Chapter 34
Thirty four
Christian
Asher looks around the room with the same kind of wide-eyed wonder I’d expect.
A look I’d missed and thought about often.
It was a predictable sort of luxury, both the room and the hotel, my publisher making assumptions about my preferences and needs.
If they’d seen the sort of conditions I’d been living in for the last six months as the Loch house stutters its way to completion, they may have opted for something less grand.
After I’d finished the book (the tell-all about my time in government had started a bidding war between publishing houses, never before seen for the biography of an ex-politician), I’d decanted myself north to watch my home unfold out of the forest towards the glittering and grey Loch Earn.
I’d dreamed of showing it to Asher one day.
That had been my most treasured fantasy.
And if I’d made sure there was a large studio space on the eastern side, where the light was best, then it was with foolish hope and not presumptuous conceit.
There was absolutely no guarantee I would ever have him back in my life.
I didn’t know how I would find Asher in Paris—happy and content with someone new, angry and entirely over me?
Resentful and unwilling to even entertain the idea of giving me another chance. I’d have accepted whatever I found.
He owed me nothing.
I owed him everything.
He is the reason for everything I’ve done the last couple of years, for the father I’ve become, the healthy and whole man I now am.
I’m still healing, each day a little more than the last, because I’ve learned through counselling that one never completely heals from the sort of grief Leo and I experienced.
I’ve also learned that our grief is different, individual to us, and that we would always have experienced it alone, even if we’d been closer, and that this wasn’t necessarily a failure by me as a father.
But it is possible, with the right tools, to live happily again after such a loss.
We can learn to love again without guilt or shame or fear.
And as I learned how to use each of those tools, I’d come to realise that Asher had been a kind of Kintsugi for my heart and soul.
A thread of gold through the broken pieces of me, reassembling me, making me even stronger than I was before.
“Definitely better we came here than the draughty apartment I share with four others,” he remarks.
“I don’t know.” I slip off my coat and hang it in the mirrored wardrobe. “That could have been fun.”
“Maybe…” His eyes are keen as he stares at me, filled with desire, and I feel the lick of lust move through my body.
It’s been a long time since I’ve had him, since the night of the ambassador dinner.
I’m not sure if sex is the reason he’s come back to my hotel, and I’d never instigate—not this soon—but the look in his eyes is one I recognise well.
It’s one I’ve woken up wet from dreaming of.
He is more beautiful in the flesh than his online presence has ever been able to portray, I’ve always thought.
He has a glow about him, a light inside him, one that seems to emanate from his pores, and that dreamy, intoxicating aura had curled itself around me and pulled me in.
Seductive and impossible to resist. When he moves around the bed toward me, my heart speeds up, breathing kicking into a presto.
“Shall I order another drink?”
“Not really what I had in mind,” he says as he slips out of his jacket to reveal a wool jumper beneath, fashionably threadbare with a wide neck. It’s barely holding together. The fabric exposes his throat and nipples, and the flat, toned skin above the waistband of his baggy red jeans.
When he’s close enough, I reach out and pull him into my arms to devour his mouth.
Beer and something deliciously sweet floods my tongue and he moans into me as his hands find my cock over my trousers.
I’m embarrassingly hard already. He doesn’t seem to mind.
We kiss there in the middle of the room for a long time, tasting and touching, before he nudges me toward the bed with his smaller body.
I reach for the hem of the wool garment and pull it up and off, exposing his upper body.
The first thing I notice is that both nipples now have small jewels hanging from them. They glitter in the lamplight.
“Christ,” I marvel.
He leans back to display himself more. “I’m trying them out. What do you think?”
“I think they’re divine.” I lean in to kiss the right, then the left.
His whole body trembles and lets out a small, breathy whine.
“You’re still the loveliest thing I’ve ever seen, darling.
” The scent of his skin, the warmth and rush of his blood beneath it, the sound of his breath short and sharp against my lips.
I move down his body and begin to strip off his trousers, and then he sits up and does the same so we’re both naked, bodies already sweat-licked from the heat of the room.
When I take his erection into my mouth and suck it deep into my throat, he gasps and lets his legs fall wide, his head dropping back as his hands go to tease and caress the jewels on his chest. It pulls a groan from my throat.
I drop lower and let him slip from my mouth, pushing his legs up to kiss my way down, over his balls to the sensitive stretch of skin behind. When I reach his hole, I take a long, deep inhale before using my whole mouth on him, feasting hungrily on the sweet little opening.
“Fuck,” Asher gasps as he begins to thrash. “Christian…”
“Mhm, darling?”
“Can you… just… fuck…”
I slide my finger inside him, and he groans, delicious and low from his throat. Pulling out, I suck my finger into my mouth to taste him. Earthy, sweet, and intoxicating. When I flick my eyes up and find him watching me, he mutters:
“Holy shit.”
“I’ve missed how you taste.”
“Yeah?”
“Yes. So perfect, so sweet.”
“Fuckkkk,” he says as I slide my finger inside him again and thrust a few times.
“Okay, fuck this, I need you inside me.” When I stand and go immediately to the bathroom, I hear him begin to protest. I don’t have lubricant, but I do have some lotion, and I grab it quickly before returning to him.
He makes an amused noise when he sees me with the bottle.
“One day you’ll believe me when I say I’m a pro at this, and I can take it.”
Back at the foot of the bed, I uncap the bottle to pour some of the scentless lotion onto my cock, smoothing it lavishly over the head. It’s cool and pleasant to the touch.
“Oh, I recall, you graduated from porn school.”
“Top of my class.”
“Summa cum laude.”
“Gonna cum where now?”
I laugh as I lean over him and kiss him soundly on the mouth. “Summa cum laude. It’s Latin. Means ‘top of the class’.”
“Really? That’s actually kinda perfect for someone who aced porn school.”
Smiling, I kiss him again, watching his eyes flutter closed as I do. Christ, I love this boy. As I start to push inside him, his eyes fly open, blood rushing visibly to his cheeks.
“Fuckkk… yeah, okay… maybe the lubricant was a good idea this time… did you get bigger?”
I bite back a laugh. “Not that I’m aware of.”
“Right, okayyyy then let’s do this…”
I take it slowly and carefully, listening for the sound of his breathing to know when to push in a little more. When I’m all the way inside, I kiss him again, groaning with pleasure as he bites gently on my lip, and he begins to move.
“Perhaps you got tighter?”
He manages a breathy laugh. “Yeah, maybe I did. Shit, I forgot how good this feels with you.” His eyes are bright blue pools as they gaze up at me, wide and trusting. I touch my nose to his and then kiss it lightly.
“You feel wonderful, sweetheart.”
“Yeah,” he whispers.
It’s not going to last long; I know this as soon as I begin to thrust in earnest. We kiss and move and touch, desperate and starved of each other, like finding shore after a shipwreck.
I hold him too tightly as I fuck him, but he doesn’t complain; in fact, he grips me almost as hard as his body chases the peak.
Somehow, I hold on long enough that he climaxes first, fucking his own hand as he ejaculates over his perfect body, cheeks bright as ripe apples.
“I love you,” I tell him as he comes, gorgeous with abandon. “I love you.”
I scoop up some of his pleasure with my finger and suck it into my mouth before kissing him again. And as he moans and sucks on my tongue, I can’t hold back, I come deep inside him, his body a tight, warm fist clenching around me, milking me of every drop.
After, he lies with his head on my chest, stroking the hair there, around the nipple. It’s disarmingly sensitive, but I don’t object.
“That was perfect,” I say into the satisfied silence.
“Yeah, it was.” He looks up at me, his dark hair is shorter than he used to wear it, but the top is long so that it’s settled in a middle part, curls on either side. He looks positively cherubic. “What now, then?”
“Are you hungry? We could order some room service.”
“No, I meant with us.”
I frown. “I’m not… I don’t understand. I thought…” I sit up so that I’m against the headboard. Had I misunderstood his lust for something else? My heart sinks. “Is this not… do you not want this?”
“Of course I do, I just meant…” He takes a deep breath.
“What’s the arrangement this time? Can we go out in public now you’re out of politics?
Or do people still not know you like guys?
Am I your ‘artist friend’ or something else?
I just want to know what to prepare for, so I can manage my expectations properly this time.
You love me and want me in your life, which is great and I’m in, but what does that mean for us, I guess. ”