“A little arse-play. This is going to be more than a little arse-play.”
I curled myself around him, this beautiful man in my arms. I spooned him and tickled him until he was pliant and soft as I kissed his neck and stroked his cock, then I coated my fingers in lube and stuck them inside of him. Two of them, firmly wedged against his prostate.
“I think I should fuck you back for that.”
“I think you should too,” he whined.
“Your prostate is fine by the way.”
“Oh… good to know,” he panted out as I thrust my fingers deeper inside of him.
“Dr Gilbert recommends regular exams.”
He didn’t respond, but he had gone a little glassy-eyed and his mouth was hanging slack as I pulled out and added more lube to my fingers.
I let my fingers fuck him until he begged for my cock, then I pushed my dick inside him as he lay curled up in my arms. I held him, his leg trapped against his chest, his body locked in my embrace as his body tensed up, and his breaths came hard and fast. I fucked him well and good, even as the plug fell out of my lubed-up arse. I fucked him with everything I had as my cock swelled, and my brain went static and my mind blank. I still fucked him because he was mine, and he was gorgeous, and he laughed as I roared into his neck, spilling my seed into the condom inside him. He smiled as he jerked himself off, coating his stomach in come, and I choked on my own laughter because he was just so beautiful, lying there with me still inside him, his come on his skin and a blush on his chest.
“This thing with you...” I choked out, “… is amazing.”
“Told you it would be,” he said back.
“You’re my Charlie.”
“My Daniel.”
“Stay.”
“The night?”
“Stay here. Just let me stay here inside you for a little while.”
I leaned over him on my elbow with my limp dick still inside him. I kissed his beautiful face and the damp eyelashes that surrounded his eyes. I kissed his skin because I loved him.
“Do you still love me?” he asked, and I kissed him again.
“Always,” I said back.
“I’m not… perfect.”
“Nobody is perfect, but I think this?”
“This?”
“Shut up,” I laughed. “I think you should fuck me again. “
“Stamina, Daniel. I thought you would have had enough by now.”
“Enough of you?”
He kissed me, and I kissed him back, then he slid back inside of me and fucked me until I almost passed out. Then he came in my chest hair, leaving me a tangle of sticky seed. And then? He made me jerk myself off into his mouth. I almost passed out for real at the sight of it, Charlie’s mouth around my cock, and my come dripping off his cheek.
He called me a total come-slut. I laughed in his face. I told him it really didn’t matter what I was because him? He was a total slut for my cock. He told me that was true and curled up in my arms. My Charlie. I fell asleep with his body surrounded by mine, and I woke up with his hair in my mouth and a used condom stuck to my chest.
I was thirty-two years old, and my life was a mess, but this thing with Charlie?
This was the best thing yet.
One year later.
You would have thought I would have learned my lesson and taken Daniel’s advice. But nope, apparently not, as I sighed into my hands, feeling every little piece of the stress that had once again knotted itself in my shoulders.
“Charlie, you dumb fucker,” I muttered to myself instead.
I’d finished my Masters and could have looked for a position teaching something interesting at a respected college somewhere. I could have written a bloody book if I’d wanted to. I could have done anything with this strange degree I had so easily added to my skills, but no. No. No. Of course not. Instead, I had decided to take another class in English Lit because yes, Reflections on Classic Queer Literature in the Modern Age had called to me, and I signed myself up before my brain had thought to stop. Yeah. It had sounded interesting, and the course had been bloody great, reading more wonderful books and spending hours analysing texts and all those beautiful words that now danced on the page in front of me, mocking me by refusing to fall into place.
I was tired. Worn out. Exhausted. Because the time I used to have was no longer my own. I baked in the mornings, taught patisserie classes in the afternoons, and I was completely stupid trying to finish this course on time when I clearly didn’t have to.
For the first time in my life, I didn’t have to do anything. Daniel had told me, every bloody day. I didn’t have to do anything. All I needed to be was his.
I baked because it was in my blood, family or not. I owed it to Graham, even though he would pat me on the back and tell me I owed him nothing at all. He kept talking about retiring and that in itself filled my chest with dread. I could take over the bakery, he said laughing as my face would twist with unease. I knew that. Or he could sell up, and we could both move on. The choice was mine.
It was a choice I had refused to make. Instead, I was now struggling, trying to figure out what on Earth I had become. For Daniel, it was easy because he was just what he was. He was mine, truly, madly and deeply. I adored him, more than I knew how to put words to, even when he charged around the house and shouted at me. He was also a brilliant kind doctor and played with me on Chistleworth’s five-a-side football team despite never having kicked a ball before I made him come with me to practice. I still made him do things he didn’t really want to. I still forced him to use that deprived body of his for good. Good things. Like football matches for charity and wild monkey sex at night.
It was almost a year since Dr Daniel Gilbert had walked into my life, wearing muddy joggers and trailing a bike through the lobby of that hotel where I used to work. Almost a year since I had first seen him and my heart had made a little jolt in my chest.
Dr Daniel Gilbert. He’d been a vision of dark curls and stubbly chin and legs for days and a firm little arse. He was also like sunshine on a rainy day, like light in the darkness, and fluffy meringues on my lemon-posset cups. I’d made one hundred of the darn things this morning for a wedding in town because Daniel was not only the love of my life and the man who’d finally taught me how to put down roots, but he was also the savvy co-owner of Charlie’s Catering, where I provided mouth-watering desserts and fine patisseries for high-end occasions in town.
It had started with Mrs Hallet’s daughter’s wedding, as a favour, and then the guy from the football club needed a christening buffet sorted out, and once we’d catered that big gay wedding bash this summer things had gone completely nuts.
It was nuts, I knew that. I couldn’t keep doing everything, and to be honest, I got it now. I was overstretched, overworked and overtired as I bumbled down the stairs from my office.
I had an office. The thought still made me snicker, but it made sense since our bedroom was in the loft and the huge open space downstairs was our living area and kitchen and game room and chill-out space with the huge bi-fold doors that opened up into the pool of mud that was still our unfinished garden.
So yeah, it had made sense to do something with those two bedrooms that sat unwanted and unloved on the first floor. We didn’t want lodgers or kids or whatever, so we took a room each and made it ours. Daniel’s was decorated with vintage posters of medical journals and his old computer and a TV hooked up to his beloved PlayStation One. Mine was full of my books and scraps of paper and stuff everywhere that had been mine since forever. I’d cried a little the first time I looked through it all. Graham had brought over boxes of toys I used to cherish; things he’d saved when I didn’t even know those things were mine to keep. I had somehow overlooked all those things he’d done for my family during that year when our lives had so irrevocably fallen apart.