Page 15 of Edged
“Thank you, Dad. I’ll keep that in mind.”
I left them in the loft and went to the main bar, which took me down the stairs and across the whole dance floor. I was trying to buy myself some time, hoping that if I took enough steps I could will myself to get my act together.
Flynn hadn’t been wrong about my spray cheese tendencies. Even though it truly was a comfort food, something that I’d eaten my entire life, it was something I leaned more heavily on when I was distressed or distraught. Because the spray cheese had been Owen’s thing, and while the taste and the texture of the processed shit spray in my mouth did make me feel better overall, it was definitely always laced with memories of him.
But Owen was a whole lifetime ago, and my friends were upstairs and they were all worried about me, and I needed to get it together before they staged some kind of intervention.
“Just a Red Bull and lime,” I told Raf, the bartender. He poured me a glass and added a maraschino cherry for show, which I appreciated.
“You can tell them it’s a Seven and 7 if you don’t want twenty questions,” he said, sliding it toward me.
“Thank you.” I raised the glass in toast to him, pushed a five across the bar top, and turned back toward the stairs.
Taking a slow path through the dance floor, I didn’t argue when people tried to dance up on me, letting myself get almost swept up in the beat of the music and the desperately horny kind of undercurrent that pulsed through the air. By the time I reached the stairs, I was feeling a little more like myself, and at the top of the landing, I let my feet come to a stop outside of the first playroom door.
It was cracked open, and my first thought went to Barclay, assuming Val had already showed up with a pre-lubed asshole, which was his norm. A low moan fell out of someone’s mouth and I knew it wasn’t BarclayorVal, so I dared a quick glance inside the room.
What I found wasn’t anything out of the ordinary for a Friday night at Rapture. Someone with their back pressed against the wall, their attention turned down to the other person on their knees, mouth full of cock. The person getting sucked off had a mop of curls, half dark, half bleached, and their fingers dug hard into the shorter strands of whoever was on the floor.
Listening to the familiar sounds of excess saliva and lack of oxygen that came with a proper throat fucking, I spun my straw toward my mouth to take a small sip. If they’d wanted privacy, the door would have been closed. Those were the rules of the club so my observation didn’t require specific consent.
The curly-haired man made another rough grunt and threw his head back in pleasure. I watched as his spine arched, and when his eyes opened, I recognized him before he even saw my face. I almost dropped my glass, because the man currently getting ready to shoot his load down—yeah, that actually was Val’s throat—was the one man I never expected to see again. The one man I neverwantedto see again.
He hadn’t changed at all from when we’d been teenagers together in the basement of his parents’ house, but he’d also changed in every way at the same time. He was taller maybe, but not much broader. He had tattoos on his hands and one on his chest. A pearl necklace, ironically, aroundhisneck, and a silk shirt half-buttoned and spread open.
“Owen?”
His eyes flew open, back bowing as he curled forward over the top of Val’s head. I watched light flash in the depths of his irises when he saw me, the unavoidable arousal of his orgasm mixed with the shock and anger at the sight of my face. But it was a house of cards by that point and there was no stopping anything that happened next. He was already right on the brink of it, and the way his mouth went slack as he came was just like it had been the first time I made him come.
He locked his eyes onto mine, and his mouth made the shape of my name while he came into the back of Val’s throat.
“Archer.”
I took a step backward, blinking like I could vanish him with willpower alone, but to no avail. With his cock still resting on Val’s ever waiting tongue, Owen held my stare, stroking his fingers through Val’s hair before pulling out.
Val stood and turned, a dazed and happy smile on his face. He saw me almost immediately, wiping a smear of Owen’s cum from his mouth.
“Archie.” He grinned. “Is Barclay here yet?”
I nodded and pointed toward the couch.
Owen hadn’t stopped looking at me. I could feel it, feel him, and I was more awake than I had been in what felt like years. Val slinked out of the room, squeezing past me and heading right for the couch, right for my friends who didn’t even know the name of the man who’d just crashed back into my life with no warning and no reason.
“What are you doing here?” I asked.
Owen’s lips pulled into a tight line and he tucked his cock, now pierced I noticed, back into his jeans. He buttoned and zipped, adjusted himself and brushed past me toward the stairs like he hadn’t seen me at all.
Maybe I was a ghost after all.
CHAPTER4
OWEN
I’d barely gottenmy cock back into my pants before I made it out the front doors of Rapture. The night air was warm, and I sucked in a breath as my cock spasmed through the last pulses of orgasm. Cum smeared against my hand, my underwear. My hands were shaking, the back of my neck dotted with sweat and not from exertion during the blow job either.
“Owen.”
Archer’s voice saying my name filled my ears again, quickly followed by the slapping of his shoes against the stone steps that led down to the parking lot. I shook my head, feet landing in the gravel as I made a sharp turn right toward the alley. There was one light attached to the middle of the building, casting an umbrella-shaped glow across the space. I went past it, deeper into the dark. Pressing my back against the cool bricks at the end of the alley, I closed my eyes, shoulders sagging when Archer’s footsteps continued to approach.
