Chapter One
“You didn’t haveto run out onus.”
Guilt surged through Dylan Hart as he pressed his face against the cool glass of the train window, his phone plastered to his other cheek. “I’m sorry, babe. I just need some space,okay?”
Eddie sighed. “I’m sorry too. I wish things weredifferent.”
“No, you don’t.” Dylan forced a chuckle. “You and Sam are perfectly happy wrapped up in each other. We can party as much as we like, but at the end of the day, I’m an add-on you don’tneed.”
“Don’t saythat.”
“Why not? It’strue.”
Crickets. Dylan suppressed a sigh of his own and squeezed his eyes shut. “Look. Me and Sam have been close for a long time, but we never messed around much until you came along. Sam’s into me because you are, and I’m okay with that,but?—?”
“You need more, don’tyou?”
“Yes.” Dylan hadn’t realized how true it was until he said it, but once he had, the reality that he had to quit his sexual addiction to his two best friends gut-punched him. He leaned forward in his seat, like he could curl his body against the pain. He’d been in love with Sam for years, and now Eddie too, but where did it end? “Eddie,” he whispered, “you’ve got it made with Sam... he loves you so much. Let me go find a piece of that for myself, eh? Before we all gethurt.”
He hung up before Eddie could reason with him. She was upset, he could tell, but it was for the best. Sam would take care of her, like he always did, and Dylan would take care ofhimself.
Dylan changed trains at Highbury and then again at Stratford. By then it was getting dark, and he almost convinced himself this was his usual commute home and he hadn’t left a piece of his heart inVauxhall.
But the feeling didn’t last as he got off the train in Romford, and he drifted out of the station with a black cloud for company. Outside, a queue of traffic was being held up by a funeral procession, complete with a horse and carriage. Dylan stared at the coal-dark horses, mesmerised by their grace. Old school cockney funerals were common around Romford, but the spectacle never lost its dignity. He observed the procession as it passed?—the undertakers and the family walking slowly behind?—and wondered where they were headed. The Sacred Heart, perhaps? Dylan’s grandfather was buriedthere.
The procession passed. Dylan snapped out of his daze and made his way to his apartment in the old Railstore complex. He hadn’t been home for a few days, but the converted flat was exactly as he’d left it?—cluttered and yet distinctly empty. He glanced at the L-shaped couch and recalled a night he’d spent on it a few weeks ago, wrapped up with Sam and Eddie, their legs tangled together as they slept off an evening of fucking and friendship. He’d miss thosenights.
He turned his back on the living room and trudged to the bathroom, his nerves beginning to tingle with the urge to wipe the slate clean.No. It’s too soon.But was it? How did you measure something likethat?
Dylan had no idea and continued to wrestle with it as he stripped his clothes and abandoned them in a pile by the bath. A hot shower did little to soothe his disquiet, and by the time he should’ve been winding down for the night, he had itchy feet that he couldn’tignore.
Forgoing dinner, he slipped into his favourite tight jeans and a fitted dark shirt and headed out with only one thing in mind:I want to be someone else for a while.Or at least a different version ofhimself.
He took a cab to the outskirts of town. The nondescript building by the motorway junction appeared lifeless as he got out of thecar.
“Are you sure you want to be here, mate?” the driver asked, though he didn’t seem to particularlycare.
Dylan paid the man and allowed himself a small grin. “Oh, I’m sure. Have a goodnight.”
He shut the door and walked towards the old coach house. With its painted over windows, it looked abandoned, but as he got closer, the faint thump of EDM reached him, and his pulse picked up to match thebeat.
The signage was as discreet as the rest of the building, but the wording never failed to get Dylan hot:Lovato’s?—a place for every fantasy. So far, it had yet to let him down. He paid the entry fee and signed in, and then made his way to the downstairs cloakroom. Usually, he’d hit the bar first, but he wasn’t in the mood to wait today. His non-fuck with Sam and Eddie had set him on fire, and he couldn’t rest until he’d done something?—or someone?—to dampen itdown.
By the stairs, the door to one of his favoured haunts was open. Despite his focus on reaching the basement rooms, Dylan glanced inside. The row of cubicles was affectionately known as “the truck stop” and the scene that greeted Dylan was a perfect endorsement?—men and women alike stood with their underwear around their ankles while burly men screwed them from behind. One guy was sprawled on the pseudo bathroom counter, his legs in the air while his missus did him with a strap-on. Dylan caught his eye and winked. Perhaps he’d join them later, if he could shift his darkmood.
He left the truck stop behind and descended the stairs. The corridor leading to the basement rooms split in two, and he took the left fork to changing rooms that were quiet compared to the pleasurefest upstairs. Pounding music slowed to a dirty dubstep beat, and Dylan let the headier vibe seep into him as he stripped his clothes and stashed them in alocker.
With a towel around his waist, he bypassed the glory hole pit and approached Seamus, who was guarding the bunker rooms. “What ya got forme?”
Seamus appraised Dylan with his usual inscrutable stare and handed him a strip of inky-black fabric. “Go to the end. I’ve got a cracker foryou.”
Yeah, yeah.But Dylan had been frequenting Seamus’s lair long enough for the surly Scot to know what he liked, and the rush of what was to come stirred Dylan’s dick to life. He entered the last bunker in the corridor and dropped his towel by the raised mattress that took the place of a cosy bed. The room was barren to a layman’s eye, but Dylan approached the utilitarian chest of drawers like he was in his own home and selected his box of tricks with little conscious thought. Just rubbers and lube today?—the plugs and glass dildos couldwait.
Dylan draped his towel over the liquid-proof mattress and then sat on the edge and fixed the strip of fabric Seamus had given him over his eyes. Blindfolded, his pulse kicked up again. He licked his lips and counted the beats as he positioned himself on the mattress?—chest down on his hands and knees. He palmed his aching dick just once and then raised his hand to signal that he was ready for whatever walked through thedoor.
* * *
“Angel! Long time, no see.”
