Isha:I’m in town tomorrow. You about?
Jude:You know where to find me.
Fifteen
Jude
Isha came like it had been a year since we’d last fucked, not six long days. Head thrown back, body a map of beautiful tension, he moaned louder than I’d ever heard him, and shot deep inside me.
Beneath him, I fought for breath and composure, but it was a battle I wouldn’t win. I was a wreck. Again. Because he’d been in my house two minutes before I’d dragged him upstairs and begged him to fucking ruin me.
And Lord knew, Isha was good at that.
Better than good.
Wiping sweat from my face with an abandoned item of clothing I didn’t look closely enough at to identify, I sat up. We were on the corner of the bed, by the door—we’d barely made it. My chest was heaving. Isha rubbed my forearm, but he didn’t speak. I was learning he rarely did after sex. That he seemed to bathe in the calm after the storm. Quiet and reflective. If he wasn’t brooding or regretful, I could live with that.
He got up and went to the bathroom. I studied his back as he sauntered out. His casual confidence didn’t fit with the closeted men I’d been with before. It spoke of a man who’d been doing this for years, who’d perfected the art of being queer for an audience of one, and didn’t expect it to ever change.
“What’s the matter?”
“Hmm?”
Isha came back into the room and knelt in front of me. “You look spaced. Everything okay?”
He was asking if I was about to drop on him again, and for once, I was grateful to my malfunctioning brain for the get-out clause. “I’m good. You just destroyed me, though. I’m gonna need some dinner and a nap before I can walk.”
“You want dinner in bed?” Concern melted from Isha’s lovely face, replaced by a childlike brightness that didn’t seem remotely out of place. “I can run out and get something?”
It was the best offer I’d had all year. I had no intention of falling asleep while he was in my house, but if he wanted to bring me sustenance in bed? Share it with me before fucking me all over again? “Sounds good to me. There’s a bit of cash by the back door.”
Isha snorted. “Rich arsehole, remember? Let me buy you dinner, please?”
I conceded because I was bloody starving, but I scratched a mental note in my fried brain not to make a habit of it. My life was fucked up enough without adding pride issues to the pile.
He left, and I flopped back on the bed before realising I’d forgotten to warn him off the curry house at the end of the road. I sat up again and retrieved my phone from the floor.
Jude:Don’t go to Curry King, unless you want e-coli
The message sent. I dropped my phone on the duvet as a buzz vibrated through the bed. It wasn’t my phone, and further investigation found Isha’s flashy iPhone buried in the sex-scented mess that was my bed.
Instinct—and common decency—told me not to touch it. I picked it up anyway, and activated the lock screen. It was blank, showing no notifications at all. As though my message had been ghosted. Or that he wanted it to be, so no one else saw it.
So? You don’t want people reading your messages either.
But disquiet rippled through me all the same. I’d told myself over and over that Isha’s out status was none of my business—that it meant nothing to me anyway—but the prospect of being entirely invisible made my stomach churn. Who was he hiding me from? Not his kids, and his ex knew he was bi, even if he hadn’t told her about me. So it must’ve been his friends and work colleagues. People like Rae and Cash. His business partner, Dom. Men who were as queer as I was, so what was the damn problem?
I was no closer to figuring it out, or why it suddenly mattered so much, when Isha returned, letting himself in the back door with the keys he’d clearly discovered in the bowl on the counter.
Startled, I dropped his phone onto the bed and lay back down, feigning nonchalance, though I was pretty certain he’d hear my thumping heart through the ceiling.
His footsteps were light on the stairs. For a tall, strong man, he moved like a ninja. Or like someone with something to hide.
Stop it.
I snared my imagination in a net and hung it from an imaginary tree. Isha appeared in the bedroom doorway just as I found a lazy grin from somewhere and plastered it on my face. “What did you get?”
Isha held up a bag. “Chinese.”
