A hand patted his backside and a single finger pushed underneath to toy with his well-fucked cunt. Gabriel wriggled. It flexed and the cool back of a fingernail rubbed gently against him, almost like a kiss.

  “Take it that’s a yes?” Aled asked.

  “Bed.”

  Aled still needed towing by the hand. He was entirely naked, light freckles dusting every inch of skin, including his prick. He had once been stocky and muscular, now hidden under a spare tyre and thick thighs. The jaw could have cut diamond even without the sinful stubble, and his smirk turned Gabriel’s legs to water as he was crowded down onto the mattress in a tangle of limbs. Aled’s cock was semi-hard, thick but not yet rising from its crop of curls, and it nestled comfortably against Gabriel’s hip. He glanced down and grinned. Curtains matched the carpets.

  “You’re too high.”

  “Open up, then.”

  He didn’t bother trying to be sexy about it. Just dragged himself up to the pillows and opened his legs, rubbing one hand down the crease of hip and thigh and adjusting his already well-satisfied—and well up for another go—dick. If there was one thing Gabriel liked about his physical origins, it was this. Aled might need some recovery time. Gabriel? He was all sorted.

  And if Aled didn’t hurry the fuck up, after all that face-rubbing, Gabriel would be gagging for it, too.

  “Ah-ah,” Aled chided, catching his wrist. “That’s mine.”

  “What’s—oh, fuck!”

  He’d expected Aled to do what most guys willing to blow Gabriel tried to do. And sure, he didn’t object to being eaten out. It was nice enough and it was a great warm-up for the good stuff.

  But Aled didn’t go there.

  He went straight for Gabriel’s cock.

  “Fuck-fuck-fuck—”

  It was like having an entire bottle of heated lube poured over his dick and nowhere else. And when Aled sucked, Gabriel lost his voice entirely. He whined, fisting both hands in the sheets as Aled explored his labia with the very tip of his tongue, then cocooned his dick in that hot, wet heat once more. And again, and again, and again—

  He was already on fire before the stubble ever came into play. And when it did, it was like his entire leg was consumed in the flames. He nearly kicked Aled in the side of the head, then was tortured through a second pass with two hard, heavy hands pinning his hips down to the bed. Soon, all Gabriel could hear was himself. Swearing. Gasping. Begging. As the fire was scraped across his inner thighs, every muscle below his chest jumping in desperation, the water soothing it only to have all the sensation dragged back into his straining cock. After the first, Gabriel thought he was going to dissolve—but then Aled did it again, and again, and again—

  He barely noticed coming the first time. He only felt the sharp bite delivered to his stomach minutes later. And by the time he realised that the pressure on his cock was Aled’s body and not his tongue, and that he’d missed his chance of sucking off the shaft that was fucking him through the mattress, it was almost over.

  Gabriel didn’t care.

  He just hooked an arm around Aled’s neck, drew him down and bit his ear in furious retribution.

  Because somewhere in there, that smug son of a bitch had managed to glove up again.

  Chapter Five

  When Aled woke up, he was alone.

  He knew it immediately, though he couldn’t put his finger on why. But as he stretched and explored enough to find Gabriel’s bathroom and have a piss, he realised it was the total and complete silence permeating the flat. It was unnaturally quiet.

  Admittedly, Aled hadn’t done much looking around when they’d stumbled in off the street and fucked in the middle of the floor, but he’d seen enough to know it wasn’t a big flat. Even Gabriel sitting and quietly reading a book should have given away his presence somehow.

  A cursory search after aforementioned piss confirmed it—Gabriel was gone.

  Aled stretched again, ironing the kinks out of his back. It hadn’t been anything monumental, really. They had staggered in wrapped around each other and he’d fucked Gabriel into the bare wooden floor right behind the door. Then he’d sucked Gabriel off and fucked him through his orgasm. Aled must have fallen asleep after that.

  They were just clumsy, messy shags.

  But he felt…good. Tired, but a good tired, for the first time in months. His skin was buzzing gently, like the satisfied hum after a hard workout and a hot bath. The ache wasn’t in his chest, for once. He didn’t feel like he needed to sleep even more. He felt—happy. Positive. Bright.

  God, maybe Tom was right. Maybe a bit of Gabriel was good for the soul.

  He padded back to the bedroom to find his briefs, and also found a note on the bedside table. Gabriel’s handwriting was scratchy and hurried—gone 2 werk feel free 2 rade fridge—and Aled wondered what he actually did for a living. The flat was obviously rented, the décor too bland and neutral for any actual, living human being to willingly put in their own home, but then there was no roommate evident, so Aled guessed he wasn’t still a student or pulling part-time shifts at some bar somewhere.

  Fuelled by curiosity and time, Aled went exploring properly. He was suddenly intensely curious about this trans guy with all the confidence and swagger of any cis bloke Aled had ever met before. He’d always imagined trans men would be a bit shy in bed. Hesitant. Less up for one-night stands.

  Not on Grindr with a waiting list of potential shags.

  The flat was only three rooms—a small main room, with a kitchenette jammed in next to a crowded living space, a bedroom with a stunning view of the brick alley between the two blocks of flats and a bathroom with a serious case of black mould sprouting from one corner of the ceiling. The house-proud part of Aled shivered at the desperate need to repair and repaint almost every aspect of the place.

  Gabriel’s bedroom told him very little, but his bathroom was a weird mash-up of products that reminded Aled of his own before his wife had walked out. The deodorants and razors were men’s, but there was a box of tampons on the side and a set of bath bombs that were distinctly at aimed at women, judging by the flowers all over the packaging. If not for the single bedroom and lack of anyone else’s clothes, Aled could have been convinced of a girlfriend, or at least a female roommate. And when he found a half-empty tub of Slimming World diet shake powder in the bathroom cabinet, he wondered if that was just a thing that trans people did. Keep the best bits of the wrong gender and adopt all the other bits of the right one? He’d have to ask.

  He borrowed some of the lemon and lime shower gel for a quick scrub-down, and was pleasantly surprised by the luxuriously fluffy towels, before dressing again and wandering into the main room. The kitchenette looked like it was supposed to house a bodybuilder, with all the high-protein foods and shakes everywhere, and Aled suspected that Gabriel was probably the only person in the building who owned a copy of Men’s Health to actually read the articles instead of just gawk at the pictures. There was no booze in the place, but a stash of cigarettes that could put a newsagent’s to shame was hidden in a cupboard between a tower of baked beans and a thousand packets of instant soup.

  The living room area was the most revealing, by the corkboard covered in photographs of the countryside, the filthy mountain bike propped up in the corner and the bundle of cycling maps from the Ordnance Survey folks on the coffee table. Aled groaned. Gabriel was one of those outdoors types. And a cyclist. Christ, Aled gave himself bonus points for not deliberately running them over when he encountered cyclists. At least it was a mountain bike, not a road bike, and—he leafed through the maps and pulled out a couple of orange tickets, months old—it looked like Gabriel was more in the habit of taking the bike on the train somewhere nice than cycling up the A650 and carving up the traffic.

  Nice-ish, anyway. Why would he have taken the bike to Sheffield, of all places?

  Aled put the pile back the way he found it. He ought to go. Gabriel had made no mention of coming back, and it was nearly six in the evening. Aled still had to get the bus back to Wakefield. He picked up his jacket from where Gabriel had shoved it off his shoulders halfway to the bedroom. He patted it down for his keys and phone, then hesitated.

  Phone.

  Should he…?

  The intention had just been a quick shag with someone who was a bit interesting and had a gorgeous mouth. But Aled felt good. Unreasonably good, for a quick shag. Gabriel had been responsive in all the right places and the little whimper he’d made when Aled had thrust into him for the first time had been sensational.

  And, of course, there was the way he’d responded to being held against the wall.

  Aled swallowed. To hell with it. If he left his number and Gabriel never called, so what? And if he did, then maybe they could do it again sometime. Either way, Aled wasn’t going to lose by leaving it, was he?

  He found a permanent marker in one of the kitchen drawers and paced back into the bedroom to add his number to the poorly spelled note Gabriel had left him.

  Then Aled corrected his spelling, and left.

  * * * *

  Aled lived on the Darnley estate, about fifteen minutes down from the bus station. It wasn’t an especially long way, so, in light of the bitterly cold but gloriously bright and dry weather, he hunched deeper into his coat and decided to walk it and break it up with a cup of coffee in town on the way.

  And with that in mind, rang Tom.

  “Aled? The fuck, mate, what’s up? Something wrong?”

  Aled didn’t usually directly speak to Tom on the phone. Although they got along perfectly well, and Aled certainly considered Tom a good friend, he was and always would be Suze’s boyfriend before he was Aled’s friend. Unless it was about Suze, Tom and Aled rarely spoke or met up without her.

  So his instant jump from surprise to concern wasn’t too big a leap.

  Still—

  “Hi, Tom, how are you? Fine, thanks, nice weather,” Aled deadpanned.

  “Shove off.”

  Predictable.

  “Just wanted to let you know, I owe your brother a pub of pints.”

  “Yeah?” Tom laughed. “You meet up with his angel?”

  “Yep. Gabriel.”

  “You’re kidding.”

  “Nope.”

  “The Archangel Gabriel, fuck me.”

  “Well, I fucked him, actually, but semantics…”

  Tom laughed again and Aled heard him sitting back in whatever chair he was in. “Do you some good, did he?”

  “Yeah,” Aled confessed. “I’ll only say this once, but you were right.”

  Tom whooped.

  “I needed that. I feel good, for once.”

  “And you’ve realised that it’s for once?”

  “Eh?”

  “Come off it, mate, you’ve been feeling nothing or crap since your missus walked. You feel good now. That throwing the last year into a bit of perspective for you?”

  Aled grimaced, suddenly remembering the other reason he and Tom didn’t speak alone often. Tom made Suze look cuddly and empathetic with personal advice.

  But—

  “I can’t deny that,” he admitted quietly. “It wasn’t even the shag, you know? It was just…feeling close to someone again. Like that.”

  “Bit too mushy for me, mate.”

  “Oh, fuck off, Tom, you act like a kicked puppy whenever Suze gets sent to the New York office.”

  “I do not.”

  “I’ll film it next time,” Aled said mildly. “Point is, I feel good. Really good.” He was leaving the town centre and crossed the road to detour for coffee before heading home. “It’s woken everything up a bit, I reckon.”

  “Good. You gonna fuck him again?”

  Aled rolled his eyes. “I don’t know.”

  “You left your number.”

  “I said, I don’t know.”

  “Which means you totally left your number, because you are a romantic, and you decided to bang a guy based on his eye colour.”

  “It was his mouth!”

  “You waxed lyrical about his eyes for five minutes, Aled. Face it. You. Are. A. Girl.”

  “I’m a girl who had a phenomenal shag this morning with someone straight out of a beauty magazine, so that would make me the success of the day and you the sad loser sitting around in his bunny slippers.”

  The distinct rub of carpet on fuzz met his ears before Tom grouchily said, “Barefoot.”

  “Yeah, now you’ve slipped them off.”

  “You know what, fuck this. I preferred you mopey and depressed.”

  “Yeah, whatever, mate,” Aled said as he pushed open the coffee shop door. “Just thank your brother for me. He’s more useful than you.”

  He hung up to Tom’s indignant assessment of him as an ungrateful bastard and beamed at the barista. It was absurd but…he did feel as good as he’d said. He felt awake, like he’d been drowsy and tired for a very long time, and now he’d had a good sleep and a shot of energy all at once. And Aled wasn’t thick—sex did that to the brain, chemically speaking—but he’d take what he could get from it. And, grudgingly, he had to admit that Tom and Suze were right. He’d been depressed. There was no denying it…and no shame in it, Aled felt. Of course he’d been depressed. His wife had left him.

  But now…maybe this was the way to actually get control of his life back. Clear out his system—maybe see Gabriel again, maybe see some other men and women—and once he was feeling better, feeling happier, feeling more confident, he could get a grip on everything again. Be that go after her and finally work on their problems, instead of burying his head in the sand, or be that…

  Not.

  But feeling better, Aled thought maybe he could work it out with Melissa now. The day she’d left, he’d simply stood and watched her go, and physically felt his heart breaking in his chest. They’d never really rowed. There wasn’t a screaming argument, complete with slamming doors and breaking plates. There wasn’t some climax of a story, no coming to a head.

  She’d said, ‘You’ll regret it if you don’t. You’ll be old and alone, and you’ll regret it.’

  He’d said, ‘No, I won’t.’

  And she’d quietly got up and left.

  And never come back.

  Aled had never confronted her about it. They’d never had that final argument. They’d split up in this strange limbo, where they had never finished the disagreement that had broken them down.

  And Aled knew why she’d gone. It wasn’t that he didn’t understand why. It was just that he’d hoped that it wouldn’t keep her away. As the months had slipped by, he’d kept hoping that maybe today, maybe this week, maybe next, she would come back and they could finish what they’d started.

  Only she never had.

  Now, with that energetic buzz thrumming through his veins, Aled thought that maybe this was the kick-start he needed. He could ring her up and they could have lunch and talk about it. Maybe the year apart had been necessary, to brush the cobwebs off their marriage and re-evaluate. Sometimes, putting a project on hold and coming back to it later could bring ways around the problem into view that couldn’t be seen before. Maybe she wouldn’t be so adamant that they had to do things the traditional way. Maybe he’d have learned from the quiet and the loneliness and be more open to what she needed.

  Maybe they finally had a chance to—

  Aled turned into the street and stopped dead.

  His house was barely visible from the corner, sitting as it was on the junction between Henry Street and Plumpton Road. But the car parked outside it—the very familiar little car that used to sit in his driveway and used to contain a spare jacket in the boot for him and had a scuff mark on the door from where he’d once drunkenly opened it too wide and hit the garage wall—was perfectly visible.

  As was the woman leaning against the boot, head down, texting.

  Melissa.

  Chapter Six

  When he was fourteen, one of the girls at school had called Gabriel a professional prostitute.

  At the time, Gabriel had been hurt. Now, after eight hours on his feet being polite to arseholes, he wondered if he hadn’t made a crap career choice by not putting his phone number on toilet walls. At least he’d get more money to suck suits off than help them figure out how to use the self-checkout machines. And they’d probably be nicer about it.

  He hated the itchy uniform. He hated the customers. He hated the seventeen-year-old team leader who gave him speeches about the importance of correctly stacked shelves. And the one good thing about his job—the weekdays security guard who liked to stick his dick in anything that wasn’t his wife—had been sacked last week for being caught with his trousers down in the stockroom.

  Even Aled fucking him into a coma couldn’t keep Gabriel in a good mood for eight hours of stacking shelves and smiling at Susan while she screamed that he needed to honour her out-of-date vouchers.

  It was dark when he left and he headed for the bus stop. During the day he’d walk back, but Gabriel could pass all he wanted—he was still a five-foot-five white guy with a girly walk. Even after he’d managed to scrub ‘girl’ off his face, ‘gay’ was still well and truly tattooed there.

  Which meant when his phone started ringing—an iPhone, a Christmas gift from Kevin—he was reluctant to take it out of his pocket. He slid it free with the intention of just silencing it but then grinned when he saw the name, so plugged his earphones in and swiped the call open.

  “Hey, Kevin.”

  “Well, hello there. Nice of you to stay in touch.”

  Gabriel sighed dramatically, but it didn’t wipe the grin off his face. He reached the bus stop and settled into the seat in the shelter, hunching his shoulders against the cold and any prying eyes.

  “Nice holiday?”

  “Except for the radio silence. You good?”

  Gabriel had known Kevin for three years. Kevin knew everything. Sometimes the question meant myriad things—who’d he fucked, what he’d taken, if he’d been to the clinic lately, what did he need, where was he, who was he with—and other times, it just meant…

 

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