The Divorce (Starting Over Book 1), page 19
And frankly, Gabriel was beginning to see why Aled’s wife might have had issues with the best friend.
Aled and Suze were close. Gabriel couldn’t put his finger on it exactly, but there was a kind of familiarity between them that was a bit too much for friends. They smiled too much, watched too often, leaned into each other’s spaces like siblings didn’t and like lovers did. By contrast, Suze sat almost apart from her actual boyfriend, who talked to Gabriel as though their respective partners weren’t even there.
A smile quirked the edge of Gabriel’s lip. Maybe Aled wasn’t as monogamous when it came to love as he made out.
So when Aled excused himself for the call of nature before the bill arrived, Gabriel leaned across to Suze and said, “So when did you and Aled stop being a thing?”
Suze groaned. Tom laughed.
“I keep telling you!”
“And I keep telling everyone!” she complained, then fixed Gabriel with a stare. She had blue eyes and their hold was firm. “We’ve never been a thing.”
“Right.”
“We haven’t! You’re his thing now.”
“Don’t call me a thing.” Gabriel’s voice tightened, the echoes of countless messages calling him an it rising in his mind. Then he shook it off and shrugged. “Anyway, we’re not. We screw. There’s a difference.”
“You don’t love him?”
“I don’t know him.”
“But you play games with him.”
“Some games. Not all.”
“Like what?”
“I don’t want to know what!” Tom interrupted hotly and Suze flashed him a dirty look that made Gabriel smirk.
“He’s a prude,” she said scornfully. “So how can you play with him at all if you don’t trust him?”
“I didn’t say I don’t trust him.”
“You said you didn’t know him.”
“Don’t need to know him to trust him.”
“Really?”
Gabriel rolled his eyes. “When you’ve fucked as many men as I have, and you’re transgender to go with it, you learn to recognise someone you can trust a mile away. I don’t trust him enough for certain games yet, but I trust him enough for the basics.”
“Which are…?”
“Seriously, can we stop talking about what Aled likes to do to other blokes in bed? Please?”
Suze sat back, pulling a face. “Fine. I’m just saying, it’s weird. He’d normally have you in a chastity belt by now if you trusted him, but you don’t know him enough to love him?”
Gabriel shrugged, smirking. His pulse was beating too hard and too hot in his crotch, but in the wake of Suze’s words, it felt amusing more than annoying. “I fuck a lot, I love far less often. And chastity’s really not my thing.”
“What’s not your thing?” Aled asked, reappearing. The waitress interrupted, taking her chance and zipping across with the bill, and a heated argument ensued between Tom, who wished to be traditional and pay for both himself and his girlfriend as the man in the relationship, and Suze, who promptly emasculated him on principle and insisted on paying for everyone.
“It was my idea to come to dinner and, Tom, if you don’t shut up, I’ll fucking pack you back off to St Ives!” she seethed in the end and Aled laughed quietly in Gabriel’s ear.
“Time to go, I think,” he said and nudged Gabriel to stand.
Tom merely wanted to shake hands and pull a face or two. Suze wanted a hug and Gabriel ground his teeth through it as she pressed right up against him to do it—and finally, finally, they were out into the night again and the car was a gleaming beacon, lonely at the end of the car park.
“So, did she completely scare the shit out of you?”
“No, she’s nice. And Tom apologised. Twice.”
“Good.”
“Did I pass the vetting?”
Aled laughed. “You noticed?”
“That was like dinner with your future in-laws.”
“Oh God, don’t, you’ll give her ideas—”
“I win.”
Aled glanced quizzically at him as they reached the car.
“They didn’t guess.”
He grinned. “No, you’re right—”
“And you totally had a thing with Suze.”
“Nope.” Aled’s reply was casual and almost bored, like he’d heard it all before. “If I could be in love with her, I would be. Now, is that what you want to do with your victory—ask questions about Suze—or—”
“She asked if I trust you.”
“Do you?”
“Not completely. Not yet.”
“Fair en—”
“She also asked if I love you.”
Aled paused. It was a cold night and Gabriel frowned at the response, tugging on the locked car door.
“Unfreeze, please?”
“Sorry.” The indicators flashed and Gabriel let himself in, turning on the heaters immediately. “What did you say?”
“Said I didn’t know you enough to love you, but it makes me wonder why she thinks I would.”
Aled pulled a face. “She wants me to fall in love and—go through with my divorce. She thinks you’re the ticket.”
Gabriel frowned a little at the twist that statement elicited in his chest, then shrugged it off. “That’d be daft of you, divorce a wife to get with a guy who sleeps around.”
“So did my wife. Some of us don’t mind a bit of sleeping around, now can we stop talking about my divorce and Suze being a meddling cow, and talk about what you want me to do to you?”
Gabriel bit his lip, thinking. He watched Aled’s face—calm, but with a trace of impatience lurking under the skin—and decided. “I want you to make me trust you.”
“Sorry?”
“You choose what to do. But whatever it is, I have to trust you. Role play a rape scene, tie me up and gag me, choke me—whatever you want. But it has to be something that needs me to trust you.”
For a long moment, there was silence.
Then slowly, Aled’s thumb came up to brush over Gabriel’s bottom lip—and he shook his head.
“No.”
“No?” Gabriel echoed.
“You can’t force trust. And me gagging you and fucking you so you can’t stop me won’t make you trust me. If you want me to make you trust me, then we just carry on the way we’re going and time will do the job on its own.”
Gabriel cocked his head.
“You can name something else if you want, but asking me to make you trust me is asking for trouble. And I don’t want that.”
“You said test you.”
“Not by—” Gabriel saw the moment that Aled twigged. He blinked, frowned, blinked again, then huffed an exasperated laugh. “That was a test.”
“Uh-huh.”
“It was—inventive, I’ll give you that.”
“I’m not in this game because I like it boring.”
Aled coughed a laugh and shook his head. “Christ, you’re mental.”
“Maybe.”
“Definitely. So without the testing, what do you want? I find it hard to believe you don’t want anything—”
“Oh, I didn’t say that.”
Chapter Twenty-Three
Two weeks later, Aled tied Gabriel to his bed, gagged him with a pair of socks and fucked him like a living fleshlight. Then left him there to make lunch. Then came back upstairs and fucked him again.
Like a live-in sex slave. Like a thing to be used. Like an object.
And afterwards, they cuddled on the sofa and Gabriel made fun of yet another SyFy programme—albeit one that was actually bad, to his credit—and Aled woke up in the middle of night to cold feet sliding up the backs of his thighs, toes wiggling against his leg hair to get warm.
It was—
Trust. And sex. Fun. And something.
He wasn’t single anymore.
He wasn’t exactly sure what he was, either. But he didn’t keep booze in the house anymore. He had an extra key, hanging on the ring between his garage key and his house key. He went to a nightclub for the first time in years and kept a proprietary hand in Gabriel’s back pocket. Sometimes he came home to someone cooking in his kitchen. Sometimes he left work and took the main road straight out to Belle Isle.
Things…were different.
One message on a hookup app had changed everything. His mood. His lack of energy. His wallowing. Gabriel had shaken the dust off, and sure, it was mostly sex. It had started with just sex. And more often than not, if Aled went over, they fucked. If Gabriel stayed the night, they fucked.
But sometimes they didn’t.
And sometimes…
He’d never say it front of Gabriel, largely because he’d be mercilessly mocked for all eternity, but sometimes Aled was sure that they made love, as well as fucked. Sometimes, he caught himself wondering if he hadn’t found a whole new future, with a whole new person.
Just sometimes. Like when Gabriel gave him floury kisses in the kitchen, or climbed into his lap in the cuddle chair after a rough scene to calm Aled down, or sent him pictures of cats from his walk to work while Aled had already been in the office for three hours.
Sometimes it felt like the world had changed—but Aled knew it was only him.
And went he opened the kitchen drawer, the first day in April, to find an old brown envelope staring mournfully back at him, Aled realised that it was time to stop living in the past.
* * * *
He grunted as he came, shaking so hard that the car rocked, and snarled when Gabriel coughed and choked, unable to take it. As the shaking ebbed away, and the feeling leaked back into Aled’s limbs, he tightened his grip on Gabriel’s hair and swore breathlessly at him for the failure.
“Clean it up.”
Gabriel’s tongue was rough against Aled’s over-sensitised skin and Aled groaned again at the soft laps and drags as Gabriel removed all evidence of his failure.
“You’re going to have to practice.”
“Yes, sir.”
Aled pushed down on Gabriel’s head. “Don’t talk with your mouth full. Finish it.”
Gabriel’s breath was hot against him and he whimpered once before that tongue resumed its task. The denim would taste foul and he would want a drink after.
Aled had no intention of giving it to him.
When he was clean, Aled released the handful of hair that he’d used to force Gabriel’s head down onto his cock and stroked it smooth. Gabriel rested his cheek against Aled’s thigh and waited, licking his lips absently, and Aled smiled.
“Want more?”
“Yes, sir.”
“You can do it again when I get back.”
“Won’t you want to fuck me proper when you get back, sir?”
Gabriel’s tone was playful and Aled casually lifted a hand and slapped his bare arse. The crack was deafening and Gabriel cried out. Aled narrowed his eyes and did it again. This time, as a red handprint blossomed, Gabriel bit his lip, whining on Aled’s lap like a newly broken-in sex slave.
Now there would be a game. Aled made a mental note.
“You keep quiet, or I’ll put a gag between your teeth and you can find out what it’s like to be filled at both ends.”
“Yes, sir.”
“You want me to fuck you properly, is that it?”
“Please, sir.”
“Well, then. I’ll tell you what. When I get back from my errand,” Aled crooned, smoothing down Gabriel’s hair, “you can have another try at sucking my dick. And if you do it right that time, I’ll take you down a nice little alley you undoubtedly know and you can pick your favourite stretch of wall to be fucked against.”
Gabriel shivered, licking his swollen lips. Aled hooked his finger into the metal collar hanging loose at his neck and jerked him back upright into the passenger seat.
“Now, I have a prior engagement for lunch,” he said, padlocking the collar to the metal rods at the base of the headrest. “You stay here, nice and quiet and still, and I’ll even give you a little something to entertain yourself. But you have to be good, or someone will see you.”
Gabriel stiffened and Aled laughed, tracing his thumb over the blindfold.
“Trinity Walk car park,” he said softly. “Just the blacked-out windows between you and a couple of hundred shoppers.”
Gabriel’s jaw sagged and Aled kissed the slack mouth. Slowly. Hungrily. Promising.
“So I’ll leave you something to entertain yourself with,” Aled said, opening the glovebox and taking out the vibrator he’d stashed for situations just like these. He slapped Gabriel’s knees casually apart and thrust the device up into his cunt brutally hard, tutting when he whined and deliberately stroking his swollen cock as he switched the vibrator on. Gabriel’s thighs clamped around his wrist, but Aled pulled free and patted his thigh. “If it comes out, I’ll put it back and make sure it can’t come out. Understood?”
“Y-yes, sir.”
“Good.” Aled leaned close and kissed him again, before whispering, “Colour?”
A ghost of a smile. “Green.”
Aled patted his knee again, then tucked himself into his jeans, grabbed the folder off the dashboard and got out, locking the car behind him and heading for the lifts, the picture of cool composure, not attracting a second glance.
Leaving Gabriel in the car, stark naked but for the blindfold and collar and a vibrator torturing him with no release.
Aled idly reflected that Gabriel looked damn good in a blindfold and he’d have to use it more often, and stabbed the button for the ground floor. He felt antsy. Despite the blowjob, he felt too big for his own skin, too energetic, too—
Nervous.
And yet—
There was a kind of strange goodness about it. As though he were shaking something off, brushing away chains and cobwebs and rolling the weight off his shoulders.
The coffee shop was only across the road from the car park, not quite in the hustle and bustle of the city centre proper, and she was already there. Aled could see her auburn hair, glowing gently in the wintry sun, even from the pavement, and he ducked into the coffee shop with that nervous energy reaching a fever pitch, bubbling up out of his skin so much that when she stood and held out her hand, he ducked in to hug her, rather than shake it.
“Uh—”
“Sorry. Hi.”
Melissa coloured faintly and nodded. “Hi.” She sat gingerly, eyeing him, then her gaze dropped to the folder and she bit her lip.
“This is yours,” Aled said, handing it over.
“And it’s—”
“All signed,” Aled said and her shoulders relaxed. “Your solicitor will have to get in touch with mine and we’ll have to both contact the bank independently to close the holiday account down, but it’s all signed.”
“You—you’re not going to contest any of it?”
“No.”
Her shoulders sagged and a smile began to form.
“You’re being more than fair. And I don’t want to—I know I’ve dragged this out and I’m sorry. I wasn’t ready to move on, wasn’t ready to accept that I’d failed—”
Melissa shook her head. “We both failed.”
Aled blinked.
“We changed, Aled,” she said softly, squeezing his wrist over the table. It was the first time she’d touched him in over a year and her skin felt alien. It felt like a stranger’s hand, despite all their years together and Aled exhaled.
There was no hum.
His skin had always buzzed and hummed when Melissa touched him, like an electric shock. And now there was nothing.
Aled—smiled.
“We just changed,” she continued softly. “We wanted different things and in the end, one of us would have to have been miserable. And I do still love you. I’ll always love you.”
“You just love your future children more.”
She smiled sadly. “Does that make me a bad person?”
“No,” Aled said honestly. “It’s going to make you an amazing mum one day, though.”
“I do hope you find someone else, Aled,” she said, squeezing his wrist again. “I really do. I hated leaving you, I hated seeing you hurting with this—this paperwork…”
“I didn’t want to admit I’d failed,” Aled said, “and when I finally figured out that it was my failing at being married, my letting my dad down—”
“Oh, Aled, you never let him down—”
“—more than it was about you, about specifically you…does that make sense? I was gutted at losing my wife, at losing my marriage, but…not about losing you.”
“It does,” she admitted. “It was how I felt when I left. I realised I was hanging on to my marriage, not my Aled. And I knew I had to go before we started to hate each other. I never hated you, never wanted to hate you, never wanted you to hate me—”
“I don’t.”
She bit her lip. “Thank you.”
“It’ll always hurt, that we didn’t work out,” Aled said honestly, “but I’m moving on and I did a lot of soul-searching before I signed those papers, and you know what? I want you to be happy. I really do. I want you to settle down with some other man and have a whole football team of kids if you both want them, because I’ll always love you, even if it’s not the way I did when I married you, and you’re going to make a brilliant mum.”
She made a little noise, her eyes shining, then suddenly stood up, came around the table and hugged him.
Hard.
Aled breathed in her smell—the familiar perfume, the faint underlay of hospital disinfectant, the barely-there scent of her favourite shampoo—and closed his eyes. His heart ached, but it didn’t hurt the way it had before. He loved her and he’d always love her but—
But he no longer looked at Melissa the way he’d found himself looking at Gabriel.
“Find someone,” Melissa whispered, squeezing him tight. “Find someone who fits around all your little edges and tells you you’re being a tit when you are, and cuddles you when you need one, and knows you. Someone who loves you, every last bit of you, and who makes you every bit as good as you could be. You deserve someone like that.”
