Screwing the System (27 page)

“Love you,” Cosmo heard as heat splattered up his back, but he couldn’t for the life of him figure out who had said it.

Maybe it didn’t matter.

Chapter Twenty-One

Alasdair lifted a limp and pliant Cosmo onto the bed, then spooned up behind him. Had he been hearing things? Had Cosmo really said it at last? Or was that just wishful thinking? He didn’t want to ask, and so he started talking.

“His name was Jon. We were together for six years.” Cosmo stiffened in his arms, instantly alert. “The wildest, most intense years of my life. Until I met you.”

Cosmo huffed out a breath in what might have been a snort, but his body relaxed against Alasdair’s. “This was the one who died, right?”

“That’s right. I used to think I’d never forgive him for that. But I don’t know. Lately, maybe, I think I could.”

Cosmo turned in his arms, fixing him with a pair of serious eyes. “Tell me about him. What was he like?”

The smile hurt Alasdair’s face. “He was a punk. Not just the way he looked but his whole outlook on life. Didn’t believe in anything. An anarchist. He was only eighteen months older than me, but he’d been living rough for years, and I was an innocent in comparison. He turned my whole world upside down.”

“How did you meet?”

“At my dad’s shop. I was working there, saving up for medical school. Dad wanted me to be a pharmacist so he could turn the newsagents into a small dispensing chemist. He said that was where the money was at, and we never seemed to have enough of the stuff. So anyway, there I was, closing up for the day, when Jon swaggers in, all dangerous looking in his leathers and his piercings. Asked me if we sold any beer or rubbers, and when I told him we didn’t, he stocked up on cigarettes instead.” Alasdair lost himself in the memory a moment. Of Jon’s insouciant gaze checking him out as he turned to reach for the Marlboros. He could feel it, as palpable as a hand resting on his arse. At eighteen, he’d known he was gay for a while but hadn’t yet dared come out to anyone.

“Go on,” Cosmo prompted. “What happened?” He didn’t sound jealous, just curious, which was a relief. Alasdair relaxed into telling the story.

“Somehow I plucked up the courage to ask him about his bike, and he offered to take me for a ride. I nearly turned him down. I probably should have, but then he leant on the counter and said, ‘Come on, sexy, I promise I won’t bite. Not unless you ask nicely.’ First proposition I’d ever had. I didn’t have a clue what I was doing, but I yelled up the stairs for my mum to take over the shop and headed on out of there.

“It was my first time on the back of a bike, and I loved it. The air whipping through my clothes. Pressed up against Jon’s body. He took me up West Wycombe Hill. It was closed for the night, but we hopped over the barriers and headed up to the graveyard. He’d stopped off at a supermarket on the way up, so we sat there drinking beer, me listening to tales of his life on the road, until the booze got the better of me and I kissed him.”

And what a kiss it had been. Hungry, biting, ferocious. Years of pent-up frustration released themselves in Alasdair’s body, turning him wild. Forceful. And to his astonishment, Jon had responded eagerly. “I ended up losing my virginity that night. Up there, under the stars. It’s part of the reason I’ve never wanted to leave this town. I make a pilgrimage there, every year. Leave flowers on that spot. Black roses, like the tattoo he had over his heart.” He laughed, even though it made his chest ache. “It was such a cheesy tat. Used to tease him about it. How he must have been rat-arsed when he got it done.” But that hadn’t stopped him peppering it with kisses every chance he got.

“You really loved him,” Cosmo said.

“I was infatuated, right from the start. The love followed after. He showed me who I was. What I enjoyed. He loved pain. Extreme bondage. He was an adrenaline junkie, a total thrill seeker. Even on that first night, he got me spanking him. Biting him. Crushing his balls. I couldn’t believe what I was doing. That he was asking for it. Loving it.”

He’d rolled back home that night a changed man. And when Jon had turned up again a week later, asking him if he wanted to shake that town out of his hair, Alasdair had taken only a moment to run upstairs and fetch his pre-packed bag.

“We left Wycombe with a group of other local bikers he’d hooked up with. Freddie was one of them. I raided my medical school savings and got myself a bike of my own and the leathers, then started on the ink.”

“You just lived off your savings, then?”

Alasdair grunted. “For a while, then we lived off whatever we could. Stuff I’m not particularly proud of. Shoplifting was the least of it.” There were always hard-faced men who needed small packages moved around the country for cash, and between those jobs, Jon had another way of making money. It had ripped him to shreds the first time he’d watched Jon walking off with a punter, and so after that, he’d insisted they worked as a pair.

Could he trust Cosmo with that part of the story? He gazed into those guileless eyes. Fuck it. Cosmo deserved the truth. “Would you believe I’ve whipped men bloody for cash?”

Cosmo’s eyes widened. “You never.”

“And screwed them too. You’d be surprised how many well-off men want a bit of domination.”

“Seriously?
You
were a prostitute? Mr. Respectable Business Man of the Year?”

“You see why I haven’t told you this before?”

Cosmo nodded. “Yeah, this is major blackmail material.”

“Quite.” A bitter laugh forced its way up his throat. “And don’t you dare use it against me.”

“I wouldn’t.” Cosmo’s wounded eyes stared into Alasdair’s, imploring. “You must know that, right? You can trust me.”

Alasdair relented, stroking Cosmo’s clenched jaw. “Yes, I do trust you. I wouldn’t be telling you otherwise.”

Cosmo still looked like he had doubts. “I trust you implicitly,” Alasdair insisted. “You’re a good man.”

“Not just a lazy brat, living off benefits?”

“You’re not lazy, and there’s a lot more to you than that. I can see that now.”

Cosmo nodded but seemed reassured. “Was Jon a good man too?”

Alasdair’s face screwed up. Another smile that hurt his face. “Yes and no. He had his moments. He could be incredibly generous, and I know he loved me, but his main loyalty was to himself. It didn’t matter who else got hurt in the process of him following his impulses. Even if it was me.”

“But you loved him anyway.”

“Yes. And I thought I could change him. I was young. Foolish. Didn’t know any better.”

“And now you do.”

“Now I do.” They shared a look that seemed to go on forever until emotion rose in Alasdair’s throat, choking him. He sat up and turned away, trying to regain his control. “Sorry,” he said uselessly as his eyes prickled. He swiped them with an angry hand.

“Nothing to be sorry about,” Cosmo said, his voice up close to Alasdair’s ear.

Alasdair eased himself back into Cosmo’s embrace. For a moment, he worried he’d crush the breath out of him, but Cosmo was tougher than he looked, and he looked plenty tough enough. The strong arms around him were a comfort he’d never acknowledged he needed, but now he had them, he realised what he’d been missing all these years. Jon had held him like this sometimes. Sitting back in the long grass by chain-link fences, Jon’s cigarette smoke scenting the air around them. Their bikes cooling off after a long day’s ride.

“How did he—” Cosmo began. “No, it’s none of my business.”

“What? You can ask. I don’t mind.”

“I just wondered, how did he die?”

Alasdair screwed his eyes shut. The stench of blood and petrol flooded his airways. “Came off his bike,” he forced out past the lump in his throat. “It had been raining, and he misjudged the corner. I saw… I couldn’t stop it happening.” Fuck. He didn’t want to cry. Not again. Not like he had back then.

“That must have been awful.” Cosmo’s arms hugged him tighter. “The poor guy.”

Anger rose in response to Cosmo’s sympathy. “Poor? He was a stupid, arrogant fucker. He’d been drinking. Taken a wrap of some speed we were delivering. If he’d been wearing his helmet like I told him to, he might have lived.” Probably not, judging by the angle of Jon’s head and the blood soaking his clothes, but at least he might have lasted long enough to give Alasdair some closure. A last line. A last kiss. Something to tide him through the dark years alone.

But they weren’t dark anymore, and he wasn’t alone. The warm breath against his neck was proof of that. Alasdair turned around and pulled Cosmo in tight. The tears squeezed past his eyelids, but this time they didn’t burn. This time he had someone he loved to hold him through the pain.

I forgive you, you bastard. We were great together, but it’s over. Now let me go. Let me be happy with someone new.

He thought he heard a sardonic chuckle, somewhere on the edge of earshot, and the dam burst.

Later, when the sobs no longer shook his body, Alasdair found Cosmo’s lips. They kissed sweetly, tentatively, as if exploring each other for the first time.

Cosmo drew back first, his dark eyes solemn, a frown creasing his brow. “I do love you, you know. I’m going to prove it to you.”

And there it was. The declaration he’d been waiting for. A smile tugged at Alasdair’s lips. “You don’t need to prove anything.”

Cosmo’s expression softened, the transformation filling Alasdair’s being with pure joy. “I’m still going to. You just wait and see.”

Alasdair pulled Cosmo to him, swallowed his words up with hungry kisses. Cosmo responded in kind, and as their hard cocks found each other, there was no domination or submission, just two ravenous bodies and souls taking their fill of each other. Rutting and clutching and kissing until their love spilled over between them.

Chapter Twenty-Two

Morning arrived with the strangest request Cosmo had ever heard.

“I want you to top,” Alasdair said, interrupting Cosmo’s wake-up blowjob.

“Don’t talk rubbish.” Cosmo ducked his head, keen to get back to the important business of sucking Alasdair’s cock.

Alasdair’s hand came out to stop him. “It’s not rubbish. I want you inside me. Come on, you’ve done it before, haven’t you?”

“Yes, but…”

“But?”

“You really want to? You’re not just saying that to humour me.”

“I really want to. I like being fucked too. There’s just not many men I’d feel comfortable bottoming for.”

“You would with me?”

“Definitely.”

Cosmo stared up at Alasdair along the length of his body. Hard to imagine a man that powerfully built wanting someone like Cosmo inside him. More to the point, it was almost impossible to imagine Alasdair bending over submissively. Although, come to think of it, until he met Alasdair, Cosmo had never considered bottoming to be a submissive act. And getting to screw Alasdair? Yep, that set his heart pounding.

Cosmo shifted, rubbing his painfully stiff cock against the sheets. “Okay, then.” He kissed the tip of Alasdair’s dick and grinned. “You want it fast and hard or slow and gentle?”

“Fast and hard,” Alasdair demanded, then gave a sheepish grin. “It’s been a while, though, so maybe you’d better take it easy to start with.”

“Hope you’ve got plenty of lube handy.” Cosmo licked Alasdair’s dick, making the man shudder underneath him. “I’m going to work you with my fingers until you’re begging for something more.”

Something hard bounced off his forehead. “Less teasing. More prepping.”

“Topping from the bottom now are we?”

“You bet.” They shared a grin as Cosmo picked up the small tube of slick Alasdair had thrown.

“We’ll just have to see about that.”

It turned out that Alasdair did indeed top from the bottom, bearing down on Cosmo’s finger impatiently. “Come on. That can’t be all you’ve got. I can barely feel you.”

“Bloody toppy bastard,” Cosmo grumbled, but he upped the pace, sucking on the head of Alasdair’s dick while he added another digit, which shut the man up for a while. The heat of Alasdair’s body seared his fingers. So tight. It was going to be like fucking a virgin, but fortunately both of them knew what they were doing. When the grunts and entreaties for more grew insistent, he found Alasdair’s gland and gave it a rub.

“Hngh!” Alasdair’s body arched off the mattress, forcing his dick deep into Cosmo’s throat. Sweet. He couldn’t wait to get inside the man properly, if this was how he reacted.

“You ready?” Cosmo asked. He certainly was. He was going to pop before he got in there at this rate.

“Ready,” Alasdair panted.

“How d’you want this. On your front?”

“I’m staying right here. I want to watch you stick it to me.”

“Okay.” Cosmo gulped. He wasn’t nervous. Couldn’t be. He’d topped before, and he loved this man.

Maybe that was why he was nervous. What if Alasdair thought he was crap at it? But no, he wasn’t crap. He could do this. He could do whatever he wanted with his life. Alasdair had taught him that.

And he wanted this. So much.

“You still up for this?” Alasdair asked, concern threading through his voice. His muscles clenched around Cosmo’s fingers, still aggressive even when being penetrated.