“Maybe Jamie just doesn’t feel like talking to you,” Ryan said. “You aren’t exactly his favorite person in the world after you made it clear you considered him inferior to your other son.”
When Arthur didn’t reply immediately, he knew he’d hit a nerve.
“Nevertheless,” Arthur said. “This is very unlike him. Whitford’s boy was clearly concerned as well when I spoke with him this morning. He said he could not betray my son’s trust, but he wished he could do something for him.”
Ryan’s gut clenched. If Luke was concerned enough to come so close to betraying Jamie’s trust, something must be seriously wrong.
“Fix him and bring him back,” Arthur said suddenly, his tone harsh. “I’ve never liked your influence over my son. But if anyone can fix whatever is wrong with him, it’s you.”
Ryan bit the inside of his cheek. “Your son and I aren’t exactly on speaking terms,” he said, every word an effort to say. “Sorry, but I can’t help you.”
He hung up.
In the utter silence that followed, he took a deep breath, then another. He forced his hand to unclench. Motherfucker. Refusing to look out for Jamie went against every goddamn instinct in him.
Ryan stared at the first glimpse of sunrise on the horizon. He had forgotten to close the blinds when he returned last night after an evening out with some old school mates. There had been a lot of drinking, dancing and flirting with women involved. He had almost felt like his old self. He’d even snogged a very pretty brunette—before politely turning her down when she invited him to her place. He’d expected her to get mad for leading her on, but the girl just smiled sympathetically. “A recent breakup?” she had asked. Ryan had nodded with a rueful smile.
He was still unsure whether he had meant Hannah or Jamie. Perhaps both. But while he still felt a pang of sadness every time he thought of Hannah, he tried not to think of Jamie altogether. Thinking of Jamie just made him angry, restless, agitated, and uncomfortable—for several reasons. One of those reasons was pretty damn sick.
Feeling a familiar stirring in his groin, Ryan sighed.
A few minutes later, he lost the battle with himself and reached out for his tablet on the nightstand. It didn’t take him long to find the photograph. He came across it a week ago when he was uploading photographs from his old camera to a cloud service for safekeeping. Now he wished he’d never come across it.
The picture had been taken almost five years ago, just after Jamie’s eighteenth birthday. He remembered that day clearly. They were on the beach in the south of France. Jamie had claimed that the water was cold and refused to get underwater with him; instead he decided to take a nap. As a bit of revenge, Ryan put a flower in Jamie’s hair, tugged Jamie’s trunks down his ass and took a picture. It had been a harmless prank, something teenagers did to mess with their mates. Jamie turned ten shades of pink when Ryan had showed him the picture afterward. It had been funny as hell at the time.
It wasn’t very funny now. He couldn’t look away from the pale curve of Jamie’s spine. From the two dimples just above the swell of Jamie’s ass. From the tiny pink hole between Jamie’s pale, lush cheeks.
He felt like a bloody pervert every time he looked at the picture. This time was no exception, but he wasn’t looking away. He never could. He licked his dry lips, looking at Jamie’s hole. There should have been nothing arousing about it. But he couldn’t help but remember how tight it was around his cock, how good it felt around him, how sweetly Jamie moaned as he took him in deeper and deeper—Jamie fucking loved having his cock in him, he was gagging for it—
Dammit.
Swearing through his gritted teeth, Ryan sat up, raking his fingers through his hair and trying to ignore the massive erection in his boxers. It felt like he had two minds: the old him who missed his best mate like a fucking limb and wanted to hop onto a plane to Russia to fix whatever was wrong with Jamie and protect him from everyone; and the horny asshole who wanted to hop onto a plane to Russia for an entirely different reason. The worst part was, he couldn’t reconcile those two wants at all. He still cringed every time he caught himself thinking of fucking Jamie. He couldn’t suddenly stop thinking of Jamie as a pseudo-brother only because a part of him wanted to screw him, too. It was one hell of a mindfuck. He knew that in this state of mind he should stay away from Jamie—he would only end up fucking with his head and hurting him again.