Page 6 of Single Player

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The soft moans Silas was making were far too quiet to be heard by anyone else, but they were going to drive Matthew absolutely crazy. This wasn’t how he’d thought this night would go, not really. The back room had been an impulse born of a wave of lust when he’d seen Silas approaching the bar unexpectedly, that shy little smile playing around his mouth, and now they were pressed against the wall of the employee coatroom, stroking their cocks together, and he could not handle this. Silas was even hotter than he’d imagined, going from conservative engineer to desperate sexpot in about as long as it took for Matthew to bite his neck. He loved it when his partners liked it rough. How long had it been since he’d fucked someone as responsive as Silas, whose hips were already stuttering, his cock leaking wetly all over both their hands?

He had been bracing himself on the wall with his free arm, but now he took a handful of Silas’s hair again and pulled, feeling Silas twitch hard in his arms and thrust harder in his grip. Fuck, that was so good, and he was racing toward orgasm faster than he’d intended. A part of him wanted to stop, get on his knees, and swallow Silas down, make him shatter and beg, but he knew the other man would never stay quiet enough to keep them from getting caught. All it would take was another employee on break, even though no one was scheduled off until close in another hour. Damn, he wanted to do this again, and take his time. He wanted to lay Silas out and drive him crazy with bites and licks, shatter his veneer of respectability and make him cry out for more.

Just the thought was so hot that Matthew felt another stab of pleasure run through him, making him tighten his grip on Silas’s hair again and making Silas buck into him once more.

“Oh god,” Silas breathed, the first coherent words he’d said since asking if they were going to get caught. “Oh . . . I’m going to . . . I’m . . . I’m . . .”

His face contorted in a mask of ecstasy as he came, pleasure that looked like pain from its intensity, his cock spurting hot all over both their hands. His trembling frame and desperate, whimpering breaths were so erotic that before Matthew expected it, his orgasm slammed into him like a punch. He released Silas’s hair to brace himself heavily on the wall, coming and coming and coming, shocks of pleasure running down his spine and through his legs, until he was completely spent.

He staggered back from Silas, out of breath like he’d just run up a dozen flights of stairs. Shit, they were a mess. He looked around for something to clean them up with before spotting a box of tissues on the table in the corner.

“Holy fuck, Silas.” He shook his head, handing the other man the tissues. “You okay?” He began restoring his own clothes.

Silas was leaning against the wall like he couldn’t possibly support himself, the complete picture of debauchery. His pants were still down around his knees, his shirt untucked and rumpled, a few buttons unfastened, his tie half undone, his hair a total mess. His eyes were wide and shell-shocked, but at Matthew’s question, he nodded. “Yeah.” His voice sounded hoarse. He looked down at the tissue box in his hand as if surprised to see it, then shook himself out of that reverie and cleaned up. He pulled his trousers back up with visibly shaking hands. When he tried to fix the buttons on his shirt, though, he was trembling too badly, and Matthew stepped in to help. He fixed the buttons, then adjusted Silas’s tie, sliding it back into place. He wasn’t sure why he felt so tender toward this guy, this complete stranger he’d just fucked in the back room of work. Silas gently brushed his hands away. “I’m all right.” He finished fixing the tie himself, then bent to pick up his jacket. “That was . . . unexpected.”

“The good kind of unexpected, or the bad kind?” The sex had been incredible, but maybe it had been too much for Silas. He did look a bit overwhelmed.

“The good kind, I think. Thanks. That was . . . enjoyable.” Silas was already putting himself back together, his composed exterior slipping into place as easily as he slipped into his jacket. Something had changed in him, though, and he didn’t look quite the same as before. Less uptight, maybe. That could just be Matthew’s wishful thinking, but he liked to think that this had been good for Silas more than just physically. Once composed, Silas looked around the room as if not sure what to do. “I’ll . . . see myself out, I guess?”

Matthew opened the door of the coatroom, peered around to make sure the hallway was empty, and then gestured for Silas to come out. The back door was right there. “You can head out here and go around front. It’s almost closing time, so there’ll be cabs waiting. And, uh, I had fun tonight. This was really good.” He paused, almost ready to ask if he could see the guy again. Now that was surprising. Silas intrigued him, though, in a way he hadn’t been intrigued in a long time. An uptight engineer who responded like that to sex? He wanted to follow that trail and see where it led.

But Silas made no move to ask for his number, so Matthew just stepped aside and let the other man pass. Silas paused in the hallway, as if he were going to say something, but turned and slipped out the back door without another word.

Once he was gone, Matthew leaned against the wall to try and restore his own sense of equilibrium. He seldom had impulsive one-night-stand sex that left him wanting to see the guy again. He enjoyed sex, but mostly he took a lover to get a sense of what they were like in bed, and once he knew, the curiosity was gone, along with the desire to sleep with them again. With Silas, it was different. He felt like instead of answering his questions, he’d gained a dozen more. He wanted to see how Silas responded to sex in every possible way. If taking him apart once was this fun, making the conservative engineer lose control, then taking him apart again would be even better.

He had to stop thinking like that, though. Silas was a one-night stand, the kind that didn’t even stay the night. That was his preference, too: short hookups without emotional entanglements, not relationships that came with commitments and expectations. He didn’t need that kind of baggage, and even if he wanted a little more from Silas, it wasn’t like he was looking for a boyfriend. You didn’t meet a boyfriend by fucking him in the coatroom. He and Silas had had their fun, and now it was over.

As he stepped forward to open the door, he felt his foot knock something and send it skittering across the floor. He flipped on the lights, searingly bright after the darkness, and spotted the item. Silas’s phone. Oh shit. He bent to pick it up. It was an iPhone in a plain black case, and when he tried to turn the screen on, it was dead. So much for being able to call an emergency contact. He tucked it into his suit pocket. Hopefully Silas would realize he’d lost it and get in touch with him, somehow. Maybe he could tell the front desk that he’d found a phone. Of course, if he appeared right now, it would raise eyebrows, since he was supposed to have left awhile ago. He’d charge it and hopefully find an emergency contact on it. For now, he would just have to go home and probably collapse for the next ten hours. He’d had enough excitement tonight to last him a whole weekend.

Silas wasn’t hungover, but he felt like hell. Lying in bed, staring up at the ceiling, it took him a few minutes to analyze why he didn’t feel his normal tip-top awake self this morning. Okay, so he never felt particularly good in the morning, but he’d trained himself to associate that groggy feeling with the satisfaction of using his self-discipline to get his butt out of bed. This morning, though, that self-discipline was nowhere to be found.

He rolled over and blinked at the clock on his nightstand saying it was eleven fifteen. What? He’d slept until nearly midday? That couldn’t be right. He rubbed his eyes with the heel of his hand. When the cab had dropped him off at home last night, he’d stripped off his clothes and collapsed into bed, still dazed after his encounter with Matthew and shocked at his own behavior, not wanting to confront the reality and choosing to sleep off his confusion. Now that he was awake, he wasn’t sure he was any less confused.

His eyes felt dry and crusty, and his stomach was filled with a nagging sense of unease and more than a little nausea, probably thanks to last night’s drinking and debauchery. A shower would help. In the bathroom, his reflection caught his eye before he stepped into the shower. Oh god, look at his neck. His collarbone was mottled with bruises, most of which could be hidden by a collared shirt, but his normal T-shirt attire was going to make him look like he’d been the victim of an attempted strangulation instead of a wild sex romp. As he ran his fingers across each bruise, he was surprised how much he liked the discomfort the pressure caused. People enjoyed this sort of thing, he knew, but he hadn’t expected to be one of them.

Once he was under the steaming spray of water, he felt the various stinging spots on his skin, and even that was nice and different. He so seldom paid attention to his body except in filling its basic needs—food and water, warmth and occasionally sex—and anything beyond that was an unnecessary indulgence.

The silence in the bathroom was unusual. Normally, he brought his phone into the bathroom with him and played his favorite podcasts while he showered, but he hadn’t even plugged in his phone when he got home last night. He’d left his fancy clothes in a pile on the floor, and his phone was probably still in his jacket pocket where he’d put it when the battery had finally died, right before he’d gone to find Matthew. Silas felt his heart rate speed up as he remembered that dark little coatroom, Matthew’s roving hands, his own shameless moans urging Matthew on . . . Jesus. Silas shook his head in a physical effort to clear it of those lurid, vivid images, and focused on getting his body clean even as his mind remained stubbornly dirty.

After he showered and dressed, he went to look for his phone. He searched the pile twice with a steadily increasing sense of panic, shaking out each piece of clothing and checking all the pockets. Damn it. His phone wasn’t there. It wasn’t on his nightstand, either, nor on his kitchen table where he might have tossed it after getting home. Could he have left it in the cab? No, he didn’t take it out of his pocket, and it was his breast pocket, so it wasn’t like it could have slipped out of his pants or something. And he’d kept his jacket on, except for . . .

Oh.

Except for when he’d had sex with Matthew in the back of the club. The phone must have bounced out of his coat pocket as it was tossed onto the floor.

He felt a dropping sensation in his stomach at the thought. He was all set never to see the guy again. Would Matthew have noticed his phone on the ground and picked it up? If he had to ask at the club, he’d have to explain that he’d lost it in the back room, and that would raise a bunch of questions he didn’t want to answer, like what the heck he was doing in the back room of a club where he didn’t work. He also didn’t want to get Matthew in trouble for their little tryst. No, he’d have to get in touch with Matthew directly. That was an uncomfortable thought. If only he could remember where the guy worked. Some game company. He normally had a good memory, but he’d been a little drunk at the time. And more than a little distracted by Matthew himself.

No, it was better to contact the club first. Maybe someone would have turned it in, and he wouldn’t have to explain where he’d lost it. He couldn’t tell if this was legitimately something to be concerned about, or if he was doing that thing where he overcomplicated upcoming social interactions by thinking of all the ways they could go wrong. It was hard to tell. Of course, as soon as he went to call the club, he remembered that he didn’t have a phone. The decision to give up a landline and go entirely cell phone only was feeling foolish now. He’d need to delegate the call. Fortunately, Dee was always on Facebook, and he knew he could get in touch with her by Messenger.

Silas flipped open his laptop, and once it booted up and connected to his Wi-Fi, logged onto Facebook. Hi, he typed when he saw Dee’s telltale green dot.

Her reply came back quickly. Hey, you. Have a good night?

Yes. You?

Fantastic. Birthday sex is fucking awesome.