Limerence: A MM Rivals to Lovers Ballet Romance (Famous Young Things)

I’m pulling on my shoes by the door when the sound of a key slides into the lock. Ava comes in looking harassed, jute bag in one hand weighed down with shopping, and a London Book Review tote over her shoulder. She’s still carrying her dance bag too. I take the jute and tote bags from her, carry them into the kitchen, and set them on the counter.

“Was gonna do Assassin’s pasta,” she says as she sets down the other.

“Ah, sounds great, but I am on my way out. Tomorrow?”

“Sure.” She starts unloading. “Where you off to?”

The delay in answering has her attention. I don’t like lying to Ava—for a whole multitude of reasons—but I’ve found that my life is just easier if I don’t tell her when I’m going to Christian’s. She doesn’t like Christian—again, for a whole multitude of reasons—and for such a laid-back, non-judgemental person, she gets very uptight and judgy whenever I do.

“Oh, right. He’s rung the bell has he?” It’s a joke about my Pavlovian response to Christian. Because when he rings, I run, salivating (usually all over his cock) and Ava’s respect for me dies a little more each time.

“I probably won’t be back tonight.”

She levels a look at me at this. It’s different from the look she gives me when I mention (or don’t mention) Christian in a more general sense. This one is laced with pity. “Babe, seriously? There’s therapy for this kind of thing.”

She’s right. There definitely is.

“But therapy wouldn’t make me come until I see stars, now would it?”

“No, if it did, we’d all go. But your self-esteem would probably benefit.”

“Babe, look at me. I love myself. Some would argue too much, and with abandon, so my self-esteem is not something you need to worry about, trust me.” I bend to kiss her on the cheek. “See you in the morning. Don’t make Assassin’s without me, okay?”

Christian’s flat is in Green Park which is exactly four minutes on the tube from Warren Street. It’s convenient. Far too convenient for a man to be living that close to a man he absolutely, resolutely, should not be fucking on the regular. Or at all. But I’m not moving, and since he has no plans to sell up either, I guess we’ll keep doing this as long as we can.

It’s not love, nowhere near. And that’s the thing that bothers Ava at heart. She’s under the impression that Christian is using me, that I’m his dirty little secret (okay, I am. I’m both dirty and a secret, so that’s fair) and that he’s never going to be able to give me what I really want, which she says is a monogamous, loving, committed relationship. Which yes, fine, I do want. Who doesn’t?

Thing is, I also know I’m not going to get this from Christian. I’m not delusional. It’s just that Ava doesn’t seem to believe me when I say this to her. She thinks I’m lying about it, that I’m in love with him or something. Which I’m not. I was in love once, I think—I was sixteen and he was the year above me in school—and it ended horribly for everyone involved, mostly for him since he’s married to a woman and has a set of ginger triplets at age twenty-five, but I’ve been a little terrified to do it again ever since.

But I do want to do it again.

And I will. What I get from Christian is enough to fill that hole in the meantime (yes, this pun is absolutely intended). What I get from Christian on the regular is a good, hard, filthy fucking, and that’s more than fine with me. We’re not exclusive, and I’m free to pursue other things as long as I tell him all about them. If I meet someone who makes my heart do that weird fluttering thing, then he’s told me that I must absolutely pursue it because he doesn’t want to hold me back from anything. Especially love.

There just hasn’t been anyone like that, yet.

So, all this to say, I don’t get the big issue Ava has with two consenting adults fucking each other’s brains out every now and then, which is all we’re doing.

Okay, maybe I do get it. The complicated nature of it is, problematic, I suppose. Risky. And she’s worried about the potential fallout, which would likely be cataclysmic. But I think if she just focussed on getting her own brains fucked out every now and again, she’d be less focussed on my brains, or how they get fucked.

The motion of the tube rutting over the tracks plays havoc with the plug in my arse, so by the time I step out of the station at Green Park, I’m hard as a fucking pole.

I press the intercom for Christian’s flat and wait. It’s stopped raining, thank fuck, but the chill coursing over my heated skin has my nipples hard through my light jacket. They’ve always been too sensitive by far. A slight breeze and they’re off, standing to attention like they’re on a bloody protest march.

“Hello,” his polite voice comes over the line.

“Yeah, hi, I’m looking to get my hole destroyed by a prominent member of the British government please?”

He chuckles and I hear the door unlock. I practically jete upstairs to the first floor where he’s left his door ajar for me. The TV’s on inside, a news channel playing as always. Christian lives and breathes politics; it’s his life in the very same way dance is mine. Which on some level is sexy—guys who are passionate about things are sexy—but since I can’t stand politics or anything even slightly politics adjacent, for obvious daddy-shaped reasons, it can be a bit of a mood killer for me.

He’s in the kitchen pouring wine into two glasses. His shirt sleeves are rolled up showing off tanned, strong forearms, and his tie is long gone, chestnut hair mussed from his day. He lifts his eyes to mine and a warmth moves into them I never get tired of. A guy who looks at me like he’s missed me, like I’m the reason his shitty day just got better—it’s a heady feeling.

“Hey, beautiful,” he says, coming around the counter holding two wine glasses. He takes a sip from his glass and hands me mine. It’s a rosé, sweet and light like he knows I prefer. I’m not a huge drinker, except on special occasions, but I enjoy a tipple every now and then and a sweet light rosé will never miss with me.

“Hey.” I bend to kiss him. We’re about the same height—though that wasn’t always the case, of course. He had almost a foot on me the first time we met, when I gazed up at him with the sort of look he’s giving me now. He wasn’t the first guy whose dick I sucked, but he was the first guy who made me realise how much I wanted to suck a guy’s dick. When I was fifteen, I’d met him at a party and gone on to crush on him for years before I got to have him.

“Have you eaten?” he asks, a note of concern on his face.

“I had a big lunch. Let’s eat after?”

He slides a hand up to my cheek and smooths his thumb across my jaw.

“Missed you,” he murmurs before kissing me again, slow and deep. When he presses the front of his body into me, I feel he’s already a little hard. My butt clenches around the plug, a shiver rolling through me.

“So, what’s my gift?” I pull back and take a sip of wine.

He smirks and wanders back into the kitchen. When he returns, he’s holding a small green and gold bag, which I immediately recognise. It’s from the chocolatier in Geneva who happens to make the best chocolate on the fucking planet. Seriously, I have never put something in my mouth that tastes better than this, especially if the chocolate is wrapped up in a praline and pistachio truffle. I groan and take the bag from him.

“Okay, well thanks. I’ll be off then.” I start to leave before he pulls me back by my belt.

He’s smiling. “Not until I’ve tasted you.”

I sigh dramatically. “Fine. I guess I can hang around a bit.” I wander over to the couch and set the chocolates on the coffee table. Then I down my wine and set the glass next to it.

“I actually have a gift for you too…” I say as I unbuckle my belt. I’m so fucking hard now, dangerously so.

Christian’s eyes flare with lust as he sips his drink. “Is that so?”

I shuck out of my jeans and toe off my trainers without removing my eyes from his. When I’m standing in just my jock, I turn my back to him and kneel up on the couch, spreading my legs and arching forward over the back, displaying myself for him.

“Fuck,” he says. It always turns me on to hear him swear like this. Because it’s always for this reason. “Look at you…”

Behind me, the TV catches my attention. “Foreign Secretary, Sir Christian Darling, returned from Geneva today after a meeting with lawyers for the family of the convicted terrorist Henrik Abrahmsen. Abrahmsen is currently serving a life sentence in HMP Belmarsh for the bombing of the…”

I tune it out. I don’t know why it’s still on. Sometimes I think he gets a kick out of it, screwing me while they talk about him on TV. Screwing me while they mention my dad. Alright, I suppose I do too. So yeah, maybe that’s the main reason I shouldn’t be fucking Christian. He not only works very closely with my dad, he is, at least publicly, friends with him too. It was at a party thrown by my dad that we first met.

“You like it?” I ask, breath turning quick. Fuck, I’m so turned on.

“Very much,” Christian murmurs from closer behind me. “Take it out and show me how open you are for me.”

A shiver runs through my whole body as I reach down to tug on the end of the silver plug nestled there. I pull it out slowly, each rounded bead slipping past my rim one at a time. When it’s all the way out, I feel him take it from me before he slips his fingers into me in its place. I moan like a whore.

“So wet and open and ready for my cock.”

“Yes, daddy.”

Christian groans and tosses the plug on the couch, then moves to stand behind me. I hear his belt unbuckle, zip pull down, and then he’s fumbling. The blunt head of his cock nudges against my entrance, hot and hard. I bite down on my lip as he pushes the head in just a little. He digs his fingers into my hair and pulls back my head to meet his mouth.

“Did my beautiful boy miss me?”

“Yes, daddy.”

“Did you let anyone else fuck this slutty little hole while I was away?” He’s circling the head of his cock around my hole as I clench, as I try to suck it inside.

“Yes.”

Christian groans and releases my hair so he can lean down and get a good look at said hole. His eyes feel hot on it. Then his finger is prodding, pushing inside, pulling at one side like he’s trying to look into it. It drives me insane. Sliding my hand into my jock, I give my dick a few strokes before he grabs my arm and forces it behind my back, fist tight around my wrist.

“Not until you tell me how naughty you were.”

I close my eyes and think back to Alex the waiter. It hadn’t been the best sex of my life by any means, but Christian doesn’t need to know that. He wouldn’t want to.

“He was big,” I lie. “He stretched me out so wide I felt it all day at rehearsal.”

Christian’s tongue flicks at my twitching hole, wetting it. “Mmmm, this slutty hole opens up so easily for cock doesn’t it. Did you let him come inside it?”

“No,” I say quickly. “Of course not, only you get to do that.”

“Good boy.” He rewards me with another tongue-heavy kiss there before he stands back up, positioning himself behind me. “Now open it for me, let me see what I’m about to fuck.”

Vibrating out of my skin, I lean my head on the back of the couch and reach back to spread both cheeks for him as wide as I can.

“Such a pretty boy…”

I groan as he pushes against my rim, once, twice, three times before he slips past and inside. He’s fat, Christian Darling. A fat, short-ish cock that still overwhelms me a little when I haven’t had him in a while, and it’s been almost a month by my count. Hence the plug. But it doesn’t take long for my body to open all the way for him, hungry and slutty and desperate. And then he’s fucking me in earnest, pounding me hard against his expensive sofa as my dad’s voice comes on the TV behind me.

You’d think it would be a turn-off, but it’s not. It’s hot as fuck knowing his government’s foreign secretary, someone he sees every single day, is fucking me into next week while he pulls my hair and I call him daddy.

So I’m a little fucked up.noveldrama

Ironically, I blame my dad.

After, we eat pizza (or he does while I nibble on the toppings because I’m still thinking about Nico’s comment earlier) on the sofa while I tell him all about Nico Savini coming to LBC and how much I’m going to make his life a living hell until he jete’s off back to Italy where he belongs.

“Are you attracted to him?” Christian asks apropos of nothing whatsoever. He’s studying me as he licks pizza sauce off his index finger.

“He’s straight as a flagpole.”

One corner of Christian’s mouth twitches. “I’m certain that’s not what I asked.”

I frown at him, trying to figure out why he’s asking this in the first place.

“I mean, he’s hot, obviously. But he’s such a massive fucking arsehole that it’s hard to see past that.”

Christian nods in thoughtful agreement but says nothing more. I settle in closer to him and he slides an arm around me. There’s an old movie on the TV, from the ’80s by the looks of it, which he tells me is a favourite of his. Lots of his favourite films and bands and things are from the ’80s, which makes sense since he was born in 1982. He couldn’t name a single Little Mix tune if someone put a gun to his head. So we don’t have a huge amount in common, but you’d be surprised at how little that sort of thing matters when he’s eating my ass like it’s ice cream on a hot summer day.

“Sorry I missed your birthday,” he says sincerely, nosing my hair softly. “I do have a gift for you, it’s being delivered this week. I was hoping it would have been here by now.”

“I told you I don’t need anything.”

“Yes, and I told you I like spoiling you.”

I give him a suggestive look and skim a hand over the front of his shorts. “Oh, you do spoil me, daddy.”

“You know it only works when we’re fucking, otherwise I’ll start to assume it’s a Freudian slip.”

“More like wishful thinking.” If Christian was my father, my life would be a different kettle of fish altogether.

He pulls back and gives me a horrified look. “Excuse me?”

I laugh, nuzzling his armpit. “Incest joke. Sorry, wrong audience.”

“And there’s a right audience for that?” He chuckles.

“Ava perhaps. I mean no one finds incest funny actually, which is a shame. Probably since it’s still illegal, though you and your mates could sort that if you wanted to.”

He laughs. “I don’t even know what we’re talking about anymore.”

“Keep up, Mr. Foreign Secretary.”

He laughs but it’s cut off by the sound of his mobile phone. It’s on the side table near me, so I reach over to get it, chancing a glance at the screen as I hand it to him. His son.

Visibly, his demeanour changes, as though perhaps Leo can see through the phone at what his father is up to.

He answers with, “Hey, what’s up, son?”

Christian’s son is my age and a staffer for the PM. He knows absolutely nothing about his father’s sexual preferences. But then, no one does. On the outside, Sir Christian Darling is the handsome, well-liked, and much respected human rights lawyer turned cabinet minister. Widowed at 38 by the death of his wife Stella—beautiful, willowy, and blissfully ignorant about her husband’s attraction to men—from a brain injury she got from a fall while skiing. So while there’s nothing outwardly wrong about what we’re doing, the idea of anyone finding out, especially his son and my father, scares him absolutely shitless.

I get up and leave him to it. Knowing them, it could be a long conversation and none of it even remotely interesting to me. I run myself a bath instead. He has a massive jet tub which I try and take advantage of whenever I come over. I’m submerged up to my neck and singing to Dua Lipa when he wanders in.

“Everything alright at number 10?” I ask, though honestly, I wouldn’t give a shit if the place had been petrol bombed. Preferably with my father inside.

“He’s worrying about a leaked email,” he says as he comes to sit on the edge of the bath.

“Why? Did he leak it?”

He huffs a laugh. “No. He suspects some disgruntled under-secretary. He’s wondering whether to tell Nish.”

“Always the under-secretaries,” I tut, sliding under the water a little more. “Are you coming in?”

“I was going to make you some dessert. How many calories do you have left?”

“Well, I worked off a bit when I got here so…”

“Clotted cream ice cream, caramel sauce, and a sprinkle of pistachios then?” He stands and comes toward me, leaning down to press a kiss to my head. I think about Nico’s comment again, then push it aside. Like I’m going to let that prick ruin my favourite dessert.

“Sounds like another orgasm to me.”

He grins. “Let me change first; you relax here for a bit.” I stare after him as he wanders out of the bathroom. Sometimes I do wonder what it would be like if we were a thing; like a proper couple thing. If he could just accept that he liked men and ask me to come with him to some dinner or event. Hold my hand in public and kiss me in front of my father. If he could just tell his son that he enjoyed fucking me. Okay, he wouldn’t have to be as descriptive as that, but the general idea.

I don’t say any of this lightly because it would be a big deal. I’d never actually had to come out, it had just been very obvious to everyone that I was a boy who liked other boys. My dad doesn’t love it, he doesn’t love the dancing either, or the Instagram posting, or basically anything about how I choose to live my life, and he certainly wouldn’t like it if I was to announce I was fucking someone twenty years my senior who happens to be a friend of his from work.

So, Ava is right, in that this thing can never really be anything more than what it is. But honestly, I think it works perfectly for us. I like what we have now just fine, I like it a lot. I like Christian a lot. I like that it’s forbidden, and I like knowing it would completely fuck up my dad if he found out. I like the idea of Christian and my dad talking about amendments and PMQs before Christian’s mind wanders to thinking about how tight my arse is, or what it looks like with his cum dripping out of it. Why on earth would I ruin that with something as boring as love and monogamy?

I wouldn’t.