“Don’t be sorry, Zac. Shit happens. So long as you’re okay.”
“That’s not what I’m here for though, is it? To be okay? I’m here to work.”
For a brief moment—so brief Zac wondered if he’d imagined it—Liam appeared offended, then he shrugged. “Workers have rights. I don’t expect anyone else I employ to work if they’re not well, or something’s going on that they need to deal with. Why should you be any different?”
The logic was sweet, but they both knew their arrangement wasn’t quite the same as what Liam was talking about. It wasn’t like Zac paid his taxes with the bundles of notes he hid in the toilet cistern. “I—I don’t know what happened.”
Liam sighed. “Suit yourself. Listen, I’m starving and there’s nothing edible in this place, so I’m going to nip out and get some dinner. Why don’t you take a shower and chill out, then, if you want to go when I get back, I’ll call you a cab.”
“What?” Zac started to sit up. “You want me to go?”
“No, I’m giving you the option. It’s up to you, mate. I’ll be back soon, okay?”
Liam stood and retrieved his clothes from the floor, much like he had in the aftermath of their first fuck. Zac hugged his knees to his chest. He hadn’t wanted Liam to leave then, and he didn’t want him to go now. “Are you sure you want to leave a dirty hooker alone in your flash pad? What if I nick everything?”
“I know where you live.” Liam buttoned his jeans. “Besides, if that’s really what you want to do, I’m not altogether sure I give a shit. There’s nothing in this place I’d lose any sleep over. Take what you want.”
Liam left the room and the front door slammed a minute later. Zac jumped and the unease he’d felt when he’d got off the train at Euston returned full force, merging with the disquiet from his postcoital meltdown. He put his hand on his chest, like he could slow his jumping pulse by rubbing it into submission. Nothing happened, so he let his hand drop and lay back against the marshmallow-like pillows. Liam had given him leave to take his money and run, but he made no move to get up. Despite the agitation fermenting in his nerves, he was suddenly profoundly tired, so tired he could hardly see straight. He closed his eyes, trying to forget that he was bollock naked and alone in a strange apartment. I’ll just rest my eyes, then maybe I’ll take that shower . . .
Liam stood in the bedroom doorway, transfixed by the young man asleep on his bed. And young he was. Now, without a night on the Jäger bombs to cloud his judgement, or the haze of frenetic fucking blurring his vision, it was clear that Liam had ten years on Zac . . . maybe more, and Liam was thirty-four, which meant Zac was barely out of his teens.
Damn. Zac was clearly old enough to have taken Liam home, but it didn’t take a genius to figure he must’ve lived beyond his years to wind up selling himself in the first place. Or did it? Liam had no idea. All he knew was he had a sleeping hooker in his bed who he couldn’t stop staring at. And far too much Thai food that was going to get cold if he didn’t put it in the oven to keep warm.
Liam tore himself from Zac’s sleeping form and went to the kitchen, a room he rarely used at the London flat. He unpacked the bag of food and stashed it in the flashy cooker built into the wall, all the while missing the AGA he had at home, and the dogs sleeping in front of it, tangled together in a huge pile of muddy wool. With that done, he found himself at a loose end. Zac, still sprawled out naked on his bed, called to him like a siren, but he forced himself not to drift back to the bedroom and nudge Zac awake to make the most of their night together. Instead he went to the bathroom and turned the shower as hot as he could bear, a habit he’d got into over the past year, as though the stinging burn of the water could erase the grief-induced ache in his bones.
It worked, sometimes, but tonight he barely noticed the red-hot spray lancing his skin. His mind returned to Zac and his minor meltdown. Guilt tickled his gut. He’d been rough with Zac—like Zac had asked him to be—but was that what he’d truly desired, or had he danced to the tune he thought Liam played? Liam had no idea, and it was hard not to worry that he’d hurt Zac. Physically, Liam was a much bigger man, in all but cock.
Damn it. Liam leaned against the tiles and closed his eyes, trying to ignore his own cock as it rose slowly to meet the images of Zac in his mind. Zac’s beautiful body, the perfect contradiction of slender and strong, wrapped up in flawless skin that smelled like fags, sweat, and the boyish deodorants Liam remembered from his teenage years. And he had a big cock—larger than his slim frame suggested, and Liam had enjoyed having it in his mouth.
Enjoyed. Ha. Liam allowed himself a smirk. He’d been dreaming of sucking Zac’s cock since their first transaction had forbidden him from doing so, and fuck if it hadn’t been worth the wait. Liam had always enjoyed giving head, but doing it for Zac had been something else—the taste of him, every sound he’d made, and the almost violent shudders that had wracked him when Liam rimmed him. He tried not to consider whether Zac’s reactions had been real. He’d come, hadn’t he? No man could fake that.
But as the comforting thought crossed Liam’s mind, it collided with a thick wall of cynical doubt. Handing Zac his fee had taken mere moments, done and out of sight before he could blink, but he couldn’t hide from the fact that he’d paid Zac for every gasp and moan, and nothing that passed between them was more than a brief respite from the real world.
A cool, dry hand closed around Liam’s dick. “So this is where you’re hiding, eh?”
Liam opened his eyes and took a breath, but Zac tapped his finger to his lips and pressed a condom into Liam’s hand. “My turn to call the shots. No talking. Just fucking.”
Who was Liam to argue? He turned Zac around and shoved him against the tiles, nudging his legs further apart. A gasp caught in his chest as he slid a finger into Zac and found him already slick and relaxed. Jesus. Liam’s dick jumped. He braced himself on the tiles and gripped Zac’s hip, aligning them, then he eased inside Zac, closing his eyes against the heat that enveloped him.
Zac groaned and pushed back, flexing and tightening around Liam’s cock. “Yeah, that’s it, that’s it. Do it. You know you want to.”
The dark mist Liam had come to expect from his encounters with Zac descended fast, eclipsing the pain and doubts holding him back. With his dick buried deep inside Zac, it was difficult to accept that it wasn’t real, that Zac’s drawn-out, gravelly moans meant nothing. In the heat of this moment, the carnal desire between them seemed undeniable.
Liam drew his hips back and thrust into Zac, hard enough to force a gasp from him and put himself right on the edge of orgasm already. “God, I love fucking you.”
The declaration surprised him, but he meant it. Paid for or not, fucking Zac was bloody incredible. And this time it seemed destined to be over as abruptly as it had begun. Liam drove into Zac once, twice, three times before Zac cried out. “Shit, I’m going to come.”
He tightened impossibly, and Liam was done too. A brutal release crashed over him, and he came hard, just beating Zac, who spilled without either one of them touching his dick.
For a long moment, Liam stood stock-still, panting, his forehead pressed between Zac’s shoulder blades, as he held Zac up, fighting the trembling in both of their legs. Then Zac squirmed in his grip, so Liam let him go and straightened.
Zac turned and closed his hands around Liam’s wrists, eyes briefly shut, like he was focussing, then a frown crossed his face and he blinked hard, staring at Liam’s fingers. “Where’s your ring?”
“What?”
“Your wedding ring. You’re not wearing it.”
Liam glanced at his bare left hand and reality forced its way into his post-fuck daze. “I took it off.”
