Handle With Care (18 page)

And, let’s not forget, one with a horny young boyfriend who looked at him like he was a fucking hero, no matter how little he deserved it.

Ollie sucked one of my balls into his mouth with a hungry moan, and I swear I nearly shot my load then and there. My body jerked, and while there was a little stiffness in my abdomen, it didn’t really hurt. Not enough to make me ask him to stop, anyway.

“Mmm, you taste amazing,” Ollie said between nuzzles as he licked and nibbled a tortuously slow trail up to the tip of my dick. “All salty, like a bag of crisps.”

I couldn’t help it; I burst out laughing.

“What?” Ollie said, all mock innocent as he held my cock and gave a lick to the end. “Yeah, I’m getting hints of roast beef with an undercurrent of gravy.

Mmm, savoury!”

“Shut up!” I wheezed, desperately trying to calm my shaking body. It still hurt to give a belly laugh, but it was worth it.

Made me think it would be worth it to have an orgasm too.

“You taste sweet,” I said. “Like a mocha.”

“I’ve got mocha spunk? Nice one! No one’s ever said that before.”

“No, your skin. But there might be a hint of it in your jizz, now you come to mention it. I’d have to try it again to confirm, but I think the predominant flavour is brine.” I nodded sagely, doing my best impression of a wine connoisseur. I didn’t want to betray the way my heart was thundering within me at the prospect of what Ollie was about to do.

“Well, I’ll have to give you some tasting notes when I’ve finished,” Ollie murmured before enveloping my cockhead in the moist heat of his mouth.

“Fu-u-u-uck!” The word shuddered out of me, and I had to reach out for Ollie’s head, had to take a double handful of his vibrant, red hair. Last time it had been purple, and I had a strange sense of déjà vu, of two overlapping scenes.

I remembered the way Ollie had looked at me, tube and all, with lust brimming in his eyes. As if he could read my thoughts, he moved his spare hand from my hip and found the puckered scar, gently teasing it with his fingertips. He took me deep, then eased off again and winked at me.

“Later,” Ollie said.

“Huh?” I had to fight the urge to shove his head back down again.

“We’ll fuck. Later. Back home.”

“Okay.” I sank back into the cellophane-wrapped beanbag as Ollie began to suck me off in earnest. I can’t honestly say if it was his technique or the fact it was only my second blow job in over four years, but I had to shut my eyes and concentrate on the nasty slide of the plastic under my sweaty arse to keep myself 158

from coming too fast. But then I got to thinking about what I’d just agreed to, and the thought of sinking deep into Ollie’s pert little bum set my balls boiling.

Of course, that would have to be the moment Ollie took his hand away from my dick and deep-throated me. As he swallowed around my cockhead, squeezing me tight, it was like my whole body contracted then expanded. My hips jerked, my scar throbbed, and my dick shot pulses of bright pleasure that threatened to rip me apart.

When I finally opened my eyes, still panting, still shuddering, Ollie was watching me in this weird, tender way. Like he was the elder of the two of us and I’d just impressed him by learning some new trick.

I couldn’t take too much of looking into his eyes, so I transferred my attention to his mouth and watched as a dribble of jizz escaped when he grinned.

“Messy boy,” I chided, wiping it away with a trembling finger.

“You can come all over my face later if you like,” Ollie offered.

“Jesus!” My head hit the wall with a painful thunk. “Yes, I do like. What are you trying to do to me?”

“Just keeping my man happy.”

“Believe me, I’m happy.”

“Yeah, I thought so.” Ollie caressed my cheek and gave me another of those odd, tender gazes. I tried to change the subject.

“You want a hand job? Or a blowjob?” I wasn’t sure I was up to either after my morning’s exertions, but I’d try my best for Ollie.

“Nah, I’m good.”

“Don’t tell me you came in your pants.”

Ollie laughed and stood up, lifting my unresisting hand to feel his erection through his jeans. “Nope. I just want to wait. I want to come in
our
bed while you’re pounding my arse. I think I deserve it, don’t you?”

My throat went dry, and I stared up at him, no longer able to think of a single reason why we shouldn’t be at it like rabbits.

Well, except for the fact that my body seemed to have turned to jelly.

“I’ll take that as a yes, then,” Ollie said, then turned on his heel and strutted off. “You have a rest while I wash the brushes; then we’ll stop by Omar’s and pick up my stuff, okay?”

“Okay,” I whispered to Ollie’s retreating back.

160

When we got to Omar and Meera’s place, they were both out at work, thank God, as I really didn’t fancy another showdown with Mr. Macho. We’d gone straight there at Ollie’s insistence. I’d tried to persuade him that the MG wasn’t really a suitable moving vehicle and we should wait to hire a van, but he’d said that we’d have plenty of room. I was amazed to see how right he was when I stepped into the box room he’d had as his bedroom. There was only one narrow, high-up window, but it cast enough light to see how pitifully sparse the furnishings were.

“Is this everything you own?” I asked, unable to keep the surprise from my voice. There were a couple of piles of comics and graphic novels on the floor, a plastic toolbox full of art materials, a laptop covered in stickers, a chest of drawers stuffed full of clothes, and a few plastic spaceships hanging from the ceiling—but that was it. With no other furniture than a narrow air mattress on the floor, the room could have been depressing if it hadn’t been for the brightly inked pictures all over the walls. Representations of skateboarders jostled with sketches of Cyber-Ben and Sidekick-Ollie—fortunately not the pornographic ones, though, as I didn’t like the idea of his hosts clapping their eyes on those.

Ollie bustled past me with an armful of empty carrier bags. “Yeah, this is it.

Well, there’s my skateboard and a couple of jackets by the front door, and I’ve got a mug in the kitchen, but everything else is in here. Oh, and don’t worry about the airbed or the chest of drawers. Those both belong to Omar and Meera.”

I felt chastened to think that Ollie’d had to come back to this joyless little cell every night when I could easily have asked him to stay at mine.

“Why don’t you sit in the living room and have a rest? Won’t take me a moment to pack this lot up.” Ollie pulled out one of the drawers and began stuffing T-shirts haphazardly into one of the bags.

“I want to help you. I could fold those for you. They’ll get all creased if you don’t pack them properly.” Come to think of it, they probably already were, as they looked like they’d been shoved into the drawer with the same amount of finesse.

Ollie grinned like I’d said something funny. “They’re only T-shirts. Chill.”

He stuffed a second carrier bag with pants and socks. “Tell you what, if you want to help with something that takes a bit of care, how about you take my pictures down? You can stick ’em in here.” He reached behind the chest of drawers to pull out one of those big zip-up folders the art students at school all used to have.

“Glad to be of use,” I said and began gently removing the pictures from the wall. Ollie had used blu-tack, so it took real care not to pull off chunks of the paintwork as well. I studied the pictures as I worked. “We should frame these.

Put them up at my place. Our place,” I corrected myself, blushing.

“They wouldn’t go,” Ollie said in a matter-of-fact kind of way.

“Why not? This one would go perfectly with the colour scheme in the kitchen.” I held up one that had caught my eye: a skater doing some kind of airborne stunt, silhouetted against a gold-and-peach sunset.

“You want my pictures up in your kitchen? Really?”

“
Our
kitchen. And yes, really. You have talent, and I want it to feel like your home too.”

“Does that mean I can put my spaceships up on the bedroom ceiling?”

162

I cast a horrified glance up at them, imagining them hanging above the bed in my perfectly restful, harmonious bedroom.

Ollie chuckled and punched my arm. “I’m only joking. God, you should see the look on your face.”

Shame washed over me. There I was, thinking of it as my bedroom still. This co-habiting was going to take some time to adjust to, I could see.

“Of course we can put your spaceships up. Just…maybe not in the bedroom.

How about the living room?” I couldn’t believe I’d just offered that.

“That’d be brilliant. They’ll go much better with the decor in there.”

I nodded, wisely deciding not to pass comment. Perhaps I’d become too precious about my interior design scheme, anyway. Who really cared if plastic spaceships knocked shoulders with Jasper Conran sofas, Italian shelving and hand-printed wallpaper? If there was room for Ollie in my life, then there was room for his stuff too. I recalled how my one touch of kitsch, the Nightcrawler key holder, had been instrumental in bringing us closer. Yes, perhaps I needed more of the quirky in my home. Let’s face it, there’d be plenty of quirky with Ollie around the place.

I grabbed him around the waist and kissed him.

“What was that for?” Ollie asked.

“Just for being you.”

“You’re weird, you are,” he said, smiling. “Now let me get on with this, yeah? I want you to take me home and fuck me stupid.”

Oh yes. That. I turned back to my task and tried not to dwell on the terms “erectile dysfunction” and “performance anxiety”. Unfortunately, they seemed to take up all the available room in my brain.

I lay back on my bed—our bed—wondering if this was how people used to feel on their wedding nights, back in the days when virginity was a valuable commodity. Not that I’m comparing myself to a virgin bride or anything—but my poor body had been through the wars, and it had been so long since my last shag, I wasn’t remotely confident I’d make a good lover.

And God, I wanted to be good for Ollie. I could hear him splashing about in the shower, singing jubilantly but slightly off key as he sluiced all that paint and sweat off his skin. We’d only got back about half an hour ago, and Ollie had dumped his bags of clothing and spaceships in the living room, promising he’d take care of them first thing in the morning. I’d taken my shower first, too weirded out about the whole moving-in thing to take him up on his offer to share, muttering some lame excuse about the stall being too small. He’d just given me another one of those affectionate looks that made me feel about five years old and said he’d switch on the heated towel rail for me.

So here I was, splayed out on the bed—our bed—the sheets smooth against my slightly damp skin. Between the soporific effect of the hot shower on my exhausted muscles and the paralysing fear that I wouldn’t be able to fuck Ollie the way he deserved, I couldn’t seem to be able to move. The feather duvet felt like a lead blanket pinning me to the mattress.

The clanking of the water in the pipes ceased, and my heart began to pound.

It would only be moments now, and here I was, as limp as an old carrot that’s been forgotten about at the back of the fridge. Bugger. I persuaded one of my arms to move and took hold of my dick. I tugged a few times, but it didn’t want to wake up. Felt like the times I was full of dialysate and couldn’t persuade the little bastard to respond. Not even with porn.

Now there was a thought.

164

I couldn’t face getting up to put on a DVD, but I had Ollie’s drawings in the drawer by my bed. I fumbled around and managed to grab hold of the folder with a minimum of movement, dragging it out and over. I rested a minute before opening it, aware of the sounds of Ollie towelling off, still belting out some thrash-metal tune that sounded ridiculous without the backing music.

Okay, so he’d find me looking at porn when he got back in here. What the hell? He drew it.

I pulled out the first drawing, and my breathing hitched.

It was a new one.

I was still staring at it when Ollie entered the room.

“You found it.” Ollie’s voice was quiet, hesitant. He gave a nervous laugh. “I was going to give that to you afterwards.”

“Do you mean it?” I asked, my eyes watering like crazy.

“Yeah.” Ollie lowered himself onto the edge of the bed while I gazed at the picture. It showed Cyber-Ben and Sidekick-Ollie at it again, this time with Ollie riding me. But it wasn’t the erotic content that had blindsided me—it was Ollie’s speech bubble. “Love you,” he was saying to Ben, and the look in both their eyes was that indulgent one I’d been seeing a lot of from Ollie lately.

“You love me?” How could anyone actually love me who wasn’t obliged to by blood?

“Is that okay? I mean, I thought you knew. I know it’s probably way too soon, and I don’t expect you to feel the same way yet, but I hoped in time you might—”

I pushed myself up and silenced him with a kiss. As our tongues slid together, a sensation of rightness washed over me. I wanted to keep doing this.

With Ollie.

When we came up for air, Ollie gave me this look. “So does that mean…”

“It means I do too.”

“Do what?” he asked, his cheeks dimpling.

I swallowed hard. “I think I love you.”

166

There, that wasn’t so hard after all. Okay, so my voice croaked and my palms were damp with sweat, but I’d done it. I’d said it.

And I’d meant it.

“You only think? I dunno.” Ollie shook his head in mock sadness. Bugger, he was enjoying this. “Maybe it’s because you haven’t had a chance to do me yet.

Isn’t that supposed to be the moment you fall in love? When you’re pumping me full of your creamy love-juice?”

I stared at him. “Have you been reading porny romance or something?”

Ollie looked shifty. “Well, I might have picked up my mum’s Mills & Boons now and again. Some of the guys on the covers were pretty hot, you know?”

“You’ve got a taste for Fabio now, have you? I should be worried you’re going to run off with some pool-cleaning hunk?”