Tattoos & Teacups (20 page)

“Are you staying?” I asked when we were done.

He nodded. “If that’s okay.”

“It’s always okay.”

I had work to do. Not a lot, just marking some short assignments, but there wasn’t a rush for me to get it done so I conceded to a night on the sofa. Chris sat with his back in a corner and his feet in my lap, letting me massage his arches and appreciate how nice his feet really were. I hadn’t had a good look at them before. His toes weren’t too long, and they were only a little bit hairy. Good feet.

“Is everything okay at the house?” I asked. From his tone earlier, I’d guessed that maybe there were tensions between his housemates.

“Yeah,” he sighed. “Just, usual shit, you know?”

“Not really,” I admitted. “The only people I’ve ever lived with other than my family were Lu and Chloe.”

“Oh.” He fiddled with the remote for a few minutes. “We’ve been on the road together for ages now. When we left, John and Lex could barely admit that they were attracted to each other, and now they’re fucking like rabbits. And Danny is cool, you know. But he’s really, really into the music and the art of it. He was bugging me about being here all the time because when I’m here, I’m not immediately available to the rest of them for impromptu band practice.”

“Does that happen a lot?”

“I don’t know. I suppose so. We jam a lot. I never thought of it as official band practice before; we were just having fun and making music. But now he’s making out that it’s something that we should all be committed to doing, and he’s… fuck. He’s leaching all the fun out of it.”

“Are you saying you want to quit?” I asked. This sort of dramatic suggestion often worked with my students who really only wanted to have a bit of a whine and a moan. If they wanted out, I was opening the door for them. If they wanted to stay, it was enough of a shock to the system to make them realize that.

“No,” he said slowly. “I don’t want to quit. But… Rob, you know we’re touring, right?” He was still refusing to look at me. “There was never any intention for us to stay here forever.”

“I know,” I said. “Are you leaving?”

“Not yet. But soon. Probably soon.”

“Was that why you were arguing with Danny?”

“We weren’t arguing. He’s just getting restless here. He wants to go on to Chicago where the gigs will be bigger.”

I nodded. “Let’s not worry about it until the time comes,” I said. It was clearly hurting him, this conflict of interests. “Come to bed?”

My cat was perched on my pillow and was wearing an air of
I’m not moving
. Chris snorted.

“Let him stay there.” He blinked and yawned.

“Tired?” I asked.

“No.”

I ignored him and undressed him like a child, having him lift his arms for me to take his T-shirt off and sliding his jeans to the floor. They practically hung off his ass anyway. I was yet to be let in on the secret of where gravity-defying denim was being manufactured and sold. Chris’s jeans seemed to perch precariously on the edge of his ass.

When he flopped facedown on the bed, Flea gave him a look of utter loathing, then relocated himself onto the dip at the bottom of Chris’s back. I joined them, lying on my side so I could better stroke the spot between Flea’s eyes that made him go all squidgy for me and the spot under the swell of Chris’s ass that elicited a similar reaction.

“Night, baby.”

“Night.”

Chapter 12

I
WOKE
to the undeniably lovely feeling of Chris snuggling into my side.

“What are you doing today?” he asked, his fingertips tangling and tugging the hairs below my belly button.

“Mm. Office hours this morning,” I said, forcing my sleepy brain into action. “It’s Wednesday, right?”

“Yeah. What does office hours actually mean?”

I ran my hand down his back and sighed. “It’s when annoying students who have spent all semester out drinking come and beg for extra time on their assignments. Sometimes I get a genuine one looking for help or guidance, but that’s pretty rare.”

“What happens if you’re not there?”

“I’m not bunking off,” I said firmly.

“Not doing what? Is bunking off like getting off?”

“No.” I laughed. “Although the two are sometimes related. Bunking off is like playing truant. It’s slang from my youth, I’m sorry.”

“Robert,” he said, equally as seriously. “When was the last time you took a sick day?”

I thought back. “I can’t remember,” I admitted.

“Mhmm. Just as I thought.”

Chris rolled over to his side of the bed and leaned off the edge, no doubt looking for the pile of clothes he’d left down there the night before. I considered slapping the bare ass that was wiggling in my face. Then gave in to temptation.

When he pulled himself back to sitting, he had his phone in hand, and with the other braced on my chest, he swung his leg over my waist to straddle my thighs.

“What’s the number for reception at the college?”

“I’m not telling you,” I said petulantly. He took my one good testicle in his hand and squeezed threateningly. I gave him the number.

“Good morning,” he said pleasantly, smiling down at my naked and struggling form. “My name is Christopher Ford, and I’m Robert McKinnon’s partner. His partner,” he repeated. “His husband, for all intents and purposes? Yes. I’m afraid Professor McKinnon is unwell this morning. I think it must be some kind of bug. He has office hours today, so could you post some sort of note on his door?”

I opened my mouth to protest, and his hand squeezed my scrotum. I shut it again.

“I should imagine he’ll be back tomorrow, yes. Thank you for your help.”

He tossed his phone back on the floor and adopted a rather smug expression.

“Proud of yourself, are you?” I asked. “I have an excellent attendance record, and you’ve just—”

“Blah blah,” he interrupted. I wasn’t really mad, anyway. “Blah.”

He reached over once more, pulled his lube from the nightstand, and helped himself to a generous amount. I watched, slack-jawed, as he reached behind and prepared himself, his eyes fluttering closed with the touch and a soft sigh escaping from his lips.

For all the fuzzy thinking I was capable of, I couldn’t think of one good reason not to take advantage of the situation that had presented itself. So when Chris tossed a condom on my chest, I opened it carefully and rolled the thin latex over my cock. When had it gotten hard? I thought back and decided it had probably been around the time Chris had used the word “husband.”

He took a good grip of the base of my cock and angled it just right so he could sink down on my length. I’d lost count of how many times we’d had sex to this point; to my utter delight, the last number I’d forced myself to remember was fifty. And that was a good few weeks ago. The look on his face when he took me inside him would never become routine, though. It was beautiful.

I took hold of his hips as he wriggled, trying to find the best angle and his deepest spot. I knew the moment he found it because he threw his head back and gasped, then braced one hand on my chest and began to rock.

Chris generally didn’t ride me like this, although neither of us had a problem with the position. I had a feeling it was something to do with him being a lazy bugger and preferring for me to take control while he lay back, spread his legs, and let me get him off.

After a few minutes, he started to bounce, the sticky head of his cock making contact with my stomach with a soft
thunk
before the momentum took it back up to repeat the action against Chris’s stomach. The head of his cock always looked swollen during sex, red and angry and sore. So pretty.

He must have been horny before we even started because it didn’t take long for a telltale red flush to start creeping over his neck and chest, a redness that echoed the color at the tip of his cock. My grip on his hips tightened, and I started lifting my own to meet each generous downward thrust that took me deep inside him.

“Gonna come,” he said, and I barely had time to tell him “I know” before he took his cock in hand and spurted a generous amount of sticky white come all over my chest.

A combination of three things triggered my own release: his shiny pink lips open in a little, silent “oh”; his eyes screwed shut with the force of it, then opening, unfocused, to find my own; and the incredible clenching of the muscles in his ass as he orgasmed.

He leaned forward and brushed his sour morning-breath lips over mine, smiled, then squirmed with his belly pressed against mine to spread his rapidly cooling come between us.

“Eughh,” I groaned. But held him close when he tried to pull away and I attempted to catch my breath. “What’s the plan for the rest of the day? I suspect I’m going to need your guidance on how to do this properly.”

“Well, there are rules,” Chris said, propping himself up on my chest. He winced and disposed of the condom, then came back to me. His come was now nearly gluing us together by the short and curlies.

“Shower,” I said firmly. “Tell me the rules in the shower.”

“Number one,” Chris said once we had relocated under the hot spray. “You’re not allowed to get dressed all day. You have to wear pajamas.”

“What if I get cold?” I complained.

“That brings me nicely to rule two,” he said. He took another handful of soap and applied it to my ass in an overly enthusiastic manner.

“You’re just groping it now.”

“I know. Rule number two: we drag your duvet out onto the sofa so we don’t get cold.”

“Can’t we just wear sweatshirts?”

A very slippery finger insinuated its way between my bum cheeks and pressed lightly against my hole.

“Behave,” Chris warned. “Rule number three. We are not going to leave the house all day. There will be lots of tea because you make the best tea in the world. And there will be takeout for at least one meal.”

“Is that all?”

“No. We shall have sex. Lots and lots of sex.”

I smiled and leaned down to capture his lips with mine. “I think, with a lot of guidance from the expert, I might be able to manage it.”

“Good,” Chris said. “Want a blow job?”

I
DECLINED
that first offer, and Chris conceded that rule number one could be bent just a little bit because it was, in his words, “bloody freezing.” Not surprising, really, since we were edging further into November, but the outcome was long-sleeved T-shirts and a pair each of my fluffier socks.

After making tea in my only, beautiful teapot and finding proper teacups and saucers to drink it from, I loaded up a tray with the tea-making paraphernalia and some proper Scottish shortbread and joined Chris under the duvet that he’d brought through to the sofa.

“I’m going to feel guilty about this all day, you know that, don’t you?” I said.

“Don’t worry,” Chris said, accepting a cup of tea. “I’m an expert at this. By the end of the day, you’ll be so orgasmed out that your hard-working little testicle will be begging for mercy.”

“Watch it on the ‘little’,” I said.

“Your absolutely mammoth, goose-egg-sized testicle,” he amended. And slurped his tea.

“Better.”

Moment by moment, the guilt eased as I spent the morning curled up with a warm, happy, tea-slurping man in my arms. Chris hogged the remote and the cat and demanded kisses with startling regularity.

“Oprah?” I asked as he flipped the channel once again. “Must we?”

“We must,” he said, mocking my accent. “Chat shows are definitely part of the sick-day rules.”

“I have a feeling you’re making this up as you go along,” I said, poking my finger into his ribs to make him squirm.

“Never,” he protested. “What are you making me for my lunch?”

By midafternoon I was bored to the point my eyes were starting to lose focus. Surely the television programming had not been so bloody terrible when I was a kid? Still, Chris seemed disproportionately happy with my small act of rebellion, and I’d managed to mentally atone for my absence by reasoning that I’d not missed a lecture or seminar, that it was only office hours, and that spending nearly an entire day wrapped up with Chris was something possibly heaven-sent, and who was I to argue with the powers that be?

Our conversation, unsurprisingly, moved to sex.

“Do you have any kinks?” Chris asked. He was lying between my legs with his back to my chest, running his fingers up and down my arms.

“I thought you did when I first met you,” I said, neatly deflecting the question away from myself. Chris took the bait just like I knew he would.

“Really? What sort of kink?”

“An older man kink.”

“That’s not a kink,” he protested. “Kinks are… you know. Kinky.”

“You don’t say,” I said drily.

“They have to be naughty or it doesn’t count. So what is it? Leather and bondage and whips?”

“No, thank you.”

“Or… PVC? Lace panties? Corsets and fishnet stockings?”

I shook my head. “I’m not into cross-dressing.”

“Hmm. Spanking?” He smirked at me, a wicked gleam in his eye.

I wriggled my hips. “I’m not opposed to doing it again, if I think you deserve it.”