by R. J. Moray
Nathaniel fucking Scott leaned down to look over his shoulder. He braced a hand on the desk, and he was within arm’s reach, close enough Ewan could lean over and put his face into Nate’s neck and breathe him in. He could smell him already, crisp and spicy, with a hint of citrus, and it smelled like heaven.
“Hmmm. I think…try this.” He edited one of Ewan’s lines, did a find and replace, and ran it. “There.”
Ewan blinked, still focused on the stubble cresting Nate’s jaw. He had to tear himself away to see the test had passed. Fuck. “How do you do that?”
Nate grinned, eyeing him sidelong. “They do call me a genius.”
“Ugh, so it’s true,” Ewan groaned, pulling away to slither out of his seat and turn his back, pretending to fuss with his phone and wallet.
“Not really.” Nate sounded calm, vaguely amused, and when Ewan turned to face him Nate was leaned up against the desk, thumbs tucked casually into the belt-loops of his jeans. “There’s no such thing. It’s hard work more than talent, you know. Anyone can be good at programming.”
“Anyone?” Ewan didn’t believe it for a second.
“Anyone who puts in the hard yards. ‘Hard work beats talent when talent doesn’t work hard,’” he quoted, and Ewan made a face.
“And I suppose you’ve got both.”
Nate nodded solemnly. “I do work hard. I work very hard. At everything I give a fuck about.” Things like you, his eyes said, and Ewan had to look away.
Lunch, it turned out, was gyros in the park. There was a gazebo hidden behind a hedge and a shed, and it was rundown and dilapidated but sheltered from the wind, and Nate dusted off a bench with a napkin before gesturing for Ewan to take a seat.
“Enjoy the view,” he said. They were two levels up in the terraces. Ewan could look down between a gap in the topiary to see people walking past on the path below. It was fairly secluded, while still feeling like the outdoors, and there was something enjoyably secret about it.
Nate leaned his forearms up against the railing, watching pedestrians trundle by. Ewan eyed his gyros, and tried to think of something to say.
Nate beat him to it. “So, what’s Bianca saying behind my back?”
Ewan jerked guiltily. How to say it? “She thinks you got laid on the weekend.”
It made him laugh. “I did get laid on the weekend,” he said, glancing at Ewan with sparkling, sky-blue eyes. “I guess it’s obvious, huh?”
“You look well-fucked,” Ewan snapped, and it only made Nate’s grin broaden. “You look smug.”
“I feel pretty smug,” Nate agreed. He took a bite, chewing slowly, his eyes narrow and thoughtful. “Does it bother you?”
“No.”
“I mean, it bothers me.”
“What?”
“That you don’t look nearly as smug as I feel, and I was pretty sure you came just as hard as I did,” he said levelly, as if it was nothing. Ewan nearly choked on a chunk of lamb. “I mean, if it didn’t work for you,” Nate went on blithely, “I’d like to know why, or how. I do want to do it again, if you want to.”
Ewan swallowed some soda, feeling like this conversation had got away from him. “I don’t…I mean, I do. And there’s nothing that didn’t work.”
“But you’re prickly instead of sated,” Nate said, cocking his head to examine Ewan sidelong. “I guess it could take some time to get it right. Whatever puts you down somewhere cathartic. I enjoyed flogging you,” he added. “I hope it was up to your expectations.”
Ewan felt his face heat. They were talking about this. Here. In a privately public place. Nate looked like work-Nate, not Club-Nate, or Dom-around-the-House-Nate. He looked soft and handsome and approachable, and Ewan felt like he was going to overheat. “It was…good.”
“But not great?”
“It was great,” Ewan amended, but he couldn’t help frowning a little. “It was…you can…for next time,” but it was too hard to admit this like this, outside of the quick-and-dirty boundary conversations he’d have on his knees in a dark corner of the Club. “You were rough. The first time.”
“Too rough, maybe,” Nate said, sounding regretful. “I misjudged. I’m sorry for that.”
“No,” Ewan said quickly, “it was…I liked that. Next time,” and he took a deep breath, “I want you to fuck me. And make it rough. I want to feel it.”
Nate didn’t seem surprised. Instead he eyed Ewan with interest. “You want me to slap you around a bit first?”
“Yeah, I…I liked it when you slapped my face,” Ewan said, feeling shivery and humiliated discussing this now, in work clothes, under the unforgiving brightness of a late autumn sun.
“For having a smart mouth,” Nate said softly. “If you’re smart with me, I’m going to slap you again.”
Ewan shuddered. “Yeah.”
“You bit me,” Nate added. “If you do shit like that I’m going to hurt you. Is that what you want?”
“I want you to hurt me,” Ewan admitted, clutching his lunch in both hands.
“Good.” Nate crouched down in front of him, flattening a hand on Ewan’s thigh. “I can do that. You just have to help me work out the best way.”
Ewan nodded, his throat feeling tight and terrible.
“And you want me to fuck you.”
Ewan nodded again, glaring at his lunch, which had done nothing wrong.
“Hard and rough?” Nate’s hand slid up to Ewan’s hip, gripping him there. “Just use you until I’m done with you?”
“Yes,” Ewan admitted, lightheaded. God, he wanted just that.
“Are you going to beg me to let you come? I’m not going to make you hold back, but I can put a cage on you, lock your dick up for you and fuck you until you plead for it.”
Fuck. Ewan nodded, a short sharp jerk, and stuffed gyro into his mouth so he wouldn’t have to answer.
“Good.” Nate ran his hand up Ewan’s arm, to stroke up behind his jaw. “That’s good.” He paused. “So is that all Bianca was saying?”
It took him by surprise. Ewan swallowed his mouthful and looked Nate in the eye. “Are you sleeping with Jonathan Nash?”
Nate froze, his eyes wide. “Did Bianca say that?”
“She thinks it’s true. And I saw you with him, at Sakura-da. Were you on a date?”
Nate straightened, frowning. “Weren’t you on a date that night? Your clean-cut friend. Laurence?”
Oh. Ewan shrugged. “We broke up.”
“So you were together.” Nate winced. “The farmers market.”
“Sort of…not really. It’s complicated—it was complicated, but it’s over now so it doesn’t matter.”
“It doesn’t,” Nate agreed. “It’s your business. So long as whoever you’re dating doesn’t mind that we’re doing whatever we’re doing.”
The words took a moment to penetrate. Ewan froze, staring at him in shock. “What?”
“It’s only fair. I’m not going to help you cheat on someone.” He finished off his gyro, balling up the wrapping and lobbing it into a trash can. “It’s okay if you want to have boundaries. You can fuck your boyfriends. We’ll have barriered sex. Or if you want to take sex off the table when you’re seeing someone, that’s okay too. I’d miss kissing you,” he added smiling faintly. “I’d like to keep on doing that, but again, if you want.”
“You…don’t care if I have a boyfriend?” It was so completely unlike the usual savage possessiveness of the Doms Ewan had known that it didn’t make any sense. Sure, in theory he knew some people were like this, but…Nate?
“I care,” Nate corrected him. He wiped his hands on a moist towelette, careful around his nails. “I just don’t mind. If that’s what you want.”
Anger bloomed up in him, hot and heavy. Nate didn’t mind. What did that mean?
Did it—
“So you are fucking Jonathan Nash,” he said bitterly. They were together. Ewan was a bit of fun on the side. Of course.
“Not really. We’re not together,” Nate said calmly, but he’
d leant up against the railing and his hands were tightly wrapped around it, knuckles flushed white. “We’ve had sex. We used to have sex all the time. But we’re not a couple, if that’s what you’re asking.”
“I saw him,” Ewan said, feeling awkward. “He was flirting with someone from help desk.”
Nate didn’t look surprised. “That’s okay.”
“Are they—”
“It doesn’t matter what they are,” Nate said firmly. “It’s fine. Everyone involved is fine with it. You don’t have to worry.”
Was he worried? He didn’t know. God, he didn’t care.
“You don’t seem happy. Was there something else you wanted to ask me?”
Why don’t you want me all to yourself? But no, he didn’t want to know. Instead— “Are you going to fuck other people?” he asked. “Or, or play with them?”
“Do you want me not to?” Nate asked, but Ewan couldn’t take it.
“I don’t care who you play with, or who you fuck,” he said savagely.
“Well, I do,” Nate said. “You can sleep with whoever you want, but I don’t want you playing with anyone else. I don’t want someone else’s bad habits rubbing off on you.”
“But you’re okay with someone else just rubbing off on me?” Ewan asked, skeptical.
Nate shrugged. “If I’m not fucking you then I won’t stop you fucking anyone else. Unless it’s for disciplinary reasons. Are you okay with that?”
“I guess.” Ewan’s mouth felt thin and hard. “And you’re just going to—what? Fuck whoever you want? Play with whoever you want?”
“You just told me that you didn’t care. Should I assume that you lied to me?”
Ewan shuddered, and shook his head. “I don’t. Do what you like. With who you like.”
“Or,” Nate said, brushing his fingers through Ewan’s hair, “we can not do it that way. If you want.”
“What do you mean?”
“I mean,” Nate said, smiling all the way to the crinkles in the corners of his eyes, “If you want we can keep it between us. Just you and me, for play. And sex. Would you like that?”
Ewan didn’t know. “Let me think about it.”
“Okay.”
There was a long pause. Ewan finished his lunch and concentrated on folding the wrapper up so it didn’t drip.
“I have been playing with someone else,” Nate said suddenly. He was frowning, his arms folded over his chest. “In a way.”
It was like being gutted. Ewan hunched over, hiding his face. “In what way?”
“I helped out a friend with his sub,” Nate said, weirdly detached, as if this was nothing, just an aside. Nothing important. “He wanted to play out that kind of scene. He invited me to show his boy a good time. Does that bother you?”
“One time?” Ewan asked.
“Twice.”
“Did you fuck him?”
“The sub? Yes.”
Ewan swallowed, feeling his skin all shivery points of misery. “Did you flog him?”
“No. I caned him, though. Nice neat cuts. We cuffed him to a spanking bench and took turns fucking him. He didn’t know it was me. He didn’t know, at first, that there was anyone there but his Dom.”
Ewan shuddered, clutching his arms. “I don’t care,” he lied. Fuck, he cared. He shouldn’t. He shouldn’t have cared at all. Nate was being honest in what he was offering and Ewan…Ewan had no idea what he wanted anyway.
“Do you want to go on a date this weekend?” Nate asked, cutting into his thoughts.
It seemed to come out of nowhere. “You already asked me that.”
“No, I mean a date.” Nate stroked Ewan’s hair and Ewan tried very hard not to lean into it like a cat. “Like, I pick you up and take you out and then I take you home, and kiss you goodnight.”
Ewan stared up at him. “Like a vanilla date?”
“Sure.” He smiled. It looked so real.
“Why?”
“Because. I want to take you on a date. You can say no. It’s fine.”
Ewan tried to find the space in him to scoff at this but there was none. “What if someone sees us?” he demanded. “Isn’t that weird?”
“Not if we tell them we’re on a date,” Nate said, sounding reasonable but the words were just crazy. “It’s not like we have anything to hide.”
Ewan gaped at him. Nate wanted to date him. “This isn’t going to be antiquing, is it?” he demanded, feeling defensive.
“Not unless you’re keen,” Nate told him, petting him carefully, like he was trying to quiet a wild animal.
Ewan shuddered under his hand. A date. A vanilla date. With Nate. It sounded terrible.
And wonderful.
“Okay,” he said, “we can do that.”
It might be fun, right?
Chapter 3
Of course, nothing ever worked out the way it was supposed to.
Nate put on his best, ‘Jack, what have you done?’ face and swung into Jack’s office. Jack had the gall to look at him as if to say ‘What?’ so Nate folded his arms, cocking an eyebrow in accusation. “We’re having a tech demo?”
There was a moment in which Jack clearly didn’t know if he should bluster his way through it or just take it on the chest. He settled for somewhere in between, leaning casually back in his chair. “It’s time to show off the Doberman alpha.”
Doberman was the latest version of what had originally been Akita Defender—the current release was Corgi: Defender 3.4.6 and Doberman was so raw it was still mooing. “Uh, it’s barely even alpha. Why do we need to show it off?”
“Because it keeps us relevant in the industry.”
This was true, but in Nate’s opinion irrelevant when they didn’t have an alpha to show. “It’s not ready. Why not just release something on the channel?” A video would put the pressure back on Marketing and Janet would destroy him when she found out, but Nate had plans, dammit, and those plans couldn’t happen if he was working the next three weekends to make Jack’s ego…wait. What was this about?
“Sure,” Jack said, far too smoothly, “but an event is also a mixer. We have clients, and I’d like to keep them happy.”
Because it wasn’t about the publicity, it was about the visibility. Not for the company. Nate sunk into a chair, knowing he was going to lose this one already. “You want to take Channon,” he said.
Jack didn’t look even a little caught out. “Of course I’ll take Channon. Who else would I take?”
“You want to show him off,” Nate insisted, giving him a, ‘Jonathan Nash I am on to you’ look, “so you’re manufacturing a tech demo. Is he even out?”
“He told his mother,” Jack said, which wasn’t even an answer.
Oh, for fuck’s sake. Nate rolled his eyes, unable to keep his sarcasm from showing. “Ri-ight. So maybe you need to have a talk to him before you out him to everyone in the industry.”
Jack paused, as if he was actually thinking that over. Then— “I was really looking forward to getting him into a nice suit,” he said, leaning his chin in his hand.
Nate snorted. It was just typical Jack. “Getting him out of it, you mean. Listen, just take him out to dinner somewhere nice. Ask him if he’d like to be your date to a tech demo. If he’s nervous, don’t push him. He’ll come out when he’s ready. And Jack?” Nate gave him a firm look, because Jack needed to hear this. “Don’t phrase it like a challenge. If he doesn’t want to be out then he shouldn’t do it just to impress you. Remember college.”
Jack winced expressively, clearly remembering the same things. “I drank enough in college that I should legally be allowed to forget.” But then he sighed. “Fine, fine. I’ll ask him.”
“Great.” Nate hesitated, watching him. “So. How is Channon?”
“Didn’t you have lunch with him yesterday?” Was that…Jack sounded jealous, and Nate couldn’t help grinning at him.
“Oh, yeah. It was a very intimate pizza party with the thirty members of his team. We discussed pineapple
as a pizza topping. Your boy’s in favor, if you didn’t know. You should keep an eye on that.”
Jack laughed, leaning back in his chair. “Of course that offends you.”
“Pizza is very serious business,” Nate said, because it was true, and they both knew.
It made Jack smile. “I’ll talk to him,” he said. “I won’t throw him into the shark tank without at least asking first.”
“Good. So. I guess I can’t talk you out of that tech demo, while I’m here?”
“No,” Jack said, but then he smirked. “You’ve got three weeks. Make them count.”
“You owe my team a bonus,” Nate shot back, and Jack grinned.
“Done! Providing the demo goes adequately.”
“Oh, it’s going to be great,” Nate promised, knowing he’d make sure of it himself, if nothing else.
But, of course, it meant rain-checking his date with Ewan.
Ewan, being Ewan, would almost certainly be a little shit about it. Nate wondered if the best way to head off melodrama was with more melodrama, and called a team meeting.
Five minutes before it started he texted Ewan.
Heads up! I’m not going to be able to take you out this weekend, and I’m about to spend half an hour explaining why to the entire team.
He got back, !!! ?? >:(
And then he spent half an hour explaining to the team why the next three weeks were going to suck.
⁂
It sounded like a brush-off. Ewan tamped down on the disappointment he didn’t want to admit to. It was just a date, nothing special. A vanilla date, not even something to get excited about.
And then Nate said the words, “Surprise tech demo,” and everyone groaned out loud the way Ewan wanted to.
Of course the marketing team would surprise them with a tech demo instead of planning it in advance. Of course they’d pull this shit.
Nate held up a hand and waited for silence. “Yeah, I know, right? But this is something that’s going to be good for our public profile and good for customer relations, and we’ve got three weeks to pull something together that’s demo worthy. That’s plenty of time.”
It was only marginally mollifying. Ewan could feel unpaid overtime lurking in the wings, and that was just great.
