by Dal Maclean
Will gaped at him. “Of course it fucking wasn’t! I told you what happened! That was a business meeting. Are you trying to use that as an excuse to put all the blame on me? Because I sure as fuck didn’t come anywhere near kissing her!”
Tom’s eyes bugged with rage. “And I didn’t kiss Cam! I told you that!”
“But you couldn’t deny you wanted to!” Will shot back. “I could see it happening with my own eyes!”
Tom gave a furious laugh. “Like I could see you looking at that woman? The camera never lies right?”
“That was different!” Will protested. “Still shots are different from video.”
Tom made a sound of howling frustration and without warning he lurched forward and grabbed Will’s suit lapels. Will braced for a blow, but instead he was hauled forward a few inches, stumbling and startled.
There was no tenderness in Tom’s kiss. Not even lust. Just inarticulate rage and resentment. Hard. Uncompromising. More a fight, than a kiss.
But after a stunned moment, Will kissed back just as brutally; needing it. An outlet for his inchoate fury that Tom didn’t want what he did. His fear of the pain he knew was coming. His huge resentment that he loved so much and so unequally.
He couldn’t say any of it.
It was a mutual expression of pain and disappointment, of rage and loss, masquerading as a kiss. Obscene, in its way.
But slowly, rationality began to regain a hold. It shouldn’t be like this, Will thought, driven by dysfunction and resentment. Even if they’d reached the end now. It should be kinder.
Will forced his muscles to loosen the wire-tight tension he hadn’t even registered, and his mouth softened under Tom’s, ready to pull back. But the moment that seemed to register with Tom, he tore his own mouth away first.
He stared at Will for a long moment, breath heaving, eyes wild, then he reached up with both hands and pushed Will’s jacket roughly back off his shoulders.
“Tom,” Will said quietly. “That’s not a good idea. You know we should talk.”
But Tom shook his head, and shoved a little harder until the jacket slid down Will’s arms to the floor.
Will prepared to step away, but Tom burst out, “I can’t think when I know people are reading that!” His face contorted with misery. “Believing that! Fuck!”
Will stilled under his hands.
Because . . . that didn’t sound like Tom was going for a piqued goodbye fuck—anger and blame, to make the end easier for him. In fact, he sounded as possessive as Will had ever heard him.
Tom hauled at Will’s tie knot, then he gave up, dragging loose Will’s shirt buttons, exposing the skin of his chest.
That article should have been Tom’s easy exit. But whatever else was going on in his head, he didn’t seem inclined to take it.
It was a moment of the sweetest reprieve. And no way was Will now going to deny Tom the control he seemed to need.
He stood still and let himself be stripped, clothes thrown everywhere, tie still half knotted round his neck because Tom hadn’t the patience to undo it, letting the intensity of the moment fuel his own desire, until he was pushed naked onto the bed. Then he lay and watched while Tom hauled off his fancy clothes and those electric blue shoes, as if they were burning him.
Tom had known about the article before he went to James and Ben’s house. It occurred to Will that Tom had worn those clothes like armor.
But then Tom was on him, all hot silky skin and hard muscle, dominating and demanding, hands and mouth everywhere as their cocks rubbed together between their writhing bodies. Tom muttered harshly in his ear, “I have so many images in my head of you, bent over in that uniform.”
Will’s erection took another impossible rush of blood. Tom had been fantasizing about him. And Will would give him anything to make him happy, even that.
“It’s at the station,” he offered. His cock felt ready to spurt.
Tom huffed with amusement. “I didn’t expect you to go and get it.” Then, in a deliberate whisper, “I don’t really care what’s round your ankles when you take my cock.”
Will’s eyes widened—shock and embarrassed arousal. Which made him more embarrassed to be embarrassed. He wanted to laugh, just as badly as he wanted to go under to Tom’s dirty talk. But Tom gave him no time to decide. He took Will’s mouth again greedily and Will cooperated with gusto, soaking up the lovely reassurance of Tom’s continuing desire.
He felt weak with the want to give in, as he always did when Tom got like this, probably he admitted inwardly, because Tom was entirely focused on him and there could be no room for doubts in his mind. And this time—tonight—he wanted to atone for Tom’s distress. He could feel even now, the desperate, angry edge to Tom’s lust.
The idea of being cheated on was agony for anyone; but with Tom’s family background, and the hangups it had given him, that article must have been beyond humiliating and tormenting. Hazily, he could hear Tom’s notifications buzzing spasmodically under his discarded clothes. He prayed it was just Pez, calling Will obscene names.
As if he could read Will’s mind, Tom rolled off him to wriggle across the bed, fishing over the edge until he found the phone. Then he tossed it without care into his bedside drawer and he was back in seconds, a condom square and the depleted tube of lubricant in his hand.
Well, there had never been any doubt this was going to culminate in a fuck.
Will closed his eyes.
He could hear Tom’s ragged breathing in his ear, then Tom lifted off him again and he felt a brush of cool air on his hot skin before the first soft touch of a tongue on his swollen, achingly sensitive penis. His whole body arched. He heard a sound of satisfied amusement, then Tom went to work in earnest, sucking the head, licking the shaft and balls, stroking Will’ s inner thighs until they’d parted as wide as Will could bear, feeling the delicious ache in his hips; then one leg pushed up and back exposing his hole. And Tom’s persistent fingers, massaged and stimulated then came back slippery with lube, to push inside and open him up.
Will was tossing his head against the pillow, ready to beg, when Tom finally knelt back and picked up the condom square. But he didn’t rip it open; he paused and studied it as it sat in his palm. When he looked up at Will, his expression was enigmatic.
Will heard him inhale then let the breath go as if he were bracing himself.
“Do you still want me to use it?” Tom’s tone was casual, but all of a sudden he seemed to radiate waiting tension. Will recognized it, because every molecule of his own relaxation had blinked out of existence too. Suddenly, just like that, they were at the brink again.
“Tom . . . .”
But how could he explain?
Tom had wanted to stop using protection almost immediately after they decided to restart their relationship again, but it had felt to Will—wary, watching for signs—to be one gung-ho, rush to commitment too many. It went against everything Tom had wanted for his life up until then. As if Tom was trying to lock himself inside his decision and throw away the key, so that he couldn’t run for it when he wanted to. Before Will, Tom had categorically rejected monogamy.
So, Will had said as tactfully as he could that maybe they should wait, settle into the relationship. He’d worried Tom had taken it as rejection, because he’d seemed almost wounded for a day or two before getting back his old determination.
“That’s a ‘yes’ then,” Tom’s said, light and unbothered.
But his hurt was very evident to Will. And Will couldn’t stand that, especially tonight.
Yet perversely, Tom asking for this, now of all times, with their relationship so fragile, made him more apprehensive than ever.
You’re trying to tie yourself in. He almost said it, but he crammed the words back into his mouth in time.
“I just. I don’t want you to feel trapped,” he said at last, the closest he could come.
But what he had said had clearly been bad enough. Tom reared back as if he’d been struck.
“Trapped? Is this some kind of projection?” His expression had frozen to ice.
Will eyed him with astonishment. “No!”
“So you just want to make sure you’re safe when I have the irresistible urge to fuck someone else.”
Will’s bewilderment melted to horror. Tom still looked oddly calm, cold. As if he’d known it all already.
The video of that almost-kiss with Cam and the photographs in the newspaper—both of their supposed indiscretions—stood between them, but neither of them went there.
“I trust you not to cheat,” Will said. “The way you trust me.”
“But, you don’t trust me not to want to.”
It was an echo of Will’s accusation over the video with Cam. An echo of Will’s worries. His face must have shown that, because Tom’s expression grew even bleaker.
“You’re never going to forgive me, are you? For leaving you.”
And that was just too far.
“You’re wrong,” Will said urgently.
It had very little to do with forgiveness. It had everything to do with fear.
Tom still knelt in the same position, but his head hung low, hair concealing his face and his hands lay lax on his thighs. His posture screamed defeat.
“Tom.” Tom’s hands clenched and unclenched in his lap. Will ventured: “I’ve never done it bare before.”
Tom peered up at him from behind his hair. It was unbelievably endearing. “You don’t like the idea then?” he asked.
It was an easy out—a benign explanation—but Will wasn’t tempted to take it.
“No. I didn’t fancy it with anyone else. But . . . I like the idea with you,” he said. Their eyes met and held.
Tom looked uncertain, braced for rejection, the way he had the day he’d come to Warren Road to try to get Will back. It looked all wrong on him, and Will hated it.
“You haven’t even done it with women?” Tom asked tentatively. Will shook his head.
He reached out to touch Tom’s thigh, one of the few parts of his body on which modeling had allowed him to retain hair, though it was naturally sparse.
“Have you? With anyone?” Will asked, though he knew the answer. This was the elusive Tom Gray after all.
Tom bit his lower lip. “I was sure I never would.”
The implicit message in that made Will want to punch himself. Tom was trying. Will needed to stop waiting for him to fail. He had to try to control his fear.
He snatched the foil wrapper out of Tom’s hand and flicked it across the room. Tom looked at it, then him, warily.
Will had done enough damage, and what the hell was he resisting anyway? It was all symbolic. His own juvenile, starry-eyed view of it had been as part of a final commitment; a mutual declaration of intent. But that was stupid romantic shit. It was only sex. And he did trust Tom to keep him safe, as Tom was showing he trusted him.
If and when Tom decided to sleep with someone else, he’d end his relationship with Will first. And if Will thought having used condoms was going to mitigate his agony if Tom left him again, he must be fucking insane.
Tom was right. There was no reason not to have this.
He slid a slow hand up Tom’s thigh until he could brush his balls and then his cock. It had lost some of its volume, but it hardened and swelled again under his fingers.
Will picked up the tube of lubricant, lying open beside Tom’s thigh and squeezed some gel into his hand, then slowly stroked his slippery palm up and around Tom’s erection until it stood, huge and glistening between his thighs, and Tom’s head had fallen back in ecstasy. His cock looked pink, wet, obscene.
“So,” Will asked. It took real effort to keep his tone elaborately casual. “D’you wanna fuck me bare?”
Tom’s head fell forward again and his drugged gaze met Will’s. Will deliberately gave the slow lopsided smirk he knew Tom found sexy, and then he stretched, inviting, provoking. Tom had needed dominance before Will fucked it all up.
It took a minute or two before Tom was fully immersed in the act again, as if he had to force his thoughts back into the zone. But soon he had Will moaning on his fingers as they returned to softening and stretching him, as if Will weren’t already prepared.
He loved being fucked by Tom, almost as much as he loved fucking him, but as he waited to take Tom’s cock, he found that for all his rationalization, there was a new tension to the act, a new importance, a first.
The intimacy of what they were about to do together. He couldn’t deny he craved it now.
He wondered if Tom felt anything like that, if that was why he was taking his time, dragging it out even. Will clung to patience, but his chest felt tight and heavy; his groin, his arse, his skin were aching with the urge for hard fast sensation. He could barely hold still with the need for it to happen.
Tom sat back on his heels at last, and greased his cock again. It looked an angry dark pink by now, as desperate as Will felt. Then at last Tom bent Will’s leg back into position and leaned forward pressing the naked head of his cock against the dip of Will’s hole. Will made an involuntary sound of anticipation.
Tom stopped. “Did I guilt you into this? Because if you don’t want it . . . .”
“Fucking hell!” Will snapped. “Will you just do it?” It was a perfect echo of their last time together when he’d driven Tom to similar desperation. But Tom just gave a tight nod and pushed forward, letting the bare length of his prick slide inexorably inside Will’s body, skin to skin.
He made a whimpering sound of disbelief.
From Will’s end, it didn’t feel physically much different, but the knowledge of what they were doing was wildly sexy after a whole sexual lifetime of careful barriers. Mentally and emotionally, it was ridiculous what a difference it made.
He felt ready to come almost at the first stuttering thrust.
He rested his other leg on Tom’s broad shoulder to let him slide in deeper.
“Oh God.”
“Does it feel good?” Will managed.
“Ohfuckyeah . . . .” Tom’s voice was strangled, tortured. His erection felt fully embedded now, but he’d stopped again as if he was afraid to move. “Like hot, wet velvet all along my dick.”
“Do something . . . .” Will gasped. Tom pulled back a little and thrust. Will moaned loudly. “Yeah. That.”
“I can’t last long.” Tom warned. He began to fuck, weight borne mainly on his arms and knees, head thrown back exposing his strong tanned throat.
“Me neither,” Will managed, because just the thought of it, of Tom planting his seed inside him, had him teetering on the edge already. The sight of Tom’s perfect body, his ecstatic face, weren’t helping him hold on. He craned his neck to see that big naked cock pistoning in and out, but the visual was overwhelming alongside the thick slippery thrusts inside him.
He flopped back onto the pillow and he could feel orgasm building with every expert slide and pull. He reached for his own neglected erection, drooling on his stomach and gave it a desperate pump.
And he gave himself up to it. He came hard and long, shaking through his orgasm, clenching on Tom’s prick as he was screwed through it.
“So . . . fucking . . . lovely.” Each word was punctuated by a hard thrust and when Will finally opened drugged eyes, he found Tom’s desperate gaze locked on his face, greedily taking in every nuance of expression. “A woman can’t give you this,” Tom slurred. “No one else sees you like this.”
He threw his head back and gave two hard shoves, then cursed and moaned through a shuddering climax as Will felt for the first time, a sudden slide of wetness inside him, making every weakening thrust looser and unbearably sensual.
Tom’s seed inside his body.
When Tom finished, his full crushing length collapsed onto Will, and they lay like that for a long moment of contented, doped silence. Will couldn’t resist stroking Tom’s hair. He was addicted to the silk-feel of it under his hand. He felt beautifully at peace.
Tom sig
hed, heavy and languid.
“That was the most incredible fuck I’ve ever had,” he slurred. He sounded totally spaced out.
And at last Will had to shift under his weight, grimacing as he felt the oddness of liquid trickling down his cleft to his thigh.
“You okay?” Tom pulled up onto his elbows to eye him with anxiety.
“You made a mess,” Will said.
Tom’s eyes widened, then he smirked. “You made a mess. I put mine in the receptacle provided.” But his grin faded comically fast. “What does it feel like?”
“Wet,” Will said. “Slippery.” On the receiving end, the extra power of the whole thing had definitely been in its symbolism. Though the feeling of Tom’s semen in him had been, and still was, undeniably erotic. “Sexy.”
Tom studied him for a second, then rolled off him onto his back. “Come here.” He raised an arm for Will to duck under and to lay his head on his chest, though they more often slept the other way round.
Thoughts lapped at the edges of Will’s mind like surf shifting lazily against sand. He felt . . . blurred out like a screen filled with white noise. Content. Relaxed. Reprieved. Distantly bewildered by his own past certainties.
He’d been sure Tom was about to end their relationship. And Tom hadn’t. Quite the contrary in fact.
But Tom had wanted to talk, he reminded himself. After that video from Schuler. Before the article blew everything else out of the water and focused them on just . . . getting through it.
A worm of reluctant reality nibbled at the fug of his contentment . . . he knew their past was too complicated and treacherous to continue to just pretend it wasn’t there, until it exploded again. They should talk. But just the idea of it made Will shy away. Lying there with Tom, smelling his skin, exhausted and at peace, Will couldn’t bear the thought of deliberately stirring up more pain and insecurity.
He was happy in that moment, and he wanted . . . he needed . . . to hold on to it.
“We should get cleaned up,” he suggested idly. His own spunk-smeared front was pressed messily against Tom’s side.
But Tom’s arm tightened round him and his other hand slid down Will’s side and round to his arse, teasing his wet cleft. “Nope. You’re never washing again.”