By CLARE LONDON (7 page)

I took his hand. It was warm and the handshake very firm. “Max Newman.”

He held my hand for a few seconds longer than was usual, but I wasn’t pulling away either. “Are you sure now, Max?”

Irritation spiked through me. “What the hell kind of a question is that? I was making conversation, that’s all. Like normal people do.”

He dropped my hand and his eyes widened.

I sighed and took a step backward. “Fuck, I’m sorry. I’m just….” Mixed up? Horny? Both?

Seve took a step forward to close the gap again, and he smiled. “You startled me, that’s all. You like to talk, don’t you? To argue as well. You’re very….”

“Very what?”

He didn’t finish. His gaze slid down to look at my mouth, and the desire in his eyes sucked any resistance out of me. I let out a breath that had been building tight in my chest. He looked intrigued now, and I remembered his reaction last week, when we struggled, very briefly, out in the yard. So perhaps he liked a little resistance.

“Come with me, Max,” he said. Very low, very quiet, but full of promise. I might not have heard the words because of the noise surrounding us, but I read those lips. In the middle of the heat of the bar, I felt a chill. He moved away and walked right past me.

I turned and followed him, just like before. There’d never been any doubt I would.

WE DIDN’T go out through the back door this time. Seve led me out of the dance area, across the lobby, and toward the exit. Did he have a place nearby? “Where are we going?” I asked.

He didn’t answer, just moved confidently through the crowds of people moving to and fro, pausing for nothing. The dance floor lights were flashing behind us, the noise level loud and distracting. There was a roar of approval from the dancers as the DJ segued into a medley of eighties hits. Seve led us to a short flight of uncarpeted stairs behind the entrance desk. It was roped off as private, and a couple of security men nodded to him as he lifted the rope and slipped through. I ducked under as well. One of the security men continued to follow our path with angry, half-hooded eyes. But the lighting was dim on the staircase, so perhaps I was imagining it.

I concentrated solely on following Seve. Every step was firm, his movement elegant. I’d rarely seen a guy so physically sensual and yet so obviously masculine with it. I felt clumsy compared against him. The stairs led to a small landing with a couple of closed doors. Both of them had a spy hole looking out and a small gilt plaque saying “Private.” No one was around, though I could hear the bustle at the entrance down below. There was a security keypad on the wall, and Seve pressed a few buttons, quickly and confidently. There was a soft snick as the lock disengaged; he pushed the door open and gestured for me to go ahead of him.

I went in, of course. It was dark, and for a moment I couldn’t get my bearings. Seve had followed on my heels—I could feel his breath on my neck—and as I groped around for the light, he kicked the door shut behind us. The room felt small and the air stuffy. The thud of the door was reminiscent of our exit out of the club the previous week, but this time I was being captured indoors rather than thrown out into the fresh air. I still couldn’t find any switch, but Seve eased past me and clicked on a lamp.

It was some kind of office-cum-storeroom. The lamp was on a table pushed to the back of the room, with a plastic chair tucked up against each end. There was a computer on the table, but I didn’t see how anyone could comfortably work, because it was surrounded by box files, reams of copy paper, and a pile of neatly folded towels that looked like they’d just come back from the laundry. On one of the chairs was a tall box with torn flaps at the top and polystyrene chips scattered around the bottom. The packaging had obviously spilled out when the box was opened, and now it looked bizarrely like snowdrifts at the base of a cardboard tower. Three filing cabinets lined the left-hand wall, and a dozen or more boxes covered the wall to our right. From the print on the sides, the boxes seemed to contain cleaning and catering supplies. They were piled high and deep, leaving very little floor space for two men to move about. I considered another of my lame witticisms along the lines of “nice place you have here” but managed to keep it to myself. I wondered what the hell he was up to. “I’m with the new management,” he’d said. Obviously he wasn’t any kind of cleaner, but he could have been anyone from bar supervisor to finance manager and still know the security codes to the storeroom as part of his job. Maybe we were going through here to a larger office, but I couldn’t see any door except the one we’d originally come through.

Seve reached his arm across my body and flipped off the lamp again. Immediately we were plunged into darkness, with no windows to the outside world and barely a sliver of light around the close-fitting door. I took a step toward the table, or so I thought, and almost tripped over one of the boxes of supplies. A crinkled strip of something fluttered up and brushed across my cheek. I shivered in shock until I realized it was probably a stray edge of shrinkwrapping. I was fighting to focus my sight in the blackness when a hand gripped my arm.

“Can’t wait,” Seve said, his voice a hoarse purr.

He kissed me then, just as shockingly as he had the first time. His mouth was hot and damp on me, plundering my own, his tongue probing behind my teeth. His beard felt rough against my skin, the short hair scraping across my jaw. He nipped at my lower lip and started undoing the buttons of my shirt with deft fingers. At the same time, he slid his wet tongue out of my mouth and ran it around my cheek and out to my temple. Along its path, his lips pressed against my skin, kissing me with possessive care. His hot breath tickled the hair I’d tucked back behind my ears, and his hands caressed my chest.

I shuddered with pleasure. It seemed like forever since I’d had this kind of attention. A few words, a kiss that was more like an attack—that was all I’d had from Seve so far. That, and a bloody good fucking. What kind of relationship potential was that? Yet tonight, this was pure indulgence—even though it was already heading way beyond a kiss.

He wriggled his hand down between us to undo the button and zip of my jeans. He wrenched them down, dragging my boxers with them. I wriggled until I got my feet free of the cloth, but it was difficult to move with hardly any space in the room. And now I was naked from the waist down. Again, I thought, more than a little disorientated. Seve was all over me, hands at my groin, pushing my flapping shirttails out of the way, fingers sliding in between my tensed thighs. His features were half-hidden in the dark, but he remained a very tangible man, his body pressed against mine. He cupped my balls, his palm even warmer than my furred, tightening flesh, and his eyes glinted in the shadows. I saw the occasional flash of his teeth as he grinned or grimaced—I wasn’t sure which. He never said a word, but I happily surrendered to those sweaty, demanding hands in the stuffy air of the storeroom, allowing him to hold me. To grip my waist, to curl a fist around my aching cock. To do whatever he wanted with me.

There were soft moans of satisfaction, and they weren’t only mine.

He pushed me back until I felt the edge of the table on my arse. Then he slid his hands under my bare buttocks and hoisted me up onto the top of it. There was only a small square of available space—half the box files immediately slipped off the table, and the towels flattened out underneath me, their softness a welcome cushion under my bum. Seve pushed the other files off impatiently and let them crash on the floor. It felt a little like that scene in A Streetcar Named Desire when Brando angrily sweeps away the crockery to show how he’s gonna clear the table. My shoulders were pressed hard against the cold surface of the back wall, and Seve leaned in against me, holding me in place. He twisted awkwardly, shaking off his shirt, fumbling with the waistband of his jeans. Then his hands gripped my thighs and pulled them apart.

My cock was damp at the tip and straining shamelessly to the heavens. He tugged me farther toward him so that my arse perched on the very edge of the table. I wanted to grab on to something as an anchor, but I didn’t think the computer monitor was stable enough, so I just spread my hands on the tabletop and hoped for the best. My fingers caught the edge of a pack of paper, and it tumbled off after the files. By now my back was bent awkwardly and my feet were waving in the air. My knees were wide apart—I was completely, brazenly open for him. I knew that at this angle, if there’d been enough light, he’d have been able to see all of me—my dick, my balls, my hole. I felt horribly exposed and even more shockingly excited. A blob of precome dripped onto my belly, and I could smell my eagerness.

Seve suddenly took one hand away and turned his head so he was totally shadowed. He seemed to be groping around in the pocket of his jeans. All I could hear was the sound of his harsh breathing. When his hand touched me again, it was covered with something cool and slippery. Lube. I shifted, trying to get more comfortable, and one of my joints cracked. My heart was hammering. Then his fingers slid into me and I moaned more loudly.

He loomed over me again, his eyes wide and knowing, his mouth searching for mine. I sucked hard on his tongue, desperate because I knew what was coming. He wriggled forward, rubbing his groin against mine. His cock was free of his jeans, the satiny sheath stroking my length, tugging my own skin up then back down again. The suspense was almost unbearably exciting. When he moved against me, our chest hair brushed with a thin sheen of sweat. I grasped him with one hand and held on. The hair on his forearms was damp already.

He’d come prepared this time. Or maybe last Saturday’s condomless status had been the exception. When his stretching fingers had finished their work in my arse and his cock nudged up against my entrance, it felt slick with latex and lube. I was really glad I didn’t have to bring up the subject again. I also didn’t need him to spread my legs even farther, but I let him, because it was a touch from him—an intimate one. He slid his hands under me again and lifted my thighs a couple of inches off the bench, propping me on my tailbone. And he entered me like last time. Hard.

A groan escaped me, probably too loud considering I had no idea who might be passing outside the room. We both grunted and started moving together. He was face-to-face with me this time, though his features were gray in the half-light. But it was good to feel him flush up against me, and I hung on to him as best I could. He had more hair on his chest than I did and he was more muscled, even though I was fit from work on the site. He smelled great, whereas I was sure I smelled of too much sweat and beer. Each time he thrust into me, I was knocked back against the wall, but I clenched my thighs around his hips and let him dictate the pace. It was a bloody exciting angle for me. He hit my prostate more often than not, and several times I had to hold myself back from arching right up and falling off the table. My cock was squashed between us, rubbed to maximum sensitivity by the skin of his belly and begging for release. His knee knocked against the table leg, and the last of the box files teetered on the edge, then fell. We rocked on top of the table, not caring. The towels slid away from under my arse, and when I flung out an arm, looking for better purchase, I thumped the tall box on the chair. The cardboard gave a whumph sound, and I heard the squeaky puff of more polystyrene chips flying through the air.

“Max.” I barely caught Seve’s whisper. His breath blew out over my neck. “Touch yourself, Max. I can’t….”

I peeled my hand away from his shoulder. He adjusted his stance so that he could still balance me on the table and continued to thrust into me, his thighs under mine, the open zip of his jeans starting to scratch at my exposed skin. I didn’t care. I fisted my fingers around my cock and started to pump.

Seve’s breath hitched and his head dropped. Even in the dark, he was watching me jerk off, my hand squeezed up between our bodies, twisting up and down my swollen shaft. His teeth tightened briefly on the skin of my shoulder.

“Close,” he hissed and started to thrust into me more quickly. I reckoned I could feel him thickening inside me. I squeezed both the muscles of my hole and my hand around my dick, eager for completion for both of us. Seve was going to come soon, and I was either going to be flattened against the wall or plonked down unceremoniously. There was already a nagging pain in my lower back from trying to keep upright as he fucked me to a blubbering wreck. But I didn’t need much help at all to get there—my climax came rushing like a geyser and my hand became a blur as my eyes filled with tears of excitement.

“Seve… shit!” I moaned aloud, and the last things I saw before the ecstasy robbed me of sense were his eyes opening wider in the half light and a shocked smile on his face. Even as my hot come hit our stomachs and began to dribble down between us, he gave a shout and pushed hard against me, forcing me back up against the wall and pressing finger-shaped bruises into my buttocks.

Gotcha! I thought wearily and triumphantly.

IT WAS eerily quiet in that tiny room, despite our ragged breathing. I untangled my legs from around his hips and he pulled his cock slowly out of me. With a wince, I sat back properly on the table and let my feet land on the floor. I was in dire need of proper support. My whole body ached and throbbed with the climax, the excitement, the physical strain.

“You okay?” I whispered into the darkness.

He nodded. I felt it because his head was bowed against my shoulder. He reached out a hand to grip my waist as if he were supporting himself as well. “Your head,” he muttered.

Huh? I put a hand up, wondering why he was suddenly worrying about it. I found several chips in my hair and pulled them out with an irritated grunt. They were squashy between my fingers and shone white in the dim light. Great. Not only did I presumably look well fucked, I was also a lookalike for Frosty the Snowman.

“Hell of a squeeze in here.” It was a feeble joke of mine, I knew, but to my surprise, Seve chuckled softly.

“Hell of a good squeeze, though.”