Blowing It (6 page)

“Clothes. Off.” He released my head, and I hurried
to kick off my boots, reclining on my back to unfasten my tight jeans.

Magnus bent to finish removing his clothes, then
straightened and grabbed my ankles, helping to remove my trousers.

“What is that?” he asked, pausing mid-motion to
look at my groin.

I held my breath as he stared at my underwear. I’d
told him I didn’t dress in drag, but I’d forgotten to mention my penchant for silky
underthings. The pair of hot pink pants I was wearing was my favourite. They
felt decadently good against my cock and didn’t show through my clothes, no
matter how tight my jeans were.

“You wear women’s underwear?” His expression was
inscrutable, his attention fixed on my clothes and not what bulged beneath
them.

“Technically, they’re not women’s,” I said primly.
They came from a specialist online retailer which designed pretty, lacy things
for men of discerning tastes who didn’t want to worry how to pack everything
into a pair of knickers without losing a ball out the side.

The corner of his mouth twitched in what I hoped
was the start of a grin. “They look like it.”

My voice was soft as I answered, hoping with all my
might he would be as understanding as he’d promised when he thought I wore
dresses. “They make me feel good.”

Slowly, deliberately, he finished removing my jeans
and straddled me, resting his hands either side of my head, our faces kissing-close.
“They look incredible.”

I barely released my breath before he was kissing
me, harder and hungrier than he had before. The slide of his thickening cock
against mine through the silk of my underwear had me almost bursting at the
seams, and I writhed shamelessly beneath him.

A push on his shoulder, and he caved instantly,
rolling onto his back and taking me with him. I lay across him, trusting him to
take my full weight as I kissed his lips and ran my hands through his hair and thrust
my hips. He palmed my arse, pushed his blunt fingers into the waist of my
underwear, and touched my skin, grabbing great handfuls and squeezing.

“God, that feels good,” he groaned, closing his
eyes as I rolled my hips in a slow, lazy motion.

Smirking, I kissed the tip of his nose and climbed
off him, standing to shove my underwear down my legs. I kicked them free, then
stood on first one foot then the other to remove my socks. I’d always
maintained leaving them on to fuck was the height of bad manners, and was
pleased to see Magnus had stripped fully as well.

I fell to my knees at the side of the bed, spread
his thighs with my hands, and sucked his balls. With my nose pressed in his
groin, I got a good whiff of aroused musk, the scent underlined by the rich
notes of soap or shower gel.

“Jesus, your mouth.”

I smiled as best I could around his nuts, a warm
feeling rising in my chest. I did like to be appreciated.

He had a nice dick. Clean and pink, marbled with
dark veins, thick enough to feel good, but not so girthy I’d get jaw ache
within five minutes of sucking it. A point I set about proving the moment I’d
rolled a condom on, taking him as deep as I was able without choking. My gag
reflex was out of practice, and dry heaving on someone’s cock was never
attractive.

Magnus propped himself on his elbows, head raised
to watch me, a dopey, blissed-out smile on his face. I cupped his balls in my
hand, enjoying the way the soft skin crinkled under my fingers. In many ways, I
considered going down on a guy to be more intimate than fucking. There was something
about the act of sucking, taking a cock into my mouth and nursing on it, eyes
closed, trusting my partner not to hold my head and stuff it down my throat. I
couldn’t be doing with that “dominant” bullshit. My mouth, my blowjob. I got to
dictate the terms.

Happily, Magnus seemed to agree with me. His hips
gave little involuntary jerks as I suckled the head and ran my tongue against
the underside of his glans, but otherwise he was still, save the heaving of his
chest pushing groans of contentment through his lips.

When the noises he made turned frantic, and his
dick gave a telltale twitch in my mouth, I pulled off, removed the condom, and
brought him to orgasm with my hand, hot spunk splashing over his stomach and
groin. His thigh trembled as I used him for leverage, standing and climbing
over him to kiss his mouth. He wrapped me in his arms, my straining cock
trapped between our bodies.

I straddled his lap, smearing his ejaculate between
us, and guided his hand to my dick. He stroked me slowly, and I thrust into the
tight circle of his fist, one arm around his neck and the other holding the
crook of his elbow, his muscles flexing under my fingers as he gave a little
twist of his wrist which made me gasp.

Eyes squeezed shut, I kissed him, sliding my tongue
lazily against his in time with his slow, even strokes along my dick. He slid
my foreskin over the sensitive head, easing it back down again in a gentle
glide which sent a shiver racing along my spine. My toes curled and calf
muscles tightened, muscles clenching in anticipation of a climax which wasn’t
far off. I rubbed my cheek against his scratchy beard, buried my face in the
crook of his neck, anchored myself around him, and squirmed in his lap, chasing
the beginning of the end.

He increased his pace, pressure building, a slender
cord drawn taut between my stomach and groin. My balls hiked up, and I gasped,
gritting my teeth to stifle the sound I made as I came. My brain switched off,
and I was oblivious to everything save the movement of his lips against my neck
as he nuzzled me.

When I finally had strength to move, I clasped his
face between my hands and kissed him, our eyes hooded, lazy, satisfied smiles
on our faces.

“Have you got a towel?” he asked, looking around
for something on which to wipe his hand.

Groaning melodramatically, I fell off his lap onto
the bed, nestling in my pillows.

“It’s that or change the sheets tomorrow,” Magnus
warned, an amused look on his face.

“Fine.” I clambered to my feet and made for the
bathroom, trying not to get self-conscious about the fact Magnus was watching
my naked arse. I’d only end up walking funny, trying to stop my cheeks
wobbling.

I wiped down with a flannel soaked in warm water,
wrung it out, and wet it again before taking it to him. He had reclined on the
bed, his head on the pillows, an appreciative smile on his face, blue eyes soft
around the edges with sleep and, I hoped, a little affection. He held out his
hand and I wiped my spunk away, then ran the flannel over his groin, giving his
flaccid dick a little tug which made him squirm.

Tossing the cloth on top of my discarded jeans, I
climbed over him and under the covers on the opposite side of the bed.

“We should probably have closed the curtains,”
Magnus mused, glancing at the second set of French doors, which also led onto
my balcony.

“We’re seven floors up,” I said with a dismissive
wave of my hand. “Nobody can see in.”

He lifted his legs, pushed down the covers, and
made an ungainly show of getting into bed. I snuggled against him, slinging my
arm over him and resting my cheek on his chest. He covered my arm with his own,
sliding his other under my pillow, holding me securely. I twisted his chest
hair around my finger and did my best to stifle a yawn.

“Sleep,” Magnus said, kissing my forehead. “I’ll
still be here in the morning.”

“Damn right, you will,” I mumbled, wriggling to get
comfortable and closing my eyes.

By the time morning arrived, we’d both come twice
more, and more than earned the decadent breakfast Magnus treated me to at the
greasy spoon down the street.

CHAPTER SEVEN

On Saturday afternoon, I put the long goodbye we’d
shared in the morning out of my mind and got down to work. I’d finished writing
and only had to go over the manuscript making minor changes before I was due to
hand it to Max on Monday. The book had taken six months to write, but now I was
so close to the end, I didn’t want to let it go. Not that I would be done with
it for another several months yet: there was editing to go through, and perhaps
even a rewrite if Squire decided they didn’t like something about the
narrative. Yet in that moment it was perfect, as fresh and raw as it would ever
be. Somehow the finished, polished product always, to my mind, lacked the spark
of the final draft.

I wasn’t going to be a diva about it, I told myself
firmly. I would hand it in, let the powers that be make whatever changes they
wanted, and cash the cheque I was due on its acceptance. My flat hadn’t been
cheap, and I needed the money to keep up with my mortgage payments. That’s one
thing they never tell you when the newspapers are reporting you’re a
millionaire: the money comes in a trickle over the course of years, and real
estate in London is pricey enough to cripple all but the very richest. My
little flat had cost almost three-quarters of a million pounds. I wondered if I
should have moved to the suburbs, bought a house for half the price like Ryan
and Sameer, but I loved the city, loved living right in the heart of
everything, watching the rest of the world bustle around me.

My agent’s office was on the other side of London,
near Blackfriars. Getting there required taking two tubes and navigating the
warren of subterranean tunnels connecting Bank and Monument, the pen drive
containing my manuscript zipped safe in an inside pocket of my coat. We didn’t
trust email to keep it secure, and I even wrote on a laptop disconnected from
the internet, with nothing stored on the computer’s hard drive. Paranoia,
maybe, but there were plenty of people to whom a leaked copy would be worth a
considerable sum. The file lived on an external drive, a backup copy kept in a
safe hidden behind a dummy plug socket in my bedroom. It wasn’t getting stolen
on my watch.

I emerged from Blackfriars Station, an impressive
glass and steel construct built on a bridge spanning the Thames, onto Queen
Victoria Road. The station frontage always reminded me of a job half-done, a
wide semicircular glass wall lined with grey bars which looked too much like
scaffolding for my taste. Then again, looking around the busy street, I saw
enough cranes and real scaffolding that somehow Blackfriars’ edifice seemed
fitting, in a grim kind of modern sympathy with its surroundings.

The hideous ’70s tower blocks gave way to stately
white stone as I turned onto New Bridge Street, then shifted again, Union Jacks
strung on poles over doorways juxtaposed with plate glass-fronted coffee chains,
and everywhere the ubiquitous red and black of London buses and taxis. It had
rained in the night, and the pavement was still damp, grimy puddles collected
in the cracks. Everything was pigeon-grey, the colours washed out of the sky
and street, blurred and blending together like some drab French watercolour
from the turn of the last century.

Cardwell & Grosse Literary Agents did business
out of one of the statelier buildings on the street, finished in neoclassical
art deco design sometime in the mid-1930s. The entrance was through a small,
unassuming black door to the right of the glass-fronted cafe which leased the
ground floor. Inside, a narrow corridor led to a narrower set of stairs, up
which I traipsed. Cardwell & Grosse had the entire third floor, their
offices, hidden behind an old door thick with uncountable layers of paint,
surprisingly neat and formal.

High ceilings edged with ornate, white plaster
mouldings of scrolls and vines gave way to pale lemon walls and framed prints
of the covers of the agency’s bestselling titles. I’d like to say my little
bedroom montage was original, but here in the entrance to my agent’s office hung
the evidence to state otherwise. I noted the cover of my first book hanging
square in the centre and wondered who would get knocked out of place when my
second was released.

A tall, narrow desk stood in the corner, behind
which sat Jennifer, the agency’s receptionist. She looked a sweet, timid thing,
but never had looks been more deceptive. Jennifer was well-versed in keeping
the wannabes at bay, and her cool indifference could reduce a grown man to
tears. I well remembered the days when I, too, had been kept waiting, squirming
on the uncomfortable leather chair beneath the framed covers, the silence
broken only by the overloud tick of the clock hung on the opposite wall, and
the endless
tap-tap-tap
of her busy fingernails on a computer keyboard
hidden behind her desk, until she judged sufficient time had passed to impress
upon me the insignificance of my place in her world. Then and only then, by
some unspoken cue, would she press a buzzer opening the door into the office
proper and grant me admission.

Today she greeted me with a smile reserved only for
those who had earned their place in the inner sanctum and buzzed me through
immediately. Max’s office was behind the third door, down a long corridor lined
with doors on the right and lit from the left by tall windows which looked out
onto the street below. I knocked twice and entered.

“Owen! Do you have it?”

I pulled the pen drive from my pocket and waved it
triumphantly, a grin spreading across my face in response to Max’s almost
childish delight. He took the drive, cradling it as some people held newborns. I
could almost forget he’d already read most of it more than once over the course
of it being written.

“I’ll get someone on it immediately,” he promised,
opening a drawer in his desk and removing a small lockbox, into which he placed
the drive. “We should have it over to Squire by next week.”

I raised my eyebrows. “You’re confident.”

“If it isn’t ready now, it never will be,” Max
said. “Besides, I want to beat the deadline if we can. It makes us look more
efficient.”

Squire’s deadline was for the end of the month, meaning
we still had three weeks in which to polish the manuscript until it shone, but
I deferred to Max’s decision. I didn’t get involved in the politics if I could
help it.

“I can still start the third book, right?” The
story had been building in my mind, buzzing through my head until I had to
fight it off in order to get the second finished. I knew better than to ignore
the urge to write when it struck, and had every intention of diving straight
into the outline for the new manuscript. Asking Max was only a formality.

“Yes, of course.” Max seemed distracted. “Can you
sit for a moment, Owen?”

I sank into the plush chair before his desk,
suddenly apprehensive. “What is it? Does Squire want to renegotiate the
contract? Can they do that?” I could only think it was some threat to our
income which had put the serious expression on Max’s face.

“No, nothing like that. Not yet.”

“What do you mean, ‘not yet’? What’s happened? I
told you, I never called that woman from Bloomsbury back—”

“It’s nothing to do with that.” Max rested his
elbows on his desk, steepling his fingers. “Have you seen your Twitter account
recently?”

I pulled a face. “I don’t
have
a Twitter
account. You made me delete it, remember?” Along with every other social media
presence I had. Apparently the photos my friends posted didn’t pass the
children’s author litmus test.

Max made an exasperated sound. “Yes, you do. The
official one Katy set up.”

“I never look at that.” I frowned. “Was I supposed
to? I thought it was only for promo.”

“It is, but we still have somebody monitor it. People
try to contact you on there.”

“I know how Twitter works, Max.”

“Then you know people can post photos. Even tag you
in them.”

A dark cloud of foreboding gathered over his desk.

“Where were you on Friday night, Owen?”

“I, I was out with my friends.”

“Friends, plural, or one person in particular?”

I bristled. “Okay, I had a date. Is that such a big
deal?”

“Yes!” Max thumped the table. “You were
seen
.”

“I’m not the invisible man,” I said sulkily.
“People see me all the time.”

“Not like this.” He pushed his computer monitor
around. My Twitter account was on the screen, open to the notifications page. I
glanced quickly through a series of inane tweets about how much people loved my
books, those who’d been to a reading or sat in a studio audience and wanted to
know if I’d noticed them, parents asking for a release date for the second book
to appease their children. Then there was the tweet Max was bitching about. Sent
from somebody with a decidedly un-child-friendly handle, crowing that he was
having a drink in the same bar as me.

The picture had been taken in The George and showed
me and Magnus walking through the busy pub, I suspected on our way out. Snapped
quickly on a cameraphone without using the flash, it was dark and grainy, but the
picture was unmistakably me, the neckline of my top slipped to expose my upper
chest, drainpipe jeans leaving nothing to the imagination. I was looking at
Magnus, a smile on my face, my makeup still pristine. He was leading me from
the pub, and the photo clearly showed our clasped hands.
Fuck.

“Five hundred retweets,” Max said severely. “Five
hundred
,
Owen! What were you thinking?”

“I can’t help it if some creeper took a photo of
me,” I said petulantly.

“You were in a gay bar! In makeup!”

I tossed my head. “It’s a bit of eyeliner, that’s
all. And five hundred retweets is nothing.”

“It only needs one for the papers to see it.”

“Like they give a damn,” I said with a roll of my
eyes. “I’m not some reality TV wannabe with my tits out”—well, okay, I pretty
much
did
have my tits out, but that was irrelevant—“I’m an author.
Authors are boring. It wouldn’t make the tabloids on a slow day.”

“That’s not the
point
.”

“Well, what is?” I demanded. “Seriously, Max. I
can’t help it if there are creeps and weirdoes in the world.”

“You could try not giving them ammunition. What if
somebody from Squire sees this? What if they decide it’s too much of a risk to
their reputation to print your books?”

“Then fuck them,” I said.

“You can’t afford to fuck them,” Max replied
darkly. “If we lose this contract, Owen—”

“I know, I know!” I held my head in my hands. “I
fucked up, okay? I’m sorry.”

“Sorry isn’t good enough. They
just
announced the Carnegie shortlist. You think because it didn’t make the tabloids,
people haven’t noticed? You couldn’t have chosen any other week to act out?”

“I wasn’t
acting out
,” I hissed. “I was
being myself, with somebody who actually likes me for who I am.”

“Very touching, I’m sure.” Max narrowed his eyes. “I
thought we’d already discussed this?”

“We went for
one drink
!”

“One drink too many. In a bloody gay bar, Owen! Why
not take out an ad in the
TLS
? ‘Owen Black sucks cock.’”

“Don’t be crude.” I returned his glare with
interest. “What I do, and who I do it with, is nobody’s business but mine.”

“You made it their business when you signed your
publishing contract. You’re not your own person any more, Owen. You’re a
product, the same as your books.”

“I didn’t sign up for that!”

“Yes, you did.” Max sighed and sat back in his
chair. “I hate this social media bullshit as much as you do. It makes all our
lives more difficult. But you
know
there are people out there who think
nothing of taking a picture and putting it online, and the minute it’s posted,
you can’t ever get rid of it. That’s why we agreed there would be no
opportunity for pictures to begin with.”

“So I just put my life on hold indefinitely, do I?”

“If you want to sell books, yes
.
”

I huffed. “It’s not fair.”

“Life isn’t fair.” Max softened his tone. “Do you
want to go back to how it was before? Pouring your heart and soul into books
nobody would touch? Working as a waiter to make ends meet? Squire is paying you
more money than you ever dreamed of, and the trade-off is you don’t do anything
to make yourself less commercially viable. You think they won’t hesitate to
pull the plug if sales dry up?”

“They’re buying my books, Max, not me.”

“We are
this close
to breaking America,
Owen, and we need that market. We’re
counting
on it. If you think there
aren’t conservative parents who’ll refuse to buy the books if they even suspect
you’re queer, you’re an idiot.”

“Parents like that probably won’t buy them anyway,”
I protested. “There will always be people who complain about something.”

Max shook his head. “We can’t afford for there to
be. If people don’t like the books, fine. They’ll be in a minority. But all
this gay marriage stuff has people riled up enough as it is. You need to be
bland, boring Owen who writes stories kids and their parents love. No
controversy. I’d say the same thing if you were photographed falling out of
Spearmint Rhino with a stripper on your arm.”

“It’s not the same thing,” I growled.

“It’s all
sex
, Owen. And given you write for
adolescents, any hint of sex is firmly off the table.”

“Would holding hands with a woman be okay?” I
asked.

“Owen—”

“Seriously. What does holding hands have to do with
sex? We weren’t even kissing.”

“You kissed him? In public?”

I debated letting him suffer but decided it
wouldn’t be worth the hassle. “No. I’m not entirely stupid.”

“Good.”

I sighed. “I’ll be more careful, okay? I just
wanted to be myself for once.”