Freddie
My smile makes my cheeks ache. I lie in bed while admiring my ring finger despite its bareness.
Keegan has the engagement ring with the heart-shaped diamond, a symbol of our commitment, but I touch my finger imagining a platinum wedding band.
I look to the side where my phone waits on the bedside table.
After Keegan said yes, she texted nearly everyone in her contact list on the taxi ride home and their responses of congratulations were instantaneous.
I only messaged two people—Liam and Ryker.
At my last check, twenty minutes ago, neither had messaged me back.
I reach for my phone then flip it over and the lock screen brightens.
There’s still no message. It’s early Sunday, though.
Ryker was probably out last night drinking, and Liam .
. . Liam might have been working a nightshift, not that I remember him mentioning it.
Either way, there’s no reason to panic, and yet .
. . my gut squirms with the lack of response.
I could send a question mark, but that’s kind of aggressive considering the message hasn’t yet been read, but a worry that’s hard to put into words picks away at me.
I’m more nervous about the empty space beneath my message than I was when I got down on one knee in the restaurant.
I’d picked a secluded corner in case Keegan said no, but thankfully she pushed her chair out from the table and dropped to her knees to kiss me.
Then we got a taxi back to our house, where I’d decorated the bedroom with cut roses, candles, and petals on new silk sheets.
Keegan had disappeared into the bathroom while I lit the candles, then she came back out giggling, gazing at her ring as she tried to photograph it looking just right for her socials.
I stretch my arms above my head until my shoulders click.
There are still petals, roses in vases, and blown-out candles, but there are added decorations too, like our clothes, strawberry lube, a blindfold, and a roll of tissue paper because as unsexy as it is it’s necessary for the cleanup operation afterwards.
There’s one more thing on the bed, pushed aside by Keegan’s or my feet as we snuggled up tight to sleep.
It’s bright pink, made of silicone, and over six inches long including the handle.
We used it in the foreplay stage, along with the blindfold and sensual candle wax.
I roll onto my side, and spot it at the foot of the bed.
The first time she mentioned using sex toys I’d felt emasculated, like I wasn’t good enough to satisfy her on my own.
She showed me that wasn’t the case. I wasn’t in competition with the toy, it was just a tool to use during foreplay to get her ready for me. I get it now. I really do.
Sometimes I wish I didn’t.
Sometimes I wish I’d said a firm no to sex toys.
I bite my lip, and eye the bathroom door. The shower hisses on the other side, and I hear Keegan singing. Her showers usually take between fifteen and thirty minutes. She’s already been in there for ten.
I’m running out of time.
If I’m going to do this, I need to do it now. My cock is heavy and hard, several steps ahead of my brain. I watch the bathroom door and train my ears on the shower as I reach for the dildo.
Self-pleasure isn’t a form of cheating. That’s what the online agony aunts, and reddit users say.
That’s what I tell myself as I close my hand around the two-and-a-half-inch girth of the toy.
I use it on Keegan to sexually excite her, so it makes sense that once I stopped seeing it as a rival or my arch nemesis, I might be curious.
The reason it’s arousing is because of her, what it does to her, or at least it used to be.
Now I find the sight of that thing a turn on when I’m on my own because of what it’s done to me.
It wasn’t at first. At first it hurt, and I didn’t understand the appeal at all, but I persisted out of sheer stubbornness.
Keegan doesn’t know.
It’s a tool, an object that increases the velocity of my orgasm, but I can’t tell her.
She’d put two and two together and get a hundred, particularly because my two best friends are gay.
But this—whatever it is—isn’t about sexual orientation.
It’s about my body and what feels good. I snatch the dildo and hide it beneath the duvet, breathing harder as I stare at the door.
I get it ready without looking, using the strawberry flavoured lube to coat the length of the toy.
Then I let it rest on my stomach while I draw up my knees, feet flat on the mattress, and push my lubed fingers into myself.
It’s mechanical, unemotional, with no thought needed.
They’re my wet fingers, and my hole, and they feel good together.
There’s nothing wrong with what I’m doing.
My body. My fingers. My lubed toy.
Except it isn’t mine, it’s ours, mine and Keegan’s. But that entitles me to fifty percent of its use, right?
And not all that use has to be wielding the object, right?
Life partners don’t need to know each other’s every insignificant secret, do they?
I freeze at the bang from the bathroom with two fingers inside myself.
But I don’t take them out. I wait. The shower doesn’t shut off, and the more I think about it, the more it sounded like a bottle of shampoo or shower gel being knocked over.
Keegan is not going to fling that door open hard enough to break the hinges and catch me in the act no matter what my brain screams at me.
And if she does burst into the room, I’m hidden by the duvet. She won’t know where my fingers are, or that her toy is waiting on my chest. I’d have time to hide what I’m doing and carry on with my day with Keegan oblivious.
The throb of my cock is almost painful. I’m thinking about taking my orgasm away and it’s reminding me that’s a very bad idea, that I need this, but I’m running out of time.
If I’m going to do this, it has to be now.
I take the toy off my stomach, leaving a sticky strawberry-scented residue behind.
She bought the lube for me—for my cock—said I leak too much precum and she wanted something sweet on her tongue while sucking me.
I apologised, told her I’m not responsible for how much excitement comes out of me while we play, that it’s a compliment, but it didn’t change the fact she prefers to coat me in sweetness.
It’s left me self-conscious, and now I rarely ask for blow jobs, but last night she’d wanted me to have one.
I glue my gaze to the bathroom door absentmindedly, wondering how many times I’ve stared at it while I’ve come. The shower hisses. The door stays shut.
I can’t resist the toy, and I can’t resist groaning as I push it inside myself, squirming my toes on the bed.
These types of sex toys are supposed to be rocked in and out of a hole.
That’s how I use it on Keegan, but it’s not how I use it on myself.
I marvel as the toy slides into me, stretching me open, and I push it as far as I dare, then let go.
There’s a sex toy inside me, and my heart pounds at the penetration, the full feeling unlike anything else I’ve experienced.
I clench around it, and that’s what I love, so that’s what I do while jerking my cock.
I squeeze the dildo, and that action tightens everything down there.
It makes my balls draw up, and my insides flutter.
I wonder if that’s my prostate—the male G spot—or whether I’m just hoping the unique tickle inside me is that, assuming I’ve found the place that will give me the most intense pleasure.
But the orgasm never comes from there, it comes from my hand, and the vulnerable sensation of my stretched-open hole.
It comes from me clenching and unclenching around something solid, and noting how different it is from anything else I’ve done sexually.
This thing inside me feels almost as if it’s in control, as if it’s overpowered me, and maybe in some ways it has.
I keep doing it. I keep jerking off with it inside me.
I bite my lip as I come, and it’s the only time my eyes slide shut. It’s a risk. Keegan could walk into the room in those few vital moments, catching me in the act. But it’s one I take.
It’s one I’m forced into because I love this feeling.
It’s helplessness as a fierce orgasm slams into me, stealing my breath.
My cock jolts, and my come hits the duvet I’m jerking off under. It’s a mess of lube and my release, and rather than bask in the afterglow, I hurry to clean up the evidence while I’m still too tender and sensitive.
She won’t know.
I won’t ever tell her.
Everything I’ve read online suggests its common for straight men to experiment with their bodies, but I don’t think Keegan would see it that way.
I don’t think Ryker or Liam would either, which is why I’ve never told them, although I have thought about asking them about the prostate in case that’s the weird tickly feeling inside.
I have two gay best friends, well experienced with anal sex, but I don’t dare ask them.
It’s a tool, that’s all, something exciting and new.
Something Keegan herself uses and champions.
It doesn’t mean anything about my sexuality.
I’m a straight guy with a girlfriend who I’m going to marry, and maybe one day I might tell her, I might see if she wants to pleasure me in the same way I pleasure her, and we’ll enjoy it, and it’ll be incredible.
I scrunch my face as I drop the sodden tissue into the bin by the bed.
Who am I kidding?
That will never happen.
The shower shuts off, and the first prickles of guilt warm my cheeks.
After staring so intently at the shower door, I now can’t even look at it.