Free Playing With Fire (Glasgow Lads Book 3) by Avery Cockburn

you were funny and cool and not, you know…”
    “A flaming fairy?”
    Robert glared at him. “No, that’s—”
    “I wasn’t gorgeous,” Liam said. “Straight lads could look at me without thinking, ‘Hmm, I’d give that a go.’ The kind of thoughts that scare them into being bullies.” He patted Robert’s cheek. “If you’d been out, you’d have terrified them.”
    Robert took Liam’s hand from his face and held onto it. “I know what those lads did to you. I know how you got by.”
    “You mean when I sucked them off? That was as much for my sake as theirs. It was good practice. Plus it got me—it got us—free cigarettes. How are you doing with that, by the way? We used to smoke like madmen on camping trips.”
    Robert blinked at the change in subject, his mind still spinning from this latest revelation. Liam had always told him he got the cigarettes in exchange for chemistry tutoring. “I’m—erm, it’s been hard.”
    Liam glanced downward, raising an eyebrow. “I know, but we sorted that, aye?”
    “It’s been difficult ,” Robert amended with a smirk for Liam’s cheekiness. “All this fresh air but no cigarettes. It’s pure strange.” He lowered his eyes. “All of this is strange.”
    Liam tapped his foot against Robert’s. “Strange but good, aye?”
    “Oh aye.” He leaned over and planted a kiss on the bridge of Liam’s nose. “Very good.”
    With a soft chuckle, Liam turned away from Robert, onto his left side. “Come spoon me, my new best gay pal. Keep us warm.”
    Robert complied eagerly, sliding an arm and a leg over Liam and holding him tight. He closed his eyes and pressed his face to the back of Liam’s neck, inhaling the manly zing of his sweat mixed with faint, spicy undertones of shampoo.
    Outside their tent, the wind had settled to a lulling whisper. Sleep was folding its velvet grip around Robert, but he needed to make something clear. “You know I’m not gay, right?”
    Liam stirred and said, “It’s okay, mate. No judgment here. We’ve all got different journeys.”
    “Journeys?”
    “Some men are, like, forty before they accept they’re gay. You just need time to get used to the idea.” Liam squeezed Robert’s hand at his waist. “I’m here if you need to talk.” Then he yawned. “But not just now, as I am seriously shattered. In the best possible way.”
    Suddenly Robert’s body and mind felt like they belonged to two different people. His body still hummed in the orgasm’s afterglow, while his mind spun in a sickening loop as he processed what his friend had just said.
    Either Liam didn’t believe Robert was still attracted to girls, or he thought he could be—what, cured of his bisexuality? That after the hundredth body-rippling blowjob, Robert would make up his fuckin’ mind , as Liam had said?
    “G’night,” Liam whispered, and when Robert didn’t answer, he turned his head to add, “You asleep already?”
    Robert kept his eyes shut and lengthened his breaths—as much as he could, given his anger-fueled adrenaline. What an eejit he’d been, to think that in one night he could magically transform Liam’s prejudice into acceptance.
    “Hm. That was fast.” Liam snuggled closer, pressing his arse against Robert’s crotch.
    Just like that, Robert was hard again. But he didn’t move. He just lay there and prayed for sleep’s escape.

C HAPTER S IX

    L IAM STARED OUT over a crystalline blue Loch Lomond, listening to the calls of lake birds and the sizzle of butter in the frying pan, trying to decide how he felt about hooking up with Robert. Happy? Apprehensive? Happrehensive?
    Aye, that was it. He was pure crammed out with happrehension.
    He’d lain awake for nearly an hour last night, listening to Robert’s uneven breaths and wondering why his friend was faking sleep. Then this morning he’d considered waking Robert with a good-morning blowjob but decided against it. What had seemed so simple in the darkness—wanting, taking,