To Say I Love You (Another Way Book 3)

by Anna Martin

  “Weird,” I said. I had no other words to describe it.

  “Bad?”

  “No, Sir.”

  “Then I’ll do it again.”

  He still used the same sound, and I watched, fascinated, as it penetrated me just a tiny bit more each time. I wasn’t quite as aroused as I’d been before, and I could take it all in with an almost detached view. It was only when he pulled it free and squeezed the base of my cock that I realized how painfully aroused I still was.

  “I’m satisfied you’re in excellent physical health, Jesse.”

  I dropped my head back and squeezed my eyes shut, silently begging that he’d just let me come now and my aching balls would finally get some relief. When he didn’t touch me for moments longer, I pried one eyelid open and almost groaned when I saw him making notes on that goddamned clipboard.

  “Ah, yes,” he said with a smile when he noticed me staring. “Let’s finish off with that sperm sample, shall we?”

  “If you like, Doctor,” I bit out.

  His grin turned a little sadistic. “Do you need some prostate stimulation in order to reach climax?”

  “I wouldn’t say no.”

  Character be damned. I wanted to come.

  Within moments, two slick fingers penetrated me again and he fisted my cock. It felt like I had been building up to this for hours, I was so horny, and I knew in the context of this scene, I didn’t need his permission to come.

  I still gritted my teeth hard and tried to be good, tried to make it last since his hands were doing incredible things to me and I wanted to lose it with him, because of him.

  “Sir,” I said, a warning, and he said my name, and I exploded.

  Tiny dots danced over my vision as my balls clenched and released, my stomach muscles contracting, fingers turning white with pressure. At first I was silent, unable to make a sound, then I roared.

  The straps from earlier still held me down, which was probably a good thing, otherwise I would have been on the ceiling. By the time I finished coming and found the energy to open my eyes, the room was empty, other than Master and me. He’d discarded the latex gloves and was stroking my thigh gently.

  “Oh, my God,” I rasped.

  “Let me untie you.”

  His fingers were sure as he let the straps loose, starting with my hands so I could stretch my arms and work my sore wrists. He was gentle, massaging my stiff muscles, kissing the spots where the straps had chafed.

  Will shrugged out of the white coat and his shirt so when I sat astride his thighs, our bare chests pressed together. For all the intimacy that had just passed between us, it was weird to think he’d been dressed for the whole thing.

  Slowly, he trailed his fingers down my spine.

  For long moments, we held on to each other, a strange back-and-forth comfort while my mind and the world around me settled.

  He hadn’t asked for anything, and wouldn’t, not when I was like this. Taking the initiative, I slid down from his lap to my knees and kept eye contact as I unbuttoned his fly.

  “You don’t have to.”

  “I know,” I said, pulling his heavy cock free. “I want to.”

  His mouth fell open as I sucked his dick into my mouth, swirling my tongue around the head and tasting just how aroused he was. It was good to know it wasn’t just me.

  With one hand gripping the shaft and the other seeking out the sweet spot just behind his balls, and my mouth never leaving his skin, it didn’t take long for him to come. I swallowed around him, then kissed his belly.

  Will pulled me to my feet, and we stood toe-to-toe and kissed until the last of his flavor was licked from my tongue.

  Chapter 16

  We spent most of the next day relaxing and recovering, lazing about in the hotel. I was sore in all sorts of different places and wasn’t enthusiastic about doing anything that involved moving. I guessed Will was pretty wiped out too; he agreed to my choice of crap TV without his usual protesting. Or maybe he was just feeling sorry for me after what he’d done the night before.

  He ordered room service for lunch again, objecting to my choice of a burger and instead ordering a large salad with chicken and walnuts for protein. Then we went back to making out, watching movies, and napping.

  I woke to his head on my chest, his breathing calm and even, but I knew he was awake.

  “Can I take you out for dinner?” he asked as I dragged my fingers lazily through his hair.

  “What, like on a date?”

  Will snorted. “Yeah. If you like.”

  “You haven’t taken me on a date in ages.”

  He heaved himself up and planted a firm, decisive kiss on my lips. “Then I definitely should. You took me out last time.”

  Thinking back, there had been a trip to the theater to see one of the comic book movies he so loved. I’d bought the tickets and the snacks, and held his hand and groped his knee in the back row. Definitely a date.

  We took turns to shower quickly, and I dressed in my jeans again and a shirt. It was as smart as I was going to get with the clothes I’d brought with me. Actually leaving the hotel took longer than it should have due to a long and complex make-out session by the door. We had only been apart for a few days, but all I wanted was to kiss him.

  By the time we made it out of the hotel, it was late, not that Will seemed to mind. He had a place, he told me, he’d wanted to take me to for weeks.

  “Is this a gay bar?” I murmured after we’d been seated in a booth, a leather-bound menu handed to each of us.

  “It’s a gay-friendly bar,” he said. “I don’t think it’s owned by a gay couple, but they’re very welcoming. There are a few places like this around the city. I did my research.”

  I grinned and flicked open the menu.

  “I want steak,” I said moments later, flicking it shut again.

  Will laughed. “Trust you to order steak when it’s me taking you out.”

  I stuck my tongue out at him.

  “I’ve been meaning to ask you,” he said, once the server had brought a beer for each of us. “There’s this thing going on at work and partners are invited, and I wondered if you’d come with me.”

  “Thing?” I repeated. He wasn’t looking at me directly. “Thing” could be anything from a cocktail after work to a full black-tie dinner.

  “Yeah. It’s sort of to do with the project. They want to organize a social event.”

  “Do I have to wear a suit?”

  My job didn’t require suits, except on very, very rare occasions when we were hosting some glitzy party. Being able to go to work in jeans every day was one of my favorite things.

  “Yes, baby,” he said with a laugh, reaching over the table to squeeze my hand lightly. “It’s not a tuxedo event, but you will need to shower before we go.”

  “I can do that,” I said. “I don’t have a suit here, though.”

  “You can borrow one of mine. We’re pretty much the same size.”

  “You’re broader than me.” I tried not to whine.

  “Not anymore. Since you’ve been doing all that lifting and painting, you’re getting all pumped across your chest.”

  “I didn’t know you noticed things like that.”

  “I always notice.”

  He did. I couldn’t decide whether it was sweet or scary, how he always seemed to know things before I told him. He claimed to be observant. I thought he was a spy in training. Or psychic. Something.

  It turned out the dinner was only a week away. I didn’t ask, but got the impression he’d known about it for some time and not mentioned it until the last minute to prevent me from developing a plan to get out of it. Not that I didn’t want to be there for him—I did—but fancy, suit-and-tie dinners really weren’t my thing, and Will knew it.

  As he’d moved up the ranks in first one company, then another, things like social events got marked on the calendar with increasing frequency. I knew he turned down as many invites as he accepted, and went to a lot of the
lunchtime functions to make up for his absence at the evening ones.

  The whole inviting-same-sex-partners issue was one his current company managed with a great deal of grace. Apart from the frustration caused by the fact we always messed up the table plans, we were welcomed like any other couple.

  By the time the night of the dinner rolled around, I felt particularly clean. Will had insisted that I get a haircut, and I’d spent hours scrubbing dirt and paint out from under my fingernails, then shaved close so there wasn’t even a hint of scrubby beard left on my jaw.

  He had been right too: one of his suit jackets fit me pretty well. Well enough for one evening, that was for sure. Since Will had a whole closet full of suits—he collected them like baseball cards—I had plenty to choose from and picked a dark gray three-piece.

  “I don’t know why you ever buy waistcoats,” I said as I buttoned myself into one, grateful for the full-length mirror in his hotel room. We didn’t have one back at the house. “You never wear them.”

  Will shrugged. “Sometimes you get them for free when you buy the jacket and pants. You don’t know when they’re going to come in handy.”

  He’d already assured me gray was a perfectly acceptable color for a dinner event, even though he was wearing black. He could pull off black with a white shirt without looking like he was going to a funeral, which I considered a pretty big achievement. With his dark eyes and the reddish tones in his hair, he looked more James Bond than Pastor Jim. Thank God.

  Working out in the sun had lightened my hair and darkened my skin to the point where sharply cut Armani didn’t work for me at all. Will didn’t buy Dior very often, but this suit was a nice exception, and worked much better on my frame.

  This particular collection cost a lot more than baseball cards, that was for sure.

  “You look hot,” Will murmured, straightening my collar. From this close I could smell his cologne, a little more than what he wore during the day, combined with the stuff he’d used on his hair.

  “You smell good,” I countered.

  He kissed me for that, hands on my waist, holding me steady as his mouth rubbed over mine.

  “Taste good too,” I said, eyes still closed.

  “Come on,” he said with a laugh. “Can’t hang about here all day.”

  I shrugged into the jacket and straightened it, leaving it unbuttoned. I hated wearing ties even more than I hated wearing suits and hadn’t bothered with one this evening. I’d probably stand out for it, but the waistcoat went some way toward smartening the whole thing up, even if my collar was open at my throat.

  The concierge flagged down a taxi for us, and Will gave the driver directions to some fancy restaurant on the other side of the city. I held his hand in the backseat and tried not to lean back so the jacket wouldn’t wrinkle.

  “You really do look great tonight,” he murmured, too quiet for the driver to hear.

  “You too.”

  “I should get you in a suit more often.” The statement was delivered with a twinkle in his eye.

  “Good luck with that.”

  By the time we arrived and met Will’s boss, I was glad I’d dressed up. We had the whole top floor of the restaurant to ourselves, and there were about thirty or so of his colleagues, plus their spouses. It wasn’t as intimidating as the events held in the big ballrooms, but in a way this was worse. The more intimate setting meant I couldn’t blend into the background, and eyes turned toward us as we walked to our table. More than one person ducked their head behind their hand, whispering to their neighbor as we passed.

  “Call the cavalry, the fags have arrived,” I muttered.

  “Play nice,” Will said under his breath.

  He approached the man who was greeting everyone and showing them which table to sit at. He was tall, taller than both Will and me, broad with an impressive beard.

  “William,” he said in a booming voice as we approached.

  “Leonard.”

  “Good to see you here. You must be Mr. Ross.”

  “Yes,” I said, giving Will a questioning look before I shook the man’s hand. “Jesse.”

  “This is Leonard Blackwell, my boss, for all intents and purposes.”

  “Oh. Nice to meet you,” I said, plastering a smile on my face.

  Leonard directed us to a table, and I let Will rest his hand on my lower back as we made our way through the restaurant. At least at this event we could sit next to each other. It seemed a lot less formal than other events we’d been to in the past, with the stuffy old rules thrown out. I still pulled his chair out for him, though, like the proper Southern gentleman I was.

  “Matthew.” Will shook the hand of the man sitting next to him. I judged him to be around the same age as Will and me—early thirties—and the woman to his left was clearly his wife. “This is my partner, Jesse, who I was telling you about.”

  “Yes, of course. Hi.”

  “Hi,” I said, reaching over Will to shake his hand. “Nice to meet you.”

  I had a feeling I’d be saying that a lot.

  “You too.”

  “Matthew and I have been working together for a few years,” Will explained. “But in different offices. This project has put us in the same room for the first time.”

  “He’s probably sick of the sight of me,” Matthew said, and for some reason, I didn’t like the guy. He was too friendly, if that could be a thing, too intimate with my partner. The naughty wink he punctuated his words with didn’t help. “We ended up pulling an all-nighter last week.”

  “Oh?” I asked. He hadn’t told me about that.

  “Not like you do when you’re pushing a deadline,” Will said to me. “We were out by midnight. Jesse works as a curator in a museum in Seattle,” he explained.

  “That’s a long commute.”

  Now I definitely disliked the guy.

  “We moved here to be close to my family after my mother died,” I said bluntly.

  “I thought I’d mentioned that,” Will said, clearly embarrassed, although Matthew didn’t seem fazed.

  “Sorry for your loss.” He wasn’t. “Silver linings, though. Atlanta is a great city.”

  “We live out of town.”

  Will squeezed my knee under the table, a little too tight. I took the hint and shut up.

  The couple sitting to my right, an older guy named Roger and his wife, Sally, were much better company, and I focused my attention in their direction as the first course was served.

  I tried not to look at Will, sure that I would only get more frustrated. These events usually ended up being either a big bitch-fest, with Will’s colleagues all taking it in turns to complain about the company and the work or other colleagues, or just an extension of the working day. Neither option was particularly fun for me, especially when people would look at me and wonder how much I knew about all the secret projects.

  Will was clearly annoyed with me for not immediately warming to Matthew. As the evening grew on, I decided he was a grade-A douche bag.

  From all the years Will and I had been together, I knew he was fairly oblivious when it came to flirting. It was different when I did it because he already knew I was interested in him. Watching Matthew flirt with my boyfriend made me want to scream.

  They were touching each other far more than necessary, leaning in close to murmur in each other’s ears so neither me, Matthew’s wife, nor the other diners could hear what they were saying. Matthew laughed too loudly at things Will was saying, things I couldn’t quite catch, and they brushed me off when I asked them to explain.

  Matthew’s wife looked bored, and I wondered if she even knew what was going on, or cared that her husband was being such an outrageous flirt with another man. I tried to catch her eye across the table, to try to silently ask if she could see it. But she was ignoring me.

  “Do you want another glass of wine?” I asked Will, pushing back from my seat before the entrées were served.

  He nodded. “Please.”

  �
��Red?”

  The word was pointed. If my boyfriend was ignoring me, then maybe my Master would listen when I used my safeword. I might not have been tied up or feeling the lick of a whip, but I was definitely hurt. I was close to panicking. He gave me a funny look, then smiled.

  “That would be great.”

  I left for the bar with an uncomfortable pressure in my chest.

  The bartender was cute, so I flirted with him a little as he poured two glasses of wine, then left him a decent tip as I took a circuitous route back to the table.

  Matthew was leaning in to my boyfriend, saying something else that obviously wasn’t meant to be overheard.

  “Hi,” I said a little too loudly, passing Will his glass.

  “Thanks.” He gave me a quick smile, then turned back to Matthew. I tried not to seethe.

  I couldn’t tell if he knew I was upset and was annoyed with me right back, or if his attention really was just directed at Matthew. I wasn’t sure which was worse. Little things we did all the time—hooking ankles under the table, rubbing our knees together, his hand brushing mine—he wouldn’t do.

  Before dessert I excused myself to the bathroom, and when I was washing my hands, Will walked in.

  “What the fuck are you doing?” he demanded.

  I forced myself to take a deep breath before replying. “Not in public,” I said evenly. “If you don’t see what’s going on… I’ll talk to you later.”

  I could practically hear his back teeth grinding as I passed—something he only did when he was really upset. By the time the waiters came around with tiny, perfect cheesecakes, I was ready to jump into my dad’s car and drive straight back to the house. Fuck him and fuck his fancy dinner.

  I didn’t care that he had friends at work—I liked a lot of the people I’d met at these things. Matthew was just… different. Slick and charming and probably came from a similar background to Will. He was rich, from the “right sort” of people. And my folks were dirt-poor.

  If that wasn’t enough, he was definitely sliming all over my boyfriend.

  I’d always thought Will was pretty observant, but he seemed oblivious to the smarmy bastard. He was laughing at his jokes and actually leaning in when Matthew touched his arm or his shoulder.