When he saw me, his eyes flashed, and he took an instinctive step forward. His hand flexed once as if he wanted to grab me and haul me close. My body responded immediately, my traitorous cock stiffening against my mint green trousers, my mouth already watering for his kiss. As he came closer, the light from the sitting room caught his face, and I could see that his blue eyes were rimmed with red, and that the scowl on his face seemed less his usual everyone is beneath me frown and something more—well—sad. If I didn’t think he was incapable of feeling anything other than irritation or lust, I might have suspected he’d been crying.
But as James’s stare moved over to my date, his expression changed utterly.
No more sadness. No more hints of vulnerability.
Right now, he stared at Oliver like he could burn down the entire world and not shed a single tear.
James turned on his heel without a word to us and went upstairs.
“Wow,” Oliver said after he’d gone. “I can’t decide if I’m more surprised that the prime minister is at your mother’s party or that he’s actually a giant bellend.”
I gave a weak laugh, fighting the urge to go up the stairs after James. What did I care that he looked like he’d been crying? What did it matter that his obvious jealousy was still swelling certain parts of my anatomy?
It didn’t.
Right?
I tried to focus on Oliver for the rest of the party, I really did. I fetched him punch, I laughed at his jokes, I introduced him to the many Ullswater cousins. (Which may have been a mistake, since they were all as adorable and as charming as me, and Oliver seemed to be getting less picky about who he took back to the rented room with each fresh glass of punch I brought him.)
I definitely tried not to notice when James returned to the party without his phone but with a jealous glower that did strange things to both my cock and my heart.
I definitely tried not to notice that his eyes were still red along the insides, that I heard someone telling his father that James was such a dear for celebrating Christmas when it was at Christmastime when he’d lost his mother two years ago.
I definitely tried not to care that he looked sad and lonely and hot and vulnerable, and did I mention hot?
Yes. I tried.
In fact, I was trying so hard that I was about to break one of my top five rules (to be fair, I’ve broken it before) and had decided to kiss a boy even though my mum was around. Because Oliver happened to be lingering under the mistletoe, quite shamelessly flirting with an Ullswater cousin, and I had made up my mind to remind him whose date he was and also remind myself that I was here to have fun with Oliver.
Not to covertly watch a mopey, possessive prime minister glare at me all night.
I came up to Oliver and gave him my brightest smile. “You know,” I said coyly. “The Romans hung mistletoe during their winter Saturnalia festivals. They used to fuck under it.”
Oliver’s answering grin was all the consent I needed. I leaned in to kiss him, my eyes fluttering closed—
—only to be abruptly yanked back by my elbow. I staggered back into a firm chest, suddenly surrounded by the scent of crisp pine and leather.
James.
“I apologize,” my new stepbrother seethed quietly. “But I must steal Tobias away for a few moments. Family business. You understand.”
And then he hauled me into the hallway and into the small library, kicking the door shut and backing me into the cozy, sagging bookshelves.
I held up a hand. He ignored it, stepping so close that his shoes bumped mine.
“Listen, stepbrother dearest, I wasn’t about to make a scene at my mum’s party, but what the fuck do you think you’re doing?” I asked. “That was weird. And rude. And weird.”
The room was dark except for the moonlight streaming in through the window, and it made James’s eyes something more than blue, something almost like silver.
“You were about to kiss him,” James said. He sounded like he wanted to throttle me or kiss me himself; I couldn’t tell. “You were about to kiss that boy right in front of me.”
“He’s a date. Dates are for kissing, James.”
“No, they aren’t. Not for you.”
I valiantly attempted to ignore the shivers that ultimatum sent skating down my spine. “And what is ‘for me’ then, if you’re to be deciding these things?”
James narrowed his eyes. “Are you saying you want me to decide?”
“I’m saying that you clearly already have, and so you might as well—”
His mouth was on mine before I could even finish speaking, his big hand in my hair, pulling my head back so I had no choice but to surrender to his kiss. To the hot, searching plunder of his mouth. His tongue swept across mine; it stroked, it probed, as if I wasn’t allowed to have any secrets from him. As if even my kiss would need to belong entirely to James Caldron, along with the rest of my body.
It was infuriating how hot that was. I pushed him off, glaring up at him.
“Oh! This is just typical!” I huffed. “I am trying to be mature by setting boundaries, and then you show up being all deliciously possessive and vulnerable, and now I don’t know what to do!”
“I’m not vulnerable,” he ground out, but I’d noticed how his mouth had flattened when I said it, and I was already shaking my head.
“You are. Tonight has fucked you up, and you know it, and you know I know it, so don’t make us both into idiots by pretending otherwise.”
He didn’t answer, but he did rub his forehead with his hand, a gesture endearingly uncertain. Almost shy.
I softened my tone. “Is it your mum?”
I expected him to bark at me, rebuff me, or maybe even mock me. I didn’t think he liked being vulnerable and even less having his inner life be anything less than utterly, insanely private. But he surprised me.
He looked at me as he dropped his hand. His eyes were dark silver pools, and his mouth was made of shadows. Seeing him so unbearably gorgeous and sad made my heart feel all sorts of stupid things.
“Yes...I suppose it is. I miss her. Very much.”
“I miss my dad,” I offered after a minute. “All the time. Even after loads and loads of therapy, I still cry about him.”
“Are you suggesting therapy or crying?”
“I dunno, both? All I’m saying is that it’s okay to have a shit night. You know?”
“I suppose I don’t have any choice.”
“You could always go out there and have more punch. Mum always puts way too much rum in it. A cure for any ailment.”
He almost smiled at that. “Oh, really.”
The moment lingered between us, nearly soft, nearly sweet, and I found I didn’t want to ruin it by arguing with him.
I wanted to leave it like it was now; I wanted to leave it good between us. But when I said, “I should go check on Oliver,” and stepped forward, I found myself pressed back against the shelves. One hand collared my throat while the other slid through my hair.
“Where are you going?” James asked. He sounded confused, like a child having his toy taken away without his knowing why. “You’re not going anywhere yet.”
“And why is that?” I breathed, my body tingling at his touch. With that hand on my throat and his eyes on me, my erection was unbearably hard now. When he shifted closer, I could feel his swollen cock brush against mine through our trousers, and I let out a tattered moan.
“Because you’re going to be my boy right now, aren’t you?” James said, the hand playing with my hair dropping to my zipper. Moments later, he had me unfastened and throbbing in the cool air of the library, and I was shuddering as if he’d already wrapped a fist around me.
“Is that what you want?”
“It is. You see, I can’t stop thinking about that hole of yours. The one you say is so needy. For the past two weeks, the thought of this hot, greedy part of you has taken over my mind. I want it, Tobias. I want it.”
Pre-cum was beading on the tip of my er
ection now, and I was nearly past the point of rational thinking.
“So are you?”
“Am I what?” I asked dazedly.
“Going to be my boy? Or are you going to go back out to Oliver and spend your night having tepid, ten-minute sex with that human rowing trophy?”
Well. When he put it like that.
I took his hand and guided it to where I wanted it. Right to where I loved being kneaded and invaded. He hissed at the first touch of his finger to my hot entrance, his Adam’s apple working up and down his throat as he struggled to go slow.
He pushed me back against the bookshelf again and bit at my neck as he explored me. When he started kissing me—his tongue fucking my mouth as his finger finally breached my outer ring of muscle—the line between my cock and my heart sizzled dangerously.
And when he lifted his head and stared at me like I was a work of art—his mouth swollen and his eyes like pools of molten mercury—and he said, “You are so beautiful, Tobias,” that stupid line caught on fire.
This was trouble. I was in trouble with him.
“James,” I whispered. “James.”
He stilled his caresses, looking down at me.
“I’ll be your boy. Just...please be something for me too, okay? Don’t let me fall alone.”
He stared down at me, a muscle working in his jaw. After a moment, he said, “No, Tobias. You’re not alone. I’ll be whatever you like.”
“Just be here. That’s what I’d like. I’ll be your boy and you’ll be here, and that will mean we’re together. We’re not alone in falling.”
He gave a short, jerky nod as though he was roiling inside, and he spun me around to face the shelves. “I’ll be here. Now hands up,” he rasped. “Be still.”
He tugged my trousers down to my thighs, and then he knelt behind me and spread my bottom. The moment he touched his tongue to me, I started chanting his name. I started squirming back against him while at the same time squirming forward to get away from him because the silky invasion of his tongue was too much. It felt too good; it stirred my impending climax too fast.
He growled when I squirmed away, and he wrapped his hands around my hips, dragging me roughly back to his mouth. “I said still,” he told me. “This isn’t for you. It’s for me. It’s for every minute of every hour of every day that I’ve spent obsessed.” He licked me again, and then he stood.
“Get my cock out and then bend over that desk. Be quick. I’ve waited two weeks for this.”
Hands shaking, I did as he asked, my neglected erection bobbing painfully in the air as I pulled him free. And my God was he everything I’d fantasized about. A thick eight inches, straight and proud, with a big, flared tip and dark, silky curls at the base leading up to his navel. In fact, when I ran my hand over his hard, muscle-etched stomach, I felt a light dusting of hair all the way to his chest.
He was all man—all mature, hardened man—and I thought I could spend the rest of my life nuzzling against the hair on his stomach and thighs.
“I’m only dating older men from now on,” I murmured to myself, and that earned me another fierce growl of displeasure.
“You are my boy,” he said unhappily. “Mine. Only I get you. Only I get this.”
“Yes, James,” I said, too horny to argue. Because it was true, and I knew it was true. James had snared me—heart, mind, and cock. For better or for worse.
“Tell me you have a condom.”
I let out a small laugh as I pointed him toward my trouser pocket. “You really are new at this, aren’t you?”
“Hush,” he said. “I’m a busy man. I haven’t had time for...trifling.”
“I’m also busy, James, but I always find time for trifling. It’s what makes me such a magnificent slut.”
He hauled me close and kissed my lips before bending me over the desk. “You’re my slut now, though, aren’t you? Can’t even make it through our parents’ Christmas party without offering your hole to me.”
His filthy mouth was going to be the death of me. Or of my poor, aching cock. I dropped my hand and started rubbing myself. “James,” I whispered. “Hurry.”
I heard the condom packet tear open, and after a minute, I heard him tear open the second thing he’d found in my pocket: a small packet of lube. He painted my entrance with it, making me slick all over, and then he pushed a finger inside. Then two.
I saw stars.
“Please,” I murmured. “Please, please, please…”
He removed his fingers, the vacancy nearly as uncomfortable as the initial penetration was, and then I felt the blunt, latex-covered tip of his erection at my opening.
“Waited so long for this,” he murmured to himself, and then he pressed. And pressed. Tunneling past the tight rim into my soft heat beyond.
“Since the day we met,” I agreed, my voice choked with the intensity of his invasion.
“Christ, Tobias,” he muttered when he pushed all the way in and bottomed out inside my channel. “Christ. I never—if I’d known…”
“If you’d known, what?”
“If I’d known,” he replied in a hoarse voice, “that this is what having my cock inside you would feel like, we would have done nothing but this for the past six weeks. Every day. Every hour. I would install you in my office so I could fuck you whenever I wanted. I would have you ride in every car with me so I could fuck you in the back seat before every meeting. I would have you tied to my bed so I could use you all night long.”
My erection swells even more in my hand, responding to his dirty words and his even dirtier longings. Longings I shared. To be his plaything, to be his toy, his possession.
“James,” I managed. “I think I’m going to—”
“Not yet,” he ordered, finding my cock with his hand. Instead of moving my hand out of the way, he wrapped his fingers around my own and squeezed. Stroked. Made me fuck my own fist as he fucked my ass like a man returned from war. “I want to feel it. I want to feel the minute you come for me, Tobias.”
He didn’t have to wait long. With that thick rod stroking my prostate and his big hand guiding mine, I didn’t stand a chance. With a low cry, I collapsed against the desk and emptied my cock in heavy, jolting spurts, sullying the side of my mum’s antique desk and dripping onto the rug.
I didn’t even care. It felt so good, and James’s reaction was enough to keep my cock jerking with more and more spend.
“Beautiful boy,” he breathed, his voice ragged in my ear as he pumped and pumped and pumped into me, rutting with short, vicious thrusts. “So fucking beautiful. I saw you, and I knew—I just fucking knew—you would ruin me, and so you have. I’m ruined for this, Tobias, because I never want to do anything else. We’re never doing anything else, do you understand me?” He gave me a series of slow, deep thrusts that left me gasping. “You are coming to bed with me tonight after our parents go to sleep so I can do this again, and when we leave tomorrow, you are coming to my house, and you will let me finger you and fuck you until you literally can’t stay awake anymore. You will let me play with this hole whenever I want, and I am going to see how many times I can make you come. You’ll be just as addicted to me, and you deserve it because you’ve ruined me—”
His orgasm seemed to come at him like a wave he thought he could ride. He braced his feet, his hands tightened on my body, and then he realized all at once that he was wrong, that the wave was dragging him under, and he let out a series of guttural gasps as he pounded me hard against the desk. Hard enough to move it across the rug, his low roar of primal triumph going straight to my semi-erect cock as he drove his release into me. As he pumped his condom full of his release and throbbed his way finally, finally to relief.
Even though he’d just fucked me—his nearly twenty years younger stepbrother—at our parents’ Christmas party while calling me boy and uttering all sorts of outrageous filth, James was a rather swoony gentleman about helping me clean up. After he gave me his handkerchief, he took care of the condom and
helped with my clothes. By the time we were both dressed again, we were already hard and ready for a second round.
“Tonight,” he said, making me promise to meet him in his bedroom. “I’ll be quiet. But I need you again.”
“Tonight,” I consented.
“And Tobias…” He paused a moment, pulling his firm lower lip into his mouth and then releasing it. “Thank you. For what you said about grieving. I will take it into consideration.”
“The only things that should be stiff around me are cocks, not upper lips,” I quipped, and he actually laughed. A deep and happy sound that somehow sounded more like Christmas than all the carols I’d heard tonight. A sound encompassing comfort and joy.
“So much I’m learning from you,” he teased, and then he gave me a smile that I felt carving itself into my heart.
Oh, God.
I swore I wouldn’t be a secret. I swore.
But how was I supposed to resist raunchy sex and that smile? That fantastic cock and these rare little moments when he opened up for me? When he let me see how he truly felt?
He had been right that I’d ruined him.
But unfortunately for me, he had also been wrong.
I was already addicted.
CHAPTER FIVE
James
I was infamous in politics for my unflappable composure, rational manner, and the cool wit I used to harness errant naysayers.
This was James Caldron, the prime minister.
Tobias Talbot-Ullswater, pretty and golden-haired like an angel with the heart of a sinner, had revealed to me a very different beast entirely.
Tales of Darkness & Sin: An Anthology Page 38