Page 119 of For Real

But now he touched me without hesitation, lapping up the frosting, teasing me with his tongue, drawing me a little way into his mouth. My fingers twisted against each other, seeking some kind of purchase against the pleasure, but there was no defence. There was only something else to suffer for him. This terrible bliss. The helplessness of it, the intimacy.

I gasped out his name. Spread myself wider. It drove the hook deeper, but even that pressure was part of this now, subservient to Toby, another way he had chosen to fuck me. Everything tangled up together: freedom, restraint, pain, humiliation, rapture, fear, love. One of Toby’s hands curled round me, his grip tight, so perfectly tight, my skin sliding tenderly against the roughness of his palm. And just when I thought he couldn’t give me any more, he sucked in a shaky breath and took enough of my cock to meet his own hand. Sealing me in wet velvet warmth.

I rocked forward, heedlessly, and the ball inside me nudged my prostate.

“GodpleaseTobyIcan’t—”

I came uncontrollably. So hard I saw nothing at all. Just a flawless, unending dark.

I only got back to myself when I heard Toby coughing.

He looked up from my cock, semen and saliva dribbling down his chin.

“I’m so sorry, I tried to warn you.”

He gently released me and wiped his mouth on the back of his hand. “It was hot.”

I was starting to shake, and I couldn’t control that either. “Th-thank… It was… You…” My words came out as slurry as my thoughts.

I didn’t quite follow what happened next, but Toby took care of me. Unchained me. Drew the hook out as gently as he could. Held my hands through the sullen agony of stiffness and returning blood flow. And then we lay entangled on my kitchen table, Toby holding me tightly, until I was done with tears and I had skin enough to face the world again.

“I love you,” he whispered. “I love you. Shit, my pie.” He only left me for the time it took to rescue it. He put it on the counter and rushed back into my arms. “Final secret of a good lemon meringue pie: wait till it’s cooled before you cut it.”

“Good to know.” I turned my head and surveyed the result of his labours: a picture-book lemon meringue pie, perfect golden pastry topped by an immense swirl of baked meringue. My boy really did have talent. So many talents. Beautiful, clever, merciless Toby.

“You do realise there’s going to be a test later, right?” he asked.

I mustered a pale shadow of outrage. “Toby, that isn’t fair. I’ll fail.”

He propped himself on an elbow and peered at me with narrowed eyes. “I bet you’ve never failed anything in your whole life.”

“I excel at standardised tests. Which is hardly a skill to boast about.”

“Oh, man.” He lay back down, resting his head on my shoulder. The table was not comfortable to lie on, but right now it was as perfect as Toby’s pie. “I fail even at the shit I’m supposed to be good at. I got a D for my English Lit GCSE. I was like totally the teacher’s pet. A*s all year. Still came out with a D.”

“What went wrong?”

He sighed. “There’s this bit where they give you a poem and ask you a dumb-arse question about it. The poem was ‘The Jaguar’ by Ted Hughes. Do you know it?”

“No.”

“Sorry.” He ran his fingers over one of the reddened patches he’d left on my skin, sending little shivers through me. “It’s earlyish Hughes, so nature shit, basically. I only really like Birthday Letters. I mean, that’s just him wanking off about how sad he is his more talented wife killed herself, but at least it’s sincere, y’know? Anyway, ‘The Jaguar’ is about a zoo full of, like, stultified animals. Except there’s this jaguar who’s going all crazy in his cage. And the question was, right, get this: what does Ted Hughes think about zoos?”

It was absurd. We’d just had sex and pain and lemon meringue pie, and my standardised test impulse still leapt to life. “It doesn’t sound like he likes them.”

“Oh great. Well done. A*. Fuck you.”

“Isn’t that the answer?”

“Well, yeah, I guess, but the poem isn’t about fucking zoos. It’s about people. All the animals are anthropomorphised. Like the parrots who are cheap tarts or whatever. Because don’t we…in a very real sense”—his sarcastic voice was starting to sound increasingly similar to Jasper—“live in a social zoo. And the jaguar is a poet, because even though he’s surrounded by bars, he still sees freedom. And that’s kind of his madness and his salvation all at once.”

“That’s all very well,” I said, “but it doesn’t answer the question. Which was about zoos.”

Toby ruffled a hand through his hair. “You are so not a jaguar.”

“You’re missing the point. Standardised tests are simply about demonstrating your understanding of the question. The answer, to a degree, is irrelevant.”

“Well.” Toby pouted. “I care about the answer. And if that means I suck, then…I guess I suck.”

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