Heartbreaker, a Heartstopper Story - Ch. 25

Gay Cuckold, Gay Erotica, +18, Cheating, Voyeur, Humiliation

Before you read the final chapter of Heartbreaker, I need to stop for a moment and say something.

Thank you.

To every single one of you who stayed with Nick and Charlie through all these months — through 490 pages, 207 thousand words, three cities and two countries — who showed up for every update, who left comments that made me laugh and stay up too late writing the next part because I couldn’t stand to make you wait. Thank you for giving this story your time, your emotions, your hearts (and, let’s be honest, a few other parts too).

And to my paid subscribers, a separate, enormous, deeply felt thank you. Your support is what makes this possible. It keeps the words coming and gives me the freedom to tell the stories I’m desperate to tell. I will never take that for granted, and I hope you’ll follow me into whatever comes next.

Now. One last time. Let’s go. 💙🤍🦈

—

The door clicked shut and the world contracted. The noise of the party was still there, somewhere below and behind them, muffled by floorboards and stone walls. The pulse of whatever song was playing, the occasional burst of laughter that rose and faded, the clink of glasses, all of it distant, belonging to a different room, a different version of the night that was continuing without them and would continue without them for hours, because nobody downstairs was thinking about where Nick and Charlie had gone.

They had all the time in the world.

The room was small around them. The brass bed, the lavender-scented sheets, the window letting in the deep blue dark of a Scottish summer night. Charlie could see the hills through the glass, their outlines just visible against a sky that had finally given in, the last of the colour gone and replaced by northern darkness that was never quite absolute. A few stars had appeared. The radiator was cold. They didn’t need it.

They were sitting on the bed, facing each other. Charlie didn’t remember deciding to sit this way. There had been a sequence, the door, the shoes, the slow unbuttoning that had felt less like undressing and more like unwrapping, Nick’s hands on Charlie’s shirt and Charlie’s hands on Nick’s belt and all of it unhurried, each piece of clothing removed and dropped to the floor without either of them breaking eye contact for longer than a breath. And now here they were, naked, in the centre of the mattress, Charlie’s legs draped over Nick’s thighs, Nick’s over his, tangled at the calves, close enough to feel the heat radiating off each other’s skin.

Nick’s body was golden in the lamplight. The tan had deepened since Charlie had last seen him in person, California sun baked into every inch of him, and his muscles looked denser somehow, fuller, as if the summer had added a final layer that hadn’t been there in June. Charlie’s hands rested on Nick’s thighs, thumbs tracing slow lines along the inner muscle, and he could feel the faint tremor in them. They were both hard. Charlie could feel Nick’s cock against his own, so hot, pressed together where their bodies met, and every time one of them shifted, leaning into a kiss, adjusting the angle of a hip, breathing too deeply, the contact changed, slid, created a friction that sent a slow pulse of heat up through Charlie’s stomach. They weren’t grinding. It was subtler than that, almost accidental, the natural consequence of two bodies sitting this close with nothing between them. Nick would kiss him deeper and lean forward and their cocks would press together and Charlie’s breath would catch and Nick would feel it and hold there, just for a second, before easing back, and the absence of the pressure was almost worse than the pressure itself.

They kissed slowly, so slowly it almost didn’t qualify as movement, just the gradual closing of the space between their mouths until Charlie’s lips found Nick’s and rested there. Nick’s hand came up to the back of his neck, fingers sliding into his curls, and held him, keeping him close. He tasted like champagne and when Charlie tilted his head and opened his mouth wider and let Nick in properly, the sound that came out of him was quiet and helpless and made Nick’s grip tighten in his hair. They kissed like they had nowhere to be. Like the party would go on forever and the night would never fully end and the rest of the world had agreed, unanimously, to leave them alone.

Between them, their cocks were pressed flush against each other, and the heat of that contact was doing something devastating to Charlie’s ability to think. Nick was leaking steadily against Charlie’s stomach, a slick warmth that smeared between them every time either of them moved. Charlie was in the same state, his own cock steel and aching, the head wet, and where they touched, shaft to shaft, the sensitive underside of Charlie’s pressed against the heavy length of Nick’s, each small movement sent a current of pleasure through him that started at the base of his spine and radiated outward in waves. Nick somehow felt bigger. Charlie knew that was probably impossible — cocks didn’t grow at twenty — but his hand found Nick between them, wrapping around them both, and the weight and the girth of what he was holding made his breath stutter. It felt thicker in his grip and whether that was California or muscle or the simple, maddening effect of weeks of deprivation sharpening every sensation, Charlie didn’t care. It filled his hand in a way that made him squeeze, instinctively, and Nick broke the kiss to exhale against his mouth.

They held each other’s gaze and kept holding it while Charlie’s hand moved between them, stroking them together, and neither of them flinched. Neither of them closed their eyes or turned their head or retreated into the private dark behind their own eyelids where pleasure was usually processed alone. They just looked, blue into brown. Charlie’s hand tightened around them. He twisted on the upstroke, his thumb sliding through the slick gathered at the tip of Nick’s cock, spreading it down over both of them, and the wet glide that followed made Nick’s breath catch audibly. A muscle in his jaw twitched. His nostrils flared. But his eyes didn’t close. They stayed on Charlie’s, open, and in them Charlie could see the pleasure arriving and building, could watch it happen in real time, like watching weather move across a landscape.

It was the most intimate thing Charlie had ever experienced.

More intimate than sex. More intimate than the first time, fumbling and nervous and laughing in Nick’s childhood bedroom with the door locked. More intimate than the FaceTime call after Jet, more intimate than the hundreds of nights they’d spent in each other’s arms over the years. Because those moments had all contained some small partition, some thin membrane between what they were feeling and what they were letting the other person see. A closed eye. A buried face. A sound muffled into a pillow or a shoulder. The instinct to hide at the exact moment of being most exposed. There was nothing between them now. Charlie could see everything, Nick’s desire and his tenderness and his vulnerability and the incredulous wonder that still surfaced sometimes when Nick looked at Charlie as if he couldn’t quite believe this was his, that this was allowed, that loving someone this much was something the universe would let him get away with. And Charlie knew that Nick could see the same things in him, because he was hiding none of it. Every wall was down. Every door was open. He was letting Nick look at him, fully, without filtering, the curtains thrown open after years of keeping them drawn, trusting that what the light found would be enough.

Charlie’s hand moved, their cocks sliding together in his grip, the friction building into something warm and inevitable. Nick’s breathing roughened. Charlie’s matched it. They were inhaling and exhaling in the same rhythm now, chests rising and falling together, as if their lungs had decided independently to synchronise, and Charlie could feel his own heartbeat in his fingers where they wrapped around them both and he was almost certain he could feel Nick’s too, the two pulses meeting through the pressed-together skin of their cocks, not quite aligned, almost, almost.

Nick’s brow creased. His mouth opened wider. His hands, which had been resting on Charlie’s thighs, gripped suddenly, fingers digging into the muscle, and a groan left him, pulled from somewhere deep in his chest. His head fell back and his eyes finally closed and his lips shaped a word that might have been fuck or might have been Charlie. Charlie watched him. Watched the pleasure take his face apart, watched the tendons in his neck pull taut, watched the flush spread down from his jaw toward his chest.

And that was when he saw it, just below the collarbone, on the left side. A bruise, roughly the size of a thumbprint, with the unmistakable mottled edges of a mouth that had been there recently and stayed long enough to leave a mark. It sat on Nick’s golden skin like a signature — someone else’s handwriting on a body Charlie knew by heart.

Charlie’s hand stilled. His cock pulsed in his own grip.

“That’s new,” Charlie said.

Nick’s head straightened at the sound of his voice. He looked confused for a second, still half-lost in whatever Charlie’s hand had been doing to him, then he followed Charlie’s gaze down to his own collarbone, and understanding arrived. That smile, the one Charlie had been privately cataloguing as New Nick, the one that was darker and slower and belonged to a version of his boyfriend that hadn’t existed three months ago, settled onto his mouth.

“Yeah,” Nick said. “Parting gift from Grayson, I think.”

Charlie’s brain snagged on the name like fabric catching on a nail. Grayson. Who the bloody hell was Grayson. The name was new, completely unfamiliar, a real person with a real name who had put his real mouth on Nick’s collarbone hard enough and long enough to leave a mark that was still visible days later, and Charlie’s cock throbbed so hard in his own hand that his vision briefly lost focus.

“Grayson?” he repeated. The word felt hot in his mouth.

“Bloke I met the other night at Fever.” Nick’s voice was easy, conversational, as if they were discussing something that had happened at the shops. “Met him and his boyfriend, actually. Devon.”

Him and his boyfriend. Charlie’s hand found their cocks again. He began stroking, his grip looser than before, almost lazy, because if he went any harder he was going to finish this conversation before it started and he was not willing to let that happen.

“Yeah?” Charlie said.

“Oh yeah.” Nick was looking into his eyes again, steady, letting Charlie see everything. That new confidence was there, settled into his jaw, loosened into his shoulders. He’d done things this summer, and none of them had left a mark he wanted to hide. “Nice lads. Took me up to Fever’s dark room.”

The two words landed on Charlie’s skin like a lit match. Dark room. The image that assembled itself in his mind, Nick in a dark room, in a club, with a couple, with two men, with strangers, was so immediate and so vivid that Charlie felt his stomach drop and his cock leak simultaneously.

“Tell me,” Charlie said.

Instead of answering, Nick’s hands found Charlie’s hips and pulled, and Charlie’s body left the mattress and then he was in Nick’s lap, thighs bracketing his waist,and Nick was lowering them both backward onto the sheets in one smooth motion that used muscles Charlie could feel working beneath him. The brass bed groaned and their mouths found each other again, and this time the tenderness was gone. This was fiercer, wetter, Nick’s teeth catching Charlie’s bottom lip and pulling, Charlie’s tongue chasing his, both of them breathing hard through their noses because breaking the kiss to breathe properly was an option neither of them was willing to consider. Charlie’s hands moved down the landscape of Nick’s body and kept going, past his hips, around his sides, until his palms found Nick’s arse. He grabbed. Pulled. Dragged Nick’s hips down against his own, and their cocks slid together, both of them slick now, completely wet, and the friction was so perfect and so maddening that the groan that left Charlie’s mouth cracked in the middle and came out in two pieces.

“I don’t know,” Nick said. He’d moved his mouth from Charlie’s lips to his neck, kissing along the tendon, breath hot against his pulse point. Charlie could feel the smirk pressed against his skin, and somehow that was almost worse than the contact itself — knowing Nick was smiling while he did this, knowing he was enjoying the power of it. “You want me to tell you?”

“Y-yeah,” Charlie managed. His fingers dug harder into Nick’s arse, pulling him closer, needing the friction, needing something.

“Hmm.” Nick’s mouth drifted lower, along the line of Charlie’s collarbone, lips barely touching, breath ghosting over the skin. “Maybe I want to keep this one to myself.”

He settled on a spot just below the ridge of bone and bit down gently, just teeth, just the suggestion of pressure, holding the skin between them. Then he sealed his mouth over it and sucked. hard enough that Charlie felt the bruise being written into him in real time,placed on the exact same spot where Grayson, whoever the fuck Grayson was, had placed his.

Nick pulled off and examined his work. He looked really satisfied, but Charlie missed that. Maybe I want to keep this one to myself. The idea detonated quietly, somewhere between his chest and his cock. Nick keeping a secret. Nick having done something in a dark room with two strangers and choosing to keep it locked away. He could share it. He was choosing not to. And that choice, that deliberate denial, was doing more to Charlie than any confession ever could. Because the power of withholding it, of letting Charlie sit with the not-knowing, of denying him the images and the details and the excruciating knowledge of what had been done to that body while Charlie was six thousand miles away — Nick understood, perhaps for the first time, that the denial was its own gift. Charlie’s cock throbbed against Nick’s stomach, a kick so visceral he felt it in his teeth. The exclusion didn’t hurt. It burned, the same way that desire always burned, pleasure and ache fused into something indivisible, each one feeding the other. He wanted to know. He wanted it with a greed that frightened him slightly. And the fact that Nick might not tell him, might keep some piece of his summer locked away in a room Charlie would never enter, made the wanting so acute that Charlie thought he might actually lose his mind.

“You’re cruel,” Charlie breathed.

Nick grinned against his collarbone, and just like that the smirk softened and he was Nick again, kind and golden and entirely Charlie’s, the boy from Whitstable who blushed the first time they held hands, looking up at him with blue eyes full of warmth and mischief and something so tender it made Charlie want to scream.

“You love it,” he said.

He did. God help him, he did.

“Close your eyes,” Nick said.

Charlie hesitated, just for a second, because he had watching Nick’s face all night and wasn’t ready to stop. But Nick’s hand came up and brushed his eyelids shut, fingertips featherlight across his lashes, and Charlie let them close, of course he did, there was nothing in the world he wouldn’t do when Nick was looking at him like that. Without his eyes, the room rearranged itself around his other senses. The sheets beneath his back, cool where his skin hadn’t warmed them yet. The weight of Nick above him, not pressing down but hovering, close enough that Charlie could feel the heat radiating off his chest without contact. The faint sound of music from the party below, so distant now it was barely more than a heartbeat in the floorboards. And Nick’s breathing, moving closer, the warmth of it travelling across Charlie’s chest like a searchlight. When Nick spoke again, his mouth was so close to Charlie’s skin that each word arrived as sensation before it arrived as language, the brush of lips, the humidity of breath, the vibration of a low voice against flesh that was already oversensitised and waiting.

“It was Friday night,” Nick began. His lips were on Charlie’s chest, tracing the line of his sternum. “Harp and I went to Fever. You’d love it, Char. Everyone there looked like they’d been cast.”

His mouth moved left. It found Charlie’s nipple and circled it once with his tongue, slowly, then closed his lips around it and sucked, just enough to make Charlie’s back arch off the mattress and a bitten-off gasp leave his mouth.

“I was at the bar,” Nick continued, releasing the nipple, his breath cooling the wet skin he’d left behind. “ And there they were. Two of them. Grayson and Devon. Together.”

“You said there were a couple?” Charlie asked, his voice already thinner than it had been thirty seconds ago.

“Right, a couple.” Nick’s mouth was moving down now, tracing the faint line that ran from Charlie’s chest to his stomach, each word a warm imprint on his skin. “Grayson was blond. Curls, like mine. Blue eyes. Smaller than me, but — fit, Char. Properly fit. And his mouth—”

Nick paused. Pressed a slow, open-mouthed kiss to the dip just below Charlie’s ribcage.

“What about his mouth?” Charlie whispered.

“His lips, Char.” Another kiss, lower. “So full, love. So pouty. You look at those lips and you just — you already know, yeah? You know exactly what they’d look like wrapped around your cock.”

Charlie’s hips shifted involuntarily. His hands found the sheets and gripped.

“And Devon?” His voice was barely holding together.

Nick’s mouth reached Charlie’s navel. He circled it with his tongue, took his time, let the silence stretch until Charlie’s breathing was audible in the small room. Then his hand found Charlie’s cock, just his hand, loose, barely a grip, his fingers wrapping around the shaft and holding there without moving.

“Devon was Black,” Nick said against Charlie’s stomach. “Same height as me but leaner. Gorgeous smile, Char. One of those smiles that takes over someone’s whole face, you know?”

His thumb moved once along the underside of Charlie’s cock, a single slow stroke from base to tip, and Charlie moaned.

“And his hands. Fuck, Char, his hands were so big. He put them on my chest about thirty seconds after we met and just — felt me up, yeah? Right there at the bar.”

“Were you hard?” Charlie asked.

Nick laughed close against Charlie’s skin. His hand began to move, glacially slow, stroking Charlie with a maddening rhythm that gave him just enough to feel and nowhere near enough to finish.

“From the second he touched me, love.”

Charlie’s head pressed back into the pillow. Behind his closed eyelids, the images were assembling themselves with the specificity of a film — the club, the lights, the bar, Nick in with two strangers’ hands on him, and the combination of seeing it in his mind while feeling Nick’s mouth on his stomach and Nick’s hand on his cock was creating something almost unbearable, a dual frequency of stimulation that was short-circuiting him from two directions at once.

“Then what?” Charlie said.

“We danced.” Nick’s mouth moved to Charlie’s hip bone. He bit down, gently, and Charlie’s whole body jerked. “The three of us. Devon behind me, hands on my hips, his cock against my arse — hard, Char, he was so hard already — and Grayson in front. Close. His forehead against my chest.”

Nick’s tongue traced the groove of Charlie’s hip, following it inward, and his hand twisted on the upstroke, his thumb smearing the wetness gathered at the head of Charlie’s cock, and Charlie made a sound that was closer to a sob than anything else.

“And I could feel both of them wanting me. Both of them. At the same time.”

“Fuck,” Charlie breathed. “Nicky—”

“You want me to stop?”

“Don’t you dare — don’t you fucking dare stop—”

Nick rewarded him with a firmer stroke, his grip tightening, his thumb finding the sensitive spot just beneath the head and pressing there, circling, and Charlie’s hips bucked up into his fist.

“They kept looking at each other while we danced”, Nick’s mouth dragged along the inside of Charlie’s thigh, open and wet, and his hand kept moving, each stroke calibrated to keep Charlie on the edge of something enormous without letting him fall over it. “This look, Char. Like they were deciding, yeah? Like I was being auditioned and they were both on the panel.”

“Did you pass?”

“What you think, love?”

Nick bit the inside of his thigh, not hard, just enough, and Charlie cried out, his hand flying down to Nick’s hair, gripping, holding on.

“Tell me,” Charlie panted. “Tell me — how it happened. How they asked you.”

“They didn’t ask.” Nick kissed the spot he’d just bitten, soft, almost apologetic. His hand slowed on Charlie’s cock, reducing the strokes to something featherlight, just fingertips, just the ghost of contact, and Charlie whimpered. “Devon leaned in. Put his mouth right against my ear, just like this—”

Nick rose up Charlie’s body, his chest dragging along Charlie’s stomach and ribs and chest, skin against skin, until his lips were at Charlie’s ear, his breath hot and intimate and devastating.

“And he said two words,” Nick whispered.

Charlie’s cock was leaking steadily in Nick’s hand, his stomach wet with it, his thighs trembling. Behind his closed eyes, the club pulsed with music and bodies, and Devon’s mouth was at Nick’s ear, and Grayson was watching, and Nick — his Nick — was hard and wanted and standing at the foot of a staircase that led somewhere dark and red and full of possibility.

Nick’s lips grazed the shell of his ear.

“Come upstairs.”

A silence. Charlie’s whole body pulled taut, every muscle coiled. His hand tightened in Nick’s hair.

“And you went,” Charlie said.

Nick pressed a kiss below his ear.

“I went.”

“Keep going,” Charlie said. “Don’t stop. Tell me everything.”

Behind his closed eyelids, the room materialised, red and warm and pulsing, bodies in the corners.Nick in the middle of it. Nick walking through the curtain with a stranger’s fingers laced through his.

“What happened first?” Charlie asked.

Nick’s mouth found his left nipple again. He flicked his tongue across it, once, and Charlie’s stomach clenched.

“Devon started touching me,” Nick said. “Couldn’t keep his hands off me, Char. My shoulders, my arms, my chest. He spent ages on my pecs. Just holding them, feeling them, like he couldn’t believe they were real.”

“I know the feeling,” Charlie managed, and Nick huffed a laugh against his skin that sent warm air across the wet trail his tongue had left.

“Then they took my shirt off.” Nick’s free hand moved to Charlie’s side, fingertips dragging down over his ribs, counting them one by one. “ And Grayson pulled my jeans down.”

His hand tightened on Charlie’s cock, the stroke quickening just slightly, and Charlie’s hips rose to meet it.

“And then I was naked. Just me. Standing there with nothing on. And they were both still fully dressed.”

Charlie’s mouth fell open. The image landed on him with a weight he felt physically — Nick stripped bare in that red light, exposed, surrounded, those two strangers still clothed, still in control, looking at everything Charlie considered his.

“How did that feel?” Charlie asked, and his voice sounded like it belonged to someone else, someone further away and more wrecked.

“I loved it.” Nick said it simply, without hesitation, his mouth moving down to Charlie’s other nipple, biting gently, and Charlie gasped. “I wanted them to see everything. I wanted the whole club to see. I wanted the walls to come down so everyone could watch.”

“Fuck, Nick—”

“I know.” Another bite, harder this time, followed by the soft apology of his tongue. “I know.”

Nick’s hand was moving faster now. The pace had shifted from glacial to something with intent behind it, each stroke pulling more blood to the surface, tightening the coil in Charlie’s pelvis, dragging him closer to something large and bright and terrifying. Charlie’s thighs were trembling. His hands fisted in the sheets, released, fisted again.

“Grayson was already blowing me, yeah? Nick said.

The sound that left Charlie was not dignified.

“Was it good?” Charlie asked.

“So good, Char.” Nick’s voice had dropped into something almost reverent. His thumb pressed into the slit of Charlie’s cock, circled there, and Charlie’s vision went white behind his eyelids. “His mouth was so wet. So warm. He took the whole thing. Didn’t even hesitate, just — all of it, down his throat, and he fucking stayed there.”

“All of it?” Charlie’s voice cracked.

“Every inch.” Nick twisted his wrist and Charlie cried out, his hips snapping up off the bed, and Nick held him there, hand firm and steady, not letting him retreat from the sensation. “And Devon was behind me the whole time, kissing my neck, talking in my ear, telling me how pretty Grayson looked with my cock in his mouth.”

Charlie was losing the edges of himself. The room, the bed, the brass frame, all of it was dissolving into a bright, formless haze. All that remained was Nick’s hand and Nick’s voice and the images burning behind his eyelids, vivid and merciless. His cock was leaking continuously now, Nick’s grip slick with it, the wet sound of each stroke filling the small room.

“Nick,” Charlie panted. “Was he — was he better than me?”

The question left his mouth and Charlie felt the truth of his own wanting trail behind it like a lit fuse. He knew what he needed Nick to say. Not the kind answer, not the reassuring answer, not the nobody is better than you answer that would have been lovely and true and completely, devastatingly wrong for this moment. He wanted Nick to say yes, he wanted it so badly his teeth ached. He wanted the word to land on him like a hand around his throat, the humiliation of it, the exquisite degradation of knowing that other men had taken Nick’s cock into their mouths and done it better than Charlie ever had, that Nick had been out in the world being serviced by people who were more skilled, more practised, more capable of giving him what he needed, while Charlie lay alone in his childhood bedroom in Kent. He wanted to be made small by it. Made less. Wanted Nick to tell him that his mouth, the mouth that had loved Nick since they were sixteen, wasn’t enough had, never been enough, because the inadequacy was the point, the inadequacy was the fuel, the inadequacy was what made Charlie’s blood sing with a frequency that nothing else on earth could reach.

Nick hesitated for a fraction of a beat where Charlie felt him reading the question, turning it over, understanding what was actually being asked. Because Nick knew. Maybe not the whole of it, not every tangled wire and hidden mechanism, but enough to recognise the hunger in Charlie’s voice for what it was. Enough to give him what he needed.

“Yeah, Char,” Nick said. His voice carried no apology. “So much better than you.”

The words crashed through Charlie like a wave breaking against rock. His cock pulsed in Nick’s grip, a hot, aching surge that pulled a moan from somewhere deep inside of him, somewhere he didn’t have a name for. His back arched off the mattress, his fingers clawing at the sheets, and the pleasure climbed another step, and another, and another, building toward something enormous and blinding.

“Nicky,” Charlie moaned, writhing against the sheets, his hips moving in desperate, jerky thrusts into Nick’s fist. “You never — I never sucked you off that g—”

“You didn’t even come close, Char,” Nick said, tightening his grip, quickening his pace, his voice merciless and tender at the same time, feeding Charlie exactly what he was starving for. “Grayson’s mouth was—”

“Ni— Nicky — wait — stop stop stop —”

Nick’s hand released him instantly and Charlie lay there shaking. The pleasure crested, right there, right at the very edge, so close to the peak that Charlie could feel his orgasm standing in the doorway, one foot over the threshold, ready to flood through him. His cock twitched against his stomach, untouched, slick and flushed and desperate, and for one terrible, glorious second he was certain it was over, certain his body was going to betray him regardless of what his mouth had said, certain that the wave was too tall and too close and there was nothing left to do but let it break. Somehow he held it. The wave hung there, suspended, trembling at its apex. His hands gripped the brass frame above his head, knuckles white, every muscle in his body locked against the tide. He didn’t breathe. Didn’t move. Didn’t open his eyes.

Slowly, agonisingly, the wave receded. Not gone, just pulled back, still there, still enormous, waiting just below the surface. But manageable, survivable. Charlie exhaled.

“You okay, Char?”

And just like that, the game was gone. Nick’s voice had shed every layer of performance and what was left was the voice Charlie had heard a thousand times.

“Was that — too far?”

Charlie waited another second to let his breathing settle, let his voice find something resembling solid ground.

“N-no,” he stammered. He swallowed and tried again. “No. The opposite, actually. Too... too good, Nicky.”

He opened his eyes. Nick was propped above him on one arm, and the lamplight made his skin luminous, sheened with sweat, every muscle in his chest and shoulders defined by shadow. His cock was so hard it looked like it hurt, but his face held nothing but tenderness.

“I think that’s the hottest thing you’ve ever said to me,” Charlie said.

Nick’s expression shifted. The worry dissolved, the kindness stayed, and mischief crept in at the edges like sunlight finding a gap in a curtain.

“You sure?” Nick asked.

“Hundred percent,” Charlie said. He reached up and touched Nick’s face, his thumb resting on his cheekbone. “If something feels wrong, I’ll say it, okay? Trust me.”

Nick looked at him, searched on his face for the truth beneath the words and found it. He nodded and then the grin arrived, full of something that Charlie recognised as a man who was about to detonate a bomb and wanted to watch the explosion from up close.

“Wanna hear something else really hot?” Nick said.

“What?”

“I let Devon rim me.”

Charlie’s entire body went rigid the shock of information so unexpected, so completely outside the map of who they were together, that his nervous system simply short-circuited for a second and rebooted in a different configuration.

It wasn’t that Nick had ever said no. It wasn’t that Charlie had asked and been turned away, or that either of them had drawn a line and agreed not to cross it. It was simpler than that — Nick topped. Charlie bottomed. That was how they fit together, how they’d fit together since the very first time, and it had always felt so natural, so mutually and obviously right, that the question of doing it differently had simply never arisen. The sky was blue, water was wet, and Nick was the one who fucked Charlie. It existed outside the vocabulary of their sex life, a word in a language they’d never learned because the language they already spoke worked so perfectly that there’d been no reason to pick up another one.

And Devon — a stranger, a man Nick had known for less than an hour, in a dark room in a club in West Hollywood — had simply walked up to that unvisited territory and introduced himself.

Charlie stared at the ceiling. His cock, which had been slowly retreating from the edge, surged back to full hardness so fast he felt dizzy.

“You—” Charlie started. “He — rimmed you?”

“Yeah,” Nick said. He was watching Charlie’s face with barely concealed delight, cataloguing every micro-expression, every flicker. “Yeah, he did.”

Charlie stared at him. Nick stared back. The brass bed held them both in the silence. Then Charlie started laughing.

“I’m sorry,” Charlie managed, smiling . “I’m sorry, it’s just — you. Nick Nelson. Mr. I’m-a-top. Mr. No-funny-business-back-there. You let a man eat your arse in a nightclub.”

“In my defence,” Nick said, “he was very persuasive.”

Charlie laughed again.

“Did you like it?” Charlie asked, once he could breathe.

Nick’s grin softened into something more honest. He sat back slightly, his hands resting on Charlie’s knees, thumbs tracing idle circles on the inside of them.

“Yeah,” he said. “I really did.”

“Yeah?”

“I’m not — I don’t think I want a cock in there anytime soon.” Nick tilted his head, considering, giving the thought the genuine attention it deserved. “But his tongue? Char, it was — I can’t even describe it. I’d never felt anything like it.”

Charlie looked at him, sitting there naked and unselfconscious and talking about having his arse eaten by a stranger with the same thoughtful openness he might use to describe a film he’d seen or a meal he’d enjoyed. No defences, just Nick, telling the truth about what his body had discovered when he’d let it discover something new. This was what Charlie had wanted. Not just the kink, not just the heat of imagining Nick with other people — though God, yes, that too — but this. Nick exploring. Nick letting himself be surprised. Nick finding out who he was when he stopped following the script he’d written for himself at sixteen and started improvising. Every conversation they’d had, every boundary they’d negotiated, every terrifying leap of honesty between the phone call on El Porto beach and this brass bed in Thornfield — it had all been building toward this. A man who could look at his boyfriend and say I let a stranger rim me and I liked it and smile while he said it, because the shame was gone, burned off like morning fog, and what was left was just a person, whole and curious and free.

“That is incredibly hot,” Charlie said quietly.

Nick’s eyes darkened.

“Come here, then,” Nick murmured. “Let me show you.”

Nick helped Charlie turn over, pressing his face into the pillow, and, for a moment, nothing happened. Then Nick’s thumbs pressed inward, spread him open, and his mouth descended. The first kiss landed on the base of Charlie’s spine, soft, almost chaste, making Charlie’s fingers curled into the sheets. The second landed lower, at the very top of the crease, and this one was slower, wetter, Nick’s lips parting against the skin. The third was lower still, and by now Charlie’s breathing had changed, gone shallow and quick, his body understanding where this was heading before his mind had fully committed to believing it. Nick’s mouth reached the centre and paused, his breath coming, fanning across skin so sensitive that Charlie’s entire body contracted. Then the tip of Nick’s tongue touched him and Charlie’s world rearranged itself.

Nick’s tongue moved with a confidence Charlie didn’t recognise. Slow circles around the muscle, not pressing in, not rushing, just working the edges with patience and precision that felt practised. As if someone had shown him exactly how much pressure to use and exactly how long to hold it and Nick had been paying very close attention.

“Oh,” Charlie said. The word came out small and startled, because his body had been expecting the version of this it knew and instead had received something entirely different. “Oh — fuck.“

Nick’s response was to flatten his tongue and lick, and Charlie’s hands shot forward and gripped the brass bars of the headboard because without something to hold onto he was going to come apart entirely. His forehead dropped against the pillow. His mouth was open. This was not the Nick who’d rimmed him before. This was someone who had been taught. When Nick circled the muscle again, slower this time, and Charlie keened into the pillow, Nick did it again, the exact same pressure, the exact same speed, as if he’d learned that the repetition was the point, that the anticipation of knowing exactly what was coming was its own kind of torment. When he pressed the tip gently against the centre and Charlie’s thighs began to shake, Nick held there, letting the pressure build, and Charlie heard himself make a sound that was entirely new to both of them.

Someone had taught him this. Someone had done this to Nick and Nick had memorised how it felt and brought it back to Charlie, and the knowledge of that was doing something to Charlie’s brain that went beyond arousal into something almost spiritual. His mind went quiet. For a stretch that could have been a minute or five minutes or the rest of his life, there was nothing in his head except sensation. Nick’s tongue on him. Nick’s hands holding him open. The wet sounds of it filling the small room. The pleasure building, gathering force with each pass, each circle, each gentle push.

Then Nick pressed his tongue inside him, his tongue sliding past the resistance and kept going, deeper than he’d ever gone before, and Charlie’s entire body locked. The moan that left his mouth was loud enough to be heard downstairs and he could not have cared less.

And that was when it hit him — Devon did this to Nick. Devon, allegedly tall and lean with a beautiful smile and big hands, had spread Nick open in a red-lit room in West Hollywood and put his mouth exactly where Nick’s mouth was right now. Had licked Nick exactly like this. Had pushed his tongue inside Nick exactly like this. Charlie saw it behind his closed eyes, he saw all of it, Devon on his knees behind Nick, Grayson in front, Nick caught between them, shaking, surrendering, discovering something in his own body he’d never fully accessed before. Nick’s face when the pleasure hit. Nick’s mouth falling open. Nick’s thighs trembling. The sounds of a man being taken apart in a room full of strangers.

Charlie went feral.

His hips pushed back against Nick’s face, grinding, chasing the sensation, all restraint gone. His hands released the headboard and found the back of Nick’s head, fingers twisting into blond curls, pulling him closer, harder, deeper, and the sound he made was not a moan, it was a demand.

“Don’t stop,” Charlie gasped. “Don’t — fuck — Nicky, don’t stop, don’t stop, don’t stop—“

Nick didn’t stop. His grip tightened on Charlie’s arse, his tongue pushed deeper, and Charlie felt the last of his composure shatter. He gave Charlie no mercy. His tongue worked Charlie with a thoroughness that bordered on methodical, long, flat strokes that made Charlie’s entire body shudder, followed by tight, pointed circles that wound the pleasure tighter and tighter until Charlie was vibrating with it, followed by that deep, pushing intrusion that sent Charlie somewhere beyond language every single time. Nick had found a rhythm now, a sequence, and he was repeating it, stroke, circle, push, stroke, circle, push, because the pattern was the cruelty. Charlie knew exactly what was coming next and it didn’t help at all, and Nick knew it didn’t help, and he kept going anyway, patient and precise and completely without mercy.”

Charlie was a mess. There was no other word for it. His face was buried in the pillow and his hands were alternating between the brass bars and Nick’s hair, gripping and releasing and gripping again as if his body couldn’t decide which anchor it needed more. His cock was trapped between his stomach and the mattress, untouched, aching, and every time Nick’s tongue pushed inside him the pressure against the mattress sent a secondary shockwave through him that made his toes curl.

Then Nick pulled away.

The absence was so sudden, so total, that Charlie’s body lurched backward, hips chasing the warmth that had just been taken from him, a sound of protest leaving his mouth that was entirely involuntary and deeply undignified.

“Nick — what — why did you—”

“Turn over.”

Charlie turned, rolled onto his back, to see that Nick was wrecked, breathing hard, his lips swollen and wet and flushed dark. His cock hung heavy between his thighs, thick and flushed and dripping, so hard it was curved up against his stomach, and as Charlie watched, a bead of precome gathered at the tip and fell in a slow, glistening thread onto the sheet.

“I need to be inside you,” Nick said. His shaking slightly, and it wasn’t a request or a seduction or a line. It was a statement of biological emergency. “Right now, Char. I can’t — I need—”

He didn’t finish the sentence. He didn’t need to. Charlie reached for him, both hands, but Nick pulled away. He climbed off the bed, and for a disorienting second Charlie lay there, breathless and empty and confused, watching Nick’s magnificent silhouette cross the small room. The loss of contact was physical, a cold draft against skin that had been covered by warmth moments before, and Charlie almost called him back before he saw what Nick was doing.

Nick crouched over his suit on the floor, the charcoal jacket crumpled where it had fallen and reached into the inside pocket, then the trouser pocket, and finally found what he was looking for in his wallet — a small foil square that caught the light from the window.

Charlie propped himself up on his elbows.

“I went bareback with Jet,” Nick said.

“Oh, that’s—”

“He told me he’s clean. And I believe him.” Nick was already tearing the packet, his voice practical. “But I’m not taking chances with you, Char. I’m getting tested as soon as I can, but until then, we’re using these.”

Charlie shrugged. Nick was right. It was the responsible thing, and at some point, probably tomorrow, they needed to have a proper conversation about both of them going on PrEP, about regular testing, about all the boring, necessary infrastructure that came with the life they were building. That conversation would happen. It would be sensible and thorough and they would handle it the way they handled everything now, honestly, together, like grown-ups who had earned the right to call themselves that.

But right now, in this bed, with Nick rolling the condom on and Charlie watching the latex slide down over the thick, flushed length of him, the only thought Charlie’s mind could hold was that Nick was wearing a condom with him because he’d gone bare inside someone else.

Jet had felt Nick with nothing between them. Jet had taken Nick’s cum inside his body, had felt the pulse and the heat of it, had been given the thing that was being denied to Charlie right now. Nick’s cum, which had belonged to Charlie for five years, which Charlie had swallowed and worn and felt dripping down his thighs more times than he could count, had been inside another man. And because of that, Charlie couldn’t have it tonight. It was being kept from him. Sealed away behind a thin layer of latex because someone else had received it first.

Charlie’s cock twitched against his stomach and his breath left him in a rush that he disguised, poorly, as a sigh.

Nick climbed back onto the bed.

“Come here,” Nick murmured, pulling Charlie close, settling between his legs, one hand cupping the back of his thigh. “Gonna fuck you so good, love. Fuck. I missed you, you know that?”

“You did not,” Charlie teased, his legs opening wider as Nick positioned himself. “You’ve been far too busy to miss me.”

“I bloody well did,” Nick said. He spat into his palm and slicked it over the condom, his hand moving with an efficiency that Charlie found unreasonably attractive. “Every day. All I could think about was getting back to you.”

“Liar,” Charlie whispered, smiling.

“God’s honest truth,” Nick said, and lined himself up.

He pushed in slowly, gently, and still Charlie gasped. It had been — weeks. Weeks of phone screens and Charlie’s own hand, which was a poor and increasingly frustrating substitute for the real thing. And his body, which remembered Nick perfectly in theory, was discovering that muscle memory and actual readiness were two entirely different things. Nick had always been thick, and Charlie had accommodated this particular dimension of Nick Nelson hundreds of times. But tonight his body was resisting, tightening around the intrusion, the stretch burning at the edges in a way it hadn’t since — God, since when? Since the early days, maybe. Since they were still learning each other, still figuring out the angles and the patience required.

“Okay?” Nick asked. He’d stopped. Barely inside, maybe an inch, holding perfectly still.

“Yeah,” Charlie managed. “Just — slow. Go slow.”

“I’ve got you,” Nick said, and his voice was so gentle it made Charlie’s eyes sting.

Nick pushed deeper, millimetre by millimetre, giving Charlie’s body time to remember, to adjust, to open around him the way it had opened a thousand times before. Charlie breathed through it, the Nick had taught him years ago, back when this was new and everything was too much and Nick had held his face in both hands and said breathe with me, Char, just breathe with me. He was doing it again now, matching Charlie’s breathing, their chests rising and falling in sync, and the familiarity of it loosened something in Charlie’s body that no amount of physical preparation could have reached.

He relaxed. Opened. Let Nick in.

Nick sank deeper, and deeper, and Charlie felt every inch of it, the stretch and the fullness and the impossible, overwhelming intimacy of having this man inside his body again after so long. Neither of them spoke. Neither of them moved. They just lay there, connected, breathing, and the room was very quiet except.

Then Nick began to move.

Slowly, so slowly that each thrust was its own event, a long, measured withdrawal that left Charlie gasping at the emptiness, followed by a deep, controlled push back in that filled him so completely his vision blurred at the edges. Nick’s mouth never left him. He kissed Charlie’s lips, his jaw, the corner of his eye, the damp curls at his temple, murmuring between each one fragments of words that fell apart before they were finished.

“Missed this. Missed you. So much, Char. So fucking much.”

“Every night. Thought about this every night.”

“You feel — God, you feel incredible. You have no idea.”

“My Charlie. My beautiful, beautiful Charlie.

The pain dissolved, the sharp edges softening and blending into the pleasure until Charlie couldn’t tell where one ended and the other began, and then there was only the fullness, only Nick moving inside him, only the slow, building rhythm of two bodies remembering each other. Charlie’s legs wrapped around Nick’s waist, his heels pressing into the small of Nick’s back, pulling him closer, deeper, and the sounds leaving his mouth had shifted from pained to something else entirely. Then Nick adjusted his angle, the kind of microscopic recalibration that came from years of knowing exactly where Charlie needed him, and his cock dragged across Charlie’s prostate. The pleasure that detonated through Charlie’s body was so absolute that the cry that left his mouth hit the ceiling and bounced back.

“There,” Charlie choked. “Fuck — right there — Nicky—”

“Yeah?” Nick’s voice had changed. The tenderness was still there but something harder had moved in behind it, something that recognised the shift in Charlie’s sounds and responded to it. He thrust again, the same angle, and Charlie’s back arched off the mattress. “There, love?”

“Yes — yes — don’t stop — harder—”

Nick gave him harder. His hips snapped forward with more force, each thrust precise, hitting the same spot with an accuracy that was almost cruel, and the sound of their bodies meeting filled the small room, skin against skin, the creak of the brass bed, Charlie’s voice climbing higher with every stroke.

“Fuck, you’re tight,” Nick groaned, his head dropping, his forehead pressing against Charlie’s. “Tighter than — fuck, Char—”

“Tighter than who?” Charlie gasped, and even now, even here, split open and trembling and halfway to oblivion, the old desire found its way to the surface.

Nick’s eyes opened. Found his. The corner of his mouth lifted.

“Tighter than Jet,” he said, and thrust deep enough to make Charlie scream.

Charlie’s hands found Nick’s arms and locked there, fingers digging into the biceps, feeling the muscle bunch and release with every thrust, the sheer physical power of the body above him. He held on. It was all he could do. Nick was fucking him properly now, each stroke long and hard and devastating, the bed frame protesting with a rhythmic metallic groan that was almost certainly audible in the pub below, and Charlie didn’t care, couldn’t care, because every thought in his head had been compressed into a single, burning point of sensation.

“Tell me you’re mine,” Charlie moaned.

“I’m yours,” Nick said instantly. “Always. Fucking always, Char.”

“Even when you’re — when you’re with them—”

“Especially then.” Nick’s pace didn’t falter. His hand found Charlie’s jaw, tilted his face up, held him there. “Every single time. Every bloke I touched. You were the only one I was thinking about.

Charlie’s fingers dug deeper into Nick’s arms. The pleasure was enormous now, tidal, each thrust pushing him further out to sea. His cock was trapped between their stomachs, slick and aching, the friction of Nick’s abs dragging across the head with every movement.

“Nick,” Charlie said, and his voice had gone quiet again, intimate. “Tell me about Jet.”

Nick didn’t break his rhythm. His hips kept moving and his voice dropped into that intimate register that meant the words were for Charlie alone.

“Tell me,” Charlie breathed, his fingers white on Nick’s biceps. “Tell me how it was.”

“He had the most incredible arse, Char.” Nick thrust deep and held there, grinding, and Charlie’s mouth fell open. “Round. Full. Tight as anything. I’d been staring at it for months in those fucking Roosters trunks and finally — finally I got my hands on it.”

“Yeah?” Charlie’s voice was barely functioning, each word broken apart by the movement of Nick inside him. “How did it feel?”

“Amazing.” Nick pulled back and drove in again, hard enough that the brass frame cracked against the wall. “Hot. Tight. He was so loud, Char. Every time I pushed in he made this sound—”

Charlie moaned, and whether it was from the image or from Nick’s cock dragging across his prostate or from the impossible, annihilating combination of both, he couldn’t tell and didn’t care.

“And his hole,” Nick continued, his mouth trailing from Charlie’s neck to his ear, every word a hot whisper that travelled straight through Charlie’s skull and down his spine. “Fuck, Char. It just — took me. All of me. Like he was built for it.”

“Did you think about me?” Charlie asked, and his legs tightened around Nick’s waist, pulling him deeper, needing him closer. “When you were inside him — did you—”

“Every second.” Nick’s pace quickened, his thrusts shorter now, more urgent. “Every second I was thinking about you. About your face. About you watching.”

“I was watching,” Charlie said. “God, Nick, I was watching and it was — I’ve never come that hard in my life. Never. I couldn’t — I couldn’t even move afterwards.”

Nick groaned, deep and guttural, and his hips stuttered for a moment before finding their rhythm again. He rose up on his arms, looking down at Charlie, and the sight of him — flushed, sweating, his pupils blown, his chest heaving — was so overwhelmingly beautiful that Charlie felt his eyes burn.

“You liked it,” Nick said.

“I loved it,” Charlie said. “I want it again.”

Nick leaned down and kissed him, hard, his tongue pushing into Charlie’s mouth with the same rhythm his cock was pushing into his body, and when he pulled back his lips were wet and his eyes were fierce.

“Then I’ll do it again,” Nick said. “As many times as you want, Char. Whenever you want. You just say the word and I’ll find someone and you can watch me take them apart.”

Charlie’s cock pulsed between them, leaking against his stomach, and the sound that left him was something between a whimper and a laugh because the promise of it, not a fantasy anymore, not a private shame locked in a box, but a standing offer from the man he loved, was so enormous he couldn’t hold it all at once.

“Yeah?” Charlie managed.

“Yeah.” Nick thrust deep, held, his forehead dropping against Charlie’s. “And afterwards — every single time — I’ll come home to you. I’ll come home and I’ll do this.”

Another thrust, precise, devastating.

“And this.”

His mouth found Charlie’s neck, bit down gently.

“And I’ll tell you everything. Every detail. And you’ll lie there and listen and get so hard you can’t think straight.”

“I can’t think straight now,” Charlie gasped.

“Good.” Nick smiled against his skin. “That’s the idea.”

They moved together, faster now, the tenderness still there but wrapped in something more urgent, more demanding. Nick’s hands slid under Charlie’s thighs and lifted them higher, changing the angle again, and Charlie cried out because the new position put Nick’s cock directly, mercilessly against his prostate on every stroke, no reprieve, no pause, just a relentless, building pressure that was winding something inside him tighter and tighter.

“I thought about this on the plane,” Nick said, his breath ragged now, his composure starting to fracture at the edges. “Twelve hours in the air and all I could think about was getting inside you. Not Jet. Not Grayson. Not any of them.”

He thrust hard enough that the bed moved.

“You, Char. Just you. Always you.”

“But they were better, right?” Charlie asked. His voice was thin, trembling, balanced on an edge that had nothing to do with uncertainty and everything to do with need. “Jet — he was better than me?”

“Oh yeah, love,” Nick said, without a fraction of hesitation. “So much better than you.”

The words landed on Charlie like hands pressing him into the mattress, pinning him there, and his cock surged against his stomach so hard he saw sparks.

“Fuck, Char. I love you more than anything. You know that. But you can’t compare to him.” Nick’s hips rolled, punctuating each sentence. “Sorry, love. Don’t get mad at me.”

“I’m n-not,” Charlie stammered. His hands were sliding on Nick’s arms, grip slipping from the sweat. “I’m not mad. I get it.”

“Yeah?” Nick’s mouth found his ear again, and his voice took on that quality, gentle and devastating at the same time, Nick knowing exactly which buttons to press, pressing them deliberately, carefully, one by one. “Because Jet — Char, his body was something else. When I was inside him he moved his hips in this way, this — rolling thing, coming back to meet me on every thrust, and it felt—”

“H-how did it feel,” Charlie moaned.

“Like he was made for it.” Nick thrust deep and Charlie’s breath left him in a shudder. “Like his body already knew exactly what to do with mine. I didn’t have to think about it, Char. Didn’t have to adjust or go slow. He just — opened up and took everything I gave him.”

Charlie’s eyes squeezed shut. The images were there again, vivid and merciless — Nick and Jet in that small apartment, the camera running, Jet’s body moving beneath Nick’s with an ease that Charlie recognised as the ease of someone who did this often, who liked it, who has a body that wanted to be fucked and knew how to make it feel extraordinary.

“And he was so responsive,” Nick continued, his pace building, each thrust harder than the last. “Every time I hit the right spot he’d make this sound — fuck, Char, this sound — and his whole body would tighten around me, and it was like—”

“Like what,” Charlie gasped, his nails digging crescents into Nick’s arms.

“Like being squeezed.” Nick’s voice was getting rougher, his own composure fraying. “All over. He could bloody take it hard, Char. Harder than you can. I didn’t have to be careful with him. I just — let go. Gave him everything.”

Charlie whimpered. The sound was pathetic and he loved how pathetic it was, the smallness of himself in this moment, the way Nick’s words were reducing him, reshaping him into something less than what he’d been five minutes ago. Less capable. Less experienced. Less able to give Nick what his body wanted. And the reduction didn’t diminish him, it lit him up from the inside, every inadequacy a match struck against the rough surface of his desire.

“You held back with me,” Charlie said, knowing it wasn’t true and not caring in the slightest. “You always held back.”

“Always,” Nick confirmed. “But with Jet I didn’t. I just fucked him as hard as I wanted. For as long as I wanted.”

“How long?” Charlie’s voice was ruined

“Long, Char.” Nick pressed his forehead against Charlie’s, their sweat mingling, their breath tangling between them. “So long he was shaking by the end. Couldn’t stand up afterwards. His legs just — gave.”

Charlie’s cock was weeping between them, untouched, every nerve in his body pulled taut, the orgasm assembling itself somewhere deep in his core with a patience that felt ominous. He was close. Closer than he should have been from words alone, but the words weren’t alone, they came wrapped in Nick’s body, in Nick’s cock moving inside him, in the overwhelming assault against his prostate that turned every syllable into a physical sensation.

“And you know what the worst part is?” Nick said, slowing his thrusts now, drawing them out, making each one count. “The worst part, Char?”

“What,” Charlie breathed.

Nick pulled almost all the way out. Paused. Let Charlie feel the absence, the emptiness, the desperate clench of his body around nothing.

“I wasn’t even thinking about you when I came inside him.”

He pushed back in — one long, deep, devastating stroke — and Charlie screamed.

“Nick—” Charlie choked. “Nick, that’s—”

“Too much?” Nick asked, and his voice held that impossible balance, checking in and destroying him at the same time.

“No,” Charlie managed. “More. Give me more.”

Something shifted in Nick’s face. Permission received. The last guard rail removed.

“You want more,” Nick said, and it wasn’t a question anymore. “Okay, Char. Here’s more.”

He picked up his pace, his hips driving into Charlie with a force that shoved him up the mattress.

“Jet came three times that night,” Nick said. “Three. I fucked him until he came without me touching his cock, just from me being inside him. Can you do that, Char?”

Charlie shook his head, desperate, gasping.

“No,” Nick agreed. “You can’t. You’ve never been able to. But Jet could.” He thrust hard, grinding deep, and Charlie’s body convulsed. “He came on my cock like it was nothing. Like his body was designed for it. And then I kept going and he came again.”

“Fuck — fuck — Nick—”

“And you know what he said afterwards?” Nick’s hand found Charlie’s jaw, turning his face, making him look. Making him see. “He said it was the best fuck of his life. He said nobody had ever made him feel like that.”

Nick’s thumb traced Charlie’s bottom lip, pressing gently into his mouth, and Charlie opened for him, tasting salt and skin.

“And I looked at him and I thought — yeah. I know. Because I’m really, really good at this, Char. And you’ve never let me show you just how good.”

Charlie was sobbing, sobbing with pleasure, dry, airless sounds that tore out of him with each thrust. His hands were above his head now, gripping the brass bars, his knuckles bloodless, his body arched and trembling.

“But you know what the best part was?” Nick pulled his thumb from Charlie’s mouth and wrapped his hand around Charlie’s throat instead, the weight of his palm against Charlie’s pulse, feeling the frantic hammer of it. “The best part was knowing you were watching. Knowing you were six thousand miles away with your hand on your cock, watching me fuck someone who could take it better than you ever could, and you were getting off on it.”

“I was,” Charlie gasped. “I was — God, Nick, I was—”

“That’s what you are, Char.” Nick leaned down, his lips brushing Charlie’s ear, his hips still driving, relentless. “You’re the boy who watches his man fuck other men and comes harder than he’s ever come in his life. And you love it. You love lying in your bed afterwards, alone, covered in your own cum, thinking about what I did to them.”

Charlie’s cock was throbbing between them, trapped and leaking and desperate. He could feel the orgasm coming. His whole body was pulling toward it, tightening, every muscle coiling, and Nick must have felt it too because his thrusts shortened, quickened, each one hitting that spot with devastating accuracy.

And then Nick stopped talking.

He stopped talking and he pulled back and he looked at Charlie.

Just looked at him.

New Nick vanished from his face. The game emptied out of his eyes. And what was left, what Charlie saw when the performance fell away and there was nothing between them but the truth, was a boy looking at another boy with so much love it should have been impossible for a single human face to contain. Nick’s hand moved from Charlie’s throat to his cheek. His thumb brushed the wetness from beneath Charlie’s eye, tears Charlie hadn’t even known were falling.

“Hey,” Nick whispered.

One word. Soft as breath.

“I love you,” Nick said. “I love you so much it scares me, Charlie Spring. Every day. Every minute. And none of them — not one — ever came close to this.”

He thrust once more. Deep. Slow. His eyes never leaving Charlie’s.

“You’re it for me,” Nick said. “You know that, right? You’ve always been it.”

Charlie came.

It wasn’t an explosion. It wasn’t a detonation or a wave or any of the violent metaphors his body had been building toward. It was a release, total, complete, as if every locked door inside him had opened simultaneously and everything he’d been holding rushed out at once. His cock pulsed between them, untouched, spilling across his stomach and chest, and the orgasm moved through him not just physically but somewhere deeper, somewhere in the part of him that had spent years hiding what he wanted and was finally, fully, irreversibly seen. He didn’t scream. He didn’t shout. The sound that left him was quiet and broken and raw, Nick’s name, spoken once, cracked down the middle, followed by a breath that emptied his entire body.

Nick held him through it. Held him and kept moving, gently now, guiding him through each aftershock, his forehead pressed against Charlie’s, his breath hot against Charlie’s lips. Charlie was distantly aware through the slow implosion still rippling through his body of Nick’s rhythm faltering. A stutter in his hips, a sharp intake of breath, and then Nick buried himself deep and went rigid, his whole body locking, a low groan pressed into the curve of Charlie’s neck as he came. It was quicker than usual. Nick who could normally last long enough to make Charlie beg and bargain and threaten, finishing barely a minute after Charlie, his body spending itself into the condom with a shudder that Charlie felt through his entire frame. Maybe the summer had emptied his reserves. Maybe Jet and Grayson and Devon and whoever else had occupied Nick’s nights in California had drained something from the tank that hadn’t fully replenished, and Charlie felt a quiet, perverse thrill at that — at being the one who got what was left, the final pour from a bottle that other men had been drinking from all summer.

Nick softened inside him. His weight settled onto Charlie gradually, completely, and Charlie took it, all of it, every pound of muscle and bone and exhaustion, and held him there while the last tremors faded from both their bodies.

When Charlie’s eyes opened and found Nick’s face hovering above him, blurred and golden and wet, the expression he saw there finished whatever the orgasm had started.

“There you are,” Nick said softly.

Charlie reached up. Touched Nick’s face with trembling fingers. Tried to say something. Found he couldn’t.

He didn’t need to. Nick understood. Nick always understood.

—

Later.

Charlie had no idea how much later. “Time had gone soft and unreliable. His body had been thoroughly disassembled and was in no hurry to be put back together, and time, apparently, felt the same. The room was quiet and warm, the lamp casting amber shadows across the walls, the night outside the window deep and belong to them. The party was still going below, quieter now, a murmur of voices and the occasional clink of a glass, the playlist turned down to something gentle that rose through the floorboards like a heartbeat.

They were lying on their sides, tangled together in the brass bed. Nick was behind him, one arm draped heavy across Charlie’s ribs, the other curled beneath the pillow. His fingers were in Charlie’s hair, moving slowly, combing through the curls slowly as if he intended to do this for the rest of the evening and possibly the rest of his life. Every few minutes his lips would press against the back of Charlie’s head — not a kiss exactly, more a confirmation, a check that Charlie was still there, still solid, still his.

Charlie’s body felt hollowed out in the best possible way. Every muscle loose, every nerve quiet, his skin humming with the post-orgasmic sensitivity where even the brush of the sheet felt significant. He could still feel the ghost of Nick inside him, imprinted on his body like a handprint in wet clay.

“Was that okay?” Nick asked.

His voice was quiet against Charlie’s hair, tentative in a way that didn’t match the man who’d been speaking twenty minutes ago. The confidence had receded, taking the teasing with it, and what was left was just Nick.

“I didn’t — I didn’t fuck it up, right?”

Charlie laughed.

“You absolutely did not,” he said.

“Promise?” Nick’s fingers paused in his hair.

“Promise.” Charlie pressed his lips to Nick’s knuckle. “I know — I know it’s kind of weird. What I like. I don’t even fully understand why I want to hear those things. Why it—”

He stopped. The sentence had been heading somewhere complicated, somewhere that involved therapy and attachment theory and the tangled wiring of a brain that converted humiliation into desire, and that was a conversation for a Tuesday afternoon with a cup of tea and possibly a professional, not for a post-sex haze in a brass bed above a wedding reception.

“What I’m saying is that I liked it,” Charlie said instead. “Very much. Did you?”

Nick was quiet for a moment. His fingers resumed their slow path through Charlie’s curls.

“It felt a bit weird,” he admitted. “Saying those things. Some of it I was thinking — Christ, is this actually coming out of my mouth? But then I’d see your face. The way you reacted. And that — yeah. I loved that.”

Charlie turned in his arms, rolling to face him. Nick’s eyes were close and blue and completely unguarded, the last of the performance gone, nothing left but the real thing.

“We don’t have to do this every time,” Charlie said. He put his hand on Nick’s chest, palm flat over his heart. “This kink — it doesn’t have to take over our lives. It doesn’t have to be who we are. Some nights I just want you to hold me and tell me you love me and that’s enough. More than enough.”

“But from time to time,” Nick said, and the corner of his mouth lifted.

Charlie grinned. “Yes. From time to time. Definitely.”

Nick pulled him closer, tucking Charlie’s head beneath his chin, and Charlie let himself be pulled, let himself be held, let his eyes close and his breathing slow until it matched the rise and fall of Nick’s chest.

“We should go back downstairs,” Nick said after a while. His thumb was still tracing lazy circles on Charlie’s shoulder blade. “You’re still the best man at this wedding, you know. People might notice.”

“Nooo,” Charlie whined, pressing his face harder into Nick’s chest and tightening his arms around him until there was genuinely no space left between them. “I want to stay here. With you. Forever. Never go back to Westbridge. Never go back to anything. Just stay in this bed in this pub in this village for the rest of our lives.”

“We could work in the bar,” Nick offered. “I could be a waiter. I do have some experience in the field, after all.”

“You do,” Charlie agreed, his voice muffled against Nick’s skin. “Morag would make an fortune from all the Scottish boys coming in to see the hot English waiter at The Crossing.”

“The hottest in all Scotland,” Nick said.

“The absolute hottest. They’d come from Edinburgh. Glasgow. The Highlands. Word would spread. Morag would have to open a second room.”

“Who knows?” Nick said. “Maybe I could even shag some of them.”

“A lot of them,” Charlie corrected.

“All of them,” Nick said.

Then he kissed Charlie. Soft and slow and tasting faintly of champagne and everything they’d just done and everything they were going to do, and Charlie kissed him back, and the party hummed on below them, and the Scottish night held its breath outside the window, and for a moment, just a moment, the rest of the world was kind enough to wait.

They got dressed after that. Nick was right, it was Elle and Tao’s wedding reception, and Charlie was the best man. He got dressed first, back to the charcoal suit, back to being the most handsome man alive. Then NIck ran a hand through his hair, which achieved nothing except making it look more deliberately tousled, and leaned against the doorframe with his hands in his pockets, watching Charlie, radiating the calm of having absolutely nowhere better to be. Charlie took longer. His trousers had ended up half under the bed. One sock was missing entirely and he eventually gave up looking for it. The white linen shirt was creased beyond salvation, but he put it on anyway, rolled the cuffs, and decided that wrinkled was a look if you committed to it hard enough. He sat on the edge of the brass bed and tied his shoes, and he could feel Nick watching him the whole time, that warm gaze resting on him like sunlight on a wall.

When he looked up, Nick was holding out his hand.

Charlie took it and let himself be pulled to his feet. They stood there for a moment in the small room, the bed wrecked behind them, the night settled blue against the window, the sound of their friends’ voices rising faintly through the floorboards.

“Hi,” Nick said.

Charlie smiled.

“Hi.”

“Ready to go?”

Charlie looked at him. At this man — this ridiculous, beautiful, infuriating, golden man who had flown across an ocean for a wedding, who had learned new things about his own body in dark rooms with strangers and brought them home like gifts, who had whispered terrible, perfect things into Charlie’s ear and then held him afterwards as if he was the most precious thing in the world. This man who had said you’re it for me and meant it, not as a promise to never want anyone else, but as something deeper and truer and harder to say: a promise that no matter who else he wanted, no matter where the wanting took him, the wanting would always, always lead him back here. To Charlie. To this.

“Yeah,” Charlie said. “I’m ready.”

Nick laced their fingers together and squeezed once.

“Let’s go then, love.”

They walked down the narrow corridor, the floorboards creaking beneath their combined weight, and took the stairs side by side. The noise of the party grew with each step, laughter and music and the warm hum of people who had been celebrating all day and had no intention of stopping. Charlie could hear Harp’s voice above the rest, telling a story that seemed to involve sound effects. He could hear Tara singing along to something, slightly off-key. He could hear Morag behind the bar, calling someone “hen” in a tone that managed to be both affectionate and commanding.

Nick pushed open the door at the bottom of the stairs and the party welcomed them back. The fairy lights were still glowing. The wildflowers were still drooping in their pint glasses. Darcy had woken up and was dancing with Isaac, both of them terrible at it, both of them laughing. Tao and Elle were at the centre of the dance floor, slow-dancing to something that wasn’t a slow song, her head on his shoulder, his arms around her waist, both of them swaying gently in their own private rhythm while the world moved at a different speed around them.

Nobody looked up when Nick and Charlie came down the stairs. Nobody noticed, or if they did, they had the grace to pretend otherwise. They were just two more people rejoining a party, two more bodies folding back into the warmth of a room full of people they loved.

Charlie paused at the bottom of the stairs. Nick’s hand was still in his, warm and solid and certain.

He looked at Nick. Nick looked at him.

And then they stepped into the light together.

—

If Nick and Charlie's journey meant something to you and you want more like it, please consider becoming a paid subscriber. It's $8 a month, less than a cocktail at Fever, probably, and it makes a genuine difference to my ability to keep writing these stories. And don't forget: there's still an epilogue coming, and it's an exclusive gift for paid subscribers only. Nick and Charlie have one more scene left in them. If you want to be there for it, now's the time.

To give you a taste of what’s coming next, I’m leaving you with a small preview of my next project, Blood Debt. His name is Oliver. He’s been waiting to meet you.

—

Oliver Buchanan was riding Trevor Holloways’s cock as if his life depended on it.

His boyfri — well, not boyfriend, not yet, anyway — was sprawled beneath him, his pretty brown eyes half-lidded and drowning in please, drowning in him. Oliver’s hands were spread on Trevor’s muscular pecs, anchoring himself to the bed, to the Earth, to reality itself, as his hips went up and down on Trevor’s hard cock. Trevor’s hands found Oliver’s waist. Big hands, strong hands, hands that could pin someone to a wall or break down a door, but they held Oliver like he was something precious. Fingertips pressing into the soft skin above his hipbones, not guiding, not demanding. Just holding on. As if Trevor was the one who needed steadying.

“Fuck, Ollie—”

Trevor’s voice came out broken, half-breath and half-prayer, and Oliver felt it everywhere. Felt it in the way Trevor’s hips stuttered upward, in the way those big hands tightened just a fraction, in the way Trevor looked up at him — looked up at him — like Oliver was the only thing in the world worth seeing.

Oliver rolled his hips slower, drawing the motion out until Trevor’s head pressed back into the pillow and a sound escaped his throat that was almost pained. Oliver smiled. He couldn’t help it. There was something intoxicating about this, about having six-foot-two of Brooklyn cop trembling beneath him, completely at his mercy, undone by nothing more than the slow grind of Oliver’s body.

—