The Hot Floor (20 page)

“Uh, Rai? Evan wants a word.”

It felt weird, handing the phone down to the man who was sucking me off, but Rai didn’t seem in the least fazed, taking the handset with a grin. It was great to get a moment’s relief from the onslaught, though. I didn’t want to shoot my load before Evan had had a chance to enjoy things.

“Hey, baby,” Rai purred. “What can I do you for?” He listened a moment, watching me all the time. I felt like I was on display, my dick glistening and standing proud, and was ashamed to realise how much I enjoyed it. The shame added an extra spike to my lust.

“Yeah, he’s looking properly debauched,” Rai said and reached forward to wipe away the bead of precome at the tip of my dick before licking it off his finger. I whimpered. “You should see him, Ev. He’s fucking gorgeous like this. All sweaty and trembling, with his jeans around his ankles. Makes me want to tie his hands behind his back while I finish him off.”

I somehow managed to maintain eye contact with Rai as he said those last words. I wanted that. God how I wanted that. I couldn’t ask for it, though, and despite all the other things we’d been doing, they hadn’t seriously suggested bondage just yet. Was this it, though? Was this an offer I could accept? I tried to tell Rai again how much I wanted that but couldn’t bring myself to put it into words.

“Okay, putting the speakerphone on now. Yep, love you too, sweetie.”

A pang of bittersweet pain lanced through me. I wanted that too. Having someone tell me they loved me and being able to say it back.

I love you, Evan. I love you, Rai.

The words in my head startled me for a moment, but then I recognised the truth of them. How was that possible—to love two people with the same intensity? It went against every expectation I’d ever had, but this had to be love, didn’t it? It was more than friendship, more than great sex. I wanted to spend the rest of my life with these two.

If only they’d say the words to me, I knew I could say it back to them. Both of them. No way was I going to chance saying it first, though. What if they looked at me with pity and then decided I’d got too intense? What if they then called the whole thing off? No, I couldn’t bear that. Better to endure the longing and keep things like this.

A crackling noise knocked my thoughts off their rails. I looked over to see the phone sitting on the work surface next to the fridge.

“What’s going on?” Evan’s voice sounded tinny over the speakerphone, but at least I wasn’t about to drop the phone now. Plus Rai could always answer for me.

“What do you want us to do?” Rai said.

“Same as before. No, wait, could you suck his balls this time? I want to hear Josh lose it before you move back to his cock.”

“My pleasure,” Rai said, before elbowing my legs farther apart and licking my bollocks noisily.

“Oh fuck!” I felt like I was going to slip down to the floor. I flung my hands out behind me, grabbing hold of the fridge handle in one hand, the edge of the work surface with the other. Bottles and jars rattled inside the fridge as my body shuddered.

“Oh, that’s sweet, but I want to hear more. What’s he doing now?”

“He’s, er, he’s licking me. And he’s, er, he’s wanking himself.” My cock was resting on Rai’s forehead, the tip caressed by his silky hair, but I didn’t know how to put that into words for Evan. “Looks so hot,” I settled on.

“Yeah, that’s right.”
Thwup-thwup-thwup
. “Pet, can you suck one of them in now? Want to hear you roll it around your mouth.”

Rai obliged noisily, and I tightened my grip on my handholds. “Christ! I can’t, oh fuck, that’s good!”

“Oh yeah, my dick’s so fucking hard it could break down walls. That’s what you lads do to me. Fucking hell! Wish I could hammer it into both of you at once. You’ve got such sweet mouths, sweet arses…”

Evan continued his stream of toppy dirty talk while Rai tried his best to suck my brains out through my nuts and I did my best not to shoot my load first. But then Rai added his hand into the mix and started jacking me, and that was fucking unfair because neither of them had another guy’s hand on their dicks and a mouth around their plums.

“Oh Jesus, oh fuck, I can’t stop, can’t stop,” I moaned, as my balls started to fizzle. My come erupted, jetting out over Rai’s head and splattering on the floor tiles. His mouth released my nuts and found my cock, sucking down the last feeble spurts as my orgasm crashed around my body, knocking over all the furniture in my carefully maintained house of delusions.

Through the haze, I could hear Evan grunting through his own orgasm, and Rai… Rai was still on his knees. I grabbed at him, hauled him up with jelly arms and pulled him into a kiss. I could feel his hard cock rutting against my softening one, and then he convulsed, spilling hot come all over my groin. I kissed him through it, ate his spunk-flavoured moans of pleasure greedily.

I might not be able to tell them I loved them, but I could do my best to show them, and maybe, just maybe, they’d notice.

Maybe they’d even love me back, after a fashion.

Me and Rai were walking back along the river path on my last Wednesday at the old studio, when his phone chirped with an unfamiliar ringtone. Rai’s phone didn’t ring very often, and when it did, it tended to be his special Evan ringtone—the theme tune to
True Blood
, with Jace Everett singing in that sexy voice about how he wanted to do “bad things to you”.

“Shit. I’d better take this,” Rai said, staring at the screen. “Hey, hon, good to hear your voice,” he said to the mystery caller and sped up his pace. I hung back a bit, wanting to give him his privacy but also burning with curiosity. Who else did Rai speak to in that tone of voice other than me and Ev?

“Yeah, Ev’s doing great,” I heard, and: “He’d love to see you too.” That set my mind at ease a little. Clearly, a mutual friend of some sort. But what sort? Could it be one of their past lovers? An icy hand throttled my heart.

“Oh, dinner would be lovely, but maybe not next week. Sorry, we’ve, er, got something going on at the moment… It’s complicated… No! Nothing like that. Just, er, not something I can talk about right now.”

I dragged my heels even more. So I was their “something going on”, was I? I was “complicated”. Yeah, I knew that. I mean, nothing about this was really easy, no matter how right and simple everything seemed when we were together. It wasn’t like the rest of the world was set up to understand anything other than couples. We couldn’t all go out for a picnic together and sprawl in a heap on a blanket in the park. Not without drawing attention we really didn’t want. I was a “plus one”—an awkward extra who wasn’t on the guest list and didn’t fit in anywhere. I realised I was scowling when I caught sight of Rai ahead, who’d turned back to watch me with a concerned expression.

“That was Marlene,” Rai said when I finally caught up with him.

“Your friend from when you were students?” My breath came easier as my shoulders relaxed. Marlene was no threat. Marlene was married with kids—I’d heard all about her.

“My only friend, really, apart from you guys.”

“How come you don’t have more? Sorry,” I stumbled over my own words in my rush to apologise. “I mean, I know I don’t have many friends, but I figured someone as confident as you must have loads.”

Rai shrugged. “I have a lot of casual acquaintances at work. I have online friends. I don’t really go out apart from work, though. Where am I meant to make all these friends?”

“You don’t sound upset about it.”

“I’m not. I have everything I need at home. And besides, people can hurt you if you let them get too close. I’m not willing to risk it most of the time.”

The thought suddenly hit me that I had more friends than Rai did. Seriously, I had Denise, Rai, Evan, Stella and now Dylan. I suppose I could even count Liam, who might be my boss but had certainly proved to be more than just that over the years. It also occurred to me that Rai was willing to risk getting close to me. I wanted to ask him more about what made me so special, but the words died in my throat for lack of courage.

“So what did Marlene want?” I asked instead.

“Oh, just catching up and asking me and Evan around for dinner sometime. I gave her a rain check.”

I swallowed down the hurt at the idea of them going out without me. “You should go.”

“It’s not that simple anymore, though, is it?”

“Of course it is. She asked the two of you, and you should go.” Much as I hated the idea of being left behind, I didn’t want Rai to turn down the chance to see one of his few friends just to save my feelings.

“You wouldn’t mind?”

“Of course not,” I reassured him, trying my hardest to believe my words.

Rai put his arm around my waist as we walked. “You’re a real sweetheart, you know that? I think I could fall in love with you.”

His tone was as light as the sun glinting off the water, so I tried not to read too much into the words. I concentrated on the dark water flowing below, ominous and relentless, to stop myself from shouting at the top of my voice:
I love you, Rai Nakamura, and I love your boyfriend too
!

Wouldn’t want to scare the ducks, after all.

Chapter Sixteen

I needed time to think. I know, I know. I probably shouldn’t be allowed to. After all, I’ve always seemed to make better decisions about things when I’ve just gone with my gut rather than endlessly worrying away, but if ever a situation needed some serious thought, it was this one I’d found myself in.

Would I be better off sticking around and making the most of all this uncomplicated sex and companionship, or should I cut things off before I fell too deeply for the both of them? Okay, it was too late for that, and I knew it, but how much worse was it going to hurt, hanging around knowing I’d never have with them what they had together?

I’d been quiet across town while Rai chattered away about his day’s work and some of the students he was tutoring. I listened with half an ear, then announced that I needed a bit of time on my own as I opened the front door.

Rai pouted. “You sure you wouldn’t rather come up with me? I’ve been planning what we’ll get up to all day.” His arm circled my waist, and I stiffened. Not in the good way either.

“Rai, not here. Anyone could see.”

Rai looked around at the empty entrance hall and stairwell. “I honestly don’t think the spiders are going to gossip.”

“No, but one of the others might walk in.”

“Who? Stella wouldn’t care, Denise already knows, and Vern would probably be too stoned to do more than bat an eyelid if we were having wild monkey sex while sliding down the banisters.”

He had a point. Still, I couldn’t relax about it. “Cliff might come in.”

“He has his own front door.”

“Sometimes he checks in case something’s been delivered here by mistake.”

“Fine!” Rai let go of me and threw his hands up in the air. “We wouldn’t want Cliff finding out now, would we? God, you’re so uptight sometimes!”

That was it. I definitely needed some time alone. “I’m just… I’m going up to my room.” I marched up the stairs, Rai following behind me. When I reached their landing, Rai called after me, and I stopped, waiting for him to catch up.

“You’ll be back down later, though, right? We could get Chinese delivered or something. Please?” Rai sidled up to me and peered up through his long eyelashes. “Pretty please?”

“I… Yeah, all right.” I knew I’d be hungry eventually—and for more than just a bowl of chow mein.

“Cool. Okay, you go off, then. Have a bit of Josh time.” Rai stood on tiptoes and pulled my neck down to kiss me on the lips. “Probably a good idea anyway. Me and Ev have got some things we need to discuss.”

Despite the heat, an ice cube slid down my spine after Ray dropped his bombshell. I trudged up the last flight of stairs and unlocked my door, releasing the stale odour of a room that hadn’t been aired in way too long. The pile of dirty laundry reeked, and there were a couple of bluebottles buzzing around in that irritating, erratic way flies do. I wedged open the window and collapsed onto my futon.

It shouldn’t have hurt like that, them needing time to talk alone together. They were perfectly entitled to it, and I had no right to feel left out. I couldn’t help it, though. What if they were discussing me? How things were going? Maybe they’d be comparing my performance in bed. Well, my performance on the sofa, anyway. We didn’t do anything too vigorous in the actual bed, what with my bedspring paranoia.

But no, I had to stop thinking like that. I watched one of the flies dance around the ceiling, trying to follow its path without getting it mixed up with the other one.

Rai and Evan were probably just talking about other things. Rai’s old friend, for instance. I had no right to assume I was important enough to warrant a whole discussion about me.

Shame that thought wasn’t any comfort either.

I woke up to a rap on my door. I snapped open my bleary eyes and stumbled to the door.

“Hey, chuck, you okay?” Evan stood there with a concerned expression. I wanted to hug him, but I hugged my arms around myself instead. “We were expecting you down hours ago.”

“What’s the time?” I checked my watch. “Shit! Sorry. I dozed off. I bet you’ve eaten already.”