Chapter Ten #2
Tim smiled. “I didn’t know your parents well, but your mum had a spark to her.”
“She did. And Dad could be demanding, but he had a softer side too. He was a good man.”
“’Course he was.”
“He’d worked so hard to rise up the ranks. To make his own parents proud. I didn’t get a chance to really know my grandparents before they passed away, but Dad was determined to please them even after they were gone. I guess I inherited it from him.”
“You broke the pattern, though.”
“Suppose I did. It was a woman called Doris that broke me. She turned ninety in January, and the developer planned to tear down her apartment block she’d lived in for fifty years.
She wrote the firm a letter, and it was shoved in a pile of paper in the folder.
I had to file for the permits—a bunch of boring paperwork.
But I couldn’t stop reading Doris’s letter and hearing Mum’s voice in my ear. Asking me what’s really important.”
Lachlan was quiet a few moments, and Tim waited.
“I know the developers aren’t doing anything illegal. They’re going through the process the city requires, and some would say a high-rise apartment block is progress.”
“Not me.” Tim shuddered. “Reckon it depends on the area, but they’re just…soulless.”
“Yes! Soulless. And I… I don’t want to be like that. Glass and metal and…hard. I’m not making any sense.”
“You are.”
He made a little sound—a sigh that made Tim warm all over.
“That’s basically it. I didn’t submit the paperwork.
The deal fell through. When my boss asked me how it happened, I told her.
Explained that I just…didn’t file it. If I’m honest, it wasn’t all for Doris.
I’d realized I truly didn’t like the job.
Not a single thing about it. I missed the beach.
I didn’t want to work nonstop for clients I either didn’t care about or was morally opposed to.
Doris was the excuse I needed to quit. Well, get sacked. They walked me out before lunchtime.”
“You’re better off. Fuck ’em.”
“Am I? I spent so much time and money on my law degree, and now I’m back to being a lifeguard at Barkers again.”
Tim laughed hollowly. “I know the feeling, minus the law degree.”
“You love it, though. You’re made for the sea.”
Warmth swelled in his chest at that recognition. “You’re not?”
“I love it, I do. I still want to do more, though. I can’t just be a lifeguard and go on the piss with my old mates.”
“I heard a rumor that lawyers don’t have to work for soul-sucking corporations. Public defenders and all that.”
“I don’t know much about criminal law.”
“So learn it.”
“I’m thirty this year. Kind of late to be taking on something new.”
“Oh, get fucked.” He laughed. “When you’re fifty, you’ll realize how bloody young thirty is!”
Lachlan laughed too, and Tim loved the sound. He wished he could see that smile.
“Point taken.”
“And I love my son, but didn’t you make friends at uni or the firm you have more in common with than that mob?”
“Not really. A few from uni, but we got so busy once we graduated. The firm was too competitive. Wasn’t the place to make new friends.”
“Lots of good blokes at Barkers. Some are queer too.”
“Yeah. I mean, we’re mates. But I was gone a couple of years, and I just feel weird now that I’m back. Different.”
“What’s different?”
Lachlan scoffed. “I left to be a fancy lawyer in the CBD and got sacked. It’s humiliating. They call me Shark, but I’m really not.”
“You got the axe because you didn’t want to work for a bunch of cunts evicting grannies. No shame in that.”
Lachlan was quiet so long Tim had to lift the phone from his ear to make sure they were still connected. Finally, he said, “Thanks. I needed to hear that.”
“Anytime. Well, actually…”
“I know I shouldn’t have texted.”
“No,” Tim had to agree, reminding himself he was supposed to be aggro with Lachlan, not talking to him in the dark. “You can’t call me again.”
“You called me, though.”
“You’re definitely still a bloody lawyer,” he muttered. “Now go to sleep.”
“Good night.” The words were gentle in Tim’s ear, like a whisper. A shiver ran down his spine.
“I’m hanging up now.” He jabbed the end button before he could talk himself out of it, turned off his ringer, and tossed the phone diagonally to the foot of the bed by the wall. Face down.
Flopping onto his side, he closed his eyes determinedly. They didn’t call him “Bull” for nothing.
So why the fuck did he immediately start thinking about Lachlan? Memories of Bali meshed with the sound of his soft laughter and hushed confession tonight. His uncertainty and fear that Tim wanted to soothe…
He rolled to his belly and rubbed his hardening cock against the mattress.
“Christ.”
Fine, he’d have a wank. He was too wound up to sleep, and it’d always helped. He sat up and reached for his phone in the darkness. He’d find a video to watch. Some hot women together—nothing that would remind him of—
The message on the screen read:
I can’t stop thinking about you.
Groaning, Tim stretched out on his back, spreading his legs and digging his heels into the mattress as he jerked roughly.
His other head was full of Lachlan—on his lap in Bali, the warm water surrounding them, Tim’s dick pressed up into the crease of his gorgeous arse. The little moans and cries Lachlan made as he let go.
If Lachlan suddenly knocked on the pod door right now, what would happen?
Eyes closed, Tim squeezed his nipples with his free hand, stroking himself roughly. Fantasies flashed through his mind:
Lachlan dropping to his knees and sucking him…
Fucking that sweet mouth and coming down his throat, filling him up until it dripped from his lips…
Lachlan on his hands and knees on the mattress or the floor or anywhere, his back arching as he took Tim’s cock, whimpering and beautiful as Tim came inside him—
He bit back a yell as he spurted into his hand, working himself as the waves of white-hot pleasure crashed over him, shaking and imagining Lachlan in every position known to man.
Panting, his legs dropped down, and he gulped from the tepid glass of water he’d left on the little bedside table. What the hell was wrong with him? He’d had plenty of one-night hookups before.
Lachlan shouldn’t be different.
Even if Tim liked listening to him. Talking to him. Seeing his sweet little smile. Even if he wanted to take care of him. Wanted to bring him to bed for a week and find out everything he liked, even though Tim had never done that with a man.
It didn’t matter.
Lachlan couldn’t be different.