Playing With Fire (Glasgow Lads Book 3) (10 page)

Robert crushed his lips against Liam’s to muffle the sounds trying to burst out of him.

After a moment, Liam pulled away. “But now touching’s not enough. I want to suck it.” He dropped to his knees, tugging down Robert’s jeans and boxers, then took him between his hot, wet lips.

Robert shoved an arm against his face to silence himself. His other hand clawed at the bathroom’s ragged wallpaper as Liam cupped Robert’s balls, his head bobbing faster and faster.

The orgasm hit Robert like a speeding subway train. Knees shaking, he clung to the towel rail to stay upright, hoping he wouldn’t yank the thing off the wall.

As he finished coming, he felt Liam’s mouth go suddenly tight. Robert hissed in half pain, half pleasure. Liam let go, then pressed his forehead to the wall, his body shuddering. “God,” he whispered. “Fuck.”

Robert was confused. “What’s wrong?”

Liam sat back on his heels, looking stunned. “I just came in my pants. Reached down to adjust myself and—boom.”

“Sorry.”

“Nae bother,” Liam said with a light laugh. He stood unsteadily, then brought his lips close to Robert’s ear. “Not your fault your cock tastes so good it makes me come.”

“Does it?” Robert whispered. “Show me.”

Liam kissed him, deep but soft, letting Robert explore his mouth. Robert’s tongue dove and lapped, relishing the blend of his own taste with that of the pizza Liam had eaten. The thought of Liam’s cum filling his briefs made Robert long to taste him in return.

But Liam stepped back, examining the front of his own jeans, where a tiny wet spot had appeared. “It’s a good job I’m near a shower.” He quickly stripped naked below the waist, then turned away and switched on the tap, leaving Robert gawking at his naked arse. Liam stepped inside the narrow shower stall, leaning back so the water would hit only the lower half of his body. “Gonnae stop staring and find me a towel?”

“Right.” Dazed, Robert yanked up his trousers, then reached out to the wire shelf above the toilet, where a set of shabby white-and-green towels lay neatly folded. “Shall I…” He gestured to Liam’s briefs on the floor. “Clean those for you?”

“I can see to my own washing, thanks.” He switched off the water and took the towel, then grinned up at the shower head. “Water flow seems fine. Looks like we sorted it.”

“Result!” Robert said with an ironic fist pump. “You working tomorrow?”

“Aye, like every Thursday, starting at four. Why?”

“Never mind.” He shrugged. “My last lecture ends at quarter to three.”

Liam eyed him as he dried himself. “You want to hang out in between?”

“It takes almost forty minutes to get here from uni.”

“That’s what phones are for. You go home after your lecture. I’ll be at mine.” Liam stepped close to Robert, took his hands, then placed them on his own damp, bare arse. “We can have ourselves a wee chat.”

Robert drew his thumbs up over Liam’s taut glutes, marveling at the way this man’s parts
filled
his hands instead of being dwarfed by them. “Chat about what?” Maybe they’d clear things up, where they were going as a couple or a noncouple or whatever. Maybe tomorrow was the
later
Liam referred to when he’d said,
“Can’t we just have a laugh for now, and work out what it all means later?”

“About anything.” Liam gently bit Robert’s lower lip. “Like what we want to do to each other Saturday night. And other common interests.”

So it’d be not so much a relationship dissection as a bout of phone sex. Robert couldn’t bring himself to be disappointed.

Besides, he had a brilliant idea. “I know just the thing.”

L
IAM
OFTEN
BENEFITED
from his best mate’s computer knowledge and connections. For instance, Robert had found him this secondhand laptop for only twenty quid and made it run like new. He provided technical assistance whenever it acted up, installing antivirus software and “defragging” the hard drive, whatever that meant.

But in Liam’s opinion, hacking into a free back door of the Dakota Wyatt porn site was by far Robert’s most useful technological accomplishment.

“Which one shall we watch?” Robert asked him over the phone.

“There’s so many. And they’re so long.” Sitting on his bed, Liam scrolled through the website’s catalog, looking at the videos’ run times. “I mostly watch the five-minute clips on Tumblr—not just cos they’re free, but also cos of my short attention span.” He selected an actor’s name from the drop-down menu, then chose the most recent film. “Ooh,
Brandon and Kevin Bareback
sounds intriguing.”

“Brandon? The one who looks like me?”

“The one
John
said looks like you. I don’t see the resemblance. Brandon’s got a way smaller cock.”

“Fine,” Robert said with a sigh. “Hit play.”

“I did. It’s still buffering.” He watched the circle spin in the center of the blank black screen. “The Wi-Fi can be shit in these parts, as I’m sure you remember.” The video began, showing Brandon stretched prone on a massage table, the sheet covering him from the waist down. “Oh, I’ve seen the highlights of this. The
Match of the Day
version, if you will.”

“We could watch a different one.”

“No, I want to see how this begins. Get the full narrative.” Liam plugged a headset into his phone so he could talk to Robert hands-free, then angled the laptop to get a better view of the video.

In walked Kevin, a slim man Liam and Robert’s age with close-cropped black hair, wearing nothing but a pair of yoga pants.

“For the record,” Liam said, “massage therapists work fully clothed.”

Kevin climbed onto the table to sit astride Brandon’s back, which he began to caress with long, slow strokes.

“You ever think about trying for massage college?” Robert asked. “You’re really good.”

“Doing it professionally would take all the joy out of it.”

“You could do sport massage, help athletes rehabilitate faster.”

“Aye, right,” Liam said. “I’m sure all those macho men’ll be queuing up to get my big gay hands on them.”

“Female athletes would love you—a strong, friendly lad they wouldn’t mind being naked with.”

“But can you picture me working with just one person at a time, all slow-like? I’d go mad.” He waggled his foot impatiently, wishing the guys on the video would get on with it. “That’s why I like being a barman. Things move fast in a pub, with loads of people in and out.”

“‘Loads of people in and out.’ That’s your autobiography title sorted.”

“You calling me a slut?” Liam asked with a laugh. “Seriously, though, do you resent that I get people drunk for a living? After what happened to your da?”

“Of course not.”

“But you’re always pushing me to do something better.”

“For your sake, not the world’s,” Robert said. “I cannae judge you for feeding addictions. After all, I make video games.”

“True.” Liam wrinkled his nose at the screen. “This yin’s doing it wrong. Massage isn’t just a bunch of random rubbing. You’ve got to find the trigger points.”

“You’re critiquing porn for realism?”

Liam grunted, then admired the close-up of Brandon’s face, eyelids heavy with desire. “God, he’s so fucking hot.”

“But you don’t think he looks like me. Thanks.”

Liam tilted his head. “He might be an American version of you.”

“Americans are all types. They’ve not got a look.”

“Aye, they do. They look…hopeful. Even the old yins. Like life never really beats them, no matter how shit it gets.” He paused as Kevin started kissing Brandon’s magnificent delts. “Talking of work, you never answered my question Saturday night. About your job interviews?” He tried to keep his voice casual.

“Hmm?”

Liam couldn’t tell if Robert was being evasive or if he was simply in a porn fog. “About you moving to Dundee to work for a gaming company.”

“There’s nae offers yet, just…talk.” Robert exhaled in appreciation as Kevin reached down to stroke his own cock through the yoga pants.

Liam was tempted to follow Kevin’s example, as he’d been semihard since Robert had first phoned. He held off, though, to wait for the good parts. Besides, he wanted to keep a clear head to find the answers he needed. “What sort of talk?”

“In September I went to EGX—that’s the big European gaming convention in London. Met folk from different companies, gave them my portfolio. They said they’d be in touch.” He let out a heavier sigh, making Liam wonder what else was in touch with Robert at the moment. “I told you then, remember?”

“So you’ve not heard back? Have you followed up?”

“Can this wait?” Robert asked. “Sorta distracted here.”

Liam gave his full attention to the screen as Kevin kissed his way down Brandon’s spine, removing his towel to leave him completely naked. Then he waited for Robert’s reaction as Kevin’s mouth reached Brandon’s perfect arse. He’d seen this bit before in the highlights.

Kevin parted Brandon’s cheeks and dove in with his tongue, tickling the bigger man’s hole.

“Oh…” Robert whispered.

Suddenly Liam needed to touch himself, pronto. He began with light strokes over the fabric of his sleep trousers. “You like that?”

“Yeah.” Robert’s word was all breath. Then he cleared his throat. “It’s pretty hot.”

“Rimming is the best.”

“Really?” Robert’s voice held an edge of pleading.

“Really.” Liam’s tongue tingled at the thought of doing it to Robert. “If you don’t believe me—”

“I believe you.” Robert caught himself. “I mean, no, I’m pure skeptical. I need proof.”

Liam closed his fist in triumph. “I’ll see what I can do.”
Maybe Saturday night.

Robert gave a soft moan. “Okay.”

Liam’s video stream shuddered, then froze. “Fuck, it’s buffering again.”

“Seriously?” Robert coughed. “Okay, I’ll pause it. I know how much you hate spoilers.”

While he waited, Liam made himself comfortable, leaning back and propping himself up on both pillows. He noticed one corner of his favorite poster had come loose from the plaster walls. The picture showed Gandalf from
Fellowship of the Ring
above the words
YOU SHALL NOT PASS
in great white block letters. Robert and Liam’s goalkeeper, Heather, had given them matching posters to celebrate the Warriors keeping more clean sheets than any other Scottish amateur team last season.

“I cannae believe this is the first time we’re looking at porn together.” Liam shifted the laptop to his side so he could see better. “Feels like we should be eleven, not twenty-one.”

“Ten years ago the streaming quality would’ve been shit.”

“Says the man with no buffering. Oh wait, mine’s started again.” He watched as Brandon turned over on the massage table to lie on his back and Kevin leaned down to suck him. The spell broken, Liam decided to keep his hand off himself for now. It was always more fun to come with the actors, though that was much easier with a looping five-minute clip than a twenty-eight-minute video. “So what do you fancy, porn-wise?”

“You mean like certain studios?”

Liam guffawed. “Nah, mate, this isn’t Sundance Film Festival. I mean, what do you like to watch men do? Threesomes, bondage, solo wanks, et cetera.”

“Is it horrendously heterosexual of me to say I like the kissing?”

Liam smiled. “On the contrary, loads of gays find that a massive turn-on. We’re not all about the cocks and arses, you know. We’re also about mouths.”

“Maybe that’s what it is, cos I also love close-ups of blowjobs. Like that there.” Robert paused as Kevin twirled his tongue around the bulging head of Brandon’s cock. “What about you? What do you fancy, porn-wise?”

“I’m into the wee details. Toes curling, thighs quivering, hands clutching the sheets. That sort of thing.”

“I never knew you were so artistic. Too bad there’s no soft-core gay porn. You’d probably like that.”

“Nah, I’d miss all the ball-licking.”

Robert laughed. “It’s cool we can finally talk about this stuff.”

“Aye, now we’re real best mates.”
That didn’t come out right.
“Not that we weren’t before.”

“I know what you mean,” Robert said. “Things have changed. But in a good way, right?”

Liam forced himself not to hesitate. “Right.”

But Robert’s words,
“Things have changed,”
chilled Liam’s gut. He was trying not to acknowledge the cataclysmic effect that hooking up could have on their friendship. It was easier not to question it, easier just to enjoy Robert’s body and attention (while he still could) than to analyze what was going on—or worse, predict what might happen.

Theoretically, there was no reason their relationship couldn’t progress slowly. They could start with hookups and then gradually come to care about each other more and more over the course of weeks or months, until they either made a commitment or broke up. Like normal couples did.

Problem was, he’d already cared about Robert—already
loved
Robert, albeit in a different way—long before their first kiss. For them, there was no casual starting line. So how could they ever be normal?

On-screen, Kevin and Brandon switched places, the alleged massage therapist now leaning back against the table and his “client” kneeling between his legs. Brandon peeled down Kevin’s yoga trousers and then, with no teasing preamble, swallowed him whole.

After a few moments of head bobbing, Robert said, “Is it me or is Brandon’s oral work a bit mechanical?”

Liam shoved his fears to the back of his mind again. “Aye, he’s pure crap at blowjobs. You get the feeling it’s beneath him, like a football striker who hates to track back and defend.”

“So he’s the Diego Costa of porn stars.”

Liam laughed. “Exactly. The fact Brandon has nae clue what to do with another man’s cock, along with the fact he never
ever
bottoms, tells me he’s probably one of the straight ones.”

“In real life? Some of the actors are straight?”

“Loads of them. Must be good money.”

“But how do they—you know—manage?”

“They film in short takes and watch straight porn to stay hard. And swallow enough Viagra to kill an elephant.”