Junction X Erastes (best motivational books of all time TXT) 📖

up, wiping his mouth with an urchin smile that verged on the smug. I pulled him to me and shared my plan with him.

“I can do both, I think,” he said. “Let me see what I can work out.”

“You’ve got the keys safe?”

“Of course. Of course.”

“I’d better go.” I wanted to ask him the one thing that I never ever asked him. Why. Some questions never want to be asked. Some questions are too frightened of their own answers.

+ + +

And then there I was, closing the curtains in a damp room on a Thursday evening, wondering how I’d come to this, and wondering if I could—open that door and run back for my life down the stairs and up The Avenue, back to what had been my previous life. Would I? Would I?

Stupid even to write it down, for I could have opened that door. There was nothing keeping that door shut but my feelings for Alex. And that’s the thing, isn’t it? It wasn’t about being queer, it wasn’t about wanting men. Phil could not have imprisoned me in that way.  But Alex held me like a vice.

I had turned on the gas heater, which sputtered in the damp and gave off an unappealing smell. As I looked around the depressing little flat, I realised how bad a lover I was, how bad, perhaps, I’d always been. Romance demanded candles and a warm bed with warm sheets—how else could a lover feel that their attentions were important to you? There needed to be warmth and flowers. Music. But there was nothing to attract Alex but a middle-aged man and a gas fire that coughed arthritically. I sat on the brown counterpane and put my head in my hands. There were a hundred, a thousand, a million—for all I knew—men who did this in rented rooms. Was it all as sordid?

Half of me hoped he wouldn’t come. If he waited until the weekend, I could at least make the place more attractive. Minutes ticked by in the gloom and I thought, half-relieved, half-despairing—he’s not coming.

But when he rushed in through the door, all wrapped up in a duffel coat, scarves and gloves, I forgot all my inconstancy. His face, what I could see of it, was pink and cream, and his smile was so wide that he looked like I’d given him the world instead of a tatty Railways Board flat. There were snowflakes in his eyelashes and I melted them away.

In between: “Dad insisted on driving me to Neil’s house. I had to run all the way back.”

I dreaded him looking around and I kept him occupied as long as I could, but as he shrugged himself out of his coat and scarves, he turned his head to see.

“This is great!” He obviously saw something in the brown wallpaper and bedspread that I did not.

“It’s still cold.”

“It’ll warm up. I’ll warm you up. Don’t spoil it, Ed—Edward. It’s a start. Our start. Don’t you see?”

Every nerve ending between my waist and knees tingled at his words.

He slid close in that sinuous way he had, dropping his shoulders and leaning his face against mine. “I want to undress you, Edward.”

“I…”

“I must.” His eyes had that urgency I’d seen before, when nothing would stand in the way of his youth. Wives, children, age, law—what were they? Mere mountains. “You have the advantage of me, sir.” He roared with laughter at his dreadful southern American accent and I had to kiss him to keep him quiet, warning him that I didn’t know how safe the flats were. “Well, I’ll do it quietly,” he said. “Sit down.”

Still, I was stupid. “Wouldn’t you like a drink or something, first?” Where he’d touched my face, my skin felt numb.

“Edward…please. We’ve got so little time.” I sat on the edge of the bed and he knelt down before me, as if proposing. “I’ll come to your house on Saturday and you can give me a drink then. We’ll toast this moment. This night. Like a secret.”

Like a secret. But…wasn’t it a secret? Perhaps it was a game to him, I realised. A glorious adventure.

His eyes shone, never leaving mine as he unbuttoned my shirt and slid his hands, warmer than nearly every piece of me, inside it. I could feel the heat of him through my vest…and then even that shield was gone. I helped him where I could; it was not effortless—not with each of us trying to kiss the other whenever either had the chance—but nor was it flurried desperation. It was almost measured, on his part at least. He was outwardly calm, betrayed by fingers which shook as hard as mine. I caught his hands and kissed them, before standing and letting him take the remainder of my clothes from me, shivering, hard and suddenly lesser than Alexander—he was only dishevelled.

He took a step back, and I wondered what I’d do if he pointed and laughed. Laughed and ran away. If it was nothing but a boy’s cruel joke. I felt stupid, large, cold and awkward. The erection I got from the second he’d melted into my arms withered away. I went to get into the bed, to cover myself with the counterpane, but he stopped me with a word. “No.” His eyes were wide, hungry, desperate. “I’ve never…” And he blushed.

“Come here.” Something changed a little at that moment, and I felt powerful again—or perhaps for the first time with him. I unbuttoned his shirt and pulled it roughly over his head. “You went to a boys’ school, you must have seen…”

“Boys. Yes. Showers.” His breath hitched as I pushed his trousers over his hips. “Exactly. And my Dad. Horrible. No, not that. That’s nice.”

He stepped out of his trousers and I pulled him backwards with me, onto the bed. At last.

At first it was a little awkward as we settled into the horizontal. He seemed to be all legs and arms with nowhere for them all to go, but suddenly,