Table of Contents

Love is an Open Road

Seventh Son – Information

Seventh Son

Chapter One

Chapter Two

Chapter Three

Chapter Four

Chapter Five

Author Bio

Love is an Open Road

An M/M Romance series

SEVENTH SON

By SenatorBlitz

Introduction

The story you are about to read celebrates love, sex and romance between men. It is a product of the Love is an Open Road promotion sponsored by the Goodreads M/M Romance Group and is published as a gift to you.

What Is Love is an Open Road?

The Goodreads M/M Romance Group invited members to choose a photo and pen a letter asking for a short M/M romance story inspired by the image; authors from the group were encouraged to select a letter and write an original tale. The result was an outpouring of creativity that shone a spotlight on the special bond between M/M romance writers and the people who love what these authors do.

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Words of Caution

This story may contain sexually explicit content and is intended for adult readers. It may contain content that is disagreeable or distressing to some readers. The M/M Romance Group strongly recommends that each reader review the General Information section before each story for story tags as well as for content warnings.

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Seventh Son, Copyright © 2015 SenatorBlitz

Cover Art by Beth Baxter

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M/M Romance Group Publication

SEVENTH SON

By SenatorBlitz

Photo Description

Scotsman sitting on a horse, holding a sword.

Story Letter

Dear Author,

Why do these things always happen to me?

I am the youngest son of an English Lord. All my brothers have always been, well, more manly than me. They think my interest in the arts and music makes me weak. But they don’t.

My eldest brother was betrothed to the daughter of a neighboring Lord; one with more money, more power than my father. I was sent ahead of the wedding party to help to get things in order and what happens? Some barbarian from Scotland has kidnapped me, thinking I am my brother.

What do I do now? (And no, I don’t think he’s the most handsome thing I’ve ever seen. I don’t!)

Going for the historical angle here, think Julie Garwood, but if modern day pops into your brain that’s great too. No BDSM, please, but anything else goes.

Sincerely,

Holly

Story Info

Genre: contemporary

Tags: abduction, family drama, geeks/nerds, humorous, shy protagonist

Word Count: 9,073

SEVENTH SON

By SenatorBlitz

Chapter One

Disowned

My landlord has summoned me to his office this morning.

Officially, he’s my father, but my only real use to him is as a backup in case one of his six other preferred sons dies. In lieu of being a bitter fuck about this fact, it is easier to see him as the landlord. I get food, wealth, and a luxurious apartment in exchange for my dignity and his attention. It’s not so bad. I could have been the seventh son of a poor man, a crime for which I’m fairly certain I’d have been killed at birth.

“Are you sure he said I had to come? Maybe he was talking about Christian,” I mumble through a yawn. It nearly knocks me off the elbow that’s supporting me upright. It’s seven in the morning and I’m waist deep in pillows and sheets that are the exact temperature of me. Getting out of bed sounds like just the sort of thing sadists make their masochist partners do. A good dose of ‘get out of bed, you slag’ and ‘oh, it hurts, it hurts so good…’

Get it? No? Christ, you’re a tough crowd.

Peter shrugs out of the silhouette he’s created of himself at my closets, allowing light from my window to tease out his pressed grey suit and his age-incongruous black hair. He’s frowning at two outfits that are spread across his arms.

“No, Master Aerie,” he says, returning the outfit on his right arm to the closet. “He was not talking about Master Christian.”

“You don’t know that. Father always gets me and Christian confused. We’ve got the same…” I wave my hands distractedly in the air. Peter doesn’t bother dignifying that with a response.

Because Christian is a Herculean mass who is about to be named Commander in the British Navy. I, on the other hand, am, well, let’s put it this way— the only thing I’ve got command of is the English language. And maybe my dick. Wait, no. Scratch that. Last Christmas…

“All right, not Christian. Maybe he meant Robert.”

“Not him either.”

“Thomas? Caleb? Dean?”

“Aerie.”

There is warning in Peter’s tone. Warning, I don’t take lightly because the last time I stood my ground, Peter lifted me out of bed and tossed me into a tub of ice water. The man may be about seventy, but he has the strength of a thirty-year-old and the don’t-give-a-shit attitude of a centurion.

Yeah, I don’t know why he’s a butler, either.

Reluctantly, I peel back my sheets and swing my feet around. “This is going on your monthly evaluation,” I grumble. My feet curl away from the cold floor.

“Whatever you say, sir,” Peter says, approaching the bed with the outfit that made the cut. Inexplicably, I feel proud for it, approval is so hard to come by these days. “Blue or gold?”

“Blue brings out my eyes, don’t you think?” I respond flippantly.

“Your eyes are black, sir,” Peter replies, deadpan.

“Well then my eyes bring out the clothes. Blue it is.”

I duck just in time to avoid the hanger that comes flying at my head.

****

Father’s office is armour plated in black glass and chrome, and decorated in likewise uninviting, square leather furniture. Father always says it’s not enough to dress for the job you want. You also have to have the office for the kind of client you want. And Father’s office says that he’s efficient, cutthroat, and isn’t interested in being your friend.

So naturally, all of his clients are filthy rich, have an ambiguous relationship with the law, and just want someone who can make their scandals go away as quickly as possible.

“Aerie, you’re late,” my father drawls as I enter the room. He’s sitting at the computer typing miles faster than anyone from his generation has a right to. Silver and white skate streaks into his blond hair, but his face is unlined and his blue eyes are crystal-hard like they might have been when he was twenty.

At least he knows my name today. Days when the energy to remember gets too great, he simply calls me “Boy”. When he’s drunk I become “girl”, and make myself scarce because he forgets I am one of his and it gets very awkward. I’ve a theory that it must happen because I look quite a bit like my mother: same dark hair, same dark eyes, same build of a runner who’s never run in his life, but could if they wanted.

It’s also probably why he doesn’t like me very much, either. Because I’m here and she’s dead and he can’t sleep with me. I have this fear that one day he will send me out on a trip and have someone kill me just to end the confusion altogether.

“Father.” I incline my head.

He waves me into a chair and leans over to fetch a file from his out box, which he hands to me. “Aerie I need you to go on a trip.”

“A trip?” I swallow hard, taking the file. It contains an official invitation to visit Epcom and Daughters, barristers-at-law. “Will we, uh, all be going?”

“No, just you.”

“Me?”

I wish I could say that I didn’t sound so hopeful when I say that. That it comes out with a sarcastic, rebellious edge, but I’m only ever like that with Peter. With my father I’m that ex who can’t figure out that you are, in the words of her highness Taylor Swift, “never, ever, ever getting back together.”

Observe.

“I need you,” my father says. And I hear, “because I trust and value you.”

What he actually finishes with is, “—because if you get caught and thrown in jail, at least it won’t be a son I actually need. Your brother Robert is getting wed to that Scottish floozy, so we can merge companies, but I don’t trust her father as far as I can throw him.”

I try very hard not to look disappointed. I fail, but I try very hard not to look it.

Father grabs his phone from the table and starts swiping upwards on it vigorously. “I need you to go undercover to their offices and fetch me their books. Their real books.” He puts the phone to his ear. I’m losing his attention already, “Hullo, Robert? Yes, where are you…”

No, nope I’ve lost it.

So much for an important meeting. He could have just sent this message along with Peter instead of dragging me all the way down here so he could ignore me in person.

The wedding he’s talking about, by the way, has been being planned for a year. Apparently, Robert met the girl at a conference in Edinburgh and he’s been sparkly-eyed ever since. So has my father, since Cadha’s father owns the biggest law firm in Edinburgh and he’s been itching to expand northwards.

Father is still busy being chummy with my brother. He’s even laughing, and not in that creepy way he does when he thinks I’m “girl”. I’ve become a footnote to this thesis and not even those footnotes that have any information in them. I’m an ibid footnote. The “I am too lazy to type this again so go look at the footnote above this one” footnote.

“Well, I’ll be going now,” I say loudly. “To pack, and all.”

He doesn’t even look up.

****

Chapter Two

Distance

“Peter, did you know that in Ireland, the seventh son of a seventh son was thought to be endowed with the powers of a wizard? Why couldn’t I be Irish, Peter?”

It is a bitter cold dawn of the next day and the sky has yet to give up her lover, the sun, hiding behind her curtains. I don’t know why she does this. We all know of the affair. We all know she’s going to reveal him, and yet every morning she acts as if it isn’t his sunrise we can see beaming at the bottom of her petticoat.

Peter and I are in one of father’s oldest limousines. Father won’t let me have the other cars. Those are for my brothers. And my brothers’ girlfriends. And their chefs. And the little old lady who makes my father spinach puffs every Sunday.

“Because, sir, you are not,” Peter says. He’s on his PDA playing Tetris. Across from us sit the two bodyguards who are doing their best not to be bitter that they got assigned to the uncool heir.

“Yes, but I could have been,” I point out, because talking to Peter, who barely tolerates me, is better than talking to bodyguards who won’t answer. “And then I’d have powers and could just magic us wherever we needed to go. I might actually be more important then and get a better car to be seen in and bodyguards with actual guns.”

The bodyguards shift uncomfortably.

Really? No guns? I was shooting in the dark there, too. Shit.

“Sir, do you actually want an opinion on this matter?” Peter says, pausing his game. Exasperation is written all over him.

“Lay it on me,” I dare. I’m bored. It’s cold. And stupidly forgot to bring a book on this journey.

“I believe, if you were the seventh son of a seventh son and imbued with all the powers of chaos, you’d still be exactly the same.”

“I would not. I’d be powerful. With powers,” I insist.

“Which you’d use to keep dust off of your precious library books, have meals appear in front of you when you’re studying, and banish sleep. You’d just be a fat fuck, slightly more learned than you are now, with a nastier personality because you never rest. Believe me sir, you’re better off as you are now.”

I curl my lip sullenly. “I would not be a fat fuck, I’d magic the fat away.”

Peter shrugs and returns to his game.

It gets really uneventful after this. Proper not a fucking interesting thing happens for kilometres uneventful. In the movies, this is where Hans Zimmer would distract us from endless scenery with some genius score. I don’t have a Zimmer so the scenery and I become forcibly acquainted.

Tree, tree, tree, rock thing, punch buggy, tree, sports car, tree

—We stop for an hour at a layby to get refreshments and to pee and then—

Car, car, tree, tree, car, tree.

Fuck me. Fuck me. Fuck me.

We drive and we drive and I look out the window and we drive until the monotony of it all puts me to sleep.

When I next awake, the car has slowed down. Outside, the road has become a winding, twisting thing with curves that melt into the darkness and an uninviting, vanishing end point. My stomach churns.

Shockingly bright headlights appear in the dark, sending my eyes into hiding behind my forearm. There’s a convoy ahead of us, two maybe three cars, spread across the road preventing us from moving.

“Peter?” I whisper. “Peter, what’s going on?”

Peter sets a comforting hand on my shoulder. “I’m sure it is a misunderstanding, Aerie. Don’t worry.”

A misunderstanding. Yes, a misunderstanding. This convoy of cars with their flashy flashlights and diligent menace are just lost and want us to help them find their way.

Peter starts for the handle of the door and I grab onto him. “What are you doing?”

“I’m going to find out what is going on. You stay here. I’ll signal when it is safe.”

I clutch onto his arm tighter, and my words come out sharper, shriller. “Peter, we have bodyguards for this type of thing!”

The bodyguards in question are tensing and whispering to each other. They look about as scared as I am. Useless, pieces of shit.

“They don’t have guns,” Peter says calmly. “I do.”

He drops his hand inside his suit vest and clutches onto something. I can just see a brown handle. My grip relaxes.

“Lock the doors,” Peter says to me, and then to the guards, “Make sure nothing happens to him.”

They nod dumbly. Probably grateful that they aren’t the ones who have to venture out into danger.

Peter steps out. I lock the doors. Then I unlock them in case Peter has to turn around and run back into the car quickly. Then I lock them because Peter said to.

Peter knows how to do all the things. Peter will talk to this nice convoy of guys and then we can go. I tell myself these things and yet still my stomach churns. Because, it is astoundingly hard to swallow your own bullshit when you’re scared. The mind is too damn sceptical.

I’m so busy concentrating on Peter approaching the convoy that when the window smashes open a minute or so later, I do not have the time to do something useful like run. My bodyguards move— too slow— and they are both knocked out by a gloved fist. I do more useless things like cower in the corner.

The door opens and a black fist reaches in and grabs me by the arm and my arse makes squeaky noises as it is dragged across leather into my assailant’s body. He or she is not a small person and I am enveloped in black cotton. Another hand comes down over my mouth.

“Do not move,” a voice growls near my ear.

I decide that is a good idea.

****

I sort of roll awake. Primarily, because someone kicks me in the stomach and I sort of roll.

My eyes open into a well-lit room with a bed in the corner and decently sized closet. The floors are entirely bare, but thankfully wooden so they aren’t too cold. The walls that I can see are completely bare, too. It’s hard to imagine that someone sleeps in this total austerity. No books. No pictures. No person.

Sitting up tries to become a thing and fails promptly. This is when I realize my hands and feet have both been bound. I am essentially, a giant human caterpillar.

Well at least I’m a pretty blue one.

“You’re awake, finally.” It’s the voice from before only it’s coming from a pair of steel-toed boots shuffling in front of me. I can’t arch my neck high enough to see the rest of the body, so I content myself talking to the boots. From here on out, my survival will depend on how fast I talk and how pretty I am.

“Uh, yes, hello,” I stumble out, trying to sound less like the sarcastic SOB I am. Nice thoughts, Aerie. Nice agreeable thoughts. I wiggle my arse a bit in case that will help. I’ve been told by my various dalliances that it is quite a nice one.

“Hm.”

He reaches down, grabs me by the chest, and pulls me up effortlessly onto the bed. From this vantage I can see all too clearly who has taken me and I wonder, very seriously wonder, if I might be daydreaming again.

Kidnapper is tall, at least a head over me, and fits very snugly into cargo pants and a skin-tight black shirt that makes muscles ripple out in unearthly definition. Dark eyebrows set to pepper brown-blond hair give expression to a face that does not look like it ever made the mistake of growing and stretching and wrinkling. No, it was carved into being like this: cheek bones and jaw chiselled in ice, mouth whose only purpose should be to kiss every other mouth it can find.

He purses his lips and for a brief stupid moment I think he’s heard me.

Stupid moment ends very quickly.

“Why are you so small?” the kidnapper demands, his Scottish brogue rolling thickly off his ‘r’s. It does naughty things to my spine.

“I… don’t know.”

Pathetic. It stings even more because I always figured when I was in a position like this, I’d be this badass whose mouth never stopped and who would make everyone cower before my wit and élan.

Well here I am and wit and élan have run off to elope.

“I was given to believe that the first heir of the Redmayne legal empire, Robert Redmayne, was a six-foot behemoth. I brought all my best men to swipe him and instead I get you,” Scottish kidnapper continues.

Robert?

“Pardon?”

“You didn’t even put up a fight. If I didn’t know any better I’d think I’d swiped a girl…”

He thinks I’m Robert? As in my brother Robert?

He has to be blind.

“I’m not Robert.”

“Obviously. Which one are you?”

I contemplate lying, but as my brothers are all roughly the same size, I don’t think I’ll get away with it. It’ll be “why are you so small” all over again.

“I’m Aerie. The youngest.”

Kidnappy’s face twitches and a thought passes. “That explains a lot.”

“It does?”

I try to push myself into a less compromising position. Caterpillar is cute on the floor. On the bed I feel too much like a pig up for slaughter.

“We called your father, the usual demand, five million for Robert’s hide and all he did was laugh in our faces.”

“Did he?” I laugh hesitantly, even though deep inside I’m shitting my pants. He might be pretty, but he still has kidnapped me and kidnapping is only sexy when you’re reading about it happening to someone else in a book.

“I did. He said that he didn’t negotiate with terrorists.”

He is right. Father doesn’t negotiate with terrorists. He represents them occasionally, but never negotiates.

I’ve started this very unattractive sweating thing. It’s all ripe and gross. “Maybe he didn’t hear you properly?” I try.

“Oh, he heard me,” Scottish Rogue is saying. He’s eyeing me very curiously and it makes me want to pass out in hormones. I mean fear. Fear. Fuck.

I don’t. I don’t have priorities.

Remember Aerie, you’re pissing terrified. And you need to concentrate on getting out of here.

“My father is a busy man. I’m sure if you ask him again—”

“I’m sure if I ask him again, he’s going to tell me to fuck off. Your father doesn’t give a shit. And I think he knows I got the wrong one because if I’d really gotten his heir, he wouldn’t have been so casual.”

This is the part where I beg for my life right? I’ve watched 24. This is where I beg. My father has proven that I’m disposable. And now the kidnapper shall dispose of me.

I start to get onto my knees (great place to give a blow job as well, if that’s what this begging takes) but Scottish Action Man— and I really should find out what his name is— has other ideas.

Next I know he’s sat on the bed and dragging me across to sit next to him. Uncomfortably close to him. Actually. I’m in his lap. His mouth is doing this bizarre thing that could be a smile, except in a face with as much menace as his has it looks like he’s about to eat me.

The sad, sad, very sad thing, is that I am not entirely sure I’d stop him if he did.

“See, when I planned this here kidnapping,” Scotty says, “I figured I’d make a quick million. Buy a house for my gram and pops so they could retire, take a trip around the world maybe. Your brother is such an ass, so I wasn’t too worried about how I’d treat him, and your father adores him. It was a foolproof plan.”

“You’re doing this to buy a house?”

“For my gram and pops. I owe them everything.”

“So you planned… a kidnapping?”

Not a shit taker and resourceful. If he wasn’t trying to use me as a pawn, I’d ask if I could keep him. Like this one time when I was seven and I asked my father if I could adopt a kid in class so that we could share a room and I’d have him around with me all the time. Obviously I hadn’t thought it through— you know how it is generally frowned upon to try to fuck your sibling even if they are adopted.

Scotty boy isn’t related to me. Yeah, I’d fuck him. Or have him fuck me. Oh my deprived mind. Kidnapped. I am kidnapped!

“Here’s the thing. I started this with the house in mind, but since you aren’t worth a damn I can’t use you for that.”

I swallow. “So you’re going to kill me?”

“I was. I was. I was but…” He gets up and paces, and my little lap couch goes away. I caterpillar like a caterpillar who has forgotten how to caterpillar. That is, I roll about stupidly until I finally figure out how to lie upright. Just in time because Scotty turns around just then to finish his little speech. “But your dad, man, he doesn’t give a shit about you. And that sort of bothers me. I mean, my dad was an alcoholic shit face, but he’d at least give a tenner to get me back. Your dad told me to make it look like an accident when I killed you.”

“That’s just how he is,” I say shrugging. It really is how he is. I got lost in the park as a kid and I was gone for days. Dad didn’t put out a missing person’s report. Actually, I ended up putting out my own because I didn’t know how to get home.

“It’s not right. So I feel in lieu of killing you, which would be easy and fun, but exactly what he wants, I say we humiliate him.” He stops in front of me and his eyes, which I somehow missed when I was shamelessly checking him out earlier, submerge me in chocolate brown. He puts his hands on my knees and lean forward. “We are going to make a sex tape.”

****

Chapter Three

Disarmed

At first I thought the sex tape idea would be wonderful. Getting back at my father for the years of ignoring me? It sounds like Christmas. It is Christmas. Unfortunately, Christmas is going to have to be delayed because my dick apparently is conscious and doesn’t want to sleep with a random guy.

My dick is stupid.

So we’re… um… we’re doing this thing.

Scottish Guy has brought us to a room that I am hard pressed to believe is sister to the room we were just in. That room looked like a prison. This one looks like it wouldn’t look out of place in our summer home on the Maldives; wide, glittering, opulent. Expensive equipment litters the place— I know it’s expensive because I have the same type and never use any of it— and there are mirrors on all walls, uncomfortably reminding me of how damn awkward I look wearing these large boxing gloves that Scottish guy has procured from somewhere and baring my unimpressive chest at the world. My shirt crumples in the corner.

“Relax,” Scottish Guy says, grinning at me roguishly through a mouth full of teeth that are too square to be normal. He’s naked from the waist up and the cliffs his muscles rope around his hips make deep grooves that merge into a deep vee that points to interesting places. His arms are as defined as I imagined them in his shirt, but smaller than I’d thought. He’s no pro wrestler. But he doesn’t have to be.

I’d shamelessly stare some more except I’m still naked and the light’s on and that’s just not how my sex stories go.

“Why are we boxing?”

“To get your adrenalin pumping!” he says with a grin. “With all those endorphins, I’m sure you’ll be more interested in having sex. Now get into ready stance.”

Ready stance, by the way, is a stance that in no way has ever made me feel ready. It consists of me having my legs parted in a squat and my hands held up to my face. I’m painfully aware of my pasty white skin and the skinny noodles I call arms.

There was this one time I tried to work out. The idea of it made me exhausted. Peter was right. I will end up a fat fuck.

“Come at me,” Scotsman instructs.

I nod. Bunching my muscles, I take a flying run at Scotty and land a perfect punch to his face. His beautiful brown eyes go wide and the next thing he knows he’s being blown back into the wall and then he collapses in a dead faint and I jump on top of him and make out with him because my dick has finally gotten with the program.

Okay no, that doesn’t actually happen. What happens is I run at Scotty, my arms flailing like sea cabbages. Scotty grabs me by the neck and keeps me in a chokehold for ten long seconds until I yell that I’m going to pass out and he lets go, laughing.

“How is this fun?!” I demand, rubbing at my compromised oxygen passages. I feel like I’ve just been run through a machine.

“You just don’t know how to get angry.” He tuts. “You live the most ignorable life that I’ve ever seen and you can’t even raise the energy to punch me. You’re… I don’t know man, you’re pathetic.”

He rolls his shoulders and prances around. Acting like confidence is something you’re just meant to be born with.

“I’m not pathetic.” I spit blood. There is no actual blood you understand, but it feels like the thing to do. “I just have never been taught to fight. If you can get me a book so I could read about it, this might be more fair.”

“A book?” he sneers. “You can’t learn to fight from a book!”

“Well fine, then just get me one so I can hit you with it.”

A slow lazy smile wafts over his face and I feel my heart skipping. I swallow that down. He’s… terribly pretty. I’ve mentioned it before, but I feel I have to mention it again. And again. He’s like an ice cream cone with a polar vortex in the centre. I would take a bite but something tells me, it is going to hurt…

“Maybe.” I wring my hands, slide a hand through my hair. “Maybe the sex tape isn’t such a good idea. Like, if you’re not going to kill me or anything, maybe you could just let me go.”

“And let your father get away with it?” the Scotsman snorts. “I’m no Robin Hood, but I do have a conscience.”

“Then why not just get me drunk? That’s an easy way to do it.”

Scotty rolls his eyes. “Because alcohol will have your penis limper than it already is. Also because it can’t be your revenge if you’re lying there passively.”

“My revenge?”

“Of course,” he shrugs, “he’s not my father.”

****

Scotty’s next plan to flip my penis switch on makes even less sense than the first one. I have lost all sense of time since I ran into this bizarre human being. I’ve also lost all sense of being afraid.

“I don’t get it.”

“You don’t have to get it. You just have to jump.”

And by jump he means off of a diving board into an indoor pool. It is at this point that I wonder about this boy who claims he is in dire need of money for a home but somehow lives in a building with its own indoor pool. He is either the most sophisticated con artist or he’s stolen this place too.

Oh shit he stole this place, too.

I would say I do not know what I’ve gotten myself into, except I didn’t get myself into this in the first place.

“I don’t want to jump. I can’t swim.”

“It’s not about the swimming; it’s about the jumping.”

“Last I heard, if you don’t do the swimming after the jumping you do the dying,” I snap.

“It’s not about the jumping. It’s about releasing your fears and letting go.”

“You know,” I postulate. “There is a book about that. I think I’ve looked it up before. How about you let me read that book. Then I’ll be emboldened by all that self-confidence and then we can have sex.”

Dear God, let my penis work this time so we can have sex. It’s obnoxious. Ever since puberty it’s been up and down like a predictable roller coaster, even at a cactus one time, which was… just so much fun to explain to my therapist… and now, this one time I need it to be in for the party, this ONE time, it decides to be limp. I’d slap it but I’m afraid that will make it worse.

Is it possible? Is it actually possible for daddy issues to break one’s dick? This could be the creepiest form of erectile dysfunction ever…

“Why do you keep suggesting books?” The Scotsman growls, and it is the first time I have ever heard the vestiges of anger in his voice. Scotty’s face twitches, and the anger disappears. “Stop reading about things— just do them.”

“I could just not jump. That’s doing something.”

“No, that’s doing nothing. Which seems to be a lot of what you do… absolutely nothing.”

He’s right behind me, whispering directly into my ear. Every single part of my skin is tingling, and I close my eyes. There’s a rush, blood I think. To my head. Like being high. Like he’s got heroin on his breath and is whispering it into my skin.

He doesn’t touch me though. Which is. Strange. He will not touch me but he will push me. With his words. With his actions. Again and again and again. Do it. Jump. Get angry. But he won’t touch me. Maybe that’s why I can’t get it up.

“Jump,” he commands again. Commands the tiny hair cells in my ear that are congregating there because that’s where they congregate.

And it does something to me. He wants me to jump. Well fuck, I’ll jump. But no one says I have to go alone.

We hit water and I have to let go, regrettably, to float to the surface. I break water, gasping for air and it is like I am breathing for the first time. Not living, I’ve always been alive, but sort of breathing and experiencing and… choking.

Oh dear fuck, I’m choking. Because I wasn’t kidding before. I can’t actually swim.

“Will you stop flailing? I can’t save your life if you’re hitting me in the face now, can I?”

Scotty. He’s grinning at me and it lights up his face from those deep brown eyes to that nose that is flipped like a slide at the end. He wraps his arms around my chest and swims us both to edge of the pool, powerful, careful. And happy. I just threw him into the water and he’s damn happy.

Who the hell is this person?

We dry off and Scotty sends me back to that first room like a prison and then he walks away. And I am left to contemplate life’s deep inability to do anything by halves.

****

Chapter Four

Disintegrate

He doesn’t return soon.

Or he does, but it is not soon enough. Mostly because there is something wrong with me. I feel restless or something. I don’t know. This isn’t one of those experiences in the movies where you meet that frightfully gorgeous guy and he shows you what you’ve been missing all your life. It’s not.

This is real life. This is my life. And here I am itching. Have you ever…

Is it possible to not realize you’re unhappy? I always thought I had a good handle on that. I mean I’m a sarcastic pissant who enjoys fighting with my butler. I was aware that I wasn’t the most cheerful unicorn in the universe, but I’d never realized I was actually unhappy.

Am I unhappy? Can an inability to box and jump off a wooden plank into water really tell you if you’re unhappy or not?

Fucking no. I told you. This isn’t a movie. I know I’m unhappy because…

Because it’s been hours since I’ve been kidnapped and I’ve just realized that no one is coming for me. And this… this fucking hurts. No one is coming. No one. I’m alone and it fucking sucks.

So I’m itching. I’m itching to have someone to just sit next to me even if it is an insufferable Scottish person whose only interest is to get me horny and aggressive enough to have sex with him in a way that looks cinematic on screen. I’m itching to have something else to throw the weight of my disappointment at.

Mostly I’m itching because it took me so fucking long to work this out. I feel like that kid at the orphanage who smiles at every couple who comes but doesn’t realize no one is going to adopt him because he’s too old.

I just. I can’t. This fucking…

“You know, if you’d needed a run, there’s a track or something in here. Guy who actually owns this place is filthy rich,” Scotty says, wandering back into the room. He’s carrying a bottle of wine and two glasses, which I assume he’s also stolen. I suppose when you’ve already done the house, what’s a wine bottle?

I beam, genuinely happy to see him, but a bit loathe to show it because it’s his fault I’m currently having an existential crisis. He’s back in clothes that hug him too tight on top and not enough on the bottom.

“I thought we weren’t going to get me drunk.”

“We weren’t? When did I say that?”

“Before you forced me to jump into the pool. You said that you didn’t want me to have a limp dick.”

His eyes travel down to where my penis resides. It, like me, is in uncomfortable territory. Boxers. I’ve always been a briefs kind of guy, but the pool water thoroughly drenched my underclothes. I stole these boxers from the closet along with a shirt and pajama pants. They don’t fit at all.

“Oh, that. I must have been talking out of my arse. I’ve had plenty of great drunk sex,” Scotty says from the bed. He’s backed up all the way to the wall so he can use the wall as support. Honestly, with his legs, it genuinely looks like he’s sitting in one of those post-modernist chairs.

“Then why didn’t we just do this first?” I demand. Before, you know, I had time to realize how lame I am.

“Because I really wanted to get you into a chokehold? Chill out and come sit here, wee one. There is much alcohol and very little time.”

“Time?”

“The wine has been chilled to the exact perfect temperature. If we don’t drink it now, I’m afraid that it shall never taste good.”

I shrug and trot up onto the bed. My legs do not have Scotty’s mileage, so I tuck them under me, lotus-style.

Escaping on my own to a home that is relatively uninterested in me sounds about as terrible as just sitting around and not being searched for. Perhaps I should just ask Scotty to make me part of his merry band of thieves. I lean over to ask him that.

That’s when I notice… things. I notice his lips first; ridiculously tender on a face that is so hard, and right now they are moist because he’s just drunk his wine. Balanced lips, that draw your eyes up from that precipitous jaw, quirky lips, inspired lips.

I notice his lips first. And then I notice, he’s noticing mine.

My stomach makes an odd noise. Not a flop you understand. This isn’t ‘butterflies and oh he’s cutes’. This is ‘fuckingfinally’ and ‘fuckmegood’.

It’s frustration with myself. Frustration with everyone else. The fact that he’s too pretty for this world, the more important fact that I’m not important enough for it. Before I know it, I’m leaning closer to these lips of his.

I stop about a centimetre away, contemplating stupid things like licking the wine off his cupid’s bow and tasting it that way. I bet you it would taste nice. I bet you he would taste nice.

Oh, wait no. I’m… I’m doing that already. Doing things faster than I am thinking them.

The wine tastes disgusting, even on his lips, but for some reason, this doesn’t bother me. Bitter and sweet go well with his mouth, which has suddenly decided that it doesn’t much like being invaded without a fight.

I crawl into his lap as this is a much faster way to be closer to his throat, working my hands into the fabric of his shirt and allowing skin to merge with skin.

I kiss like I’d imagine a leopard would kiss. Or okay, I don’t imagine it. I know I’m doing it. And people have told me this is how I kiss. I like to explore. I want to explore. And soon his mouth is not enough of an exploration.

My lips find his cheeks and then his jaw and then the crook of his neck and he lets out a soft moan that sends my brain into scrambling. I smile secretly and nibble on this new piece of flesh that I have found, this sensitive piece of flesh that makes him make suspicious noises like that.

The man must have a will of iron, though, because this time, no matter how I suck and pander and move, he doesn’t make a sound. I retreat and find that he’s looking at me, a half smile on his face.

“Are you ready now?” he asks.

“For what?”

“The sex tape.”

Oh yes. That. That’s totally why I’ve jumped him like a horny teenager.

My dick says it’s ready for sex, but for some reason the tape doesn’t factor into this. I still don’t give a fuck. “Trial run,” I throw back finding courage I wasn’t aware I had. “Let’s see how good you are, and then we can think about having it on tape.”

His eyebrows shoot up in something like surprise. Which is good. I’m sick of being the one in some plan I don’t get.

And then his hands come alive. And I think that perhaps I should have had this set to stun, because my GOD this man’s hands.

I’m on top of him you understand, but faster than I can blink he’s got me turned and flipped over on my hands and knees as if he means to take me right there and then. I can’t say the idea isn’t sparking something a lot of somethings inside of me.

He trails rough and terrible kisses down the small of my back, ripping off articles of clothing as he goes, because this is how he goes. I had a shirt, now I don’t have a shirt. I had pants and now I just have a bare bottom staring up at the sky, which he is now—

It’s hard… it’s hard to be delicate about telling you what’s happening to me when it is taking my brain everything it has not to enter a liquefaction space. So every now and then I’m just going to. I’m just going to black out.

Scotty continues nibbling and sucking and biting. He’s got my hands trapped so I cannot play with my dick which is starting to strain from all the blood pumping into it. I can hear myself crying into the soft cotton sheets. Always knew ass cheeks were great for sitting but never in my life could I realize that someone could torture so effectively just by…

“Mgmmgm!” I shriek into the mattress, barely missing biting my tongue.

“What was that?” Scotty says, sounding as pleasant as you please. I would be offended if I couldn’t feel his dick brushing against my thigh ever so slightly. It might just be harder than mine.

“Fuck it.”

Which, you know, means so many things in this context. I back up into him, driving my arse cheeks apart with his penis and enveloping the top of his balls. I don’t have any control over the muscles down there but I’m hoping the sheer presence of all the flesh will be enough to do pleasurable things.

And I think it has. I’ve pressed my back into Scotty, so for the time being he’s sort of trapped between me and the wall abutting the bed as I try to perform the most uncoordinated lap dance in history. I remember having one before for my twenty-first, but I was so sloshed all I could remember was that his name was Keith and he smelt of peaches. I settle for just moving back and forth, making sure all parts of his dick are pressed between my butt cheeks.

He holds out. He holds out for a long time. Even with his arms trembling and his breath holing up in his chest he holds out and then it all comes out in one explosive, animal, shriek and once again, I’m flipped.

Which I don’t mind really. Whoever said the dance was for the person being danced on was hopelessly lying.

Scotty doesn’t mess around with kisses and bites and inappropriate gesticulations. Next thing I know his hand is slippery with lube and is playing around with my arsehole. Usually the idea of a stranger’s hands back there when I’m not drunk has the effect of making that sphincter close up faster than a Ziploc bag, but the minute he touches me I feel it blossoming open.

When he slips his index finger, I swear I almost come all over the bed. I haven’t had sex in a very long time and to have someone inside me feels too much to take. My head drops between my hands and my breathing becomes harsh. I want to ram myself onto him, make him faster, make him take out those fingers and do more.

“You like that?” he says, and his voice sounds like it’s been through the ringer too.

He puts in two fingers and then a third, navigating to my prostate and then hitting it hard again and again like this is his mission in life. Each time he hits it I can feel the momentum building. I’m clutching my hands to the sheets and pushing myself onto him and mewling and squirming and I’m so outside of myself I’m actually looking in and Scotsman, he’s saying something, he’s begging.

He’s got three fingers inside me and he’s begging me to stop being so reactive or he’ll never manage to get his dick inside of me. But how can I stop when every single touch makes me want to scream.

He removes his fingers and I feel an ache inside, fixed in a few moments by his very ample dick. The skin stretches to accommodate, stretchstretchstretch, and finds him acceptable. I am full. I feel full and somehow, on top of the heady hormones, this makes me feel safe too.

Is it awful that a dick up my ass makes me feel safe?

He starts pumping inside me harder, and faster, using the muscles I never got to see in his thighs to send me into a world of ecstasy I only dreamed about in porn. I want to help, but he doesn’t need any so I just let him take me. I surrender to the wave after wave that hits me, closing my eyes, letting my mouth run wild. I don’t have to be quiet because I will annoy someone. I don’t have to put down my own feelings because someone will take the happiness away. I don’t have to do anything but be in this moment, with this stranger, and fucking take it up my arse and enjoy it.

“I’m gonna come, I’m gonna come, I’m gonna come…” I pant, beg, squirm, something.

“Nggnggg,” he says.

I take that to mean he’s going to come too. In the end, it isn’t clear who comes first. One minute I’m brushing that veil between losing myself and losing everything, and the next I’m just basking in the aftermath. Sticky. Sweaty. Happy.

Scotty is lying next to me, his eyes half closed. In this state he looks fantastically young. Maybe younger than me even. I do something uncharacteristic. I kiss him. I kiss him softly and this has nothing to do with sex.

He shifts and he smiles and he reaches a sleepy arm up to me and it is the most perfect moment in my life. I think I could die for real now.

Unfortunately, the world doesn’t seem to care very much for my happiness, because next thing I know my perfect silence is interrupted with the howling of helicopters and shouting. There is a lot of shouting and men in police outside the window and flashing lights.

I turn to Scotty, a little bit in shock. “What’s going on?”

He runs a hand in his hair. “I might have… lied.”

****

Chapter Five

Disobedience

“What do you mean you lied?”

He’s looking bashful. Bashful. If I weren’t so mad, I’d probably be kissing him again. But now. I’m mad. He lied to me.

“When I told your dad I’d kidnapped you, he didn’t exactly tell me to fuck off. I mean he did, but then he told me he’d find me and kill me.”

“He what?”

“But it doesn’t matter because he didn’t really care!” Scotty squirms. “He was talking about you like a sock that he’d misplaced and he was punishing me for taking something from his house and that made me mad because it’s you, and you’re… you’re more than a sock. You’re a silk tie.”

“A silk tie?” I sputter, “What does that even mean?”

I shoot up into a sit on the bed. It’s a lot to take in and my head is still postcoital. A fucking tie? What? Scotty pushes himself off. Even dishevelled he still towers, but there’s heady vulnerability about him now as he speaks.

“My pops,” he drops his eyes, his penetrating brown eyes, away from me and his hands meet each other in a handshake in front of him. Pink furiously stains his cheeks. He’s breathing shallowly. “He’s always talking about you. He says you’re a snotty little bitch prince, but you’re a great person. A great person who no one ever sees. And after all those stories. I had to see you. I had to know you. Grandfather Peter always did know how to pick my boyfriends.”

“Peter? Peter knew about this?”

It’s amazing I can hear anything over the sounds coming from outside. Someone is shouting instructions to someone else. I hear a reporter I think. A news channel. Men, lots of men. Guns cocking.

“Pops would never let me harm his precious Aerie. Fact, I think half that commotion outside is him. Well him and your dad. I just wanted to get to know you, is all?”

“So you kidnap me?”

“I didn’t plan to kidnap you. I really did want to kidnap your brother, but when I found out that it was you I’d gotten I just went with it. I haven’t got the best social skills, but I read this book How to Make Friends and Influence People, and it said the best way to make friends was to do stuff you liked with them. I figured now was as good a time as any to, you know, show you stuff. So I sent my friends away and showed you around the house where I worked. I tried to show you the nice parts. I was just going to throw your brother in the closet.”

So he works here. In this massive mansion as a… whatever it is he does here. It explains a lot, actually. All the access he had. The fact that there was a room that looked like this in a house that was essentially a mansion. This must be servants’ quarters. His room.

For some reason this realisation overwhelms me. He brought me to his room and he let me wear his clothes. He let me into everything…

“So the sex tape?”

“I thought I could get you to like me if I was on your side. Since your dad is so shitty and all. You know like a warrior or something.”

“And the diving?”

“I was top of my class in diving.”

“And the boxing?”

Scotty blushes for real this time. It crawls down to his neck like a hideous, but cute rash. “I like holding people. Massive hugger. Couldn’t think of a non-creepy way to do it.”

“Huh.” Scotty is very, very strange. And cute. And he likes me. Wonders will never cease.

The sounds of the helicopters are getting louder, and I wonder why they aren’t landing. I can hear heavy footsteps making their way up the stairs. Any minute now they will be here.

Any minute now they will take away this beautiful boy who pulled the most ridiculous scheme in the world to take me on a date. This is the kind of epic fantasy thing that only happens to seventh sons in Ireland. This is the kind of special treatment that only happens to other people, not me.

I can’t let them take him away.

“When they come in, we’re going to say you’re my boyfriend and I made you come here with me. There will be no talk of kidnapping or that you’re Peter’s grandkid or anything. We’re just two guys who got horny and wanted a place to fuck.”

He perks up. “That’s… not a bad story.”

“Didn’t you have one for yourself?”

“Um. No. I was sort of just going to. Um. Run.”

“And this is why I read so many books.”

They are at the doors. I can hear them. I grab his hands. “Say, if there’s police then there’s the news too, right? And they come with cameras?”

“Yeah.” He nods.

“Then let’s give them something to watch.”

I lean over and kiss him hard.

The End

Author Bio

I hate everything I write until I love it. I’m passionate about bones, smiles, and soulmates.

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