Need dragged at Joe’s balls and crawled up his spine. It felt like the tightalmost-theresatisfaction of a long workout, the heavy burn that he knew would turn sweet in a second.
Cal reached back with one arm and grabbed Joe’s ass. He squeezed the handful of flesh roughly with each thrust and pulled him closer and deeper. Joe draped over his back and hooked an arm across his chest. He shifted to drop one foot to the ground and buried himself inside Cal with fast, hard strokes of his hip. Cal choked out a groan as he was shoved hard into the back of the couch, his cockground roughly against the cushion.
“God, Joe,” he gasped out. “Please?”
His voice trailed off into a whimper and he twisted his fingers tightly in the cushions. The need in his voice caught in Joe’s balls like a hook. He thrust hard into Cal with short, ragged jerks of his hips and felt the hot spill of come around his cock as it was caught in the condom.
“See,” he said roughly against theback of Cal’s neck. It was meant to be lighthearted, but once it got to Joe’s lips, it felt like a promise. “Anything you want.”
He sprawled back on the couch and pulled Cal with him, his cock still inside. He wrapped his fingers around Cal’s rigid, blue cock, and the slow raw aftershocks of orgasm still fired along his nerves as he brought Cal off with a few rough strokes.
Cal groaned and droppedhis head back as he thrust up into Joe’s fist. The tip of the condom ballooned as he came and, fuck it, Joe would have paid to have the couch dry-cleaned. He would have paid for a new tacky velvet couch.
Next time, he thought as he nudged Cal’s head around for a sweaty kiss. He wanted to see the mess of it as it dried on their skin.
A door slammed down below and bottles rattled loudly enoughto be heard over the lull in music. There was a pause and then an irritated woman’s voice yelled up.
“If there’s someone fucking up there—or up there fucking—you’ve got ten minutes before I come back and chuck you out.”
Heavy footsteps echoed down the hall and another door slammed.
“Fuck,” Cal spluttered—half laugh and half groan—as he scrambled off Joe’s lap. He hunched over as he strippedthe condom off his cock with one hand and dragged his trousers up with the other. “That’d make the papers.”
Joe didn’t want to move. A small, mean part of him thought it would serve Harry right to end up in the gossip rags. A lifetime’s adherence to keeping his head down squandered as his only son got dragged out of a club with a wilted, neon pink condom hanging off his cock. It would serve himright. A larger part wanted to pull Cal back down onto the couch and see exactly how much mess they could make.
“I could hire the room,” Joe pointed out as he propped himself up on his elbows. His cock lay wet and pink across his thigh.
Cal gave him a wicked look over his shoulder as he buttoned his trousers one-handed. “Where’s the fun in that?” he asked as he bundled the condom into a napkinand tossed it into the trash. “Come on.”
He loped back over and dragged Joe up off the couch. It was, despite everything in Joe’s head, hard to resist Cal’s grin. He dragged Joe to his feet, kissed him roughly, and told him to “put his dick away” while Cal picked his way over the buttons he had left on his shirt.
Joe peeled the condom off and tossed it. He hitched his trousers up over his hipsand tucked his shirt tails in. There was a roll of fifties in his wallet, and he peeled off a handful and left them on the bar under the condom jar.
He might want to come back one day.
Cal tossed Joe his jacket and then grabbed Joe’s arm on his way to the door. They snuck down the stairs as though they hadn’t already been caught, two steps at a time as they muffled laughter. Two steps from thebottom Cal nearly tripped over the rehung rope and staggered to a stop, balanced on his toes at the edge of the riser. He muttered a curse under his breath, and Joe choked back a laugh behind his teeth. He glanced down the hall to the storeroom, where someone assiduously rattled bottles in a pointed stock take. It didn’t seem as though they were in any immediate danger of being caught.
“I guesswe’re trapped,” he teased Cal as he leaned back against the polished banister. “Lucky enough we have supplies.”
“I don’t think the condoms were edible,” Cal said. His shirt was haphazardly buttoned in the middle, with a deep vee of smooth, inked chest showing and the occasional glimpse of his dented-in belly button. Joe admired the view while he still could. Finally Cal rolled his eyes and steppedover the rope. He held his hand out and wriggled his fingers when Joe didn’t immediately follow him. “Come on. I don’t want to piss someone off enough they call the cops. I used up my slaps on the wrist years ago.”
Joe let himself hang back a second longer, and then a book slammed shut down the hall. He took the long step over the rope back into the real world. He would have had to eventually.
The tempo of the music had changed. The raw rock of the earlier set replaced by flashy, clashy electronica. On the main floor, the dancers twisted and hopped on the static-wrapped beat, all elbows and unpredictable moves. A short man with tiger stripes of glitter on his skin danced aggressively between Joe and Cal. His hands, encased in soft, brown gloves, stroked down his thighs in an unabashedcome on. Joe snorted and dodged around him. “Your loss” drifted spitefully after him. The lights pulsed and strobed jerkily as the beams hitched here and there across the space.
Cal muscled through with a scowl to shift people where his shoulders didn’t do the job, and Joe let him take the lead until they reached the pavement outside.
After the heat of the club, all sweat and hot breath, theair outside felt cold against sweaty skin. Joe shivered and wiped his hand over the back of his neck, sweat slippery under his fingers. Then he pulled out his phone to call a cab. Cars crawled by and the air smelled of diesel.
“So, did it work?” Cal asked as he nudged his shoulder against Joe’s. “Are you the first man in London to successfully fuck his troubles away?”
No. They were still there,like the real world and his dad’s lies. Joe still didn’t know exactly how he felt about that… yet. Angry, yes, but the rest of it was a muddle of things he couldn’t quite put his finger on. He’d expected more from Abigail than he realized—a child’s fantasy of a reunion constructed in secret somewhere in his brain where he seldom looked. It had hurt to find her alive and then find out she wasn’tanything to do with him. He thought—as he remembered the tears on her knuckles—that she felt something similar.
“It was worth a try,” Joe said. “And as troubles go, there are worse. I arrived in London with a dead mother, and it turns out she’s still dead. Probably. The only real change is that I don’t know her name.”
Or her face. He’d never pored over the few, posed shots of Abigail that Harryhad kept, but he knew her without a second thought earlier. The fact he had no idea what his actual mother looked like felt lonely.
“Are you going to keep looking?” Cal asked.
