The Wedding (Starting Over Book 3)

by Matthew J. Metzger

  He shuddered when the loops of metal closed over his hips.

  “Much better.”

  The lock of the chastity belt was like the closing of a tomb. He couldn’t push it out. He couldn’t bend around it. There was nowhere to go, no way to escape—and with the tape securing him to the bed, no protection for when Aled decided to use him again.

  “That should keep you busy until I get back.”

  The kiss was cruel and cold, but the next word soft against his ear.

  “Colour?”

  Gabriel gulped another heaving breath. He knew what came next. He’d be abandoned like this. Probably gagged. Blind and imprisoned and pinned on this massive, massive prick. The hours would feel like years. His cock would be permanently swollen. He’d itch to come. Then when Aled came back—

  He’d rip it out, and fuck Gabriel until he screamed. Until he begged for it. Until he was black and blue and bleeding, and still begging for more. Until he’d come five, ten, fifteen times—then he’d be fucked all over again for daring to come before his master.

  “Green.”

  A tiny, gentle touch against his chin. A soft kiss.

  And the tape sealed his lips and he was abandoned, defenceless, in an empty hotel room.

  * * * *

  The door clicked.

  Gabriel didn’t know if he’d slept or not. He jumped when fingers touched his chin and the tape was peeled away. He waited for the kiss—or the cock—but neither came. Instead, Aled spoke. Gently. Not the harsh rasp of a dominant playing a game, but simply Aled.

  “Pausing the game for a second, sweetheart. Understand?”

  Gabriel nodded.

  “I ran into Tom’s brother at the rehearsal. Darren. Do you remember Darren?”

  Gabriel nodded again. Small-world syndrome. Darren and his boyfriend had hooked up with Gabriel when they’d been visiting Yorkshire, years ago and before Gabriel had met Aled. Hell, they were why he’d met Aled. They’d recommended him when Aled had been looking for a fuck to get his soon-to-be ex-wife out of his system.

  “He remembers you. Said he’d like to get acquainted again. And you did mention threesomes the other day.”

  Gabriel sucked in a breath. His mind raced. It was perfect. He trusted Daz. He’d been funny and sweet and respectful. He wasn’t some scary stranger in a club. If it didn’t work, he’d be okay with stopping. And if it did—

  God, if it did.

  “What do you want to do?”

  “Do it,” Gabriel whispered.

  “How?”

  “Anonymous.”

  Obviously it wouldn’t be. But there could be some of it.

  “Blindfolded. And my hands tied.”

  “Daz played with you like that before?”

  Gabriel shook his head.

  “Okay. I’ll be here the whole time, though, so if you need out, you know what to do.”

  Gabriel nodded. He lay still as Aled unlocked the belt and carefully withdrew the punishing dildo. His legs were released and he folded himself up to sit on the pillows. Aled massaged his ankles lightly and nudged a gentle kiss against Gabriel’s mouth.

  “Say it for me.”

  “I want to be blindfolded and my hands tied and you and Daz fuck me together.”

  “How?”

  “No mouth.”

  He wanted to shout. He wanted to feel two real dicks inside him, not rubber and silicone, and he wanted to feel them almost against each other too. He wanted heartbeats and pre-cum and the real fucking deal.

  “No condoms.”

  Aled grunted. “We’ll see about that part.”

  “He gets tested reg—”

  “He did years ago. We’ll see.”

  Gabriel gave up on persuading him about that. “Remind him about alcohol. I was sober by then, but he might not remember.”

  “All right.”

  “And I don’t care who uses what. I don’t want to know. I want to be confused.”

  “Sure?”

  “Yeah.”

  Another kiss. Gabriel grinned around it and Aled laughed.

  “Madman. Okay. I’ll go talk to him. Don’t go anywhere.”

  “How can I? You’ve got the only key.”

  “Smartarse.”

  The door clicked and Gabriel was left alone with his racing thoughts. And throbbing cock. Suddenly he regretted asking to have his hands bound. It was all very well and good for an anonymous double fuck, but it made wanking really difficult. He fidgeted anxiously, imagining how it would feel. Ryan and Daz had shared him, but not both in the same end at the same time. He’d done threesomes before, but never front and back at once. How would they do it? Would he straddle Aled’s lap, because Daz didn’t like tits? Or would it be the other way around, because Daz loved kissing him until his brains dissolved?

  It seemed like an age before the door opened again. He heard four feet enter. The door click shut and lock. A hand wrapped around his ankle and pulled, and as he was tipped back into the bed, two more cupped his face and kissed him. Daz. The unfamiliar mouth. The taste. The way he was sealed shut like he couldn’t breathe even as the kiss was gentle. That was the way Daz kissed and Gabriel melted.

  The kiss broke. Hands vanished. The bed dipped behind him. He was turned, poked and prodded into a kneeling position—then the hands began to play with him. And mouths. His own was left alone, but there were lips on his neck. His left tit was massaged in a big hand and his right gripped by hungry teeth. A slick finger slid into his arse with a prickle of discomfort. Dry ones had no such qualms about his vagina and worked their way into the space left behind by the sex toy from most of his evening.

  It was—

  Gabriel gasped when the exploration turned into preparation. The squirm and wriggle of fingers both front and back was strange. His first climax felt like a deliberate ploy, rubbed out briskly and his breath barely steadied before his cunt was empty and his hips were taken in two hands. He was raised, still reeling, and came down so hard on that first prick that it was a shock. He flinched, jarring the hand that had never left his arse, and had his nipple twisted in punishment. As the sharp burst of pain faded away, he realised that two hands were spreading his cheeks and a third was pulling on his oversensitive cock.

  And there was a cock pushing at his arse.

  The breath was driven out of him as the first inch forced its way inside. Pain shivered through him as he felt the strange sensation of two living, beating things inside of him touching. He sagged forward.

  And in doing so, figured it out.

  In the familiar contours of the shoulder under his head. In the softness of the hands that bracketed his ribs. In nudge of lips against his ear. The whispered request for a colour. The flickering pulse of a cock inside of him that had paused for a moment.

  Aled.

  He was encompassed in Aled’s hold. Aled controlled the room. Aled controlled him. He could smash Gabriel to pieces, here and now. He could take it all too far and drive the fantasy away under pain—real pain—and blind fear. He could twist Gabriel up like a half-chewed sweet and spit him out again.

  “Green,” Gabriel whispered.

  Because he wouldn’t.

  Because he couldn’t.

  Because this was Aled—fucking him with a stranger because Gabriel wanted to try it, holding him like he was priceless even as two dicks worked inside of him in a rhythm that was dizzying and distracting, touching him like a maestro with a Stradivarius and not a man with a self-proclaimed whore…

  Gabriel caught a slip of flesh between his teeth and held on.

  He didn’t need it—but he wanted it. He wanted Aled. Daz was good, but he was barely there. It was all Aled. His hands, his hair, his soft chest, his familiar smell.

  Aled-Aled-Aled.

  Gabriel breathed in deep as someone bottomed out, and exhaled, settling into the man who held him like snow into a mountain pass.

  Right where he belonged.

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  “I no
w pronounce you man and wife.”

  The church burst into applause. Someone burst into tears. Suze flung her arms around a bawling Tom’s neck and kissed him full on the mouth and Aled wasn’t ashamed to wipe away a couple of tears of his own.

  “Ladies and gentlemen, please rise for Mr and Mrs Hooper!”

  The church rose in a cacophony of noise. The married couple set off back down the aisle to jubilant music, and the flash of what seemed like a million phones. Aled slid out of his pew and held out an elbow for Gabriel’s hand to slide into the gap.

  “You did good,” Gabriel whispered and Aled grinned. He’d not dropped the rings. He’d not bawled too badly. All he had to do now was look decent in some photos and not fuck up his speech. Piece of cake.

  And the box in his pocket was burning a hole.

  The wedding photographer was Tom’s sister-in-law, and bouncing around with a bright smile and endless instructions. Groom’s family. Bride’s family. Friends of groom. Friends of the bride. Fusty old female relatives. Racist male ones. Everyone in a stupid hat. Everyone who’d ignored the colour scheme. Now for people who clearly didn’t understand what formalwear was. Now for a lovely shot with everyone here under the delusion there was a free bar. Aled smiled and posed, posed and smiled throughout a series of formal shots, then broke away for a quick kiss off to one side while the staff started to usher everyone down towards the dining room.

  “Do I get to steal you yet?” Gabriel whispered.

  Aled glanced up the corridor. He could do it now. He didn’t want to make a scene at his best friend’s wedding. They could step out, he could say his piece, it could be over and done with in just a few moments.

  But he didn’t want to just steal a couple of moments. He wanted more.

  “Not yet,” he said, “but I don’t have to sit up at the high table.”

  “How did you talk your way out of that one?”

  “I told Tom,” Aled deadpanned.

  Gabriel laughed.

  Dinner was a fancy affair, much like his own wedding. For all her anxiety and neuroticism right up until she’d put her pseudo-dress on that very morning, Suze glowed. Speeches were funny. His own was a success. The ferocious mother-in-law cracked a smile or two. The photographer stopped bouncing and started taking natural shots. Aled slipped her a twenty to preserve one of him and Gabriel sharing a sweet, natural kiss over cake.

  It was perfect.

  It brought back memories of his own wedding without the tinge of sadness at its ultimate failure. It made him smile to see Suze so happy, without any sense of loss for her being so far away now. Gabriel’s acerbic cynicism made him laugh and the easy willingness to stand up and sway with him when the dance floor was cleared and the smoochy music played made the laughter soften into a warm contentment simmering away low in his stomach. When Gabriel broke away to get a drink, the contentment stayed—but something stronger pulled on Aled’s blood like there was a whole new version of gravity between them.

  “Aled?”

  The light touch on his arm made him jump. He turned to find Tom smirking at him.

  “Go and tell him.”

  “Tell him what?”

  “That you love the bloody earth he walks on. Come on, mate. If you can’t do it at a wedding, when can you?”

  Aled smiled and patted back.

  “Go and grab your wife, and start it all off on the right foot,” he said.

  Then he broke away. Because what else could he say? Tom wasn’t idle like Aled had been. He wouldn’t take Suze for granted like Aled had taken Melissa. He didn’t need Aled’s advice. He was a good man and he’d make a good husband and a great dad.

  Aled’s life wasn’t pointing that way anymore.

  Out in the hotel gardens, dusk was falling. The party was winding down and guests beginning to drift away. The candles were burning down and the sky above them was crystal clear and studded with stars. It was, Aled thought, almost romantic.

  And it was now or never.

  He took a deep breath, patting his pocket and the box within it, and went to seek out his wayward partner. Suze’s uncle, a deeply boring old bastard with a conservative streak so wide that he regarded Tom as ‘one of them foreign types’ for being from somewhere south of Birmingham, had taken a surprising liking to Gabriel based entirely on their mutual affection for cycling, and had accosted him at the bar to talk bicycle clips or puncture repair kits or whatever else it was that cyclists liked to talk about. He’d been doing it all afternoon and Aled hadn’t minded.

  But now, with the stars sprinkling a warm sky and the music turned down to a melodic hum designed to make the booze-fuelled guests tired and go to bed, Aled decided it was time and went on a rescue mission.

  He found them by the empty buffet table, Gabriel nursing what looked like a vodka and what Aled was sure was the world’s longest-lasting mouthful of water, and made a display of affection so obvious that Mr Taylor’s face screwed up in confused disgust.

  “Come on, babe,” he said, nuzzling at Gabriel’s ear for good measure. “Time we called it a night.”

  Gabriel came willingly enough, making polite apologies and smiling despite Mr Taylor’s obvious and rapid reassessment of this rather excellent outdoorsman into one of them nancy types, but frowned when Aled took him out into the gardens and under the starlight.

  “This isn’t bed,” he said, then grinned and wrapped his arms around Aled’s neck. “Or did you mean a different type of calling it a night?”

  Aled chuckled and unwound them. “I figured you might need rescuing.”

  Gabriel smirked. “Think you might have given him a coronary with that. He kept hinting it was a shame Suze didn’t end up with a nice young man like me.”

  “She’s a bit too fond of dick, it does have to be said.”

  Gabriel sniggered and turned to lean his elbows on the low wall around the terrace and stare out over the darkening gardens. “God, it’s beautiful.”

  “Ye—”

  “If you dare follow that up with a blatant pass at me, I’ll slap you.”

  Aled laughed, mimicking Gabriel’s pose and bumping their shoulders together lightly. “All right, all right. Even though it would be a true pass.”

  “Shove off.”

  “Love you too, petal.”

  Gabriel snorted, and Aled bit his lip, staring up at the stars.

  “I do, you know,” he murmured.

  Gabriel made a faint sound and bumped back. “Yeah, I know.”

  “No, I mean—I do. I really do love you, Gabe.”

  “I know that, too.”

  “Do you?”

  Gabriel paused, and Aled heard him shift. “Aled? What’s the matter?”

  Aled exhaled heavily. “This whole wedding—hell, the whole lead up to it, never mind tonight—has had me thinking.”

  “About your own wedding?”

  “Yeah, in part.”

  “So—”

  “Let me just…word-vomit.”

  “Um, okay.”

  “It’s had me thinking about you and me. I was looking at Tom and Suze and thinking how I easily love you as much as Suze loves Tom, so why in the hell had he popped the question and a big gesture from me is still bringing you cheese on toast in bed?”

  “But I like cheese on toast in bed.”

  Aled half-smiled at the almost petulant tone and tucked his forearm over Gabriel’s to wind their fingers together, staring at those empty, ring-free fingers. God, Gabriel would look so beautiful wearing a ring, but—

  “But the more I thought about proposing to you, the more terrified I became. Because rationally, I know my marriage would have collapsed in the end anyway, if we couldn’t get around the issue of children, but I also know that I’d let it crumble enough to make Melissa’s choice easy for her. I got complacent. I took her for granted. I had a woman I loved more than life itself, and I took it for granted that she’d always be there. Until one day she wasn’t. And if I’d worked at it, kept working, not l
et a marriage certificate and a ring make me think she’d always be there, then maybe she wouldn’t have left. Maybe I would have been enough to her still to make her hesitate, to make her decide that maybe she didn’t need a baby, or maybe she would have cared enough to stay and chip away at me until I came around to the idea of adoption.”

  Gabriel squeezed his fingers silently and Aled blew upwards into his hair.

  “Marriage means something to me,” he said quietly. “I’m a traditionalist like that. If you love someone, really love them, then you marry them. You prove it to them, to your families, to the whole world, that you’re this unit and you’re never going to be separated. It’s not just a piece of paper to me, but because it’s not, I let it change the way me and Melissa worked. I stopped bringing her flowers and arranging surprise dates. I stopped bringing her cheese on toast in bed. I mean, you know, metaphorically, she wasn’t much of an eating in bed person as you are—”

  Gabriel snickered, his fingers tightening around Aled’s again, and Aled smirked briefly.

  “So I got caught up in this tangle, this ‘oh, grow up, you learned your lesson, you won’t make the same mistake with Gabriel’ then following it right up with ‘but what if you do?’ And I couldn’t take not doing it, because you’re not just my boyfriend and someone to play with, you’re so much more than that, but…I couldn’t stand the idea of doing it, either, because if I fucked up again like I did with Melissa, I’d lose you. And…I—I can’t go through another divorce and survive it, Gabe. I can’t.”

  “Hey—”

  “And with my dominant tendencies, God knows how I’d respond to existing in a marriage where I’m constantly terrified I’ll fuck it up and you’ll walk. I don’t want to be that guy, Gabe. I don’t want to be that guy who’s so scared his husband will leave that he gets jealous of any hint of attention elsewhere, that he starts drawing unreasonable lines in the sand, that he ends up pushing his partner away because of his own issues.”

  “Maybe you wouldn’t.”