“Something about that appeal to you, love?” Aidan asked, quirking an eyebrow.
He sat down in one of the chairs, his fingers steepled in his lap.
“Is that where you went when…?” I asked, not sure if I wanted that answer.
He shook his head. “Doesn’t work for me, unfortunately. I just rubbed one out over and over, like a lot of the other poor saps.”
“I have.”
Peter didn’t sound happy about his confession, but there it was—bold as brass. He shot me a sidelong look, then dragged out a chair and flopped down into it, letting out a long sigh.
I felt…I wasn’t sure. Neither of them had come to me virgins, and I hadn’t expected that, but this? I frowned and then took a deep breath.
“OK. Tell me about it.”
His fingers rubbed the edge of the table for a few seconds before dropping to his lap. He swivelled around and looked me clear in the eye. “I…I went with the boys.”
“Those guys at the mess hall?”
“Darren and Brett? Yeah. They wanted… They wanted to get off obviously, and no woman would look twice at them. I tagged along, because that’s what I did. No, that’s not right. Flick, I wanted to see what it was like, if I could…” His eyes dropped to his crotch.
“You wanted to see if you could fuck someone without hurting them,” I said. “And did you?”
He nodded.
For a minute, I could see it—his big burly body pushing its way into another guy’s, both of them panting as he struggled to take him. The feelings that came after were confusing. Possessiveness and jealousy, some inadequacy and fear, but mainly it was this—some faceless guy, maybe one of the dudes at the mess, had taken something from him that I hadn’t.
“You know I’m going to want to try…to take you.”
“Flick—”
“I said try. I’m never going to know—we’re never going to know if we don’t try. We’ll just take it easy. You’re not going to turn into some kind of ravening beast the minute you put the tip in. There’s plenty of women taking bigger than that.” He snorted. “Seriously, just Google it.”
“Done some ‘research,’ love?” Aidan said.
“If you call looking at porn way before I met you guys ‘research,’ then yeah.”
He groaned in response, rubbing the heel of his hand down the front of his jeans. “We need to get the hell off this topic. We’ve got a long night ahead of us, and not the good kind. Mum’ll be back soon enough, and she’s bringing yours too, Pete.”
The man went stock still at that, only looking up at Aidan after minutes had passed.
“I’m sorry, mate. Mum’s a stickler for the old rules. I know you didn’t want her involved.”
I sighed, rubbing at my face. This was going to be one of those days where a whole lot of the stuff the guys had neglected to share with me was gonna come up. I sat up straight and said, “Fill me in on why you don’t want your mum here.”
24
It became immediately obvious when the mothers arrived at the house.
“Hello again, darling!” Renee called out as she came through the door.
“Renee, you have not asked permission to enter this woman’s house.”
This woman?
I turned to see a lady with Peter’s brown eyes standing behind Aidan’s mum, though on her, they were hard and piercing. She was dressed in a drab blue shirt and some paint splattered jeans, and stood waiting for Aidan’s mother to acknowledge her. Renee blinked and took a step backwards out of the door.
“Flick, this is Lois, Peter’s mum. It’s customary to ask for permission when entering a stranger’s house,” she said with a shrug.