The Third Date (Starting Over) Read online

  “Nope.”

  “Everything okay?”

  “Yep.” Gabriel turned his head up for the kiss. “I was thinking we could spend some time together today. Go on a proper cheesy date or something. Chris is going cycling because he’s a rude prick who wants to mock my inability to go places.”

  Chris didn’t even take his eyes off his muesli to respond.

  “Uh-huh,” Aled drawled. “This wouldn’t be you getting cabin fever, would it?”

  “Nope,” Gabriel semi-lied. “It’s me wanting to spend some proper time with my partner.”

  To his enormous surprise, it worked. Aled made up some porridge with honey in thoughtful silence, then leaned up against the counter to eat it and nodded.

  “We could go out for lunch,” he said. “Have ourselves a little date.”

  They hadn’t really gone on dates in years. To be honest, they’d never made a habit of it, even when they’d got together. They’d met thanks to Grindr, so their relationship had been about sex long before it had been about love. Usually, Gabriel only got taken on a date if it was going to lead to something kinky later.

  So the d-word had his ears pricking up.

  “A date sounds nice,” he said carefully. “Italian? We could go to that nice place in town.”

  The nice place in town where he’d been forced to suck Aled off under the table on their very first visit.

  “You’re not walking up there,” Aled said flatly.

  “But their cannelloni starter is the best,” Gabriel objected.

  “I don’t care if it’s got a Michelin star. You’re not walking all the way into town.”

  Gabriel pulled out the big guns. “I won’t. You can push me in the chair.”

  The hospital had loaned them a lightweight wheelchair to help facilitate getting Gabriel home. As far as he knew, it had been folded away in the shed and forgotten about until he was due to go back for his follow-ups. He’d refused to be literally pushed around—he wasn’t that ill—but the way Aled stopped with the spoon halfway to his mouth said his instinct was right.

  “Look,” Gabriel said. “I’m bored. I just want to get out of the house for a little bit and have you all to myself. And a cheesy lunch date at a nice Italian restaurant sounds perfect. But I get that you’re worried about me falling, and I certainly don’t want to end up back in hospital, so…I’ll let you push me. We can park in one of the car parks in town and I’ll stay in the chair.”

  Aled narrowed his eyes. “You promise to stay in the fucking chair.”

  “Yes.”

  “If you so much as try getting out of it, I’ll not take you out until you can cartwheel on your own.”

  Gabriel hadn’t been able to do a cartwheel before the accident and now just rolled his eyes.

  “Deal,” he said anyway.

  And Aled said yes.

  Well, technically he said, “Fine.”

  But that was a yes, and Gabriel could have cheered.

  * * * *

  The wheelchair wasn’t actually that bad.

  The vertigo was bad, but not so violent as the nausea in the car, and Aled surprisingly didn’t freak out or go overboard when Gabriel had to wait and just sit there for a little while by the car after the fifteen-minute drive into town. Once the nausea had subsided, the bumpy ride of the chair down the uneven pavement wasn’t too bad. As long as Gabriel kept his eyes on the sky.

  But, God, it felt good to be out.

  Gabriel was a natural extrovert, and he didn’t need to know people to get a hit off them. He didn’t need detailed conversations or crowds of friends. Just the simple act of saying hello to the waiter who put down a little ramp at the door lifted his spirits. Talking recommendations with the bartender for a good virgin cocktail made him feel better. Waving at a little kid curiously staring at two men having lunch together brought the smile to his face more easily.

  “Thanks,” he said once they’d ordered and been left in peace. “I needed this.”

  “I can tell,” Aled said. “To be honest, so do I.”

  “Yeah?”

  “Mm. It’s easy to keep thinking of you as an invalid when you’re housebound. And you’re not. I know you’re doing a lot better and you’re going to be fine. But…I could use the reminder.”

  “Thanks for not being worse.”

  Aled chuckled. “Well, thanks for meeting me halfway. So why is this just us?”

  “Sorry?”

  “I thought you were trying to get me and Chris to date each other?”

  “Well, ‘date.’” Gabriel pulled a face. “I know you don’t fancy each other.”

  “He’s all right. I’d do him. But no, I don’t fancy him.”

  “He’d not let you do him.”

  “Yeah, I know.”

  “And I do want you to get along and having you both around is great and long term I want us to talk about maybe keeping it this way permanently, but—” Gabriel nudged Aled’s foot with his own under the table. “I kind of wanted a proper date, too.”

  Aled raised his eyebrows. “And what usually happens after one of our dates?”

  “Yeah, little bit of that too.”

  “Ambitious.”

  “Hopeful. And optimistic. And up to it.”

  “Uh-huh. Keep working on the sales pitch,” Aled advised dryly.

  He had a single glass of red wine before switching to the virgin cocktails as well, and Gabriel both appreciated the teetotal solidarity—Gabriel was a recovering alcoholic, and next to never physically saw Aled drinking alcohol as part of their joint efforts to ensure he stayed recovering—and the glimmer of relaxation around the edges. Aled wasn’t one hundred percent on guard. He wasn’t the neurotic boyfriend who’d been at his bedside during Gabriel’s hospital stay.

  He was Aled again.

  And that more than anything had Gabriel wanting an end to the dry spell.

  “You want Chris to stay permanently?” Aled asked as their food appeared.

  “Maybe,” Gabriel admitted. “Having you both around all the time is great.”

  “Hmm.”

  Gabriel’s stomach dropped.

  “Is that a bad hmm?” he asked.

  “It’s a neutral hmm,” Aled said. “I’m not sure how I feel about him living with us permanently. But…around in general? Yeah. It’s nice having him around.”

  “I’ll take that,” Gabriel said quickly. “I mean, that house isn’t really made for three, either.”

  They’d upgraded a little with the move, but more in terms of a bigger kitchen and a loft conversion to build a proper playroom for their sex games. They’d sacrificed the large living room in the old house for a larger back garden and proximity to the lake at the new one. It still wasn’t fit for three fully-grown adults. Their neighbours had two teenagers, and Gabriel couldn’t imagine squeezing four people into the place.

  “True,” Aled said. “Plus, we’ve been preoccupied with you. I like him fine, but this isn’t exactly a good gauge of how we’d handle each other on a usual day-to-day basis, you know?”

  “Yeah.”

  “We’ll see,” Aled said.

  Gabriel loved him for the laid-back response. If Aled was overcautious and not much of a risk taker, he was conversely casual about Gabriel’s lifestyle. He’d taken Gabriel’s flighty nature when it came to relationships well in stride and had only interfered the once—and over a man who’d turned out to be very bad news. His typical approach was to just sit back and let Gabriel do his thing, and Gabriel adored him for it.

  “Love you,” Gabriel whispered, mindful of the setting but needing to let it out.

  Aled raised his eyebrows. “You too.”

  “Just had to say it.”

  “Okay.” Aled’s foot rubbed his calf under the tablecloth, a mute gesture of affection that warmed Gabriel’s heart. “Speaking of Chris, he mentioned that you’re, uh, back at it?”

  Gabriel snorted with laughter. “It?”

  Aled rolled his eyes. “
You know exactly what I mean.”

  “I do, but I want to know what he said.”

  “He stammered a lot and I think he said ‘doing it’ like a thirteen-year-old kid.”

  Gabriel grinned. “Oh my God. Bless him. Yes. We’re ‘doing it.’”

  “Is that what you want after this?”

  “Yes,” Gabriel admitted. “But I’d like to spin this out a little before we go home, too.”

  “Dessert it is.”

  Aled’s lack of objection was intriguing. Gabriel couldn’t tell if it was the public space keeping him quiet, or whether he really was up for ‘doing it’ later. He hoped the latter. And something kinky and coercive and bad, in that deliciously good kind of way.

  But he relaxed back in the chair and enjoyed his cannelloni, too. Enjoyed the French couple two tables over chattering about someone called Marc. Enjoyed the smells of a dozen different Italian meals sizzling away in the kitchen. Even enjoyed the barman’s terrible singing along to an Adele song on the playlist. And he really enjoyed the homemade ice cream melting on his tongue while Aled muttered darkly about an Italian restaurant serving distinctly Cornish ice cream.

  “Just shut up and eat it,” Gabriel murmured, then closed his eyes as he added another mouthful of heaven to his palate.

  Aled called him a drama queen, but Gabriel didn’t care. He had a lunch date with great ice cream and later, he might get called a cock-hungry whore and have fresh cum fingered out of him. It was the first time he’d felt normal in over two months, even if he couldn’t ride in a car without wanting to throw up, and even if he had to compromise with sitting in a wheelchair to get his date at all.

  For the first time, Gabriel really felt like things were going to be all right.

  Then the bill came, and all right turned into better.

  “I’ve got it,” Aled said, flashing his credit card at the waiter.

  Gabriel paused, spoon still in his mouth.

  In their whole relationship, there had never been such a thing as Aled just paying for dinner. In the beginning, it had been a lead-in to a game—Aled paid for dinner, so Gabriel owed him something, right? Fair was fair. Why would Gabriel accept Aled paying the bill if he wasn’t going to put out later, huh?

  Then after he’d lost his job and moved in with Aled to keep a roof over his head, it had been too scary. Too much like abuse creeping in around the edges. He’d not been able to switch off his paranoia and enjoy it for the playing it really was, so it had become one of their forbidden things. They’d religiously split the bill for months, and on the odd occasion it hadn’t been possible, Aled had expressly said what Gabriel would pay for in return. Usually the next tank of petrol, given how much Aled burned through in his fancy cars.

  But the game had crept back into their lives over the last few months before the accident, as Gabriel had shelved his paranoia and remembered how much he’d enjoyed. He loved a good coercion game, and while Kevin did outright violence best, Aled was a master at the mindfuck. And they’d often bled into secondary slavery play, where Aled wasn’t satisfied by a coerced screw in the back seat of his car or a blowjob on the side of the road and would take Gabriel home to tie him to the bed and fuck him properly.

  Gabriel’s dick throbbed at the thought.

  It had been too long. And the only trouble with Chris using him was that it gave Gabriel a really strong urge to fuck. Brutally fuck. He’d been used like a whore, and now he wanted Aled to hammer the point home. Literally.

  Under the table, Gabriel slid his foot between Aled’s.

  “I forgot my wallet,” he blurted out. “I’m so sorry. I’ll pay you back.”

  Aled raised his eyebrows. He turned the card over in his hand, rubbing the silver letters of his surname. Gabriel bit his lip with his best nervous-but-seductive expression.

  “All right,” he said, and placed the card down on top of the bill. “I guess you owe me.”

  The bolt of arousal was intense, and Gabriel’s hands shook as he unwrapped his after-dinner mint.

  He was really, really fucked.

  Chapter Ten

  Aled woke up hard.

  He wasn’t all that surprised. Gabriel finally being well enough to go out, and his dropped hints at dinner, had sunk in. Aled had refused to take advantage last night, given how tired Gabriel was, but the morning was another story.

  And, even better, Chris had already snuck out for his run.

  Gabriel, sprawled in the bed beside him, was limp and deeply asleep, so Aled left him to it, slipping out to the bathroom and showering in near-scalding water, scrubbing his skin clean so it would feel even better when he dirtied and damaged it again with their game. He wasn’t up for anything extremely violent, or even especially rough, but Gabriel would often scratch and bite if he was being supposedly forced.

  Aled’s dick twitched as he washed, and he bit his lip. Fuck. He shouldn’t—Gabriel was recently out of hospital, and still suffering from vertigo. Sex, faux-forced or otherwise, had to be a bad idea.

  But Gabriel had agreed when he’d paid for dinner. If he wasn’t ill, Aled would have no qualms about stalking back in there and fucking him senseless with a hand over his mouth to stop him screaming before going to work. And by paying, he’d promised. He’d promised. If he didn’t go ahead and play, how would Gabriel take it? At best, he’d be hacked off. At worst—

  At worst, could he even think that Aled was turned off by the surgery scars?

  His dick twitched again, seemingly determined, and Aled made up his mind. This wasn’t any different from any of their other games. He’d done far worse than fuck him in bed. And if he could trust Gabriel to safeword, then he could trust him to tell Aled when he was hurting him.

  And if he didn’t safeword…

  Aled dried off leisurely, then flushed the unused toilet, knowing the noise always made Gabriel wake up, even if only for a moment. He stalked out of the bathroom, all swagger, and sauntered back into their bedroom, drying his hair with the towel and unashamedly naked.

  Sure enough, dark eyes blinked at him from the messy bed, and Aled smirked.

  “Morning, beautiful.”

  Gabriel’s, “Morning,” was slow and hesitant, and Aled dropped the towel on the end of the bed, tugging at the sheets until they slid down to Gabriel’s hips.

  “I should be going,” he said, “but you owe me one from last night.”

  Gabriel’s fingers caught at the duvet. “I—I’ll—when you get back?”

  “What, and your bit on the side is here to stop me? Don’t think so.”

  “But—”

  “I paid for dinner. So you owe me. You trying to get out of it?”

  “I—no. No.”

  “Because if you are, that’s not very fair, is it? And I believe in fair.”

  “I’ll pay you back. I—I’ll go to the ATM today. I promise.”

  “Mm, it’s not really the money I’m after,” Aled persisted, pulling harder. The duvet came free, revealing that long, naked body, and Aled skipped his gaze over the withered leg and up to his chest. Rising and falling and getting faster.

  “You need to go,” Gabriel said weakly.

  Aled laughed, crawling onto the mattress and clasping both ankles loosely in his hands. Gabriel tugged a little, but Aled didn’t let go. “I can stick around for a bit longer.”

  “I don’t—I don’t want to.”

  “Don’t play that game with me,” Aled scolded, kissing Gabriel’s knee and crawling over him, dropping his weight over Gabriel’s good leg and clasping his head between both hands, Gabriel’s arms tangled between them. “You enjoy it. You flirted with me all the way through dinner like you were going to come then and there, didn’t you?”

  “It wasn’t flirting.”

  “You were making eyes at me like you were going to crawl under the table and suck my dick for dessert,” Aled persisted, biting at Gabriel’s ear and jaw. “You want this more than you need air. And you’ll enjoy it if you stop sounding off.” />
  Gabriel squirmed, wriggling an arm free—and slapped him. It wasn’t especially hard, but the sound was loud, and Aled caught his wrist when it rose for another try and squeezed it until Gabriel cried out.

  Then, just as abruptly, he let go and climbed off the bed. He wanted to give Gabriel the rough play that he’d asked for with their dinner contract—but he wasn’t ready to really fight for it yet. So—

  “I do like working in an office,” he said, rummaging through wardrobes as if at random, but quickly finding a tie. “Means I’ve always got what I need.”

  Gabriel lunged for his phone, but Aled was faster, knocking it aside and catching Gabriel’s wrist again. In a flash, he had them both roughly bound to the headboard, and gripped Gabriel’s chin in his hand again.

  “Just stop fussing and relax,” he crooned, rubbing his mouth up Gabriel’s cheek, and biting at his lips when they refused to part for him. “You’ll like it. Promise.”

  Gabriel whimpered, but Aled was done talking. He didn’t want to drag this one out—get them up, get them off, and get them settled. He could draw out their second ‘date’ if Gabriel preferred then.

  He licked his way down that bare, twisting torso, and settled between Gabriel’s hips, keeping his hands on Gabriel’s inner thighs but only bearing his weight down on the right leg. Gabriel was already wet and swollen, and his pleas hitched and dissolved into whines when Aled wrapped his lips around his length and sucked.

  Hard.

  Down here, with Gabriel tied and trapped, Aled focused on pure pleasure. He knew exactly where to lick, where to suck, where even to bite, and performed a neat, torturous circuit of them all, homing in on the exact sweet spots that would completely shatter Gabriel’s token resistance and undo him.

  He kept it slow, too. This was no hurried fumble, no brutal screw. This was idleness, a man with a plaything and nowhere else to be and, as he moved lower, Aled spread the fingers of one hand up over Gabriel’s flat belly and began to knead at him like a contented cat.

  Or like a warning—Gabriel tried to close his legs, and only once, as the brutal twist that Aled delivered with finger and thumb, hard and deep enough to leave a bruise, made him whimper and go very still for a very long moment.