Lucky

  Praise for Garrett Leigh

  “Emotional and brilliant…”

  ALL ABOUT ROMANCE

  “…tastefully erotic…more smart than smutty…”

  PUBLISHERS WEEKLY

  “Powerful and compelling…”

  FOREWORD REVIEWS

  Lucky

  Garrett Leigh

  Copyright © 2018 by Garrett Leigh

  All rights reserved.

  No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without written permission from the author, except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.

  Cover Art: Garrett Leigh @ blackjazzdesign.com

  Editing: Victoria Milne

  Proofing: Con Riley & Victoria Milne

  Contents

  Author’s Note

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Epilogue

  PATREON

  CASH — Excerpt

  BETWEEN GHOSTS — Excerpt

  DREAM — Excerpt

  Acknowledgments

  About Garrett Leigh

  Also by Garrett Leigh

  For my foxes, as ever, with love

  Author’s Note

  Throughout the book, you will see Lucky mentioning drone or bubble when he refers to getting high. This drug is mephedrone, which was—staggeringly—legal in the UK until so-called “legal highs” were recently criminalised. Mephedrone is far more common in the UK than crystal meth, which international readers may be more familiar with. In fact, crystal meth is pretty tough to come by over here, so it’s far more realistic that Lucky would use mephedrone instead.

  One

  Dom

  “In point two miles, the destination is on your left.”

  I shuddered; excitement and dread battled for space in my screwed-up soul. This fucking place. There was something about downtown Dalston I could never escape, even when months and months passed between visits. Maybe it was the smell—the Turkish restaurants, and the grotty meat market. Sizzling chargrilled lamb mixed with raw chicken flesh that was well past its best.

  Or perhaps it was the haze that descended on me every time I cruised the streets, searching out an address I’d tapped into my GPS, cut and pasted from Grindr. The brutal tunnel vision that wouldn’t lift until I’d paid someone to drain me dry.

  Yeah, that’s right. ’Cause it wasn’t enough to chase down a stranger on a hook-up app, I was going to pay that motherfucker too—for his time, his silence…for the privilege of indulgence.

  I rolled down my blacked-out window and another shiver passed through me. Indulgence. Something else I couldn’t seem to escape. In my world, it was a lifestyle, a given…even now, when every part of me, except my dick, was screaming at me to turn my souped-up wank-mobile round and go home.

  But I didn’t go home. I squinted at the numbers and names on the blocks of flats and parked my car in the street next to the one I wanted, ’cause I was a fucking ninja at this shit, and knew by now to keep hook ups as far away from my car as humanly possible.

  “Nice wheels. You some kind of billionaire?”

  I shivered again at the memory. Not quite, but the attention was dangerous, so I avoided it…like I avoided everything else.

  Dickhead.

  I locked my car and took the long way back to the nondescript block of flats I needed. Crossed the road a few times. Lingered outside a dodgy chicken shop and pretended to talk native on the phone.

  Fucking charade. But it calmed my nerves. Like putting on a show for the people around me who couldn’t give two shits what I was doing in their postcode could make everything right.

  The block of flats was dodgier than I’d expected. My hook up—LCK£_98—buzzed me inside, and I jogged up the grimy stairs to the type of landing I hadn’t seen since my mum sold her Thetford council place for big bucks a decade ago. Back then places like this had been home. Now it felt like I’d been dropped on the moon.

  I wandered the corridor until I came to a grubby front door. There were no numbers on it, but powers of deduction led me to believe it was the right one.

  That and the fact that it was on the latch—left open for any old closeted queer to stroll in.

  I shut the door behind me, hard enough to announce my arrival, and hopefully convince whoever was behind that profile picture that I wasn’t a fucking target. I’d survived a dozen Grindr encounters, but rocking up at some rando’s house didn’t get any easier.

  Footsteps sounded from within the flat, and nerves started a new rave in my stomach. I glanced at the stained walls and broken floorboards. By now I’d had my dick sucked in worse places, but the vibe tickling my belly right now was ambiguous enough to kick-start my already-thumping heart.

  “Wow. You’re not what I was expecting.”

  I jumped and whirled around to face a doorway I hadn’t noticed to my left. Blinked. And did that shit all over again. Fucking hell. Are you kidding me? LCK£_98’s profile picture had been a pale, slim torso, and in our private message exchange he’d sent me a snap of his full lips pressed together in a teasing pout, but there’d been nothing else to giveaway the streak of fae-like beauty that stood before me now. Dark skinny jeans clung to his long legs, and a ripped vest hung from his slender frame, showing swathes of milky skin, all set off by piercing blue eyes, a ton of weathered leather bracelets, and sandy hair tied into a messy knot at the nape of his neck.

  Long hair was my kryptonite. Damn. Did I dream him?

  “Okay…so you’re not a talker?” The young man leaned on the doorframe and twirled an escaped lock of hair around an elegant finger. “That suits me. Do you want to come in, or do this in the hallway?”

  “What?”

  “You’re here for a blowjob, right? We said fifty quid, but looking at your flashy skids I might have to raise my prices.”

  Reality kicked me in the nuts, clawing me back from wherever my renegade imagination had been about to take us. I dug deep for my apathetic hook-up mask and plastered it on my face. “Charge me whatever. I don’t care.”

  “Definitely rich then.”

  “Does it matter?”

  “Not to me. I ain’t gonna rob you, mate.”

  I ran my gaze over his slight frame again and sneered a little. “I’m not worried about that.”

  “Then you’re an idiot. Now, are you coming through, or getting your dick out right here?”

  Getting sucked off in the dilapidated hallway didn’t ring my bell, so I followed him through the door he’d emerged from into a bedroom far cleaner than anywhere I’d seen since I’d got out of my car. There wasn’t much to it—a bed, a chair, and an artfully placed mirror—but the normality of it eased some tension, even if the soft light from the single lamp drove me to pull my baseball cap further down my face.

  “Relax.” The young man appeared in front of me, close enough that I could smell the cigarettes he’d clearly tried to mask with toothpaste. “You can keep your hat on for a blowie, you know.”

  “Thanks,” I said dryly. “You want me to pay you first?”

  “Obviously. Seventy-five, wasn�
��t it?”

  I rolled my eyes. This kid was good, but I was too intrigued by him to haggle. I pulled a folded bundle of notes from my back pocket and passed him two fifties. “Call it a hundred and skip the small talk. Is there anyone else here?”

  “No. I’m all alone, if you were thinking of mugging me.”

  “I’m not.” I gestured to my belt. “I want you to suck my dick.”

  And fuck if it didn’t feel amazing to say that shit out loud. Liberating. Sometimes it seemed like my sexuality was nothing but a demon dancing around my brain, reminding me every ten minutes that I was living the worst kind of lie, but in moments like this it was real.

  I was real.

  The young man leaned closer still. I wondered for a heart-stopping moment if he would kiss me, but of course he didn’t, and my virgin lips mourned his mouth as he bent his neck to look down at my crotch.

  He reached for my belt and began to undo it. My breath caught in my throat and an age-old battle warred within me: to make him stop, or to put my hands on him to urge him to go faster. To cram my cock into his mouth before I lost my nerve, or—

  “I—”

  He glanced up. “What?”

  I shook my head. “Nothing.”

  Something flashed in those big blue eyes, but was gone before I could decipher it. He looked down again and freed my belt from the buckle, and then he unbuttoned my jeans, pushing them down my hips.

  “I’ll say it again,” he whispered. “You really aren’t what I was expecting.”

  “No?” I choked out.

  “Your Grindr name is Perignon55, so I kind of figured you’d, uh, be fifty-five.”

  I’d sent him a couple of pics of my body, so I was kind of offended he’d pegged me for an extra quarter century, before I remembered we were talking about Grindr. “My pictures were genuine.”

  “I can see that.” Cold air hit my dick and I realised my underwear had joined my jeans stretched around my thighs. “I recognise your cock.”

  “That a good thing?”

  “Fuck, yeah. It’s so pretty down here.”

  Coming from a bloke with a dude bun, I almost laughed, but there was nothing funny about the delicate finger ghosting along my shaft.

  A strangled noise escaped me. My cheeks burned, but he didn’t look up. Just flattened his hand against my stomach and urged me towards the bed until I hit the edge and sank down.

  “I’m glad you decided to come in the bedroom,” he said.

  “Yeah?”

  “Yeah.” He grinned wickedly and dropped into a crouch. “That floor in the hallway is a bitch to my knees.”

  The reality that I wasn’t the only man he’d blown in this flat—that he’d blown even tonight, maybe—threatened the barricades of my blinding arousal, but the charge didn’t last long. The young man’s smirk disappeared and he buried his face between my legs. He closed his mouth around my cock, and for the first time in months, the stars aligned.

  “Fuck!” The curse tore out of me, and I fell backwards onto my hands, arching up from the bed as much as I dared. We hadn’t discussed how physical I could be with him, but instinct held me back. His mouth was fucking beautiful…precious, though outside of common respect, I didn’t know why that made me hold back.

  “What’s your name?” I gasped out.

  He gazed up at me through long lashes, swirling his tongue around my tip, like he was gauging if I was serious. If I was really attempting conversation while he was trying to blow me.

  “Please,” I whispered. “I want to know.”

  He pulled away and wiped his mouth with the back of his hand. “Lucky.”

  “What?”

  “My name’s Lucky,” he said. “Like you’re going to be if you let me get on with sucking your dick.”

  I took the hint and went back to staring as I turned the name over in my head. Lucky. It sounded like Grindr bullshit, but I liked it.

  Lucky brought his tongue back to my cock. More swirling set me on fire, but then, without warning, he closed his lips around me, and swallowed me whole.

  “Fuck!” The second exclamation hurt my chest, but I ignored the scratchy sensation and lost myself to the forbidden ecstasy of sliding my dick down a man’s throat. Instant release bubbled in my groin, but I fought it like a starving man fighting for grain. Not yet. I craved oblivion, but I craved this more—the touch, the smell—everything about a man whose primary occupation in this moment was to make me feel like this.

  And damn if Lucky didn’t make me feel some type of way. I leaned back on my hands for as long as I could, but it seemed like no time at all had passed when my hands found their way to his head. My fingers drove into his hair, and I thrust up gently into his mouth. “Fuck, yeah. So good, so good.”

  Lucky’s answering groan vibrated through me, and one of his hands disappeared. The crunching sound of a zipper being lowered reached me, but I was too far gone to contemplate what it meant. I fucked his mouth, losing myself in his tight grip and steady moans, as my hands roamed what little of him I could reach. One remained tangled in his hair, twisting around the soft strands, while the other gripped his slender neck, scraping blunt nails over silky skin.

  It was too much, and nowhere near enough. I thrust harder, but he made a noise of protest, and I backed off.

  He pulled off my cock and glared at me, but the aggression in his eyes held more challenge than rebuke. “Lie down.”

  I shuffled back on the bed as he yanked my shoes, socks, and jeans off and tossed them aside. Naked from the waist down, my dick jutting up to meet the cool air of the unfamiliar room, I should’ve felt vulnerable.

  But I didn’t.

  A low growl rumbled from me as Lucky crawled up the bed, and I lay back, ready for him, like we’d done this a thousand times. The only thing wrong was that he was wearing far too many clothes. “Let me see you.”

  “No.”

  “Please?”

  “No.” Lucky nudged my legs apart and placed himself eye level with my dick again. “This isn’t about me.”

  Wasn’t it? I’d signed into Grindr to silence the monster dancing on my shoulder. To find a blank and willing mouth to scratch my itch. But this was more than that—so much more. “I’ll pay you extra.”

  “I know.”

  Lucky took me in his mouth again, this time asserting his control. His hand on my hip kept me still as he worked me, and the gentle pressure felt like a ten-ton weight pinning me down.

  I was so fucking done. Ragged cries fell from my lips, rising in pitch with every pass of Lucky’s tongue. I thought I’d reached the jackpot, but then he did something else. A drop of saliva slid down my balls and lower. Lucky’s fingers traced it…and then pressed inside me.

  Crying out, I reared up from the bed, my hands reaching to throw him off me, but then sensation took over and fear of the unknown, of an unwelcome intrusion, turned to something I’d never felt before. A dam of white-hot bliss burst somewhere deep inside of me. Orgasm hit, and my dick exploded in Lucky’s mouth. “Oh god, Jesus, I’m coming.”

  More nonsense fell from my lips, but I barely heard it as pleasure charged through me in waves. Everything I’d repressed for months and months drained out of me and into Lucky, and I was powerless to the rush of it. Entranced by the double-edged pleasure of his mouth on my dick, and his finger stroking a magic spot inside me.

  I sagged on the bed as it faded. Lucky slipped his finger painlessly from me like it had never been there at all, and sat back on his heels, a tiny thread of come hanging from his lips.

  Smirking, he caught it with his tongue. “Good?”

  “Fuck off.”

  “I’ll take that as a yes.”

  I shook my head, but couldn’t help grinning back a little. “How much are you going to charge me for the finger?”

  “Nothing. And for what it’s worth, I’m sorry. I should’ve asked you before I did it—I don’t know what came over me.”

  I sat up on my elbows. “I wouldn’
t do anything to you without asking.”

  “I know.”

  How he could be so sure, I had no idea, and I wasn’t sure I wanted to. As fast as the glow of the craziest orgasm I’d ever had faded, the harder reality set in that I was half-naked with a stranger in a grotty Dalston flat—a stranger I’d paid to suck my dick—and the longer I stayed put, the more chance this had of blowing up in my face. Get in, get off, get out.

  But I wasn’t ready for this to end.

  Lucky turned away and reached for my jeans. I grabbed his hand. “Wait. I’ll give you another hundred if you let me suck you.”

  Two

  Lucky

  “Stay in control.”

  “Don’t let them call the shots.”

  “Stick to the plan.”

  The advice Simone had given me when she’d lent me her pad to do this echoed in my head, mingling with what I should’ve said to this bloke’s blurted, breathless request:

  “Blowing me is a hundred and twenty.”

  “Just your mouth. Keep your hands to yourself.”

  “No.”

  But I didn’t do anything Simone had told me to. Didn’t say anything I should’ve said.

  I just swallowed and nodded, praying he wouldn’t figure out that I’d never blown a dude for cash in my whole damn miserable life. “Okay.”

  The dark eyes peering at me from beneath the man’s low cap widened, like he’d expected me to refuse—like I had when he’d asked me to take my clothes off. “Are you sure?”