Aiden Fairbairn

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I was at a holiday party thrown by my two business partners, but all I could focus on was how fine Chris was looking.

With his backwards Yankees cap, tan Timberland boots, dark jeans sagging just below his underwear band, a tight black shirt that hugged the torso he’d been working out more than usual, and a bomber jacket, I was salivating.

Since entering the world of New York’s elite about a decade ago, me and Jace had only fucked around with guys who wore wing tips, suits, and Fifth Avenue designer button downs. Those were the people we’d had access to at Liberty X—a sex club with a contract so secure, outing anyone might get you sued. But now things had changed, and I didn’t want that anymore. Neither did Jace.

We wanted Chris.

But he kept running.

Correction—he’d fall into bed with us, usually at a social outing such as a party or QFindr event, and then after a night of intense pleasure . . . he’d run. Most recently, he’d run and quit responding to our text messages. It had hurt to think he only wanted us when he was tipsy or in party mode. But right now he wasn’t drunk. Not yet. I wanted him to talk to me while sober.

I drained my champagne glass and dragged my eyes away from where he was having an overly in-depth conversation about cooking with Oli. They’d been talking forever, and it was starting to irritate me. Sure, it was Caleb and Oli’s Christmas party at their enormous penthouse, but what a way to cockblock.

I took out my phone and shot my brother-in-law a text.

Aiden: Can you fuck off so I can get Chris alone? Please.

Just as his phone chimed, I swept my eyes over their giant space. There were people literally everywhere. QFindr staff and all the friends they’d collected over the past two years. There was so much comingling between different sets of friend groups that it was impressive the way Caleb and Oli had gotten everyone together. Which also made it harder to spot my short husband amid all the tall men hanging out.

I found him living his best life, sitting in the middle of an enormous yet sleek sectional surrounded by Valdrin, Nunzio, Raymond, and Angel. They were watching football. I’m pretty sure he was just fantasizing about a gang bang.

Smirking, I caught his eye. He sat up a little straighter, uncurling himself from Angel—also known as one of the few straight people in the room—and cocked his head. I nodded toward Chris then flicked my gaze to the staircase.

Jace’s eyes lit up. He started to stand, but wound up with a lapful of Ashton. The willowy blond wrapped his arms around Jace’s neck and started talking immediately.

Holy shit. These people.

Jace settled back against the sofa, his entire expression the definition of a sigh, and looked at me again. Warm him up for me, he mouthed.

Hell yeah.

I shot him a thumbs up and realized someone had been watching our entire exchange. Raymond Rodriguez. Also known as, Chris’s overprotective and distrustful best friend.

Fuck.

He looked from me to Jace then to Chris before looking back at me. His eyes narrowed.

I shrugged and turned away to go bust up the Oli Cooking Show. I could deal with Raymond later.

“Hey,” I said, loping up to the counter. I slid an arm around Chris’s shoulders. “Can I borrow Mr. Mendez for a second?”

Chris’s mouth curved up into a half-smile, and Oli just gave me an obviously dirty smirk. “Go for it. The downstairs spare bedroom is being used as a coat room. If you fuck upstairs, Caleb will shank you.”

“Ay dios . . .” Chris mumbled, ducking his head.

I nudged Chris away from the kitchen as he mumbled to himself in Spanish. Probably saying something not too favorable about how obvious I was being in front of the entire world and his grumpy bestie, but we needed to talk. After I got my hands on him.

I glanced around just as quickly, saw David was now standing in front of Raymond, distracting him, and I hustled Chris out of the kitchen. The spare bedroom was down a short hallway and the door was tucked in a little alcove. He walked inside willingly, but showed some resistance once I kicked the door shut and backed him up against a wall.

“Whoa,” he said. “No hello? Small talk? You just go straight to grabbing my dick?”

“How about straight to sucking it?”

“Uh, well, I mean, if that’s what you wanna do . . . I guess . . .”

I pinned him against the wall with my palms pressed on either side of his face. Judging from the mischievous glint in his eyes, and the way he couldn’t keep a straight face, he was definitely joking. I gave him a side eye and rolled my crotch against his, making sure he could feel how hard I already was for him. He broke down and draped his arms around my waist, yanking me even closer and squeezing my ass.

“Why do we only get to fuck around when we’re at a party?”

Chris shrugged. “Cause that’s when we see each other?”

“And that turns into every couple of months. A man is prone to dehydrate if he can only get a taste of you once a quarter.”

He sucked his teeth, but that tiny smile kept growing. “You’re doing the most right now.”

“I’m speaking nothing but truth,” I countered.

“Uh-huh. The way y’all be fucking around at Liberty X, you’re not exactly deprived of some bonus fun by not seeing me.”

Scoffing, I used one hand to slide between us, starting with the center of his chest and then moving down. “People aren’t interchangeable, sweetheart. You have a special place in our bedroom. Most people don’t even get through the front door. We keep them at the club. And before you, we didn’t do repeats.”

Chris said nothing, just watched me from beneath long eyelashes as I popped the button of his jeans, then yanked down his zipper over the heavy bulge pressing against his fly. His tongue flicked out and I leaned in to touch my own to it before pulling back again.

“How about you?” I asked once I got his jeans sagging further down his ass.

He pressed his shoulders against the wall and arched his hips, pressing his bulge against my cupped hand. “What about me . . . what?”

“What’ve you been doing for sex?”

Chris shrugged, still rocking against my hand. “I was talking to someone for a minute.” I stopped squeezing his dick and studied him. His gaze was still on my hand, but it rose once I paused. “What?”

What in-fucking-deed? Six words, and a jolt of jealousy had hurtled through me like a bullet train. It had started at irritation and pulled to a stop in worried. All kinds of nonsense went through my head—why he’d been talking to someone else when we’d given him an open invitation to come spend time with us? Whether he really liked the other person? Maybe that was why he was scarce. Maybe he’d soon be off limits—

I blinked away the panic. He’d said a minute. And besides that . . . I was losing it. He was a free agent. Maybe he just saw us as fun.

“Yeah, someone.” Chris undid my pants, but didn’t go any farther. “Obviously, it didn’t come to anything.”

“Why not?”

“’Cause it didn’t. Who cares?” There was an edge in his voice that I’d never heard before. “Are we doing this or . . .?”

I hooked my thumb in the band of his underwear and used my other hand to grip the side of his face. There was something off. Something about his tone, his whole demeanor, wasn’t right. But . . . was it really my place to keep pushing for info if he didn’t want to share? Damn. I wished Jace was here. He was the intuitive one. My specialties were working until I passed out and fucking my lovers until they did the same.

“Hey,” I said gruffly. “If you don’t want to mess around—”

“I do.”

“You sure? Because—”

“Fuck, Aiden. I said I do.” Chris thudded his head against the wall and closed his eyes. He inhaled once and then again. “Damn.”

I slipped my hand from his underwear and dipped my head down for a kiss. Slow but firm, and just a swipe of my tongue along his lips. Instead of him turning his face away like I’d expected, pulling the tough guy route while he was obviously feeling vulnerable or angry, he parted his lips for me.

Chris moaned when I slid my tongue into his mouth to dance along his own. He jerked me against him with impatient hands once I slid my fingers through his hair—longer than usual—to deepen the kiss.

The tension eased from his body. I made a hungry sound against him, and shoved my hand down the back of his jeans, pressing my fingers into the seam of his ass through his cotton briefs. He broke the kiss with a harsh breath, panting.

“Where’s Jace?”

“In the other room. Told me to warm you up for him.”

Chris grinned as I kissed him again, one brief touch then another along his stubbled jaw. The scratchiness suddenly made me aware that this was the first time I was seeing him not clean shaven.

“What are you doing later?” I murmured between trailing kisses. “Can you come over?”

“I dunno . . .”

“Please, sweetheart?”

His grin grew, dimples popping out. “You don’t got plans already, sweethawt?”

“Kept my evening open in case a certain bad little boy who likes makin’ fun of my accent wanted to come home with us.”

“Who you calling little, though?”

“Calm down,” I said, snorting out a laugh. I dropped my hand to his underwear again. This time, I peeled them down so I could get out the dick beneath. Having his heavy length in my hand never failed to make my mouth water or for the filthy base part of me want to slobber all over it. Not seeing the need to fight that urge, I lowered myself to my knees.

“Come on, Christopher. Be a sport. I want to fuck you so bad.”

He grabbed the base of his dick, gnawing on his lower lip the way he did, and painted my mouth with his pre-come. “Jace wants me to?”

“Yes.” I licked the tip. “We talked about it earlier.”

Chris smiled again, slighter this time. “Okay. I’ll go.”

I thanked him by taking his dick down my throat, and he said you’re welcome by tangling his fingers in my hair and giving me a deep face fucking. It didn’t last long—mostly because he was riding my face like he hadn’t been touched in ages. The taste of his come on my tongue was enough to make my own eyes roll back.

I rose to my feet after swallowing every drop, and he remained slack against the wall. His breath came hard and his eyes were shut, so I tucked his swollen dick away and zipped him up.

“Lemme do you,” he said finally.

“Nah. I’ll wait for later.”

He came to awareness faster, frowning. “Why?”

I shrugged. “I just wanted you right now. I can wait. For real.”

Chris searched my face again, and I seriously wished Jace were here. He was so good at reading people, and I didn’t know what the hell was going on. All I knew was that Chris was knee deep in some serious uncertainty, and I wanted to fix him up. I kissed him again.

“Hour or two?”

“Make it two,” he said, voice still thick. “Wanna kick it with my boys for a while.”

“Sounds good.”

We left the coat room and were back out in the main living area when I realized I’d never fixed my jeans. Just after I zipped up, I looked up to see Raymond standing a couple feet away mean mugging me.

Chris had already walked over to watch the game, so it was just me and Ray. I fixed my belt and raised an eyebrow.

“Let me holler at you for a minute, Aiden.”

Fucking great. I wiped my mouth with my forearm, not giving a single fuck when his lip curled, and swept my eyes around. David was looking at us, but judging by how he was doing his best to bury his face in a glass, he didn’t want to be involved. Which meant this wasn’t going to end well.

I jerked my head back the way I’d just come, and now I was going into the damn coat room with Raymond. Minus the fun stuff.

“What can I do for you, man?”

“You can quit fucking around with Chris.”

I’d known where this was going, but him coming right out with it hadn’t been in my expectations. I huffed out an incredulous laugh.

“Say again?”

“You heard me.” Raymond stood eye-to-eye with me, and even though I had a good thirty pounds of muscle on him, he was right in my face. “I am dead serious right now.”

“About me not fucking Chris anymore?”

A muscle in Raymond’s jaw ticked—the first sign that he hadn’t known about my previous times with Chris. He’d kept it a secret from his closest friend.

“Look, Ray, I appreciate your concern—”

“Fuck your appreciation. And fuck your condescending bullshit.”

His voice rose, deep and loud and aggressive in a way that got my blood pumping and my adrenaline going. And it made me want to amp it up.

“Nah, fuck you.” I could hear my accent getting thicker. “Who the fuck are you to step to me trying to tell me who I can have sex with? I didn’t know Chris had two fathers.”

“No, motherfucker, you just didn’t know he had real friends. But guess what? He does. Just like Tonya does. And from where I’m sitting?” Raymond took a step closer and thumped his finger against my chest. “It sure as fuck looks like you and your sister and the rest of your rich friends think y’all can just cherry pick from the PR squad from Queens to get your rocks off.”

My lips moved but no sounds came out. Frustration built in my chest, turning to anger, and the further he got in my personal space, the more furious I became.

“That’s not what this is,” I gritted out. “Not by a long shot.”

“So, what is it? Tell me. What the fuck do you want with Chris?”

My nostrils flared as I took several deep breaths, trying to calm down but unable to with his hostile pretty boy face so close to mine. He was waiting for an answer, and he wasn’t going to back down until he got one, but I was stumbling over one that mattered.

“What are you so worried about?”

Raymond’s eyes narrowed incredulously. “My dude—he is not like you. He just started being comfortable with his attraction to guys, but he is—he’s—” I could see the words he didn’t want to put in the open. Chris was sensitive, he was insecure, he had no confidence, he was easily battered. “He’s not into sex clubs and open relationships with randoms getting to fuck people he likes.”

“How do you know? You didn’t even know I’d had my dick in him already.”

Raymond’s lip curled in a snarl. “Because I know Chris. And I know if you hurt him just because you want to stretch out some newly queer Boricua ass, I will knock your fucking teeth out.”

There were zero doubts in my mind that he would follow through, and that set my temper from rising to shooting through the thermometer. I closed the already minimal space between us and lifted my chin.

“Try.”

The door opened just as his body tensed.

“What the hell?”

We didn’t look away from each other until David wedged his small blond self between us and shoved Raymond back.

“Either you two are about to make out or beat the shit out of each other,” he snapped. “And both are problems for me.”

“We’re fine,” Raymond said flatly. “Just having a chat.”

“Yeah.” I sniffed and forced myself to look away from the heat in Raymond’s intense dark eyes. “Just talking about some shit.”

“Yeah, okay.” David rolled his eyes. “Is everything settled?”

Neither of us said anything, and he made a sound of disgust. “Just stay away from each other.” He grabbed Raymond’s arm and proceeded to drag his pissed off six-foot-three boyfriend out of the room. Raymond left but not without another warning glare.

“Merry Christmas, fuckboy,” he said over his shoulder.

The door slammed shut, muffling David as he scolded him.

The tension drained out of my body, and I slumped against the wall just as Chris had done a few minutes ago.

Caleb was going to kill me.

I needed a drink.

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