Which was why he hadn’t been back to Hawthorne House in three days.
He sat at the small table in his drab apartment in Sutton, drawing plans for refurbishing and replanting the gardens of Penwith Grange on large sheets of graph paper. He had some time before his official meeting with Mrs. St. Ives, but he wanted to be able to present her with multiple choices for ways she could update and refresh her extensive gardens. She’d kindly sent over an old schematic of the gardens that had been drawn in thenineteen-twenties so he could see the dimensions of what was there already. It was useful.
But even with a massive project in front of him and a deadline looming, Graeme couldn’t concentrate. Every minute that ticked away and every garden feature he drew for Mrs. St. Ives reminded him that he should have been at Hawthorne House, the job there wasn’t even halfway done, and it had been days since he’d felt dirt in his hands and sweat on his back.
He was a coward. There was no getting around it. He threw down his pencil and pushed himself up from the table, walking into the kitchen area with the excuse of getting himself a glass of cold water from the tap.
He needed the water to cool down. Every time he closed his eyes or stopped thinking about other things for ten seconds, images of Art bent forward, his trousers around his thighs, his legs spread as much as he could get them, while Ryan gripped his hips and pounded away in him, a look on his face that said how much he enjoyed every second of the forbidden activity, took over everything in Graeme’s head. Just thinking about it made him hard. He’d been denying himself the relief of self-pleasure for three days, too, which was probably some sort of sick throwback to the sort of punishment and self-denial his family and church had always told him was godly.
“It’s a terrible idea,” he muttered to himself as he finished his water and slammed the glass on the counter, almost hard enough to break it.
Neither the water nor that tiny burst of energy helped cool the fire that was smoldering within him. With a growl, he grabbed his semi through the sweatpants he wore and squeezed as if a slice of pain would dampen the arousal he couldn’t get rid of.
He wished he’d been in Art’s place with Ryan hard and demanding inside him. He wished he’d been Ryan, with Artpliable and groaning under him. That surprised him as much as anything. He’d never considered himself a top at all. He also wished he’d been under Art while Ryan fucked him, that the three of them were joined together in the act somehow.
That was a bridge too far. With a sharp intake of breath, he pushed away from the counter and strode across the room. The trouble was, he didn’t have anywhere to go. He was too scared to go back to Hawthorne House in case Ryan or Art wanted to talk about what he’d seen. Ryan had already tried to run after him and stop him from driving away minutes after he’d seen everything. Both Ryan and Art, and Robert Hawthorne a few times, had tried to call him in the last few days as well. He was too scared to check his voicemail to see what sort of messages they’d left him.
“This is ridiculous,” he told himself as he marched in fruitless circles around his small apartment just to shake out some of the buzzing, panicked energy coursing through him. “You’re not at home anymore. Dad and Mum don’t control your life or what you believe is right or wrong. You’re not married anymore. There are no real rules that say you can’t enjoy watching the two men you love?—”
He stopped, nearly crashing into his couch as his energy veered momentarily out of control.
Two men.
Loved.
“Oh, Go-shit,” he groaned, then laughed at the way his instinct not to take the Lord’s name in vain had morphed into a curse that most people would think was worse.
That was the problem with his life and the way he’d been raised, though. He’d been indoctrinated with a whole set of rules and morals that didn’t really mean anything in the real world. They were still there inside him, though. He still believed in God. He still thought love was sacred and that fidelity was important.
But did he? He started walking again, shoving his hand through his hair and breathing heavily. Could he really say he believed in fidelity if he was falling in love with two men at the same time? Did he really believe that if he liked what he was seeing and had gotten so hard watching Ryan, the man he thought he was in a relationship with, fucking another man in broad daylight? Shouldn’t he be angry and feel betrayed that his boyfriend was cheating on him?
It didn’t feel like cheating. Not even a little bit. It felt like…like…like completing a circle somehow.
Graeme puffed out a breath and went to the kitchen to flick the kettle on. He didn’t wait for it to boil. Instead, he walked back to the table and sat heavily in the chair, picking up his pencil. He just held it there, though, no idea what to draw.
His mind floated back to the night in Brighton and the three of them in bed together. He’d been really drunk that night, but he still had memories of it. He remembered Art spooning him from behind, possibly as a joke, possibly because he slept better while cuddling, and Ryan’s arm resting over his side. It had been a Graeme sandwich.
Unexpectedly, Graeme laughed over the idea. That laughter quickly turned into a groan, though. Mostly because he was getting hard again as the memory morphed into what could have happened if they hadn’t all been drunk played out in his head.
His phone buzzing snapped him out of the daydream and made him jump. It was resting face-up on his table, but when Ryan’s name flashed on the screen, he grabbed it and slammed it down again, face down.
“I’m not ready yet,” he told the phone as it stopped buzzing. “I can’t face this until I figure out what I’m going to do with my life now.”
He sounded stupid to his own ears. His life? Hiswholelife? This little bump in his moral road was going to affect his entire life?
Yes. Yes, it was. Because as much as he tried, he couldn’t imagine his life without Ryan and Art. When he tried to force himself to imagine growing his business and working on big gardens, like Penwith Grange, not having Ryan and Art in those pictures just made him depressed.
He’d sagged in his chair and was considering throwing in the towel and leaving the house, maybe to go see a film or something, when a knock at the door scared him half to death.
Even scarier was Art’s call of, “Oh, Graeme, love. Are you in there?”
Joy and terror, longing and the need to flee, warred in Graeme as he rose shakily to his feet and faced the door.
“Let me rephrase that,” Art’s voice came again. “I know you’re in there. Your truck is in the parking lot.”
Graeme gulped. He needed to answer the door. He needed to face his fears and his desires. And really, he liked Art, loved him, even. He trusted him far more than he trusted himself.
“I can do this,” he whispered to himself as Art knocked again.
