By CLARE LONDON (10 page)

“He’s with the blond one, isn’t he? Your friend?” He seemed to smile at the thought.

I knew he meant Louis. Everyone knew Louis at the clubs—he was a local dancer. He was the ripple of lightness and grace that turned heads as he passed. He was the one who drew the crowds, who would be a star one day, who got hit on every time he went out. Not me. “Yeah, he and Louis are a couple. They’ve been together for years.”

His smile broadened. “I thought so. I was tempted by him a couple of months ago when he started his gig at Compulsion, but I never got any positive reaction from him. I assumed he must be taken.” There was a twinkle in his eye—a kind of mischief. “A man like that wouldn’t be free for long.”

I was horrified at the wave of nausea that engulfed me. “You made a play for Louis?”

“No, I did not pursue it. It was obviously a mixed message from him.” Seve twisted his body to ease the car keys out of his jeans pocket. It was an elegant, sensual movement. It looked like he was trying to be careless, but from the way he turned his face, sneaking a look at my expression from under his hooded lids, he knew he’d shocked me. In fact, he was bloody enjoying it. “He looks like he needs it, doesn’t he? Needs a fuck. The way he moves, the looks he gives a man… like he’s asking for it. All the time.”

“Louis is definitely not like that. You….” I caught my breath. “You’re an arrogant prick, you know that?”

Seve just smiled as if, yes, he did know. “I said it was a mixed message. I thought it was a come-on for me, but it’s just the way he is.” He turned to face me again, his eyes sparkling. As cars passed the club, the illumination from their headlights swept the side of his face and neck. “And you’re very defensive, aren’t you? Why would you care?”

Yeah, why would I, apart from his careless disrespect of Louis? Shit, was I jealous? Startled that Seve had been attracted to one of my friends before he even met me? I’d never been in this situation before—in direct competition with a mate. It’d be amusing if it wasn’t so… so….

“I’m glad I waited, though,” Seve was saying. He rolled the keys around in his palm, back and forth. His gaze ran down my body, trailing hot slices of need in their wake. “The messages are a damn sight clearer from you.”

“You reckon?”

He smiled slowly in reply.

It’s just sex, I told myself. My head whirled. I’m just a willing arse. Look how he talks about it… about me.

“Will you get in the car now?”

I paused. I wanted something else, I guess. Some other word. Whereas my cock—I sighed to myself wearily—just wanted him. Seve dropped his head back, stretching his arms out behind his shoulders. Cracked the joints of his fingers as if he’d been still for too long and needed action. He moved with the restrained energy of a wild cat, like something feral. Something predatory.

He replied as if he’d heard my thoughts and was angry or tired of them. “You just want to talk more, then? Or do you want to fuck?”

“That’s my only choice?” I snapped back.

Suddenly there was that flash of uncertainty again. This time he was the one to hesitate, his free hand lifting from his side, reaching for me. His breath was warm on my cheek, and I thought he’d try to grab me. But instead, he ran his fingertips along my jaw and then to my ear. He touched me as if he were blind, trying to gauge the shape of my face. His breathing was faster than before.

“Max?” He said just my name, his voice low and softly questioning.

Hell. Before I could even think about replying, he leaned even closer and put his mouth on mine. I found myself sucking on his tongue, hot and needy. He had his answer. I was sure people were staring at us as they passed on the pavement, but I didn’t care. I gripped his arms and pressed as close to him as the contours of my body allowed.

Out of the corner of my eye, I saw the bouncers move uneasily. Behind them, something—or someone—else stirred. A shadow passed across the side of the building, like someone had dodged back out of sight. You know that feeling, when you don’t see something clearly enough to know what it is, but your sixth sense alerts you to trouble? The hairs on the back of my neck sprang up like I was a guard dog and I’d heard a key in an unseen but forbidden lock. Was it another security man? Just one of the partygoers?

A group of young men pushed past us with a wolf whistle or two, on their way to the club entrance. Distracted, I pulled away from Seve.

And I got in the car.

WE DIDN’T go anywhere special—no exclusive party, no discreet bar, no guided tour of where Seve lived or played. But at least he never took me to that bleak, windy lay-by I’d imagined. Instead, we drove for fifteen minutes or so in silence toward Hove, where we pulled into the tree-lined car park of a small guest house. Seve switched off the lights and turned to me.

“You mean you were listening when those guys outside the club said get a room?” I quipped.

Seve didn’t answer. He reached to the dashboard and pressed an unidentified button. With barely a jolt, the back of my seat started to recline. After the initial surprise, I released my seat belt and lay back, savoring the luxurious leather upholstery underneath me as it moved. The doors were a snug fit, and no noise intruded from outside the car. On the roof, I could hear the first patter of raindrops, as forecast. I hated the rain, though I wasn’t sure that justified driving to some unfamiliar place with Seve just as a way to stay dry. There was no movement anywhere else in the car park. The trees shaded us from the guest house itself, and I guessed every sane person had left their car long before now and gone into the warm, comfy rooms.

“You forgot to make a booking?” Another of my feeble jokes, but I felt aggrieved. “Or you need a couple of quid toward the cost?”

“It’s not that.”

I felt vulnerable, flat on my back on a car seat that was larger and comfier than some beds I’d slept in. And Seve looming over me from his side of the car. “I don’t understand you at all.”

To my surprise, he didn’t come straight back with a snappy protest. Instead, he gazed at me, the reflection from a nearby security lamp in the car park flickering in his pupils. “Then we’re well matched. I don’t understand you either.”

I laughed. It was a loud sound in the claustrophobia of the car, in conflict with our stilted breathing. “I thought you’d had plenty of experience with guys.”

“I’m not talking about guys,” he said. “I don’t understand you.”

“Maybe you should have stuck with the boy band.”

“Boy band?” He frowned. “What the hell are you talking about?” Then his eyes widened with anger. “Those fucking journalists. I tell them to keep away, but they keep calling. I have no time for their stupid gossip magazines.”

“You’re obviously news.” I shrugged. A new business venture in Brighton’s clubland, a franchise with links to other UK cities, a family manager who was young, gay, sharp, and fucking gorgeous. Yeah, what wasn’t news about all that? Especially the manager’s sex life.

“Max?” Seve was staring at me again. “You don’t believe everything you read in that trash, do you?”

“Hey!” I held up my hands in mock surrender. “I don’t believe everything I read anywhere. It’s none of their business who you fuck.”

“Who they say I fuck.” He seemed disproportionately angry about it.

“It’s none of my business either,” I said. The words felt like individual lumps in my throat. It was bizarre, arguing about his sexual diary when I was stretched out under him and aching for him to bend down. Aching for him to fuck me. If things continued like this, I’d start to dwell on the thought of him lying on a bed, panting and naked apart from his sweat, with three or four ridiculously cute pop stars, their lips on his skin and the trail of hair on his belly, their hands curled around….

Yeah. Looked like I was jealous, though it was neither sensible nor my right. I started to struggle back up to a sitting position, but his hand landed firmly on my chest.

“Get back down.” The growl was back.

“You want to do it right here?” I peered out the car window. The rain was running freely down it now, the lingering drops glistening like little silver Christmas tree lights against the darkness outside.

“Right here, yes,” he hissed. “I do it when I want it, where I want it. That makes me hot. It’s more exciting, more risky. Don’t you agree?”

“I—”

He laughed softly. “But I know you do—because you came with me again.”

I didn’t have any other defense. It was true. When Seve leaned over the central console and put his warm, moist lips on my neck, I welcomed it, wriggling on the seat to get a more comfortable position. He slid his hands up under my shirt, pulled it out from my jeans, and jerked the buttons apart with such impatience that one of them sprang off into the depths of the car. His palms were damp with sweat and his fingers were rough. When he ran them up my chest to my left nipple and twisted it sharply, I yelped.

“Hurts, Max?”

I lay back against the cool leather and panted. “Like hell it does.”

His smile made a damp shape on my belly where he kissed it. He licked up from my navel to the other nipple. He flicked it back and forth with his tongue, occasionally sucking it between his pursed lips. I felt the vibration all the way down to my toes, and my knees pushed out against the sides of the seat cushion.

Seve laughed softly, running his free hand down between my thighs. He teased at the seams of my jeans, the material now sticking to my skin with my own sweaty desire. “Soon, Max. Soon I’ll fuck you.” He cupped my groin, rubbing firmly up and down my thickening dick. It made the ache much, much worse. I heard a zip go, but to my selfish disappointment, it wasn’t mine. He slid a hand up to grasp me by the neck again, and for a few long seconds, he thrust his tongue into me, moaning his lust into my mouth. I grabbed him in return, trying to get a grip on his cropped hair, holding his head close.

Then he pulled away. He was panting too, and he fumbled under his own seat with clumsy movements. The back of it jerked down, though it didn’t settle as flat as mine—just enough for him to lie back. His hand was still on my neck, and he tugged my head over his prone body. When he pulled open the flies of his jeans with rather gratifying impatience, I saw he had no underwear on. The cloth parted and his cock was there, nestled against crisp dark curls, already filling and straining to get out into the night air. The skin was flushed and dark; the tip was weeping for attention. My mouth watered.

“Suck me again.” His whisper was hoarse. “It was so good.”

I bent awkwardly from the waist, avoiding a minefield of buttons and switches, and leaned over him. I trapped his nearer arm under my body and went down on him with as much enthusiasm as the first time. He jerked at my first touch and my head banged against the edge of the steering wheel. But then he settled, letting me suck down toward the base of his cock, and I began slowly to torment him. I licked and sucked from his balls right up to the hot tip of his shaft, shining in the dark. I could taste the drops leaking out, feel the ripple of excitement inside its sheath. I wondered how long this rock-hard dick had been aching for this, and how the hell Seve had managed to concentrate on his driving with this in his jeans, clamoring to get out.

His free hand clutched at my hair, pushing my head up and down. Damn, but he liked it. Pleasure was bubbling deep in his groin, I could feel it in his pulse. The hairs around his cock tickled my nose, and the soft furring at the tops of his thighs brushed my chin. I could feel his balls tightening and his cock throbbing on my tongue. He’d come soon. I opened my throat to take it all in.

“No!”

Like the first night, just as his climax was beating a path to escape, he tugged at my head, trying to pull me away. Tonight, though, I wasn’t going to take it like that. Perhaps I was getting bored with the whole submissive thing. I growled in my throat, tightening my lips on his cock. I resisted him.

“Max!” He faltered, maybe nervous that if he pulled too hard, my teeth would scrape a deep and angry passage all the way up that very, very sensitive flesh. I continued my sucking because I wanted to taste him. I really wanted to.

“Fuck it, wait….”

I could feel him struggling with the need to climax, the rising ecstasy. He tried to slap my head away, but I caught his hand and gripped him by the wrist. I pressed his arm back against the window so he was trapped on both sides. And still I savored him. “You want me to fight you?” I murmured into the soft skin around his dick, dragging it up over his slit then peeling it back down with my lips. “Is that what you want?”

“You have to stop….” But his hips bucked up into me regardless.

“I don’t have to do anything just because you say so. I want to swallow it, Seve.” I rolled my tongue around the rim of the head, my voice muffled by my mouthful but the words as clear as I could make them. “I want to swallow you.”

When I glanced up, he looked shocked. “That’s not what hap—oh fuck!”

I spat more saliva out to ease the way and I tightened my mouth. His cock jerked. It was reaching for my throat, I could feel it. I remembered someone telling me once I gave really good head. “No one ever did this for you, Seve? No one ever tasted you? Swallowed you?”

His silence was enough answer. Damned if I won’t enjoy being your first. And then he gasped and the flood came. His hips crushed me up against the steering column, his fingers dug into my scalp, and he keened his essence out into my mouth, pumping again and again, hot and sharp tasting and richly thick.

Shit, but I also remembered how good come tasted!

FOR the next few moments, things were awkward. Seve lay back on his seat, gasping for breath, the aftershocks still shuddering through him. I licked at his softening cock for a while, and then I levered myself back over onto my seat. I wiped my mouth carefully and teased out a thin hair stuck on my lower lip. I relaxed back as well, aware of the pressure of my own hard-on. Neither of us spoke. The only sound was our panting and the thrum of rain on the car. The air felt tense, as if it were shrinking in on itself.

Something had changed in the balance of things. Perhaps because I’d snatched control from him at the last minute? Perhaps because I’d done something for him no one else ever had? No, I was kidding myself. More likely it was because I’d pissed him off. I was meant to be the bottom in all this—to do what I was allowed, what I was told. Wasn’t that how it’d been so far? But now we were stuck out here together, and if either of us was unhappy with it, well, what would we do? I, for one, didn’t know where the hell I was.