Chapter Two Baby, It’s Cold Outside
Chapter two
Baby, It’s Cold Outside
The wind clawed at the windows with a wrath Kenny still hadn’t got used to.
It was the old cottage.
Stubborn and charming in equal measure, the place had stood on the headland for nearly two centuries, built of chalky stone and low-slung timber, with a patchwork slate roof and crooked chimneys that moaned when the gales came in off the Channel.
The sash windows rattled in their frames, warped by age to let the sea air sneak through.
The draughts wound themselves around Kenny’s ankles, a ghostly presence that never quite left in winter.
Especially as he hated wearing socks. Slippers, yes.
But socks? They got in the way. Clumsy. Thoughtless.
A barrier when instinct or desire struck.
He needed to move quickly, to strip fast when Aaron whispered the right thing, or showed he was ready.
He planned those moments, of course. Kenny was nothing if not methodical. But socks were a nuisance.
He smirked to himself, leaning back in the battered swivel chair he’d picked up at a charity shop in Ryde. They’d made a vow early on: to live simply, sustainably. To recycle, upcycle, and maintain some kind of respectful equilibrium with the world, hoping it might stop trying to crush them.
Two years in, and they were doing all right.
He reached for his phone and typed out a message.
Operant conditioning update: prolonged deprivation appears to increase subject’s reactivity to minimal stimulus. Hypothesis: by now, a single “good boy” whispered at the door would result in spontaneous orgasm. Further testing required. Don’t forget the milk x
He zoomed it off to Aaron with his gut warming and his cock stirring and, oh, yes, lots of ideas for what came next.
He didn’t need a reply. He could already see Aaron’s reaction.
Pink-cheeked, lips parted, probably staring at his phone in utter aggravation.
That tight inhale. His frustrated groan.
The twitch in his jeans. Kenny felt it all curl in his belly, warm and slow.
Not the rush of urgency. No. Better. Sustained.
Controlled. He didn’t want Aaron to come home desperate.
He wanted him to come home soft, ruined, and grateful.
Further testing, indeed.
He chucked his phone on the counter and pulled on his scarf hanging on the back of the chair to stave off the chill to his neck.
Many of the rooms still hadn’t had double glazing installed.
A silly oversight, really. He and Aaron had prioritised paint colours and velvet chairs, bookshelves and gallery walls, over any sensible upgrades.
It was all character, they’d said. Quirky.
Romantic. Who needed sealed windows when they had roaring fires, candlelit suppers and each other to hold?
But now, in the thick of December, with the wind clawing as if it wanted in, Kenny wasn’t so sure.
Outside, rain swept in off the sea in slanted bursts, hammering the slate roof in angry percussion.
Aaron would be out there in that. Chucking a ball at Chaos along the beach, wrapped up in his Dryrobe and working off his pent-up frustration.
However, inside the cottage it was all scents of cedarwood, and the half-drunk spiced tea Aaron had left to steep before his morning dog walk filling the damp air.
The fire in the front room had burned itself low, but Kenny had opted for his study, tucked in the corner upstairs, warm enough once the little electric heater kicked in, to attack the tangle of marking surrounding him.
A-Level essays, college coursework, handouts he’d promised to update before term ended.
The ache in his eyes told him he should stop, but the rhythm of end-of-term preparation had a comfort to it. Familiar. Predictable. Safe.
Two years on the Isle of Wight, and he still sometimes woke expecting the echo of Ryston University outside his office window.
The scratch of doctoral candidates slipping notes under his door, or the hollow guilt of faculty meetings where his worth was measured in citations and research grants.
Back then, he’d worn suits that never quite fit, spoken in panels where his words were dissected, and stayed late into the night crafting lectures that would be repurposed, borrowed, or lost to departmental politics.
Now? He taught in classrooms where the heating barely worked, and the walls were paper-thin.
His students didn’t beg for thesis guidance, they asked for deadline extensions and lifts to the station.
But there was honesty in it. Something real.
No pretence. No pedestal. Just minds that still had time to change, and a version of himself that finally had the space to breathe.
He shifted, cracked his spine against the back of the chair, then leaned forward to click through a presentation draft.
It was a guest lecture for the local college’s Criminology & Psychology crossover programme.
He’d promised to present something on criminal behavioural escalation in domestic settings after the principal had seen him deliver a talk on forensic psychology careers at their recent Beyond Eighteen Day.
He hadn’t said no when the college had asked him to stay on, part-time, then again when a nearby sixth form put out feelers.
There was something grounding about it. Teaching.
Passing on the clinical side of the work without dragging the rot of real cases into the room.
And he had promised no more live cases.
No more crime scenes.
Only Aaron. The cottage. And the steady, oddly healing rhythm of island life: rescue dogs, wind-chapped cheeks, the clatter of pans in their tiny kitchen, and the slow ache of trust built from the wreckage of who they used to be.
They both had to earn a living, though. Aaron’s inheritance wouldn’t last forever, and Kenny’s old book royalties had dried to a trickle.
But freelance teaching suited him. It let him slip in and out without being tangled in policy and performance reviews.
He could teach, mark, assign, and walk away. It was clean. Manageable.
And Aaron?
Aaron, who once sat at the back of Kenny’s lecture theatre with too-bright eyes and a barbed mouth and had earned a 2:1 in forensic psychology despite everything stacked against him, now worked at a dog rescue charity.
Somehow, after years of being dissected, diagnosed, and categorised by the very field he excelled in, he’d chosen to leave the pathology of the human mind behind in favour of four-legged strays with nervous hearts and bitten histories.
He’d become a dog behaviourist.
At first, it had been a joke between them. Ironic. Wry. The student turned star pupil turned lover, trading behavioural analysis for biscuit training.
“You study human monsters,” Aaron had said once, stripping off a rain-soaked coat and shaking out his hair. “And I help the ones who bite when they’re scared.” He’d grinned. “Like me.”
Kenny had kissed him for that.
Because it was more than a joke. Dogs didn’t ask why.
They didn’t need him to explain himself, to justify his nightmares or navigate institutional mistrust. They needed consistency, patience, and steady, wordless empathy Aaron had spent his whole life learning to fake for people and finally got to give for real.
And now and then, when Aaron got through to a trembling mutt or calmed a dog too wild for re-homing, Kenny would catch his eye, tilt his head, and say, “Good boy.”
Oh, yeah…that did it. Even now, he could feel the echo of Aaron’s breath on his lips from the night before.
The quiet hitch of it as he whispered Kenny’s name in plea, thighs trembling, voice wrecked from too long on the edge.
Kenny hadn’t let him come. Not for a while now.
He had to earn it, and not until that ache sharpened into something exquisite and pleading.
He shut his eyes, a flicker of a smile tugging at the corner of his mouth. For all his clinical understanding of the human psyche, nothing had prepared him for what it would feel like to fall in love with the same man again and again, and never quite in the same way twice.
His phone buzzed. A text. From Aaron.
One emoji. The middle finger.
Kenny barked a quiet laugh.
Oh, how he adored that man.
He sent one back. You’re doing so well, baby. I’m proud of you. Don’t touch yourself.
He tossed the phone back onto the table, belly warm, a low stir of heat flickering below, but mostly, what he felt was contentment. Deep. Anchored. Earned.
It wasn’t the same as the caregiver or Daddy role he’d tried on in previous relationships. Those had felt performative. As if following a script someone else had written. He’d known the beats, played the part, even found comfort in the rhythm of it.
But this?
This was different.
Because Aaron didn’t need a character. He needed precision.
And Kenny, meticulous bastard that he was, found that profoundly satisfying.
He loved the calibration. The psychology.
Learning which words made Aaron squirm. Which silences undid him.
He loved that Aaron fought it. That every surrender was a battle won, not given.
And more than anything, he loved knowing that in a life where Aaron had been used, abandoned, and objectified, he’d chosen this. He still chose this. Kenny.
He got on with a few more mundane tasks, adding bits to his online calendar, circling one for the staff Christmas bash and a reminder to ask Aaron if he wanted to come. To the drinks, that was. Because coming was up to Kenny.
His phone rang.
He jolted, fumbled for his mobile beneath a stack of marked papers, expecting to see Aaron pop up either to have a rant about being horny in the rain or to ask which milk was it he preferred again, but the screen showed a local number. Unknown.
He answered on instinct. “Dr Lyons speaking.”