Unforgotten (Forgiven)

by Garrett Leigh

  Gus poked me. “Sorry. I didn’t mean to go all morbid on you. I don’t talk about her much.”

  “It’s not morbid to say she was nice,” I said absently. “It’s more morbid to pretend she never existed.”

  “You think?”

  “Yeah. But I don’t think you do that either. Your house is full of French stuff. And so is Luke’s now. His clothes smell like yours.”

  “How do you know what his clothes smell like?”

  Gus’s fingers were still loosely wedged in my ribcage. It tickled, but in the good way, and taming my reaction to his casual touch took all my brain power. I shrugged. “Dunno.”

  He laughed. “You’re strange.”

  “Yeah. I need a Supergrass track to cover my biopic.”

  “Can’t help you there. My mum only liked folk, and French ballads.”

  I already knew that too, so I said nothing. Just lost my fucking mind and used my legs to hook Gus closer. I pulled him between them and wrapped my arms around him, intending to give him a hug, but my best laid plans always went tits up, and I found us nose to nose.

  And it was impossible not to kiss him.

  Chapter Fifteen

  Gus

  I wanted Billy in my bed. I wanted the mess of tangled limbs and snatched breaths we’d shared on the living room floor to settle into something that didn’t feel like a dream. Sliding between his legs and slanting my lips to meet his helped. Finding the skin beneath his T-shirt was even better, and for long minutes, we did nothing but kiss. Desire roared to life, but I could control it if I concentrated on my mouth and his, and not the way every other part of my body was straining to join the party.

  The thin sweatpants I’d worn to the gym betrayed me, though, and Billy was sitting close enough to the edge of the counter that I could feel his dick too. The sensation was unreal. I gripped his hips and pulled him closer. He made a sound that sent my head freewheeling, and my heart took off at a pace that wasn’t all pleasure. We were going to be naked again in two seconds flat if we weren’t careful, and instinct told me I was doing it for the wrong reasons. Or, at least, that there were other reasons besides the fact that I couldn’t get enough of him. Sex had always been the bandage I wrapped around old, festering wounds. Billy deserved better than that.

  He deserved better than me.

  I drew back, breaking the kiss with so much reluctance I nearly caved and dived straight back in.

  Billy’s lips were puffy, and I ached to trace them with my fingertip. Combined with the dirtier things I wanted to do with him, it was a trip. I wasn’t used to getting fuzzy feelings for men I wanted to bang.

  I wasn’t used to fuzzy feelings at all.

  Still on the verge of hyperventilating, I let my hands drop. Billy didn’t react. His stare was bottomless and unreadable, and I couldn’t resist leaning in again, letting him know I hadn’t stopped because I didn’t want him. “What state is your bike in?”

  “It’s not my bike.”

  Of course it wasn’t. But as long as he hadn’t pinched it from anywhere round here, I didn’t much care. “Does it work?”

  “Last time I checked, but I was drunk then, so...”

  “All right. I get the picture. You wanna go for a ride?”

  “Where?”

  “Anywhere. It’s a nice day, and I want to go outside with you. We don’t do that much.”

  “We work outside every day.”

  “That’s not the same.”

  “The same as what?”

  “As being free.” I grabbed his hand without thinking and tugged him off the kitchen counter. His feet hit the floor, bringing him well within kissing distance again, and I was only human. I swooped in and crushed our lips together, bruising and brief. “Come on. It’ll be fun, I promise.”

  Whether he believed me or not, I had no idea, but he let me pull him outside to the garage where both our bikes were stored, and he wheeled his onto the drive without complaint.

  I’d forgotten he had a fishing tackle box screwed to the handle bars until he pointed to them. “I’m only coming if you let me stash beers in there.”

  I shrugged. “Works for me.”

  We loaded his bike with French beers and a jumbo bag of Doritos and set off, heading for Sandgrove Park. I led the way, but once we were off the roads and into the labyrinth of sandy lanes, Billy overtook me and pedalled ahead, gifting me a jaw-dropping view of him from behind. He had long legs, shaped with sinewy muscle that made him look natural on the bike. And his back had been doing weird stuff to me for weeks now. I was torn between wanting to rub soothing circles into his shoulders, and craving the sensation of raking my nails over his pale skin while we rolled around naked together. Yesterday, the second impulse had won out, and I’d replayed him shooting on my chest while I came all up his back so many times I was amazed the last...however many hours it had been since hadn’t completely passed me by.

  I’d never come like that, so present and in the moment, and yet so wrapped up in the person who was making me feel that way. And I’d come a lot. Before Billy, it had been my failsafe activity to keep me out of my own head. Now I was stuck in my brain with Billy and his gorgeous rear view for company, and that was another trip.

  We rode all the way to the lake, and because Billy was my Patronus, he rode straight past the picnic benches and into the hidden glade only locals knew about. It was overgrown in the best kind of way, with caves carved out of fallen trees. A steep decline led us to the long-abandoned boathouse. Billy rode down like a pro, and I followed, still ogling his arse.

  At the bottom he skidded to a stop and dismounted with a graceful leap Grey would’ve been proud of. He reached straight for the beer, then let his bike clatter to the ground.

  I took that to mean he was still annoyed with me, and that groping him in the kitchen hadn’t improved his mood. I leant my bike against a tree and claimed a beer from the tackle box. It fizzed up as I opened it, and sprayed me. I sucked beer from my fingers. Billy made a low sound and stomped to the water’s edge.

  Mystified, I followed, then changed my mind and went back for the crisps.

  Billy laughed, and whatever tension I’d imagined in him melted away. “Seriously? Already?”

  “It was a long ride.”

  “It really wasn’t.”

  “You wanna go further?”

  Billy treated me to a heartbeat of loaded silence. Then shrugged. “Not today.”

  I was forever perplexed by everything that came out of his beautiful mouth. The words were simple, but contemplating their subliminal meaning gave me a headache. I hadn’t had enough breakfast to deal with so many syllables. Billy was the brains. I was the idiot clutching a bag of nacho cheese Doritos and staring at him, again.

  My appetite disappeared. I dropped the crisp bag at the water’s edge and kicked off my shoes and socks. The lake was dappled by sunlight, and as warm as it was ever going to get. I waded in up to my knees, squeezing the stones between my toes and not caring in the slightest that my cargo shorts were getting soaked. If I’d been alone, I might’ve ditched them, and the rest of my clothes, but I wasn’t alone. I was with Billy. And the fact that he’d already seen me naked seemed a distant memory.

  Or maybe it wasn’t distant. Maybe it was so close to my consciousness that I couldn’t see it properly.

  Either way, I kept my clothes on and concentrated on the crystal lake water lapping at my skin, until Billy came up behind me. He put his hands on my shoulders and turned me around.

  Apparently he hadn’t got the memo about nakedness.

  I blinked.

  He gave me another shrug. “What? You didn’t drag me all the way out here to go skinny-dipping?”

  “What do you think?”

  Billy sank into the water, obscuring his beautiful body from my greedy gaze. “I think I don’t think when i
t comes to you, so I’m just gonna do the skinny-dipping I’ve always done when I come to this part of the lake.”

  He pushed off the lake bottom and glided past me, leaving a gentle swoosh of water in his wake. And he was right, of course, about the skinny-dipping at least. I’d been swimming naked here since I was fifteen, and had first kissed a boy against the weeping willow tree. Why stop now?

  I strode back to the shore and ditched my clothes. By the time I turned around to go back, Billy was on the other side of the glade, floating on his back, staring up at the sky. I debated joining him, but chickened out and swam to a different spot. I ducked under the water, losing myself to the cooler depths, and shook my head, as if I could wash my brain out. My head had always been a complicated place to be, but adding Billy to the mix had me overloaded. That he was naked to boot?

  Yeah, I was wrecked.

  I broke surface and kept my eyes closed as I pushed my hair back. Billy hummed from somewhere behind me.

  “You know, this would be easier if you weren’t so fucking fit.”

  “What would?”

  “Being sensible. It’s not my strong point at the best of times.”

  I wiped my face and turned slowly. Billy was lounging by the bank, lying just beneath the shallow water there. As hard as I tried not to, I could see everything, and my dick was an instant stone column. “Who said you had to be sensible?”

  “I did.”

  “Why?”

  “Because I think getting too close to me is messing with your head.”

  He spoke without inflection. A statement, not a question. And he was more right than he’d ever know. But what did that even mean? It wasn’t as if we’d fucked. A few kisses. A grinding session on the floor. I was more churned up by the fact he’d slept in my bed. That I’d held him all night long and was still traumatised by having to let him go.

  I swam closer to him, letting myself drift until I was a metre away. “It doesn’t take much to mess with my head. Don’t take it personally.”

  “Charming.”

  “That’s not what I meant.”

  “I don’t care what you meant.”

  “Don’t you?” I shifted in the water, mirroring Billy’s pose so I could stare at the sky too. “Then why are we having this conversation?”

  “Because it winds me up that it’s easier to be naked with you than be fully dressed and act like normal people.”

  Nothing about this was easy. Or, judging by the throb in my cock, maybe this part was. I finally let my gaze loose, and trailed Billy’s body, committing every inch of it to memory—his long legs, neat waist, and strong chest. I lingered at his nipples and bit my lip. God, I wanted to take them in my mouth, tease them with my teeth, and make him squirm. I wanted to do so many things to him, and as my eyes drifted lower again, and his dick hardened beneath the water, he seemed in the mood to let me.

  Common sense drained from me as if it had never been there at all. Billy was staring at my dick too. I sat up, giving him a better view, and held out my hand.

  He laughed. “Seriously? You think that’s a good idea?”

  “We haven’t figured out why it’s a bad idea yet.”

  “True. But it definitely is.”

  I couldn’t deny it, but the longer I stared at him, the less I cared. Since Billy had come home to Rushmere, I’d fought the devil in me that gave in so easily to the call of another man’s body. After less than a minute in his company, it hadn’t been another man, it had only been him. No one else had crossed my mind for weeks. And I’d lost that fight, more than once, and I was about to lose it again. Billy called to me like a siren without moving a goddamn muscle. He didn’t speak. Just watched me edge closer to him, until something in him seemed to break.

  He met me in the middle, and I had him on his back before we could blink. I kissed him, and he responded with a low groan that made my head spin. Water sloshed around us, and my hands sank into the sandy mud of the lake bed. Anyone could’ve walked up on us, but I didn’t care about that either.

  Billy wrapped his scarred hands around my hips. His fingertips stroked the base of my spine. It was intimate, and sweet, and sexy as hell. I kissed him some more, then pulled back and studied his face, searching for something—anything—that would clue me in to what he actually wanted.

  He stared back at me with a yearning I couldn’t decipher. Had he changed his mind about wanting me to fuck him? I doubted much had changed in the short space of time since we’d been rolling around on the living room floor, and the knowledge I couldn’t fuck him anyway, here, out in the open, with no rubbers or lube, grounded me. As if anything else that happened bore no consequence.

  Because I was an idiot like that.

  I shifted Billy further out of the water, and walked up his torso on my knees. I brought my dick to his lips and paused, giving him the chance to back away.

  But he didn’t back away. He smirked, opened his mouth, and swallowed me down.

  “Jesus.” My head fell back, and my mind emptied of all that wasn’t my cock sliding in and out of Billy’s sinful mouth. Billy was right, this wasn’t a good idea, and it never had been. We had to stop, but as he brought me to a climax that made my toes curl and knees shake, it was hard to imagine how.

  Billy

  Gus came like he did everything else, gently, and with respect. I kind of wanted him to lose his fucking mind and ram his dick down my throat, but in hindsight, I was glad he didn’t. Gus was big everywhere.

  He slid out of my mouth and bent to kiss me. I pulled him down on top of me, not giving a single fuck about the stones digging into my back. I’d never been so turned on in my life. If he’d asked me, I’d probably have let him spin me round and fuck me, but of course, he didn’t. Gus heard everything. Even the things I didn’t say. It was me who needed to listen more.

  After I’d shot my brains out of my dick, cos there was no way I was thinking coherently before then.

  Gus covered me with his body, and pressed me against the ground. He gripped my chin, holding me in place as he kissed me, and—

  Voices broke the quiet. Loud voices. Approaching voices. Gus stopped kissing me. He stared at me for a long moment before it seemed to dawn on both of us that getting caught with our pants down wouldn’t be our finest hour.

  Life sometimes moved so fast.

  In the blink of an eye, we scrambled out of the lake, dressed, and climbed back on our bikes.

  Gus was quiet. Too quiet. I fought the urge to fill his silence with noise, and instead focussed on his expression when he’d shot down my throat. His glazed eyes, and slack jaw. It was everything I’d dreamt of when I’d dreamt of him.

  And I’d dreamt of him a lot.

  A lot a lot.

  And now I had a reality to match my years-old fantasies, I was well and truly fucked. Watching Gus come was addictive. I didn’t need any more bad habits, but it was too late. I was hooked, and I’d have sucked his dick all day long if porning it up in a public place of natural beauty wasn’t a messed-up idea all round.

  We rode on, leaving the park without seeing whichever souls had spoiled the party. I was behind Gus this time. He rode hard. I figured he’d head for the beacon a few miles away, but he turned back into town, and I followed him home.

  He skidded to an elegant stop on the driveway and dismounted. I climbed off my bike, watching him, as he hauled the garage door open and threw his bike carelessly inside. That shit wasn’t normal. Gus wasn’t a neat freak, but I knew he had feelings for his bike. I wheeled mine inside and set it down with more care. “Are you—”

  Gus grabbed me and yanked the garage door shut, trapping us inside with the cobwebs, tools, and exercise equipment. He propelled me against the nearest wall and was on me before I could snatch a breath. “That’s twice you’ve done that to me.”

  I fought his hold because I liked the s
ensation of him resisting. “Done what?”

  “Made me come like that. You’re bad for my stamina.”

  I didn’t want to think about his stamina, because that meant thinking about him with other men, and I’d done enough of that to last me a lifetime. “I didn’t make you do anything. What just happened was your idea.”

  Gus smirked. “Oh yeah?”

  “Yeah.”

  “So it’s your turn then?”

  “My turn to what?”

  In answer, Gus kissed me, hungry and deep, then he drew me away from the wall and to a door I hadn’t known existed. It led to the kitchen. How I hadn’t noticed it before now, I had no idea. Maybe I’d assumed it was a cupboard. Whatever. With Gus’s mouth on mine, I didn’t give a shit.

  He dragged me upstairs. The blackout curtains were still drawn in his room, blocking out the day. It seemed fitting for all the alarm bells I’d been ignoring since I’d taken to sleeping in Gus’s bed and sticking my tongue in his mouth.

  I let him throw me on the bed. The impact jarred my shoulder, but for once he didn’t seem to notice, and I was glad of it. There was nothing hot about being the dude who winced and groaned all the time.

  Gus took his T-shirt off. His broad chest, shiny with sweat from the ride home, quieted my mind of much else other than the fact that my dick had already picked up where we’d left off at the lake. I licked my lips. He smirk grew, and he unbuttoned his shorts.

  They fell to the floor. Fuck knew where his underwear had gone. He was naked again, and I couldn’t fucking breathe.

  He came to the edge of the bed and grabbed my legs, tugging me towards him like a rag doll.

  I laughed, and it was like the sun came out in his dark eyes.

  He stole my jeans and flung them somewhere over his shoulder. “I like it when you laugh. It’s the hottest thing ever.”