Chapter 11: Back Story
Eddie felt it, a fine, almost invisible line between drawing out her pleasure and crossing over into the territory he’d sworn to Robert he’d avoid. The need to slide his hand under her sweater, to peel the firm lace of her bra aside and feel skin on skin, was a physical ache in his palm. But another desire, deeper and more complex, held him back: the desire to honour the trust, the bizarre, beautiful architecture Robert was helping him build.
MJ’s breathing was coming in shallow pants against his mouth. Her hips made tiny, unconscious circles against the thigh he’d wedged between her legs. She wanted it as much as he did. He could feel the tension in her, a coiled spring of frustrated arousal. But he sensed a parallel restraint in her, too. A shared understanding, perhaps unspoken, of boundaries set by the man waiting in the house just down the street. Not a fear of disappointing him, but a respect for the purpose behind the direction.
Slowly, he gentled the kiss, his thumb stilling its circles. He drew back, just enough to break the seal of their lips. They stayed like that, foreheads touching, sharing the same humid air. Her eyes were dark pools, her pupils swallowing the soft light from the streetlamp. Frustration was there, yes, but so was a dazed, warm wonder. They gazed at each other for a long, silent minute, the only sound their ragged breathing fogging the windows.
Finally, with a shared, almost resigned sigh, they clicked their seatbelts back into place. The sound was starkly mechanical in the charged quiet. Eddie started the car and drove the short distance to her house, his hand finding hers on the seat between them, their fingers interlocking.
He ran around to open her door, a gesture that felt ingrained now, a part of this new script. He held her hand all the way up the walk and through the front door, not letting go until they were fully inside the familiar, shadowed foyer. She turned to him, the hallway light catching the flush on her cheeks. She smiled, a soft, private thing.
Then she leaned in, her lips brushing the shell of his ear. Her whisper was a hot, tickling confession. “I need to go and change. My panties are fucking soaked.”
She pulled back, gave a tiny, giddy giggle, and then turned, skipping up the stairs two at a time. Eddie stood rooted to the spot, stunned. A bolt of pure, electric thrill shot through him, hardening his already semi-erect cock to a throbbing insistence. It was working. All of it. The patience, the tease, the exquisite denial. And the prize… the promise of that prize made the wait feel like its own form of pleasure.
He turned, his body humming, and walked the familiar path to Robert’s study. The door was ajar, spilling a trapezoid of warm, golden light into the dim hallway. He pushed it open.
Robert was in his armchair, dressed down in grey sweats and a soft, faded henley shirt that stretched across the broad map of his chest and shoulders. He looked up from a closed book, a smile immediately touching his eyes.
Eddie fell almost-deliriously into the armchair opposite, his body sinking into the worn leather with a soft whoosh.
“So,” Robert said, his voice a low, amused rumble. “It went well?”
Eddie nodded vigorously, an inane, uncontrollable smile stretching his lips.
“So…?” Robert asked, leaning forward slightly, his gaze insistently curious.
“The golf was fantastic,” Eddie said, and stopped there, knowing full well he was driving Robert mad. It was a petty, delightful revenge for all the exquisite torment.
Robert’s eyes narrowed, a playful growl in his throat. “Don’t make me spank you.”
A thrill zipped up Eddie’s spine. “Don’t make promises you won’t keep,” he shot back quickly.
The retort made both men laugh, the tension breaking into comfortable warmth. Robert’s laughter was a rich, full-bodied sound. “Oh, I’ll keep that promise, don’t you worry. Now. Tell me.”
Eddie told him about the kiss in the car. How he’d used everything Robert had taught him—the focus, the patience, the worshipful attention. How he hadn’t rushed. “But her breasts,” Eddie admitted, his voice dropping to a hushed, reverent tone. “Fuck, Robert. They’re just perfect. I could feel them through her sweater, the weight of them in my hand…” He trailed off, the memory making him shift in his seat. “I could feel the pull to go further. To just take what I wanted. But once that voice got too loud, I knew it was time to stop. And...” Eddie stumbled to a stop.
“And…?” Robert prompted, not letting him off the hook.
Eddie hesitated. Saying it felt like sharing something that belonged just to him and MJ, but he knew, in this room, with this man, there were no such divisions. “And… as we said goodbye, she whispered that she had to go change her panties because they were soaked through.”
He blushed, a giggle escaping him that was part embarrassment, part sheer, unadulterated excitement.
Robert’s reaction was immediate. His hand, which had been resting on his thigh, moved to palm the thick bulge now tenting his grey sweats. “Fuck,” he growled, the word shuddering out of him. “You two are so fucking hot.”
“Not as hot as you, Daddy,” Eddie said, his own hand mirroring Robert’s, pressing down on the aching hardness confined by his jeans.
The two men locked eyes. The air in the study, always thick with the scent of old paper and wood, now thickened with something else—a potent, silent communication of need. Their hands rubbed in slow, synchronized circles over the fabric, each man watching the other’s face for the subtle signs of impending surrender. Eddie could see the pulse hammering in Robert’s throat. He was on the edge, ready to slide from his chair to his knees, or to beckon Eddie over to kneel in front of him.
But Robert cleared his throat, a rough, forceful sound. He removed his hand from his cock, gripping the armrests instead, his knuckles whitening. “As much as I want to do every filthy thing in the book with you right now,” he said, the strain evident in his voice, “we do need to talk. I want to explain.” He took a deep, steadying breath. “Before I start, what do you need? I’m getting a water and some whiskey.”
“Same,” Eddie said, his own voice tight. “I’ll pour the whiskey while you get the water,” Eddie said, heaving himself up from the chair.
Robert disappeared through the main door. Eddie listened to his retreating footsteps as he busied himself pouring whiskey for the two of them and settling himself back into the armchair, enjoying the warmth of the open fire. It took Robert a little longer than Eddie expected. He assumed some small task—checking the lock on the back door, straightening a picture—had caught Robert’s eye, a delaying tactic to marshal his thoughts.
Soon, Robert was back, carrying two bottles of chilled water. He handed one of each to Eddie, then resumed his seat, placing his own bottle next to the glass Eddie had prepared on the small table beside him. He took a swig of water, then a long sip of the whiskey, his eyes fixed on the middle distance, gathering himself.
“Right,” he said finally, his gaze swinging back to Eddie, serious and open. “Let me start from the beginning.”
He took another breath, a deep one that expanded his broad chest.
“I met Stella when Mary-Jane was eighteen,” he began, his voice low, steadying itself with the narrative. “We clicked in a way I hadn’t expected. It’s a simple kind of care, a companionship. She’s… another story. But she’s good to me, and I am to her.”
He paused, sipping his whiskey, the ice clinking softly. “Her daughter, though... Mary-Jane was a different creature entirely back then.” He described the late nights, the random men, the palpable dread that filled the house. The air in the study thickened, not with lust now, but with the memory of that shared anxiety.
“Stella was at her wit’s end,” Robert continued, his gaze fixed on the fire. “The clinics. The scares. The fear. I saw a kid drowning in her own urges with no one to teach her how to swim. So I proposed a solution to Stella.” He looked at Eddie, his expression utterly bare. “I said I might be able to help Mary-Jane understand her own appetites. If both she and Stella consented. Stella… she just trusted me. She didn’t ask for details. The relief was enough.”
“But MJ?” Eddie prompted softly, drawn into the gravity of the confession.
Robert gave a short, humourless laugh. “She wasn’t having it. She thought I was just another man trying to control her, to slut-shame her, to lock her up. A pervert. I couldn’t get through.” He took another drink, a longer one this time. The memory clearly pained him. “Then came a night. A man. It wasn’t an assault, not legally, but it was… vile. Degrading. She came home shattered. Not physically, but something inside her was cracked open.”
He leaned forward, elbows on his knees, the glass cradled in his big hands. “She was in here, on that couch, sobbing. Asking me why men were such fucking monsters. Why they only wanted to use her and then make her feel like garbage for letting them.” His voice dropped to a murmur. “I told her not all men were like that. I told her her choices were part of the equation, but that her hunger wasn’t wrong. It just needed direction. Understanding.”
Robert’s eyes met Eddie’s, unflinching. “Something in her broke open that night. She let me… tend to her. She needed proof, not words. So I gave it to her. Right there.” He nodded towards the large, plush sofa. “I went down on her for an hour. I made her cum three times. The third one… she squirted. She’d never felt that before. Never even known it was possible.”
Eddie’s breath hitched. The image was vivid, powerful: Robert’s broad shoulders between MJ’s thighs, his focused intensity, her world unraveling under his skilled, patient tongue. It wasn’t a scene of perversion, but of profound, targeted healing.
“That was the pivot,” Robert said, a faint, proud smile touching his lips. “The door opened. After that, I dialled it all back. Built the routine you’re in now. Kissing. Foreplay. Oral work. Teaching her what real attention felt like. Shaping her expectations. Always with the understanding that I was the tutor, never the destination. She learned. My God, did she learn. She started choosing better. Feeling her own worth. The chaos settled.”
He sat back, the weight of the story leaving him, yet his body remained tense, awaiting judgment. “She and Stella are inseparable now. They share the upstairs like best friends. Stella has her illnesses, but she’s supported, happy. MJ is… she’s glorious. And we agreed, she and I, that any man she deemed serious would need the same coaching. To ensure he was worthy of the woman she’d become.”
Silence pooled in the room, deep and complete, broken only by the settling of a log in the fireplace. Robert stared into his glass, his vulnerability a palpable force. Eddie could see the slight tremor in his hand.
“Do you have any thoughts?” Robert finally asked, his voice uncharacteristically shaky. The dominant master was gone, replaced by a man afraid he’d just shattered something fragile and perfect.
Eddie’s mind, which had been reeling through the implications, the images, the sheer magnitude of it, settled on a single, crystalline point. He didn’t feel jealousy. He felt awe. He stood up, crossed the space between them, and sank to his knees on the rug before Robert’s chair.
He looked up at the older man, his intense brown eyes clear. “You’re amazing,” Eddie said, the words simple and utterly convinced.
Robert blinked, his throat working.
“You didn’t try to change her or repress her,” Eddie continued, his voice gaining strength. “You didn’t shame her. You gave her exactly what she was desperately looking for in all the wrong places. You gave her understanding. You gave her skill. You gave her back her own power.” He shook his head, a smile breaking through. “You supported her in ways most people wouldn’t just fail to understand… they’d call it monstrous.”
Eddie reached out, placing a hand on Robert’s knee. The muscle beneath the sweatpants was rigid. “If I didn’t love you already…” he whispered, letting the sentence hang, the completion unnecessary.
Robert’s face crumpled. A tear spilled over, tracking through his stubble. He covered Eddie’s hand with his own, his grip desperately tight. “I love you too, son,” he rasped, the words thick with emotion. “I don’t know how, after such a short time. But here we are.”
The two men smiled at each other through the sheen of tears, a current of profound relief passing between them. The truth was out. It hadn’t ruined a thing. It had forged the connection in something stronger than secrecy: shared understanding.
The quiet that followed wasn’t empty. It was a held breath, a shared astonishment at the world they’d just fully revealed. Eddie saw a fleeting shadow in Robert’s eyes, though—a different kind of tension lingering at the edges of his exhausted openness.
Eddie finally broke the stillness, his thumb tracing circles on Robert’s knee. He kept his voice light, a gentle probe. “So, serious question.”
Robert wiped a stray tear with the back of his hand, composing himself. “Shoot.”
“If they have the upstairs,” Eddie began, glancing toward the closed study door, “where do you live? And sleep? Beyond this study?”
Understanding dawned on Robert’s face, a slow, soft smile. “Ah.” He gave Eddie’s hand a final squeeze, then stood, pulling him up with him. The motion was fluid, charged with a sudden, new purpose. He guided Eddie across the room, past the fireplace’s dying glow, to the tall bookcase flanking the right side of the window. “A secret for a secret,” Robert murmured.
His fingers curled around the bronze head of a small gryphon statue nestled between leather-bound volumes. He pulled. A quiet, heavy click echoed inside the woodwork. The entire case, shelves, books and all, swung inwards with surprising ease, revealing a deep, dark opening in the panelled wall.
“Jesus,” Eddie breathed, staring into the opening.
“Hold on.” Robert reached inside, flicking a switch. Warm light spilled out, illuminating the concealed doorway and a glimpse of what lay beyond. Robert’s hand, firm and sure, wrapped around Eddie’s bicep, and he pulled him through.
Eddie stepped into another world. The air changed, cooler, tinged faintly with sandalwood. It was a bedroom, but one of a scale and mood entirely different from the utilitarian space of his own apartment. The walls were a deep, bruised charcoal blue, warm in the low light cast by brass sconces. A massive four-poster bed dominated the far wall, its dark wood frame hung with heavy curtains of mossy green velvet, currently tied back. The bed itself was a mountain of pillows and a thick, dove-grey duvet that looked sinfully soft.
A low, tufted velvet chaise longue sprawled before the window, which was draped in tapestry curtains depicting a forest scene. An ornate mahogany dressing table with a plump, padded chair sat against one wall, its surface orderly. A simple door on the left wall, Eddie guessed, led to the main corridor, but it felt distant. Two other smaller doors opposite them, one either side of the dressing table, Eddie thought would likely be the closet, maybe another bathroom. This room, like the study, was an isolated pod, a world unto itself. There were books here too, stacked neatly on a bedside table. It smelled of Robert, of clean linen and man.
Eddie stood, utterly arrested. “This is… yours,” he said, the words inadequate.
“Built it all once things settled into this new shape,” Robert said, leaning against the now-closed bookcase door, which had seamlessly become part of the bedroom’s wood panelling. “Had the study and this room soundproofed.” A low, sheepish chuckle escaped him. “Even alone, I like to… vocalize. When I’m enjoying myself.”
“The concealed door… is incredible,” Eddie said, stepping further into the room. His fingers brushed the rich fabric of the chaise. A strange, sharp pang of envy lanced through him. Not for the room’s luxury, but for the years of private life it represented, the solitude. The thought of Robert here, alone, shouting in pleasure into soundproofed walls, was profoundly, achingly sad to him now.
Robert shrugged, misinterpreting his silence. “Silly. A holdover from a kid reading too many old mysteries about houses with secret passages. I also have a cinema room and a cosy TV nook down the hall. But…” His voice softened, admitting a truth in the same breath he mocked his own whimsy. “It gets a bit lonely using them by myself.”
Eddie turned. He crossed the space between them and threaded his fingers through Robert’s, clasping their joined hands tightly. He looked up into the older man’s weary, hopeful face. “Well, I’m here now,” Eddie said, his voice firm, a vow. “So you don’t have to feel that way.”
Robert’s grip tightened. He brought their clasped hands to his lips, kissing Eddie’s knuckles. He took a deliberate breath, his expression shifting into something carefully neutral. “I want to ask you something.”
Eddie’s heart thumped. “Yes.”
A flicker of irritation crossed Robert’s features. “You don’t know what I am going to ask you,” he snapped back, the ghost of a smile touching his lips.
“I think I do,” Eddie said, stepping closer so their bodies almost touched, tilting his face up. The air in the room was charged, thick with possibility. “But I don’t care. It’s always a yes for you.”
Robert’s other hand came up to cradle the side of Eddie’s neck, a gesture that was half tenderness, half restraint. “Let me finish then,” he chuckled, the sound warm and strained. “I’d like you to stay the night. I want to fall asleep with you and wake up with you. But…”
He paused, and Eddie could feel the nervous energy radiating from the man. Robert met his gaze directly, his expression utterly sober. “I need to warn you. If you do agree—and you can still change your mind, right now, with absolutely no consequences—if you come to bed with me, I would very much need to eat your ass.”
Heat, immediate and intense, flooded Eddie’s groin. He saw a raw, startling hunger in Robert’s eyes that hadn’t been there before, even at their most intense.
“I am trying to keep my need at bay, and I can when we’re in the study,” Robert continued, his words measured, confessional. “But if you come to bed with me, I would need that to change. I am not saying I am going to run you through. We’re a way off from that. But I need to taste you. I need to show you.”
He fell silent, holding Eddie’s gaze, waiting. The tension in his shoulders was palpable. He had laid a hidden, feral part of himself bare and was braced for rejection.
Eddie held the stare, his own face a mask of solemnity, drawing out the moment until he felt a giddy laugh bubble up from his core. He couldn’t suppress it any longer. A bright, shameless laugh burst from him. “Yes!” he said, the word loud and emphatic in the quiet room. “Yes, you incredible man. I want you to show me everything. I want to be with you. I don’t know why or what it means, but you’re mine. I claim you. I need you to claim me back.”
The tension in Robert shattered. A low, guttural sound escaped his throat. He dropped Eddie’s hand and instead wrapped both powerful arms around his waist, lifting him clean off the floor. Eddie gasped, his legs instinctively wrapping around Robert’s torso, locking at the ankles.
“Oh,” Robert growled into the curve of his neck, his voice vibrating against Eddie’s skin, “I will claim you so much tonight that you will feel like my conjoined twin.”
Robert carried him the few steps to the edge of the vast bed and dropped him onto the impossibly soft duvet. Eddie bounced once, laughing, looking up at the man looming over him, backlit by the warm sconces. The hunger on Robert’s face was pure, unchecked ferocity now. Beautiful and terrifying.
“Deal,” Eddie whispered, breathless.
Robert followed him down, his body a delicious, heavy weight. Their lips met in a clash that was all tongue and teeth and shared, urgent breath. Robert kissed him like he was starving, like he wanted to consume him from the mouth first. Eddie moaned, his hands scrabbling at Robert’s back, pulling the soft fabric of his shirt taut.
After a few moments, Robert pulled back, panting. He braced himself over Eddie, his eyes black with desire. “Time for you to prepare then,” he said, his voice a ragged scrape. “Because I cannot wait much longer.” He nodded towards a sleek, modern door Eddie had noticed earlier, set into the wall near the dressing table. “En-suite. Everything you need is in there. Cleanliness is a matter of pride here.”