Junk (10 page)

Unfortunately, none of the blokes he found on hot_geeks could give Jasper a run for his money. Looked like Lewis was going to have to break his personal ethical code and have sex with a client.

In his head, at any rate.

Real life was an entirely different matter.

Chapter Nine

Jasper lay back on the rumpled bed sheets and watched as Mas made his way to the tiny adjoining bathroom. He heard the shower water start running. Now would be a good time to make his excuses and leave, but he couldn’t bring himself to be so rude. Not that Mas expected him to hang around after sex or anything, and he’d told Jasper he was on his way out clubbing in a moment, but leaving without at least some kind of postcoital conversation felt wrong.

Instead, he hauled himself up and dealt with the used condom. The nearest bin was in the bathroom. Perhaps he could say his good-byes while Mas was under the water.

Steam was billowing out from over the top of the shower curtain. Jasper made as much noise as he could treading on the bin pedal, then went to rinse the lube off his fingers under the sink tap.

“Ow-ow-ow! Fuck’s sake, Jasper. Turn it off! That’s fucking freezing.” Mas pulled away the end of the shower curtain to glare at him. It looked comical, considering how cute he was with his heart-shaped face and Cupid’s bow lips. His looks bordered on angelic, although he couldn’t really pull off innocent too well. There was a certain slinky sexuality that oozed out of every movement he made, and a permanent tease in his large, grey-green eyes.

“God, I’m so sorry. I forgot.” Jasper turned off the offending tap and sank down onto the toilet lid. “I’m an idiot.”

“Yeah. Good thing you’re a big, lovable one, isn’t it?” Mas reached over to ruffle Jasper’s hair before letting the shower curtain fall back into place.

Jasper picked up one of Mas’s bottles of product from the shelf behind the sink. “Glossing serum.” What the hell was that?

“So, who’s this Lewis, then?”

Jasper nearly dropped the bottle into the sink. “Lewis?” He hadn’t said anything about Lewis, had he? He’d barely been in the door when Mas had told him they didn’t have long if he was to get to The Retreat while it was still happy hour and begun stripping off his uniform from the fancy department store where he worked.

“Yeah.
Lewis
. The one you were imagining you were fucking. You called out his name when you shot your load.”

Oh. Was that jealousy Jasper could hear? The bottle of glossing serum slid out of his hands and hit the sink enamel, cracking and spilling oily liquid everywhere. “Oh God, I’m so sorry.”

“Hey, don’t worry about it. For what it’s worth, I was imagining you were Professor Brian Cox.” The noise of the water abated, and the shower curtain rattled on its rings. “I’ve got a thing for hot nerds. You remind me of him.”

“I don’t look anything like him.” The Mancunian TV physicist might have similar colouring, but Jasper was nowhere near that pretty, and he certainly didn’t have those luscious lips.

“I dunno. It’s a vibe. That kind of sexy-scientist thing you’ve both got going on. Makes me want to bend over a lab table and demand you do all kinds of naughty experiments on me.”

“I’m a librarian, not a scientist. My degree was in English Literature.”

“Yeah, yeah, but you’re a right brainbox, aren’t you? Bet you could beat Stephen Fry at Trivial Pursuit. Anyway, you’re changing the subject. Who’s Lewis? I’m hoping he’s totally cream-your-pants hot if he’s that distracting. Don’t want to think I’m losing my charm already.”

“He’s…he’s my…” What was Lewis to him, exactly? Therapist? Hired help? Declutterer? “He’s my friend,” Jasper settled on.

“Right.” Mas stepped out of the bathtub and grabbed the threadbare towel hanging over the door. “I’m guessing not a friend with benefits either, if you’re over here rather than with him. But you want him to be more, yeah?” The words were muffled as Mas towelled off his hair.

Yes. Jasper wanted Lewis to be more. So much more. “But we’ve only just met, really.” He couldn’t count their school history. They’d never even spoken back then.

“Sometimes you just know. You meet someone, and it’s like,
Kapow! Take me now, cowboy. I’m yours
.” Mas’s smile appeared strained, somehow, but then it changed into a frown as he took in the mess of serum and broken glass in the sink. “Shit! That stuff was expensive.”

“I’ll buy you some more.”

The frown melted, quickly replaced by a lopsided smile. Mas’s moods flitted from one to the next like a butterfly on crack. “Nah, it’s all right. I can always grab another bottle from the stockroom at work. Just, could you do the honours with what you’ve got on your fingers?”

“This? Oh, er, okay. I’ve never done this before.” Jasper clumsily brushed his oily hands through Mas’s mop of chestnut ringlets. Did Lewis do this with his curls? Would Jasper ever get a chance to help him out?

“First time for everything,” Mas said archly. “Oi, that’s enough! We want glossy, not greasy. I don’t want to look like I’ve just finished a shift in a chippie.”

“Right. Sorry. I’ll just… I’ll clear up this mess, and then I’ll get going.” Jasper gestured at the sink.

“Nah, leave it. I’ll sort it out in the morning. You should go find this Lewis bloke you’re so strung up on and make him yours.”

“Mine? I couldn’t do that.”

“Why not? You’re sex on legs. He’d be a bloody fool to turn you down. Oh.” Mas pouted. “Straight, is he? Well, most straight blokes are happy to accept a blowjob off you, even if they don’t want to return the favour. Sometimes they’ll even fuck you up the arse if you’re not too hairy. You might have a problem there, but I could always help you with a back, sac and crack wax, if you wanted.”

“Umm… He’s not straight.”

“In a relationship?”

Jasper shook his head.

“So…” Mas strolled through to the bedroom and began searching through a drawer, naked, hairless arse in the air. “It must be you who’s in a relationship, then.”

“No! We’re both single. Seriously. You didn’t think I was cheating on someone, did you?”

Mas started pulling on a pair of bright green skimpy underpants. “Other guys do. I seem to be their ‘slut on the side’ of choice.”

“You’re too young to be cynical.”

Mas stood and stared with his hands on his hips. “I’m twenty-two.”

“Way too young.”

“And you’re old and crusty enough for it to have settled into a permanent way of thinking, right?”

“I’m not cynical!”

“Then go find this Lewis bloke you’re hung up on, and let him know how you feel. What’s the worst that can happen?”

The ground would open up and swallow him. Or maybe a pile of books would fall on top of him instead. Yes, that was much more likely. “He could laugh at me.”

“Trust me, that isn’t going to happen. He’d have to be stark raving bonkers to turn you down. You’re hot, intelligent, and you’ve got your own place.” Mas raised an eyebrow and posed coquettishly. “I think I’ll have you myself if he can’t see what a catch you are.”

“You’ve already had me,” Jasper pointed out.

“You know what I mean.” For just a moment, Mas’s mischievous expression slipped, and Jasper saw the longing lying behind it. Oh. He hadn’t realised. He’d assumed the man-tart was impervious to falling in love. If he’d known he was toying with Mas’s heart, he’d have stopped seeing him a long time ago.

“Mas, I…” But he didn’t know where he was going with that. How to bow out gracefully from a one-sided relationship. So he ended up saying what he always seemed to end up saying. “I’m sorry.”

“Ah, don’t worry about me. I’m young, I’m fit, and I’ve got the sexiest bum in the whole of the South West. I’ll find me a hot nerd all of my own one day. Hey, you got any numbers of professors at the Uni? I’m well up for some teacher/naughty student role playing.”

Jasper found himself smiling, despite himself. “None of them look like a certain TV physicist, if that’s what you’re after.”

Mas tutted. “Shame. Now go on, tiger. Go get this Lewis fella, and make him see just how lucky he is.”

Jasper walked out of Mas’s Stokes Croft building and headed back towards where he’d left his car, deep in thought. Mas’s advice was all well and good, but how on earth did Jasper “get” Lewis? He didn’t even know where the man lived. Could be just round the corner, for all he knew. Jasper glanced up at the brightly coloured mural on the wall opposite. This part of the city was covered in them, every other building sporting its colours proudly. Would Lewis choose to live in an area like this? It was on the up, but still only in the early stages of urban regeneration. For all Jasper knew, though, Lewis lived in some genteel little village on the city outskirts.

He pulled out his phone and navigated to the screen displaying Lewis’s mobile number. Would Lewis be annoyed if a client phoned him at nine thirty in the evening? He had said anytime, but wasn’t that just one of those things people said? They never meant it literally. Lewis had never mentioned there being a twenty-four-hour call-out service included in the weekly plan they’d drawn up.

Two sessions of two hours each week. And Jasper was paying for them. No. This wasn’t a friendship. This was a business transaction, and he wasn’t about to make Lewis into some kind of whore by expecting him to conform to Jasper’s every whim simply because money was changing hands.

Jasper would just have to wait until their next scheduled session together and try his best not to make a total fool of himself.

Chapter Ten

Choosing a single book from amongst the hoard was impossible. After spending the whole weekend working his way through every last stack in the entrance hall—the accessible ones at the front, anyway—by Monday morning Jasper had narrowed it down to a selection of five. It would have to do. If Lewis was angry he hadn’t followed his instructions exactly… Well, Jasper couldn’t actually imagine Lewis getting angry. He seemed totally unflappable. This was the man who’d resisted the urge to lash out at bullies. Did anything ever shake that calm?

The knock at the door made Jasper jump, even though he’d been listening out for it for the last ten minutes. But when he opened the door, he had another surprise. Lewis stood there, drenched from head to toe.

“You’re wet!” Yep, talk about stating the obvious. Jasper could hear the drumming of the rain now the door was open. Could even see it sheeting down if he craned to look over Lewis’s shoulder. “I didn’t realise it was raining.”

“Like cats and dogs. Not that I’m sure what the connection is between them and water, anyway,” Lewis said, then sneezed.

“Oh God, you’ll catch your death. Come on in. I’m so sorry. I shouldn’t have left you standing there.”

“Not your fault. I should have remembered my umbrella. Had to bus it over today as Carroll was busy with the van this morning.”

“You don’t have a car?”

Lewis pulled a sad smile. “I’ve got one. She just needs a whole new engine, and I can’t really afford that right now.”

“Ah. I suppose… It’s really none of my business and I don’t like to snoop…”

“Yes? Go on.” Lewis sounded amused now.

“Well, you don’t seem to charge much for your services. I was thinking about what your overheads must be with the van and advertising, and I can’t see how the two of you are able to make much more than minimum wage.”

“It’s not quite that bad, but put it this way, if I weren’t living with my parents, I’d qualify for Housing Benefit.”

“But that’s ridiculous! You’re a smart man. You could be earning a small fortune.”

“You’d be amazed how many unemployed Psychology graduates there are out there. It’s a cut-throat field.”

“Seriously?”

“Like you wouldn’t believe. I started working with Carroll just to get some relevant work experience. You kind of need it even to get considered for a postgrad course. But then I loved it so much, and I couldn’t abandon my clients once I’d started working with them, so I signed up for the same part-time counselling course Carroll had done, and, well, here I am.”

“Didn’t you want to be in something more high-powered? Better paid?”

“I don’t think I’m all that ambitious, really. Besides, there’s more to life than money,” Lewis said, then sneezed loudly.

“Bless you!” Why had he said that? Made him sound like an old dear. Next thing he knew, he’d be saying Lewis would catch a cold standing around all sopping wet. “I suppose…I could lend you some dry clothes. They’re clean, I promise, but they might not fit you all that well.”

Lewis stared at him for a long moment, as if considering the offer. Jasper forced himself to return eye contact, even though he could feel himself twitching and it made him want to scurry away and hide behind a wall of books. Eventually, Lewis’s cheeks dimpled; then the rest of his face followed in a slow smile. “Thanks, I’d really appreciate it.”

Jasper led the way upstairs. “They’re in the bedroom, but there’s not much room to get changed in there and if you’re all wet… Oh dear. I don’t think I have a clean towel right now.”

“That’s fine. I don’t mind using one of yours.”

“Yes, but…” Oh God, after his morning wank, had he wiped himself off with the bathroom towel? He couldn’t remember now, but it wasn’t outside the realm of possibility.