Cloud white, p.1
Cloud White, page 1
CLOUD WHITE
NAILED IT!
BOOK 3
FEARNE HILL
Copyright © 2023 by Fearne Hill
All rights reserved.
No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without written permission from the author, except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.
CONTENTS
Author’s Note
Prologue
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Chapter 26
Epilogue
About the Author
Also by Fearne Hill
AUTHOR’S NOTE
I write with a light touch but please be kind to yourselves and take note of trigger warnings for domestic abuse. There are also mentions of gambling and addiction (secondary characters, not on page), and fat shaming and mis-gendering (by a secondary character, on page).
PROLOGUE
MILO
ONE YEAR EARLIER
Bearded men made better lovers. Mungo White had declared it thus, and he was a lawyer. So it must be true.
His beard, which endangered wildlife could get lost in, had nothing to do with it.
“And I’ll tell you something else, Milo,” he announced, his strong arm providing vital support as we tottered on tipsy legs towards home. “Kissing a man without a beard is like drinking champagne without bubbles. Fact.”
If that were the case, I’d singlehandedly kept the flat champagne economy afloat for years.
But no longer. Tonight, all that was on the cusp of changing forever. Because as soon as I pushed open the front door, Mungo White and I were going to be a hell of a lot more than best friends and housemates. When I finally wriggled out of these excruciatingly tight trousers and unzipped him from his much more comfortable ones, he’d forget he was being seduced by the guy who’d once turned him down and broken his heart. That was the past; I’d been young and foolish then. Concepts like love and commitment had been ugly swearwords. I’d stuffed my fingers in my ears and pretended they didn’t exist.
He’d pieced together his broken heart, of course, then watched from the sidelines as I’d kissed an army of clean-shaven frogs. Been fucked by entire regiments, to be brutally honest. And took five whole years to discover not a single one measured up to the bearded beauty currently fumbling for our door key. When I flashed him a smile, he answered right back with a grin of his own, one of the conspiratorial ones passing between us daily. Saying I see you. I know you. I love you.
We crossed the threshold, and in a puff of smoke, the rest of the world vanished. Mungo let out a contented homecoming sigh. “Promise me, Milo, that next time Frankie sweet talks us into making up the numbers at one of his work events, you’ll pin me down and tie me to my bedframe. Don’t let me escape until next morning. I’m too old for this shit.”
A shiver of anticipation swept over me. Could he have fed me a better opener?
In the narrow confines of our hallway, before he shambled upstairs to his own room and me to mine, I laced my slim fingers through his thicker ones. He glanced down, russet-brown eyes wide with surprise.
“Milo, I…”
With a fingertip to his soft lips, I cut him off. Now wasn’t the time for words. They would come later, after he’d enfolded me in those brawny arms, carried me to bed, and fucked me to seventh heaven and back. Several times over.
“Shhh.” Winding an arm around his thick neck, I raised up on tiptoe—a stretch my puny calves were going to have to learn to love—to kiss him. On a path to melding with his, my mouth brushed against the soft silk of his dark beard. A bold heat curled from my toes, stoking the simmering fire between us. Soft pillowy lips met soft pillowy lips, the kiss igniting the way I always knew it would. A million meteors rained down to earth as it exploded, a heavenly firework display especially for us, a cacophony of…
Mungo’s palms cradled my cheeks. Gently pushing me away, regretfully, he shook his head. My blood stilled in my veins. He took a deliberate step away from me. He was not kissing me back. Mungo White was not kissing me back. My bones turned to lead.
“What’s wrong? Mungo, talk to me. What is it?”
He held both hands up, palms facing me, like a shield. Voice barely above a whisper, I clawed at his sleeve. “Mungo, what? Tell me what’s wrong?”
Weeks, no, months later, battling the vertigo of heartbreak, I still struggled to unpick the kaleidoscope of emotions passing behind those fathomless brown eyes. Sorrow, for sure. Tinged with regret, perhaps, for what could have been. Pity too—I hated that—mixed with genuine concern. But no triumph. And not a flicker of malice. This was no ice-cold calculated revenge. My Mungo was too good and kind and fucking decent.
When he spoke, his gaze dropped away, to the left, to where the stairs would carry him up to his room and me to mine. Alone.
“I’m so sorry, Milo. There is something I need to tell you. I’ve met someone else.”
CHAPTER 1
MILO
I stood, alone and fabulous, between the raised podium of the stage and the unseemly scrum at the bar. A fabulous flamingo in a pond of dreary uninspiring ducks. Clearly, I wasn’t actually a flamingo, balancing on one leg, and at this moment in time, after two hours of dancing, balancing on one leg was a physical impossibility anyhow. My hips didn’t lie, but they certainly needed a more acute awareness of their limitations. For the best part of the last thirty minutes, tendrils of sharp pain shot through both. By morning, they’d have burst into full bloom in my lower back.
I regularly passed myself off as twenty-five, though my age was much closer to thirty. And also, on the wrong side of it. In time to the hypnotic beat, I shifted my weight from one foot to the other, managing to disguise the manoeuvre as an alluring pelvic roll. Trust me, following an intense week at work, the phrase ‘his body betrayed him’ was nowhere near as sexy as romance books had us believe.
Whiling away an evening in the Lizard Lounge was the lesser of several evils. The place styled itself as more of a lounge bar than a club, so although the music was turned up intolerably loud, it didn’t split my ears like Madison’s in Soho. Notwithstanding, even three grapefruit mojitos and a spicy London mule hadn’t touched my pounding headache.
One of my best buddies, Frankie, had mooted they might slide by whilst their husband, Lysander, was out of town for the night. Until they fell in love, we reliably went clubbing together every weekend. But, as the hours wound down, it was becoming increasingly unlikely. Tristan, their triplet brother and one of my other closest friends, was still living it up with his toy boy on the other side of the world. Not that he’d ever frequented these types of bars anyhow. And my oldest friend Mungo was… I didn’t allow myself to dwell on what Mungo was up to. His nuts in guts, probably.
In life’s cruel game of musical chairs, I was the only one left standing. My best friends had found their significant others, rendering me insignificant, and I missed them horribly. Not in a grand like-the-deserts-missed-the-rain kind of way. Nor in a pathetic begging-for-crumbs-of-attention, third-wheeling kind of way. But the little things, like the predictable twitch of Frankie’s lips when Lysander droned on about the monetisation and glittery rainbow excesses of Pride, and how we should all boycott it, but we’d drag him along anyway and he’d have a banging good time. Or how we used to pile back to the triplets' flat after a heavy night, and drunkenly cuddle up to grumpy Tristan, only to be unceremoniously tipped out of his bed. And then charm their sister Maddie into making us all toast and hot chocolate. The way Mungo would tilt his big shaggy head of dark hair and stroke his thick beard thoughtfully, as if my crocheted lime hot pants hadn’t scarred his eyeballs for life.
Now they were all married or loved up, while I was still douching and optimistically guzzling PrEP before squeezing my rake-thin body into tight pleather every Saturday night.
And I didn’t want to be anymore.
A group of friends crowded each other over at the bar. With an ache of recognition, I bore firsthand witness to the brand of closeness and familiarity I now mourned. Students probably, judging from their youth. Young enough not to have peeled off into smug coupledom yet. Full of mischievous smiles and back slaps transforming into raucous laughter, crowding each other to share shit on their phones. As I swayed uncomfortably, one of them, dark-haired and bulky, sent a few cool glances in my direction, fooling no one. He was a very good-looking guy. My night’s entertainment sewn up right there if I wanted.
I had other friends, of course, buckets of them. Half of the folk on the prowl in here tonight were already in my contacts list. But none measured up to Tristan, whom I could phone during my lunchbreak to bitch about the boss. None like Frankie either, who would drag me around the Selfridges sale until my feet dropped, then whisk me into Langham’s for cocktails. Or my dear, dear Mungo, who held my hair off my face and rubbed my back when I puked, assuring me I was still beautiful even when I looked wrecked.
None who needed me.
The tsunami of misery sweeping across my heart had a name. Loneliness, and it was about the scariest thing out there.
With a wearisome inevitability, the dark-haired guy slipped away from his friends to join me at the edge of the dancefloor. Young (very), built (stockily), and bearded (barely). Twenty years old, if he was a day—the beard was nothing more than patchy scruff—but the guy sizzled with eagerness, even though a tightness around his dark eyes hinted at anxiety. How many times had he done this? If I was a betting man, I’d say single figures. Cocky enough to approach me, though, so that was something. Over his shoulder, his mates egged him on.
“Hi, I’m Danny. Can I buy you a drink?”
As pick-ups went, it was neither original nor daring. Five thousand miles away in sunny California, Tristan was smirking at the predictability of my choice. Nonetheless, he earned bonus marks for capturing my gaze, then having the nerve to hold it. Also, for not fannying around, even if he introduced himself like he was across the counter in Carphone Warehouse, with designs on flogging me an upgraded phone deal. At close range, I awarded him another extra gold star for convincing the bouncers he was over twenty-one. Ten years from now, he’d be exactly my type. As I leaned in to answer, his breath wafted over me: reasonably fresh. Liquid courage had been imbibed, but not so much he wouldn’t be able to perform later.
“I said can I buy you a drink?” Russet-brown eyes, my favourite colour.
In a word, he’d do. I needed a fuck, and, more importantly, my lumbar spine was politely requesting a shift from the vertical to the horizontal. Cutting short the tedious ritual of discreet sexual cues, I cocked my porkpie hat at a rakish angle of sixty-nine degrees.
“Let’s go one step better, flower. I’ll pour you something back at mine.”
New to the rules, or perhaps too tiddly to observe them, Danny insisted on a grope and exchanges of saliva on practically every street corner. Which was… wearing. But not as wearing as his excited line in chat in between the groping and kissing.
“I can’t think straight around you.” That old chestnut was followed up with a lascivious grin.
“I’m flattered, truly.” My eyeroll went unnoticed, seeing as he was sandwiching me against a lamppost and excavating my tonsils. With an ecstatic groan, he pressed his eager nether regions up against mine.
“Fucking hell, Milo. If you were a door, I’d slam you all night long.”
Oh my god, Mungo would be wetting himself. God knew which websites this Danny had been perusing. Nor where he’d been hiding his extra three pairs of hands, currently pummelling my sore ancient flesh like he was warming up for a boxing match.
“You’ve got a gorgeous body, Milo. And face. I bet you’re vocal during sex.”
Enough was enough. We reached my front door—thank heavens. Clearly, my cock in his mouth was the only way to shut this boy up. Twisting the key in the lock, giving it a wiggle, and then kneeing the old wooden panelling just so, I gave the young excitable octopus my most seductive pout.
“Danny, sunshine? It’s your lucky night. I can be vocal and lead guitar.”
Oh my God, he’d failed to read the memo. The boy was still here! As I discovered after easing myself out of bed late morning and tripping over his naked form, laid out on the carpet as if the FBI were on their way to draw a chalk outline around him. I yanked back the curtains, and he stirred.
“What on earth are you doing down there?”
“Uh?”
Wrapping my silk robe more tightly, I repeated the question, prodding him with my toe like I’d stumbled over something washed up on the beach. Kissing and inane dirty talk in exchange for a quick fuck was bad enough, but the morning after? Unmoisturised and uncaffeinated? Heavens no. He’d think he’d gone to bed with Beauty and woken up with the Beast.
The guy drew himself onto his elbows, blinking into the harsh light, then belching softly. A smattering of acne across his upper back reminded me just how young he was.
“Uh… you kicked me out? You specifically ordered me to get out after we finished?”
“Yes, and by out, I meant out-out, not out of bed.”
“Oh.” Another blink. “Shit.”
He scratched his head and then his hairless belly, trying to process his surroundings and equate the troll standing over him, twin tracks of mascara painting his stubbly cheeks, with the smooth sexy twink he’d shagged eight hours earlier. Twice.
I prodded him again. “It was lovely knowing you, Danny. It really was. But time’s ticking, and I’m a busy man. I have a brunch date in…” I glanced at my phone. “Pissing fuck, forty minutes, at Covent Garden. So, flower, be a good boy and shake a leg. Now.”
During the course of his stupendous evening as a gallant chap about town, young Danny had lost his phone and didn’t have any change for the bus. I passed a tenner over to him, like he was some sort of cheap gigolo I’d hired for the night. He studied it as if he’d never seen actual paper money before asking if I had a fiver instead, because he only paid half price. At which point his face turned the same shade of scarlet as my silk robe. I might be old, but I wasn’t so bloody ancient I couldn’t remember how travel discounts worked. Fuck my life.
“So. Danny. You mentioned you were a student.”
“Um… yeah.” My bland bedroom carpet suddenly became a source of great fascination. “I am.”
“Good. I’ve always appreciated an educated man.” I whisked the tenner back off him. “Um… what kind of student? Tell me the truth, flower. And while you’re about it, I’ll also be needing the name and number of the very cute guy on your fake ID. From the chiselled jawline, I’m taking a wild guess that he’s your older brother.”
Bingo. His head shot up like I’d poked him with a cattle prod. A piece of equipment I unfortunately didn’t have lying around to extract this child out of my fucking house.
“I’d like to meet him,” I continued savagely, “because he’s hot. More importantly, not only does he look plenty old enough to pick up similarly inclined men in age-restricted lounge bars, but I’ll wager he’s also not still at fucking school, Danny.”
The stony silence filling the bedroom told me I was bang on the money.
“I don’t think he’s gay,” Danny mumbled, picking at the carpet.
“That’s a pity. And a waste.”
Danny’s chin jutted; his eyes pleaded. “But I am, and I lost my house keys as well as my phone, and my mum and stepdad will have gone to church by now, and then they’re going to my Aunt Sandra’s for lunch, and my uncle’s the church warden, so they will be ages leaving church, and I won’t be able to get back in the house, and so… so can I hang around with you for a bit?”
Two soulful brown eyes beseeched me from the disadvantaged position of being level with my ankles. Eyes like Mungo’s, but a whole heap more desperate than my big friend’s ever were, very lost and very young. Something told me that Danny’s church-going stepdad probably didn’t appreciate having a gay stepson. Fuck, I knew what that kind of parental disapproval felt like. My annoyance with the boy softened a fraction.
“And the sex was all right, wasn’t it, Milo?”
I smiled inwardly. First time around, he’d pushed at my entrance like he was vying to be the first bloke into the IKEA sale on Black Friday. I’d fleetingly wondered if he’d ever done it before. But afterwards, he’d been considerate, even passing me some bog roll to clean up, and we’d had a repeat performance an hour later with a much more satisfactory outcome. And those eyes reminded me so much of Mungo’s, even if his sexual prowess lagged significantly behind.
