“So don’t say anything. I think you’re a fella who needs to talk, but that doesn’t mean the first thing that comes to your mind is the right thing.” Jevon tapped Rhys’s temple. “Just let it be. We can’t change who we are, and I don’t want to.”
Rhys’s fingers grazed Jevon’s hole. Jevon shivered, his skin jumping beneath Rhys’s touch, like it had done every time his hands had strayed lower than Jevon’s cock.
Most times, Rhys hadn’t lingered, but he did now. “Has anyone . . . ?”
Jevon shook his head. “Never. Not even me.”
Rhys absorbed the information with no comment. His fingers slipped away and he kissed Jevon again, driving his tongue into Jevon’s mouth like he’d been doing for hours now, his hand palming Jevon’s dick, squeezing, twisting, and teasing. Working Jevon up to the point of madness, only to pull back and return to languid kisses that melted Jevon to the bed.
But even Jevon had limits. Glass ceilings. And this one broke. Out of his mind, he reared up from the bed, wrapping his legs around Rhys’s waist, caging him. Rhys’s dick touched his, and they slid together with every frantic rock of Jevon’s hips, the friction too much and nowhere near enough. I need more.
Jevon broke the kiss. “Please.”
“Please what?” Rhys kissed him again, hard and searching. “What do you want?”
“Anything. Please.”
Somewhere in the back of Jevon’s mind, his desperation for Rhys was mortifying, but right now, he didn’t care. He’d used up his skill points when he’d sucked Rhys’s cock an hour ago. Life had moved on, and he needed more.
Rhys loosened Jevon’s legs around him and moved down Jevon’s body, hooking his arms under Jevon’s knees. Jevon’s cock protruded between them, rigid and weeping. Rhys stuck his tongue out and licked the very tip—a feather-light swipe that curled Jevon’s toes—and in the dim light of the room, his gaze was contemplative.
Jevon caught his chin. “Stop thinking.”
“Stop thinking about what?”
“About actions and consequences.”
Rhys laughed softly. “I spent a long time not thinking about either and it didn’t get me anywhere.”
“This isn’t like that. I’m not like that. Do what you feel. I can take it.”
Take it. Want it. And fuck, Jevon wanted it. He wanted it all.
Rhys held his gaze for a long moment, then he took Jevon’s cock in his mouth, his hands on Jevon’s thighs, pushing his legs further apart, as Jevon arched naturally from the mattress, showing his body to Rhys in a way that no one had ever seen it.
Saliva dribbled from Rhys’s mouth, trickling lower and lower until it coated Jevon’s hole. “God,” Jevon ground out. “Touch me, man.”
Rhys hummed and his fingers drifted back to where they’d made Jevon jump before. Grazing again. Pressing. Dipping slowly inside Jevon.
The sensation was insane and Jevon’s body instantly rebelled, rejecting Rhys’s probing finger, but it was a war that couldn’t be won. Rhys persisted and fresh nerve endings claimed his touch. Heat sluiced through Jevon with a violent shudder, and Rhys’s entire finger slid inside him.
Rhys pulled his mouth from Jevon’s cock and kissed his inner thigh. “Okay?”
“Yeah.”
“Sure?”
“Yeah.”
“How about if I do this?” Rhys swept his finger from side to side, curling it slightly.
Jevon bit his lip, his eyes screwed shut, and more fluid spilled from his dick. “Yeah. I like it.”
“Good boy,” Rhys whispered with just enough humour to lighten the blanket-thick air in the room. “Hold tight to your knees, man, ’cause I’m gonna make you scream.”
His finger slipped from inside Jevon, and he crawled up the bed, sinking his teeth into Jevon’s chest. Jevon jerked wildly and didn’t notice at first that Rhys was rummaging for something under the mattress.
Then Rhys tossed a half-empty bottle of lube on the bed. The sound of it hitting the duvet seemed to echo in Jevon’s head, the dull thud like a sonic boom. He stared at it, body tingling from the taster Rhys had given him already, and imagined Rhys coating his cock with it and sliding his thick length inside him. Anxiety seized his chest, but Rhys was right there.
He leaned over Jevon and kissed him deeply before pulling back and fixing Jevon with his hypnotic gaze. “Your turn to stop thinking. Nothing’s gonna happen that you can’t handle.”
I don’t know what I can handle. Jevon wanted Rhys—his body was crying out for anything he could give—but his heart trembled. And perhaps Rhys felt it.
He pressed his forehead to Jevon’s. “Trust me. Please?”
“I trust you.”
No more words. Rhys moved down the bed, taking the lube with him. He swallowed Jevon’s dick whole, gagging on it, choking, as he distracted Jevon from his wandering fingers. But then he moved his mouth lower, and his tongue swept across Jevon’s hole, and Jevon returned to that place where just one more notch of heat would trigger an inferno.
He rode Rhys’s tongue, moaning softly as the ghost-like sensation intensified. It wasn’t enough to make him come, but it pushed him closer to the precipice, dangling him over the edge and pulling him back to safety.
The click of the lube bottle pierced the air. Jevon tensed, but Rhys’s slick finger sliding home again was like a dream. No pain or discomfort, just the toe-curling strokes of a devilish old friend.
Rhys finger fucked Jevon slowly, working him open with every scissoring twist. Jevon’s groan rang out, and Rhys moaned too. “God, you’re so hot. My dick feels like it’s gonna explode.”
Jevon’s cock throbbed in sympathy. He opened his eyes and met Rhys’s stare beyond his weeping dick. His body was on fire. His chest heaved, and his skin was sheened with sweat. Rhys curled his fingers and Jevon exploded, hot come spurting out of his cock without either one of them touching it. “Fuck!”
The plummet to earth went on and on as Rhys tortured Jevon’s prostate, wringing every last shudder of pleasure from him, but eventually, it was over. Rhys’s fingers slowed and slipped out of Jevon altogether, leaving behind an emptiness that was eclipsed only by a desperate need to break Rhys into as many pieces as he had Jevon.
Panting, Jevon scrambled to his knees and pushed Rhys back on the bed. He ached to slide his fingers inside Rhys, to explore and unravel him, but his hands were shaking too much. He took Rhys in his mouth and scraped his teeth along Rhys’s length, sucking hard until Rhys gasped and threw his head back, his hips jutting forward, jamming his cock further down Jevon’s throat as he blew his load with a loud groan.
“Jesus, I’d forgotten how good you are at this. You could fucking bite me and I’d still come like a train.”
Jevon crawled up the bed, noting the theory to make use of next time, and collapsed on top of Rhys, kissing him fiercely as his own thighs still quivered. Rhys wrapped his arms around him, his legs around his waist, and it was a while before they came up for air.
Inexplicably, Jevon was hard again. He tried to hide it, but Rhys’s smirk told him he’d failed.
“There’s a beast inside you,” he said.
Jevon grinned. “One day soon.”
Laughing, Rhys rolled onto his side. “Yeah. I think I can guarantee that. Pretty shocked I didn’t put my dick in you this time.”
“So why didn’t you?”
A flicker Jevon couldn’t quite decipher passed through Rhys’s lazy, blissed-out expression. “Um, I guess I’m a bit scared.”
“Scared?” Jevon shifted to mirror Rhys’s pose and brushed imaginary hair from his face. “Of what?”
“Of messing it up for you. I didn’t have the greatest experience when I bottomed the first time, and it stayed with me enough to make things, uh, difficult for a while.”
“Did someone hurt you?”
Rhys shook his head. “Not on purpose. I think I gave them the impression I was more confident than I actually was, and things moved too fast. It put me
off blokes for a bit.”
“At least you had other options,” Jevon said as lightly as he could manage around the colossal lump in his throat. I wish I’d been there. “I can’t imagine being with a woman now.”
“That might change. Sexuality has never been static for me.”
“I remember.” Of course he did. Jevon had every word Rhys had ever uttered to him mapped out on his heart. “But I really do think I’m ready, if it’s any consolation, especially after what just happened. And I wouldn’t be shy about changing my mind mid-fuck.”
Rhys sighed. “I know that, deep down, because you’re nothing like nineteen-year-old me, horny and brimming with daddy issues. I know you’re sure of your own mind and you make good decisions. It’s just hard not to judge every situation by my own shitty standards.”
“You’re not good at being kind to yourself. It’s like you don’t believe you can be happy.”
“Happy with you?”
“Happy at all.” Jevon swiped a stray bead of sweat as it trickled down Rhys’s chest. “You have to love yourself before you can love anyone else.”
“Do you?”
“Do I what? Love myself?” Jevon drew his gaze up from tracing circles on Rhys’s bare shoulder. “Absolutely.”
And he could love Rhys too. He would love Rhys if the day ever came when Rhys let him.
The conversation faded. They cleaned up in the bathroom and returned to bed. Rhys didn’t ask Jevon to stay, and Jevon didn’t offer to leave, but crawling under the covers together was as easy as breathing.
Sleep came fast for both of them, but Jevon woke early the next morning to a phone buzzing somewhere on the bed. Careful not to jostle Rhys, he sat up and felt around for the phone, coming up with Rhys’s. Huh, same ringtone. He peered at the screen. A younger, thicker-set version of Rhys stared back at him.
Harry.
Jevon shook Rhys awake and showed him the phone. “It’s your brother.”
“Wha—” Rhys squinted at the screen and a scowl formed on his face. He silenced the call and tossed the phone aside. “Fuck that shit.”
Jevon stared, eyebrow raised. “That’s what you do when your brother calls you at six in the morning?”
“Especially when he calls me at six in the morning. He probably wants to talk me through a breakfast smoothie and FaceTime a yoga class.”
That didn’t sound half bad to Jevon, but something else niggled him. He reached for the phone. Three missed calls and a bunch of message alerts lit up the screen. “He must be pretty excited about it to hassle you this much.”
“You don’t know my brother.” But Rhys took the phone as Jevon held it out and thumbed through his notifications with a sleepy frown that steadily morphed into something more awake, concerned, and confused. “Shit.”
“What’s wrong?”
“I don’t know.” Rhys sat up, already halfway out of the bed, his phone pressed to his ear. “But I need to speak to Harry right now.”
Nine
“I don’t understand.” Rhys blurred around the bedroom, gathering clothes from the floor. “Why are you asking me to check on a patient in Romford when you haven’t worked there for more than a year?”
“He’s not just a patient,” Harry said. “He’s a colleague and a mate, and I’m worried about him.”
“Why?”
“Because he’s been out of touch for a couple of days.”
“What about his family? Friends?”
“There’s no one local apart from his fella, but he’s in Germany on business right now. I’m sorry, bro. I wouldn’t ask if I didn’t have to.”
“I know.” Rhys yanked jeans up his legs and pulled on the T-shirt Jevon handed him. “Why are you so worried, though? The dude might have dropped his phone down the bog.”
“He has severe ME. If he’s collapsed or fallen, there’s a good chance he can’t get up.”
“Got it. I can be there in forty minutes if I run for the train. Give me the address.”
“Rhys . . .”
“What?”
Crickets. Rhys paused in the action of stamping into his shoes. “Spit it out, mate. If you want me to hit the road fast, you’ve got to give me everything right now. I’m on shift at midday.”
“Okay, but don’t get lairy with me till after you’ve been over there, right? Nothing matters until I know he’s safe.”
Jevon appeared in front of Rhys, somehow already dressed and holding out Rhys’s coat, wallet, and keys. His gentle eyes held questions Rhys couldn’t answer.
Rhys shook his head. “Jesus, Harry. Just tell me. This dude an axe murderer, or what?”
“No, Rhys. It’s Angelo . . . Angelo Giordano.”
Giordano. Rhys turned the name over and over in his mind, but it still took far too long to make the connection. And even when he did, it didn’t make any sense. “How do you know Angelo?”
“I told you—he’s a patient. At least, he used to be.”
He’s a colleague and a mate. The words echoed, repeating on a loop over and over, until links he hadn’t known were missing began to slot into place. Angelo’s condition fit Harry’s specialties perfectly—Christ, Rhys had even talked about it with Dylan.
“Listen,” Harry spoke over the chaos in Rhys’s brain. “I know I’ve got some explaining to do, but we don’t have time for that right now. Dylan’s losing his shit, and I’m worried too. It’s not like Angelo to go silent.”
Outside of the club, Rhys didn’t know Angelo well enough to know if that was true, but he’d seen him unwell before. A distant night a few years ago flashed into his mind: Angelo stumbling along the pavement, face pale, glassy eyes, his legs too weak to hold him up.
Perspective returned and the paramedic in Rhys kicked in. “Okay. I’m leaving now. Text me the address and I’ll call you when I’ve found him. And, Harry?”
“Yeah?”
“I fucking hate you sometimes.”
Rhys pounded on Angelo and Dylan’s front door. A friendly neighbour had squinted at Rhys’s paramedic ID and opened the exterior doors, but so far, there’d been no response from Angelo.
“Perhaps he’s not here?”
Jevon leaned on the wall. He’d come with Rhys, despite being offered little explanation of where they were going. Of course he had. And it was only his calming presence that was keeping Rhys tied to the ground as his mind raced. Harry knows Angelo. And Dylan. And he knew I did too.
It didn’t make any sense, but it wasn’t important right now. Rhys hammered on the door again, then dropped to his knees and opened the letter box. The flat beyond was dark and quiet. Too quiet. Concern gnawed at Rhys’s gut. Despite an active playmate connection, he’d never been as close to Angelo as he was to Dylan, but the prickly feeling on the back of his neck told him something was wrong.
He straightened up and glanced around the lobby. A lamp plugged into the mains caught his attention. He ripped it from the wall and disconnected the cable.
Jevon’s eyes widened. “Whoa. What are you doing?”
“Breaking in.”
“Do I want to know how you know how to do that?”
“Probably not. Can you hold the letter box open?”
Jevon shook his head but moved to help Rhys anyway. He held the letter box open while Rhys jammed his arm through and hooked the cable over the handle inside.
It took a few tries, but eventually, the lock clicked and the door opened. Rhys dropped the cable and pushed inside, jogging through the dark flat without waiting to see if Jevon followed.
A quick scout of the kitchen, bedroom, and bathroom found them empty. Rhys was coming down the hallway again when Jevon called out.
“Rhys, man. He’s in here.”
Rhys hurried into the living room and found Angelo on the couch, sprawled out with one arm dangling limply off the side. “Shit.”
“He’s so cold,” Jevon said.
He moved out of the way as Rhys pushed past to touch two fingers to Angelo’s neck. A stron
g pulse greeted him—thank god—but the pallor in Angelo’s usually olive complexion was terrifying. The slackness in his limbs. His ice cold fingers as Rhys squeezed his hand and shook his chest.
“Angelo? Come on, mate. Wake up.” For a long moment, nothing happened, then a faint groan escaped Angelo in a scratchy whoosh of air. His eyes twitched, and Rhys kept shaking him until they flickered open. “Angelo? It’s Rhys. Can you hear me? Do you know where you are?”
Angelo’s bloodshot eyes held no recognition. His blank gaze drifted to Jevon, and nothing changed.
Rhys squeezed his hands harder and tried again. “Angelo, mate? It’s Rhys. I need you to wake up for me, okay?”
Finally, awareness seeped into Angelo’s face. He blinked, then his eyes widened a touch. “Rhys?”
“Yup. It’s me. Can you sit up?”
“Wha—what are you doing here?”
“Welfare check. You’ve got some people pretty worried about you. Where’s your phone?”
“I—I don’t know.”
“I’ll look for it.” Jevon got up and left the room.
Angelo’s bewildered gaze followed him. “Who’s that?”
“A friend. Don’t worry; he won’t raid your toy box. Can you sit up?”
“No.”
“Try. Wrap your arms around my neck.”
Angelo obeyed and Rhys eased him upright, keeping hold of him as he swayed dizzily and his eyes drooped again.
Rhys gave him a moment, then reclaimed his focus. “What’s wrong? Is your ME bad?”
“Yeah.”
“How long have you been like this?”
“I—I can’t think.”
“All right, mate. Don’t worry. It’s okay.” Rhys was familiar enough with Angelo’s condition that he didn’t expect any coherent answers just yet. He checked him for signs of genuine danger to life, then worked on getting him warm.
Jevon reappeared with a phone. “Dead. I’m gonna plug it in down here, man, okay?”
Angelo nodded. “Thanks.”
Jevon glanced at Rhys, eying the way he was rubbing circulation back into Angelo’s hands. “Should I put the heating on?”
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