Full o'Festive Spirits Page 11

  Gabriel’s expression was priceless. Those eyes in repose were startling enough; startled they assumed puppet proportions. His mouth fell open in a soundless shriek so goddamn endearing that Dylan promptly spluttered, with such ingracious gusto, he promptly sprayed Gabriel in spittle. A point at which his remaining marble suggested that Dylan should be mortified. He was inclined to agree but being embarrassed about a bit of spit did seem somewhat…superfluous, all things considered.

  “What did you think I expected to find in there?” Dylan chortled. Chortled? He’d gone bloody nuts. It seemed pointless to worry about that either, when it was, in truth, a lot more fun than he’d ever had sane.

  “I dunno…pants? Rather than a pop-up-cock?”

  An answer as priceless as Gabriel’s expression. Only he could have conjured up either. Oh, where had he been…for fucking ever? Pulling punters, knobhead. The entire year had been akin to one of those tiny tear-off calendar booklets. Uninspiring and as dreary as a wet weekend in February. December was, of course, a Snowman advent calendar. Each day, a new window of opportunity, but most enchanting of all? The existence of the calendar itself. A talisman of hope that ushered in a whole month of promise and possibility…and the miracle of Christmas to come.

  Dylan found himself rambling some rubbish about being neither blind nor insensate but as horny as hell, which was pretty much the only certainty left in his locker. Aside from one indisputable truth.

  “Gabriel…tell me what you need. I don’t want to…fuck this up.”

  “You couldn’t. I want you, not just—” Oh f’fucksakes. Dylan had guzzled his rum far too fast to put up with any more lies. Or was, possibly, just too pissed to put up with rent-a-replies any longer—which might be slightly identical points—where was I? Ah, Gabriel’s pretences, that was it.

  “You don’t need to say that,” Dylan groaned. “Please…no more lies. I don’t want you to pander to my ego as part of the service. I can’t stand it.”

  “I never have.” The lie was instant. Insistent. Incendiary.

  “Gabriel, f’fucksakes!” he snapped. That was just adding insult to its injurious predecessors.

  “Dylan why are you miffy?” A slight frown was the only indication that Gabriel had registered Dylan’s plea, let alone heard the frustration that had been spat at him alongside the curse. Either way, Gabriel seemed puzzled, rather than perturbed. Nor did he have the good grace to appear contrite. Miffy!? Dylan was seething. Miffy sounded far too close to arms-folded-in-a-huff. Or a hissy fit. Dylan was Pissed Off. Justifiably so.

  “Because I want you to be real, I don’t want you to fake fuck-all. For me,” Dylan…humphed.

  “You say that…but how real are you?” Gabriel sighed.

  What the—? Only one of them was playing to script and it sure as shit wasn’t Dylan. He didn’t even have any guidelines to go by, let alone off-pat responses to trot out.

  “Are you here as a punter, or Dylan? It cuts both ways. As a punter, you get exactly what you want. But you also get what I won’t ask for.” That was an excellent point, but Dylan was darned if he was going to admit it. Okay, that did sound somewhat…miffy. He hadn’t said it aloud though, so it clearly didn’t count. “That’s the way it works. Payment for services rendered, no needs to meet,” Gabriel added with a shrug.

  As was that. It felt accurate too—Dylan had acknowledged as much to himself earlier—albeit from a ‘punters’ perspective, but how could he tell Gabriel any of this? He wouldn’t want to hear it, listening to Dylan’s crap wasn’t part of the deal.

  “I’ve never treated you like a rent boy,” he retorted before belatedly realizing that Gabriel might feel quite the contrary. In his own defence, Dylan had never done so intentionally. “Have I?” he amended, wincing inwardly.

  Gabriel didn’t answer directly, as was often the case, although Dylan doubted if it was done by design. It was more as if a question triggered some bullet train of thought he chased before arriving several stations ahead. To reply to a query that had yet to be asked. Aloud.

  “What were you intending to do, after you’d shagged me?” Gabriel’s voice was too soft to sound accusatory, but it was impossible to ignore the implication of his question.

  “I…hadn’t thought about…afterwards,” he confessed. This was, he realized, true. He’d had far too much on his mind to fret about…beforehand.

  “Will you stay…if I ask you to? Sleep here with me…wake up with me? Open number seven tomorrow, with me?” Gabriel asked, rather than reply to ‘have I?’ Thus, ensuring that Dylan would answer his own question. Christ, he’s as sharp as a tack.

  “Yes.” Succinct. Who knew? The only thing Dylan knew for certain was that ‘no’ would have confirmed that he’d intended to treat Gabriel exactly like a rent boy, even if he hadn’t, yet.

  “I am not a rent boy.”

  What? Dylan blinked, too staggered to try and make any sense of a sentence as clear as a crisp winter morning. His brain certainly couldn’t—it felt as if Gabriel had crashed cymbals against his ears—such was the surge of adrenaline that flooded his system like rocket fuel. About a stuttered heartbeat before it plummeted with a dull thud of despair.

  “How often do you get asked to say that? It was pitch perfect.” Dylan attempted a rueful smirk. An effort to save face, having no right to bemoan being treated like the punter he was.

  “What the bejeezus are you on about?” Gabriel pinned on another Oscar worthy expression. One that managed to combine nonplussed with lunatic alert and bewildered doe-eyed deer. The latter was a masterpiece.

  “As in: ‘I’ll be whatever you want me to be…” Dylan laid that on rather thicker than he’d intended—with a goddamn trowel apparently—because it dripped from his lips as if Dylan was, in fact, draped across a chaise lounge.

  Rather than answer this, Gabriel asked a question that didn’t even seem several queries ahead. Unless he’d embarked upon a punter questionnaire and intended to follow it up with: DoB, residential address, nationality, marital status…

  “Dylan, what is your surname?”

  Was it a test of sorts…? Dylan felt pretty sure that a punter wouldn’t want to reveal this. So, he answered without a hint of prevarication. Gabriel’s response: ‘You make more sense French…’ was the most perfectly nonsensical reply even he could have rustled up. Except. ‘You have a certain élégance of bearing too magnifique to be British. Je m’appelle Gabriel Farrell.’

  Élégance? Strewth…Gabriel Farrell was clearly insane.

  “Are you Irish?” Dylan asked, having apparently resorted to if you can’t beat ’em, join ’em tactics. Or something such. That made sense. Someone had to, surely?

  “From the top o’the morning to the tips o’my toes, t’be sure,” Gabriel grinned. “Full o’ blarney, I might be, but I’ve never been full o’punters.”

  What the—? ‘I am not a rent boy.’ He’d meant that part? It hadn’t been roleplay? That part!? None of it?

  Hang on. Dylan had gone very awry somewhere along the way. So why the hell had Gabriel said he was a rent boy? He had…hadn’t he? Or, had he just not corrected Dylan’s assumption that he was? But why? For starters, it was so insulting, Gabriel should have knocked him out on principle. For the affront alone. Why had he played along?

  ‘Why so surprised’ might be a more pertinent question. When had Gabriel ever made any sort of sense, except his own? Conclusively proved by his very next words.

  “Dylan, I want you. Inside me. For Real.”

  Now Dylan might be a bit bladdered, but there wasn’t a brandy bucket on earth big enough to drown that sentence in. He was still on all fours, hovering over Gabriel, which sounded far more pleasurable than it felt. Barely an inch of their skin was touching—which seemed an obscene waste when they were mostly naked. He isn’t a rent boy and…still wants me? For Real. Really? It would be the finest fuck-up Dylan had ever inflicted on himself, if Gabriel could still, possibly, want him in anyway, whatsoever. Let alone gift
him such a privilege. One he’d just been assured money could not buy. Thank fuck for that.

  Gabriel had made a crucial misjudgement in order to determine whether Dylan might act like a ‘punter’. If he had fled…afterwards? It would not have been through callous indifference, after getting his rocks off with a ‘rent boy’. He would have left if he’d known damn well that purchasing a timeshare in Gabriel would destroy him.

  Dylan was still trying to get his head around the abrupt segue his sensibilities had taken, let alone have a hope in hell of keeping pace with Gabriel, whose brain appeared to function on scattergun principles. Aimed with the accuracy of smart bombs. He wasn’t even sure if the latter was accidental, or whether Gabriel knew precisely where he was strewing his pearls of wisdom and whimsy.

  Did it really matter when they so unerringly hit their target? Did anything, except the fact that Gabriel wanted him. Wanted Dylan despite the grievous insult he’d been dealt. He owed Gabriel the truth, at the very least. All he could do then, was hope Gabriel might allow him to atone for it. Or, fall on his sword trying.

  “It was always real—for me—I’m so sorry, I—”

  “Shh…no ‘sorry’s necessary,” Gabriel whispered, placing a feather-light forefinger on Dylan’s lips.

  Dylan pressed a kiss to it, then ignored him.

  “But that’s exactly what you said…before. I thought—”

  “I know. It seemed the only way I might be able to…have you. I didn’t want to burst your bubble, perchance you needed to believe it. ’Nuff apologies, just kiss me…”

  Almost the moment Dylan dipped his head, his long-suffering arms gave up the ghost. Their bodies and mouths did not ‘melt’ together. It felt more akin to a collision of tectonic plates when their cocks clashed.

  “FUCK!” The bolt of lust that blazed through his veins was mind-blowing.

  “Dylan…” A tender hand cupped his jaw as Dylan gulped at great gasps of air.

  “Sorry. I-Christ—” He screwed his eyes shut to steel himself, before lowering his head; all too aware what would bludgeon him when he opened them. Midnight eyes, strewn with stars in the guttering light, as incandescent as that impish grin. Would Dylan ever get used to them? Even if permitted the chance to try?

  “I-I didn’t expect-no, I did, but I-fuck…it feels…”

  After uttering that affront to the art of speech, Dylan puttered to a halt. He hadn’t said a thing worth hearing, and there were no words to capture the chaos blazing through his body, brain.

  “How about…” After clamping huge palms to his arse, Gabriel added, “…This?” While flexing his hips about a yard off the bed. The surge of hot shock that accosted Dylan’s cock damn near finished him off. It was all he could do to grit his teeth, cling on tight, and hope. Hard. “Moove, Dylan…”

  Dylan had barely twitched his arse before he froze. Frog-face all present and correct, no doubt. The friction from the rigid heat crushed to his cock was—fuuuck. His nuts were screwed so tight, they should be screaming.

  “I can’t…” he confessed. “Gabriel, I need— Tell me what you want. Show me, please. Now.”

  “S’okay, don’t worry. ’Tis not so different, except…this.” Gabriel began patting about on the bed. Lube. “Roll off a mo. Let me do it…”

  “’Kay…” Dylan blew out a slow breath and peeled himself off Gabriel before flopping onto his back.

  “Don’t worry…you can’t do it ‘wrong’,” Gabriel murmured while pushing himself up. After kicking his rumpled trousers off, he propped himself onto his left elbow, produced a condom from fucknows where, and tore open the packet. The delicacy with which he rolled it onto Dylan’s cock was as breath-snatching as the words he bent to whisper; “Nothing else matters, I just want you…inside me. You. ’Twas always you.”

  After brushing the last two words across Dylan’s lips, Gabriel leaned back to dispense a puddle of lube onto his palm. Dylan watched, transfixed by the fluidity of his fingers and the unselfconscious ease of his movements. In this, as everything else, he made the extraordinary seem as simple as it was inimitable.

  “Sorry…cold?” Gabriel asked, upon reaching for Dylan’s cock, but his gasp dissolved into a low moan when it was enclosed in a cool fist. “You are exquisite…” was a sigh of sound so soft, Dylan must have misheard.

  Exquisite? When Dylan forced his eyelids apart, he expected to find himself blind-sided by obsidian, but Gabriel was gazing down the bed. Quite where that word was applicable, in the scheme of things, Dylan was far too dazed, dazzled to fathom.

  “You are…” Gabriel insisted, when Dylan’s shoulders started quaking in bemusement, which was the only reasonable response. “All of you,” he added, unfurling his fingers to skim lower still, curving around Dylan’s balls until they were cradled in his palm. “’Tis done, you’re all set…”

  Dylan blinked savagely, as if he might find that the world had settled back into place—resumed its former mundanity—afterwards. When it did not, he found himself echoing the phrase that had been eclipsed by exquisite. In the land of make believe, clearly. Bucks Fizz, f'fucksakes?

  “You said…it’s not so different in theory. You meant…foreplay?”

  “Yes. Dylan, you don’t have to.” Gabriel’s gaze stayed fixed on Dylan’s face, eyes wide, unblinking. Far too innocent to possibly be so. Or, to be telling the truth.

  “Yes. I do,” he damn near growled. “D’you seriously think I’d rather hurt you, than— Gabriel, tell me. Does it feel good?”

  “Yes…” A word that was a soft sigh of resignation, but Dylan caught the flicker of the lie he’d considered telling. Quite how Gabriel thought, even for a second, that it might’ve been believable, was anyone’s guess. It had been a ridiculous query in the first place, but that hadn’t made it matter any less. “Give me your hand…”

  When Dylan held it out, it was trembling. He was strung so tight, something should snap. This was, without doubt, the strangest conversation he’d ever had…and yet, it seemed to be drawing him ever deeper into this…cocoon of them.

  The world beyond the flat window had no place here, in this candlelit grotto of entwined limbs and shared sighs. There was only him, here, now; tomorrow was a faraway place on the other side of this. Beyond limpid pools of liquid longing that soothed Dylan’s senses, lulling him into a dreamscape of…them. Of Gabriel, who watched him as if there was no one, nothing, he’d ever craved more. No man whose soul he would rather scour, with eyes that saw more than anyone had ever seen before.

  ∞∞∞

  When Gabriel reached for his right hand and enclosed its first two fingers in his own, Dylan glanced up, and was instantly enveloped in a brown as rich a hot fudge sauce, laced with chocolate liqueur. He could not have dragged his gaze free, even had he tried. Dylan didn’t, he clamped his palm to a long, lean thigh instead, which made those eyes flare as if midnight had burst into flames—molten with dark fire.

  A sudden surge of inexplicable yess thrilled through his veins as Dylan rolled onto his side and yanked on the leg to tug it across his own…utterly unprepared for the frisson of friction that sparked up his spine. For every movement he made, no matter how slight, rippled in shockwaves through his body. He couldn’t imagine becoming accustomed to it—to this—to Gabriel. That would be pretty much on par with ‘becoming accustomed’ to being boiled alive, or having the flesh flayed from his bones. A ludicrous simile, but Dylan didn’t have the wherewithal to rustle up a ridiculous one. So, he trailed his fingertips along lean muscle, heading towards Gabriel’s hip, then trickling inwards until they alighted at his coccyx.

  The hammering of Dylan’s heart was louder than the echo of departed doubt. Even now—especially now—he could barely believe that this man wanted him. For that’s exactly what Gabriel was, despite all indications to the contrary. He was neither rent boy or hat boy, nor even an ethereal creature conjured from Christmas magic…he was six three, four, inches of inimitable masculinity. Florid? Certainly, but nonethe
less true. Dressed, Gabriel was a random clatter of limbs, charmingly haphazard. Naked, he was ivory-carved perfection. Lips softly parted, kiss-bitten, glistening by candlelight as Dylan glided his finger down the valley of Gabriel’s cheeks, stilling when it brushed the pucker he sought. Will it hurt…despite the lube?

  “Hmm…harder, s’okay…” Gabriel assured him, when Dylan tentatively pressed.

  “’Kay…” He pushed a little harder, then gasped when the knot of muscle abruptly gave way and his finger plunged into a scorching clutch of heat.

  “Yesss…” Gabriel crammed more pleasure into a sigh of sound than anyone Dylan had ever met in his goddamn life. But even that was eclipsed by the expression on his fallen-angel face. Was it really so far-fetched to have cited rent boy rouses? Chin uplifted, feathery eyelashes dusting the smooth plain of his cheeks…that rosebud pout, perfectly fit for purpose. Oh Christ. My finger is rammed where the sun don’t shine and I’m citing fucking feathers and…rosebuds? “Dylan, move it…please.”