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T he small speaker above the buzzer crackled to life. “Hello?” said Kevin.

I couldn’t help the stupid smile that bloomed on my face at the sound of his voice.

Which I hadn’t heard for forty whole minutes.

I had it bad.

I opened my mouth to reply but snapped it shut without saying anything. As soon as he knew it was me, the idiot would probably turn the lights off and hide behind the sofa, as if I was a politician come calling about the local election.

“Hello?” Kevin said again.

I pressed my lips together, looking up at the window. I realised that he’d see me if he looked out, and flattened myself against the wall just in time—he came into view on the second floor.

Apparently playing peekaboo was a thing we did.

I pressed the buzzer again, and waited.

I heard his approach as he banged down the last few stairs inside. I turned to face the door.

He opened it with an impatient yank, took one look at me, and shut it in my face.

“Kevin,” I said through the wood, with barely a wobble in my voice. “I love you.”

He snatched the door open and stared at me.

I shrugged. “I love you. If you’ve been avoiding me because you think I don’t want you around anymore, you’re wrong. I love you.”

His chest expanded in a deep breath, wide eyes on mine.

“It’s okay if you don’t feel the same,” I said, my throat closing up and making the words come out oddly strangled, “but I thought you should know. And you can stop freaking out.”

Speaking of freaking out…if he didn’t at least blink in the next minute, let alone respond to my love confession, I was going to join him.

I hadn’t exactly planned this. I was making shit up as I went along. I’d had the vague idea of reassuring him that we were still very much on. I hadn’t planned to blurt out that I loved him. Not yet. Maybe not ever. I still didn’t know how long-term he saw this.

Thankfully, Kevin did more than blink.

He reached out, slowly, as if he was trying not to spook me. Which was hilarious, coming from the man who had a habit of cheerfully tossing me about, and had thrown me on the floor and jumped enthusiastically on top on more than one occasion.

He slid a hand around the nape of my neck and exerted gentle pressure, stepping back as he did, drawing me over the threshold and into the stairwell.

As soon as I was inside, he snatched me against him, booted the door shut, and pressed me against it.

He kissed me wildly, and it took a while for me to realise he was murmuring against my lips.

“Love you, Charlie. So much, oh my god. Seriously. I love you. Shit. I really love you.”

“Shh, shh,” I said, trying to pull back. “It’s all right, calm down.”

“Nope.” He bit my lip then grabbed my hips, grunted with effort, and slid me up the door, wedging himself between my thighs and humping me further up .

I pulled at his hair. “Kevin,” I growled.

He growled back, and went for my neck.

“Uhn.” My head fell against the door with a thunk. I squirmed. “Kevin. Kevin . Upstairs. Take me upstairs, I don’t want to do this here.”

He sucked hard on my neck one more time—the little shit left a giant love bite, I just knew it—then let me down slowly enough that I felt every single one of his abdominal muscles as I went.

He smiled at me and took my hand.

I smiled stupidly back, and wove my fingers through his.

“Come on.” He hauled me up the stairs after him.

I hadn’t been here for years, not since I’d helped Jasper move out. I’d been assigned small-to-medium-sized cardboard box duty. Which meant I’d huffed and puffed up and down the stairs multiple times while Jasper and a mate from the gym had handled the larger items. There wasn’t much; the flat came furnished, and the only larger items were Jasper’s TV and writing desk, and his exercise bike.

It was a bare-bones, basic little place, and?—

“Holy shit,” I said when I walked in after Kevin, still holding his hand. “What the fuck.”

Kevin turned and took my other hand, walking backwards and taking me with him. “You like?”

“It’s amazing! Did you do this?”

His cheeks darkened. “Yeah.”

It looked like a spread from Homes he gathered them both behind my back and held them there with one of his. He set his free hand on my chest, over my heart. “Can we talk some more about how much you’re in love with me?”

“Oh, now you want to talk?” I said, smiling.

He bumped his hips into mine. “Yeah.”

“So talk.”

“ You talk.”

I lifted my eyebrows.

“Tell me again.”

“Kevin,” I said. “I love you. I have loved you for a while now.”

His gaze roamed over my face and stopped on my eyes. “I love you.”

“And you’re an idiot.”

“ You’re an id—what?”

I squirmed. He tightened his grip. “You’re an idiot,” I said crisply. “What was all that nonsense earlier? Hanging up on me? Ignoring my calls? Leaving my text on read? No, sir. No . I’m way too old to be playing that sort of game.”

“I wasn’t playing a game! And you’re not old.”

“I’m older than you.”

He frowned and muttered, “Not by that much.”

I had another go at breaking free. The only thing it did was make me harder. I stopped squirming. “Would I be correct in assuming that you were worried I was angry at you about the dead bodies?”

“Yeah.” He managed to look angry and offended and sorry all at the same time when he added, “All of my mates at the gym were calling me Kevin the Corpse Finder. And the papers.” His scowl deepened. “And Craig got excited about it.”

“Did you think I’d break up with you?”

“I mean…yeah? It’s not nothing, Charlie.”

“Compared to how I feel about you? That’s exactly what it is. Nothing.”

He swallowed hard.

“Also, in trying to avoid letting me break up with you, you had functionally broken up with me. Good plan. We were in Schrodinger’s relationship.” Or something.

He squinted. “What?”

Now wasn’t the time to explain quantum mechanics. Also, like I could explain quantum mechanics? “We never discussed what it is we’re doing. What this is between us. That’s what I wanted to talk to you about in the coffee shop, so you’d feel secure and not freak out over a little speed bump.”

“I counted four speed bumps .”

I waved a hand. “I don’t care if there were twenty. And earlier, when I wanted to talk on the phone, it was because I wanted to know how you were holding up. That’s all. At no point was I trying to dump you.”

He opened his mouth to reply but obligingly closed it again when I shook my head.

“Let me get this out, okay?” I said. “I’m not great at exposing myself.”

His eyes heated and he gave me a scorchingly sultry look.

I knew exactly what he was thinking. Stay on track, I warned myself. Do not jump on him. “Can I have my hands back?”

“Don’t need your hands to talk.” He nudged me backwards until I came up gently against the wall. He pulled my hands up and over my head and pinned them there, staring into my eyes.

“Right,” I said. “Okay.”

He put a foot between mine and kicked my legs wider, slotting his thigh in between.

My heart rate—not slow by any means—picked up. “I haven’t had a relationship before, Kevin, and I don’t really know how these things are supposed to go. All I know is what I want from you.” Everything. Absolutely everything. “And I’m not about to put up with misunderstandings. So. Tell me. What do you want from me?”

He didn’t even hesitate. “Your love. I want your body and your attention and your love. I want to know I’m special, that I’m yours and you’re mine. I want to keep doing what we’ve been doing, but more. I’ve only fucked you once. I want to do it a lot.” He nodded, widening his eyes at me. “A lot , a lot. And if I want it when you don’t, I was thinking you could just let me look at you, and I’d have a wank.”

I dropped my head to his shoulder at the idea of it. Intense Kevin, staring at me and working himself to orgasm as I lounged around for his viewing pleasure.

He shook against me with laughter. “You said you’ve loved me for a while. How long is a while?”

“Do we need to put a number on it?” I said vaguely, and bit at the join of his neck and shoulder to distract him.

“Yes.” He began to rock his hips into mine, even as he lifted my chin and obliged me to meet his eyes. “It doesn’t matter. I’m just curious.”

“Fine. I’ve loved you for years. I’ve been in love with you for months.”

He dropped a quick kiss on my lips. “Thank you,” he said.

“You’re welcome.” I cleared my throat. “What about you? How long have you been?—”

“In love with you for two years.”

I gaped at him. “Two years ?”

“Yeah.” He ran one of those sultry looks over me again. “Fancied you for three.”

“…just me, or men in general?”

“Nah, just you. I mean, if I was into men in general, I’d probably want to bend Adam over something.”

“And you don’t?” I managed to say, even as I boggled at the thought of it.

“I don’t think we’d be compatible,” he said, like it was a secret.

“No kidding.”

“I checked Ray out a few times, because he’s a twink like you?—”

I went to poke him in the side, realised he was still holding my arms over my head, and moaned faintly when he tightened his grip. “I’m not a twink.”

“Okay,” he agreed. “But you’re built kind of lean and willowy and you’ve got these big eyes and this pointy little chin—” he broke off to nip it, “—and you’re so sassy I want to make you scream, like, all the time. It’s you, Charlie. I look at you, and I want you. That’s it. It’s not that complicated.”

We stared at each other.

“And then,” he continued, accompanying it with a long, lazy ripple of his body against mine, “you started to smile at me. Realised I had a chance, then.”

“I smile at plenty of people.”

He made a rude noise.

I scowled. “ I smile .”

“Only for me,” he said, and leaned in for a sweet kiss that turned quickly filthy. His breath came roughly. “For me, Charlie.”

“Okay, fine. I’m not winning any sunshine awards. You try working in a customer-fronting role.”

“I do,” he said. “I like people.”

I grimaced. “I like some people.” Maybe ten. “I very politely tolerate the rest of them.”

“Mhm.” He slid his free hand down my side to grip my hipbone, sneaking a thumb under the hem of my shirt to rub gently over my skin. “And then I caught you perving on me in the gym.”

I went rigid. “I did not …I wasn’t …you were sitting there stark-bollock naked , Kevin. It startled me, all right?”

“Got you hard.”

I gasped. “It did not.”

He slipped his hand in and cupped my erection. “Hard like this,” he said. “I sat there and thought, I made Charlie Galloway get hard just by being naked in front of him. Wonder what I could make him do if he let me touch him?” He leaned in and whispered, “And you did let me touch you, Charlie. And what I did was, I made you come. And I want to do it all the time.”

“How about now? Now sounds good. We can do that now.”

His lips lifted slowly at one corner as his eyelids lowered and that intensely sexual look I’d first seen in the mirror at the gym took over his sweet face. “Yeah,” he said. “We can do that. Are we done talking?”

“Yes!” I said. Then, “No. Fuck. Okay. Wrapping up. I love you. I want you in my life on a permanent basis. This isn’t casual. I don’t date, I don’t do relationships. I’ve never wanted to, but…I want you. This is it for me. You’re it for me. As in, we’re not dating, we’re together. Like…like Adam and Ray are together.”

Kevin’s dark eyes were steady on mine. When I stuttered to a halt, he nodded encouragingly.

“As in…” I said, and petered out again.

“As in?” he prompted me.

“Can you just let me know what you think so far about that before I embarrass myself further?”

“I’m on board. Hundo percent.”

“Right. Excellent.” My mouth dried up. “As in, the way I see it is, I’m going to eventually ask you to move in with me.”

He nodded. “I’ll say yes. When you do ask me. I’ll say yes to everything.” He contemplated me for a moment. I found it hard to maintain eye contact, but I managed. He was the one to look away. He also let go of my wrists and peeled his body off mine, making me whine with disappointment before I shut myself up. “Can I show you something?”

“Please do,” I said flirtily.

I was expecting him to unzip and show me his dick, not for him to peck me on the lips and stride over to the small coffee table. He picked something up and came back to where I was leaning against the wall, not trusting my legs to hold me up. He held it out.

Curious, I took it off him. It was a three-ring, A4 binder. I flipped it open, and kept on flipping through the pages.

There was a floor plan, exterior elevations and a map. There was a budget, a page of jotted calculations, a few pages torn out of a B he gripped my thighs and arranged them either side of his, lifted my hips, and lowered me gently on top of his cock, shuffling me about until his hard shaft was tucked between my cheeks.“There,” he said, holding onto my waist. “Now you can squirm around as much as you like.”

I placed my hands on his shoulders and gave a tentative wiggle. Oh. Oh .

Kevin’s lids dropped and he watched my cock through slitted eyes, his jaw tight and breathing harsh. Without taking his eyes off me, he hunted around under a pillow, knocking it to the ground and bringing out a tube of lubricant.

“You want to get yourself ready for me?” he asked. “Going to let me watch you finger yourself open? Or d’you want me to do it?”

I didn’t think I’d ever get used to the blunt, sexual way he talked. “You, please.”

He smiled.

I leaned in and snatched a quick kiss. “You’re better at it than I am.” I wasn’t being lazy. He really was. The man had a gift.

He slid a hand around behind me and stroked the top of my crack before dragging his fingers firmly down between my cheeks to rest over my hole. He rubbed gently. I caught my breath and hitched my hips against him.

“Like it sweet to start, don’t you?” he said.

Yes, I did. It was all still so new.

I was stark-bollock naked on Kevin Wallis’ lap with his finger up my butt and his pretty brown eyes about six inches from mine. I was new to being this close to someone, let alone being this intimate. Soon enough, things would get wild.

For now, sweet to start was the way to go.

And Kevin made it sweet indeed.

He played with my arse with knowing, gentle touches until I was once again squirming, following his touch, asking for it first wordlessly and then directly.

“More,” I gasped against his smiling mouth.

He hummed, sliding his tongue over mine, stroking it as lazily as he was stroking my arse.

I was one giant throb at this point.

“Kevin,” I moaned, and didn’t even feel any shame at the begging tone. I flexed on top of him and pressed closer to get some of that lovely friction on my aching dick, trapped between us. I humped against his lower belly a few times.

He helped me do it, I realised vaguely, all without stopping the deep, drowning kisses. His fingers—how many did he even have in me at this point, anyway?—were still pumping slowly, and the other hand was on a hip, guiding my fretful rolls. He squeezed, adding a bit of lift to the rocking motion I couldn’t break out of. My eyes felt damp and, every time I managed to drag them open, they refused to focus.

His were sharp and intent, always watching.

He eased me up and down a few more times, then released my hip to grab his cock and hold it in place. A palm cupped a buttock from below and he pushed me an inch or two higher and held me there, his arms bunching as my trembling thighs didn’t do much to keep me hovering.

“Charlie,” he said hoarsely. “Condom. Can you—on the side there. Right there.”

I flung out an arm and fumbled for the small box on his bedside table. I pulled out a condom with shaking hands and dropped the box.

He had the condom off me before I could open it, and he pulled me up to a high kneeling position. He pressed his forehead into my chest as he put the condom on. He added more lubricant, then flattened his hands on my shoulder blades and held me to him for a quick bite and suck at each nipple in turn before he let me down again.

The hand behind me was holding his shaft steady, and his dark eyes were locked on mine as he helped me lower onto it.

“Fuuuuuuuck,” he said eloquently as I took him in and in until I was fully seated on his lap, his cock buried inside. “Mmmm.” He ran a hand down my chest, caught my shaft and gave me a solid couple of strokes before gripping my waist. “You ready?”

I blinked at him, vision hazy. “Uh-huh.”

He lifted and lowered me a scant inch, then did it again, then again.

“Oh,” I said, my head dropping back. “Yeah, I—oh. Yeah.” I rested my hands on his shoulders and did my best to follow his guidance as he moved me softly over him. It didn’t take long to get the hang of it. I settled into a slow, thorough grind, rocking him inside me and loving the encouraging sounds he made.

Soon, it wasn’t enough. I began to lift and lower myself more enthusiastically.

Kevin let go and found other things to do with his hands. Things like holding my dick and circling his thumb over the sensitive head. Things like skimming up and down my torso, pulling me into an arch so he could get his mouth on my collarbone to suck and gnaw on, so he could get his mouth on my neck, on my lips. Things like grabbing at my arse cheeks and squeezing. I yelped and bucked into him when he gave me a light smack, and he grinned at me.

As always with Kevin, it got hotter and wilder until, yes. I was indeed bouncing on it, as he’d told me he wanted. I couldn’t say who was making the most noise at that point—him, me, or the mattress.

I didn’t care.

Everything was spiralling, drawing in and in, my orgasm bearing down on me with frightening intensity.

My ridiculous gasping grew shorter, faster.

Kevin suddenly lifted me off him and shoved me backwards. I almost fell off the bottom of the bed. He came down on top of me, pushed inside, and slid his arms under my back to curl his hands around my shoulders, dragging me down onto his powerful thrusts. I went for his arse and held it as he went absolutely wild, his body knocking the breath clean out of me.

Less than a minute of it had me coming hard. I held him to me as his thrusts sped up until his hips stuttered, until he looked right into my eyes, said, “I love you so much,” and came.