But other cogs were turning too.
About Suze’s wedding words, the way Gabriel fit as he slid down to sit by Aled’s side and cuddle up for a moment, and the empty space on Aled’s third finger, still a shade paler than the rest of his hand from the gold ring he’d worn for years.
He hadn’t thought about it since the divorce.
But—
Suddenly, it was there in the back of his mind like it had never gone away.
Chapter Four
“Ssh.”
The hand that smoothed down his sweat-soaked spine was soft and warm. Kind. It had been harsh for what felt like forever, but now it was gentle. Gabriel dragged his consciousness around it, and tried to breathe past the blinding euphoria, the cold adrenalin and the throbbing pain.
“In.”
He breathed in. The hand on his back rose with the effort.
“And out.”
He exhaled. It sank.
“Good.”
The praise was warm. He’d been good. He felt good.
“I’m going to untie you now. Just relax.”
The rope had been rough and painful. It scraped. He whimpered as it scratched at sore skin, and the hand pressed down on his back again. Grounding him between its heavy weight and the firm mattress.
“It’s okay. You’re safe. Game over.”
Game over.
The little jolt of security was like a lock turning in a heavy door to shut out the world. Like when he’d been living in the council flat and had slid the bolt home on the teenagers shouting at him in the hall, on the creepy guys who wanted to fix him, on the neighbour who’d called him a tr—
“Safe.”
The sheet was cool cotton, soft and light. It washed over his naked legs and drifted up until he was covered to the shoulder. One by one, his strained limbs were released and tucked into the safe cocoon.
Safe. Safe.
“Aled.”
The name was soft on his tongue. He blurred the last letter until it almost vanished. The kiss between his shoulder blades was chaste and calming. He breathed out and relaxed into the mattress. The pain dulled. The adrenalin soaked away into the sheets, leaving only the blissful haze behind.
He drifted.
Vaguely, he was aware of careful fingers rubbing cream into his skin, both inside and out. The brief sting was offset by the soft rub of a thumb in the small of his back, and soon it was over. The scent of massage oil was understated in the quiet room and it pooled in liquid heat right where he’d been kissed a moment earlier.
“How do you feel?”
He knew that question. The little ritual to draw him up from his headspace, or to bring him down from the high. If game over was the bolt on the door, then how do you feel was the bodyguard between him and the bolt. The great wall that blocked out the world. The Kevins, the Aleds, even the Chrises. The men who could smash him into pieces, who lived inside his armour, and yet would never cause a crack.
Gabriel curled his fingers into the pillow under his head and let out a long, long sigh.
“Safe,” he whispered. “Loved.”
There were many words—cared for, looked after, cherished, wanted, needed, secure, home, protected, defended, adored—but he only needed those two.
“How do I feel?”
He smiled, drunk on his drifting pleasure.
“You love me.”
A kiss was pressed gently to the back of his neck as hands worked the oil into his skin. Knots eased. Tension from fighting, thrashing, screaming, begging, were eased away. Everything unlocked, and he dissolved into the same sea that cradled him on the gentle ebb and flow of an idle tide.
“I do.”
The quiet cupped them like a shield and Gabriel dozed. In truth, he didn’t much need the aftercare. They hadn’t played the game in months, but it wasn’t an especially violent one. It wasn’t scary. It was just—
Aled paid for dinner and expected sex in return. Gabriel said he didn’t want to. Aled would make him.
That was all. As far as their games went, it could be tame and simple, or violent and terrifying. And they had played it simpler. He had been tied down until he could barely wriggle, then Aled had fucked him without enough preparation, and with his underwear forced between Gabriel’s teeth so he couldn’t scream. No beatings, no whipping, no facefucking or painful toys. Just a length of rope and a hard dick. The verbal abuse had been the real kink, and—as always—it was Aled who needed the cooling-off period afterward. Gabriel loved dirty talk, abusive talk, during sex. Aled…
Well, he liked doing it. Then afterwards, when it was over, he would get sick at himself for saying it—for enjoying it—and he would need to be looked after. These moments in the afterglow had always been more for Aled than for Gabriel.
Slowly, Gabriel rolled onto his back and beckoned. Aled folded down into the sheets beside him and Gabriel cuddled up, sleepily sliding his leg between Aled’s and nestling against his chest. He could feel that low, gentle heartbeat. Feel it, not quite hear it. Feel it in the gentle flutter of skin against his palm.
“That was great,” he murmured.
“Yeah?”
“Mhmm. Missed you.”
A hand carded gently through his hair. The other landed on his arse, a thumb gently stroking over one cheek.
“I’ve missed you too,” Aled murmured.
“Did you do it all vanilla-style in America?”
“Yeah.”
“Boring.”
Aled chuckled. “Well, it took the edge off. But yeah. It was a bit boring. What about you? Is Chris into all sorts of weird shit?”
“Sort of.” Gabriel yawned. “He’s got issues, I think.”
“Oh?”
“I don’t really know. He doesn’t like it if I respond much.”
“If you respond much?”
“Yeah. Like—he’d like what you just did. Tie me down so I can’t move or speak, and fuck me. But he doesn’t like it otherwise.”
“Huh,” Aled said. “Do you like it?”
“Sure,” Gabriel said, tugging on a couple of chest hairs. “Wouldn’t let him do it if I didn’t like it.”
But in an odd sort of way, he didn’t like it in the same way he liked…well, sex with other people. With Chris, it always felt oddly non-sexual. Like holding hands or hugging. His cock would move around inside, he’d come—probably—then he was done and throwing away the condom. He fucked like he needed to scratch an itch but didn’t actually like having sex.
Gabriel liked to feel used sometimes. It was one of his little kinks. He liked to be just bent over the sink and fucked, or tie down and screwed, or even—though he’d never tell Aled, because Aled would hit the roof—to wake up in the middle of sex that had started without him. But he got the feeling that Chris wasn’t exactly playing when he did it. That he really was using Gabriel’s body as a means to an end, and that he was actually with Gabriel for all the other reasons to date someone.
Gabriel hadn’t figured it out yet. He was ninety-nine percent sure that Chris hadn’t figured it out yet either.
Maybe that was why he tolerated Chris needing to figure it out more than he ever had with anybody else.
“When does Kevin come back from holiday?”
Gabriel was jerked from his musings by Aled’s question.
“Sorry?”
“You said Kevin’s away. When does he get back?”
“Next week. Why?”
Aled’s fingers drummed lightly on Gabriel’s upper arm. “Been a while since he sent me a new video.”
Gabriel smirked. “I’ll text him in the morning.”
“Hmm. Maybe.”
“Maybe?”
“I’ve got the week off.”
“So?”
“So that was nice and all, but—” Blunt nails scratched lightly at Gabriel’s hair. “It was just for starters.”
Gabriel closed his eyes and slid his arm across Aled’s stomach. He buried his nose against a light dusting of c
hest hair and sighed as the soft cushion under his frame relaxed.
“I look forward to it,” he muttered.
The light pat on his backside was promising—but, right now, Gabriel had no desire for more.
* * * *
Aled went off to see his nana later in the day, and the first that Gabriel knew of it was a deeply unimpressed voice coming from the conservatory door.
“I hope you’re going to clean up after yourself this time.”
Gabriel glanced up over the upended bike and grinned.
“Hello to you too.”
“I mean it.”
“Yeah, yeah.”
Aled grunted but dropped into the wicker chair in the corner.
“How’s Nana?”
“She’s fine. Think the dementia’s starting to speed up, but she’s still pretty with it. Told her that Suze is getting married, but she seemed to think I was getting married.”
Gabriel laughed. “Again, or your first wedding?”
“First one.”
“What was that like?” Gabriel asked curiously.
Aled shrugged. “Church, posh hotel, ridiculous amount of flowers. Ridiculous amount of money, but Melissa’s dad paid for most of it.”
“Why?”
“Melissa was the golden girl. Her older sister was a complete nightmare. I think her dad was just pleased one of them turned out all right.”
Gabriel chuckled. “Can’t relate.”
“Your dad not have a favourite?”
“What dad?” Gabriel quipped. “Just had a mother. And I was definitely not the favourite, even before I turned out to be a man.”
“Ah.”
“I don’t think I’ve ever been to a wedding,” Gabriel mused. He rolled his tongue around his teeth as he adjusted the freshly oiled chain.
“What about Kevin’s?”
“No, they ran away together. Nobody went.”
“Nice,” Aled said approvingly. “What brought that on?”
“I think Kevin just wanted to piss off his mother-in-law, to be honest,” Gabriel said. “Why did you get married?”
“It’s what I grew up with,” Aled admitted. “You love someone, you marry them. It’s what you do. And I loved Melissa, so I married her.”
“Huh.”
Aled shrugged. “It felt natural to do it. I did want to, despite how everything turned out. I absolutely adored her. Why wouldn’t I marry her?”
“Charming,” Gabriel said.
“Eh?”
“You’ve never asked me.”
Aled barked a laugh. “Yeah, well, I learned from the last time. Anyway, it was hard enough just to get you to move in.”
“True.”
“You ever see yourself getting married?”
“Nah,” Gabriel said. He righted the bike and propped it by the door. “Waste of time and money, and just creates a load of drama. Why bother. I’d not even bother going to Suze’s if she’d not kill me for skipping out.”
“Damn right she will.”
“At least I get to sleep with the best man,” Gabriel said, wiping off his hands on a rag and eyeing Aled from head to toe. “You going to wear a proper suit, instead of your office gear?”
“Yeah. Waistcoat and pocket watch and all.”
“Ooh, à la Downton Abbey.”
“More or less.”
It was a very nice mental image. Gabriel had guessed when they first met at Aled being the type who liked to pretend to fuck interns and secretaries, but it had never come out in any of their games. And to be honest, Aled’s work suits weren’t the best look on him. They didn’t fit well, and his ties were ugly as sin. Gabriel had standards, after all. He wasn’t getting tied up with paisley.
But a wedding suit might be different. A wedding suit might be—
“Vanilla fuck in a toilet while the bride and groom are dancing, or something more…sinister?”
Aled snorted. “It’s you. If I did fuck you vanilla, you’d be begging for more in minutes.”
“You don’t always give it to me, though.”
“Usually because you don’t deserve it.”
“I always deserve—”
He caught his words when Aled raised a single eyebrow and very abruptly shoved a hand down the front of Gabriel’s briefs. It was hot and hard, gripping him like a vice, and it didn’t take more than a quick wriggle to get one of those rough fingers inside him. Gabriel bit his lip and very slowly squeezed.
“You were about to tell me what sluts deserve?” Aled asked softly.
Game on.
“Don’t call me a slut, you son of a bitch,” Gabriel whispered and jutted out his chin.
The finger pushed deeper. A murmur across his jaw asked for a colour. A thumb probed at his thickening cock, teasing it out from the labia.
“Green.”
Game-fucking-on.
Chapter Five
Aled woke to the rain.
It was dark, the clock on the side reading four-twenty-four, and the hammer of water on the conservatory roof below the window deafening.
Sighing, Aled decided to give up on trying to sleep. It was simply too loud and he had a vague need to piss. Sliding free of the sheets, he felt his way blindly to the door, then slipped out onto the landing and switched on the bathroom light.
It was chilly—he’d left the bathroom window open again—and goosebumps rose under the freckles as Aled pissed and washed his hands. Eyeing himself critically in the mirror, he decided to up the swimming to seventy-five laps a session, then retreated to the bedroom. He needed his dressing gown, at the very least. He’d not get back into bed, because then he’d wake—
But inching back into the bedroom stopped all his good intentions.
The light spilling in from the landing cast a gentle glow over the bed. Gabriel had twisted onto his back, the sheets pushed down to his waist, and his alabaster chest rose and fell in soft breaths. His eyelashes were a fan of darkness cast over his face. And that face—that perfect, peaceful face—was turned towards Aled’s empty spot, long neck exposed, as though inviting a touch, a kiss, a comfort.
As though he missed Aled, even in sleep.
Aled’s chest seized up tight. For a moment, there was no air. There was nothing at all but the fist around his heart, squeezing every drop of blood from it—and unable to empty it. Because nothing, nothing, could dislodge what Aled felt.
He closed the door with a snap.
In the darkness, the sheets rustled. Aled followed the sound, crawling up onto the bed and tugging the duvet down and away. Gabriel’s skin was hot and soft and Aled spread his fingers as though to catch it. Stroking it. From knee to thigh, across the flat plains of belly and chest, sliding up lean arms as he pressed down, spreading his weight and sinking into the heat as though into a hot bath, until his lips found neck, jaw, cheek—lips.
Movement. A stir, quickly soothed. A word against his mouth, but Aled didn’t hear it. Fingers ghosted across his ear, but he caught them and set them down again.
“Let me.”
A soft sigh was his only reply, and Aled began to kiss where his hands had explored. Without sight, he could still see. He knew this body, this man, well enough to find the scars in the dark and smooth them over with lips and tongue. He could find the freckles without feeling them and he could kiss the lines of muscle too relaxed to be touched. He could press his face to ribs and hips, feel blood and breath and life, that brilliant, beautiful, bloody-minded soul that burned Gabriel bright from the inside out.
Aled could touch it all, in the dark silence of their bed.
He settled for the longest time, simply touching. There was a hedonistic pleasure in this. Gabriel was so lively, so stunning, that it was often difficult to touch him without it either leading to more, or being disrupted by his energetic need to be doing something else. And with his skin hot with sleep, it was like touching a living example of luxury. Aled could feel the idle flow of blood in hidden veins and he could feel the wash of air e
very time Gabriel breathed. He found himself kissing in time to that breathing, stroking his lips along Gabriel’s jaw to catch his own with every sigh. And when Gabriel tried to nip, Aled teased himself free. When Gabriel tried to clutch, Aled smoothed the grip away again.
“Let me,” he repeated, his voice barely audible in the dark, and Gabriel relaxed into the cushions. His hands drifted up to clutch at the pillows, and Aled kissed each elbow in turn before making his way down them, layering the skin with soft touches, fingers and mouth. He pressed attention into the marks he’d left around Gabriel’s throat. He tasted the skin of his collarbone and soothed the invisible nicks where he’d twisted his nails against his nipples. For the longest time, Aled rested his lips against the gentle thud, buried deep beneath the skin of Gabriel’s chest and breathed.
Simply breathed.
Breathed Gabriel’s heartbeat. Breathed his smell. Breathed his warmth and the rise and fall of his ribs. Breathed, and felt the hairs on his chest shift with every one. Then, as he felt Gabriel’s heart begin to slow, Aled resumed his path, kissing down Gabriel’s breastbone to his belly.
There was Aled’s favourite place to rest. Slim did not mean steel, and he rested his head against the downy hair of Gabriel’s stomach and relaxed, his hands taking over his exploration. Gabriel’s breathing made Aled’s head shift in gentle swells, like lying in a hammock or being at sea, and Aled relaxed, riding the tide in the dark, as he smoothed both hands around hips and thighs, creating patterns in the hair, until he found his mark.
His dry mark.
Aled kissed the edge of a hip and broke from the warmth long enough to find the bottle of lubricant in the bedside table. Gabriel stirred a little at the pop of the cap, then let out a breathy murmur as Aled began to massage it over his cock and inner thighs, then whimper as the prickling heat began.
“Nope,” Aled whispered, catching a hand that tried to come down and returning it to the pillow. “All mine.”
He saved this lubricant for special occasions. It tingled and burned—Aled liked the feel of it well enough, but it drove Gabriel absolutely crazy. And as Aled spread it over hot skin, Gabriel shifted restlessly, and whimpered as Aled explored inside as well as out. Silken heat gripped his fingers. A shiver rose past his mouth as he kissed Gabriel’s stomach—the same as always. There was dryness, and a tension at odds to the languid beauty of Gabriel’s limbs, but as Aled massaged and coaxed, both were soothed away, until Gabriel was uttering little gasps with every breath, and his legs were shifting restlessly at Aled’s sides.
The Wedding (Starting Over Book 3) Page 4