“Wankers.”
“If you say so.” Tom bit back a grin. “Cass and I have been together a long time. I was twenty-one when I met him; he was nineteen. It was love at first sight, but we were too young to settle down. So we didn’t.”
“But you live together now?”
“Yes, but we still hook up with other blokes from time to time. Sometimes together, but that’s rare.”
“Why?”
“We don’t often find someone we both like.”
Jake’s frown deepened. Tom jumped into the awkward silence. “We’re very honest with each other. I would’ve told him everything about you even if he hadn’t come home when he did.”
“I thought he was going to deck me.”
Tom shook his head. Cass had a volatile temper, but it wasn’t triggered by jealousy. “Cass is cool. We approach things in different ways, but ultimately, we meet in the middle.”
Jake finished his sandwich “Different? How?”
“Cass would never do this.” Tom gestured between them. “He fucks other people, but he likes his own space, mentally, at least.”
Jake raised an eyebrow. “He fucks other people . . . because you don’t bottom, right?”
“No. We fuck other people because we want to.” Tom held Jake’s gaze. “But in answer to your question, I don’t bottom. Cass is versatile. I’m not.”
“You shouldn’t have to cheat on each other because you don’t want to bottom.”
Tom suppressed a sigh. He really doesn’t get it. “It’s not cheating, Jake. We choose to live this way. It might not make sense to you, but it works for us.”
“Sounds fucked up.”
“So?” Tom felt the first flash of defensiveness. He wanted Jake to understand for reasons he wasn’t quite sure of yet, but he wasn’t prepared to let Jake—anyone—tear his relationship to shreds. “How do you feel when people judge you by how you sound?”
On cue, Jake ticked and growled something Tom didn’t catch. “Don’t play on my TS. It is what it is. It doesn’t define me.”
“I know that.”
Jake nodded slowly. “Your boyfriend—Cass—he’s . . .”
“Bloody gorgeous?” Jake rolled his eyes, and Tom smiled. “He wants to meet you.”
The faint trace of humour in Jake’s gaze faded like it had never been there at all. “No offence, but I don’t want to be part of some weird ménage trip. You’re a good shag, but you’re not that good.”
Tom said nothing. He’d enjoyed fucking Jake . . . enjoyed it a lot, and he knew Jake had too.
“Bastard, bastard, bastard. I wish you were a prick.” Jake groaned and put his head in his hands.
Tom rubbed Jake’s shoulder. “I’m not asking you for anything, Jake. You asked me a question. I answered it.” Silence. Tom squeezed Jake’s shoulder. “All right?”
Jake finally met Tom’s gaze. “If you didn’t do shit like that, I wouldn’t care if I never saw you again.”
Tom didn’t know what to say. He wanted to see Jake again, but the churning in his gut told him it wasn’t that simple. Jake didn’t get his relationship with Cass, he didn’t like it, and Tom couldn’t live with that. Cass was everything to him. Always.
“I should go.” Jake sat up and rubbed his face. “I need to go home.”
“Kentish Town?”
“Yeah.”
Tom withdrew his hand. Folded his arms. He knew this should be good-bye, but he couldn’t bring himself to say it. Instead he said, “Maybe I’ll stop by that cesspit you work sometime.”
“Good luck with that. I don’t work there anymore.”
“No?”
Jake shrugged. “I got sacked this morning. Guess you were right, and I’m not much of a waiter.”
“What happened?”
“Same as always.” Jake gulped the last of his tea. “They kept me until my probation was nearly up, then found some bullshit reason to get rid of me. It wasn’t too hard. My boss kept notes of my fuckups.”
“They can’t sack you for having Tourette’s. That’s illegal.”
“That’s life. I’m used to it.”
“Doesn’t make it right.” Tom absently stirred the dregs of his own tea. He could well imagine Jake’s TS made him a challenging team member, but victimising him wasn’t the answer. The laws against discrimination were there for a reason. “What are you going to do?”
“Something will come up. It always does. I haven’t worked on a building site for a while. Maybe I’ll try labouring.”
The thought of Jake shivering on one of the city’s many construction sites, ticking halfway up some perilous scaffolding, churned Tom’s stomach. “You don’t have to do that. I’m sure I can find you work.”
Jake kicked back his chair with an abrupt screech of wood on tile. He dumped a tenner on the table and stormed out of the café.
Tom wasn’t altogether surprised. He toyed with the idea of letting Jake choose his own good-bye. Then he shoved his own chair away and followed Jake out. He found him by the zebra crossing and caught his arm. “I didn’t mean to offend you.”
Jake squirmed and pushed Tom away. “I don’t need a fucking sugar daddy.”
The frustration in Tom’s veins boiled over. He grabbed Jake’s flailing arm and held it tight. “I’m thirty years old, dickhead, I’m no one’s bloody dad, got it?”
Jake said nothing. Tom took his chance and pressed his business card into his hand. “I don’t feel sorry for you, but I can help you. I want to help you. Call me. I’ll be there.”
DREAM — a SHORT 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.
He pushed lube into the man’s hole with his thumb, absorbing the delicious answering moan. Words were rarely exchanged in encounters like this, but there were a few that Angelo was obliged to utter. He eased his thumb further inside the man and leaned over him, his nipples brushing the man’s smooth back. “Safe word is fox. Don’t be shy about using
it.”
The man gasped out a laugh. “I won’t.”
His voice was deeper than Angelo expected, and the gravelly words went straight to his dick. He withdrew his thumb, lined up with the man’s hole, and pressed inside with as much care as he could muster with his blood roaring a symphony in his ears. The man was tight and hot and slick with lube. And more than that, he wanted Angelo’s cock and widened his stance to take all of him in one slow slide.
“Fuck yeah.” Angelo stopped for a moment, reeling from being balls-deep inside a man. He took a breath, and then a strange sensation washed over him, and he lurched forward before he caught himself, hands flailing as he fought the urge to run his hands all over the man’s smooth back. What the hell?
That was a new one. When he’d played in the basement rooms before, he’d never thought about really touching whoever he’d been railing. Had never taken much notice because that was the point—a hook-up that took anonymity to the extreme, where sex narrowed to the lightning bolts of pleasure shooting through his dick. But he wanted to touch this man, wanted to squeeze those slim hips and let his palms roam that flawless back.
Wanted it. Craved it.
Fuck it.
Under the pretence of steadying himself, he laid a hand at the base of the man’s spine. A jolt of electricity surged up his arm, and a strangled groan escaped him. “Shit!”
“Yeah?” The man arched, his chest dropping to the mattress, his hole clenching, and then he drew himself off Angelo’s cock, before spearing back down on it, again and again, setting the rhythm that Angelo had played out in his head before he’d lost his bloody mind. Over the moody electronica, the slap of skin on skin grew louder as the man ground back on Angelo’s dick, meeting Angelo thrust for thrust as Angelo regained the ability to screw him coherently.
The club faded away—the music, the hum of the crowd, and even the eyes that were bound to be watching them from the secluded observation points. The roll of the man’s hips grew more erratic, and Angelo was right there to take up the slack. For long minutes it seemed that their heady encounter would be a quick one, but then the reason Angelo had come to the club returned to him, and the desire to take control won out.
He gripped the man’s hips, slowing his movements, and then stilled him entirely as he took the man’s arms and pinned them behind his back. Angelo paused a moment to give the man a chance to squirm or protest or give any sign that he didn’t want Angelo to bang his brains out. There was none, and Angelo briefly pictured them with their positions reversed. With the man on top doing everything to Angelo that Angelo was planning on doing to him. Wow. That was new too. Angelo rarely bottomed. It had been years.
Angelo spat where they were joined, adding to the lube already there, and tightened his hold on the man’s slender hips. He started slow . . . but deliberate, dicking out the man with targeted stabs of his cock. The dizzying heat burned his veins, and he knew the moment he’d found the man’s sweet spot. The velvet warmth clamped tight around his dick, and the man cried out, balling his hands into fists and pushing back on Angelo in a blatant demand for more.
Like that, is it? And fuck if Angelo could deny him. As if he wanted to. He picked up the pace, shoving his dick home with as much rhythm as he could manage with their slick bodies sliding together. Over and over, he drove his cock deep, panting, growling, and flicking his head from time to time to keep the sweat from his eyes.
Edging had always been Angelo’s jam, and it seemed he’d found the perfect partner for his favourite game. He fucked the young blond to the other side of the mattress, and it was only when the man was perilously close to sliding off that he grasped his hips and yanked him back.
On their third go around, the man let out a ragged moan, and Angelo’s cock pulsed in warning. Heat rocketed through every vein, and his skin burned. Another odd urge to touch his companion swept over him, and then the desire to flip him over and pound him face-to-face. Except they wouldn’t be face-to-face, because the unwritten rules of the basement rooms prophesied that they should stay like this—back to chest and invisible.
Angelo had never been one for rules.
He flipped the man over, revealing a lean, toned chest that was the stuff of Angelo’s fantasies. He’d played with plenty of big guys, but when he was alone in bed, it was bodies like this that kept him awake—soft and lean . . . delicate, and yet crying out for a brutal railing.
Angelo yanked the man closer and pushed his legs apart. “Name.”
“What?”
Angelo leaned over the man, his lips a hairsbreadth from that slender neck. “Give me a name.”
“Dylan.”
Clubs like this were full of people playing under an alias, but a distant instinct told Angelo that this was real. Dylan. Yeah, he liked that. He dug his fingers into Dylan’s thighs and drove back inside him. Dylan let out a piercing moan, and Angelo took it as a cue to give it to him hard, all the while transfixed by his cock stretching Dylan out. It was a beautiful sight by itself, but combined with Dylan’s pliant body and guttural moans, Angelo was gone.
Dylan’s cock was poker straight and rigid on his sweat-sheened belly—somehow he’d known that he didn’t have Angelo’s permission to touch it.
Angelo wanted to touch it.
Squeeze it.
Suck it.
On a good day, he could’ve fucked and sucked Dylan at the same time, but today wasn’t a good day, and he settled for leaning back on his heels, raising Dylan’s hips off the mattress, and screwing him so hard that his moans turned to shouts and then desperate yells as he started to come.
Angelo rode the wave as Dylan convulsed and plastered himself with jets of come, but then things got hazy. His vision darkened to the point where he might as well have been wearing the blindfold. He busted so hard he saw stars, and for a long moment, the reality of his so-called life faded away.
He was dimly aware of a smattering of applause as he chased the last shocks of release. Beneath him, Dylan was splayed out, panting and clearly exhausted. Completing a hat-trick of weird thoughts, Angelo pictured himself collapsing beside him and then spooning up against his back, melding their laboured breaths until they fell asleep.
Idiot. Angelo hadn’t shared a bed with anyone that way in years, and he wasn’t about to start now. Ignoring the urge to stroke Dylan’s golden hair back from his sweaty face, he pulled out and lightly punched his shaky thigh.
“Cheers, mate. Thanks for the ride.”
About GARRETT LEIGH
Bonus Material available for all books on Garrett's Patreon account. Includes short stories from Misfits, Slide, Strays, What Remains, Dream, and much more. Sign up here: https://www.patreon.com/garrettleigh
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Facebook Fan Group, Garrett's Den... https://www.facebook.com/groups/garre...
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Garrett Leigh is an award-winning British writer, cover artist, and book designer. Her debut novel, Slide, won Best Bisexual Debut at the 2014 Rainbow Book Awards, and her polyamorous novel, Misfits was a finalist in the 2016 LAMBDA awards, and was again a finalist in 2017 with Rented Heart.
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In 2017, she won the EPIC award in contemporary romance with her military novel, Between Ghosts, and the contemporary romance category in the Bisexual Book Awards with her novel What Remains.
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When not writing, Garrett can generally be found procrastinating on Twitter, cooking up a storm, or sitting on her behind doing as little as possible, all the while shouting at her menagerie of children and animals and attempting to tame her unruly and wonderful FOX.
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Garrett is also an award winning cover artist, taking the silver medal at the Benjamin Franklin Book Awards in 2016. She designs for various publishing houses and independent authors at blackjazzdesign.com, and co-owns the specialist stock site moonstockphotography.com
Connect with Garrett
www.garrettleigh.com
Also by GARRETT LEIGH
Rare
Circle
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Misfits
Strays
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Dream
Whisper
Believe
Crossroads
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Bullet
Bones
Bold
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House of Cards
Junkyard Heart
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Rented Heart
Soul to Keep
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My Mate Jack
Lucky Man
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Finding Home
Only Love
Heart
What Remains
What Matters
Between Ghosts
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