Page 48

Chapter 10

Robert was ready for him, at least as far as Liam could tell at a glance as he hurried from the bathroom into the bedroom. He grabbed the duvet and the bottle of lube, in case Robert’s packet was empty—a fair guess, as it had felt like he’d doused Liam’s arse with at least two or three portions.

Covering his shivering self with the duvet, Liam went into the living room, where Robert had pulled both tartan blankets over his body. At Liam’s arrival, he drew them back to reveal he was naked underneath: naked, hard, and slicked up. As requested.

“Stay right…exactly…there.” Liam straddled his lap, draping the duvet over them both. Then he placed his hands upon Robert’s shoulders and guided his own hips down, finding his target on the first try.

He cried out at the barest brush of Robert’s head against his hole. Despite the messy conclusion of their journey home, he was still exquisitely sensitive, exquisitely aching for it.

“All right?” Robert whispered.

“God, yes.” Liam descended, slowing but never stopping, each new inch setting him aglow. Every inhalation was a gasp, every exhalation a moan.

When at last he was filled to the hilt, he just stayed there, already limp and whimpering and helpless.

“Wow.” Robert gazed down at the place where they joined. “I don’t think you’ve ever done that before, all in one go.”

“I’ve spent the last hundred and twenty-nine minutes preparing.” He nuzzled Robert’s hair, inhaling the scent of coconut shampoo. “Fuck, it’s…it’s like I was never, ever complete in my life before this moment.” His cock nodded against Robert’s abs as if in agreement.

Robert lifted his head. “Kiss me.”

Their mouths met in what felt like neither a battle nor a truce. It wasn’t like that between them, even within their amateurish games of dominance and submission. These wee power plays weren’t about winning and losing: Neither of them ever won, because both always won.

Then Robert placed his palms on Liam’s back—presumably to draw him closer, but it had the opposite effect.

“Och!” Liam jolted. “Your hands are freezing.”

“I know, I’m trying to warm them.”

“Here.” Liam lifted the duvet and pulled it over their heads, creating a cozy cocoon.

“Mmm, sexy blanket fort,” Robert said. “I hereby dub it ‘Fort Fuck.’”

“Imaginative.”

“Best to be unambiguous with place names, in case any tourists pop by.”

Liam’s laughter rippled down his spine, sending more waves of pleasure out and back in return. “Christ, you feel so good in me.” He ground his arse down hard. “All night I was thinking of this. I mean, that plug was great, but there’s nae substitute for your big, gorgeous cock.”

“You’ve got it now.” Robert tilted his hips up. “Use it.”

“Hold me steady.” Taking care not to disrupt their blanket cave, he drew his feet forward so they were planted just outside Robert’s thighs. Then, with a tight grip on Robert’s shoulders and an even tighter grip on his shaft, he began to rise and fall.

“Liam…” Robert’s breath came harsh. “Fuck, you’re gonnae make me come.”

“No no no.” Liam heard the petulance in his own voice. “Not yet. Please. I need it.” He drove himself up and down faster, his cock and balls striking Robert with each bounce. “Need more. Please.”

“Then slow down.”

“Can’t. Just let me.” His motions grew wilder, his craving more desperate. “I was good, wasn’t I? Let you tease me all night. Never complained.”

“You…complained…constantly.” Robert groaned. “Seriously, if you don’t stop?—”

“Not stopping.”

“Then you’re coming with me.” Robert seized Liam’s cock and began to stroke without mercy.

Liam shrieked, his mind and body splitting in two, then four, then every direction at once. Or so it felt as he exploded all over Robert as Robert exploded into him.

At last he slumped forward, once again spent and once again wanting still more. Robert wrapped his arms round Liam’s back and rocked him slowly.

At last Liam opened his eyes to discover they were still enshrouded in their blanket cave. “You think this fort is soundproof?”

“I hope so, cos that was quite a scream. More than what your neighbors are used to.”

“Couldnae help it.” Liam let out a deep sigh and snuggled in tighter against his partner’s warm body. “You know, one of the best parts of not using condoms is we can stay like this. I can just hold you inside me until it gets gross.”

“Mm-hmm.” Robert slid his hand down over the curve of Liam’s arse. “Or until I’m hard again.”

“Oh?”

“Only if you want more, though.”

“Rab, I think tonight ruined me.” He gave him a lingering kiss, and as the tip of his tongue brushed Robert’s, he felt himself stir already. “I may never again not want more.”

* * *

Robert mentally untangled Liam’s double negative. “Good. This isn’t something we should phone the doctor about, is it?”

“The doctor would take one look at you and tell me to stop my whingeing.” Liam awkwardly lifted himself up. “However, my feet are falling asleep, so…”

“Here.” Robert tugged the blankets out from under Liam. “Get on your hands and knees at the other end of the couch.”

Liam did as he was told, making an appreciative noise when Robert draped the duvet back over his body.

Then Robert got behind him and flipped up the back of the cover to reveal his arse. “Wow.”

“What is it? I mean, apart from the usual.”

“You’re still wide open.” He leaned forward and softly bit Liam’s right cheek, which was still warm and bright pink from the friction against Robert’s thighs. Then he dove his tongue inside, lapping at what was left of his own come.

“Oh my God, you filthy angel.” He pressed back against Robert’s mouth. “Don’t ever stop.”

Robert wasn’t about to stop, though in retrospect he did wish they’d used the coconut-flavored lube, as there was still quite a lot of that, too. But this was the least he could do after putting Liam through such torture tonight.

When Liam shivered, Robert pulled the duvet back over his own head to warm them both. Then he kept licking, tasting, exploring, until he was hard again and Liam was trembling from need instead of cold.

As soon as Robert entered him, this time from behind, Liam shoved the duvet to the floor. “Warm enough now.” He gripped the back of the couch with one hand and the arm with the other. “Fuck me, Rabbie. Fucking ruin me.”

Robert ground into him hard, searching out every last inch within. Then he went at Liam nonstop until they were slick with sweat despite the chilly air, until they spent themselves one final, wall-rattling, throat-ripping, knee-weakening time.

As Robert’s mind slowly surfaced from the sea of pleasure, he remembered something Liam had said when they’d first entered the flat. “Jelly Jubilee—is that a real thing?”

Liam nodded, wiping his eyes. “Pretty sure I saw it on Bake Off .”

“Someone torched a gelatin mold?” Robert stood, careful not to trip over his discarded shoes. “Didn’t it, like, melt?”

“Everything melts, love.” Liam flopped over to lie lengthways on the couch. “Everything melts.” He gave a drunken-sounding laugh. “Christ, this weekend. Even by our standards, it’s been a fuck-tastic forty-eight hours.” He sighed. “Want to fetch me an Irn-Bru? I’m parched and spent.”

“After tonight, you deserve any reward you like.” Robert picked up his T-shirt from under the coffee table and used it to clean himself.

“Hmm, whatever happened to the rewards?” Liam asked. “Back when you proposed this game, you said there’d be rewards, but after the Collage Challenge, I totally forgot about them. I never even gave you a reward for the Knickers Challenge. Not officially.”

“I forgot too.” Robert wrapped one of the tartan couch blankets round his waist like a kilt and headed for the kitchen.

“It’s all right,” Liam said with a yawn. “These challenges are their own reward.”

“Aye, pretty much. They’re sort of built into the—” Robert froze as he opened the refrigerator. “Oh my God. Oh my God!”

“Don’t tell me I’m out of Irn-Bru already.”

“No, it’s—no!” Robert grabbed one of the orange fizzy drinks and bounced back into the living room. “The challenge is its own reward. That’s it!”

“What’s it? Gonnae no shake that bottle, by the way, or it’ll explode.”

Robert handed it to him. “It’s what my game’s been missing.” He began to pace, holding the ends of his blanket together to keep up his makeshift kilt. “I was so focused on creating extrinsic rewards that I forgot about intrinsic ones.”

“The what, now?”

“An intrinsic reward is when the act of playing the game is fun in itself. Players get into the zone and time stops existing.”

“Aye, like it was with Tom’s Tower .”

Robert smiled at the memory of the game he’d made for Liam, to capture and torment an avatar resembling his ex-boyfriend. “Like Tom’s Tower and all the other games I used to make. Like our challenges to each other this weekend.”

“Okay.” Liam twisted off his bottle’s cap and cursed at the orange liquid dribbling out. “And extrinsic…”

“Extrinsic rewards are things you get for your achievements. They’re an incentive to keep going. See, when you first start playing a cool game, the novelty is enough. You don’t kill bad guys just to get experience points, you do it because killing bad guys is fun.” Robert made himself stand still, hoping it would help his words catch up to his racing thoughts. “But at some point, you start to focus on the extrinsic rewards. ‘Fine, I’ll kill this bad guy, because I need XP to get to the next level.’ Now you’re actually enjoying the game less because play has become a bit like work.”

“Och, like Candy Crush . I couldn’t stop playing because Jamie was always a few levels ahead of me. Mind how he and I made a pact to uninstall it and never play again?” He let out a happy sigh. “It felt like my soul had been set free.”

Robert thought of a recent comment on his app: I keep playing but I don’t know why . “That happens when the play itself isn’t enough anymore. Which is fine when it’s just entertainment. But with Glasgow Effect , we need people to stick with it.”

“So how will you get them to do that?”

“Erm…” Robert rubbed the stubble on the curve of his chin, then remembered the list of ideas he’d constructed months ago. “Actually, I already came up with loads of cool ideas for quests and all, most of which I had to chuck because they weren’t ‘serious’ and ‘realistic.’”

“Like what?”

“Like there was a mini-game where you toss a traffic cone onto the Duke of Wellington statue’s head without getting caught by the cops. Extra points if you get one on his horse’s head to make a Glaswegian unicorn.”

Liam laughed. “There is nothing more Glasgow than that. I don’t care what the experts say—you should add it. It’s your game, mate.”

“I know.” Robert thought of all the time and effort he’d wasted by overcompromising his vision. “Somewhere along the line, I got so focused on saving the world and fixing people, I became un-fun.”

“There’s still a fun-filled lad inside you.” Liam patted the end of the couch where he’d ridden Robert to glory. “We pure found him these last few days.”

“We did.” Robert’s smile faded as he remembered his time frame. “My meeting with funders is tomorrow at noon. I cannae just march in there and say I’ve got a new approach without some sort of plan.”

“Then you’ll make a plan now, with my help.” Liam rose from the couch with a slight groan. “I shall start with pancakes.”