Chapter Five I Just Wanna Make Love To You
Chapter Five
I Just Wanna Make Love To You
After having to watch Kenny sink back into that headspace, the one where his brows did the thing and all he spoke in was “hmms” and “maybes” as if channelling a ghost at a faculty meeting, Aaron needed a goddamn medal for not climbing him in the Co-Op.
Kenny wasn’t present. Not really. Not while they wandered the aisles for dinner bits.
He was somewhere else entirely, halfway between behavioural theory and corpse logistics, hardly blinking as Aaron snuck a few extras into the basket.
Some fancy treats for himself. A chew toy for Chaos.
A six-pack of luxury mince pies that absolutely weren’t on the list. And one of the expensive bottles of Merlot.
Kenny didn’t notice until they got to the till and reached for his wallet. Yeah, the bloke still carried one. With cards. And cash. Forty-four and thought he was still in the nineties, whereas the only currency Aaron used was his phone and his looks.
The look Kenny gave him then, however, didn’t have the same appeal. It was the devastating, judgey one. Eyebrow raised at Aaron’s betrayal of the household budget.
Aaron shrugged. “I’m a millionaire, remember?”
Kenny wouldn’t argue. He couldn’t. Because Aaron was a millionaire.
Technically. Or, well, had been for a limited amount of time before he’d given it all away.
Inheritor of blood money and family secrets no sane person would ever envy, he’d never enjoyed seeing it in a bank account belonging to Aaron Jones.
Because that cash came courtesy of two notorious psychopaths and a trail of bodies still keeping the tabloids foaming.
So he donated regularly to charities, paid for dog kennels at the shelter and bagged a job out of it, and once sent an anonymous sum to a survivor of his parents’ spree.
A woman he’d found out had been eight years old when his dad tried to kill her in their basement.
He shivered then. But he swallowed it down, as had become his norm when thinking about his bloodline.
The money, though, had now dwindled after all that. And they still had bills to pay. And whilst Kenny supported every donation Aaron had made with that inheritance, they still needed to live. Hence them both getting jobs.
Kenny sighed and tapped his card as if he was personally bankrolling a small, ethically questionable empire. But Aaron, smug as sin, strutted out of the Co-Op dreaming of indulging his lust with overpriced, gold-dusted mince pies instead of Kenny’s cock.
Although…fuck, he was horny again.
Still.
Whatever.
Maybe that was his other Pavlovian kink. Not just praise and edging and being told he was a good boy, but watching Kenny turn into a brooding crime-fighting mind reader who stared at bloodstains and broken people and understood.
How could anyone not be turned on by that?
His boyfriend was a forensic fucking superhero.
Sure, maybe it was a little inappropriate to pop a semi on the drive back while Kenny dissected behavioural markers and victimology clusters, but that wasn’t Aaron’s fault.
It was Kenny’s. For being so goddamn hot and emotionally unavailable in a trench coat.
And that fucking scarf. The one he wrapped around himself as if auditioning for Brooding Academic: The Musical.
It didn’t even keep the cold out. It was there to remind the world he was smarter than you, colder than you, and somehow unreasonably fuckable while discussing forensic linguistics.
So when Kenny pulled up on the driveway, headlights cutting across the garden hedge and the engine ticking with heat, Aaron concocted a plan.
And before anyone says it—
No. This wasn’t a deflection.
Absolutely not.
This wasn’t him shoving away the fear or the trauma or the million whispering ghosts living under his ribs.
Wasn’t him distracting himself from the fact that another vulnerable child had been left out in the cold as if he didn’t matter.
Not the way it clawed at him, reminding him who he was, where he came from, and that no matter how good he tried to be, there were always monsters out there.
Ones that looked an awful lot like his bloodline.
Nope.
This was him wanting Kenny to fuck him.
Desperately.
Like, life or death, soul-realignment, get-fucked-so-good-the-past-shuts-up kind of wanting.
Completely rational.
Totally healthy.
Now all he had to do was sell that to the man currently convinced it was deflection.
Good thing he had a pole and a playlist. And a total lack of shame.
While Kenny unlocked the door and wandered inside with the shopping bags, Aaron kicked off his boots, dropped his coat on the bench, and headed straight for the jukebox in the dining room.
The house was warm, but he was burning.
So he flicked through the old vinyl until he found his weapon of choice.
Etta James. Sultry. Raw. A voice dripping sin even when she sang about making soup.
As the first saxophone notes crawled out of the speakers, Aaron glanced towards the kitchen and smirked.
Kenny, crouched at the cupboard, pulling out the ingredients to make dinner, jeans stretched tight over his arse, tried very hard not to react.
But his shoulders gave him away. That little hitch, the slight tension. He’d heard the song. He knew.
Aaron chuckled under his breath.
Game on.
He yanked off his jumper, leaving nothing but pale, goose pimpled skin, marked in places only Kenny ever noticed.
He was already wearing the tightest jeans he owned.
The baby-blue ones. Borderline indecent.
Meant for warmth, originally. Practicality.
But right now? Very handy. He then kicked off his socks next, partly because it was practical for what he planned to do and mostly because socks were the enemy of seduction.
Seduction required bare skin, firm footing, and absolutely no shame.
He had all three.
He caught a glimpse of himself in the hallway mirror.
Yeah. This would work.
So he sauntered into the open-plan kitchen where Kenny was avoiding looking at him.
The pole hung from the timber beam splitting the arch between the kitchen and the lounge.
It had been a joke installation. Therapy-through-stupidity.
One of Aaron’s more brilliant ideas. To keep going with his pole fitness since leaving behind the uni society.
Tonight, though? Tonight, it was centre stage.
He grabbed it with one hand and leaned into the curve of his body, letting the music bleed through his limbs. Not fast. Not flashy. Intentional. All long lines and hip rolls and enough eye contact to register as a war crime.
He swung once with ease and fluidity, arching his back into the dip, dragging his fingertips across his stomach as he twisted and dipped low, thighs catching the light.
He flexed up into the pole, gripping with his inner legs and moved into an aerial dance in perfect rhythm with Etta James declaring she just wanted to make love.
Kenny didn’t react. But he wasn’t moving either.
Aaron smirked. Bastard was watching.
Good.
He rolled his hips again, hanging from the pole like temptation in denim and bone. He trailed one hand across his chest, grazing his nipple piercing, then down into his waistband. Enough to tease. To make every movement say, You could be inside me instead of slicing onions.
“Dinner’s burning,” he called, low and breathless.
That earned him something. A shift, a breath, the subtle stillness meaning Kenny was feeling it, even if his hands were still working. “Let me worry about dinner.”
“You could worry about me.”
“I am.” Kenny flicked his gaze behind him. “Always.”
Aaron bit his lip. Hooked his knee around the pole and spun once more, dropping into a perfect floor arch, chest rising, thighs flexed, eyes half-lidded.
The music purred on.
Etta begged.
The kitchen smelled of garlic and want.
Then as the saxophone swelled on the track, Aaron danced his way over to Kenny, every step a blend of tease and challenge.
A threat wrapped in promise. And he mouthed along to the lyrics as he moved, fluid and feral, circling Kenny as if he were the pole itself, dragging his hand across his shoulders, down his back, pressing his chest momentarily to Kenny’s spine before slipping away.
Then, with no shame and even less restraint, Aaron draped himself over the counter beside the stove, laying himself out like an offering.
Back arched. Elbows behind him. Hair a mess of damp waves.
Jeans clinging as if fighting gravity, waistband slouched low enough to reveal the slope of his stomach, the faint trail of hair leading into shadows. Right to the edge of obscenity.
A prize.
Unwrapped.
Up for claiming.
Kenny looked at him. Calm. Composed. Cruel.
“You’re glistening,” he said, utterly unfazed. “Might want to towel off before you slip and crack your head open.”
Aaron popped upright. “I hate you.”
Kenny smirked. “That’s not what your body’s saying.”
Aaron flipped him off, outrage brewing.
But Kenny caught his wrist, then slipped Aaron’s raised middle finger into his mouth and sucked on it.
He twirled his tongue around it. Flicked the tip, eyes locked on Aaron’s the whole time.
Aaron might come in his pants from that alone.
This. Kenny’s filthy cruel mouth making promises his body ached to cash.
But no, Kenny wouldn’t let him and with an obscene pop, he released his finger. “Yes, I want you. Badly. Always.” Kenny angled his head to the table. “But right now, I want you to set the table.”
Aaron didn’t even have the energy to growl. Or stamp his foot. Nor shoot off another crude quip or bratty protest. Because Kenny had done it again. Cracked right through the performance. Slipped under the armour. He’d known—of course he’d known—that Aaron wasn’t really trying to get fucked.
He was trying to escape.