The Divorce (Starting Over Book 1), page 7
Suze’s fingers ghosted over his arm in the lightest of touches. “Sometimes, we don’t get what we want.”
Aled closed his eyes. That was the cruellest part. The final straw, the thing that had broken their marriage and sent Melissa out of the door—it wasn’t his fault. And it wasn’t her fault. It was just one of those things. One of those things that could break couples, right down the middle, and had broken them.
But Aled couldn’t explain why. They could have worked around it, maybe. If he’d known she was going to walk out, say nothing for a year, then send him divorce papers, he would have given in and worked around it. He wouldn’t have said no. He would have said, “Let’s try it another way.”
He said as much and Suze sighed.
“And you would have ended up resenting her,” she said softly, “for saddling you with a life you didn’t want. And if you’d not, and she’d have come back, she would have resented you for taking away the life she did want.”
“I could have—”
“Done nothing. Sweetheart, there was no way you were going to solve that one. And anyway, even if you had, it wasn’t the only issue. She didn’t like you and me, you never convinced her we’re not a thing and she wasn’t too thrilled about the whole cock-coveting thing.”
Aled coughed a wet laugh, scrubbing his wrist across his eyes. “Coveting cock? What the hell, Suze?”
“I’ve seen you eyeing up that guy in security, you covet his cock plenty.”
“I covet his arse, thank you, it’s a nice arse.”
Then the brief levity crumpled and Aled took a shaky breath.
“God, Suze, my wife wants to divorce me and I went round to a stranger’s flat and blew him instead of—of talking to her, calling her, sorting it out, working it out—”
“You’ve not really tried to do any of that since she left,” Suze said softly. “She walked and you wallowed. Time to face the music, love. I’m sorry, but you will both be better off if you let her go. You can both move on. Maybe you could even be friends again one day.”
Aled snorted.
“And on the subject of moving on, did you visit a prostitute? Because that was not what I had in mi—”
“No,” Aled interrupted with a wan smile. “No, he’s not a prostitute. Probably. I mean, I didn’t pay him and, really, if anyone would have been charging fees on Saturday it should have been me—”
“What are you talking about?”
“Gabriel.”
“Who?”
“Gabriel. The guy Tom set me up with on Grindr.”
Suze blinked, then laughed a little. “Wait, Tom actually did that? I thought you two were just drunk and kidding!”
“No, he did it. Well, I sent the message. We met up the next morning and fucked a couple of times, then I—I went back that evening, after Melissa gave me the divorce papers, and I just—we got burgers and watched TV and I sucked him off until he was shaking like a smack addict in withdrawal.”
“Did he like it?”
And that right there was why Suze was his best friend. Even Tom would grimace at the phrase. Suze just went for the interrogation.
“Yeah.”
“So—your response to your wife asking for a divorce was to go back to the one-night stand you’d only left that morning and do him again?”
“I guess so.”
Suze laughed, the sound actually infectious, and Aled found himself cracking a very thin smile. “Oh my God, Aled. And you’re still saying you want to get Melissa back? Come on, sweetie. You’re carrying on with this guy—”
“One day doesn’t equate to carrying on.”
“You went back—it’s not a one-night stand anymore.”
“I didn’t have anyone else to fuck, and—shit, Suze, he makes you feel so fucking good. I needed that. I needed to feel good for once.”
Suze’s face softened. “See what I mean when I say you’ve not been well?”
Aled closed his eyes again, the pain sharp and burning in his chest.
“Sweetheart. Sign the papers. Let her go. And get better, okay?”
“Doing what? Fucking random people off dodgy websites? Going home to my empty house? Knowing that—that the woman I love more than I’ve ever loved anyone is fucking some other guy, having his kids and wearing his wedding ring?”
“Aled—”
“It’s just a shag, Suze, and yeah, it made me feel better, but it made me feel fucking lonely, too. I haven’t—a whole year and there’s been nobody, a whole fucking year while she’s been out moving on, and—”
“And you can’t blame Melissa for that. You’re the one who’s wallowed, Aled. She told you it was over and you’ve not moved an inch since.”
“Where am I supposed to move to?”
“To having fun again! To meeting people again! Yeah, maybe Tom’s right, maybe some meaningless sex is a good way to shake her out of your mind a little bit, but you need to try dating again sometime, too. So you and Melissa didn’t work out. And you know what, so what. She was your first serious relationship and it was never perfect, you can’t claim it was perfect—”
“It was perfect.”
“Don’t be stupid,” Suze said harshly. “She thought you were knocking off your best mate and was jealous as hell about me. She never really believed you were bisexual and got annoyed if you commented on blokes. You hated one of her colleagues for fancying her like mad, even though you were supposedly all open, even after you got married. You never got the bathroom refitted because you argued so much about the design. And that’s before we even get to the big one, the fact she wanted—”
“I get it, Suze, thanks,” Aled said sharply. “All right, fine, it wasn’t perfect, but it was perfect for me. It was what I wanted! All I wanted! And I just—I just want my fucking wife back, Suze, I want my wife back, I want her back, I want—”
The tears dissolved his vision and Suze’s hair surrounded his world again, her grip firm and unyielding even as she scolded him for his denial and said he ought to be seeing a counsellor, getting some kind of help, where was trying to get back a woman who wanted to divorce him ever going to get him, he needed to focus on his Grindr account and the instructor at the gym who fancied him, not Melissa and their never-finished bathroom…
“Just sign the papers, sweetheart, and end this mess. Please.”
“I can’t.”
He couldn’t do it. He couldn’t just give up, give in, let go. He couldn’t. He couldn’t.
“I can’t do it, Suze.”
Because if he did, what in the hell was he supposed to do to replace it? He didn’t want to date and he didn’t know how to. He’d never dated. He’d met Melissa when he was a teenager and they’d been together ever since. How did adults meet? Where was he supposed to find another woman, never mind another man?
“Do you mind if I just drop you at home?” he found himself asking. “I just—I can’t face it today. I want to just go home.”
“Aled—”
“Please.”
She wavered. He could see it in her face. The indecision, the anxiety, the edges of anger. He knew her expressions better than he knew his own—but for once, he didn’t care. Let her be angry. Let her be worried. He just wanted to go home.
“Okay.”
She offered three times on the way to hers to come over to his, but Aled just shook his head. He didn’t want her to. He didn’t want to hear how Melissa asking for a divorce was a good thing. Pathetic as it was, he wanted to drink the house dry, go through their photos and wonder if it wouldn’t have been less brutal, less awful, if Melissa had died. Dead people didn’t want to leave you. Dead people didn’t choose to go. Divorced wives did.
But the house, when he got home, was disapproving.
It wasn’t his house, in a way. They’d lived here. Their first home. Aled had paid the mortgage—Melissa had still been studying, with no money to her name—but it had been theirs. The kitchen was all hers. The garden, with all her favourite plants. She’d bought him exercise equipment and a weights bench that had been rotting in the garage ever since, to combat his soft edges and spare tyre. He’d used them every January, intent on a new regime, and never stuck to it. God, even the curtains framing the conservatory doors had Melissa all over them—she’d repaired the hems when they’d frayed the winter that the boiler needed replacing and they didn’t have the money for things like curtains.
It was theirs.
Only she wasn’t here and never wanted to come back. So it was empty and cold. It was like renting a furnished flat. Hostile. Alien. Someone else’s décor. It was quiet. No radio, no singing from the bathroom. Her shoes hadn’t been kicked off at the bottom of the stairs and her jumper didn’t decorate the back of the sofa anymore.
Aled swallowed, his throat heavy, and raked both hands through his hair. He couldn’t do this. He couldn’t just sit drinking in this empty house, thinking of the wife who didn’t want him anymore. He had to…do something else. Get out, get someone else in, do something. Or he would just drink himself blind and feel shit for it anyway and prove Suze right. He just—
His phone buzzed in his pocket.
Sliding it out, he saw it was just another text from Sky, reminding him of his due bill, but Aled clicked out of it and scrolled to find Gabriel. So what if it was just a fuck? He needed—something. He needed a fuck, or at least a friend. A friend who didn’t know her, who couldn’t and wouldn’t comment on it or offer advice. A friend who could take his mind off her completely, and none of Aled’s friends could do that. All of them—every last one—predated the night she left. All of them knew her.
Many had walked with her.
So maybe it wasn’t healthy, maybe it was just as stupid as reacting to a divorce pack by fucking someone else, but—fuck it, Aled needed someone else right now. He needed to not just be the sad bastard left behind for something he couldn’t help, needed to feel good again, just for a minute, and Gabriel had made him feel so good—
Me: Free to come over tonight? I can offer the finest takeaway menus in Wakefield and a bit of fun.
He could offer home cooking, technically, but he’d never been that good at it. And he could maybe break out the wine instead of the beer—Gabriel didn’t strike him as a beer drinker, despite his tiny flat in a crappy part of Leeds.
Gabriel Grindr: Sorry, got plans tonight. Another time though? Can you offer another brick wall? ;) x
Aled swallowed and closed his eyes, the disappointment washing over him in a wave. His stomach tightened and he felt oddly angry with himself, even as he thumbed out a bland no worries. His eyes burned. God, why was he fucking upset? They’d just shagged a couple of times. Of course Gabriel had other plans. They’d met only a couple of days ago. How clingy could Aled bloody well be? It wasn’t like they were bloody dating. It wasn’t like—
Aled cut his own thoughts off and put the phone aside, his stomach churning and his heart hurting. Fuck it. Fuck Tom’s warnings about his imminent alcohol problem and fuck Suze’s insistence that he sign the papers. He didn’t want to think. He didn’t want to feel. And so what if it all hit him tomorrow? He could deal with that tomorrow.
He was going to get absolutely wankered and he was going to look at the photos of his wife, of the woman he loved, and pretend it hadn’t all gone so bloody wrong.
Chapter Ten
Gabriel’s breath hitched as the hot flood of cum caught him by surprise. He clenched, dragging the pleasure out, closing his eyes and gasping through the feel of it, digging his fingers into the sheets and heaving for air. Fuck, he loved this. This feeling of being split open and filled, this feeling like he was nothing more than an attractive body and had no purpose but to be fucked.
God, it felt good.
His mouth was captured and Gabriel sighed into the hungry kiss, then nudged his face aside and laughed. “Shower,” he whispered, his voice hoarse from shouting, and was kissed again.
“I have to go soon.”
“Then fuck in the shower and you can go,” Gabriel bargained.
The man pulled out, too sudden and too soon, and Gabriel clenched around the empty space he left behind. He reached, but the man was already climbing off the bed, sweat glistening in the light from the bedside lamp.
“Can’t. I really do have to go.”
“Wife calling?”
The guy coloured faintly. “I’m not married,” he said, but Gabriel had seen the pale strip of skin on his ring finger. Gabriel shrugged.
“Not my problem if you are. Just want to know if calling you again would be a bad idea.”
The man grinned, coming back to bite his bottom lip and kiss him. “It would be a very good idea,” he said, stroking his palm up Gabriel’s bare thigh. “I’m quite busy, but I’ll send you a message.”
“If it’s a very good idea,” Gabriel bargained, reaching for that soft cock and cupping it in one hand, “then you could stay for another round.”
The man laughed and shook his head, pulling away. “Even if I had the time,” he said, reaching for his underwear, “I’m not bloody twenty-five. I can’t get it up again that fast.”
Gabriel laughed, spreading his legs wider and playing idly with himself. “Ah, the affliction of the cisgender man.”
The man frowned. “You what?”
Gabriel rolled his eyes. “Never mind. Help yourself to the kitchen. I just have to shower.”
The man slapped his arse as Gabriel clambered free of the messy bed, but made no further attempt, and Gabriel slipped into the bathroom with mixed feelings. Gorgeous, certainly. Perhaps he would call the man again for a second go. But he wouldn’t be selling his soul for that—the sex had been good but somewhat unimaginative. Clothes off, cock in arse—he hadn’t even considered the cunt—and a dull rhythm. The man had obviously learned to fuck at the school of drunken parties. And was obviously trying a sexuality on for size.
Gabriel tipped his head back under the water and slowly began to toy with himself again. The guy had gotten Gabriel off first, though, and that earned big points in Gabriel’s book. He liked a good fuck, but at the end of the day, it would take a bloody hour of being fucked raw before he came on cock alone. He might be able to get off several times in a row but having been assigned female did hinder matters slightly when it came to anal.
When the last of the evidence had been washed away—aside from a clean bruise on Gabriel’s hip that made him smile—Gabriel stepped out and rubbed down with a hand towel before slipping back into the rest of the flat, completely naked and still damp. Temptation on two legs and he knew it.
Only, to his disappointment, to find himself alone.
“I guess soon meant soon,” he muttered to himself and rummaged up his phone from the kitchenette. He had a couple of new messages and another unsolicited dick pic—albeit an impressively big one, it did have to be said—but nothing of much interest. And he could do with another, really. The man had taken the edge off, but Gabriel had just had his shot yesterday and the week after his shot he always wanted to fuck until it hurt to sit.
Shrugging, he retreated to the bedroom to strip the sheets and change the bed, then he could get the bus into town and scour the clubs, perhaps. He never pulled direct from them—the lure was dangerous and the risk of someone being a little too surprised by not getting the penis they expected was too high—but passing out his Grindr profile always worked. He could line up a few guys for tomorrow, or—
Gabriel stopped dead in the bedroom doorway, staring at the bedside table.
And the cash folded and tucked under the base of the lamp.
Money.
The fucker had left him money.
“You fucking bastard!” Gabriel exploded, snatching up the cash and counting even as he dialled. When it connected, he didn’t pause. “You fucking cunt! I’m not some fucking hooker, you cheating piece of shit! You think flashing a hundred at me will get me grabbing my ankles and moaning like a whore for you, or do you pay your fucking wife a handful of twenties to get her to open her legs, too?”
The man spluttered some kind of protest, something about hook-up sites and figuring out his sexuality and Gabriel looking like he needed the money, and Gabriel swore viciously at him again.
“If you ever so much as think about contacting me again, I’ll find you and I’ll find that wife you apparently don’t have and I’ll make sure she knows you’re fucking trans men because you’re not quite gay enough for the so-called real thing, you son of a bitch!”
Gabriel heard perhaps half a swear in reply before he drew his hand back and flung the phone at the wall. It smashed to pieces, glass and plastic exploding over the dressing table, and for a moment, he simply stood and breathed, eyes closed and the anger pulsing in time with his heart. Fuck’s sake, wasn’t he fucking allowed to enjoy sex? Was there some code he’d missed, where if a trans guy was offering a shag, it really meant he wanted paying for it? Obviously, there was no fucking way Gabriel enjoyed sex, not being trans and living in a dodgy area. No, clearly he was a professional prostitute.
Exhaling, and deflating, Gabriel sat heavily on the edge of the bed and raked his fingers through his hair. Fuck the clubs. He’d probably just find some other closeted bellend who figured it wasn’t gay if the guy he was screwing—in the arse, no less—still had his original plumbing. Clearly it wasn’t gay if you were within twenty feet of vagina at the time, Gabriel thought bitterly. He didn’t need more like that. More cis guys who told themselves they were open-minded when really, in their heads, he was just a woman with small tits.
No, he needed to get it from a trusted source, from someone who knew what he liked, knew what Gabriel was and didn’t offer pathetic cover stories and fucking money for the privilege.
Gabriel glanced at the ruin of the phone and nodded to himself. Aled. Aled ticked those boxes and he’d asked earlier.
Rescuing the SIM card from the remains, Gabriel retreated to the kitchenette, found a spare handset in one of the drawers, plugged the SIM in and scrolled quickly to Aled’s name.
Me: Change of plans. Still offering those fine takeaways and a wall?
Aled closed his eyes. That was the cruellest part. The final straw, the thing that had broken their marriage and sent Melissa out of the door—it wasn’t his fault. And it wasn’t her fault. It was just one of those things. One of those things that could break couples, right down the middle, and had broken them.
But Aled couldn’t explain why. They could have worked around it, maybe. If he’d known she was going to walk out, say nothing for a year, then send him divorce papers, he would have given in and worked around it. He wouldn’t have said no. He would have said, “Let’s try it another way.”
He said as much and Suze sighed.
“And you would have ended up resenting her,” she said softly, “for saddling you with a life you didn’t want. And if you’d not, and she’d have come back, she would have resented you for taking away the life she did want.”
“I could have—”
“Done nothing. Sweetheart, there was no way you were going to solve that one. And anyway, even if you had, it wasn’t the only issue. She didn’t like you and me, you never convinced her we’re not a thing and she wasn’t too thrilled about the whole cock-coveting thing.”
Aled coughed a wet laugh, scrubbing his wrist across his eyes. “Coveting cock? What the hell, Suze?”
“I’ve seen you eyeing up that guy in security, you covet his cock plenty.”
“I covet his arse, thank you, it’s a nice arse.”
Then the brief levity crumpled and Aled took a shaky breath.
“God, Suze, my wife wants to divorce me and I went round to a stranger’s flat and blew him instead of—of talking to her, calling her, sorting it out, working it out—”
“You’ve not really tried to do any of that since she left,” Suze said softly. “She walked and you wallowed. Time to face the music, love. I’m sorry, but you will both be better off if you let her go. You can both move on. Maybe you could even be friends again one day.”
Aled snorted.
“And on the subject of moving on, did you visit a prostitute? Because that was not what I had in mi—”
“No,” Aled interrupted with a wan smile. “No, he’s not a prostitute. Probably. I mean, I didn’t pay him and, really, if anyone would have been charging fees on Saturday it should have been me—”
“What are you talking about?”
“Gabriel.”
“Who?”
“Gabriel. The guy Tom set me up with on Grindr.”
Suze blinked, then laughed a little. “Wait, Tom actually did that? I thought you two were just drunk and kidding!”
“No, he did it. Well, I sent the message. We met up the next morning and fucked a couple of times, then I—I went back that evening, after Melissa gave me the divorce papers, and I just—we got burgers and watched TV and I sucked him off until he was shaking like a smack addict in withdrawal.”
“Did he like it?”
And that right there was why Suze was his best friend. Even Tom would grimace at the phrase. Suze just went for the interrogation.
“Yeah.”
“So—your response to your wife asking for a divorce was to go back to the one-night stand you’d only left that morning and do him again?”
“I guess so.”
Suze laughed, the sound actually infectious, and Aled found himself cracking a very thin smile. “Oh my God, Aled. And you’re still saying you want to get Melissa back? Come on, sweetie. You’re carrying on with this guy—”
“One day doesn’t equate to carrying on.”
“You went back—it’s not a one-night stand anymore.”
“I didn’t have anyone else to fuck, and—shit, Suze, he makes you feel so fucking good. I needed that. I needed to feel good for once.”
Suze’s face softened. “See what I mean when I say you’ve not been well?”
Aled closed his eyes again, the pain sharp and burning in his chest.
“Sweetheart. Sign the papers. Let her go. And get better, okay?”
“Doing what? Fucking random people off dodgy websites? Going home to my empty house? Knowing that—that the woman I love more than I’ve ever loved anyone is fucking some other guy, having his kids and wearing his wedding ring?”
“Aled—”
“It’s just a shag, Suze, and yeah, it made me feel better, but it made me feel fucking lonely, too. I haven’t—a whole year and there’s been nobody, a whole fucking year while she’s been out moving on, and—”
“And you can’t blame Melissa for that. You’re the one who’s wallowed, Aled. She told you it was over and you’ve not moved an inch since.”
“Where am I supposed to move to?”
“To having fun again! To meeting people again! Yeah, maybe Tom’s right, maybe some meaningless sex is a good way to shake her out of your mind a little bit, but you need to try dating again sometime, too. So you and Melissa didn’t work out. And you know what, so what. She was your first serious relationship and it was never perfect, you can’t claim it was perfect—”
“It was perfect.”
“Don’t be stupid,” Suze said harshly. “She thought you were knocking off your best mate and was jealous as hell about me. She never really believed you were bisexual and got annoyed if you commented on blokes. You hated one of her colleagues for fancying her like mad, even though you were supposedly all open, even after you got married. You never got the bathroom refitted because you argued so much about the design. And that’s before we even get to the big one, the fact she wanted—”
“I get it, Suze, thanks,” Aled said sharply. “All right, fine, it wasn’t perfect, but it was perfect for me. It was what I wanted! All I wanted! And I just—I just want my fucking wife back, Suze, I want my wife back, I want her back, I want—”
The tears dissolved his vision and Suze’s hair surrounded his world again, her grip firm and unyielding even as she scolded him for his denial and said he ought to be seeing a counsellor, getting some kind of help, where was trying to get back a woman who wanted to divorce him ever going to get him, he needed to focus on his Grindr account and the instructor at the gym who fancied him, not Melissa and their never-finished bathroom…
“Just sign the papers, sweetheart, and end this mess. Please.”
“I can’t.”
He couldn’t do it. He couldn’t just give up, give in, let go. He couldn’t. He couldn’t.
“I can’t do it, Suze.”
Because if he did, what in the hell was he supposed to do to replace it? He didn’t want to date and he didn’t know how to. He’d never dated. He’d met Melissa when he was a teenager and they’d been together ever since. How did adults meet? Where was he supposed to find another woman, never mind another man?
“Do you mind if I just drop you at home?” he found himself asking. “I just—I can’t face it today. I want to just go home.”
“Aled—”
“Please.”
She wavered. He could see it in her face. The indecision, the anxiety, the edges of anger. He knew her expressions better than he knew his own—but for once, he didn’t care. Let her be angry. Let her be worried. He just wanted to go home.
“Okay.”
She offered three times on the way to hers to come over to his, but Aled just shook his head. He didn’t want her to. He didn’t want to hear how Melissa asking for a divorce was a good thing. Pathetic as it was, he wanted to drink the house dry, go through their photos and wonder if it wouldn’t have been less brutal, less awful, if Melissa had died. Dead people didn’t want to leave you. Dead people didn’t choose to go. Divorced wives did.
But the house, when he got home, was disapproving.
It wasn’t his house, in a way. They’d lived here. Their first home. Aled had paid the mortgage—Melissa had still been studying, with no money to her name—but it had been theirs. The kitchen was all hers. The garden, with all her favourite plants. She’d bought him exercise equipment and a weights bench that had been rotting in the garage ever since, to combat his soft edges and spare tyre. He’d used them every January, intent on a new regime, and never stuck to it. God, even the curtains framing the conservatory doors had Melissa all over them—she’d repaired the hems when they’d frayed the winter that the boiler needed replacing and they didn’t have the money for things like curtains.
It was theirs.
Only she wasn’t here and never wanted to come back. So it was empty and cold. It was like renting a furnished flat. Hostile. Alien. Someone else’s décor. It was quiet. No radio, no singing from the bathroom. Her shoes hadn’t been kicked off at the bottom of the stairs and her jumper didn’t decorate the back of the sofa anymore.
Aled swallowed, his throat heavy, and raked both hands through his hair. He couldn’t do this. He couldn’t just sit drinking in this empty house, thinking of the wife who didn’t want him anymore. He had to…do something else. Get out, get someone else in, do something. Or he would just drink himself blind and feel shit for it anyway and prove Suze right. He just—
His phone buzzed in his pocket.
Sliding it out, he saw it was just another text from Sky, reminding him of his due bill, but Aled clicked out of it and scrolled to find Gabriel. So what if it was just a fuck? He needed—something. He needed a fuck, or at least a friend. A friend who didn’t know her, who couldn’t and wouldn’t comment on it or offer advice. A friend who could take his mind off her completely, and none of Aled’s friends could do that. All of them—every last one—predated the night she left. All of them knew her.
Many had walked with her.
So maybe it wasn’t healthy, maybe it was just as stupid as reacting to a divorce pack by fucking someone else, but—fuck it, Aled needed someone else right now. He needed to not just be the sad bastard left behind for something he couldn’t help, needed to feel good again, just for a minute, and Gabriel had made him feel so good—
Me: Free to come over tonight? I can offer the finest takeaway menus in Wakefield and a bit of fun.
He could offer home cooking, technically, but he’d never been that good at it. And he could maybe break out the wine instead of the beer—Gabriel didn’t strike him as a beer drinker, despite his tiny flat in a crappy part of Leeds.
Gabriel Grindr: Sorry, got plans tonight. Another time though? Can you offer another brick wall? ;) x
Aled swallowed and closed his eyes, the disappointment washing over him in a wave. His stomach tightened and he felt oddly angry with himself, even as he thumbed out a bland no worries. His eyes burned. God, why was he fucking upset? They’d just shagged a couple of times. Of course Gabriel had other plans. They’d met only a couple of days ago. How clingy could Aled bloody well be? It wasn’t like they were bloody dating. It wasn’t like—
Aled cut his own thoughts off and put the phone aside, his stomach churning and his heart hurting. Fuck it. Fuck Tom’s warnings about his imminent alcohol problem and fuck Suze’s insistence that he sign the papers. He didn’t want to think. He didn’t want to feel. And so what if it all hit him tomorrow? He could deal with that tomorrow.
He was going to get absolutely wankered and he was going to look at the photos of his wife, of the woman he loved, and pretend it hadn’t all gone so bloody wrong.
Chapter Ten
Gabriel’s breath hitched as the hot flood of cum caught him by surprise. He clenched, dragging the pleasure out, closing his eyes and gasping through the feel of it, digging his fingers into the sheets and heaving for air. Fuck, he loved this. This feeling of being split open and filled, this feeling like he was nothing more than an attractive body and had no purpose but to be fucked.
God, it felt good.
His mouth was captured and Gabriel sighed into the hungry kiss, then nudged his face aside and laughed. “Shower,” he whispered, his voice hoarse from shouting, and was kissed again.
“I have to go soon.”
“Then fuck in the shower and you can go,” Gabriel bargained.
The man pulled out, too sudden and too soon, and Gabriel clenched around the empty space he left behind. He reached, but the man was already climbing off the bed, sweat glistening in the light from the bedside lamp.
“Can’t. I really do have to go.”
“Wife calling?”
The guy coloured faintly. “I’m not married,” he said, but Gabriel had seen the pale strip of skin on his ring finger. Gabriel shrugged.
“Not my problem if you are. Just want to know if calling you again would be a bad idea.”
The man grinned, coming back to bite his bottom lip and kiss him. “It would be a very good idea,” he said, stroking his palm up Gabriel’s bare thigh. “I’m quite busy, but I’ll send you a message.”
“If it’s a very good idea,” Gabriel bargained, reaching for that soft cock and cupping it in one hand, “then you could stay for another round.”
The man laughed and shook his head, pulling away. “Even if I had the time,” he said, reaching for his underwear, “I’m not bloody twenty-five. I can’t get it up again that fast.”
Gabriel laughed, spreading his legs wider and playing idly with himself. “Ah, the affliction of the cisgender man.”
The man frowned. “You what?”
Gabriel rolled his eyes. “Never mind. Help yourself to the kitchen. I just have to shower.”
The man slapped his arse as Gabriel clambered free of the messy bed, but made no further attempt, and Gabriel slipped into the bathroom with mixed feelings. Gorgeous, certainly. Perhaps he would call the man again for a second go. But he wouldn’t be selling his soul for that—the sex had been good but somewhat unimaginative. Clothes off, cock in arse—he hadn’t even considered the cunt—and a dull rhythm. The man had obviously learned to fuck at the school of drunken parties. And was obviously trying a sexuality on for size.
Gabriel tipped his head back under the water and slowly began to toy with himself again. The guy had gotten Gabriel off first, though, and that earned big points in Gabriel’s book. He liked a good fuck, but at the end of the day, it would take a bloody hour of being fucked raw before he came on cock alone. He might be able to get off several times in a row but having been assigned female did hinder matters slightly when it came to anal.
When the last of the evidence had been washed away—aside from a clean bruise on Gabriel’s hip that made him smile—Gabriel stepped out and rubbed down with a hand towel before slipping back into the rest of the flat, completely naked and still damp. Temptation on two legs and he knew it.
Only, to his disappointment, to find himself alone.
“I guess soon meant soon,” he muttered to himself and rummaged up his phone from the kitchenette. He had a couple of new messages and another unsolicited dick pic—albeit an impressively big one, it did have to be said—but nothing of much interest. And he could do with another, really. The man had taken the edge off, but Gabriel had just had his shot yesterday and the week after his shot he always wanted to fuck until it hurt to sit.
Shrugging, he retreated to the bedroom to strip the sheets and change the bed, then he could get the bus into town and scour the clubs, perhaps. He never pulled direct from them—the lure was dangerous and the risk of someone being a little too surprised by not getting the penis they expected was too high—but passing out his Grindr profile always worked. He could line up a few guys for tomorrow, or—
Gabriel stopped dead in the bedroom doorway, staring at the bedside table.
And the cash folded and tucked under the base of the lamp.
Money.
The fucker had left him money.
“You fucking bastard!” Gabriel exploded, snatching up the cash and counting even as he dialled. When it connected, he didn’t pause. “You fucking cunt! I’m not some fucking hooker, you cheating piece of shit! You think flashing a hundred at me will get me grabbing my ankles and moaning like a whore for you, or do you pay your fucking wife a handful of twenties to get her to open her legs, too?”
The man spluttered some kind of protest, something about hook-up sites and figuring out his sexuality and Gabriel looking like he needed the money, and Gabriel swore viciously at him again.
“If you ever so much as think about contacting me again, I’ll find you and I’ll find that wife you apparently don’t have and I’ll make sure she knows you’re fucking trans men because you’re not quite gay enough for the so-called real thing, you son of a bitch!”
Gabriel heard perhaps half a swear in reply before he drew his hand back and flung the phone at the wall. It smashed to pieces, glass and plastic exploding over the dressing table, and for a moment, he simply stood and breathed, eyes closed and the anger pulsing in time with his heart. Fuck’s sake, wasn’t he fucking allowed to enjoy sex? Was there some code he’d missed, where if a trans guy was offering a shag, it really meant he wanted paying for it? Obviously, there was no fucking way Gabriel enjoyed sex, not being trans and living in a dodgy area. No, clearly he was a professional prostitute.
Exhaling, and deflating, Gabriel sat heavily on the edge of the bed and raked his fingers through his hair. Fuck the clubs. He’d probably just find some other closeted bellend who figured it wasn’t gay if the guy he was screwing—in the arse, no less—still had his original plumbing. Clearly it wasn’t gay if you were within twenty feet of vagina at the time, Gabriel thought bitterly. He didn’t need more like that. More cis guys who told themselves they were open-minded when really, in their heads, he was just a woman with small tits.
No, he needed to get it from a trusted source, from someone who knew what he liked, knew what Gabriel was and didn’t offer pathetic cover stories and fucking money for the privilege.
Gabriel glanced at the ruin of the phone and nodded to himself. Aled. Aled ticked those boxes and he’d asked earlier.
Rescuing the SIM card from the remains, Gabriel retreated to the kitchenette, found a spare handset in one of the drawers, plugged the SIM in and scrolled quickly to Aled’s name.
Me: Change of plans. Still offering those fine takeaways and a wall?
