Gus smirked. “Oh yeah?”
“Yeah.”
“So it’s your turn then?”
“My turn to what?”
In answer, Gus kissed me, hungry and deep, then he drew me away from the wall and to a door I hadn’t known existed. It led to the kitchen. How I hadn’t noticed it before now, I had no idea. Maybe I’d assumed it was a cupboard. Whatever. With Gus’s mouth on mine, I didn’t give a shit.
He dragged me upstairs. The blackout curtains were still drawn in his room, blocking out the day. It seemed fitting for all the alarm bells I’d been ignoring since I’d taken to sleeping in Gus’s bed and sticking my tongue in his mouth.
I let him throw me on the bed. The impact jarred my shoulder, but for once he didn’t seem to notice, and I was glad of it. There was nothing hot about being the dude who winced and groaned all the time.
Gus took his T-shirt off. His broad chest, shiny with sweat from the ride home, quieted my mind of much else other than the fact that my dick had already picked up where we’d left off at the lake. I licked my lips. He smirk grew, and he unbuttoned his shorts.
They fell to the floor. Fuck knew where his underwear had gone. He was naked again, and I couldn’t fucking breathe.
He came to the edge of the bed and grabbed my legs, tugging me towards him like a rag doll.
I laughed, and it was like the sun came out in his dark eyes.
He stole my jeans and flung them somewhere over his shoulder. “I like it when you laugh. It’s the hottest thing ever.”
“For real?”
“For real. You don’t do it enough.”
“Maybe you’re not funny enough.”
“I should rip more of your clothes off and find out.”
“Don’t let me stop you.”
I couldn’t identify when it had become so easy for us to talk like this. As if tearing each other’s clothes off was something we’d done our entire lives. That it was normal, and not bogged down in a black cloud of baggage, doubts, and complication. His bare skin touched mine. We slid together, roaming hands, entwined legs, and short sharp breaths, and a desperation rose in me that I’d never felt before.
Gus laid me on my back. He had his hand wrapped around my cock, pumping slow and tight, making my eyes roll. “I want to do something to you,” he said. “Will you let me?”
“Depends what it is.”
“I want to touch you.”
“Where?”
He grinned. “Everywhere.”
I got the picture, and I sucked in a nervous breath. I’d let other people do that stuff, but with Gus, everything felt brand new. I trusted him, though. So I nodded and scooted further back on the bed. “Do what you like.”
Gus leant over me to his bedside table. He rummaged around and came up with an unopened bottle of lube. I didn’t look at it, and I closed my brain off to the sound of him popping the cap. I wondered when would be the right time to tell him the last bloke to come at me with a bottle of KY had—unintentionally—really fucking hurt me. Or if I even needed to tell him, because there was no way he’d ever be that clumsy with his big, work-hardened hands.
“Hey.” Gus gripped my chin, forcing me to look at him. “Stay with me, okay? I’m not going to hurt you.”
How did he know? I swallowed thickly. “I’m not going anywhere.”
“Good.” He smoothed lube between his palms and stretched his tall frame out beside me. “Because you’re gonna like this, I promise.”
I didn’t doubt him. Only myself. But as he moved his slick hands down my body, I forgot my fears. Gus worked my cock with one hand, while the other moved lower. He took me apart with his gentle, probing touch, and I came with a ragged groan, and a shudder that gave me whiplash.
It took a while for me to come back. For who-the-hell-knew how long, I hid in Gus’s chest, shivering while he stroked my back, but I wasn’t cold. Never was when I was with him. I just loved his fucking touch, man, and I wasn’t giving it up in a hurry. Eventually, though, it belatedly occurred to me that we were covered in dirt and gritty sand from the lake, and now it was all over Gus’s bed.
I shifted away from him, and something else seemed to shift too, as perspective returned to me. I wanted to kiss him. To thank him for making me feel so damn good. But I didn’t kiss him. Instead, I wrapped my fingers around his wrist and squeezed. “We need to stop doing this.”
In the darkness, Gus sighed. “I know.”
Chapter Sixteen
Gus
Billy stopped sleeping in my room. It was for the best, for both of us, but I missed him. And I hadn’t washed my sheets yet. Each night I went to bed alone, I convinced myself I could smell him, but in reality, I couldn’t even smell myself as I’d taken to showering twelve times a day to calm myself down.
I was so hot for him, and yet I knew I couldn’t have him. That just one more night with him, one more kiss, would push us so far into a vortex of angst that we’d lose the easy friendship we’d started with forever.
If you could call it friendship. I’d never spent years clinging to a drunken kiss from any of my other friends, and I’d kissed a fair few of them. More. And still, no one had ever consumed me like Billy did. Working with him was torture, especially as, in typical English fashion, autumn turned out to be warmer than summer had been. T-shirts became optional extras. It was almost law that they were gone by lunchtime, and as Billy grew stronger by the day, and his lean muscles filled out, my ability to deal
