Aled: Am I close?
Gabriel let out a long, shuddering breath.
Me: Not fucking close enough WHEN YOU’RE IN CORNWALL, YOU ARSE.
Aled: That’s no way to talk to your betters.
Me: What you going to do, punish me?
There was a long pause. The shower shut off in the bathroom. Gabriel fidgeted on the bed, hoping Chris would stay out for a little longer, just in case Aled gave him something to work with. Sometimes, Aled just laughed at his indignation. And sometimes, he’d give Kevin’s sadism a run for its money. Gabriel wasn’t sure he wanted it that violent, but he wanted something.
Aled: See how I feel. There’s a toy in your bag if you want it though.
Gabriel crawled to the end of the bed, hoping for a ribbed dildo or his bullet vibrator, and expecting a chastity belt. Chastity belts were like an insult to his sex drive—and a cattle prod to his submission. He hated them and loved them in equal measure. And Aled had an insulting sense of humour sometimes.
“Holy fuck.”
The door opened.
“Do you want break—what the fuck is that?”
Gabriel laughed, turning Aled’s present over in his hands. It was rather obvious what it was. A massive dildo, complete with balls and a proper fucking function. It was an absolute monster, and originally a Christmas present from Kevin. He’d only used it once or twice, and its size and vibration were a fast ticket to subspace.
“It’s a sex toy.”
“Thanks for that.” Chris pulled a face. “I’ll, um. Leave you to it. Sorry.”
“Sorry?” Gabriel caught his wrist. “Don’t be. I like waking up like that. It just—you know, I get my own itch afterwards and I asked Aled if he’d be in the mood to abuse me later and he said he’d packed a toy.”
“That’s not a toy. It’s a weapon. How does it even fit?”
“With difficulty. That’s why it’s one of the abuse toys. It hurts like hell and it’s so good.”
He climbed off the bed and skirted around to the bathroom, still in his T-shirt and nothing else. Why bother putting boxers back on? He had every intention of putting this monster to use and paralysing his brain for a while longer.
To his surprise, Chris followed.
“So…what do you do with it?”
“Depends how far you want to go,” Gabriel said. “Once it’s fully seated, these two rabbit ears jack you off while it vibrates. And if you attach it to a solid surface, it has a pump action so it can fuck you. You can even put water—or whatever—in the balls and if you squeeze it right when it’s in you, it’ll come.”
Chris blinked. “Does it stop after?”
“Stop what?”
“Fucking.”
“Nope!” Gabriel said gleefully.
“No wonder you like it,” Chris said, leaning in the doorway as Gabriel washed the toy. “You, uh. You want to borrow one of the kitchen chairs? I have to finish painting the hall today, so…”
Gabriel’s heart picked up a few paces. Get fucked in the kitchen while Chris worked in the next room?
“Please. Do you—can I—”
How the hell did he even ask? He’d never expected this. Not at Chris’ house. Not in Chris’ company. Chris barely slept with him vanilla-style, never mind whipped out toys and watched from the next room. The one and only time they’d played, Aled had somehow bewitched Chris into joining in and they’d brutally spit-roasted Gabriel between them.
Was Aled working some kind of voodoo all the way from St Ives?
“Water?” he croaked eventually around a dry mouth and clumsy tongue.
“Tiled floor.”
Gabriel’s mouth went dry, and the dildo slipped easily from his grip when Chris took it and turned it over to examine the balls. He unfolded the little rubber tube from between them as nonchalantly as if he were checking a car engine.
“You fill it up through this tube?”
“Yeah.”
“Huh.”
He walked off with it. Gabriel gawped. Chris never played. He didn’t do toys. The nearest he’d got to playing was when Gabriel had once sent him a text bitching about Aled’s chastity belt fetish, and Chris had forwarded it to the man himself. That was it. He didn’t even like handling Gabriel’s toys.
Was he seriously about to do this?
Gabriel trailed into the kitchen after him, staring as Chris suctioned the base to a hard kitchen chair. The cock—an obscene python of a dick that was more like being fucked with a forearm—jutted up from the wood. Dry. Bulging balls. Chris tied off the tube and stood back.
“All yours,” he said.
Then he walked out. Gabriel sighed, a little disappointed, but then shook himself. It was already way more than he’d expected. He should be grateful.
He was grateful for the fuck, at least. His cunt was still a little loose, and he got the first three inches in before the girth started to hurt. Inch by inch, he fought his way down until he could finally cup the swollen testicles between his thighs. There, he paused. Tipped his head back to simply breathe. Fuck, he felt so damn full. If he breathed too deep, he swore he could feel the bastard thing pressing against all his organs. Everything ached—including his swollen cock, caught between the rabbit ears.
“Hold up.”
Chris’ toolkit banged on the table. Something tore. Gabriel yelped as he was blindfolded with tape. First one ankle then the other was tied to a chair leg. Then his arms to the back. Then his waist, loose enough to ride but tight enough to prevent him lifting off the cock tearing him open. Two strips over each breast, like a vest holding him into a rollercoaster, but pinching his bare nipples between the edges. In a matter of moments, he was trapped—and the toy wasn’t dry anymore.
Then Chris put his boot on the rim of the chair between Gabriel’s knees, and pushed.
With a deafening squeal, Gabriel was shoved away from the table until his chair hit the sink. He could sense Chris fiddling around rather than hear him. Under the arousal flooding his senses—he was about to get brutally fucked while strapped down so he could barely move, and his asexual, sex-shy boyfriend had put him there—Gabriel managed to conjure up a few scattered questions.
“W-what are you doing?”
“Setting up a drain.”
“What?”
“There.” Something sloshed. “There’s about four pints of water that’s going to drain into that toy. You’re going to milk the lot.”
“Oh holy fuck,” Gabriel breathed. His cock pulsed violently. “Fuck-fuck-fuck—”
“Or I’ll tell Aled you’ve been misbehaving.”
Then he switched it on.
And Gabriel came.
He was so turned on by Chris’ display of sadism that one thrust was all it took. And he was fucked through it. And the ears kept rubbing, and the tape hurt his wrists, and he couldn’t see, and—
It took two climaxes before he scraped together enough sense to start fucking it back. Then the filthy rush of it fucking water out of him scattered his senses and—and—
Time slid away.
The floor was wet under his feet.
Chris calling him loud and taping his mouth shut. Gabriel had a feeling that came later, but he wasn’t sure. He wasn’t—
The bulging balls shuddering between his thighs.
Water.
A tide of orgasms, one after another until he cried.
Time—sliiiiiding…
Darkness.
Voices.
The strips coming away from his face.
Aled’s smile. Aled’s cock in his mouth. Aled’s cum sliding down his throat as more water flushed out his cunt.
Emptiness.
Aled’s car. Darkness. The radio on low. The quiet hum of the engine. A clicking indicator. Tape-sore skin, freed. Fluffy pyjama bottoms and a dressing gown. Warmth. Safety.
An afterglow like the surface of the fucking sun.
“What—what happened?” Gabriel croaked.
“You spent about h
alf the day spaced out,” Aled said. “How you feeling?”
Tired, sore, blissful—
“Amazing.”
Aled chuckled. His hand was warm where it squeezed Gabriel’s wrist.
“You were so out of it, Chris filmed you and sent it to me asking if he should be worried.”
Gabriel giggled like a drunk, curling up even smaller in the dressing gown. It wasn’t his, and hung far too big on him. The extra layers were comforting. The best aftercare involved cuddles, but this was a very nice, and very close, second option.
“He should be worried if he doesn’t do it again,” he mumbled sleepily.
Aled chuckled.
“Go back to sleep,” he said. “We just reached Birmingham. Plenty of time to go.”
“Mm. Did you fuck my mouth?”
“Yep.”
“Was I good?”
“Nope. Total mess. Looked bloody gorgeous, though. That thing fucked you six ways to Sunday.”
No kidding.
“Did I get all the water?”
“Nope.”
He—and the gaping exhaustion inside him—cringed.
“When we get home, you can practice your new milking technique on my cock instead of a toy,” Aled said. “So get some rest, because that’s happening whether you’re tired or not. And I won’t be tying you up so some chair will help you out.”
Gabriel groaned in relief. Thank God. Tired or not, at least Aled wasn’t hung like a machine. And—
“But it’ll be your arse.”
Oh, fuck.
Chapter Six
Chris had to mop the kitchen floor once Gabriel left.
Truth be told, he was a little bit proud of himself. Six months ago, there was no way he would have played with Gabriel like that. Even the idea of getting so sexually involved—even though he had barely touched him—had been abhorrent and made his stomach turn. A year ago, he’d come out in a sweat just trying to have sex with him. Vanilla sex, at that. No toys, no torture, nothing like that.
But that had been—
Fun, Chris decided. It had been fun. For the first time, he could see why Aled liked tormenting Gabriel.
He cleaned up and finished the painting before tidying that away too and heading out into the front garden to start on mending the squeaky gate. It was already dark, but the light from the front windows gave him enough to work with. And the easy job gave his mind something to do.
Like think about Gabriel’s suggestion.
Ultimately, Chris didn’t want to keep the bungalow. There were too many ghosts, too many reminders of growing up awkward, ashamed of himself and never quite fitting. He didn’t feel like that with Aled and Gabriel. For the first time, he felt comfortable in what he was, and accepted for who he was. If they judged him at all, it was a friendly sort of banter that didn’t sting like his mum’s quiet watchfulness or Tim’s barbed jokes. He wanted to feel like that all the time, not haunted by the questioning glances from the past.
He wasn’t keen on sex. He’d never seen someone he wanted to sleep with. So what?
Finally, the so what felt genuine.
And while Gabriel’s suggestion of moving somewhere with him and Aled had initially been terrifying—was he meant to move in, would Aled be up for that, what if they fought or fell apart or fell out of love—Chris’ brain started to turn the scenario around as he replaced the rusty hinges. It wasn’t just about moving nearer to them.
It was also a suggestion of moving away from Nailsea.
Living elsewhere, in itself, wasn’t remotely odd. Chris had lived for short spells all over the place—a bedsit in Bristol, a flatshare in Portishead, the rented room in Weston-Super-Mare that he’d hated, countless army bases while he’d been serving—but the gravity of family and familiarity had always brought him back here. It was the only place he had if there was a gap between living arrangements. It was where he’d been dumped when he’d dropped out of the army in the wake of Tim’s death. It was the safety net he’d relied on once Gabriel—thankfully inevitably—recovered and he wasn’t needed up north anymore.
But Nailsea had never felt good for him.
He would always be Karen’s odd young’un. Tim’s shadow. He’d always be that awkward kid from school who never had a girlfriend, who was too quiet, who was up to something, who was a bit funny, like. He’d been bullied for being gay even when he wasn’t, and he knew there’d been gossip the first time he’d been seen with Gabriel, who was obviously gay. Mum had called. Worrying. Fretting. What wasn’t he telling her?
‘People are talking.’
Somewhere this small, people were always talking. And Chris had a long history to talk about. From the father who’d never existed to the potential of being the only gay in a sometimes not-entirely-quietly homophobic village, there’d always been something to earn him funny looks. And in Nailsea, he was never going to get away from it. It would never be forgotten.
Somewhere else, he could shed all that baggage.
He wasn’t sure he was up for living in the same house as Aled and Gabriel again—not unless it was a much bigger house—but somewhere else, near them. He’d have an instant social circle when he wanted to hang out with people. He and Gabriel had a lot in common, but he’d learned after Gabriel’s accident that he got along surprisingly well with Aled, too. And Aled came part and parcel with some friends in St Ives that he’d heard good things about. He could build a new life quickly if it was near them.
A new life where he started out as Gabriel’s boyfriend and Aled’s mate. Where the gossip would revolve around that relationship, and not all the history that had come before it. Where his hard looks could well fit to a hard personality, not the shy, stuttering, awkward little boy who’d trailed around in Tim’s long, long shadow.
Sitting back on his heels, bottom hinge complete, Chris glanced up the lane and watched curtains twitch as nosy pensioners with chronic insomnia spied on Karen Wheeler’s strange son. ‘He’ll end up in the papers one day,’ they used to tell each other. ‘He’ll do something silly.’
Chris had never figured out if the silly was supposed to be a murder or a suicide.
There’d be none of that in Newquay.
He headed back inside, filled up Noodle’s dish to entice him into the house then locked up and stopped in the kitchen to heat up some leftover vegetarian chilli. His thoughts ran in circles as well as the bowl in the microwave, and he took it to bed so he could do some work on his laptop rather than eating in the still-damp kitchen. Work like job hunting. Work like flatshare prices. Work like average rents.
If he went to Devon or Cornwall, he’d need to find a new job—but here, the army and Chris’ own lack of ambition helped. Aled would be thinking about prestige and promotions, but Chris was happy stacking shelves on minimum wage. He just needed to pay his bills. That was all. Everything else could come later.
So he went hunting for garages that might need apprentices, for supermarkets with a lack of till monkeys, for winter work in sorting offices to counteract the summer tourism season. He could work all summer selling ice creams to kids, then shut himself away in post rooms all winter separating Christmas presents into the correct piles. Work was work was work.
Because, outside of it, he could go biking with Gabriel every weekend, and without expensive train tickets to get there. He could cuddle up in bed more often, and turn the heating down a bit to counteract Gabriel’s radiator of a body. Two-for-one cinema tickets beckoned.
Gabriel had hinted they’d not be apart for too long once Chris had packed up and come home again after his stint as a nurse up north, but Chris hadn’t really taken him all that seriously. It had been wishful thinking at the time. Separating Aled from Yorkshire was like Somerset without the cider. It didn’t work. It wasn’t going to happen. Not really.
But now—
He remembered the way Aled had screeched away at midnight, desperate to get to St Ives to see his sister and unwilling to stop for as much as a drink, a snack
and a brief hello. Unwilling to add half an hour to his journey. Unwilling to lose a minute more.
Now, Chris could see a real possibility in front of him.
* * * *
On Tuesday afternoon, he called Gabriel on the way to work.
Chris worked at a garage, but not actually fixing any of the cars. He dealt with the customers. Answered the phone. Took payments. Booked appointments. All that shit stuff. It was run by a former flatmate’s brother, who hated people even more than Chris had, and had instantly offered him money to take that particular aspect of the garage off his hands. It sucked, but it was slightly more than the minimum wage, and Ryan wasn’t a prick like Chris’ last boss. And it was a short, pleasant walk from Nailsea into Backwell, under the railway bridge and around the corner.
So he called Gabriel as he shut the front door of Mum’s bungalow, and had a cheery hello before he’d opened the repaired gate.
“So I was thinking about your whole moving plot,” he said.
“That was fast,” Gabriel replied.
“How—how confident are you that Aled’s going to be up for it?”
“Pretty sure,” Gabriel said. “But you know Aled. You have to wait for him to come to his own conclusions. Telling him what they are in advance gets you absolutely nowhere.”
Chris hummed.
“Why?”
“I like the idea,” Chris admitted. “I think—I think I’m going to sell up and leave Nailsea anyway. Eventually. But, um. I’ll wait. Until you know where you’re going to go. And then maybe I could get somewhere nearby.”
He didn’t hold out any hope of being able to buy outright and live without any rent or mortgage like he could in Mum’s house, but that was nothing new. He’d been house-sharing right up until her illness had progressed to the final stages, when he’d moved back in to look after her in the last days. He didn’t mind company. It was better than the aching silence of an empty house. And renting in Exeter or St Ives or Falmouth or somewhere down in that corner of the world wasn’t going to be much different from renting in Bristol.
The Beginning Page 4
