Sometimes it shocked me how fast we’d moved from a sordid Grindr hook up in Dalston, to bareback love-making in Tottenham, but on days like these, when I rolled onto my stomach and gave myself up to him, time ceased to mean anything.
Lucky moved like magic inside me, his slick cock nailing my prostate with every slow, deliberate thrust. “You know what else I can’t believe?” he whispered.
“Tell me,” I gritted out.
“That you love me doing you like this more than fucking my brains out. I had you pegged for a monster top when we first met.”
“I do love fucking your brains out.”
“Yeah, but you love this more.”
I couldn’t deny it. Fucking Lucky was a ride I couldn’t describe, but having him inside me, turning me inside out like I was his most precious thing—fuck, it was everything.
The time for talk faded. Lucky drove into me with more purpose, harder, faster, and his hands were everywhere—roaming my back, my neck, his fingers twisting in my hair.
I lost myself to sensation, and the coiling pit of pleasure in my gut, as I moved with him. Frantic need drove me to my knees, and I gripped my dick with a desperate hand, jacking myself in time with Lucky’s thrusts until I choked out his name, and orgasm hit me like a shit ton of bricks.
Behind me, Lucky cried out. Wet warmth pulsed where we were joined, and he slumped against me, panting. “Damn, I’ve never come so hard before.”
A chuckle that was more of a gurgle rumbled out of me. “You say that every time.”
“’Cause it’s true.” Lucky rolled off me and landed in a heap of long limbs and pale skin.
Grinning, I left the bed briefly to clean up, and then returned to lay my head on his abdomen.
He combed his fingers through my hair and brushed his thumb over the faint scar on my wrist he’d never questioned. “Can I ask you something?”
I forced a heavy eye open. “Of course.”
“Are you happy?”
Now there was a question. Before my sordid closeted life had carried me to him, I hadn’t known what happy meant. I’d had the glory and riches of top-flight football, and the bone-scraping lows of self-loathing, but never the pure joy I felt when I woke up in the morning to find Lucky beside me. Or when I reached for him in a public place without giving a shit who saw me. When I was proud to be seen. Proud to love him. Proud to even know him.
And proud of my fucking self.
“I’m happy, Lucky. Are you?”
His answering smile set me free.
Lucky
“You’re a bit of a dick to Isha,” Jamila remarked from her perch on Dom’s kitchen counter.
“That right?” Dom didn’t even look at her. “How do you know he isn’t a dick to me?”
Jamila hopped down and came to peer over his shoulder. “Because he’s almost as in love with you as Lucky is.”
I snorted into my drink. Jamila had pegged Isha as a closet case the moment she’d laid eyes on him, and enjoyed terrorising Dom about it, even though he largely ignored her.
His silence usually wasn’t enough to shut her up on its own, but today, whatever he’d been doing on his iPad for most of the morning since his meeting with Isha piqued her curiosity. “What’s this?”
“New project,” he said.
She rolled her eyes. “I can see that, but what is it? It looks like that hellhole Lucky used to live in.”
“That’s because it is.” Dom’s gaze flickered to me, wary for the first time in months. “The charity running it dissolved last month and the centre shut down, so me and Isha were thinking of taking it over.”
“The charity?” Jamila dropped onto the stool beside Dom. “Or the building?”
“Both.”
That was news to me. Dom had used his retirement so far to build a property business that would shore up his already ridiculous finances, but he’d never mentioned fucking with the halfway house I could still smell when he wasn’t lying close enough to me.
Dom caught my frown and beckoned me closer. I scowled harder, but my nosiness got the better of me. I claimed my place at his side and flicked through the drawn-up plans on the iPad. The centre was unrecognisable to how I remembered it.
“Why?” I asked, sharper than I meant to. “You could throw money at anything. Why this?”
Jamila silently slunk away. Dom waited for the front door to bang, and then turned so he was facing me and pushed the iPad away. “Because I haven’t been able to get the place out of my mind since you told me you’d rather have died on the street than go back there. It’s supposed to be a safe space for people who are trying to recover from homelessness, but it wasn’t fit for purpose.”
“So? What do you care?”
Dom sighed. “Seriously?”
“Yes. You don’t have to change the world for me. I’m doing just fine.”
“I know you are, and that’s because you’re strong as fuck, even if you think you aren’t, but what if you weren’t? What if living in that place had derailed everything you’d achieved up until that point? If you’d lost your job? Or been hurt? I know I can’t change the world, Lucky, but I need to do this.”
I didn’t get it, and I didn’t have time to argue with him. I had an appointment at the addiction clinic I’d signed up to when it had become clear that being head over heels in love with Dom wasn’t a cure for all my bad habits.
Still glowering, I left him alone, and stomped to the tube. My appointment was in Tottenham, which had become my base for just about everything—home, work, play when Dom and I forced ourselves to go out. And of course when I drifted to the clinic, my brain still wrapped up in Dom’s plans, I had to pass the very shithole in question.
Except it wasn’t a shithole. It was a sanctuary that had been underfunded and badly managed. In the right hands, perhaps it could change the world—or, at least, a small slice of it.
It amazed me how it sometimes took me so long to find common sense. I said as much to the kindly woman who had guided me through the addiction course.
“Logical thinking isn’t easy when it’s a subject close to you heart,” she reasoned. “Didn’t you say Dom didn’t always make sense when he was struggling with his decision to come out? That you didn’t understand because he seemed to think so simply about everything else?”
I kind of hated this woman, but only because she was always right, and that meant I regularly had to go back and adjust my thinking. “I suppose I just figured that part of my life was done with.”
“Nothing in life is ever done with. We learn and move on.”
“That’s not done with?”
“You tell me.”
Bitch.
I left the clinic and walked back to Cash’s house. I’d last seen Dom in Greenwich, but he was waiting for me, naturally, sitting on the front steps.
“Miss me?”
“Of course,” he said with a grin. “And I was worried I’d freaked you out.”
“Nah.” I helped him up and unlocked the door, still half-awed that I called a house like this home. “You know me—snap before I think, just like my dad.”
“You’re nothing like your dad.”
“I know.”
“So why say it?”
“’Cause I’m a dick.”
Dom didn’t argue. Just shut the door behind us and trailed me to the kitchen.
I opened the fridge and pulled out the pasta I’d stashed the night before—tomato and chilli, ’cause Cash was a fucking vegetarian nut and wouldn’t have meat in the house. It was the only downside to living with him, so I couldn’t complain, but I did, all the time, much to his amusement.
“Lucky.”
I blinked to find Dom had crossed the kitchen and invaded my personal space. He took the pasta dish from me, set it aside, and lifted me onto the counter.
He inserted himself between my legs and forced me to look at him. “Nothing is set in stone. I can back out at any time if you’re not comfortable with it.”
“I am comfortable with it.”
“Really?”
“Yes.” I nodded slowly. “But, Dom, you’ve got to do it right. That place needed double the night wardens, and better security, and—”
Dom pressed his hand over my mouth. “I know all that. And Isha is hiring people who know how this shit works better than we do. My role is to make sure the project has the funding it needs to set up properly, and Isha will see it becomes self-sufficient enough to continue. I would like you to consult on it, though? If you can?”
“Consult?”
“Yeah. Basically tell me everything we’re doing wrong so we can fix it. It’s a real job—you’d get paid.”
“Paid?”
Dom rolled his eyes. “Yes. And don’t go thinking I’m creating a job for you because I love you. If you don’t do it, we’ll find someone else and pay them the same.”
“But I have a job.”
“I know. This would only take a few hours a week.”
There was no part of me that wanted to refuse, but still I found myself unable to say yes. Would I ever learn to reach for the things I truly wanted?
“Tell you what,” Dom said when my silence stretched out. “How about you look over the preliminary plans in a couple of days? See what you think? Lucky—look at me.”
I hadn’t noticed my gaze drifting from his. I stared up at him now and lost myself in the kind eyes he’d never quite been able to hide, even in the beginning. “What?”
Dom smiled and shook his head. “Nothing, mate. I’m just happy to know you.”
“I’m happy to know you too…and, Dom?”
“Yeah?”
“I’ll take the job.”
Before he could react, I wrapped my legs around him, and then my arms, and held him so tight he grunted in surprise, but I didn’t let him go. Couldn’t. Wouldn’t. Never. He told me often that loving me had set him free. That I got to love him in return? Damn. I learned every day that lucky didn’t even come close.
THE END
PATREON
Not ready to let go of Dom and Lucky? Or looking for sneak peeks at future books in the series? Alternative POVs, outtakes, and missing moments from all Garrett’s books can be found on her Patreon site. Misfits, Slide, Strays…the works. Because you know what? Garrett wasn’t ready to let her boys go either.
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CASH — Excerpt
(Coming January 2019)
Cash
“I’m not getting it.” I pointed the kitchen knife in Lucky’s general direction, ignoring Dom’s overprotective glare. “The only idiots whoever knock at the side door are twat-hound reporters looking for you.”
It was true. As the man Dom had given up a premiership football career to be with, the press loved Lucky, a fact he indulged to keep them away from Dom. And me, when he wasn’t being a dick.
“Put it this way,” I said when he didn’t move. “You ain’t getting dinner otherwise.”
I knew it would work. That boy was a slave to his stomach, and I enjoyed feeding him, even if the two minutes flat it took him to clear his place reminded me that it wasn’t so long ago he’d had nothing and no one.
Lucky slid off his kitchen stool and sloped off to answer the door. I promptly forgot all about it and went back to chopping veg for dinner.
He surprised me when he reappeared a moment later, smirking. “It’s for you.”
“What?”
“You heard.” He hopped back into his seat. “Some moody hottie who whole named you.”
I froze, knife in hand. My name was no secret, but there was no one round these parts who’d use it on my doorstep. Everyone called me Cash, even the damn postman.
Trepidation rippled through me. Lucky didn’t seem to notice, but I felt Dom’s gaze on me as I left the kitchen. That fucker saw everything.
I slipped down the hallway to the side door we never used. It was open a jar, concealing who was on the other side, and my heart jumped again. Chances were it was some market research bullshit and they’d got my name from the electoral role. That he was, in Lucky’s words, a hottie, was a bonus, right?
Life was never that simple. I eased the door open. At first, I saw no one, then a slim figure stepped out of the shadows, his expression grim until recognition seemed to hit him. And me. Jesus Christ. Dark hair, moody eyes, beard, and perfect skin, dear-fucking-God, it was Rae.
Heat rushed me in the same moment suspicion shut me down. I stepped outside and shut the door behind me. “What the fuck are you doing here?”
BETWEEN GHOSTS — Excerpt
Between Ghosts
Reality crept in, facet by facet. The sticky mess on Nat’s hand cooled as his breathing slowed. He slipped out of Connor and rubbed his spine. “Okay?”
“Hmm?” Connor sounded dazed. He straightened up and met Nat’s gaze over his shoulder. “Yeah . . . yeah, I’m good. You?”
Nat had no answer to that. He helped Connor dress, then turned him so he could see his face, touch him, kiss him. “You know, I think this room might be soundproofed. Can’t think of any other reason that no one dropped in on us, or that you didn’t hear the south side of this building being bombed to bits.”
Connor stretched his spine and looked around. “Soundproofed? That would go with the badass door, I s’pose. What happened outside? I heard a few rockets and stuck my head out, but some arsehole told me to stay in here, and he hasn’t been back to say otherwise.”
“Arsehole he may have been, but if he didn’t come back, he’s probably dead, or fucked up on a stretcher. It was a serious raid.”
Connor’s expression turned grave. “How many dead?”
“Too many,” Nat said. “It’s going to be a heavy couple of days while we clean house, inside and out.”
And just like that, the heady heat between them faded. Connor nodded grimly. “When do you start?”
“Yesterday.”
“You’d better go, then.”
Connor wasn’t wrong, nevertheless, Nat wrapped his arms around him and held him close. He spied Connor’s laptop. “How’s the writing going?”
Connor shrugged. “I can’t get a grip on what I’m seeing here. It’s all so fragmented . . . Behrouz, the IEDs, pissing about with the aid packages. I don’t get it. Any of it.”
“Perhaps you’re not meant to,” Nat said. “Us minions aren’t supposed to think so hard. We just do as we’re told, where we’re told to do it.”
“I get that, and I knew when I came here that nothing would be as I expected it to be, that whatever happened, I’d see the world differently by the time I left, but I guess I thought I’d find the obvious answer too, or at least something that led me to it.”
“The obvious answer? To what?”
“To everything that brought me here? Fuck, I don’t know . . .” Connor shook his head, and the sadness Nat often found so compelling took over every feature of his beautiful face. “My brother was a soldier.”
“Was?”
“He died.”
Nat tightened his embrace. “Where?”
“Not here, and don’t ask me how, ’cause I don’t know.”
“Do you want to know?”
“Some days, but others I reckon how he lived matters more.”
“Is that why you came to Iraq? Walk a mile in his shoes?”
Connor sighed. “He’d have laughed his tits off if he’d heard you say that. Think he reckoned I wasn’t much good for your way of life—too busy farting around with ‘artsy shit’—but in a roundabout way, I suppose I could be trying to prove him wrong. I ran the Brighton Marathon a month after he died . . . like it could fucking change anything. Stupid, eh? And it doesn’t really matter now, does it? He’s still dead, and nothing I’ve seen here makes it any more meaningful.”
“Not much makes death meaningful.” Nat closed his eyes, breathing in the scent of books and paper that seemed to linger around Connor.
He wanted—craved—so desperately to know more, to know it all—every joy and hurt that made Connor who he was—but the moment to ask the questions passed before he figured out where to start. Right here, right now, Connor was in his arms, heart beating, and breathing, and Nat didn’t much care about anything else.
DREAM — Excerpt
Dream (a Skins novel)
Bunker five was at the end of the corridor. Angelo paused with his hand on the door and psyched himself up for what he might find. In the past, he’d screwed all kinds of people, but dear God, he wanted to fuck a man tonight—needed it. Craved it. Pansexual be damned, some days, only a man’s touch could take the pain away.
Angelo opened the door. Blinked a few times. And then a rush of relief hit him so hard he had to steady himself on the doorframe.
Whoa. Jackpot.
He sucked in a breath, and the smouldering desire in his gut did a happy dance. It had been a while, but the thrill of opening the door never got old, and this time he’d struck gold—literally. The slender young man waiting for him on the bed had a halo of fair hair and pale skin that would look awesome with Angelo’s handprints welded into it. And beyond that, he was ready. Blindfolded and splayed out on his hands and knees, the man had left condoms and lube beside him—his message clear. He wanted to be fucked, and Angelo was over the damn moon to oblige.
Dropping his clothes as he went, he stalked around the raised mattress, his dick already hard. His plan was basic, already spelled out by his mysterious companion, but he paused by the man’s head, intrigued by his lips. Pillowy and full, the temptation to slide his cock between them was strong, but the metal floor biting into his bare feet stopped him. People didn’t come to the basement rooms for that—they came for the anonymous oblivion that Angelo craved.
Angelo returned to where the man clearly wanted him most. He reached for the condoms, and the man shivered as Angelo tore the foil wrapper open and then tossed it aside. Angelo rolled the condom on, jacking himself a couple of times before he turned his attention to his partner in crime and his willing hole. The lube was the stretchy kind that was fashioned on real come. It dripped out of the bottle in long wet strings and onto the man’s cleft, sliding down his thighs. The man shuddered again, but Angelo made no move to comfort him. Nah. The basement rooms weren’t about getting up close and personal; they were about getting down and dirty, and Angelo was more than ready.
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