Lifting my mobile off the bedside table, I clicked a button to make the screen light up, pleased when the LCD glow in the curtained murk of the room didn’t make me wince in agony.
Lunchtime. Much earlier than I’d thought. My sleep-fogged mind had had its perception of time messed with as well.
Footsteps tapped up the stairs, the mustn’t-thud-too-loudly ones of a man trying not to disturb me. But then, why come home at all? Unless he’d forgotten something, and that wasn’t like Gary, so maybe Steven—
Two short raps at my door before it creaked open. Again, I lifted my head off the pillow, muttering, “Fuck, “ as I did so.
“Still sore?” Steven grinned, and I let myself drop back again. Just the person I wanted to see. Just the person I didn’t want to see.
“Yeah.” The boner from earlier had gone down, and without any five-fingered help from me. I hadn’t fancied lying in my own spunk and getting out of bed again to go get cleaned up was more than my fucked-up sense of balance could have coped with. So I’d killed the desire for orgasm with a little magic pill, a few hours’ broken sleep and the promise to myself that I’d crack one off as soon as I was able to stand in the shower without the spray making me wince.
“Came back to see how you were.” The door clicked shut again, with Steven on this side of it.
“Fine.”
“Liar. Are you really?”
“No.”
“How bad is it?”
“Still thumping a bit. Not as sharp as it could be.”
“Medication’s working, then?”
“Think so.” I ran a hand through my hair and gave the matter some thought. A monumental operation given how slow-to-react my brain was when dealing with reason and logic. “You didn’t have to come home to check up on me.”
“No. I didn’t have to.” He approached the bed but not to sit on or crouch by the near side.
The mattress dipped behind me and my stomach failed to turn over. A good sign.
Pained and sluggish, but no longer in danger of throwing up. The drugs were working and chances were I’d feel human before dinner this evening. If I managed to eat anything, that was.
“Just felt like checking up on you.”
“You sound as if you’re a lot better yourself.”
“Yeah. I am.” Twin thuds, muted as he—I guessed—kicked his shoes off onto the carpet. The mattress dipped again as his weight shifted and he curled himself against my back, above the duvet. His weight and presence warmed me without being overbearing and I let myself relax against him. “Is this all right?” he asked, slipping his arm around my waist, probably not wanting to cause me any discomfort in what he imagined was my delicate state.
I wanted to say no. Blame it on feeling under the weather, rather than my reluctance to get close to anyone. But the dying migraine and victorious medication must have been playing with my common sense too. “Yeah.”
“Seems like I’ve recovered faster than you have.”
“I told you. Hangovers fade. Migraines just get worse unless you catch ‘em quick enough.”
“Kill it with medication?” He spoke in a whisper, which almost made me laugh. He’d never be a nurse. He looked too devilish to be a ministering angel.
“Think I just about managed it. Still really dozy though. Feel spaced out.”
“Damn.” Steven tutted, a low click very close behind my ear. If he lay any closer I’d be able to feel his breath on the back of my neck.
The thought made me shudder.
“Better not take advantage of you,” he went on, still quiet, but with laughter dancing at the edges of his voice now.
“Got a funny way of checking up on me, Steven.”
“I’ve told you before, Christopher. A Kenton hand-job. Stuff of legend. It worked before.”
“God damn it, you’re all heart.”
“Tell me you didn’t feel better after that time I made you come.”
Just like that, I was hard again. The manipulative bastard. God, I loved it. “All these years I’ve been relying on painkillers, caffeine and bed rest.”
“That’s where you’ve been going wrong.”
“I didn’t think you got Kenton hand-jobs on the National Health S—” The rest of whatever I’d been about to say—probably nothing important—caught in my throat. He hadn’t even touched me yet but his arm lifting off my waist was enough to make me jump.
“Carry on. Don’t let me stop you.”
“How am I supposed to speak when I don’t know what you’re going to do next?”
“I think you know very well.” Though he’d just come in from outside, his hand was nevertheless warm on my back. I still shivered, though, when he got to my waist. Hipbone.
Waistband. “I didn’t just come back to check up on you.”
“No?”
“Someone’s been thinking about me.”
“What makes you think that’s for you?”
“Because you’ve been too sleepy to watch your Supernatural DVDs. Gotta be for me.”
Steven wrapped his hand around my cock and stroked slowly, not even bothering to push my shorts out of the way. He wasn’t trying to make me come. Not yet. Just touching me.
“Oh God.” I didn’t even have to tell my hips to move, they just automatically pushed against his grip, forcing my cock through it. “I shouldn’t…”
“What?”
“I shouldn’t feel like this.” I could have laughed. “You’re taking advantage of an invalid.”
“Want me to stop?”
“Fuck no.”
“Turn over then.”
“Steven, just—don’t…” How the fuck did he do this to me? Get inside my head, make me hard without even being in the room, then instantly resurrect my not-yet-I’m-too-fragile boner as soon as he laid his hand on me?
“Just turn the fuck over and touch me, will you?”
It wasn’t a polite request. I followed orders by turning over—gingerly—and resettling myself, waiting for him to get his hand on my cock again.
He frowned in obvious concentration.
“Don’t look at me,” I told him. “I feel dog-rough.”
“You look okay to me. Well,
