Art and Graeme both jumped as Ryan’s slightly foggy question interrupted them. As soon as they turned to see who had caught them, they jumped away from each other and turned to Ryan. Graeme wore the look of a guilty child, but Art was far more inclined to ask if Ryan wanted to join them. The only thing that stopped him was Ryan’s heavily lidded eyes and the gentle sway in the way he stood.
“This might be a good time to mention that I definitely do not feel up to driving back to Hawthorne House tonight,” Ryan said.
Art laughed. “I wouldn’t dare drive in this state either.”
“I didn’t do it,” Graeme said, like someone had a torch in his face and was interrogating him. “I mean, I can’t drink drive.”
“No,” Art said.
“There’s a hotel just over there,” Ryan said, nodding unsteadily across the street and down a few buildings. “Think we should spend the night there?”
“Definitely,” Art said.
They pulled themselves together enough to cross the road and make their way to the tiny, boutique hotel. It wasn’t anything classy or first-rate. In fact, as Ryan took charge and got them a room, a single room, Art noted, he had the feeling they were used to drunk clubbers stumbling in to rent a room by the hour.
It didn’t really matter. Their room was on the first floor, so they pulled themselves up the stairs and down the hall, turned the key in the door, and found themselves faced with a double bed.
“Frankly, I don’t even care,” Ryan said in response to the unasked questions and unsaid observations. “I’m that drunk and tired.”
He staggered to the bed, sat down, and started pulling off his shoes.
“I just need the toilet,” Graeme mumbled before lurching off to the bathroom.
As soon as he shut the door, Art sat on the bed with Ryan and started taking off his shoes, too. “You’re not really that drunk,” he said quietly.
“I’m not,” Ryan said, instantly more alert. “But Graeme is. I don’t want him to feel bad about…I don’t know, I just don’t want him to feel bad.”
“You’re a prince,” Art said, leaning over to kiss Ryan’s cheek.
When Ryan turned to him with a look of surprise, Art kissed his lips. That only surprised Ryan more.
“Weren’t you just making out with Graeme on a streetcorner?” Ryan whispered.
“Can’t I make out with both of you?” Art asked in return.
Ryan stared hard at him for several, long seconds before shaking his head and finishing with his shoes. “I’m genuinely too tired for this.”
Art laughed. “Me, too.”
He was too tired to try to explain to his lovely protector that there was nothing wrong with sharing and caring. True, he’d never been in a throuple before, but there was a first time for everything. And truth be told, he didn’t think either Ryan or Graeme were ready for advanced gay dynamics like that.
It was okay. He could wait.
EIGHT
Brighton.It was always fun, but Ryan had never seen anything particularly earthshattering about it.
He’d never seen anything earthshattering about itbefore.
It was days later, but as Ryan fiddled around with a sewing machine in the studio he’d taken over as his own, his thoughts kept drifting back to the laughter and the music, the middling curry and the delicious drinks he, Graeme, and Art had shared on their day of getting away from it all. He was supposed to be sewing prototypes for some of the ideas he’d been sketching, but instead, he found himself staring out the open window with a goofy grin on his face.
Graeme was a terrible dancer. Art was an amazing one. Graeme had turned out to be surprisingly good at the silly, seaside games that had drained their wallets earlier in the day. Art was a fantastic kisser.
That thought sent heat pulsing through Ryan’s whole body. Their kiss had taken him by surprise, but what was even more surprising was the fact that he would have absolutely allowed Art to sink to his knees and get his cock out so he could suck him off if they hadn’t been on a very public pier with half of BrightonBeach in view. He could only imagine that Art was as good at giving head as he was at teasing and making lewd jokes.
Ryan shifted in his chair, widening his stance to give his interested dick room to grow. Even more shocking was the way his thoughts flitted straight on to imagining Graeme’s reaction to an Art blow job. Had anyone actually given Graeme a blow job before? Anyone male, that was. There was no telling what Graeme and Mavis had done behind closed doors.
Ryan made a squeamish sound and adjusted his stance again, forcing himself to concentrate on sewing another seam. After everything Graeme had told him about the community he’d been raised in, that Mavis had also been raised in, he couldn’t imagine the sex they’d had had been anything other than missionary and quick.
