Malcolm choked on a giggle, and then clapped his hand over his mouth. When he’d recovered his dignity, he looked at Owen with wide eyes.
“That’s cruel,” he said with wonder. “That’s . . . I couldn’t have thought of something that cruel. I like it.”
Owen nodded, shivering with the thought of it. “Yup. You just remember that every time we brush shoulders or touch accidentally today, okay?” His grin at Malcolm was completely unfettered.
“I think I could even add a, you know, a wrinkle or two.” Another eyebrow lift, which was Malcolm’s shortcut for checking whether or not he was okay with the idea.
“Do you just carry that shit in your pocket?” Owen asked, intrigued.
“Nope.” Malcolm bared so many teeth that Owen knew something was up. “Trust me.” He kissed Owen deeply, as if probing for his own taste, then briefly tightened his grip. “Let’s go. We’ll just hop on the Tube and do something cool and exciting.”
Owen narrowed his eyes. “Cool and exciting?”
Malcolm’s chuckle was downright evil. “Absolutely.”
Owen stood and offered Malcolm a hand up. His hard-on still burgeoned in his pants, and not a damned thing about Malcolm’s tone or the look in his eyes changed that. “Right,” he said, but Malcolm just smirked at him while they straightened up and prepared to leave.
* * * * *
To reach King’s Cross, they could have gone either on the Northern Line or the Victoria Line. On the Underground map, the black Northern line seemed the faster option, though Malcolm insisted that the blue Victoria line was actually the better connection and that he needed to pick something up at Victoria on the way.
Owen had already resigned himself to the fact that he’d never navigate London like a native, though Malcolm had told him that nobody really was a native in London, and the status of being proficient at navigating the Big Smoke was imparted by way of improvising and bitching about the weather for five years. Despite that, there was something fishy about it, especially considering how Malcolm was checking his phone and making sure that Owen didn’t get a glimpse of the screen.
“Get me a skinny cappuccino, will you?” Malcolm said when they’d emerged from the Underground at Victoria station, and even before Owen had decided which of the roughly six outlets he’d patronize with his custom, Malcolm had rushed off. So Owen picked the nearest one and queued for their coffees. And maybe a couple of muffins, too. He was ravenous and figured he’d likely need his energy.
By the time Malcolm came rushing back, one of the muffins had already suffered its allotted destiny, and Owen was considering doing the same to the second and acting like he’d never bought them in the first place.
Weirdly, Malcolm wasn’t carrying a plastic bag, though maybe one of the pockets of his jacket looked bulkier. Or maybe that was his wallet. Owen pretended he wasn’t looking. Maybe that was better for his sanity.
He sighed and offered Malcolm the muffin.
Malcolm shuddered for no reason Owen could think of. “Hell no. If you had any idea of the grief I had to go through this morning, you’d understand.”
Owen shrugged and took a bite of the muffin. “Why do you let that guy boss you around like that?”
Malcolm scowled. “I’ve been the fat kid, Owen. Lots of shit I’ll put up with to not be the fat kid again.”
Owen simply blinked at him. “You’re a grown man, Mal, most of the time. Are you really going to let your childhood screw with you that badly?”
Malcolm scowled. “Someday, I will show you pictures,” he said after a moment, and then he put his hand in his pocket and brightened. “But not today. Are you ready to get back on the Tube?”
Owen raised an eyebrow. “You look . . . well, evil.” Then he smiled. “Wonderful.” Mal evil? How awesome was that?
“It’s a lie,” Malcolm said with a straight face. “In reality, I’m as innocent and pure as one of those horrible creatures on your boss’s desk.”
Owen grimaced. God, this man was putting a crimp in all of his sweet dreams of the future. Well, better let him know where Owen stood on that whole matter right now, even if it was only in jest. “Excellent, because give me eight or nine years, and I’ll be ready to adopt one of them.”
The horrified look on Malcolm’s face was very likely worth the ticket to England. “Adopt . . . be a father? Me?”
Owen chuckled and took a bite of his muffin. It wasn’t the horror that made him happy, so much as the fact that Mal assumed that what would happen to one of them would happen to them both. “C’mon, Mal. Let’s catch that train, and you can do something obscene and illegal to me that other people write to sex magazines about.”
Malcolm grunted at him sourly. “Oh sure. Say that to me now, after you bloody well cut me off at the balls. I won’t be able to get it up now for . . . for . . .”
“An entire fifteen minutes,” Owen supplied dryly. “Come on.”
They got back on the Underground and the Victoria line, squeezed by shoppers who mostly left the Tube train at Oxford Circus. Once at King’s Cross, it was only a matter of ten minutes to get tickets and locate their train.
In the carriage, Malcolm planted down on a four-seater with a table in the middle. When another couple tried to claim the other seats, Malcolm informed them cheerfully that they were taken, and then showed Owen the reservation. Four people.
“But we’re only two,” Owen said.
“Yeah, but my ego needs more space than that. Besides, I’m not spending the whole time looking at some arsehole opposite.”
“How do you know it would be an asshole? Maybe it would be a totally nice person who made your day.”
“I’ve got room for one of those in my life,” Malcolm said, pulling his winging black brows together. “You’re him. Besides. You’re going to want privacy in a minute.”
“In a minute? What are we doing in a minute?”
Malcolm leaned close to him, close enough that Owen could feel Malcolm’s hand knocking about in his jacket pocket, bumping Owen as he rummaged. Suddenly Mal’s hand was free, and a package, still wrapped in its plastic blister, was thrust into the kangaroo pocket of Owen’s hooded sweatshirt.
“That’s what you’re doing. Go to the bathroom, read the directions, follow them.”
Owen’s mouth quirked. “Your capacity for romance never ceases to amaze me.”
Mal’s chuckle was low and evil. “Romance, no. Sex? I’m a right hand at that, mate, so buckle down and follow directions—we’re going to school.” He paused for a moment, pondering. “Oh, you might want some extra lube.” The last bit said under his breath, and with a paranoid glance around, which was a lot more conspicuous than it strictly had to be. “There you go.” He pulled a small packet out of his trousers and palmed it off to Owen. “Now go, before the train leaves in five.”
It took longer than five minutes. The train was clacketing down the tracks before Owen left that miniscule torture chamber, and he was absolutely sure his cheeks would never cease burning. His elbows and knees were long enough, but when you were struggling with the lube and the shiny vibrating egg and the inserting it into the covert places of your body, it was like someone had painstakingly designed his most humiliating sexual nightmare.
And his most arousing erotic dream.
His asshole was stretched and packed full, and he stood, fully clothed, in a very public place, trying hard to walk normally as he returned to his seat next to a very smug, very dominating closet sub.
“That,” he said deliberately, still standing in front of the little cubby, “was not pleasant.”
Malcolm arched those expressive black eyebrows over what, at first glance, was a rather bland countenance. “No? I would imagine you had all the room in the world.”
“There was a woman and her child banging on the door to get in,” Owen muttered, remembering that the panic of their knock on the little folding door was almost enough for him to squeeze the slickened egg between his fingers and send it
spinning into the low metal toilet.
Malcolm burst into delighted cackles beside him, covering his mouth and giggling like a school boy, and Owen tried to scowl. It was almost impossible though—it figured that this of all things would set Malcolm off, but seeing that manic joy as he dissolved into giggles in a public place was almost as sexy as that thing currently wedged solidly in Owen’s backside.
“You,” said Owen, breathing harder than standing in a train strictly warranted, “are a horrible, horrible little man and—”
Malcolm’s hand twitched in his pocket, and Owen whimpered as the thing in his ass started to vibrate. His knees buckled and he put his hand on the armrest of the seat, hissing, “Scoot over, jerkoff,” before collapsing—and oh, God, the pressure on his ass as he did!
Malcolm showed him a full set of teeth. “There’s one you can control with a smartphone, but the thing is, my phone is constantly near empty anyway, so I decided against that.”
Owen wasn’t sure whether he had the presence of mind to hate him a little bit for the sheer dastardly ingenuity, or be impressed with it. Possibly both, a little. He did like that Malcolm had clearly invested some thought into this, but the way Mal’s brain was structured, that could be a mixed blessing, definitely in public.
“Much more fun this way. And longer-lasting, too.” Malcolm placed a hand on Owen’s thigh and squeezed. “You at least get to enjoy the bumps on the tracks more than I do, so I guess we’re even.”
“Not. Even.” Owen’s teeth were gritted and he had to breathe deeply as a wave of sensation washed through him. “Not. Even. Close.” He glared at Malcolm, and the buzzing in his ass decreased in intensity for the moment, which was a good thing because he’d been that close to just curling into a ball and coming.
Malcolm smiled beatifically. “Well, we’ll have to see what we can do about that, won’t we? It wouldn’t do for you to feel like this relationship is completely one-sided, would it?”
Owen groaned softly, from the groin, and leaned his head back against the short seat. “No, Mal. That would be a bad thing. Bad. Baaaaaaaaaaaad.” And then he concentrated hard on his breathing, and counting to 10,000 in base twenty in English Shepherd’s counting, and let the train clatter solidly on under his vibrating ass.
* * * * *
Malcolm had to hand it to his lover—he possessed remarkable control.
For the length of the train ride, he’d sat next to Malcolm, trying to carry on a conversation while Malcolm had effectively blown his mind. Malcolm had been careful—he hadn’t wanted Owen to become numb to the vibrations, and he certainly hadn’t wanted to bring Owen to climax right then.
He’d just wanted Owen to depend on him, to need him for that stimulation. To cling to him and never let him go.
Watching Owen struggle not to come apart in public, all based on Malcolm’s whim? Best bit of dominating Malcolm had ever done.
But then, with Owen, dominating was a two-way street, and Malcolm realized that when the train coasted to a stop. Owen stood up first, and then Malcolm stood up in front of him, whispering, “Adjust yourself.”
Owen had been doing that frequently when they’d been seated, but now, standing up, his rather loose jeans were, well, making his arousal more than evident. There was a queue of people in front of Malcolm, and he stood back politely and waited for a break while Owen mashed up against his backside and fiddled with that thing in his pants so he could walk without drawing attention.
While the thing in Malcolm’s pants grew thicker and tighter and less comfortable. Oh, bloody hell. How had Malcolm managed to bind himself so tightly in his effort to drive Owen insane?
Moving off of the train was irritating, finding a cab was excruciating, and by the time they pulled up in front of the Fitzwilliam Museum, the two of them were down to controlled breathing and snappy, snarky remarks.
Arousal was one thing, priapism was another. They needed to find a private place in a bloody hurry.
“What are you looking at?” Owen muttered, his voice sharp and thready and desperate.
“The map for the bathrooms.”
“Oh, thank God—but there’s one right there.” All museum lobbies had bathrooms.
“Right. But everybody knows where that one is. We need something in the far corner, behind several dead bodies, where nobody goes but the janitor.”
“Please, Malcolm,” Owen begged, digging his chin into Malcolm’s shoulder. He smelled like sweat, and arousal, and, to Malcolm’s fevered imagination, like pre-cum, which Malcolm imagined was smeared all over the inside of his boxers.
“I hear you.” He felt a little remorse for sexual torture for maybe the first time in his life. “Come on. Here we go. Japanese woodcuts. How crowded is that going to be?”
It felt like the entire bloody country had turned out for the Japanese woodcuts. Malcolm didn’t have the time or the brain space to ogle the amazing 90-degree bevel for the arching window which allowed natural light into the main lobby, or to marvel at things like an interactive Afro Comb exhibit. He was too busy guiding a partially functioning Owen through the throngs of men, women, and children who were apparently enchanted with the idea of fine line drawings being printed on wood.
“It’s cool,” Owen marveled as Malcolm literally dragged him through a gaggle of students, staring open-mouthed at a picture of four women engaged in various “accomplishments.” “This was printing at its earliest, Mal. It was a way of preserving and disseminating—you bastard!” That last part was hissed because Malcolm, as a last resort, had hit the button on the damned egg again.
“Could we concentrate here!” Malcolm ground out between clenched teeth. “There has got to be some sort of medical condition brought about by this much backup.”
“Priapism,” Owen said automatically, and the fact that it mirrored Malcolm’s own thought made Malcolm want to smack him. “It’s the state of having an extreme and engorged—”
“I know what it is, what I need to know is where to get rid of it.”
There! Finally, a toilet. And a single, too, so Malcolm pushed Owen inside and locked the door, hoping against probability that it would be empty.
But lo (loo?) and behold, it was. Malcolm pushed Owen all the way to the far wall.
“Handicapped toilet? That’s not—”
“Shut up,” Malcolm groused with more than a little desperation. “And yes, if I had a fucking car and if I needed something really bad, I’d take the disabled parking spot, too. There aren’t possibly enough disabled people going shopping at the same time as I am to use all of those.” He punctuated every half-sentence or so with pulling at Owen’s clothes.
“That’s not nice,” Owen panted.
“Fuck nice.” Malcolm sank to his knees in front of Owen and saw the damp, shiny spot on the front of his boxers. He mouthed it for a moment before Owen’s sharp breath reminded him that they were in something of a hurry. “Nice doesn’t get you laid.” With that, he pushed down the boxers and suckled Owen’s cock to the back of his throat, clamped his lips tight to the base, and swallowed.
Owen’s fingers yanked through Malcolm’s gelled hair as Malcolm’s gentle lover forgot to be gentle and started thrusting mindlessly, violently, into Malcolm’s mouth. Malcolm had barely the presence of mind to reach into his pocket and to turn on the egg. Owen’s muffled scream jerked Malcolm’s attention up sharply and he saw that Owen was biting his palm and groaning into his own flesh.
Malcolm’s whole body washed cold as he realized how close he was to coming. He’d wanted to fuck Owen, but mindfucking him worked too. He managed to deal both with the cock in his mouth and getting his own dick out—as far as he was concerned, a miracle of coordination. Getting Owen to lose it, to need him so badly he put up with everything else, was the real payoff. It was what he loved about domming: Pushing somebody until they lost all sense and reason and control. Peeling away the veneer of nice and turning them both into crazed need.
Owen’s thrusts were erratic, fi
erce, and Malcolm jammed the control up to max, then used that hand to stroke himself while Owen pummeled his throat. They both came in a frantic mess, Malcolm swallowing, Owen fucking his face.
Malcolm needed no more than a couple strokes to get there. He pulled back a little when he came, dizzy with lack of oxygen, which was another turn-on, but for that kind of game they’d need to . . . ah, fuck it, whatever. He came, glad that he couldn’t make a great deal of sound, and remained on his knees, panting.
Owen slid halfway down the wall. “Oh Christ,” he breathed.
“Now you’re allowed to be interested in Japanese wood—after I’ve dealt with yours.” Malcolm cleared his raw throat.
“Am I allowed to take this thing out of my ass too?” Owen asked before gulping more air.
“Probably a good idea.” Malcolm had spilled on the placket of his jeans. He took in another hard breath and tried to orient himself. “Could you hand me a wad of tissue there? I need to—”
Owen had pitched forward, pants still around his ankles, and was thrusting his tongue down Malcolm’s throat with more energy than Malcolm had thought he possessed. Malcolm returned the kiss, his whole body still tingling, and then Owen pulled back and bumped his nose along Malcolm’s cheek.
“Thank you,” he whispered. “That was really amazing.”
Malcolm swallowed, absurdly touched. You usually didn’t get a lot of tenderness after a frantic fuck in the bathroom. Only his Owen, he thought. Only Owen.
“My pleasure,” he said shortly. “Which is why I need the tissue. Speaking of which . . .”
Owen laughed softly, and reached behind him for the toilet paper dispenser, pulling off a big wad to help with clean-up, and then he stood up and cleared his throat.
“Could you, uhm . . . you know?”
Malcolm stood up and tried to get a hold of himself. It had been a kiss. Just a kiss. Really—wasn’t a kiss from a lover a given?