Chapter One Fever
Chapter one
Fever
Aaron had long since figured out Kenny’s game.
He couldn’t live with a master of the mind for two years and not learn a thing or two.
Not that he minded playing, either. But the thing was, Kenny could have him on his knees with a single look if he wanted.
He didn’t need this slow-burn build-up, drawn-out performance he favoured like his pair of old comfy slippers.
Aaron would crawl for him, no coaxing required. Kenny knew that.
Which was precisely why he made him wait.
Why he dragged it out.
Which was exactly what he was doing right fucking then.
Arsehole.
Aaron got it. This was Intro to Psych. Foundation fucking year.
Fuck it, they taught this at GCSE level.
Conditioning. Positive reinforcement. Classical fucking Pavlovian seduction.
That’s what Kenny was doing. Aaron knew it.
As a fucking graduate of the forensic persuasion and taught by Dr Kenneth Lyons himself for most of it, he was smart enough to know what was going on in his own fucking house.
By his own bloody boyfriend. Because Kenny was a sadist. Used affection like a scalpel.
Precise. Deliberate. Calibrated to elicit a reaction.
Not praise for the sake of it. Not needy, or desperate.
Oh, no. Kenny gave compliments the way he gave orgasms. Intensely, and only when earned.
And because of that, they were addictive.
Aaron knew what Kenny was doing.
Knew the game. The psychology. The profile.
Aaron could write the lecture himself. And he heard his own bored, mocking delivery in his head as he sat here, at the dining room table, the window beside him rattling faintly in the sea wind while he scribbled his fake name and fake shit all over the bloody Disclosure and Barring BS forms.
“Seduction through strategic withholding. Operant conditioning through delayed gratification. Control through softness.”
Outside, the coastline sulked beneath a heavy grey sky, the winter tide chewing quietly at the edges of the beach.
Gulls wheeled lazily above slate-coloured waves, and somewhere beyond the dunes, someone’s dog barked into the wind.
But inside, the cottage was all warm wood and dimmed lamplight, radiator ticking under the windowsill, the air thick with the faint scent of Kenny’s coffee and whatever ridiculous vanilla candle Aaron had accidentally come to like.
Cosy. Lulling. A scene set by Kenny to orchestrate a patient undoing.
Still he fell for it.
Every fucking time.
Even though Aaron could see the strings, he still danced.
Still trembled under the subtle brush of fingers that shouldn’t mean anything.
Like earlier, when Kenny had walked past the dining table, spouting something about his A Level lecture prep—Freud or Jung or whatever other long-dead daddy complex bore—and as he passed, he stroked the back of his finger up Aaron’s neck.
There. Beneath his ear. Hardly touched him, really.
But it was enough to make Aaron freeze mid-form, pen stuttering on the line, because that was how it always started.
Kenny’s opening move.
His first piece in their private game of seduction chess.
And that nothing touch made Aaron hyperaware of every inch of skin he had.
Kenny didn’t even look back as he did it. He wandered off into the kitchen as if he hadn’t set Aaron’s nerve endings on fire, phone still at his ear, talking about “attachment patterns in borderline presentations” as if he wasn’t currently dismantling Aaron with the same technique.
Aaron dropped his pen. Slumped back in the chair.
Fuck.
It was starting.
And he hated it.
Hated how much he loved it. Craved it. Was a fucking slave to it.
A sharp snap of fingers from the kitchen had Aaron jerking his head up, glare already loaded. Kenny’s eyes met his, brows raised.
Aaron mouthed a defiant, What?
Kenny pointed at the unfinished forms without breaking stride on the call. “Yes, absolutely, I can expand on that.”
Aaron flipped him the finger.
Kenny didn’t break eye contact, but his voice stayed smooth for the phone. “Yes, I’ve got significant first-hand observation of oppositional defiance and aversion to perceived authority. Fascinating how it plays out in real time.”
Aaron poked his tongue into his cheek and made the wank sign.
Kenny cocked his head, arching an eyebrow but his tone never wavered. “No, I agree. Discipline is often the only effective intervention.” He curved his lips the faintest fraction as he said it, a private smile meant only for Aaron.
Aaron snorted. Turned away. He should be immune to all this by now.
He wasn’t, though.
He was pathetic.
Because part of him—the shameful, sick part that was utterly Kenny’s through and through—craved the authority. The attention. The affection given only when earned. And the delicious ache of anticipation.
He wanted the fucking reward.
The praise.
Cause when Kenny finally breathed that, “Good boy,” and shoved him down, touched him like he bloody meant it, Aaron turned to the gooey, grovelling mush Kenny had made him and wanted him to be.
For him only. He became a fucking walking Crème Egg of a man.
Split wide, soft in the middle, shell cracked for Kenny to lick him clean, lapping up every sweet, fucked-up inch until Aaron melted on his tongue and stayed there.
Prick.
Aaron stared at the kitchen doorway. Kenny was still talking. Still wearing those jeans. That fucking shirt and jumper combo that made Aaron want to peel it off with his teeth. Hair down, glasses on, looking like the world’s hottest moral dilemma.
The bloke could say it.
“Hey, baby. Wanna fuck?”
Aaron would drop the forms, bend over the table, and let him have at it. No hesitation, no buildup, no need for preamble. Kenny knew that. Knew exactly how easy it would be. But that wasn’t his style. Oh, no, no. That was too easy. Too ordinary. Too normal.
And Dr Kenneth Lyons had long since walked away from the illusion of normalcy, peeling it off like an old skin the moment Aaron entered his world and made control feel holy.
And this—the teasing, the praise, the unbearable waiting—was who Kenny was now.
Not the man who asked.
The one who made Aaron ache until he begged to be undone.
And Aaron would.
Every time.
Eyes wide open, crawling to the edge to feel Kenny pull him back by a single whispered word.
Sure, over the year or so they’d been here, living in this quasi-normal domesticity on the Isle of Wight, they’d had the occasional fast and filthy.
Moments when the control snapped, and Aaron clawed at him ‘cause he thought the world was ending and the only thing that could ground him was skin, sweat, and cock. Kenny’s cock specifically.
He’d climbed onto Kenny’s lap before the man could protest, rutted through layers of clothes, dragging feral lips along his throat, yanking his hair, begging without saying a single bloody word.
And Kenny, when he read him right, let it happen.
Because that was the point.
It wasn’t about surrender, not in those moments.
It was about rescue.
Intercepting whatever spiral Aaron was mid-fall through and giving him something solid to hold onto. Something real and unfiltered. Kenny didn’t give in because he lost control in those moments. Oh no. He gave in because he saw Aaron and knew when he needed rough over ritual.
So on those occasions, Kenny had unzipped himself, pulled Aaron close, and fucked him hard. Right there. On that sofa there, the one in front of the roaring open fire. Curtains wide open, no nets, anyone could’ve walked by on their way to the patch of the beach that was a dog walker’s heaven.
They had been hot fucks.
But more than that…they were his lifeline.
They’d done it in the kitchen a few times, too.
Kenny mid-stir of some sad bastard dinner and Aaron was antsy and needy.
He’d ground himself over the counter, give a sultry dance or two to the classics being played on the jukebox, like the one that was playing right then, Peggy Sue’s Fever, and Aaron would whisper filth until Kenny shoved him over the worktop and gave him a stuffing with the oven timer still ticking.
And once—fuck, yeah—once Aaron had crawled under Kenny’s desk and sucked him off while he marked some dead-eyed student’s half-arsed essay on Erikson’s psychosocial stages, Kenny’s red pen trembling with every bob of Aaron’s head.
But see, those weren’t the norm.
They were lapses. Cracks in Kenny’s carefully constructed control. Rare enough to be treasured. Dangerous enough to be addictive. Because most of the time, Kenny made him wait. Made him want. And the fucker made him beg.
Fuck, he was so fucking horny right now.
He shoved the forms aside and clicked his pen closed.
More for dramatic effect than actual productivity.
Chaos, ever the loyal golden retriever who left his side even less than Kenny did, huffed at his feet, reshuffled himself, then promptly fell back to sleep.
Aaron glanced up to Kenny again, leaning against the counter mid-phone call, all calm and businesslike, talking rotas and lecture prep unbothered that he was dismantling Aaron’s will to function.
And that fucking hand.
Not the one holding the phone to his ear.
The other one. Resting there. Fingers long and elegant, tapping the rim of his coffee mug.
Those fingers had been inside him. Knuckle-deep, curling slow, ruthless.
Stroking that spot again and again until Aaron was sobbing, tears spilling down his cheeks, begging for more, for anything, for everything.
Until he didn’t know where the pain ended and the praise began.
And now, over the next few days, those same fingers would trace a languid, ruinous path across Aaron’s body as part of this sadistic little edging routine Kenny had him trapped in.
Aaron knew the order. Had memorised it.