Page 6

I slept, something my body always craved. My whole life, sleep had been my saviour, rescuing me from everything from random childhood fevers to thoughts I didn’t want to think. I had no idea why I was like this. I had no terrible trauma to overcome. No horrible parents instilling their warped beliefs in me. Love and understanding, endless hugs and hot meals had shaped me into the person I was. The person who was curled up on a sofa somewhere in Hampstead.

Fucking Hampsted. How we’d ended up here, Jakey and me, was beyond belief. Two fuck-ups from the suburbs who had done good at uni. Got all the degrees, good jobs, money pouring into the bank.

He’d got himself a mortgage. I’d bought a fancy car. A fancy car that I had parked somewhere downstairs and probably needed to move before I got myself saddled with another hefty parking fine. This was London, after all.

Funny how my head was clear this morning, being Monday and all that. But this was my routine. I got up at four every morning, walked Flossie, went to the gym. Had breakfast on the go before being at the office just before seven. I worked eight hours straight before leaving my desk at three sharp. Got myself home, had a snack and went to bed again. It had worked really well with Juliet, who had a schedule that ran around four hours behind my own, which meant she got space, I got space.

And now I had all the space.

The memories from yesterday came crashing back at me. How she’d stormed back out throwing stuff at me. Crying. Threats. Anger. So much fucking anger in one human being.

I didn’t blame her, hell no. She was going to cancel everything, stop it all. And I would cough up the money and pay her back for all the stuff she’d paid for, down to the very last crumb of wedding cake.

I would. Of course I would. Perhaps the reason I had let her pay for it all and not involved myself was clear for both of us to see now. I’d been scared and overwhelmed, terrified of the future I was signing myself up for. But if I’d been scared before, I was paralysed now.

Still, I pretended everything was normal and walked into the office like there was absolutely nothing wrong in the world. I could still feel him all over my skin. Every time I sat down. And yes, I had been drunk and not very well, but my marbles were far too intact. I remembered everything. How he’d made me feel .

And the terrifying truth those feelings had brought to the surface. One by one.

Fear. So much fear. Fear of everything in the world, when I had everything to keep me safe, right here.

And the absolute fact that I had been a horrific partner to Juliet. Something else I didn’t want to face right now.

The sigh of relief that came out of me walking past her empty office was a welcome comfort, even more so when the news spread that Juliet had taken a day off. Everyone suddenly looked at me as if they knew I was to blame. Juliet never took a day off. I grunted loudly at anyone staring, which put them all back into line. My team knew better than to mess with me, especially in the office. I may have been a certified nutcase underneath my suit, but I could run this office in my sleep. So could Kieron, who slapped a file on my desk with one eyebrow raised.

“Juliet,” he said. Yes. I knew.

“Don’t,” I grunted. “Work.”

“She sent me a proposal. An offer.”

“Really?”

“I take the new role. You step into my team. ”

Fuck you, Juliet.

“Fuck off, Kieron.”

I wasn’t sure if he was railing me up or if she had really done this. Not as big as a surprise as it could have been. She had already shown me the proposal to rearrange our teams to streamline our productivity and better utilise our office capacity. No redundancies, just stepping us all sideways into nice little lines, the way Juliet liked it.

I wanted up, not sideways, but I understood her logic. I’d just hoped she would reconsider. Apparently, she hadn’t, and this was just the start. I could see it now, how she would carefully manage me out of her life. Out of the company.

Juliet was smart.

She also loved me.

I wasn’t going to cry in the office. Wasn’t going to let anyone in on the fact that I’d seen Juliet’s email from her private account. A cold and professional row of words, sent to all the people we’d invited to the wedding. A curt message informing them of the change of circumstances. She was acting too fast, and I was expecting a concerned phone call from my parents, any minute.

A kneejerk reaction, you might think, but this was kind of the tip of the iceberg, a last straw for Juliet, who had been more than patient with me and my ways. Something I, Bastien Dewaert, had brought on myself.

It wasn’t like she hadn’t warned me after the last time I’d… Damn it.

I should just have stopped this, ages ago. Sat down with her and hashed it all out. I hadn’t. And now here I was, while she was at home waging a war she would absolutely win. Hands down. I wanted to hold my hands up, wave a white flag of peace, but I knew it was a futile thought.

Perhaps I should take some time off too, wallow on Jakey’s sofa until I started to smell and he carted me off to my childhood home, told my parents to sort me out. It wouldn’t be the first time he’d had to do that.

There was a pattern, and I was sick of it. Sick of making sharp decisions at work, being on the ball, handling clients like I was orchestrating greatness. Note, I was. Then I’d go home and let everything fall apart. I had no idea how people lived without doing that. Jake never fell apart. Juliet didn’t either. Everyone else managed just fine, apart from me.

I grunted in gratitude as another cup of coffee was placed on my desk by my current intern, assigned to me for a few weeks to learn the ropes and serve me coffee and green healthy smoothies, know my every whim, take notes. Clean up my mess. I wondered if I could ask her to sort out my life. The discomfort on her face when I asked her that question was almost comical. No doubt the rumours around the office were already rife.

That made me smile. I wasn’t a complicated person, not really. It was just my life, and now I was back with Jake. A huge step backwards where I should have moved forward.

Jake.

He left me to it and let me get away with being a dick. I was grateful, yet I was itching for a fight. I wanted him to scream at me. Something. Anything.

I broke him in three days. Now, that had not been my intention, but I made it back to his sofa three days in a row. I’d avoided speaking to him, almost completely, because he worked late shifts, cracking people’s backs, necks, loosening up hips and lumbar regions of poor Londoners who could only get off work in the evenings. Hence, he didn’t come home until I was already fast asleep, and Jakey, being who he was, was considerate and kind and left me to rest.

Well, he also was constantly grabbing my phone to scan my sensor and make sure I had eaten and was monitoring my bloods, which irritated me to hell because it of course woke me up. But my bloods were fine. Honestly, I was fine, which made him utter that little sigh of relief and put my phone back on charge. I could hear him. And he knew, no doubt, I was awake. We danced a careful dance around each other, those three days in a row. I went to work. He went to work. Flossie got walked and fed. I could hear him taking her out, like we’d made arrangements, when we hadn’t.

Don’t get me wrong. I was grateful. More grateful than he’d ever know, because I hadn’t been lying when I said I needed to sleep. Reset. Figure things out in my head.

I needed this. Just a place where I could be and not think too hard. Because the thoughts in my head were not good or sane or easy to deal with, so I didn’t. I ignored everything around me for three days.

Day four, Jake was home when I got in, and he scared the living daylights out of me, standing there at the kitchen counter, his hand raised as if he was doing something and had been frozen in time. I probably looked just as startled standing there in the small hallway of his open-plan flat with nowhere to hide. Bathroom off to the side. Bedroom at the back. A sleek kitchen island. His goddamn treadmill taking up the space where his dining table should have been.

He didn’t own one. I strangely loved that about him.

Flossie yapped and bounced around my feet. I lifted her up and gave her a cuddle. Something small and uncomplicated, love, the only way I could deal with it right now. It was all I had left.

“Shoes off,” Jakey grunted, but I didn’t care. In fact, I liked it. It was a small piece of normality—something I craved right now when nothing was normal.

“Your parents have rung me twice today, and it’s starting to piss me off. I decided to come home early and get you to talk to me. Enough, Bastien. ”

Oh, so that was the plan. I had nothing to say, because I was already stressed and freaked out to the limit. I stood there, silent, with Flossie messing about to the point where I had to put her down on the floor. She scooted straight over to Jake, who gave her something out of a packet. A titbit.

Traitor.

“Don’t give her treats. It’s not good for her.”

“So you are talking then?”

Was I? Well. That was the end of it. I marched over to the bathroom and went inside, leaving the door to slam shut behind me. Locked it. Then I stood there like the fool I was. I hadn’t managed to find enough guts to speak to Mum and Dad. I didn’t want to have that conversation, not yet.

I stripped off my suit in an angry frenzy and got in the shower, let the water cool my skin. I needed to go to bed, walk Flossie. Switch off.

But I knew Jake. He wouldn’t let me get away with my usual tricks. Not this time. I could tell from the stomping around he was doing out there in the kitchen. The fridge door banged shut. He was no doubt making me a cup of tea, strong, with milk, probably accompanied by a suitable snack, something small but healthy. Not like Juliet’s constant vegetable crudités. Jake would cut up chicken breast, pieces of grilled bacon, sun-dried tomatoes. I loved those.

I was drifting again and not concentrating, which was why I walked out into the room with a towel around my waist, only to get pinned in against the wall by Jake, his strong arms either side of my head, his eyes locked on me as I slowly looked up.

Fuck.

“Stop it,” he said sternly. “This all stops now. We need to talk about stuff.”

Stuff? No, Jakey, we do not need to talk about stuff. I breathed and tried to focus on the scruff on his chin, the scent of him. The way he breathed too. Swallowed. His Adam’s apple moving up and down.

This was not what I’d expected. Not at all. All these feelings bubbling through my veins. Jake was safety and comfort, not…not this. I licked my lips—a nerve impulse. I felt vulnerable, exposed. My hair was still wet from the shower, droplets running down my neck. He moved, one big heavy hand slowly landing on my shoulder .

I tried to turn out of his temporary jail, wanting to escape this inevitable scenario where he would talk to me, and I would say something that would make what remained of my life a living hell. I had so many things I wanted to say but refused to say them.

Story of my life.

He was faster, stronger, quicker, no doubt smarter too, because his other hand was now around my chin and his chest was crushing me against the wall.

“Bastien,” he panted.

“Fuck you.” That was me, of course.

I allowed myself to look at him, and he looked back, stern and solid to my frazzled self. We just stood there, our eyes locked in some kind of insane standoff, but there was something else there as well, something only I could read. I felt it. Damn, I felt it. Something bubbling under the surface, like an unstoppable wave. However much I tried to push it back, it was right there, and I could see it in him too, the slow panic rising in his chest, coupled with that look in his eyes.

It scared me senseless; of course it did. Everything frightened me right now, but Jake? He was what scared me the most .

Then all of a sudden, our lips were fused. I had no idea who had moved first, if he kissed me or if I had gone for him. We were just suddenly there, inseparable and fighting for space and depth, our mouths doing that thing he was so good at, mine lapping up every small breath of air from his lungs as he stole all of mine, kissed me so deep and hard that I actually felt a little breathless.

And I think that was it, where my senses went out the window, because I could feel him, all of him, and this was not what was supposed to happen. Absolutely not.

My hand was doing the thinking for me, cupping his junk through his joggers, his dick rock hard under my gentle fondling. This wasn’t a new boner; this was one he’d probably nursed since I walked through the door. I wondered if I’d done that to him, if I turned him on. Did I? I think I liked his dick—big, long, excellent girth. I remembered it well, and I smiled through the sensations pulsing through me. Since when did Jake turn me on like this? I had no idea, but he was breathing oddly, and I was rubbing my groin against his. Weird, him being bigger and me smaller. But here we were, his neck stretched back as I found myself kissing down his clavicle, having ripped away his scrubs, him seemingly leaning into me, or maybe I was trying to climb him, reach all those places I wanted to reach.

My tongue wanted his neck, licking a little line up behind his ear.

“Bast…” he started, but I cut him off, mauling his mouth. Perhaps it was only something I did to stop him talking, to stop the conversation we would inevitably have. But this was just what we were now, when he was kissing me right back, greedy with need, like I needed. Fuck, I needed.

He had given me exactly what I’d craved the other night, taken everything from me in a swift couple of minutes, fucked me like nobody had ever fucked me before, and I wanted it again.

I wanted to know what his stubble would feel like against my arse. I wanted to know what his dick tasted like. I wanted to be wanted the way he had wanted me, because yes, this was not new to me, but he was, and he was so incredibly different from encounters I’d had before.

Maybe because he was just Jake, maybe because he was shaking in my arms, which were slung around his neck as he once again kissed me, his large hands on my naked arse as he held me up against the wall, mouth on mouth, his heartbeat strong against my chest. I could feel it, every fucking beat. I’d lost the towel, but he didn’t seem to mind.

“You know you want to,” I panted out. It was the only way I knew to do this, riling him up, making him do things that were against everything Jake was, breaking him like he was breaking me.

“We’re not doing this again.” He didn’t sound very sure.

“Do it,” I insisted.

He growled in response, a low sound from somewhere deep in his chest. He would normally throw his hands in the air and vent whatever frustration he was struggling with—a math problem, a particularly difficult patient, Flossie pooping on the floor—all scenarios that would produce a similar growl, but this was different. This was… Fuck.

“This would be a good time to say no, if you don’t want this to go where it’s going. ”

“Not saying no.”

“I have no condoms, no supplies at home.”

“Fine with me.”

“Consent is a thing, Bastien.”

“Well stop fucking talking and do it.” I sounded more desperate than was wise, but there was nothing I could do about that now, as he swung me around so that my chest landed flat on the marble kitchen island, the stone cold against my skin, his hands hot and firm on my hips. Then, movement. He wanted to say no, I could feel it, but he was trembling with need and pushing his pants down, the sound of fabric against skin, a snap of elastic, his knee spreading my thighs as my dick jumped, tapping against my leg.

I wanted to touch myself, but I was too shell-shocked to do anything at this point, too turned on to function, because yes, he turned me on. This turned me on. I had no control, and he was everything.

The weight of his hand left me for a moment, cool air suddenly whooshing over my back and jolting me back to the reality of my situation .

Bastien Dewaert, splayed out on a kitchen counter, my dick trembling, my legs shaking and my arse twitching.

I wasn’t gay. That was a bit of an issue here, but I wasn’t about to protest. I lived for this shit, absolutely loved it, breathed every day hoping to once again get to feel like this. Completely…

Fuck, fuck.

His fingers pushed my arse cheeks apart, his panted breaths hot on my trembling skin.

“Jake!” I gasped in shock, or surprise, as something squirted out of the tip of my dick, a surge through me I couldn’t control.

“Gonna eat your arse,” he growled, his stubble scratching my skin, “and you’re going to be good.”

How the fuck did he know what to say to make me moan like this, like I wanted this (I did), like I had asked for it. (I hadn’t out loud, but how the hell had he known?)

His tongue felt insane, strong and intense as warm wetness kissed my skin, tracing my opening with long drawn-out strokes, his hands on my arse, kneading, fingers spreading me apart to the point I felt I might split, hard movements, deep growls, my hips trying to hump the slab of marble like an idiot. I would have bruises after this.

I didn’t care.

“Oh, fuck!” I yelled as his tongue breached me, deep, wet warmth making me shiver as I gripped the sides of the worktop, trying to hold on as he fucked me with his tongue.

“I’m…” I panted. “Close,”

“Don’t you dare come yet,” he warned.

Difficult when just the sound of his voice turned me on. More wetness ran down my dick.

He lifted me up like I weighed nothing, marched me over to the sofa and threw my willing body against the backrest, soft padded leather under my skin, my hips screaming out from the unfamiliar position as he bent my leg up and positioned me like I was just a toy, something he needed, a hole to fuck.

Thank goodness I’d removed my pump before I showered, because here I was, getting flung around and then grabbed and held down.

I was a hole to fuck, and fucked I was, his dick pressing against my opening while I gasped and whined and shouted as he pushed further, the stretch and sharp pain making my vision fade to all white.

I loved this part, lived for this, when I was stretched apart, used and fucked, his dick pushing inside me as he growled out words I barely understood.

“You want this?”

I did, but my mouth failed to form a reply. I think I nodded and grabbed his hand in mine, held on to those big fingers as he did that final firm push where he was deep inside me, so deep I could feel him everywhere, my body no longer my own. I was his, his to fuck, his to own, his to…

“Gonna make you come now,” he said, the words almost drowned out by the ringing in my ears, the rasping breaths escaping my mouth as he started to move, tearing me apart and making me whole with every firm jerk of his hips, in and out, faster and faster, stronger and closer as his body bent down over mine.

I was about to snap in half from the weight of him, but I would have welcomed every broken bone, the way his breath felt against my back, my skin, my cheeks.

“You’re fucking mine,” he whispered. “Mine. ”

I hadn’t even touched my dick, neither had he, but the orgasm he fucked out of me was spectacularly breathtaking and terrifying in one foul go. I couldn’t stop, my body spasming and twitching as he pulled my back up against his chest, my legs wedged against the sofa, my feet sliding on the floor, yet I was held safely in place by his hands, his dick slamming in and out of me.

I had come all over his sofa, white ropes over the grey leather, wet pools in the creases left by the weight of me as he lifted me up, held me, wrapped me up in everything he was.

I was breathing too fast. My chest hurt from the lack of oxygen, but my body was warm, shaking a little from everything.

Sex

Orgasms.

This.

“I need you to hold me,” I whispered. “Don’t leave me.”

“I won’t.”

“You did last time.” I had no idea where the words were coming from. “Aftercare is a thing, Jake.”

He sniffled softly, a small laugh. “I’ve got you.”

He did as well. I had no idea how long we stood there in each other’s arms, my skin prickled with goosebumps and his chin wedged in my neck. He held me and let me breathe, holding me up when I couldn’t make sense of the world.

Nor this, because this? This was insane.