Brady's Choice

...I thought we’d been in love. Stupid now to think of it. I’d met him over ten years ago, when I was just twenty-six and trying to pursue a career in finance, whilst getting increasingly side-tracked by my hobby of pot-making. God knows why I’d ever imagined I could make a go of anything to do with mathematics, but my father had been keen. And, after all, it was where I’d met Philip. He’d taken my breath away at first sight, and I wasn’t being a cliché as I’d really felt it hard to breathe for a few moments. It hadn’t been love, not then, just something else that felt almost physical, but wasn’t only lust. He’d been standing at the door of the meeting room I was heading toward, a dark-haired, rugged man with the bluest eyes I’d ever seen. Such a contrast from my own fair hair and rather too willowy physique. Opposites, I supposed, and even then I should have been warned.

He was there representing one of our clients, and I couldn’t stop glancing at him, which made focusing on the presentation I was giving an uphill task. Once, I looked across at him while I was in the middle of pointing out sales trends for his aeronautical consultancy, and he smiled right at me. I think I stammered my way to the end of my moment in the spotlight after that and, as I sat back down, he winked at me.

When we left the meeting, he caught up with me and asked me out, then and there, breaking at least a dozen professional rules in the process, and not seeming to care that my colleagues were right next to me, overhearing everything. While I hesitated, feeling the weight of surprise at my back, Philip laughed.

“Don’t worry,” he’d said. “I won’t let it affect any business relationship we have. That decision isn’t entirely mine to make anyway. In this instance I’m interested in you on a personal level, Brady, so what you do say? Yes or no?”

Of course, I’d said yes. I couldn’t take my eyes off him, so there was no other option. Five hours later, when work was done, he was kissing me in the shadows outside the gay-friendly bar where we’d agreed to meet. An hour or so after that, he was in my bed, and in me, and I was well on my way to having the richest orgasm I’d ever had in my life, while begging him for more.

For about a year after that, I couldn’t get enough of him. I thought about him every minute of every day, the shape of his hands, the particular shade of brown of his hair, the lilting tones of his voice. I could never, to my own satisfaction, describe how beautiful he was, but I knew every inch of him as if he was engraved in my blood and in my memory. In many ways he was..