Gaydar

Excerpt from: Gaydar

“Let me guess, he’s straight?”

Mathias Hilliard perched his backside on the barstool between his friends. “I’m meeting him in the gents’ toilets in five minutes,” he announced.

Even with his run of luck, Matt was pretty sure an entirely straight man wouldn’t suggest meeting another man there. He ran his hands through his hair, messing up the carefully styled blond strands, and tried not to look too anxious as he watched his friends exchange a very speaking look.

“Married,” they decided in unison.

Matt took a sip of his beer, trying to work some moisture into his throat as nervous energy built inside him. “He says he’s not married.”

“That’s what all your boyfriends start off saying,” Paul reminded him.

“No wedding ring,” Matt recounted. “And no pale line where a wedding ring should be either. I checked.”

“What’s wrong with him then?” Lewis asked from the stool on the other side of him.

Matt glared at his friend as he put his empty beer bottle back on the bar. “Maybe there’s nothing wrong with him. Maybe he’s just a nice guy who just happens to want to have sex with me. Would that really be so strange?”

Out of the corner of his eye he saw one of his friends raise an eyebrow at the other. The bartender took the empty bottle from in front of him and tossed it into a barrel that was already half full of other empty bottles before he walked back down to the other end of the bar.

“So, I’m having a run of bad luck,” Matt said with a shrug.

“One that’s lasted ever since you came out of the closet,” Lewis muttered into his glass.

Matt made a point of ignoring him. He stood up and straightened his new shirt, smoothing out non-existent creases. Taking a deep breath, he nodded to himself. This time it would be different. This guy would be different. He just knew it.

A few minutes later Matt stepped into the men’s room at the back of the bar. He didn’t even have time to look around before his back hit the wall. A man’s body covered his, pressing him back against the plasterwork, holding him there when instinct made Matt push against the larger man’s chest.

Firm, demanding lips swallowed his gasp. A confident tongue swept into his mouth, coaxing a moan from him. Without any order from his brain, Matt felt his hands claw at the man’s shirt as he tried to pull him closer. There wasn’t much material to hold on to. Well-defined muscles moved under his hands. Suddenly it became absolutely essential that the shirt should go.

Dropping one hand to the other man’s waist, Matt tugged at the material, trying to free it from his jeans so he could at least feel skin under his touch, even if he couldn’t strip the other man down right there.

Large hands wrapped around both his wrists and pinned them against the wall on either side of his head. Matt groaned a protest. The guy had suggested they meet in the men’s room. He couldn’t start playing hard to get now. There had to be a rule against that sort of crime against humanity and common bloody sense.