When I pulled down the warm, leather blindfold, the haze of a deep sleep evaporating any memories of dreams from my waking mind, Richard was gone.

 

The bedroom blinds were closed but his side of the vast, steel-framed bed was empty. His plush, grey pillows still crumpled but cold. Cold and dry like the creased top sheet next to me. Only wafts of heavy scent remained, created by the both of us: aftershave, lube, cum, arse, sweat, cocaine and champagne.

 

What a combo.

 

Stretching my arms and legs and cracking my neck first right and then left, I listened in the dim. From eleven-forty-three to eleven-forty-five in the morning: time spelled out in red LED numbers across the clock on the bedside table. Two minutes sprawled in silence, straining my ears for the faintest of sounds as my fingertips absentmindedly played with the leather wrist straps that had bound me only hours before.

 

Nothing.

 

No coughs or sneezes. No rustle of a newspaper or book. No kettle boiling or frying pan sizzling or taps running or drawers being opened and closed. No TV, no radio, no music. No footsteps. No fidgeting on furniture. Just the quiet, calm of an empty space.

 

He’s out.

 

I smiled to myself. Chuckled, pondering how he wasn’t the first man to leave me alone in his home. Not that I was going to do anything. Richard had my phone number and picture, so even if I knew where to pawn his art or flog his sound system, I’d eventually have my face on some police list.

 

Never ideal.

 

Thing is, I always found it so interesting when they did that. How they believed that I wouldn’t start rummaging and rifling the moment the front door shut behind them. All because of what? They’d spent one evening railing me to within in an inch of my life? How did that suddenly make me more trustworthy?

 

Fools.

 

Slowly sitting and swinging my bare legs out of the warmth of the bed, I gave myself five seconds. Three for the room to stop spinning and two to realise I was still drunk. Tipsy. Either way, I didn’t have a hangover.

 

Not yet.

 

Standing sluggishly, my cock hard and jutting from my naked body straight and thick as the bedsheet cascaded off me like a silver waterfall of expensive cotton, I made my way to the ensuite toilet and took a piss. Difficultly.

 

Then I staggered past Richard’s walk-in wardrobe and his writing desk, over polished pine floorboards and a thick, dark grey rug, and under low-hanging, designer lighting to the wide, open-plan living, kitchen and dining area literally glistening in the late morning sun that streamed through the floor-to-ceiling glass spanning the farthest wall.

 

His apartment was like a movie set. Everything was perfect. There were no signs of our boozing, snorting and fucking from the night before. Every surface and space had been tidied and cleaned. Our champagne flutes back hanging in the kitchen. The smudged outline of my body on the glass dining table from where he’d pummelled my throat wiped away and polished to a flawless shine.

 

Even the city I’d lived in for almost a year, stretching off and beyond like a grey and glass patchwork quilt of concrete, looked cleaner and newer and more impressive through Richard’s windows.

 

Under a cloudless, mid-August blue sky, it looked like a painting.

 

Maybe it was the sheer luxury around me influencing my mind, or the residual class-A drugs and French alcohol still bubbling in my system, but I didn’t feel like a poor student living off government grants. I felt different. Like I was on holiday.

 

Somewhere new and exciting and fresh.

 

Walking over to the wall of windows, I rested my forehead against the reinforced glass. Pressing against it, I closed my eyes and relished the soothing chill as my cock softened and primal urges tugged at me in the darkness. Urges asking me to stand back and away from the two-centimetre thick, invisible barrier between me, the pavement and twenty storeys of freefall.

 

When I opened my eyes, the glass was fogged-up from my breath: a smoky blot obscuring the panoramic scene. Lifting my index finger, I wrote my name in the condensation. As I finished the final flick of the r, the front door opened and Richard’s deep voice boomed into the apartment.

 

‘Anyone alive?’ he called out.

 

Three seconds later I watched him walk into the living area from the hallway. His thick salt and pepper hair was messy but styled and he was dressed in tan suede shoes, midnight blue, fitted jeans and a dark navy t-shirt that clung to his sculpted body like a second layer of skin. In his hands were two takeaway coffees in a brown cardboard tray and a small, white paper bag.

 

I was naked, bar the black leather blindfold around my neck.

 

‘Morning,’ I said.

 

‘Good morning!’ he said, walking to the dining table and placing his bounty down. ‘Sleep well?’

 

‘Like a log,’ I said, his hot, strong hands already around my waist; mine around his shoulders.

 

He kissed me. Once on the lips. Then, sliding his hand up the centre of my back to the elastic of the blindfold, he grabbed hold and bunched it in his fist until it was digging into my throat. Pulling it slowly to the side he watched me before kissing my straining neck.

 

‘Fuck you’re sexy,’ he said.

 

I said nothing. Just stared and smiled and enjoyed the swelling in my cock and the tingle over my balls as the elastic squeezed my windpipe. Then he loosened his grip and, with one hand, lifted off the blindfold.

 

‘It suits you,’ he said, turning away and pulling out a chair at the dining table.

 

‘Thanks,’ I said, my cock almost fully hard again as he took a seat. ‘That all I’m getting?’

 

He snickered then he nodded his head at the chair opposite, indicating for me to sit down. I did: the clear, polycarbonate plastic invigoratingly cold against my skin.

 

Lifting one of the takeaway coffees from its tray he passed it over and said, ‘I wasn’t sure what you’d want so I went for a latte. Hope that’s ok.’

 

‘Of course,’ I said, taking my first gift of the day from daddy with a hot, sweet sip. ‘It’s delicious.’

 

‘They’re from my favourite place. The barista is a genius.’

 

‘As are you for fetching them.’

 

‘I thought if you were feeling anything like I did when I woke up, you’d need one. This,’ he said picking up his own coffee, ‘is my second.’

 

‘Smart man,’ I said, the revitalising, velvety milk already heating my empty stomach and releasing its treasure trove of caffeine into my bloodstream.

 

‘Speaking of,’ he said, picking up the white paper bag before dropping it on the glass in front of me. ‘I grabbed these too.’

 

Placing my coffee on the table where my left shoulder blade had been the night before, I opened the bag. Inside was a small, rectangular box with a label stuck to the front. On the label was writing. A lot of writing in a small, computerised font.

 

‘What’s this?’ I said, taking the box out of the bag and shaking it: too tired and lazy to read the label.

 

Something rattled inside.

 

‘PEP,’ he said.

 

‘Oh,’ I said.

 

Then my brain caught up.

 

PEP? Post-exposure prophylaxis? What the fuck?!

 

‘Excuse me?’ I said, my stomach twisting, my face flushing red and my heart beating a million times a second.

 

‘Don’t panic,’ he said, a kind smile spreading across his handsome jaw. ‘I’m negative. I just thought you might want them. For peace of mind.’

 

‘Peace of mind? You think I need these?’ I said, my heart still pounding.

 

‘No!’

 

‘Then what? This is your way of figuring out if you need to take them? Because if it is it’s fucked up, mate. Just ask me.’

 

‘That’s not it at all.’

 

‘Then why?’

 

‘In case you thought you needed them, but you didn’t want to ask,’ he said.

 

For a few seconds I said nothing, my inebriated brain still struggling to comprehend. During which he sighed and shook his head. Then he smiled at me. A smile like his stare: open and honest and kind.

 

Relaxing in my seat I took another sip of coffee. Calmed down a little. Opened the box and pulled out a sheet of pills.

 

‘Thanks?’ I said.

 

He laughed. Said, ‘No problem.’

 

‘You just keep a supply of these on hand?’

 

‘God no,’ he said chuckling and taking a sip of his coffee. ‘I usually never fuck bareback on a first date.’

 

I laughed. Said, ‘I bet you say that to all the boys.’

 

‘Honestly, Oscar, I don’t.’

 

‘Then how come I get to be the lucky one getting PEP for breakfast?’

 

He sighed, most likely beginning to regret his second choice of gift. Said, ‘I just couldn’t help myself. You did something to me.’

 

‘I think it was you who did the doing.’

 

‘True. But you’re legitimately the sexiest lad I’ve ever had the pleasure of tying to my bed. I wanted to feel everything. Every part of you.’

 

I rolled my eyes. Blatantly so he could see.

 

‘What?’ he said.

 

‘Creep,’ I said.

 

He laughed and so did I. Then we both took a sip of coffee and stared at each other.

 

Fuck he’s sexy.

 

‘When I woke up this morning, I felt guilty,’ he said.

 

‘What for?’

 

‘I thought maybe I’d taken advantage. Like maybe you were too drunk or high to tell me to get a condom.’

 

I cocked my head to the side and smirked. He’d known what he was doing.

 

‘I would have told you to get off me if I didn’t want it,’ I said.

 

‘Good.’

 

‘You just bought this on the off chance then?’

 

‘Sort of. Truth is I bumped into a very good friend who happens to be a doctor. We got chatting and naturally I told him about my evening.’

 

‘About your new boy?’

 

‘About my new boy. And then he told me about the last time he’d cum inside a tweaked-out twink. One moment the guy had been begging for his load, then an hour later he’s freaking out about the seventy-two-hour window. Not fun. So, he gave me a course, just in case.’

 

I said nothing. Tweaked out twink? Charming.

 

‘Not that you’re a tweaked-out twink,’ he said, reading my mind.

 

‘Good save.’

 

‘Thanks.’

 

‘So, you just happened to bump into your friend?’

 

‘Yeah, his office is around the corner so I see him all the time. We go to the same place for coffee.’

 

I said nothing.

 

‘Like I said, you don’t have to take them.’

 

‘Did you take any?’ I said.

 

‘Do I need to?’

 

‘No.’

 

And he didn’t. I’d been getting tested regularly ever since I’d turned sixteen. Mainly because the clinic had been the only place to get free condoms.

 

‘There’s your answer,’ he said.

 

Placing the box of medication on the table, I leaned back in my chair with my coffee. I didn’t know what to say. I’d taken PEP before: condoms breaking and one or two drunken lapses in judgement. And I’d been lucky with the side effects too. Probably because after each pill I’d smoked a fat joint to soothe any potential nausea. But I’d never had a man buy it for me. They’d all dumped their loads and moved on.

 

No one had cared.

 

‘Thanks,’ I eventually said, meaning it this time. ‘And thank your friend.’

 

‘I will. But he’s always happy to help. I think you’d like him.’

 

‘Oh yeah? In what way?’

 

‘In the me and him taking turns fucking you kind of way.’

 

‘Oh,’ I said. ‘In that way.’

 

He nodded, his eyes wide and hungry.

 

‘Tell me more,’ I said.

 

‘He’s my height but a few years younger. Thick brown hair. Blue eyes. Not as blue as yours, mind, but beautiful nevertheless. Nice, thick cock and knows what to do with it.’

 

‘How thick?’

 

He smirked. Then he said, ‘You’ll have to find out for yourself.’

 

‘He your only friend?’

 

‘Oh no. I meant what I said last night. With a boy like you, I could rustle up a group.’

 

Raising my eyebrows, I smiled. Then I picked up the box of PEP and threw it to him over the glass table top. He caught it one handed.

 

‘Keep it,’ I said. ‘For when I meet your friends.’

 

‘Of course,’ he said, smiling like the devil himself.

 

Finishing my coffee, I placed the empty cardboard cup on the table. Then I stood up and made my way to the bedroom. Halfway across the room, his eyes burning into me from behind, he spoke:

 

‘Where you going, boy?’

 

‘Bedroom,’ I said without looking back.

 

‘You better not be getting dressed.’

 

Stopping and turning, the now midday sun streaming through the windows and warming my unblemished, teenage skin from head to toe, I smiled.

 

‘Shower,’ I said.

 

‘Want some company?’

 

To be continued …

 

Want more? My debut novel, Oscar Down Under Part One, is OUT NOW on Kindle (coming soon to iBooks and other retailers). Find my novels on Amazon US here, Amazon UK here and Amazon Australia here.

 

Or head over to my website to learn more, including exclusive content on my series, Oscar Down Under, as well as my first collection of Nifty stories titled, Oscar (also available on Amazon as an edited, remastered eBook).

 

Copyright Jack Ladd 2017

 

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