Table of Contents

Love Has No Boundaries

RIGHT HAND RED

Author Bio

Love Has No Boundaries

An M/M Romance series

RIGHT HAND RED

By Danni Keane

Introduction

The story you are about to read celebrates love, sex and romance between men. It is a product of the Love Has No Boundaries promotion sponsored by the Goodreads M/M Romance Group and is published as a free gift to you.

What Is Love Has No Boundaries?

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 they do.

A written description of the image that inspired this story is provided along with the original request letter. If you’d like to view the photo, please feel free to join the Goodreads M/M Romance Group and visit the discussion section: Love Has No Boundaries.

Whether you are an avid M/M romance reader or new to the genre, you are in for a delicious treat.

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.

This story is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents are the products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

All rights reserved worldwide.
This eBook may be distributed freely in its entirety courtesy of the Goodreads M/M Romance Group. This eBook may not be sold, manipulated or reproduced in any format without the express written permission of the author.

Right Hand Red, Copyright © 2013 Danni Keane

Cover Design by Goodreads M/M Romance Group

This ebook is published by the M/M Romance Group and is not directly endorsed by or affiliated with Goodreads Inc.

M/M Romance Group Publication

RIGHT HAND RED

By Danni Keane

Photo Description

Two young men are positioned squatting one behind the other, on a Twister mat. They are completely naked, with discarded clothes scattered around them. The one at the front has a prominent erection, and his head is turned towards his partner, who has his hand on the other man’s shoulder, as he leans in for a kiss.

Story Letter

Dear Author,

Felix and I have been best friends since we had matching lunch boxes in Kindergarten. We’ve done lots of crazy stuff over the years, but I never expected this. Sure we've messed around, but I can't believe this kiss. His kiss. Oh shit!

No boundaries for this story. Anything goes. I hope I did this right, folks.

Sincerely,

Vivian

Story Info

Genre: contemporary

Tags: coming of age, friends to lovers, hurt/comfort, first time sex, outdoor sex, young adult characters, British, twinks

Content warnings: underage sexual activity, mention of childhood abuse (emotional)

Word count: 12,470

RIGHT HAND RED

By Danni Keane

“Come ’ere, Beanie baby.” Mum patted her knees. “Hop aboard HMS Mum and tell me all about it.”

I didn’t need to be asked twice. I propelled myself feet first onto the sofa, and bounced back, plopping my bottom straight onto Mum’s ample lap.

“So?” She asked. “You had fun?”

“It was really, really fun,” I told her. She wrapped her arms around me as I reached forward to claim a biscuit from the tempting piled-up plate on the coffee table.

“Did you make lots of friends?”

“I got a new best friend. Feee-Lixx.” I said it exactly that way because I liked how it sounded. Not only did I have a new best friend, but I had a new best friend with an incredibly exotic name. I had never met anyone whose name ended in x before.

“He’s going to be my best friend forever,” I told Mum. I knew this was true, because Felix had told me so.

“That’s nice, darling. Maybe he could come round to play some time?”

“Tomorrow?”

“Well, I don’t know about tomorrow.”

“Thursday?”

“I don’t know hun.”

“Please Mummy.”

“We’ll see. I’ll speak to his mum. Maybe next week some time.”

I sighed. Next week was a world away to my four-year-old brain. I stuck out my bottom lip in a pout, but Mum just tsked under her breath.

“Watch out,” she told me. “The wind will change.”

As always, I took heed of her warning. I had no intentions of my face remaining frozen like that forever. I snuggled my head into the crook of Mum’s neck, wiping biscuit crumbs into her hair.

“So you think you’re going to enjoy nursery?”

“Mm hmm.” I knew I was going to enjoy nursery.

For a few quiet moments we stayed like that, just cuddling together on the sofa. Mum smelt lovely, as she always did. A combination of biscuits and warmth and Mum. I closed my eyes and basked in the comfort of her arms until a perplexing question popped into my head.

“Mummy?”

“Yes darling?”

“What’s a frigid bitch?”

Mum’s arms stiffened around me. “Where on Earth did you hear that?”

It was more than six months before Felix was allowed round to play.

****

I had been petrified that first day at nursery. Even at four years old I had known the rules. In the privacy of my own room it was okay to dress up in a flouncy harem outfit, with a scarf wrapped turban-style around my teddy bear’s head, while bellowing A Whole New World at the top of my voice. Doing the same thing in the lounge with my mum and her best friend Val as audience, while they chuckled and drank tea and remarked on how cute I was, was okay too. But having a Princess Jasmine lunch box to take to nursery? Not okay. Not okay at all.

My mum, while fantastically broad minded, had absolutely no concept of coolness, and had been oblivious to how horrified I was when she returned home from the supermarket the day before, and proudly showed me her purchase.

“It’s Princess Jasmine!” I exclaimed.

“Yes, I know. It was the last one.” She scooped me up, holding me tight so I could wrap my legs around her waist. “Isn’t it brilliant?” It wasn’t brilliant but I didn’t have the heart to tell her that the tears that squeezed through my lashes to soak into the shoulder of her dress were tears of dismay, not joy.

As it turned out, those tears that continued to flow through the night were wasted. As soon as we arrived in the playground it was obvious that I wasn’t the only “mummy’s boy” there. All of the other kids in the playground— except one— were anxiously clasping their mum’s hand, or clinging to their dad’s leg, or crying or wetting themselves with fear of being left.

Just one boy stood on his own, a defiant look on his face, which I later came to recognise as Felix’s default setting. He reminded me of The Cat in the Hat, a character so out of control he both thrilled and petrified me in equal measures; the lanky awkwardness a façade covering a subversive nature that simmered quietly below.

His skin was golden brown, much darker than mine, which my mum had plastered in Factor 50 despite the cloudy summer we had just had. His demeanour was so arrogant, so teenage, if it wasn’t for his size and the fact he wasn’t wearing the regulation uniform for kids at “big school,” he could easily have been mistaken for a much older sibling.

Intense eyes fixed on mine across the playground, and sensing danger I turned my lunch box around, holding it close to my thigh to ensure that the Princess Jasmine on the front wasn’t visible. I may have been a mummy’s boy but at least I had acquired some small sense of self-preservation.

Although he looked to be unaccompanied, when the teacher opened the door and welcomed us in, a thin woman walked over to him. Her face was pinched with a slight weaselly look.  She too had olive skin, and the resemblance between the two of them was astonishing. There was no doubt to me that she was his mother, until she merely passed a book bag and a blue lunch box— in a colour that matched mine— to him and walked away. I looked at the other parents in the playground, all kissing tearful good-byes to their children. My own mum appeared to have her hand surgically attached to mine. Mothers didn’t just walk away, not without a smile or a kiss or some tender words. The weasel-faced lady couldn’t possibly be that boy’s mum.

After receiving several tear-stained kisses on the top of my head, I reluctantly made my way into nursery, book bag clutched in one hand, the other hand still holding the lunch box as close to my body as possible.

“Lunch boxes need to go on the trolley, children.”

My heart raced. I was standing right by him. My coat peg was next to his. Even if my plan to keep the lunch box turned round in the playground had worked, there was no disguising it when I popped it onto the trolley.

I was right.

“Princess Jasmine!” The boy pointed at the lunch box clasped in my clammy hand.

I instinctively stepped back while bracing myself for a punch or kick or any other suitable punishment that sort of boy might feel appropriate for this sort of boy.

He smirked and picked up the lunch box on the floor in front of him. “Me too.”

My senses reeled. That boy from the playground, the defiant, teenage, arrogant one with the weaselly face had the same “girl’s” lunch box as me. “Oh!” was the only sound my voice could form. I took a deep breath. “Do you like Disney Princesses too?”

He shrugged. “No.”

My little brow furrowed. “So why did you get a Princess Jasmine lunch box?”

He shrugged again. “Because Cinderella’s a frigid bitch?”

He plonked his lunch box onto the trolley and grabbed my hand. “I’m Felix,” he said. “We’re going to be best friends forever.”

****

During that first week, Felix established his rightful position as “official best friend” to Ben Hunter. If anyone dared to sit next to me on the carpet he would tell them matter-of-factly, “Ben’s my friend. Move!” following up his instructions with a swift kick to the offender’s shins. I didn’t mind. Nursery was a scary place and having an official best friend like Felix offered me protection.

“Right, Ladybird class,” Mrs. Peters said. “It’s time to choose classroom monitors. I’m looking for children sitting nicely on the carpet, to do some special jobs. Ah, Ben…” She looked straight at me. “You’re sitting beautifully. Would you like to be our special Home Corner tidier?”

I nodded enthusiastically. I loved helping my mum out at home; so tidying away the knives and forks in the Home Corner, and ensuring that the plastic piece of toast remained in the purple toaster would be fun. Mrs. Peters ticked her sheet of paper. “And cloakroom monitors? That’s a very important job. Who would like to be a cloakroom monitor?”

Twenty-seven little hands went straight up, accompanied by the strange mewling sounds of children desperate to be given a responsibility. Only two children didn’t raise their hands: Felix and me. I already had a job, but I suspected Felix refrained from volunteering because he didn’t have much interest in hanging coats on pegs. In the week I had known him, Felix didn’t seem to have much interest in anything that didn’t involve intimidating other children.

Eventually, Mrs. Peters looked down her tick list and sighed. “There’s only one special job left, so Felix—” she fixed her eyes on him, waiting for him to sit up from the prone position he had lolled back into, “I would like you to do that job. You can look after our class snail, Bob.”

Felix immediately sat straight up, and crossed his legs as we had all been urged to do. He had a beaming smile on his face, which turned to a nonchalant pout when he realised that everyone in the class was looking at him.

“Do you think you could be a good snail monitor, Felix?” Mrs. Peters asked.

Felix shrugged. “S’pose.”

As it turned out, Felix was much more than just a good snail monitor. Every day he remembered to change the water in the bottle, and he would carefully spray Bob’s shell, to keep him clean and fresh. Each morning, Felix wandered down to the school kitchen to collect salad scraps which he spent a good deal of time lovingly arranging in Bob’s plastic tank. And occasionally as I was busy fluffing up the multicoloured beanbags in the Home Corner I would look over to see Felix cradling Bob’s shelled body in his little hands, holding him close to his face, whispering to him. It was the only time of the day I ever saw Felix smile.

****

Felix carefully surveyed my room through narrowed eyes; a detective checking for evidence at a crime scene. He made his assessment. “Your room’s really messy.”

I shrugged, looking round at the crumpled duvet, the piles of toys and games stuffed haphazardly under the bed, and the socks and pants strewn merrily around the room. D.I. Felix was a fine detective. “Yeah, I guess.”

He reached for a chocolate Hobnob from the plate my mum had given us and stuffed it into his mouth. D.I. Felix paused to enjoy his biscuity treat before giving his next assessment about my life. “Your mum’s really fat.”

This startled me. He was right. My mum was certainly on the tubby side; it couldn’t be denied. But that didn’t change the fact that it was pretty damn rude of him to just come out and say it. I shouldn’t have been surprised really. Felix always said whatever he thought. I suspected that was why I was the only person who wanted to be friends with him at nursery. It was the reason I had stopped pestering my mum to invite him round. If he said one of those rude things to her, she might not want us to be friends any more. As it turned out I didn’t invite him anyway. He just told me that morning, “I’m coming round your house tonight.” When I nodded, he added, “For tea.”

I wanted to tell him it wasn’t kind to say the things he said, but if I did he might not like me anymore. I couldn’t risk losing the boy who held my hand as we sat on the carpet at nursery; the boy who had been sent to the Head Teacher for punching Billy Smith after Billy had taken a disliking to the fact I could read; and most importantly, the boy who had promised to be my best friend forever.

I knew there was something under that hard scrappy exterior. I had seen him tenderly and carefully stroking Bob’s shell when he thought nobody was looking. I had seen the corners of his mouth twitch into a half-smile that almost immediately changed into a defiant frown when Mrs. Peters chose him to collect in the books at the end of the lesson. There was something more than the strong, couldn’t-care-less little boy Felix wanted everyone to see. Something soft and kind. Something that was just Felix.

Faced with divided loyalties between two people I truly cared about, I compromised. “It’s rude to say fat. She’s just cuddly is all,” I told him.

He nodded. “I guess,” he said and let out a huge sigh. “I wish my mum was fat.” He carried on. “Your mum calls you Beanie,” he told me, as if I didn’t know that already. “Why does she call you Beanie? Your name’s Ben.”

“I suppose she just likes it.”

“Do you like it?” he asked me.

I thought about it. “Yeah,” I told him. “I really like it. Beanie sounds nice doesn’t it? Happy. Doesn’t your mum call you anything?”

He shrugged. “Felix,” he said. “Just Felix.”

Neither of us said anything for a few moments, until finally Felix spoke. “I want to call you Beanie,” he said.

“Well, I guess you can if you want.”

His serious face lit up, his features lifting into a bright smile. “Okay. What shall we do now?”

He wandered over to the bed and started pulling things out from under it. He grabbed the box for Twister. “I want to play this.”

“Okay,” I said. I loved playing Twister with Mum, and I had a feeling it would be even more fun with Felix.

He shook out the plastic mat. “How do you play?”

I stared at him. “You’ve never played Twister before? It’s awesome.”

“Nope.” He placed his feet wide apart— one foot on a red circle, one on green— then sprung forwards trying to reach the matching colours at the end of the mat. The force of his jump caused the mat to slip under his feet and he tumbled over, landing face first with a thud on the carpet. He shook his head, and peered at me through his messed up hair. His face broke into a massive grin. “Yeah, it is awesome!”

****

The sound of chatter in the classroom didn’t cover the piercing howl from Bob’s corner. Twenty-eight children turned in unison to see Felix hurl something into Bob’s tank and then race out of the room.

“Carry on with what you’re doing, children. I won’t be a moment,” Mrs. Peters told us calmly before following after him.

I had lost my usual enthusiasm for plumping beanbags, and instead stood in the Home Corner, listening carefully to the murmuring tone of Mrs. Peters from the corridor. She kept her voice calm and quiet and I couldn’t catch anything of what she was saying.

The quiet murmurs were suddenly punctuated by a sharp, “Fuck! Off!” from Felix and then a red-faced Mrs. Peters came back in and made her way over to the Home Corner.

“Ben?” she said. “Could you do a special job for me?”

I nodded, dropping my beanbag.

“I’d like you to speak to Felix. He’s very angry about something and he won’t talk to me. He only wants to talk to you. Would that be okay?” she asked.

“Yeah,” I told her. I would spend every living moment with Felix if I could, and the fact that he wanted only me made my chest swell with pride. I went out of the classroom to find him huddled under a small table in the corridor.

“Felix?”

He had his head buried in his knees, which were pulled tight to his chest. His whole body was shaking.

“Felix. Why are you crying?” I asked.

He lifted his head to look at me. He wiped the back of his arm across his teary face, leaving a streak of snot on the sleeve of his jumper. “I’m not crying.”

“Well, why are you sad then? What did you throw in Bob’s tank?”

His shoulders shuddered. “Bob.”

“You threw Bob?”

“He’s turned to goo.”

“Oh.”

“I didn’t kill him,” Felix told me. “They’re all going to say it was my fault. But it wasn’t. I looked after him.”

“I know you did,” I told him. “You talked to him.”

He peeked at me through red eyes. “I talked to him and he talked to me. He was my friend, and he just turned to goo. Now I haven’t got a friend.”

I sat down next to him. “I’m your friend, Felix,” I said. I put an arm around his shoulder. “I’m your best friend forever.”

“Promise?”

“I promise.”

“Promise you’ll be my best friend forever.”

“I promise.”

“You won’t leave me will you, Beanie?”

I figured he could feel the shake of my head.

“Promise?”

“I promise.”

“Beanie?”

“Yeah?”

“You won’t turn to goo will you?”

I grinned. “No.”

“Not ever?”

“Not ever.”

“Promise?”

I tightened my arms around him. “I promise.”

****

In all the years I knew him, I never went round to Felix’s house. He never invited me, and I never asked. I knew that Felix’s home life was nothing like mine, and I didn’t want to know about the ways it was different. Instead, I pretended his life outside of our friendship didn’t exist, and if truth be told I think he pretended that too.

“I’m bored; let’s do something.” Felix wandered over to my bed and started pulling things out from under it. My breath caught in my throat as his fingers reached the soft chiffon material of my harem outfit. If only I kept my room tidier, I might have stashed it away somewhere it couldn’t be found. “What’s this?” He stood up and held the trousers against him. The hem only reached his knees.

“It’s um…” My face reddened. I tried desperately to think of a good excuse for having a flouncy pair of harem pants under my bed, but found that I didn’t have many to choose from.

He snorted. “Oh my God, it’s a Princess Jasmine outfit! That is sooo gay!”

The remark stung, and I made a quick retort. “You had a Princess Jasmine lunch box.”

Felix shrugged. “Yeah, but that was years ago. And anyway, I didn’t choose it.”

“Who did then?”

“My dad. Said it suited a dirty little ponce like me.”

“Oh?”

“Yeah. I’m a dirty ponce. My mum’s a frigid bitch.”

My attitude softened a little. I didn’t even know what a “ponce” was and Mum had never explained the meaning of “frigid bitch” to me, but neither of them sounded very nice. “I don’t ever dress up in it any more. It’s just something I liked when I was little. See, it’s much too small for me.”

“Uh huh.”

When I looked at Felix, he was chewing his bottom lip while he stared at the harem pants. He blew out a decisive breath and then stepped into the leg holes, stooping to pull the pants up his legs. The outfit was tiny on his eight-year-old frame. “Is there a top?” he asked. “I want to wear the top too.”

“Oh. Um… well yeah, I think,” I said, as if I didn’t know. “I think it’s under the bed too.”

He’d already found it and had his arms lifted up high as he squeezed into it. His school jumper bulged out from the bottom of the cropped top. He spun round. “What do you think?”

I wasn’t sure what he wanted to hear, but I tried my best. “You look just like Princess Jasmine?”

“Good,” he said. “You’re Aladdin.” He pulled a T-shirt out of my top drawer and hurriedly wrapped it around my head to make a haphazard turban. When he stepped back to check his handiwork, he laughed. His eyes danced with mischief. This was the Felix nobody else saw. I had never felt so privileged.

“We need a magic carpet,” I told him.

“Yeah.” He was about to pull my duvet onto the floor when he caught sight of something under my bed. “There!” He said. He opened the box for Twister and shook out the plastic mat. “This is our magic carpet.”

It felt like time stood still as we played. Princess Jasmine and Aladdin. Felix and Beanie, in our own kingdom. The beautiful look of joy on Felix’s face suddenly gave me a crazy idea. I prayed for the wind to change. I wanted that beaming smile to stay there. So when to my surprise it did, I was so happy, I affectionately wrapped my arms around him, and pressed a soft kiss against his cheek.

Maybe the Twister mat did have magical powers that afternoon, because instead of pushing me away as he usually did, Felix simply returned the hug and whispered in my ear, “I feel like I’m really flying, Beanie.”

Sadly, the power of the magic carpet was short lived. After deciding that mere flying wasn’t any way near exciting enough, Felix grabbed the Twister mat and made his way hurriedly to the landing. “Come on,” he urged me.

Before I could stop him, he placed the mat at the top of the stairs and then launched himself off, expecting to glide gracefully down to the bottom. Instead he toppled forwards, bumping down with a thud for each of the seventeen steps.

My mum heard the noise from the lounge and came running out. “Oh my God, Felix, what were you thinking?” she cried.

“I’m okay,” Felix told her. “I’m fine.” He went to stand, the slight wince he gave totally out of proportion to the fact that his left arm hung down at a peculiar angle.

“You are not fine!” Mum reached for him to give him a cuddle just as she would have done with me, but he moved away. “Your arm’s broken. We need to take you to the hospital.”

Felix shrugged the best way he could with an arm broken in three places and reluctantly agreed to a trip to A&E. While we waited there, Mum left us together at the x-ray department so she could call his mum. Felix and I didn’t say a word to each other. I was scared to open my mouth in case the sobs that had collected in my throat slipped out. Instead we sat side by side on those hard plastic chairs, me in my school uniform, Felix in that ill-fitting harem outfit, and when my hand and his good hand touched, I curled my fingertips around his and gave them a gentle squeeze.

When Mum came back she looked angry but she turned to Felix and gave him the best smile she could. “Felix sweetie, Mum’s a bit busy.”

Felix bit his bottom lip, and then said, “And Dad, is he a bit busy too?”

The fake smile disappeared from Mum’s face. “I suppose so. It’s fine though; you can stay round ours tonight. I’ll make you something nice for tea. What’s your favourite?”

He looked at me.

“Spagbol?” I suggested and he nodded.

“Okay,” Mum said. “Spagbol it is!”

Even though we didn’t arrive home until late, Mum was true to her word. She cooked a beautiful spagbol for us which she followed up with a couple of syrup puddings hastily heated in the microwave. At night time, she put out the camp bed in my room, giving me the instruction that I was to sleep in it, while Felix could sleep in my much larger and more comfortable double bed.

Even though he had insisted he didn’t need them, he had been given strong painkillers at the hospital, and he drifted off to sleep almost immediately. I did too, exhausted by the distressing events of the day.

In the middle of the night, I woke to hear a muffled sound.

“Felix?” I whispered.

The noise stopped on a sniffle.

“Fee, are you okay?” I asked. “Do you want me to get my mum?”

His voice was quiet and scratchy in the dark room. “I’m fine,” he said. “I’m just cold.”

I reached over, and touched his arm. His skin was freezing, dotted with goose pimples. I got up from my bed and slid under the covers next to him, curling myself around his trembling body as best I could without moving his plastered arm. We lay like that for a long while until finally his shivering subsided.

“Beanie?” he whispered.

“Yeah?”

“Sometimes it really hurts.”

I gently kissed his forehead. I knew he didn’t mean his arm.

****

For years after, even in the height of summer, Felix would complain of being cold every time he slept round at my house. Ever since the night of the broken arm, he had claimed my double bed as his, but it never took long before I climbed in beside him to warm him up. For a long while it was simply fun to have Felix sharing my bed. I would whisper silly words to him in the night, my pathetic attempts getting ruder and ruder— and more ridiculous sounding— just trying to get him to crack a smile. Although Felix most certainly had a much filthier vocabulary than I did, most of the time it worked, and the mattress would vibrate with our giggles until eventually our snorts would die out and we would drift off to sleep, our stomachs aching from shaking so hard with laughter.

If I wasn’t successful in achieving my aim, I would resort to tickling him, poking my wriggling fingers into his armpits or against the susceptible spot I had found at the backs of his knees. He would squirm away, swatting at my hands and swearing at me, although I noticed that he never objected enough to escape and reach the easy refuge of the camp bed.

Although Felix never initiated physical contact, on occasion I would find that in the night— especially the genuinely cold ones— sometimes we would end up pressed together like spoons, my arms wrapped around him, holding him close to my body. His hands would clasp mine, as if urging me not to let him pull away.

As we got older, things changed and I couldn’t work out if it was for the better or not. I started to notice things about Felix I had never taken much note of before— the way his body had filled out, his broad shoulders emphasising his still lanky but now more sinewy frame. Felix could never be described as muscular, but I still admired the strength in his body. Felix had a toughness about him that couldn’t be achieved by weight training and protein shakes.

By this time, sleeping in the same bed as Felix was no longer silly and fun, it was both scary and at the same time breathtakingly thrilling. I loved to feel his body against mine, the rough dark hair on his legs prickling my skin. I always got hard. At first I tried to justify it to myself as just a natural response to another human being in my bed, teamed with the copious amounts of hormones zipping through my body. The undeniable thrill that ran through me when Felix snuggled back with a sigh, my boner jutting into his back soon put paid to that theory.

I would sometimes dare myself to move my hand to his crotch to see if— as I suspected— he was hard too, but I was never quite brave enough so instead I settled with nuzzling into his neck, dotting small kisses onto the warm skin there. I actually felt that was almost as daring.

It carried on until one petrifying occasion when we woke in the night, tangled together, both of us sticky and shaky, but neither of us able to find the words to acknowledge what had happened. I felt utterly compelled to crush my mouth to his, to feel his lips part and for us to have more than those silly little kisses, but instead we both rolled away, trying to calm our unsteady breaths. I lay awake until early morning, miserably holding my damp shorts away from my skin.

****

Felix stretched out on my bed, and chucked his book down on the floor. It landed with a heavy thud. “I’m sick of studying,” he told me. “I wanna do something else.”

“Like what?” I asked. “Xbox?”

“Nah, it’s boring,” he told me. I wondered why he had never found it boring the thousands of times we had played on it before. “I wanna do something fun.”

He leant over and started to pull out the stuff from under the bed, dismissing things as quickly as he found them. It was like he was looking for something in particular. He grabbed the box for Twister. “Do you remember when we used to play this?” He turned to me and I couldn’t miss the wicked grin on his face.

“Uh huh.”

He laid the mat on the floor and looked at me expectantly. “Go on then.”

“You want to play Twister?”

“That’s why I got it out, duh!”

“Really?”

He spun the pointer. “You start. Right hand yellow.”

I could think of worse ways to spend an afternoon than tangled together with Felix, so I obediently bent down and placed my right hand on one of the yellow dots.

“Okay, me now.” He spun again. “Left foot blue.”

He carried on spinning the pointer, reading out directions for both of us. “Right foot green… right hand yellow… left hand green…” After about ten games we were both breathless with the exertion of changing position and keeping ourselves from falling down. Each game we played brought us closer together physically until at last I was so close to Felix I could smell the fragrance of shower gel on his lightly sweating skin. “Left hand yellow,” Felix announced, moving his body over me. I inhaled deeply but as quietly as I could, trying to get more of Felix, and predictably, my body reacted. I got hard, my trousers tightening around my groin.

“Left foot green.” An intense thrill ran through me as Felix’s lower body brushed mine. He was hard too. My arms trembled as I tried to keep going. I didn’t want this game to ever stop. He was crouching above me, while I pushed my body into a crab shape, holding my position on shaking limbs. If only the pointer would land on “Right hand red,” it would push him to a place where he would be stretched out so far he wouldn’t be able to stop himself rubbing right against me. I repeated it over and over in my head like a prayer. “Right hand red, right hand red, right hand red…”

Felix spun the pointer.

“Right hand red, right hand red… please, please, right hand red…”

I cautiously flicked my eyes towards the pointer board, trying to get a glimpse of the result. Left foot green. My arms sagged under the weight of my disappointment.

“Right hand red,” Felix declared.

“Huh?”

He reached over me and stretched out his fingertips towards the furthest red dot, the tip of his erection rubbing mine again. The shock of that touch broke me. I collapsed back onto the mat, bringing an unsteady Felix down with me. I lay there dazed for a moment. The only thing I was conscious of was our laboured breathing and the way Felix’s weight pressed down on me. I opened my eyes to find him staring into them, his own eyes intensely dark, and his pupils wide. His tongue darted out and moistened his lips. They were beautiful, so inviting I couldn’t resist tilting my face upwards to kiss them.

He responded with a soft groan as he returned the kiss. At first it was sensual and sweet, just the slightest taste of the Coke we’d been drinking shared between us. He pressed forward, his body pinning me down as his tongue pushed into my mouth. I opened to him, our wet tongues sliding against each other.

He reached for my hands by my side, and threaded his fingers through mine. Every place our bodies touched sent electric tingles shooting through my body. He rolled his hips against me, all the while his mouth crushed to mine, our tongues licking and teasing each other.

“Ben!” Mum’s voice carried up the stairs.

We shared a stifled moan of frustration and then Felix broke away from me, his breathing ragged.

“Ben! Felix! Dinner,” Mum called again.

Felix went to stand. He was trembling. “Fuck!” he said.

I grabbed his hand and held it tight. “It’s okay,” I told him. “Later, yeah?”

He nodded. “Yeah.”

That night we both hurriedly changed for bed, neither of us making any attempt to conceal our tented shorts. Instead of climbing into the camp bed to later transfer to the double, I simply got straight in next to him. My heart raced as I looked into dark eyes that stared back at me. He was daring me to carry things on. Or was he urging me to push things further, to reach their logical conclusion?

I longed to kiss him, to feel those soft lips again, but when I attempted to carry on where we had left off, he disappointed me, turning his head to the side. I gasped out a huff of exasperation, but my disappointment was short lived. Felix grabbed my hand and held it forcefully to his crotch. His arm wrapped around me, pulling me into a fierce hug. He whispered in my ear, “Please, Beanie.” I had never heard him say please before. I didn’t need to be asked twice.

He didn’t look at me again until it was all over— it was like he just shut off in some way. His eyes squeezed closed and although he bit down on his lower lip, it wasn’t enough to conceal the way his breaths quickened to raspy gasps as he bucked under my hands. I was delighted to see the blotchy flush that crept across his chest and up his neck, spreading rapidly like ink on paper, but then he let out a strangled groan and tried frantically to pull away from me. “Beanie, stop—” he choked, twisting away, but it was too late. His hips jolted and his whole body convulsed as he came. I didn’t let go, just carried on stroking him until he grabbed my wet hand and pushed it away from him.

When he finally opened his eyes and stared down at the mess on his chest, a harsh laugh burst out of him. “I guess my dad was right. I am a dirty little ponce,” he said.

I was hurt. I couldn’t believe that he had tried to deny us that perfect moment. It didn’t matter that his body hadn’t let him. His actions had cheapened what we had done together, as if it was something to be ashamed of.

He didn’t realise that everything about it was beautiful. Everything about Felix was beautiful— it always had been, but he just didn’t see it. I looked at his flushed face and the way the sweat on his neck had teased his hair into damp curls against the pillow. How could he see anything about himself as dirty or wrong?

He closed his eyes again, and I kissed each of his eyelids. “Don’t ever talk like that,” I told him. “That was amazing. You’re amazing.”

He shook his head.

“Look at me.”

His eyes flickered open.

And then I told him what I’d known from the day I comforted him under the table in nursery. “I love you.”

His lips turned up in a sad smile. “It’s just me and you isn’t it?”

I nodded because I knew exactly what he meant. At that moment the world only revolved around us. Felix and Beanie in our own magical kingdom.

“Beanie?”

“Yeah?”

“Promise you’ll never leave me.”

“I already promised you that,” I told him. “Remember?”

“Promise me again,” he said.

I laid my hand over his heart, not caring that my fingers rested in the cum on his chest. “I promise I’ll never leave you.”

And that time when I brushed my lips against his, he let me kiss him.

****

After that night, I would often wonder if my mum realised why Felix and I rushed to get the chores done after dinner. If she did, she never said anything. As soon as the last spoonful of pudding had been eaten, Felix would stand up, and without saying a word would start scraping the plates and bowls, before obediently taking them into the kitchen to wash up. I always offered to dry and put away, not just because the task would be done sooner but also because I loved to stand next to him at the sink, our arms brushing together lightly as we worked.

I tried to ensure what we did together wasn’t tinged in shame like it had been for Felix that first time. I wanted him to know it was never just about getting off; that it was about me and him and how we felt about each other. Sometimes boys at school would brag about what they did with their girlfriends. It was all “wanking off” and “blow jobs” and “fucking”. I felt sorry for them. When they talked like that, I would try to catch Felix’s eye. I wanted to reassure him, to give him a look that told him that what they boasted about was nothing, nothing to what we had together.

If it could be called that, our foreplay would last all day, little looks and touches that told Felix I loved him, that it was just me and him forever and that I’d never break the promise I made to him that day under the table.

The times we were lucky enough for my mum to leave us on our own while we ate, I also made new silent promises to him under the dinner table, running my socked foot up and down his. Sometimes I was particularly daring, rubbing up his calves, and then between his thighs until his sharp intake of breath indicated that I had reached my target. Very deliberately he would put down his fork, and flick his eyes up to meet mine, a strong blush across his nose and cheeks. He would smile at me, that secret smile only I knew, and I would grin back, knowing that when he changed for bed that night, his boxers would show up damp at the front, because of me.

I learnt easily how to use my hands— and later my mouth— deftly to have Felix shaking with need, bent almost double as he chased that moment where his whole world was absorbed into a pulsing chasm of mind-blowing sensation. I was honoured that he trusted me enough to let me share that most vulnerable moment with him. He was so exposed; the only time when nothing was hidden behind bravado or angry words or defiant frowns. He was just Felix, nothing more, and I loved him for it.

I was delighted to find that he was just as enthusiastic about exploring my body as I was his. I loved to see the wide-eyed look of pride on his face as I responded to his first tentative touches. He seemed astonished to find that he could affect anyone in such a way. The feeling of closeness it brought was almost unbearable; an intense rush of pure love pulsing through me. And the first time I tasted my own semen on his lips as I kissed him, my heart pounded so hard, I felt like it might burst.

****

When I had a visit day at my university campus I asked Felix to come with me. I wanted him to know that even if our lives took different paths, it wouldn’t change anything between us. He would still be as big a part of my life as he always had been.

“So, what do you think?” I asked him.

He shrugged. “Looks good.”

“Just good?”

We wandered across the lawn area towards the vast library building, the sun glinting on its windows. He shrugged again. “Nah, it’s cool.”

“It’s frikkin’ amazing more like,” I told him. “Just think about it. It’s only down the road, I’ll have my own room, and you can stay over every weekend, no one around to care what we’re doing.”

“It’s a bit further than just down the road,” he told me.

“What, forty minutes on the train? That’s nothing.”

I got the sense that it wasn’t nothing to Felix, but I was so caught up in my excitement I didn’t ask him why.

“Best of all, no one cares here. About us. It’s not like school.”

“You reckon?”

“Look.” We stopped walking and I grabbed his hand, threading our fingers together.

“What you doing?” He tried to pull away, but I held on tight. Two young girls walked past us, chatting, paying no attention to our joined hands.

“See?”

“Maybe,” he said. “I dunno.” His shoulders sloped in a nonchalant slouch, but then his face broke into a grin. “Do you think anyone would notice me going down on you, right here?”

I sniggered. “In the middle of the campus? That might be pushing it a bit.”

“Come on,” he said. “Let’s go somewhere else.”

We changed direction and headed towards a wooded area on the outskirts of the campus. Finding a gap in the fencing, we made our way through the maze of trees. Dappled sunlight shone through them, casting a peaceful glow over the fallen leaves on the ground. There was no sound other than the occasional chirp of birds. The whole place had that feel of summer stillness, as if the world had settled on that beautiful day and had simply stopped turning.

We sat on the ground, our backs against a large tree stump and kissed. I knew I’d never get tired of the feel of Felix’s lips on mine. I loved everything about it; how his mouth felt so soft even though he always had that hard look about him; the easy slide of his tongue in my mouth as it licked, caressed and probed in a way that made me breathless; the minute sounds in his throat that vibrated through me; the knowledge that even without me meaning to those same sounds escaped my throat too.

We rolled onto the ground, and he pressed against me, the weight of his erection prodding my belly. His breath felt hot and damp on my ear as he murmured, “How about here for me going down on you?”

I bit down on my lip and whimpered approval, although he was already sliding down my body, his warm hands brushing the skin under my T-shirt. As his fingers fumbled with the fly of my jeans, I dropped my head back onto the bed of leaves and twigs, and stared at the canopy of trees above us. The branches overhead formed a secret den for us where only Felix, me, and the glorious sliding of his hands and mouth existed. Even though Felix was unusually gentle in his ministrations, I came quickly and powerfully, pushing my cock hard into the back of his throat.

He had unbuckled his own jeans as he worked on me, and he rose to a kneeling position, his briefs hooked under his tightened balls. I pulled myself up to sit, wet and breathless from my own climax, and guided his rigid cock between my lips. He must have already been nearly there, because just the warmth of my mouth was enough to trigger him. His hips immediately jerked forwards and he came hard and unrelentingly, the tangy taste flooding my throat. He threaded his fingers through my hair, lightly holding my head as he shuddered through his aftershocks until he was completely spent. Eventually, he slid his cock from my mouth. “Jesus Christ,” he panted. “I think my brain just exploded.”

“Yeah.” I smiled dreamily.

We tucked ourselves back into our jeans, and he crawled over me, planting a weary kiss against my ear before settling his head on my chest. We lay like that for a long while, our breaths gradually becoming more even.

“Beanie?”

“Yeah?”

“I don’t want you to go. I don’t want you to leave me.”

I stroked gently at his hair. “I’m not leaving you,” I told him. “That’s why I chose this place. I won’t be far away. We’ll be able to talk to each other all the time anyway.” I nudged him on the shoulder. “And there’s always web-cam fun.”

“S’pose.” He paused before he carried on. “But, I don’t want it to change. I want it to be like this forever. Just you and me. Nothing else.”

“Fee, life’s not like that.” I immediately felt stupid and angry with myself for having the cheek to tell Felix what life was like, when he knew much more about it than I did.

“You’ll find new people. New friends.”

“Well, yeah, I hope so, but that doesn’t change anything about us. You’ll make friends in your new job too.”

“I don’t want to,” he said. “I don’t need anybody else.”

I leant forward and kissed his forehead. “Fee, promise me something?”

“What?”

“If things at home… if things at home get… I don’t know… if they get difficult, then promise me you’ll come here. Or if you can’t get here, then go to mine. You know how much my mum cares about you.” I winced after I said it. Someone else’s mum cared more about him than his own did. I’d never spoken to him before like that, but I needed to throw him a lifeline. Moving away didn’t mean I was taking away his only place of safety.

His hands balled into fists, and I was scared I’d done the wrong thing, to question the quality of the life he shared with his family. “Sorry,” I told him. “I just wanted you to know that I’m here. And my mum. We’ll always be here for you.”

“It’s okay,” he said. “I’m gonna get out soon anyway. I’ve been looking at places to rent.”

“Hey,” I jiggled my legs under him. “That’s great. Why didn’t you tell me?”

“I dunno. I guess I wanted to get something sorted first. I can’t afford much, but I’ll get something.”

“Cool, so we’ll have even more places where we can be alone together.”

“Yeah.” He smiled up at me. “Do you remember our first kiss?”

“Of course I do. On the Twister mat.”

“Yeah.”

I raised an eyebrow at him. “And I remember what happened after.”

“I broke my bloody arm.”

I couldn’t help laughing. “Not that time, you didn’t. We did something much more fun than that.”

He stared at me, his eyes wide with confusion. “The day we had our first kiss on the Twister mat was the day I broke my arm.”

“When you broke your arm we were like eight years old!”

“Uh huh. And you kissed me.”

It had never occurred to me that he would count a silly little peck like that as our first kiss. It was just a simple gesture of affection, but maybe it was significant to him because it was the first he had ever had.

Gradually, his breathing became slower, and I stroked my hand lightly up and down his back as he slept, only waking him when the shards of sunlight no longer warmed us through the trees.

****

“I got it!” he told me. There was no missing the excitement in his voice.

“Hey, that’s great, when you moving in?”

“I’m here. I’m here right now.”

“Jesus Christ, you don’t hang around, do you?”

“Nah, well, I didn’t have that much stuff to bring, and they called me and said I could have it and I already had the deposit sorted and everything so…” The words came tumbling out. I had never heard him so animated. Just imagining the grin on his face made mine break into a matching one.

“What’s it like?”

“It’s cool. I mean, it’s only one room, and it’s a really old place, and you know, it’s gonna be fucking freezing in winter but I don’t give a shit. It’s mine.”

“That’s brilliant. I’m so proud of you. What are the other people like? They okay?”

“I dunno,” he said. “They seem okay. I mean as long as they’re not serial killers or anything, and even if they are, I don’t care. You’ll have to check them out, see what you reckon. When you coming round?”

I looked over at my desk at the house-warming gift I had bought for him. I couldn’t wait to give it to him, but I had shedloads of work to do. “Well, I should be able to get round Saturday.”

“Saturday?” His voice cracked around the word. I hated disappointing him like that.

“I wish I could come sooner but I just can’t. I’ve got so much work to do. I’ve got like three essays due in next week.”

“I really wanted you to come round. I want you to see my place.”

“I wanna see your place too. But it’s only a few days.”

Stupidly I tried to placate him. “Hey, I got you a present.”

“Oh, okay.” He didn’t seem to care. “I wish you could come round now, Bea. I want you to see it. I don’t want to be on my own.”

“I’m sorry.”

“I know,” he said. “I just… it’s okay… You’ll stay round Saturday though, won’t you?”

“Just try and stop me.”

His voice brightened a little. “Cool. And you’ll come round first thing, yeah?”

“Relax,” I said. “I’ll even get up early for you.”

“How early?”

“Really fucking early, okay?” I laughed and I was glad to hear him laugh too.

“I love you, Fee.”

“Okay,” he said. There was a really long pause. “Bea?”

“Yeah?”

“I love you too.”

As soon as our call ended I packed a bag. Those words changed everything. Felix had never said them to me before, and if he had the courage to do something so difficult for him, then I could take a few days out from my work to go and see him. I could catch up on my essays after the weekend. They could wait; Felix couldn’t. I chucked some clothes into my holdall, and grabbed his house-warming gift. I wanted to wrap it up, to make it look special, but I figured I could drop in at Mum’s and get some wrapping paper there. There was something I needed to collect from home anyway. Mum might be disappointed that I wasn’t staying with her for long but I knew she’d understand. She loved Felix too.

As it was, she insisted on giving me a lift round to his new address, a large tatty-looking Victorian house, with peeling paintwork and grubby curtains at the windows.

A hairy, barefooted guy answered the door. His scruffy, unkempt appearance made it difficult to guess his age. I placed him at around thirty, but he could have been ten years either side of that. He smiled at me through his thick beard. “Hi.”

“Oh hi, I’m here to see Felix?”

“Oh right, yeah, the new guy. Yeah, his room’s just up the stairs.” He peered at me. “You must be the boyfriend then?”

A blush fired up my neck. I couldn’t believe Felix had mentioned he had a boyfriend.

“Beanie, yeah?” the guy said.

I nodded. “Well, Ben…” I told him. “Most people call me Ben.”

He opened the door wide and stepped back to let me in. “Welcome Ben,” he said in just about the most laid-back tone imaginable. “Up the stairs, first right.”

I hefted the box I was carrying under one arm and waved goodbye to my mum.

The whole place smelt of damp, but oddly it was quite comforting. A bit like an old holiday cottage that had been closed up for the winter and needed a good airing to kick some life back into it. I made my way up the threadbare carpet to the top of the stairs and knocked on the door there.

“Yeah?” came the yelled reply.

“It’s me.”

There was a shuffling noise, and the door was flung open. “Bea! What the fuck?”

I nearly dropped the box I was carrying as he lunged for me, crushing a hot kiss to my lips while pulling me into the room and slamming the door behind us.

“What the fuck?” he repeated. “I thought you weren’t coming till Saturday.”

I grinned at him. “I wanted to see you. I needed to see you. It couldn’t wait.”

“Oh my God!” He landed another peck on my lips, and then stood back to stare at me as if he wasn’t sure I was really there. Eventually, he seemed to accept it, and he gestured around the room. “Sooo, what do you think?”

The room was as much in need of some TLC as the rest of the house, but it didn’t matter. The beaming smile that lit up Felix’s face was all I needed to know about what the place meant to him.

“It’s great. Really. It’s awesome.”

“Yeah. Shit, it’s all mine.” He looked from the box I was carrying to the holdall slung over my shoulder. “You’re staying the night, aren’t you?”

“I thought I’d stay a few days, go back Sunday. Is that okay?”

“Yeah, I just can’t fucking believe it. I can’t fucking believe you’re here.”

My arm ached from the awkward weight of the box under my arm. “Here,” I told him. “I got you a present. A little house-warming gift.”

He took it from me and held it up, trying to see through the thin paper. “Can I shake it?”

“No! No way. Put it down somewhere safe before you open it.”

“Oh, is it breakable?”

“Kind of,” I told him. “Just open it and see.”

He put it down carefully on a small table, and slid his fingers under the sticky tape, before folding back the wrapping paper. His mouth gaped open.

“Do you like it?”

When he turned to me, his eyes were bright with tears. “Bea, I love it.” His voice sounded funny.

“I thought he could be here for you. A friend. You know, when I can’t be here in person.”

He lifted off the plastic lid and gently reached into the container. He cradled the snail in his hands and lifted it to his face just as he had done all those years ago. “What we gonna call you, mate?” he whispered.

“You could call him Bob?” I suggested, but Felix shook his head.

“Nah, too many memories. Don’t worry little mate, we’ll think of something good.” He placed the snail back onto the piece of lettuce in the tank. He tenderly stroked its shell before replacing the lid, and then he washed his hands and shook them off at the sink without looking at me. When he rubbed his hands down the front of his jeans, I noticed they were trembling. He swallowed down a gulp, then turned to look at me, his dark eyes wet and shiny. He looked so fragile, like he might just crumple and disintegrate into nothing. “Thank you,” he said, and then he leant in and kissed me. He barely moved, the kiss was just a whisper of breath on my lips but it broke me. I closed the distance between us, holding him so tightly to me I could feel the soft thud of his heart against mine.

Eventually, I pulled away. “Come on,” I said. “I’ve got something else for you.” I unzipped my holdall and gave him the box I’d collected from Mum’s house.

He laughed, shaking his head. “I can’t frikkin’ believe you brought Twister round.”

I arranged my features into an indignant frown. “It’s not Twister.”

“Kind of looks like Twister to me.”

“Well, it’s not.”

“Shit, there’s not another snail in there is there?”

I snorted. “Well, why don’t you open it and find out?”

“All right, I will!” He pulled the lid off the box. “It is Twister, you liar!”

“Uh uh.” I shook the plastic mat onto the floor. I meant, it’s not just Twister. It’s something else. “This, my friend…” I swept my arm across in a dramatic gesture, “this is a magic carpet. Our magic carpet.” I sat down on the mat, and reached my hand out to his. “Come for a ride, Aladdin.”

He slid down next to me, a beaming smile on his face. “Can I ask you a favour?” he asked.

“Anything you wish, my prince.”

“Can you be Aladdin too? I kind of always fancied him more than Jasmine.”

“As you wish.”

He nudged me gently in the stomach. “Can you do me another favour?”

“Uh huh.”

“Can you wear a turban? It’d really turn me on.”

I laughed. “Of course. We should both wear a turban.”

“What I meant was…” He cupped his mouth with the pretence of whispering his next words. “Just a turban.”

“So did I.” I grabbed the hem of my T-shirt and pulled it over my head, dropping it onto the floor. We both quickly stripped down to our underwear. I couldn’t take my eyes off him he was so beautiful. Sure he was skinny, probably a bit too skinny for his own good, but he still had that strength to him, a strength only achieved from a few knock backs in life. My eyes wandered over his olive skin, from the jut of his collarbone to his ribs to his stomach. The thin line of hair at his belly button thickened as it trailed downwards. The dark hair there peeked out from the waistband of his briefs, held away from his skin by a powerful erection. He ran his hand over the damp material at the front of his briefs, and took a deep breath.

“You okay?” I asked, and he nodded, staring at me with wide eyes.

“Where’s your turban?”

I reached for the T-shirt I had discarded on the floor, but he grabbed my hand. “Nope.” He hooked his fingers into the sides of his briefs and wriggled them carefully past his engorged dick, down his thighs and eventually off his feet. There was a glint of mischief in his eyes as he arranged them on my head. One side flopped over my right eye and we both giggled.

I shucked off my boxers too and did the same for him. I leant back to admire my creative vision. “Very nice. You look very Aladdiny.”

We kissed then. Slow, sensual kisses, kneeling up, chest to chest, our dicks pressing against each other’s bellies. Eventually, Felix broke his mouth away from mine to spit on his hand before enclosing it around our cocks, stroking slowly, sending shivers running through my body that had nothing to do with the cold air in the room on my naked flesh.

When he let go of his own cock, it pinged back against his stomach, and then he concentrated on just mine, sensuously sliding my foreskin up and down over the swollen head. His rhythm increased in speed, leading me close to bursting, but when he rubbed gently at the sensitive spot under the glans that he knew drove me wild, I steadied his hand. “Fee, stop,” I choked out.

He did as I asked, and pressed a soft, wet kiss to my ear. “Turn around,” he said.

I knew what he wanted and I turned away, squatting in front of him on the Twister mat.

He swiped both our “turbans” from our heads and threw them down where they lay twisted on the floor. Gently, he dotted warm kisses on the back of my neck. “You used to do this to me,” he murmured. “Do you remember?”

Of course I remembered. I could never forget those kisses I had dared to nuzzle into his flesh as we lay there, two boys entwined in bed together.

I felt the brush of his cock between my arse cheeks and I leant forward, wanting more. We sometimes did this. He would slick us both with lube and then rub the fat head of his cock against my hole, sending sparks of desire pulsing through my body. I did the same to him too. We knew that neither of us was quite ready for that final stage yet, but to get so close was still mind-blowing. The trust involved in being there pressed against him, fighting the aching need to push in and make us as close as we could possibly be, deepened the bond between us. But this time we both needed more.

“I want us to—”

“I know,” I said. “Me too.”

“Bea?” He leaned in, one hand on my shoulder, and brushed a sloppy kiss to my lips. “I want to… can we… um?”

I twisted my head to look at him and was surprised to see such a strong blush across his nose and cheeks. It startled me that he could be bashful about anything while his cock was wedged against my arse. I frowned. “What, what is it?”

His shoulders shrugged upwards. “Can we do it so… so you’re… you know… in me?”

My cock twitched, and a quiet moan escaped my lips. There was nothing I wanted more.

“Jeez, you don’t have to be embarrassed of asking for that. I mean, I want it too.” I reached a hand round to gently stroke his hair. “We’ve got all the time in the world. We can try whatever we want, however we want.”

“Okay. I just… I don’t know. I felt a bit funny asking for it.”

“It’s only me, Fee.” I enclosed my fingers around his, squeezing them tight, trying to reassure him that anything between us was all right. “Have you got some lube?” I asked.

He patted my shoulder lightly and rose to his feet to rummage in the wash bag by the sink. The tube he threw over rolled onto the Twister mat in front of me. I uncapped it and squeezed a large amount of the slick liquid into the palm of my hand and used it to coat my dick.

“Fee?”

“Yeah?”

“How do you think we should do this?” I asked him, and he shrugged before kneeling down on the mat.

He twisted to see me over his shoulder. “Like this?”

“Okay.” His flesh was covered in goose pimples and he was shivering a little. Just like all those other times, I wanted to warm him, to comfort him, so I stroked my hands slowly up and down his bony spine. Eventually, my fingers stopped just at that tantalising crease of his arse. I didn’t know why I felt so nervous, we often touched each other like this.

I knew how crazy it made him when I was sucking him and I pushed my fingers into his hole, angling them forwards at just the right moment. His whole body would jerk uncontrollably, his hand clamped over his mouth to muffle the loud sounds he made as his orgasm ripped through him. But this time was different. I was scared of hurting him. I consoled myself that if Felix could break an arm in three places without uttering so much as a whimper, I probably wasn’t so hugely endowed I could do that much damage.

I squeezed some more lube onto my fingers and then slipped them into his crease, caressing gently around his hole with a soft circular motion.

He let out a sound somewhere between a groan and a sigh, and reached behind him to pull his cheeks apart, exposing his tight opening fully to me. I pushed in lightly, feeling the grasp of his ring on my finger. “Jeez, that feels good,” he moaned. “Give me more.”

I added another finger, sliding them backwards and forwards, feeling the muscles in his body yield slightly as I did so. Every so often, the pads of my fingers caught a place that made him thrust forward on a grunt, pushing the head of his dick hard through the circle he made with his fist.

“Oh God, you’d better stop doing that before I…” I pressed again, and he let out another unrestrained grunt. He wriggled back, squirming about on my fingers. “Fuck, I mean it Bea. Stick your cock in me. I wanna feel it.”

I withdrew my fingers and clasped my swollen dick, rubbing the glans hard against his opened hole. The pressure was intense as I tried to nudge in. At first I thought the muscles there wouldn’t give. I backed off a little and then tried again, and finally, his body softened enough to allow just the head of my cock to slide in.

I looked down at where we were joined. Just the tip of my penis was inside him, his entrance stretched around it. His thighs were shuddering, sending vibrations through my body. “Oh my God, that looks fucking amazing.”

His shoulders bunched up.

“Shit, are you okay?” I asked.

“I’m fine,” he said immediately, although it sounded like the words came through clenched teeth. He moved one of his hands to his groin and I could see from the way his arm flexed, he was slowly stroking himself.

I ran my hands gently over his buttocks, trying to soothe him. “What do you want me to do?” I asked. “I’m not really in yet.”

“Just do it,” he urged. “Please.”

I moved forwards again, pushing gradually into his tight heat, until my pubes were right up against his backside.

For a second I thought I was going to come before we’d even really got started. Being surrounded by him, being inside him, was enough to make my aching balls tighten and my hips buck. I pulled back a little trying to take the edge off. Gripping the base of my cock, I took in deep breaths through my mouth.

“What?” he asked, turning his head to look at me over his shoulder. “What happened there?”

I took a few more panting breaths, in the hope of calming the frantic heartbeat pounding in my chest. A nervous giggle burst out of me. “Fuck Fee, I nearly came, just like that.”

“Why didn’t you?” he asked. “I want you to come. I want you to come inside me.”

“Yeah, I do too, but it would be nice to last longer than two seconds.”

“Well, that might be twice as long as I manage,” he laughed. “My dick is so fucking rock hard I think it’s going to explode. Seriously, it’s never felt like this before.”

As I pushed slowly back into him he reached for my hand and led it to his crotch, enclosing both our hands around his dick. “See?”

He was right. It was like granite under the warm, smooth skin. I gripped his shaft and eased his foreskin up and then back down again. Precum coated my fingers. He was steadily leaking it, a thin thread trailing down and pooling onto the Twister mat below.

I started an even rhythm, keeping my thrusts as gentle and shallow as I could manage, but it took very little before the need to come rolled over me again. I dropped my chest down to cover his clammy back, desperately needing the skin contact it gave us. I rolled my hips a few times but I couldn’t cope with any more. I wrapped my arms around him and forced myself as deep inside as possible. My whole world stilled as the tsunami overtook me, rushing through my body and spilling into him in wave after wave of pleasure.

I clung on for a long while after, my mouth pressed to the back of his neck, the ragged breaths that escaped it eventually turning into lazy kisses. Finally, I found the strength to lift myself up on my arms. I pulled out of him and gazed in awe at the thin trickle of cum that slipped out and glistened on his inner thigh. “Jesus Christ, that was the most intense experience of my whole life,” I said, finding to my embarrassment that my throat was choked with tears. I gently patted one of his buttocks. “You okay?” I asked.

“Yeah.”

“Did you come?” I asked.

He turned over and lay back on the mat, a smile on his face so wicked he looked like he had come ten times over, but his long dick stuck out from his body, still fully erect.

I reached a hand down and cupped his tightened sac, then ducked down, angling his cock between my lips. I shifted my fingers behind his balls, and pressed lightly against his wet hole, before sliding a finger in. He let out a groan, and then his hips jolted forwards, flooding my throat with the sweet taste of his spunk.

I crawled up his body to kiss him. “Was that all right?” I asked.

“It was amazing.” He squeezed me really tight.

“I love you, Fee.” I said. “I’ve always loved you.”

He reached over to the bed beside us and pulled the duvet from it. He arranged it over us, and snuggled in next to me. “I love you too.”

My eyelids became heavy, but I tried to fight the almost unbearable urge to sleep. I wanted to tell him something before we both drifted off.

“Fee?”

“Yeah?”

“You know that time at nursery? Under the table?”

“Uh huh.”

“I lied to you.”

He looked at me, his pupils wide in the darkness of the room. “When you promised me you’d never leave me?” His voice was very quiet.

“No. That wasn’t a lie. I’ll never leave you. Never. There was something else.”

I smoothed my finger along the little line on his brow, where it had furrowed into a frown.

“That you’d be my best friend forever?”

“Nope, that wasn’t a lie either.”

I raised a hand and touched the strands of his hair.

The frown line grew deeper. “I don’t get it. That was all you promised me.”

“There was something else,” I said.

He shook his head. “I give up.”

“I promised you I wouldn’t turn to goo,” I said with a grin.

He laughed, a soft laugh that vibrated through my body. “And?”

“And…” I lifted my head and pressed a gentle kiss to his lips. “I think I just did.”

THE END

Author Bio

Danni Keane lives in the depths of English suburbia, where she likes to divide her time equally between writing, daydreaming and napping.

Having never really grown up, Danni fits right in at her day job, working with children. She spends her days avidly listening to the whimsical imaginings of five-year-olds, and then rushes home to shamelessly plagiarise their ideas. However, she has yet to write a story about an exploding ghost banana. Maybe one day…

She loves all different types of stories, but her favourite characters usually have one thing in common: they are ordinary people with extraordinary dreams.

Contact & Media Info

Danni Keane loves to hear from readers, and can be contacted at Goodreads.