The Other Man (Starting Over Book 2) Read online

  He’d not asked—but then Aled had told him anyway.

  “I need to get something off my chest,” he’d admitted, halfway into his clothes the next morning. “Can I come over tonight? We can go get something to eat and talk it out.”

  “What do we need to talk about?” Gabriel had asked warily.

  “Nothing bad. Promise.”

  So Gabriel had agreed, earned himself a sweet kiss at the door and that had been that. But frankly, the anticipation had nagged all day, so he feigned a stomach-ache and left work an hour early, intending to have a shower, tidy the flat and brace himself for whatever had gotten Aled so wound up.

  Then—just as he put the key in the door—he heard the voice.

  “Hell-o, beautiful. Come to Daddy.”

  Gabriel wheeled around at the catcall and laughed. He’d have to brace for something else entirely—Michael was grinning at him from the stairs.

  “I mean it, bring that pretty little arse over here,” Michael continued, beaming widely. He’d started growing in a beard and it made his wide, dentist-advert smile even filthier.

  But Gabriel wasn’t in the mood to play it easy. Michael had come over yesterday afternoon. They’d fucked. The edge had been taken off. So now the git could work for it.

  “Why would I want to have my arse anywhere near a random bloke hanging out in the stairwell by my flat?” Gabriel asked, turning back and unlocking his front door.

  He didn’t even finish turning the key before Michael was up against his back, pressing him into the door and reaching around to unbutton his jeans.

  “Because I’ve got a fucking foot-long dick that’s hard enough to hammer nails into walls, and it wants to hammer you.”

  Gabriel groaned as nimble fingers shoved their way into his briefs, pushed his packer out of the way and began to massage him. Shivers flickered up his spine and fire lapped at his crotch as Michael tugged at him, thrusting against his arse in time with his fingers.

  “Pull ‘em down and let me watch my cum drip down your legs, yeah, baby?”

  Gabriel twisted the key and jerked the door open. They tumbled into his flat and he was slammed up against the door again, Michael licking a stripe up the side of his face before roughly pulling his jeans and pants down and beginning to finger him.

  “Front or back?” Michael grunted in his ear, grinding against his thigh. “Won’t have no lube, though. Too far gone to touch it.”

  Oh, Christ, that would hurt, then. Michael’s dick wasn’t nearly as long as he said it was, but it was a thick bastard. Obscenely thick. It was like being fucked with a bottle—and not the neck, either.

  “Then come on my face,” Gabriel breathed, “and by the time you’ve opened me up enough to take you deep, you’ll be ready again.”

  “No, need it inside. Now.”

  Gabriel grimaced, resigning himself to a bit of a brutal fuck—although at least it would be short—and said, “Front, then. Can’t take that without lube in the back.”

  Michael laughed and licked him again before kissing him, slack and open-mouthed, gasping with desperate intent into his mouth as he fumbled with his own jeans, the bulge in them making it difficult.

  Then the door bounced behind Gabriel’s ear as someone knocked heavily.

  “Forget it,” Michael hissed, mouth moving to bite and chew at Gabriel’s neck, messy and wet. “Won’t be nobody important.”

  The next knock was a flat bang—a palm slap—and Gabriel groaned, knowing who it was. And knowing that, really, he shouldn’t be here just yet. He was too early. He must have skipped work too.

  “Let me just—”

  “Leave it!” Michael insisted, seizing Gabriel’s wrist when he tried to reach the handle. Gabriel scowled, a surge of anger rising at the display, and he shoved, pushing Michael off him. He pulled his briefs up, stepping out of his work slacks entirely, and opened the door in nothing but his rumpled Tesco polo shirt and Primark underwear, with a liberal amount of spit on his face and neck.

  Aled stared.

  “Fuck’s sake, babe,” Michael said over his shoulder, then dropped an arm across the back of his neck, leaning forward to talk to Aled. “Sorry, mate, look, we’re busy, heard all the great news about God, thanks, bye.”

  He pushed the door. Gabriel stuck his foot in it and shrugged the arm off.

  “Ignore him,” he told Aled pointedly. “Is everything okay?”

  “Er—no. No, not—not really. I was, uh. Hoping we could talk sooner rather than later.”

  Aled never took his eyes off Michael, and a chill crept up Gabriel’s spine.

  “Right now?”

  “If you’re not—otherwise engaged.”

  “He is, so come back in, say, ten minutes?” Michael interrupted.

  Ten minutes? Gabriel snorted. Enough for Michael to shove his dick inside him, come, slap his thigh and walk out. No way would Gabriel get any real fun out of it in ten minutes, not with a man who refused to give oral anywhere near a vagina.

  “Michael, shove off. Use your hand if you’re that desperate. Aled, sorry, I just got back from work, you can come in if you want or we can go somewhere—”

  “Are you serious?” Michael said.

  “Very, piss off.”

  Aled was glancing between them, a dark expression on his face. Michael huffed, an angry scowl crossing his, but then he shoved past and stormed out without a backward glance, gait awkward.

  “What did I interrupt,” Aled asked flatly.

  “Michael with blue balls,” Gabriel replied and gestured for him to come in. “He was about to come in his pants. Or mine.”

  “Right,” Aled said and frowned harder. “He seemed—aggressive.”

  “Most men are when they get stopped from shooting off with five seconds to spare,” Gabriel said tartly then shrugged. “I’m not fussed. It’s his problem. Didn’t sound like I was going to get too much from it anyway.”

  “Why?”

  “He was at the shove-it-in-and-shoot stage. And he’s wide. It would have hurt and I would have only got a hand to help me. He doesn’t do oral.”

  “He’s an idiot. Eating you out is amazing,” Aled said flatly. He shucked his jacket off and offered a quick kiss. “Still, I should have called ahead. I just—really needed to talk to you, so I took off after my meeting.”

  “Talk about what?”

  “Well—”

  There was a long pause, during which Gabriel just waited and Aled got redder and redder, rubbing the back of his neck.

  “Him.”

  Gabriel frowned. “What, Michael?”

  “Yeah.” Aled was starting to go maroon, a mottled flush creeping up his neck.

  “Is…everything okay?”

  “I—no. Not really.”

  Aled dropped to sit on Gabriel’s sofa, and Gabriel hesitated. He was torn between getting mad and getting worried. Aled was usually good at talking. This reticence was odd and Gabriel felt thrown by it.

  “Um—do you want a cup of tea or something?”

  “No. No, just…come and sit here? I need to talk and it’s not something I’m proud of and it’s—it’s up to you how we deal with it.”

  Warily, Gabriel perched on the cushions. Aled reached out and plucked his hand from his knee, cupping it both of his own and beginning to massage the fingers. It felt nice, but also very strange in and of itself.

  “I’m just going to say it,” Aled said, and sighed. “I’m jealous of Michael.”

  Gabriel’s blood ran cold.

  “I’m getting angry when I know he’s touched you. I’m upset when you talk about him. I’m finding myself unable to touch you gently if Michael’s been around. I feel like I have to dominate you, almost like I’m staking a claim—”

  Slowly, Gabriel drew his hand back, his heart pounding. Shit. Shit. He had a jealous dominant on his hands, a jealous dominant who was built for monogamy—

  “But it’s just him.”

  Gabriel’s growing panic…paused.

/>   “I’m not having the same reaction to Kevin. Or your random hook-ups. It’s just Michael.”

  The panic receded a little.

  “Why just him?”

  Aled blew upwards into his hair and took off his glasses to rub at his eyes. He looked tired, suddenly older than his thirty-four years.

  “I talked it over with Suze,” he said, “and she thinks it’s because he’s—I—fuck. I think he’s a dick. To you. And I don’t—you know I love you.”

  Gabriel did know that, but it didn’t stop the little hiccup that his heart made.

  “I think I’m struggling with leaving you in the hands of someone who—who just sees you as an object. As a warm hole to shove his prick into.”

  Gabriel licked his lips. “So do several of my one-night stands.”

  “Yeah, but that’s a one-time thing. He’s not.”

  “It’s not really any of your business how Michael sees me, Aled.”

  “No, I know,” Aled said quickly. He dragged a hand through his hair until it stood up in spiky ginger clumps. “I think—he unsettles me. The way he is with you.”

  “Like—?”

  “I know this is pretty rich coming from me, given what we do, but—from my perspective, he just looks like he uses you.”

  “How?”

  “Like the other day when I found his hickeys. And just now. He’s stormed off in a paddy. You said he was at the shove-it-in stage, that it would hurt and he’d not really get you off after. And the texts he sends you sometimes—look, I know it’s hypocritical of me and I know there’s plenty we do that would be seen by an outsider to be that way, but…he unsettles me. I get the feeling he’s only around because he sees you as a sex object.”

  Gabriel raised his eyebrows. “He’s forward, I’ll give you that—”

  “I’m not saying I’m right, Gabe—”

  “—riel, Christ!”

  “—but that’s why he’s disturbing me, I think. I don’t like him, and I don’t trust him with you.”

  “Right,” Gabriel said. “So you’re jealous of him.”

  “Maybe not quite of him, but I act like a jealous twat when he’s around, yeah. It’s like—it’s like when you had to introduce me and Kevin because I thought he was abusing you last year. It’s like then. You had to—I don’t know, I guess prove to me that he wasn’t a cunt. Only that”—he gestured at the closed front door—“that was a cunt.”

  Gabriel eyed the door.

  Then let out a low, long breath. And inhaled. Took his hand back from Aled and twisted them around each other.

  “What do you want me to do about it?”

  Aled blinked then reached for Gabriel’s hand again. Gabriel let him take it.

  “It’s your choice. It always is. But I would—”

  Another long pause yawned between them.

  “—prefer it if he weren’t around.”

  “At all?”

  “At all.”

  Shit.

  “You want me to dump him.”

  Aled squirmed. “Well…yeah.”

  Gabriel pursed his lips. “Aled. I’m not going monogamous for you. Or anybody else.”

  “I’m not asking that. I swear I’m not.” Aled’s fingers tightened around Gabriel’s. “I—I’ve never been bothered by your hook-ups. And I like your games with Kevin. The videos are fucking fantastic—”

  Gabriel cracked a wary smile.

  “—but there’s something about him. Just him. And I think—I think it is that combination, rather than it’s someone you fancy, or someone who fancies you. That Danny kid who won’t stop messaging you on Grindr obviously fancies you, but he doesn’t bother me.”

  “He’s also not slept with me.”

  Aled sighed heavily, raking a hand through his hair.

  “I can’t—I can’t pin it down,” he admitted. “I only have Michael to go from, and that one time with Kevin. I honestly—I honestly don’t know if this is a one-off, it’s-just-him issue, or whether there’s going to be problems with other emotional regulars, but in my defence, he’s been around longer than me and it’s only recently I’m having these issues with him.”

  “So why now?” Gabriel pressed. He felt uneasy and pulled away entirely, getting up and going to the kitchenette under the pretence of getting a glass of water. He didn’t want to have this conversation. He didn’t want Aled to get jealous of other men, because if he did, then it would only be a matter of time before he started trying to curtail Gabriel’s activities with other guys. Then Gabriel would have to run, or be pinned down under an angry, jealous dominant with far too much control over his life.

  And God, he didn’t want that to be Aled.

  Aled hesitated, then said, “Those texts over your birthday weekend.”

  “Sorry?”

  “He—he texted you something like, you need to finish up your party and get back here, I need a decent shag with your arse at the end of it. And it was just…urgh.”

  “You’ve texted me things like that.”

  “I love you.”

  The confession was frank and forthright and Gabriel resisted the urge to glance down. Twice in one conversation? Aled had only started saying it recently and Gabriel wasn’t used to hearing it.

  “Maybe Michael loves me.”

  “Maybe he does. And that’s what I mean—I know there’s things I say to you, things I do to you, that he’d be equally justified in using to paint me as some complete dickhead, but—I just get a nasty vibe off him and I don’t want him near you. So I’m finding myself angry and jealous when I know he’s been around and I don’t want to be. I really don’t. And I don’t have this problem with Kevin, or with any of your Grindr guys—”

  Except he had had that problem with Kevin. And now he was having it with Michael. And Gabriel wasn't liking the pattern that was trying to emerge.

  “So what do you want me to do,” he repeated flatly, folding his arms over his chest.

  “Why do you sleep with him?”

  Gabriel didn’t miss a beat. “He’s a Greek god with a dick that can rip me inside out.”

  “So you don’t—love him.”

  “I fancy him. As long as he looks like that.”

  “But it’s not— You don’t want to date him.”

  “No.”

  Aled swallowed. “Then…is he replaceable?”

  Gabriel frowned. “You want me to replace him?”

  “I want to know if it’s him. And I think it is. Kevin cares for you and, hell, I like that he cares for you. I don’t mind when you say you fancy people you’ve been playing with. And if it just Michael, then—then what’s the problem?”

  “The problem is it's the second time you've gotten twitchy about one of my other men. And okay, we sorted it out with Kevin. But you're not asking to sort this out—you're asking me to dump Michael completely. And if I give in to this, then you’ll ask again. And again and again, until I’m not allowed to play with anyone else and—”

  “I won’t.”

  Gabriel narrowed his eyes.

  “I won’t,” Aled insisted, his eyes wide and imploring. “I was married for years and my wife certainly loved a couple of guys who weren’t me. And I never got jealous. I’m not asking for monogamy. I’m not. I’m just asking for Michael to not be one of the others.”

  A little relaxation eased into Gabriel’s shoulders, though he maintained his firm stance against the counter.

  “She loved other people? Really loved them? Melissa?”

  “Yeah. I only got jealous near the end, when I could feel she didn’t love me anymore.”

  Slowly, Aled came up off the sofa and padded across the carpet, cupping Gabriel’s elbows between his hands and rubbing at them lightly. His face was open. Relaxed. There was nothing hiding behind the eyes.

  “But I know you love me. You don’t say it much and you’re still skittish of the whole commitment thing sometimes, but I know.”

  Gabriel swallowed, nodding awkwardly.


  “And I think as long as I know that, as long as I know that the other guys are in addition to me, not instead of me, then I’ll be okay. I really do think it’s Michael being a cunt to you.”

  “He’s never hurt me.”

  “Yeah, well, maybe you’re comfortable with a guy coming round to stick his dick in you, shoot off and leave again without so much as kissing you, but I’m not.”

  Gabriel coughed a brief laugh and called Aled a romantic.

  “No, I just know what sex should be, and that’s for both parties.”

  “He’s not some john, Aled.”

  “He could easily be,” Aled parried, and slid his arms a little farther around Gabriel’s waist in a loose hug, eyeing him from close range. “So—would you?”

  “Get rid of Michael because my dominant, self-professed boyfriend doesn’t like him?”

  “And promises it’s just Michael and if he starts having problems with any of the rest of it then he won’t say a word and will—will go to counselling to deal with his stupid, egotistical emotions?”

  Gabriel frowned. “Promise?”

  “I swear,” Aled said gravely. “If it turns out it’s not just Michael, I will go to counselling and we will sort it out without you changing your lifestyle. I said it at the beginning and I’ll say it now. I don’t want you to belong to me. I want you to belong to me in scenes, when we’re playing, then to switch it all off and be you. And ‘you’ is a flighty, sex-mad socialite who could turn a priest.”

  Gabriel chewed on his lip. He wanted to believe it. He wanted to focus on the aftercare last night, on the way Aled would cuddle up in the kitchen if they were making dinner together, the blanket on his sofa at the house in Wakefield where they’d squash up on the cushions and Gabriel would make fun of Aled’s taste in TV shows—

  But the other side of him was there too. The dominant who’d fucked Gabriel over the sofa because another man had been round. The master who’d kidnapped him for his birthday and pretended to punish him for the better part of three days for getting messages from other men.

  What if he turned?

  But what if he didn’t?

  Gabriel had fixed the problem with Kevin. Once Aled had realised Gabriel wanted Kevin to hit him sometimes, he’d been fine. He'd never tried to stand between them since. And—and that was the moment, wasn’t it?