The Divorce (Starting Over Book 1), page 11
But all notion of fun evaporated out of his system when he got home and saw the corner of brown envelope sticking out of the letterbox.
“Fuck,” he whispered.
Wildly hoping he’d missed a payment to the TV licensing people, he opened the front door as gingerly as if the package could be a bomb. But it was worse.
It was crumpled and the envelope a little torn, as if it had been roughly forced through the letterbox, and when Aled turned it over, the return address was to a solicitor’s office in Huddersfield.
The same solicitor on the last packet.
Melissa’s.
Aled closed his eyes, suddenly feeling sick. How had they gotten here? He’d loved Melissa ever since he was fourteen, had vowed to be with her forever, had married her with every intention of adhering to ‘until death do us part’. And now he was standing in his hall, holding the second pack of divorce paperwork she’d tried to give him and planning a conversation with a man he met on Grindr about whether or not Aled would be allowed to chain him up in the basement and use him like a sex slave on Saturday nights.
God, how had it fucking come to this?
His phone buzzed in his pocket and Aled stormed into the kitchen, shoving the envelope in the back of a drawer. He couldn’t deal with that. Not now. He was—he was going to take Gabriel out to dinner and find out his dealbreakers and persuade him that Aled wasn’t dangerous to play with.
Not this. Not this, not a divorce, not losing her, not this.
Aled breathed, his fingers trembling, and shook his head. Fuck. It was too late. The plan was careering away from him. He couldn’t do this. Not now, not today. Fuck. Fuck!
He twisted and slammed his fist into the plaster by the doorframe. The plaster crumbled and the pain that lanced up his forearm cleared his thoughts. He was too upset for this. His head was in bits and he wouldn’t really hear whatever Gabriel told him. He’d either end up hurting Gabriel or hurting himself by mistaking resistance for the sake of the game as resistance for the sake of consent.
“Fuck,” he whispered and fumbled for his phone. The buzz had been a text from Gabriel and Aled swallowed, dialling.
“Hey! So I’m—”
“I’m sorry,” Aled interrupted. “It’s been a bloody shitty day and I know what I just said, but I’m in completely the wrong place to do it right now.”
Gabriel made a quiet noise. “Are you okay?”
“Just—shit day.”
“Well, you always say I make you feel good. Come over anyway and we’ll forgo the talk and I’ll just make you feel good.”
Aled laughed quietly. “I appreciate the offer, but right now—”
“Not right now. You’re obviously too wound up. Tell you what. Pub, dinner, a couple of rounds of pool and whoever loses gives the winner a blowjob in your car after. Deal?”
Aled smiled sadly at the crumbled plaster, pushing at it hypnotically with his finger. His knuckles were scraped and bruised and he’d need to shower to get the dust off and put some antiseptic cream over the damage. It would be really late by the time he got there.
“I won’t be at yours until at least half-seven.”
“That’s fine. You might have relaxed by then anyway and I can blow you before we leave.”
“You won’t have lost by then.”
“I suck at pool. Trust me, you win in this arrangement.”
“I’m shit as well.”
“Well, fuck. Are you any good at darts?”
“Not unless you want me to Hawkeye some poor bastard fifty feet from the dartboard.”
“What?”
“Okay,” Aled said, rallying himself, “I need to sit you down and give you a proper course in geekery.”
“Oh no you don’t—”
“Oh yes I do. And thanks,” Aled interrupted when Gabriel spluttered. “Just…for being nice about things and not asking.”
“Never ask, just commiserate,” Gabriel said cheerily. “Come and get me and your blowjob for half-seven and we’ll go down and you can kick my arse at pool and I can blow you a second time for, say, ten?”
“Ten sounds good. See you soon.”
As Aled hung up, he shook himself, as though shaking off rain, and squared his shoulders. Hot shower. First aid kit on his hand. Then, apparently, blowjob.
He didn’t have to think about the post until the morning anyway.
* * * *
Dinner was a good idea.
Pool was not.
By the time the table was free, Aled had forgotten all about the divorce paperwork. And by the time they had finished the first frame, he’d forgotten that he’d been having a bad day at all. Mostly because Gabriel was wearing very tight jeans and pool involved a lot of bending over the table.
Especially as Gabriel refused to use a rest.
He was hot as the surface of the sun and Aled wasn’t ashamed to stare along with a fair few women in the pub. Gabriel was packing, the jeans showing off a decent bulge in his crotch, and it made them cling even more to his backside. The long T-shirt hid the curve of his hips but was tight across his upper chest and shoulders. He was wearing something to flatten his tits and every time he bent over the table to take a shot, Aled wanted to rip his jeans down and fuck him bloody—but he couldn’t. And a tiny part of his brain absolutely hated Gabriel at that moment, for the trick Aled knew he’d pulled. Innocent, friendly game of pool to lift Aled’s spirits, his shapely arse.
Although…it was lifting said spirits.
“I know what you’re up to,” he said as Gabriel set up the second game.
“What?”
“Trying to distract me.”
“Nothing to do with distraction.”
Aled snorted and Gabriel laughed.
“It’s not!” he said and grinned. Aled regarded him warily. “I told you, I suck at pool anyway, I couldn’t win unless you totally lost your shit and fucked me on the table.” A couple of nearby girls stared. “I’m not trying to distract you.”
Aled groaned. “So you’re trying to get laid.”
“Always.”
“Well, it’s working. Stop it,” Aled groused, but in truth, he quite liked it. Nothing like someone actively trying to get in his jeans to rally his opinion of himself. “I have a question.”
“Shoot.”
“Have you always been so…sexual, or it is from the hormones?”
“Who says I take hormones?”
“Your three-day-old semi-beard says you take hormones.”
Gabriel smirked. “Maybe I’m just naturally fuzzy.”
“Nobody without a liberal amount of testosterone has arms that fluffy.” Gabriel’s arm hair—and leg hair, actually—was still a source of complete shock to Aled. Someone with limbs that hairy ought, by rights, to be a certified werewolf. And yet his back and chest were almost completely hairless, and his face took a couple of days to get going.
“Could be intersex.”
“Are you?”
“Not that I know of,” Gabriel admitted, taking a shot and missing spectacularly.
“So you take hormones.”
“Yep.”
“So…?”
“So, I’ve always been like this,” Gabriel said, “but in the week after a shot, I’m definitely hornier. Six of one, half a dozen of the other.”
“How often do you have a shot?”
“Every four weeks.”
“So once a month, I’m almost guaranteed to get laid if I come round?”
“Definitely guaranteed.”
Aled grinned and Gabriel narrowed his eyes.
“Don’t make the monthly visitor joke,” he warned and Aled held up his hands.
“Wouldn’t dream of it.”
Gabriel rolled his eyes as he narrowly missed fouling off the black and said, “Can I ask a question?”
“Seems fair.”
“Why the lack of questions?”
Aled blinked. “Uh—”
“That’s the first time you’ve mentioned it.”
“Well…”
“Don’t get me wrong, constantly having to be a teacher when it comes to this stuff is exhausting and kind of sucks sometimes, but honestly, sometimes someone asking no questions whatsoever is a bigger red flag than getting grilled.”
“What do you mean?”
“It becomes an elephant in the room. I mean, seriously, even people who know other people like me want to talk about it.”
Aled squirmed uncomfortably. “I—”
“It just seems like you’re avoiding the subject. Which can feel just as shit as someone slagging you off for it, to be honest.”
Aled winced. “I don’t mean that—”
“I know you don’t. I’m just saying.”
“I guess I don’t ask a lot of questions because…well, it’s not my business,” Aled said awkwardly.
“Not your business doesn’t stop anyone talking about something ever.”
“True.” Aled sank the ball, waved Gabriel to set up again and pondered. “I suppose because it doesn’t change anything about me, I didn’t feel like I ought to ask.”
“How do you mean?”
“Well, you said about that guy the other day that he figured if he, uh, you know, you didn’t make him not straight.”
“Right—”
“I don’t change no matter what you are,” Aled said baldly. “I’ve had both. I’ll always like both. So I guess…I don’t know, it’s visually odd but there’s nothing I’ve not seen before, maybe?”
“So you have questions, you just thought it would be rude to ask.”
“Well, yeah. You always get told don’t ask, it’s none of your business, you know?” Aled said. “Almost like it’s rude to be curious these days.”
Gabriel laughed. “Oh, I have no problem with curiosity.”
“You don’t talk about it, though.”
“I don’t much like to,” Gabriel admitted as he slotted the balls into place, “but you learn to pick apart curiosity from cuntishness. And there’s always curiosity. Everyone on earth wants to comment on it when they find out, so when you find someone who doesn’t, it can be cuntishness all on its own.”
“Cuntishness,” Aled said flatly, “is not a word.”
“And I do not care, O Graduate of Pendanticity.”
“Nor is that.”
Gabriel pulled a face and punished Aled by taking the break in the most bent-over, long-winded, arse-wiggling way he could possibly manage. The conversation was thoroughly derailed and Aled swallowed against a dry throat, his jeans uncomfortably tight where they’d fit fine a moment ago.
“That’s on purpose,” he croaked.
“Mm,” Gabriel said, breaking—poorly—and smirking at Aled’s situation. He wandered around the table, a little too slow and his eyes a little too dark, and said, “You’ve won two games and there’s only one remaining. If you want to forfeit this one, you still win.”
“Loser blows winner.”
“Yep. Want to get to that part?”
Aled swallowed. “Or…or a bit more. I could explore. Ask some questions.”
“Sounds good. Your place or mine?”
“Yours. It’s closer. No way can I drive back to Wakefield like this,” Aled said hoarsely and Gabriel laughed, openly palming him in the middle of the pub and causing the little spare blood that Aled had to flood his face and burn it hot.
“Tell you what,” Gabriel whispered, very close and very quiet. “Find us a layby and I’ll let you ask all the questions you want.”
Not taking his eyes off Gabriel, Aled casually reached out, took hold of the black and placed it firmly in the nearest pocket.
“I lose,” he said. “Now get the fuck in my car.”
Chapter Fourteen
“So what do you call this?” Aled asked.
Gabriel unglued his eyes and blinked sleepily at the ceiling. Were those even words? God, his brain was fried.
“W’t?”
“This.” A finger gently pierced him. Some remaining cum slid free and Gabriel clenched to hold it in.
“S’my cunt, dipshit.”
Aled chuckled. “Then?”
The cumstained finger stroked his aching, exhausted cock, and Gabriel whimpered.
“Sorry. Tender?”
“Suck me again and find out.”
“Suck your what?”
“My cock,” Gabriel mumbled. “You need an anatomy lesson?”
“Practice makes perfect,” Aled quipped, but—to Gabriel’s annoyance—he didn’t get his hand up in where his tongue and cock had already visited. Instead, he wiped his fingers off on the sheet and pushed himself up out of the bed.
“Hey!”
“I need to piss.”
Gabriel grumbled. He kicked the sheets off and stretched. Everything ached. Aled had eaten him out like he was the steak platter on a Man Vs Food challenge, then—after he’d already gotten Gabriel off twice and reduced him to mindless gibbering—had rammed his cock in there and hammered him only three or four times before coming and leaving what felt like a flood behind. Gabriel was fairly sure he was leaking, with or without the casual fingering.
He had to wear those jeans again.
And they had to have that talk, he decided. It was hot—but it would have been a thousand times hotter if Aled had tied his heads to the headboard and shoved a sock in his mouth when he’d fucked him. A clean sock. Gabriel didn’t want to get too nasty, but a sock all the same.
He blinked.
His tit was hot.
Gabriel yawned and realised that he must have dozed off. The sheets were back. There was someone snoring in his ear. The scratchy sensation of dried cum on his skin. And his left nipple was incredibly hot.
Gabriel frowned as his brain started to come online. Why the hell would—
The body at his back shifted with a low mumble and the hand that had glued itself to his naked breast contracted lightly.
Oh.
He sighed and dislodged the hand. Typical. Gay or bisexual, hands always ended up on his tits when he slept shirtless with someone. And ninety per cent of the time, they migrated there even if he had a shirt on. He yawned again and freed himself. Dried cum was trying to glue his labia together and it wasn’t a great feeling. Shower.
He took his time, washing away all the evidence, then scrubbing himself down with an exfoliating sponge. Aled had been biting again. His neck was a rainbow of bruises and there was a perfect outline of some decent dentistry on his inner thigh. He hadn’t even noticed the tit-chewing, but that same left nipple was swollen and sore. He slapped some antiseptic cream and a plaster on it, then went hunting in the fridge.
It was half past five in the morning. The sky was still black as tar and it had been snowing lightly overnight. Gabriel checked the calendar and punched the air when he realised he didn’t have to go to work. And it being a Saturday, surely Aled didn’t either? Grinning, he added more eggs to the mix and went rummaging for the big pan.
“What are you doing?”
He jumped at the deep, raspy question. Aled had materialised in the bedroom doorway. His hair was sticking up and he was completely naked. And wanking idly, his half-hard cock getting fuller by the second in his hand.
“Not you?”
“Wrong answer,” Aled growled and everything in Gabriel’s body went south. He stood frozen as Aled crossed the room, and whimpered when a hand gripped the back of his neck and pressed down. Counter, his mind whispered, but there was no belt. He shuddered as knees pressed between his own and parted them and a long shaft slid neatly up against him.
Then inside.
He whined as he was filled. Slow. Relentless. It was an unyielding pressure that climbed all the way up inside him until he felt impaled. Imprisoned. Weight pressed down on his back and head, pinning him to the kitchen counter.
Trapped.
And it felt so fucking good.
He curled his hands into fists on the counter as he was massaged from the inside by that insatiable dick. The thrusts were nothing more than soft rolls of the hips pressing up against his own. The head scraped back, then pushed in like it was the last stroke every time, and when he clenched—for more, to have it harder, to be fucked instead of idly screwed—the hand on the back of his neck tightened in warning.
But Gabriel didn’t like to just relax and let sex happen. It was boring. It was always too gentle. The mental sensation was nice—being used, being a service—but there was no physical burn, no adrenaline, no kick. He wanted to wriggle. He wanted to be ploughed. He wanted to feel it all the way up to his teeth.
But every time he tried, Aled just bore down. He wouldn’t fuck. He would crush, smother, flatten, even smack—a sharp reprimand on the wrist when Gabriel tried to reach back and grab Aled’s hair—but he wouldn’t fuck.
He came suddenly. The flood of wet heat was almost disappointing. He froze inside Gabriel for the longest moment, then his lips brushed his ear.
“Don’t move.”
“Wha—”
The withdrawal was sharp and left Gabriel empty and cold. A trickle of cum leaked down the back of his leg—but he obeyed. He stayed perfectly still. Heard footsteps padding into the bedroom. Heard a drawer bang. The footsteps coming back.
“Jesus,” he whined when a tongue licked a heavy stripe from his knee to his arse, cleaning away the spilled cum. Then he lost the power of words altogether when a familiar coolness pressed up against him.
“Found your toys.”
He whined as the dildo sank into him. It was wide. And usually one for punishment. It was the one Kevin would lock into his arse when he’d misbehaved. It was the one that made it hard to walk. Flickers of pain radiated out into his hips as it was pushed deeper, deeper, deeper—
“There.”
He gasped when it bottomed out, throbbing all around it. And Aled had pushed it all the way in and Gabriel’s own lips kissed the base of it and he took a gulping, hitching breath when Aled’s tongue traced the back of it, cleaning him.
“Thought you were making breakfast?”
“F-fuck.”
“Figured that could keep you busy until I’ve recharged.”
Very carefully, Gabriel pushed himself upright. The rod buried inside him rubbed in all the right—wrong—places, and his knees shook. Aled laughed and his hands were warm and oddly tame at Gabriel’s waist.
