“I’ve no clue. I wasn’t there.”
Silence. A beat that stretched long enough for it to be uncomfortable, before Jude cleared his throat. He reached for my proffered credit card. His fingers brushed mine and it was all I could do not to shiver. To force myself to track the card as he shoved it into the payment machine.
Jude took my money and handed the card back. Our fingers didn’t touch this time. Disappointment rippled through me, and I turned to leave.
“Wait,” he said.
I stopped.
Stared.
He stared back, eyebrows up again. “You don’t want to see what I’ll be doing with your son at the party?”
I really didn’t, if it involved touching anything other than him, but he’d caught me in a vortex of his hypnotic gaze and the weight of parental responsibility. I shrugged, going for nonchalance while my blood zinged in my ears. “Course I do. Show me what you got.”
* * *
An hour later,I remained a confused mess of horny and terrified. I left Madfall Exotics, promising to bring Tam back in a week for Jude to read him the riot act before the party, and harbouring an unfamiliar desire for someone—for him—to read me a riot act, too.
The feeling unnerved me. Dom was right. I was a control freak in every aspect of my life, save the parts Mina handled for me, and on the rare occasions blokes had turned my head in the past, the fantasy had always been to dominate them. Not for a floppy-haired reptile enthusiast to lecture me on a leopard gecko’s civil rights.
I got into my car and drove out of Thorston without any real idea of where I was going. Home was a place that never called to me, but I wasn’t in the mood for a lonely night at Dom’s empty apartment either. Before he’d come smiling shyly out of the closet, he’d been as much of a cold-blooded loner as I was…or so I’d thought. Whatever. His place was still too barren for my current state of mind.
Lacking any better ideas, I checked into a hotel in the town ten miles from Thorston. It was a luxury chain, but basic enough to be anonymous, not that anyone recognised me anymore. Away from the glitz and glamour of top flight football, I was a nobody, and I liked it that way. It meant I didn’t have to worry about being outed when the first thing I did after a long hot shower was open Grindr. And, that I didn’t have to waste precious browsing time pondering why being outed was still so horrifying to me.
I clicked through a few profiles, most of them faceless, like mine. None stood out to me, but that wasn’t unusual these days. I went through phases. Sometimes I couldn’t get enough dick, and others I was too fucking lonely to appreciate it. To appreciate anything except all the things I didn’t have.
Perusing still got me hard, though. I stroked myself lazily with one hand, while swiping my phone screen with the other. Grindr had once been a place that terrified me, but I was used to the briskness of it now. No one was there for small talk, least of all me. A profile caught my eye. The avatar was a black and white image of a naked torso, angled just right so the light bounced off a lean abdomen and chest. The muscle mass was perfect—strong, but not too defined. I wasn’t into hench dudes who cared more about their protein intake than intelligent conversation.
Not that I was after conversation, but whatever. The profile was intriguing, and after a solid twenty minutes of dead ends, that was enough.
I dug around. The dude was called dragon89, which made sense, considering the tiny fire-breathing dragon inked on his abdomen. I also took it to mean he was twenty-nine, which I could dig. I also liked that he wasn’t one of those twats who listed everything he didn’t want—as though that made them somehow more desirable. Yeah, ‘cos fucking a bloke who wrote “no coloureds” at the top of his page was peak hook up…not.
Anyway. This bloke hadn’t done that. His profile was simple and clean. Just him and his glorious torso, and a single word—fun.
Fun. I turned it over in my head and tried to apply it to myself. And failed, naturally, because though messing around on Grindr had become easier over the years, however hot the hook up, it was never fun. I’d never laughed, and barely cracked a smile, sometimes. It was release, pure and simple. Mechanical almost, even when the chemistry fit. When I picked up a dude who made my blood sing.
But fun? Huh. Maybe I craved that as much as I did a willing dick. Or maybe it was more than that. I pictured Dom and his boyfriend, and immediately regretted it. I’d slept in the same house as them enough times to know they had amazing sex, but it wasn’t that I couldn’t bear to think about. Nah. It was everything else—the way they looked at each other and constantly touched. How fiercely they loved each other. It made me…sad, an emotion that had lived with me for decades, even for the brief period my marriage to Mina had seemed on point.
It had been bearable when my days had revolved around alpha male heterosexuals, forgettable, almost, but life had moved on since then. Now Dom was openly gay and living with his gorgeous boyfriend, sharing a house with Cash and his boyfriend, and their invariably hot mates. Not a day went by when I didn’t rub shoulders with a gorgeous queer man, and worse…
I was as queer as any of them, and no one except my ex-wife had a clue.
Fuck it. I sent torso dude a message.
Two
Jude
The shop closed at six on weekdays, usually a good hour after the last customer came in, but I didn’t mind keeping the doors open. I was there anyway, feeding, cleaning, and checking every creature in my care was set up for the night.
I went from tank to tank, topping up water bowls and offering feeds to the animals who required them. It was a task I enjoyed, even when my gang of geckos gave me the run around, but tonight, my mind was elsewhere, drifting, and I couldn’t seem to pinpoint why.
The geckos simmered down. I left them to it and moved on to the snakes. Most had been fed the previous day, but I had a new girl in stock, a rescued ball python, who was out of synch with the others, and she hadn’t eaten since the RSPCA had dropped her off a week ago.
I opened her tank and lifted her out. She was typically docile, as most ball pythons were, and she was beautiful too. Her colour—her morph—was a pure creamy white, and her eyes were blue. She’d take a cracking photo for the website when I could afford a decent camera.
No time soon, then. I sighed and returned the snake I’d yet to name to her tank. Just the thought of money was enough to ruin my day. The blue-eyed beauty was a rare morph, and would be worth a few quid once she’d recovered from the poor care she’d come from. To keep the doors open, she’d have to be sold, and long before I was likely to get my hands on a camera good enough to do her justice.
