Page 3 of Short Stack 3

His laughter makes me feel warm inside, and I know he’s right. I might never be the next Adam Rippon, but who cares? Adam doesn’t have Dylan.

The School Trip

The first of the new stories. This is set immediately after the events ofRule Breaker.

Gabe

I come awake slowly and roll over. Dylan’s body is warm against mine, and I drift, enjoying his scent and listening to the sound of the gulls calling outside. After a few minutes, he wriggles back against me, rubbing his arse against my very interested cock, and I chuckle. “Trying to tell me something, my dearest?”

“If you can’t understand this message, there’s no hope for you.”

I caress the full, round globes of his arse and then reach into the bedside table for the lube. When I turn back, I blink because he’s no longer there. “Wait. Where are you going?”

Dylan looks back at me from his route towards the bathroom door. “For a shower. We haven’t got time for sex.”

“What couldpossiblybe happening in the world for that to be a true statement? Meteors hitting the earth? Me losing my personality?”

“The school trip.”

I fall back against the pillows. “I think I’d rather take my chances with a meteor,” I say gloomily.

He laughs, and I hear the noise of the shower starting. When he comes out ten minutes later with a towel wrapped around his narrow hips, he cocks his head. “I think it’s termed avoidance if you stay in bed all day.”

“I think it’s called being astute.”

He scrubs the towel over his brown-blond hair and grins. “If you don’t get up now, Jude will be able to say I told you so until the end of days.”

“You think you’re motivating me, but you’re not,” I say darkly and then sigh. “Okay, you are. So why would Jude be happy about me not making his son’s school trip?”

“Because he’s got a bet on with Asa.”

I roll my eyes. “It seems to me that people with children are closer to a child’s mentality than an adult’s.”

“Let’s see how close you are after today.”

“I’ll be closer to death from aggravation.”

I pad through the bedroom, avoiding the suitcases that are open and spewing clothes across the floor. We only got back from holiday yesterday, and I’m unsure which genius scheduled this in our diary. I look at my boyfriend.Oh, that genius.

“Get ready,” he orders, swiping me across the arse. I make sure to put a wiggle in it just to hear my favourite sound in the world — his laugh.

An hour later, I’m wondering what I was thinking.

We’re sitting in Jude’s classroom. It’s brightly decorated with tinsel and Christmas decorations and is empty of children in the early morning. Their shouts and screams come from the playground outside, but they can’t entirely drown out the laughter from Dylan and Jude.

“And then the jellyfish stung him on the arse,” Dylan says, barely able to speak he’s so amused.

“I don’t know why this is funny,” I say plaintively. “It was rather painful.”

“It could have been worse. It could have been your coffee receptors,” Dylan says rather callously.

“I’m unsure why my boyfriend is taking so much joy in the incident.”

“I videoed it. His voice went higher than when I spilt mustard on his Tom Ford suit,” he announces to Jude, who’s red-faced with laughter.

“Well, how wonderful it is to have given you so much joy,” I say. “It makes me extraordinarily happy. And it was equally scrumptious of the doctor to give me that lecture on swimming naked.”

“He was only trying to help.”

---