Whisper (Skins Book 2) Read online

  That was a new one. When he’d played in the basement rooms before, he’d never thought about really touching whoever he’d been railing. Had never taken much notice because that was the point—a hook-up that took anonymity to the extreme, where sex narrowed to the lightning bolts of pleasure shooting through his dick. But he wanted to touch this man, wanted to squeeze those slim hips and let his palms roam that flawless back.

  Wanted it. Craved it.

  Fuck it.

  Under the pretence of steadying himself, he laid a hand at the base of the man’s spine. A jolt of electricity surged up his arm, and a strangled groan escaped him. “Shit!”

  “Yeah?” The man arched, his chest dropping to the mattress, his hole clenching, and then he drew himself off Angelo’s cock, before spearing back down on it, again and again, setting the rhythm that Angelo had played out in his head before he’d lost his bloody mind. Over the moody electronica, the slap of skin on skin grew louder as the man ground back on Angelo’s dick, meeting Angelo thrust for thrust as Angelo regained the ability to screw him coherently.

  The club faded away⁠—the music, the hum of the crowd, and even the eyes that were bound to be watching them from the secluded observation points. The roll of the man’s hips grew more erratic, and Angelo was right there to take up the slack. For long minutes it seemed that their heady encounter would be a quick one, but then the reason Angelo had come to the club returned to him, and the desire to take control won out.

  He gripped the man’s hips, slowing his movements, and then stilled him entirely as he took the man’s arms and pinned them behind his back. Angelo paused a moment to give the man a chance to squirm or protest or give any sign that he didn’t want Angelo to bang his brains out. There was none, and Angelo briefly pictured them with their positions reversed. With the man on top doing everything to Angelo that Angelo was planning on doing to him. Wow. That was new too. Angelo rarely bottomed. It had been years.

  Angelo spat where they were joined, adding to the lube already there, and tightened his hold on the man’s slender hips. He started slow . . . but deliberate, dicking out the man with targeted stabs of his cock. The dizzying heat burned his veins, and he knew the moment he’d found the man’s sweet spot. The velvet warmth clamped tight around his dick, and the man cried out, balling his hands into fists and pushing back on Angelo in a blatant demand for more.

  Like that, is it? And fuck if Angelo could deny him. As if he wanted to. He picked up the pace, shoving his dick home with as much rhythm as he could manage with their slick bodies sliding together. Over and over, he drove his cock deep, panting, growling, and flicking his head from time to time to keep the sweat from his eyes.

  Edging had always been Angelo’s jam, and it seemed he’d found the perfect partner for his favourite game. He fucked the young blond to the other side of the mattress, and it was only when the man was perilously close to sliding off that he grasped his hips and yanked him back.

  On their third go around, the man let out a ragged moan, and Angelo’s cock pulsed in warning. Heat rocketed through every vein, and his skin burned. Another odd urge to touch his companion swept over him, and then the desire to flip him over and pound him face-to-face. Except they wouldn’t be face-to-face, because the unwritten rules of the basement rooms prophesied that they should stay like this⁠—back to chest and invisible.

  Angelo had never been one for rules.

  He flipped the man over, revealing a lean, toned chest that was the stuff of Angelo’s fantasies. He’d played with plenty of big guys, but when he was alone in bed, it was bodies like this that kept him awake⁠—soft and lean . . . delicate, and yet crying out for a brutal railing.

  Angelo yanked the man closer and pushed his legs apart. “Name.”

  “What?”

  Angelo leaned over the man, his lips a hairsbreadth from that slender neck. “Give me a name.”

  “Dylan.”

  Clubs like this were full of people playing under an alias, but a distant instinct told Angelo that this was real. Dylan. Yeah, he liked that. He dug his fingers into Dylan’s thighs and drove back inside him. Dylan let out a piercing moan, and Angelo took it as a cue to give it to him hard, all the while transfixed by his cock stretching Dylan out. It was a beautiful sight by itself, but combined with Dylan’s pliant body and guttural moans, Angelo was gone.

  Dylan’s cock was poker straight and rigid on his sweat-sheened belly⁠—somehow he’d known that he didn’t have Angelo’s permission to touch it.

  Angelo wanted to touch it.

  Squeeze it.

  Suck it.

  On a good day, he could’ve fucked and sucked Dylan at the same time, but today wasn’t a good day, and he settled for leaning back on his heels, raising Dylan’s hips off the mattress, and screwing him so hard that his moans turned to shouts and then desperate yells as he started to come.

  Angelo rode the wave as Dylan convulsed and plastered himself with jets of come, but then things got hazy. His vision darkened to the point where he might as well have been wearing the blindfold. He busted so hard he saw stars, and for a long moment, the reality of his so-called life faded away.

  He was dimly aware of a smattering of applause as he chased the last shocks of release. Beneath him, Dylan was splayed out, panting and clearly exhausted. Completing a hat-trick of weird thoughts, Angelo pictured himself collapsing beside him and then spooning up against his back, melding their laboured breaths until they fell asleep.

  Idiot. Angelo hadn’t shared a bed with anyone that way in years, and he wasn’t about to start now. Ignoring the urge to stroke Dylan’s golden hair back from his sweaty face, he pulled out and lightly punched his shaky thigh.

  “Cheers, mate. Thanks for the ride.”

  BELIEVE — a SHORT excerpt

  Rhys and Jevon

  Believe

  Rhys had never felt anything that came close to how Jevon made him feel. To hear that a even a fragment of it was reciprocated blew the stress clean out of his soul. “You can talk to me, mate. And not just about sex. Do me good to listen to something outside of my own head.”

  “Introspective, eh?”

  Rhys shrugged. “According to my brother, the fountain of all knowledge. He reckons I have one skin for work, one for hooking up, and neither is who I really am.”

  “Everyone’s got skins, dude. You think I wake up in clown mode every day?”

  Rhys chuckled, but was saved from answering by the server coming back. “You order,” he said to Jevon. “I gotta take a leak.”

  He retreated to the gender neutral bathrooms and by the time he returned, Jevon was alone again, twirling a straw in a rum and Coke. “So…” he said as Rhys reclaimed his seat.

  “So, what?”

  “How did you end up becoming a paramedic? It’s a pretty intense career choice.”

  “It wasn’t really a choice,” Rhys said. “Not a conscious one, anyway.”

  “Curious.”

  “Scuzzy, actually.” Rhys gulped some of the rum-laced drink Jevon had ordered for him. “I was a terrible teenager, and it spilled out into adulthood until I wound up doing community service at Kings hospital. From there, I got a job as a healthcare assistant, then a place on a paramedic course. I quit briefly to work in butcher’s shop—ironic, huh?—but I knuckled down eventually, and here I am.”

  Jevon tilted his head to one side, spearing Rhys with a quizzical frown. “What’s scuzzy about that?”

  Rhys shrugged. “It’s not my calling, I guess. I didn’t get into it to help people…I was trying to help myself. Save myself, I suppose.”

  “From what?”

  “Everything. My dad died a little while ago, and before that, he was in prison for some shit that went down at home. It took me some time to get past that.”

  Jevon said nothing for a long moment. Just stared at Rhys like his bottomless eyes could burn a path to everything that had ever hurt Rhys. Like he wanted to take it away and set it on fire.

&n
bsp; But he couldn’t do that. No one could. Rhys had started plenty of his own fires, and somehow all the bullshit still lived in the ashes. “Don’t look at me like that,” he whispered. “I’m not one of your kids that needs saving.”

  More silence. But the server intervened with the food Jevon had ordered while Rhys had been gone. Two pizzas, and a salad that looked like it belonged in the Tate Modern. And for the first time in days Rhys was actually hungry. They dug in while Jevon explained between bites what he was doing with his life for the next few months.

  “I swore down I’d only do a few birthday parties, but I’ve got four next week alone.”

  Rhys chuckled. “You don’t like them?”

  “It’s not that. Any chance I get to act the fool is fine by me, but it just seems kind of—I don’t know—hollow, I guess. Which is why they make us do it.”

  “Who does?”

  “The team who look after the entertainers at the charity. There’s a psychologist here in London who comes to visit us on site, and checks in with us when we come home. He’s the reason we’re only allowed to do three month stints in the camps before they bring us home for a while. Before him we had people bedded in for most of the year without a break, and not even soldiers do that.”

  There was beauty in the comparison. Jevon and his coworkers fought wars of their own with laughter instead of bullets, joy in place of despair. But at what cost? Rhys had seen enough medics go under to know the risks were real. “Do you ever feel like not going back?”

  “Not really.” Jevon toyed thoughtfully with a pizza crust. “It’s hard sometimes—lonely too—but I can’t imagine leaving those kids with nothing, you know? Even if all we give them is a few days of madness. It is getting harder, though. Lots of governments are tearing the camps down.”

  “I thought that was a good thing? The camps I’ve seen on the news look awful.”

  “They aren’t great, but where else do these people go? At least in the camps the aid organisations know where to find them. And, it’s safe for them to look. We’ve done some street work, but I don’t fancy roaming the Albanian countryside on my unicycle. Getting shot ain’t my bag.”

  Rhys shuddered. He’d seen a few gun shot wounds since he’d joined the chopper team, and the thought of Jevon getting hurt turned the dinner in his belly to dust. “When are you going back?”

  “Second week in December.”

  “Gone for Christmas then?”

  “I’ve been gone every Christmas since the war in Syria kicked off. There’s a dedicated camp in Hungary for the Yazidi and Christian refugees who won’t come to the main sites. We go there when we can and try to make it really special for the children there.”

  “Why don’t they come to the big camps?”

  Jevon shrugged. “It’s complicated, and I try not to think about it too much. I want these kids to believe they can do anything, and I can’t do that if I’m bogged down in the politics.”

  Rhys traced lazy patterns on the back of Jevon’s hand. He wanted to ask more, but at the same time, the thought of Jevon leaving the country in just eight weeks time made him feel sick. This was why he didn’t do relationships. Because life always got in the way and fucked everything up. Among other reasons, obviously. Mostly the fact that he had no idea what to do with the ever-growing bone deep affection he felt every time Jevon crossed his mind. Every time they touched. Kissed. More.

  I can’t do this.

  But I need him.

  Rhys took a deep breath and leaned back in his seat. The pizza place had filled up while they’d eaten and it was kicking. Staff flitted around with trays of food, and the hot guy manning the pizza oven seemed to be in constant motion. Rhys watched him work, absently admiring the flex of his tanned forearms, and the concentrated expression that made him equal parts alluring and intimidating. The dude was hot, and Rhys was about to say so when another man approached the chef from behind.

  This dude was half the size. Slender and blond, he reminded Rhys a little of Dylan. He climbed up the other man’s back and wrapped his arms around his neck, kissing his cheek. The chef’s answering smile was blinding.

  “Nice, isn’t it?” Jevon squeezed Rhys’s fingers, breaking into his reverie. “I hung around here a lot when my sexuality first started making itself known.”

  “Just to watch them?”

  Rhys could understand that. Dylan and Angelo’s relationship made him jealous as hell, and Harry and Joe were so utterly perfect together that Rhys often wanted to puke when he was near them, but the moody chef and his elegant partner were a joy to watch. Like the distance between them and Rhys made their love easier to bear.

  “Not just them,” Jevon said. “There’s a few queer blokes around here—more than a few, actually—and being around them made me feel normal.”

  “You don’t feel normal?”

  “I do now, but I didn’t for a while. There were moments when I was so terrified I couldn’t imagine how it would ever end well.”

  “What changed?”

  “Lots of things over time. Work, family, relationships. Things that I thought were gospel turned out to be the opposite. My dad being so awesome was a big factor, and Efe is my best friend in the world. But something has always felt missing. I figured it was just the sex, but then I met you, and…well…it’s more than that.”

  Of course it was. Rhys had pictured himself having sex with Jevon so many times it almost seemed like they’d done it already. But it wasn’t enough. Being with Jevon was so much more.

  A new chef took over at the pizza oven, and the dark haired man and his partner disappeared. Rhys watched them go, sensing Jevon’s gaze on him, but unable to face him, though he wasn’t entirely sure why.

  “I watched them fuck once.”

  That got Rhys’s attention. He turned to Jevon and wondered instantly how he’d held out so long. “I’d let him fuck me.”

  If Rhys’s candour offended Jevon, it didn’t show. “Which one?”

  “The darker dude.”

  Jevon shook his head. “It was the other way around.”

  “For real?”

  “Yup. I didn’t watch it all, so maybe they switched, but what I saw was so sensual and hot, I knew I’d like bottoming…if I ever found the balls to try.”

  If. A tiny word that held so much power. Rhys rarely topped, preferring the oblivion of having his own brains screwed out, but he wanted to fuck Jevon. Needed to. Even if it tied a bow around the heartbreak they were surely heading for.

  Rhys caught the eye of their server and signalled for the bill. “Let’s get out of here.”

  HEART — a SHORT excerpt

  Dex and Seb

  Heart

  DEX WOKE with a start, his face mashed into Seb’s chest and the rest of Seb’s body wrapped protectively round him like a cocoon. His head hurt and his stomach felt like he’d been kicked by a horse, but the warmth of Seb’s arms felt amazing.

  And so did the pulsing, throbbing heat pressed against his thigh.

  For a moment, Dex didn’t dare move, breathe, or even blink, and then a wave of exhausted nausea swept over him and he found himself burrowing closer to Seb as though he could climb inside him and escape the fast-growing hangover brewing deep in his bones.

  He woke again sometime later to Seb rubbing his back. “All right?”

  Dex blinked, both relieved and disappointed to find the dick pressed into his leg had retreated back where it came from. “What time is it?”

  “Eight. You’ve got your lesson with Mel at nine, haven’t you?”

  Dex sat up and scrubbed his hands down his face. It was Tuesday, the day he had a two-hour reading lesson before his workday even started. Dammit. Why hadn’t Seb reminded him of that before he’d drunk his body weight in lurid fizzy booze? “I need to go home.”

  “What for? You can use the bathroom here. Stay awhile and rest. You’ll need it if you’re going to get through today.”

  “It’s not that. I need to get my washin
g so I can do it at work.”

  “Oh.” Seb was silent a moment. He looked tired and rough, and Dex could almost see the effort it took him to think coherently. “How about

  100

  Heart

  you grab a shower and a cuppa here, then you go to work while I fetch the washing from your place?”

  “You want to go to my place?” Dex wasn’t sure about that. He kept his room clean and tidy, and his dirty clothes were stacked in one of Bernie’s big linen bags by the door, but glancing around Seb’s sleek, polished flat, he wasn’t sure he wanted him to see the sparse reality of his life at the hostel.

  “I’ve been there before, Dex. I know what it’s like.”

  Dex sat up again. Somehow, his head had dropped back to Seb’s chest. “What? Why did you go there?”

  “Last time I lived in London, my head chef used to donate leftovers to the homeless shelters around the city. I took some food there once.”

  Dex clambered off the couch, stumbling over the too-long legs of his borrowed tracksuit bottoms. He didn’t have much in his life to be proud of, but it bothered him that Seb knew just how lowly he was. “Where did I put my clothes?”

  “Over there.”

  Seb inclined his head toward the coffee table. Dex frowned. He didn’t remember putting them there. “I need to go.”

  Seb didn’t argue, and he didn’t reiterate his offer to go to the hostel either. He watched Dex scramble around for his things with an unreadable expression on his face, and when Dex emerged from the bathroom dressed in his own clothes, he met him by the front door with a travel mug of hot, sweet tea.

  “See you later.”

  Dex ran home, changed his clothes, and dragged his bag of washing up the road to the restaurant. His detour had made him later than usual, and after loading his things into the machine, he was just in time for his literacy lesson.

  He usually enjoyed his sessions with Mel. Reading was hard, and writing near on impossible, but he could see with his own eyes he was making progress. Not today, though. Today, the words on the page seemed to blur into a migraine-inducing riddle. Mel lost patience in the end and sent him back to the kitchen an hour early.