The Third Date (Starting Over) Read online

  “Rude.”

  Of course, that wasn’t how Chris’ life worked. Even though they changed the subject and talked about a potential trip to Scarborough once Gabriel was able to travel decent distances in the car again, his dick had taken an interest in proceedings. By the time he was washing up, that aggravating pulse had started. And so, despite his bruised ego, they ended up watching a horror movie in bed, Gabriel’s hopefully infertile body warm around his cock, and a condom nicked from Aled’s stash in the bathroom keeping any more baby talk at bay.

  It was over quickly, and Gabriel peeled the used condom off before distracting Chris from the stomach-turning revulsion with a quick kiss and a sharp tug on his ear.

  “There you go,” he said. “No babies. Now get out of my way. I want to see who dies first.”

  Chris dragged himself off. Gabriel cuddled up under his arm. It was a shitty film from the early 2000s, so the black guy died first. Chris’ dick went back to sleep, and the unease settled under a layer of warmth that was nothing to do with the duvet, and everything to do with the dead weight giving him pins and needles along his left arm.

  “Gabriel?”

  “Ssh!”

  “Love you.”

  “I said ssh.”

  But then a foot rubbed up against his own under the covers, and the tiny pressure on his collarbone might have been a kiss.

  “Love you, too.”

  Chapter Twenty-One

  Gabriel was almost there.

  He could have proper sex. The wheelchair had been given back to the hospital. He could drift in a hot pool until his skin dissolved. Getting dressed didn’t make him fall back into bed the minute he tried to put on socks or pull a shirt over his head. He could—as long as he was lying down—ride in a car without throwing up. He could even walk round to the shop with Chris at lunchtime and sneak a doughnut when the health freak wasn’t looking. Even that cunt of a consultant had referred him back to his GP and taken him off everything but the migraine medication and the as-and-when painkillers in case the skull fracture acted up.

  He was so fucking close.

  But there was one thing standing between Gabriel and being better.

  He stood in the bathroom doorway, staring at the stairs, and felt wobbly just thinking about them.

  “Give me a minute,” Chris said through a beard of shaving foam. “Won’t be long with this.”

  “‘Kay,” Gabriel said, but didn’t take his eyes off the stairs. They wavered as if they were underwater. When he blinked, they shivered.

  He’d not once managed getting down them on his own. Up was bad, but not impossible. With supervision, or if he crawled on hands and knees like a little kid, he could get up the stairs. But down? No. Something about going down the stairs—any stairs—made the vertigo a thousand times worse. What had dulled into a gentle tug around the ears most of the time, and even vanished entirely when he was sitting down or lying in the hammock, rose into the tipping deck of a sailing ship in a hurricane whenever he tried to tackle stairs. One step worked. Two started to shake. And on the third, he would sag into Chris’ grasp and cling to him to be carried the rest of the way. Usually crying in frustration.

  He hated it.

  Hated it.

  And yet he couldn’t get past it. He’d been trying every morning for three weeks to conquer them, and it just wasn’t working.

  But today—

  Today there was a flicker of hope. Not from the vertigo, which seemed to have hit its limit and hadn’t improved in a while, but from a conversation. When Gabriel had complained over breakfast about being stuck on one floor of the house, Chris had made a suggestion about where to look.

  “I get dizzy with ear infections,” he’d said. “I always found it helped to do that gymnast thing. You know, stare into the middle distance?”

  Gabriel stared down the shaking steps, then raised his eyes to the wall.

  The stairs in the old house had curved to fit, but in the new house they fell in a long, straight line down into the living room. He could just about see the edge of the sofa from the landing, and the sofa was his goal. He wanted to walk downstairs, sit on the sofa and watch a film with Chris with their feet up on the coffee table.

  The stairs themselves were the only thing throwing a wrench in the works.

  A wooden banister supported one side, and the wall the other. They’d taken out the railing drilled into the wall for being ugly, but Gabriel regretted the decision now. He could have done with a white-knuckle grip on both. As it was, he was tempted to lean up against the wall to slide his way down.

  “Okay.” The tap switched off. “Ready. You want carrying, or—”

  “I want to try it myself first,” Gabriel said.

  To Chris’ credit, he didn’t argue. “Uh, okay. Let me go first, then.”

  Gabriel kept his eyes trained on the opposite wall as he inched towards the stairs. He was barefoot, and the lush carpet cuddled his toes before he took that first step off the edge of the abyss and lowered his weight through the wind buffeting his brain. His body hung in the vacuum of space. The cold wall under his palm tipped downwards. The banister shook.

  But he kept his eyes on the opposite wall, and his foot met carpet once more.

  “Fuck,” he muttered.

  “Just take your time.”

  “I’m gonna do this.”

  “On your own time.”

  He didn’t dare nod. Instead, he clung to the banister as he slid the second foot down to join the first and steeled himself to do it again.

  The second time was just as bad, but the awful wait with his feet on different levels was shorter. Once he could press his ankles together like two sides of a jigsaw and locked his knees, the sensation of something shadowy grabbing at him and trying to pull him over eased.

  He kept his eyes on the wall and slid his hands down for the third try.

  He’d never made it this far on his own before, and when his foot touched the third step, his vision began to blur with tears. He blinked them away to keep focus on the wall and they ran down his face in hot streaks.

  “You okay?” Chris murmured.

  “Yeah.”

  “You’re doing great.”

  “M’gonna do it,” he croaked.

  He was going to do it. He was going to walk down the fucking stairs. He was.

  His knee buckled on the fourth, but Gabriel clung to the banister and forced himself upright again. He closed his eyes rather than look down, and the terrifying sensation of a sheer drop faded. After a little while of hugging his ankles together, the newfound nausea abated too, and he tried for the fifth.

  And the sixth.

  And the seventh.

  Slowly, the wall gave away to the living room ceiling and he focused on the light fitting instead. On the swirly patterns that had presumably been the fashion for plasterers all over Yorkshire when the house was built. Sweat was running down his back. His hands were shaking with the effort of holding on. He wasn’t entirely sure which way was up, and his stomach was rebelling worse than its puking sessions in the hospital. He was going to hurl.

  Only he was on the eighth step.

  The ninth.

  The ceiling got too high, and he focused on the window instead, warm summer sun streaming in from the road. There was a butterfly dancing on the outside of the glass and he stared at it until the colours blurred into an indistinct blob. He was going to sit in the sun. He was going to lounge in the sun until it moved around to the other side of the house, then he was going to get into the hammock and read a book or something.

  Ten steps.

  Eleven.

  “Gabriel.”

  “In a minute,” he croaked. His feet hurt. Knees. Hips. Everything hurt, aching with the tension that vibrated down his whole body like a plucked violin string. His heart was pounding in his chest. His hair was damp at the temples and around his ears. He needed another shower. God, he was going to have to turn right around and go straight back up—
/>
  “Look down.”

  “No.”

  “Look down.”

  Chris’ hand squeezed his wrist. Gabriel glanced at him.

  And frowned.

  Not—

  Not down at him. Chris was level with him. Chris was—

  Gabriel looked down.

  A single solitary step stood between him and the living room rug.

  “One more,” Chris said, and held open his arms. “C’mere.”

  The vertigo clawed at Gabriel’s brain. His vision was both perfectly fine and perfectly fucked. He wanted to puke. He wanted to fall. Collapse in a heap and forget he was human. Forget that a flight of fucking stairs had reduced him to such a mess.

  Instead, he burst into tears.

  As he stepped off the edge of the planet into Chris’ arms.

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  Aled put his keys in the door, then yelped as it was jerked back and Gabriel flung his arms around his neck.

  “Um. Hello?”

  “I walked down the stairs!”

  Aled laughed. “On your own?”

  “Yes!”

  He grinned, seized Gabriel’s face for a kiss then picked him up and twirled. That earned a shriek and a protest—and a little clinginess when he stopped—but it was worth it for the sunny beam on Gabriel’s face.

  “Twice,” Gabriel enthused. “I did it twice. Chris didn’t need to help once. I can do stairs. I’m getting better!”

  He looked better too. The sun had come up in his eyes. A flash of arousal smashed through Aled’s body, and he grabbed a handful of hair to kiss him again. Open. Hungry. Biting.

  Gabriel whimpered and fingers tangled in his belt. The buckle slid free.

  “Do it again,” he whispered when Aled let go of his hair and mouth.

  Aled backed him into the wall, biting at his neck. Gabriel shuddered. Whined. His hands seized Aled’s love handles and pulled him closer. He opened his legs around Aled’s hips and ground up against his dick. Still soft, but not for long. Aled dropped his briefcase. Groped blindly to slam the front door. He could go for anything—a wall fuck, a worship, a wank into an unwilling body…

  The latter made itself known. The sudden squirm. The attempt to close open thighs. Gabriel pulled away from the kiss and whimpered when Aled sank his teeth into his shoulder instead.

  “Wait—”

  Aled ignored him. The hot summer wasn’t abating, and Gabriel was only wearing a pair of denim shorts and a baggy T-shirt. And not for long. Aled ripped the T-shirt off over his head and bit again, this time on a puffy nipple. Gabriel had small breasts, and Aled could almost fit the whole swell into his mouth. He sucked until Gabriel tried to push him off, then let go to grip Gabriel’s jaw in one hand and crush him into silence.

  “If you’re fit enough to climb the stairs, you’re fit enough to lie on your back and open your legs,” he said.

  “Later?” Gabriel pleaded. “Your friend is still here. I can’t—please. Not in front of your friend.”

  “You think I’m stupid?” Aled said. “You’ve been alone in the house with him for weeks. There’s no way a whore like you hasn’t been gagging on his cock for breakfast every morning.”

  “I haven’t!”

  “Bullshit,” Aled said. “I know he’s fucked you. He’s seen you moan like a bitch in heat before—what do you care if he sees you do it again?”

  He let go, only to seize Gabriel by the upper arms and frogmarch him into the living room, topless with pink bites decorating his neck and nipples. Chris was sitting in the corner, bike upended on some newspaper, and stared.

  “Stay and watch, or clear off,” Aled said. “Doesn’t matter to me.”

  He immediately flung Chris out of his mind, focusing instead on throwing Gabriel down on the sofa and ripping those tiny shorts down his legs. His underwear followed, then Aled stepped back and dropped his trousers. He stepped out of them, unbuttoned the fly on his boxers and drew out his cock, pumping it quickly to hardness.

  “So how do you want it?” he asked. “You going to ride me like a lover, or do you want to be fucked like the free slut you are?”

  Gabriel fisted his hands into the cushions. Even through the roleplay, Aled could see the indecision. Be humiliated by being taunted as he sat in Aled’s lap and wriggled, having his tits played with like he was nothing more than a sex doll? Or be held down and pounded until Aled gagged him with his own underwear to muffle the screaming?

  Aled waited, wanking idly, until Gabriel’s throat bobbed and he finally offered an answer.

  “I—I’ll ride you.”

  “Ask nicely.”

  Gabriel’s face burned red. “Can—can I ride your cock, sir?”

  Aled smirked and sat down on the end of the sofa, patting his thigh.

  “Come on, then. Put your lips around it. Any lips.”

  He’d appreciate the blowjob, but Gabriel seemed to want it deeper than that. He crawled over Aled’s lap, looping his arms around Aled’s neck to steady himself, and the warm wetness of his pussy gently kissed the head of Aled’s dick before he began to lower himself.

  “Fuuuuck,” Aled breathed.

  The tight heat that sank over him was glorious. He dropped his head back with a deep, guttural groan.

  “God, I could fuck that cunt all day,” he murmured. “You’re still tight for a two-timing whore.”

  Gabriel settled into his lap, fully-seated, and wasted no time. His hips rolled forwards, and Aled’s cock was massaged, squeezed, almost milked, by a very talented body.

  “Very nice.” Aled slapped his arse, enjoying the jolt both inside and outside, then cupped bouncing tits in both hands and squeezed until a look of pain crossed Gabriel’s face. He relaxed his grip, then leaned forward to take the nipple ring between his teeth. He pulled until Gabriel cried out, then let go with a laugh. “I’m going to get you a chain for that. You’d like that, wouldn’t you? Getting pulled around by your tits.”

  “N-no. It hurts. Please—”

  “You get off on pain.” Aled squeezed his breasts again and bucked his hips up into Gabriel’s. “Hear that? It’s like fucking a bowl of water. You’re dripping. Tight as a drum and you didn’t need a single lick to lube you up.”

  Then he let go.

  Sat back.

  Draped his arms over the back of the sofa.

  His own orgasm was a while away yet, but Gabriel was leaking around him like a burst pipe and the flushed heat in his face and neck wasn’t entirely the humiliation of being dirty-talked in front of his other boyfriend.

  “Fuck yourself,” Aled said.

  “B-but—”

  “No touching your own. You ride my dick until you come,” Aled instructed. “You’ve got ten minutes. And if you don’t—”

  He leaned forward until his lips brushed Gabriel’s ear.

  “Then I’ll put this up your arse and you can come like that instead.”

  * * * *

  Half an hour later, Gabriel was face down on the sofa with Aled’s belt securing his arms behind his back, gagged with his own briefs and being fucked in long, hard, painful thrusts.

  And he screamed with every single one, because he’d disobeyed.

  He’d brought himself close several times in his allocated ten minutes, but had eventually jacked off. Aled had let him, holding the base of his own dick so he wouldn’t be jerked off by Gabriel’s powerful orgasms, and had then turned him over, trussed him up and fingered him until he was ready for something more considerable.

  It didn’t stop him screaming, though.

  It hadn’t stop him coming a second time, either, and Aled was looking forward to the third one. He always tried for a third. It was the ultimate humiliation, making Gabriel jack off while Aled fingered the cum back out of him.

  Although—

  He glanced up as he fucked.

  Chris was still watching.

  Aled had expected him to leave or try to interfere out of ignorance about their games. But h
e must have picked up on the lack of safewords, and he was still staring. Not quite as pale and stunned as when it had all started, but—

  Aled’s gaze dropped.

  He was hard.

  Interesting.

  As he pulled out, Aled caught Chris’ eye once more and smirked. The cyclist sat perfectly still on the cuddle chair, knuckles white where he was gripping the armrests. The hard-on in his jeans was clearly visible. His bike had long since been abandoned.

  “I think my friend wants to have a go,” Aled murmured in Gabriel’s ear, just loud enough for Chris to hear, and tugged the underwear gag free. “Let’s put you to better use, shall we?”

  “N-no—” Gabriel whimpered.

  “If he wants, then he gets.”

  “But—”

  “Sluts don’t get a choice,” Aled purred. “And we both know what you are. Say it.”

  Gabriel whined.

  “Say it.”

  He rolled his hips again. Even the hint of the threat was enough.

  “I’m a slut.”

  “And?”

  “And—and y-your friend wants to fuck me.”

  “So?”

  “S-so he gets to.”

  “Because?”

  “Because s-sluts don’t get a choice.”

  “Much better,” Aled said and squeezed both cheeks in his hands until he left fingerprints. He still ached to come there, but an interesting prospect beckoned instead. “My friend prefers it dry. So he can pump a load into you, and you can put your mouth to better use than whining about it. How does that sound?”

  “G-good. Sir.”

  “Much better.”

  He climbed off the sofa, and Chris was up off the chair in a matter of seconds. His jeans hit the floor. Aled smirked before schooling his expression and yanked on Gabriel’s hair to get him on his hands and knees.

  “Get on with it, then,” he said, perching on the arm of the chair.

  He wasn’t kind about it. Gabriel tried to suck gently on the head, but Aled forced his head down until he gagged on far too much hard cock, then yelled when Chris roughly entered him from behind with a harsh slap of flesh on flesh. Aled groaned as the impact shivered down his dick. He’d only done a threesome with Gabriel twice before, and Suze’s gay brother-in-law didn’t have nearly the same hard, cruel appearance that Chris did. Daz looked almost sweet. Chris looked like—like—