be anywhere between painful torture from a sadistic monster to a loving stroke that was barely felt but for the climax it teased out of him. Aled could be clinical or caressing, brutal or brilliant. He could make it as sexy as a visit to the gynaecologist or reduce Gabriel to nothing but a pulse and the word ‘yes’ on repeat.

  Gabriel relaxed at the familiar touch. A single finger, gently working at his lips until they were wet, then drying itself in long strokes up and around his dick before smoothing its way back down. A shivery pleasure followed it, ghosting along his skin and sinking into his nerves. He sighed with every touch to his cock. Eventually, Aled settled his weight along Gabriel’s right leg, kissing his belly briefly before turning his attention to the film, the pattern of pierce, stroke, tease, stroke, repeat settling into a rhythm between Gabriel’s legs.

  And Gabriel—

  Drifted.

  He felt as if he was a body of water, Aled dipping into him like a swimmer on the edge of a pool. But he also felt as though he was a balloon, ready to float away but for the weight anchoring his leg to the bed. He reached blindly for the footboard and opened his knees wider.

  “More,” he whispered.

  “Patience,” Aled chided, but he let Gabriel have a little more. The first gentle finger was joined by another and they stroked up either side of him to meet again at his cock with every pass. Nails dragged against the folds of his skin until he felt scored open, and they wriggled into him in tiny bursts of movement until they were buried to the final knuckle and he could feel them inside.

  That was the best part.

  It was oddly non-sexual. He could come on cock, but it wasn’t the way the world ended. Coming from the inside was just vaguely pleasant but coming from the outside would shatter him into a thousand pieces, like an imploding star that went too far and burst again in every direction, spilling stardust into the universe for all eternity.

  But the feeling of something simply being inside? The pressure against him? The heat nestled into his muscles? He squeezed and felt Aled wave his fingers in reply. He relaxed and they curled soothingly into him. He could feel the fingerprints left against the hard wall to the back, and the loving curiosity in the strokes that pushed into the front and sides and tested his limits, opened him up, kissed him from the inside.

  Some war raged from the TV on the wall. A burst of gunfire and a snide remark made Aled chuckle. But Gabriel just closed his eyes behind the blindfold and centred himself on the hand that cupped him inside and outside, and held him like he was a new country to be discovered, a universe otherwise unknown, and the most beautiful thing that these intrepid explorers had ever seen.

  It was sensual pleasure, to be gently worked open on loving hands with no other intention. Even when the drying cum was worked back out of him and his hiss of discomfort was met with a shift in weight and the wet seal of lips around his cock, Gabriel felt less sexual pleasure and more a strange, hedonistic bliss. He was cocooned in cotton, brought to the peak of the mountain by a lover’s mouth and kissed back down to earth by the same lips that had dragged him away from it. Lips that tracked from cunt to chin. Soft. Loving. He opened to the kiss and tasted himself, and his only reply to the murmured question was to tighten his grip around the three fingers now searching out every nerve inside him and squeeze them back into one.

  “Does that mean fine?”

  “Mhmm…”

  For the longest time, that was all that was there. Three fingers, sometimes clutched as one and sometimes fanned out to stretch him. They pushed in and dragged out, over and over again, until he made a grumble about dry discomfort and a bottle cap popped.

  Then the fire came.

  The label called it a warming tingle. Gabriel called it bottled sex. The heat lit him up like a firework, and he sobbed as his dick was pumped between finger and thumb until it hurt, everything hurt, coming hurt—

  “Empty,” he whispered into the dark. “Fuck, please, m’empty, please—”

  “Ssh…”

  His knee was pushed over to open him up wider. He’d come like a burst water main, and it was all pushed back inside. From very far away, he heard the noise, but couldn’t scrounge up a scrape of embarrassment. He was being wrought open, dissolved like gold melting in the forge. He was nothing. Boneless, limp, a puddle of nothing.

  Knuckles bumped against his shores, and he rocked as though caught in the tide.

  “I love you.”

  Aled’s voice was the wind that plucked white from the waves and his hand was the shore that Gabriel crashed down on. The air rushed out of his lungs as the emptiness was banished. As he was filled. As the thin wedge that had been driven into him began to turn and he felt—from the inside—every tiny bone twisting in Aled’s wrist.

  “Aled.”

  “Mm?”

  “Hand.”

  He grasped blindly, and his fingers were taken in a familiar grip. His knuckles were kissed then his mouth. He gasped around the kiss as Aled tightened his biceps, and power surged down his arm and into Gabriel’s body, as tangible as any load he’d ever taken.

  “F’k me.”

  “What?”

  “F’k me.”

  “Just relax, sweetheart.”

  He basked in Aled’s voice. Turned his face into the kisses that came out of the dark and sighed as movement fluttered inside him, like mermaids swimming in the deep, as fingers fanned out and the wide span of rigid knuckles eased. Then th
ey closed and the fist was clenched again. Sank a little deeper. Relaxed. Fanned out. Clenched—

  It was like fucking, but without the sex. Gabriel wasn’t moving and yet the whole bed was shaking. He was being rocked in the centre of the world, the tide caused not by the moon but by the fist sinking impossibly farther into him until it met the sharp edge of warning, where nothing—not even his limits—dared to cross.

  Then it stilled.

  Relaxed.

  Curled up inside him like he was a pocket.

  “Hey.”

  Gabriel hummed, blinking hazily under the cloth. It was dark. Why was it dark?

  “You wanna come like this?”

  “Mhmm…”

  “Is that a yes?”

  He didn’t answer. He dragged his foot higher on the bedspread and felt everything change inside, yet stay the same. It had been agony before. Fistfucked until he bled. But this was—

  “C’mere.”

  The kiss was soft and messy. Someone was dying on the TV. Gabriel could sympathise, but why were they complaining about it? If he was dying, then it was the best thing to have ever happened.

  “You are so stoned right now…”

  “Mmm…”

  “Could stay like this until the credits roll, you know.”

  “F’k me through it…”

  The hand tightened in its pocket and the gentlest of undulations rippled through him, like a stone thrown into a rock pool. It barely moved, and yet the ocean flowed from him. It barely moved, yet what remained dissolved.

  He was everything and nothing, all and none, the world and an atom. This was love without sex, and sex without love, and all the points along either line.

  But it was Aled.

  Aled who held him, Aled inside him, Aled around him. Aled-Aled-Aled.

  It occurred to him—as Aled’s fingers flexed inside him, as Gabriel’s entire being was wrapped around this man physically as well as mentally, as he was moved like the sea yet surrounded by another—that the two-week trial would over in a matter of days.

  And Gabriel didn’t want to leave.

  Chapter Seventeen

  Aled hated working between Christmas and New Year. It had been the perfect Christmas. The day itself had been spent with Gabriel, and the day after laughing at Nan’s scathing assessment of her younger son, and the day after that catching up with Suze over a pint about their respective celebrations with their partner—him—and their future in-laws—her.

  But then the wet, miserable week between the two holidays rolled around and Aled ended up having to go into work.

  “At least you earn decent money. No minimum wage for you,” was Gabriel’s unhelpful reply, so Aled gave him half a blow job then left him hanging before heading to the office. By the time he’d pulled up outside the building, his phone was full of swearwords and aspersions on his parents’ marriage.

  Me: Love you too, darling x

  The only upside of working that week was that there was very little to do. Most of their sister firms were closed over Christmas, so there was no marketing to actually be done. The Christmas campaigns had been up and running for weeks, and there was nobody to talk to about making new ones. He spent most of the morning cleaning out his email folder, playing games on his phone and helping one of the secretaries decorate the CEO’s office for his birthday next week. He’d never been paid so much to draw stars on Post-it notes before, and it made a nice change.

  But he missed Suze.

  She wasn’t going to be back until after New Year and even ringing her for a chat at lunch wasn’t the same. Half the fun of watching Suze rant was seeing her. She waved her hands and pulled faces and had the most expressive eyes. Just hearing about her future mother-in-law wasn’t the same.

  Then the incoming call warning beeped.

  “Hang on, Suze. Got another call incoming.”

  “It’ll be the boss, tell him to go away!” she shouted as he took the phone away from his ear and frowned at the display.

  What the—

  “It’s Gabriel,” he told her. “I’ll ring you back.”

  Gabriel very rarely rang him. And he’d be at home, so why bother?

  “Hello?”

  “Aled?”

  Gabriel’s voice was very quiet and hoarse, and Aled’s stomach twisted. “Yeah, it’s me. What’s up, babe?” The endearment slipped free, and when Gabriel didn’t huff about it, Aled’s stomach clenched even harder.

  “Work called.” Gabriel sniffed and it sounded like he was trying to snort half a pound of cocaine. “I’m unemployed.”

  “Oh, hell.”

  “They’re closing the store. They’ve sacked everyone. I’ve got no job anymore.”

  “Hey, it’s all right,” Aled interrupted, lowering his voice to a soothing murmur. He sat forward, dropping his feet to the floor from where they’d been propped on the desk. Cheryl, the secretary, gave him a worried look. “It’s all right. When’s your notice up?”

  “Two weeks.”

  “Okay, that’s two more weeks pay, and a fortnight to find something else. You can do that. And—”

  “What if I can’t, Aled, I’ll lose the flat, and—”

  His voice was rapid and panicked. Aled sympathised. It had been a long time since he'd had to worry about money, but he remembered the feeling. His parents hadn't been particularly well off. University had been a juggling act of begging, borrowing and trying not to resort to stealing. He could remember lying awake at night wondering how he was going to make ends meet, and what would happen if he couldn't.

  “If you can’t, I’ll help you,” Aled interrupted. “It’s not the end of the world. I know it’s fucking scary and it’s shit they’ve done this to you, but you could always find something better, with less weird shift patterns, and more than the minimum wage. Could be a blessing.”

  Gabriel swallowed, and Aled realised uneasily that he was crying.

  “Hey, you at home?”

  “In town.”

  “Wakefield?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Let me come and pick you up.”

  “You’re working—”

  “I’ll tell them I’m sick.”

  “No.” Gabriel’s voice was croaky, but firm. “You can’t put your job on the line for me.”

  Aled bit his lip. “It wouldn’t,” he said gently. “They’ll be fine without me for half a day. There’s nothing going on anyway. Let me come and pick you up.”

  “You don’t need to—”

  “I want to. You’re upset, and I’m worried about you, okay? You never call me—you’re a text demon.”

  It didn’t elicit a laugh like usual and Aled grimaced.

  “Where are you?”

  “Trinity Walk.”

  “Okay, why don’t you go to the Costa behind Sainsbury’s and get yourself a coffee or something sweet. I’ll come and get you, then I’ll take you home and make a big fuss of you, all right?”

  Gabriel swallowed again. “Full body massage?”

  “From your toes to your scalp,” Aled promised.

  “Okay.”

  He hung up and Aled dropped his phone on the desk, stooping to unplug the charger.

  “I have to—”

  “I heard,” Cheryl said. “Was that your girlfriend?”

  “Yeah,” he lied, not bothering to correct her. “Bad news. Look, if—”

  “Oh, you’re around, I’ve seen you,” she said airily, waving a hand. “You know Aled, he’s probably flirting with the girls down in finance again!”

  Aled rolled his eyes but accepted the out, sweeping his things into his bag and grabbing his coat off the stand in the corner.

  “You’re a gem!” he shouted before the door banged shut behind him and he was taking the stairs two at a time down to the car park. Fuck. Fuck. They’d had such a great Christmas, and now this. This.

  The city was heaving, and it took him a ridiculously long time to get back into Wakefield—which wasn’t any better. The car p
ark at Sainsbury’s was packed out, and Aled cursed post-Christmas sales and the fact that Wakefield suddenly seemed to hold a population of six million whenever Primark was selling off their tat.

  But there was one tiny reprieve from the mad crush.

  Gabriel wasn’t waiting in Costa, but at the bottom of the stairs up to Trinity Walk. He was nothing more than a shape smoking in the shadow of the concrete and Aled’s heart twisted before he wrenched the car around and headed for the disabled bays opposite his dejected-looking partner.

  “Hey,” he called out the open window. “Room for one more in here.”

  Gabriel didn’t so much as blink. Aled sighed, mentally apologised to whoever was watching and sloppily parked in a free yellow bay. Sliding out, he paced through the drizzle to the shelter of the stairs and watched the cigarette glow.

  “How many?” he asked gently.

  Gabriel dragged heavily on the stub he held between finger and thumb. “Fifth.”

  “You know what, in light of your shitty day, I’ll not argue about the rest of the packet,” Aled said quietly, sliding an arm around his waist. Gabriel relaxed against his jacket with a sigh, but didn’t look up and didn’t stub out the cigarette. “Come on, sweetheart. Snuff it out and let’s go home.”

  “I won’t have one.”

  The whisper was so quiet that Aled almost missed it. “You won’t have what?”

  “A home.”

  “What? Gabe—”

  “Jobseekers won’t cover the flat, they’ll make me move into a council and last time I was in a council flat someone scrawled ‘tranny paedo’ on my front door and set fire to my bins.” Gabriel’s voice was wavering, razor-thin and cracking along the edges. “I’ll lose the flat, Aled, and then it'll be lying awake, listening to kids spraying slurs on my front door, and then—I can’t—I can’t go back to the streets again, I can’t, I—”

  “Hey, hey, hey, ssh,” Aled murmured, taking the cigarette and tossing it away. Gabriel turned into him, clinging, and Aled rocked them lightly on the spot, combing his fingers through the hair at the back of Gabriel’s neck and head. “What do you mean, back to the streets?”