Chapter 1

Gary Levinson burst through the kitchen door. His best friend, Danny Rawlings, was at the table—textbooks spread out in front of him.

Breathless, because he’d run all the way from his house, Gary asked, “Raw in?”

Danny looked at his watch. Laying down his pen, he said, “You’re early.”

“Couldn’t wait.” Gary panted and rested for a moment, hands on knees. “Is he in?” he asked again.

Danny sighed, scraped back his chair and stood. “Dad’s upstairs in his room. I’m going over to Matt’s.”

Gary watched his best friend leave. He knew it was difficult for him, his best friend and his dad having sex. Gary tried to imagine how he’d feel if he were in a similar situation—Danny about to have sex with his mother.

“Yuck!”

He jogged round the table, through the living room and into the hall. As he took the stairs two at a time he could hardly believe what was about to happen. Finally, after years of suggesting, cajoling, and downright begging, Danny’s dad was going to make love to him.

It was the morning of Gary’s eighteenth birthday and the only gift he wanted was behind the closed door at the end of the landing. Reaching the top step he paused, suddenly nervous. He tried to calm his racing heart and slow his breathing. His stomach also felt funny, like a flock of doves—or were they lovebirds—flying around in there. Gary didn’t want Raw to see him like this, so he stepped into the bathroom. After washing his face and drying it on Raw’s towel—taking a big sniff of the man’s unique scent—Gary tried to do something with his unruly tangle of red hair. Frowning at the blackhead that was starting to sprout on his freckled, too-big-for-his-face nose, Gary thought about squeezing the zit, but that’d only make it look worse. He knew he was too thin, too gangly and uncoordinated, nothing like the strong, powerfully-muscled god who was waiting for him.

“Fuck!” he said under his breath, his hands nervously picking at the pockets of his jeans. He’d agonised that morning about what to wear. What did you put on when you were going to be made love to by the man of your dreams?

He’d quickly rejected one of the Leopards’ rugby shirts. Gary had narrow, rounded shoulders; the shirts just looked stupid on him, although that didn’t stop him from getting the replica kits—both home and away—each season. And of course they had Rawlings as well as 13on the backs.

Eventually Gary had decided on his best—and tightest—pair of Wranglers and the white T-shirt with the broad blue horizontal stripe across the chest that Raw had gotten him the previous Christmas.

Realising he was wasting time, time he should be spending with Raw, Gary looked at the unopened box of Tums in the medicine chest, decided he could do without, and turned for the landing.

“For what I’m about to receive,” Gary mumbled, “May the Lord know I’m truly thankful.”

Crossing the landing, wincing at the creak of every floorboard, Gary knocked on the door to Raw’s bedroom, a room he’d only glimpsed the interior of once before.

“Come in.”

This is it, Gary thought, turning the handle. Taking a deep breath he pushed the door open. “Sorry I’m earlier than I said I’d…” His mouth fell open at the vision standing in the centre of the room. “Oh, God.” He felt his knees weakening. Goddamn it, he’d wanted to prove to Raw he wasn’t the infatuated fan boy he suspected Raw saw him as. And what did he do the second he laid eyes on the man? “Fuck!” he added under his breath.

“You just gonna stand there?” Raw’s question was delivered in his usual deep—and to Gary—sexy timbre, but the man was smiling, the dimple in his chin in full…dimple. This did nothing for the floppy feeling in Gary’s belly, but judging by the painful tightness a little further down, his dick was far from floppy. “Come in, if you’re staying.”

“Uh, yeah, sorry.” Gary stepped inside and closed the door.

Raw’s room was awesome. All glass and chrome with dark wood flooring. In the far corner was the Nautilus machine Gary had advised Raw to buy a couple of seasons earlier to help the man stay in peak shape. A huge bed was against another wall, the sheets were black and to Gary’s untrained eye, satin. Gary swallowed, his mouth had gone dry. But what dominated the room, kept drawing his gaze, was Raw himself. Raw was decked out in the Littleborough Leopard’s 2008 black away strip with its classic two V’s—one above the other—in thin white piping across the chest. Although Raw looked awesome in whatever strip the team chose…the black and white was Gary’s absolute favourite. He’d wanked off in his own copy several times, but that was a secret only known to him and the washing machine. It was around 2008 that he’d insisted to his mother he do his own laundry.