“…I know Orlando…but Henry dropped by and he wants to take me to a new gallery in Silverlake and since he’s leaving for Europe in a few days, I figured we’d spend some father-son time together…you understand, right?”

Viggo lied.

I heard the deep sexual tension in his voice, as taut as a bowstring, desire thickening his words like a red wine reduction over low heat.  I heard a sharply indrawn breath as if he’d been so gently touched.   It was a sound I knew well because Viggo had made me emit such sounds many times before.

A bottomless pit opened up where I thought my heart was.

Viggo lied and I knew why he lied.   

Sean was there.  Sean had finally come back to take Viggo back and there wasn’t a damn thing I could do about it.

The proof was staring at me in the face.

I knew Viggo’s mobile phone number better than I knew my own.  The number that registered on the caller i.d. wasn’t his.  I also knew damn well it wasn’t Henry’s.  Nor was it Dom’s or Billy’s.  That idiot Sean Bean had forgotten that he’d given me his mobile number back in Wellington.  For some reason I’d never erased it. 

Oh yes that’s right, he and I had been friends once.

Now he was just a bastard fucking the man I loved.

Worse was that somehow I knew the man I loved was fucking him too.

***

I don’t do histrionics.

It’s not that I didn’t believe that men don’t cry—I’d seen Viggo—and who could be any more masculine than him—shed tears for what people might consider some strange reasons.  Like the night one of his mares gave birth, or when he’d written or painted something especially personal.  Viggo often played the steely-eyed, unemotional male figure in his films, but in real life, he’d never been afraid to be vulnerable.  I never held that against him—it made him a lot stronger than the “chin up old chap” types I’d grown up with.

The truth was I simply didn’t have the tears to shed.  My emotions were in a total limbo.  I was numb, and certainly not comfortably so.

For nearly a year, I’d given Viggo everything that I could.  My goal was love, not to be a replacement for Sean Bean, though somewhere buried in the place where denial dwells, lay patiently waiting that very realization.  Oh yes, I simply wanted to be a better man, one in touch with his feelings, unlike Sean who’d refused to accept them.  I’d gone past labels like queer or het, the way Viggo had taught me, because he believed they were limiting and meaningless. 

I should have known from the moment Vig kissed me that I was nothing more than a substitute.  The warning bells should have went off.  I should have known, but my legs failed me the second those lips touched mine.  One taste of him and I was done.  I’d been entranced by him from the first and now that he was to be mine—the fulfillment of every waking and sleeping fantasy—I just didn’t care how or why.

I was determined to be the lover he wanted.  The things he demanded of me, the things he did to my body—sometimes they shamed me afterwards—but I never once considered not doing them.  Besides, I’d come to enjoy his mastery of me.  It made me feel desired—wanted—that Sean was a distant memory.  I can’t even remember the number of times I’d show up on set with my mouth and body bruised, my tongue still coated in or my ass leaking from Viggo’s come. 

The spectre of doubt never quite went away, but lying in his bed with my legs high on his shoulders as he drove that huge cock into me over and over again made me not give a damn as long as he never stopped.  I never noticed that his eyes were glazed over, as if he were somewhere else—or with someone else.  I never cared that he didn’t whisper sweet words of love to me.  I never cared that afterwards I would feel like a cheap male whore with a convenient hole for him to use.

It just felt so right. 

And the rimming.  He knew how much I hated when he did that to me, when he used his mouth and tongue like that, opening me up, delving deep within that place a tongue shouldn’t go.  He also knew how crazy it made me when he did it.  He made me beg for it, and I would, panting and pleading and whimpering while his hands spread me wider.  It made me come so hard and I’d hate that as much as I loved it and never wanted him to stop.  My stomach, chin and lips would be coated in my thick, liquid lies.  Worse still was that he always kissed me afterwards and I tasted myself on him and I wanted to be disgusted and never was. 

My mind recalled all of it.  So did my body.  The pain, the pleasure, the way I lost myself in his eyes when he took me.  The way he looked as he made my body his own private playground.

No, Viggo had never been a romantic fuck.  He didn’t do sweet words or a lot of foreplay.  When he took me, it was always with a purpose.  More often than not, his big cock hurt as he stretched me, but I loved the pain.  I had never been a pain slut until after meeting Viggo.

Viggo had found hidden depths to me and brought them out.  It was as if he enjoyed corrupting me.  All the while, somewhere inside I knew he didn’t feel the same.  I didn’t care.  I went into the relationship with my brain and eyes closed and my ass wide open.

Knowing all that didn’t make the end—now that it was here—any easier to deal with.  I had hoped that when the end did come, I could have handled it with calm and stoic acceptance.  No, that too was a lie.  My dream had been for Viggo to suddenly realize how much I loved him, and that I was willing to have some part of him because of that love and that his heart would open and let me inside; then would declare his love for me and apologize for not seeing it sooner and we would make tender, passionate love and live happily every after.

Lij would laugh his ass off at me if he even suspected how maudlin I’d become.  Lij, who never let his heart get in the way of a good fuck.

No, I couldn’t—wouldn’t—fucking accept this.  I wanted to know, I had the right to know why.  Coldly, I picked up the hand-blown vase he’d purchased for me at one of the street fairs and without thought allowed it to slip through my hands.  It shattered the way my heart threatened to, the shards creating bloody little pinpricks on my bare feet, the way my heart bled now.

***

I sat in the darkened living room of my rented condo, phone unplugged, trying not to think, trying not to imagine Sean’s hands all over Viggo’s body.

Less than 48 hours ago, it had been my hands over Viggo’s body. 

My lips on his. 

My mouth on his cock. 

His cock inside of me.

Less than 48 hours ago I had been Viggo’s willing sex toy, and in spite of knowing he didn’t even want me, I was willing to be that again as the hot flood of memories bathed me over and over again in torrid imagery.  I pulled my cock out of my pants and stroked hard up and down, wetting my palms with saliva as I re-lived everything from two nights ago.  I got on my hands and knees, still with my cock thrusting in my hands, and spread myself as wide as I could, imagining Viggo behind me fucking away as I cried out for more and deeper and harder as my hand flew faster over the turgid flesh as I begged to come.  I screamed as climax took me over, violently spilling hot semen into my hands, onto the couch, everywhere and still it wasn’t enough.  Viggo had never accepted my coming once, he liked to make me come again and again until my body had nothing left to offer and until my hole was stretched so wide his fist could enter me easily…and sometimes it did. 

I made myself come that way too, pulling and stroking, using my other hand to slide inside my hole and fucking myself six ways into oblivion, screaming Viggo’s name into the careless night.

Then I collapsed in a pool of sweat, come and tears of shame.

Oh god, was I that weak?

***

I don’t do histrionics. 

Morning came unwelcome through the window as I slowly tried to put myself to rights.  I smelled like come and ass.  I smelled the way I did after Viggo—like raw sex.  At one time that smell would arouse me and I’d wake him up with my mouth on his cock, in spite of knowing where it had been hours before.

Now, the smell sickened me and I raced to the shower where the water flowing from my cascading showerhead washed away all traces of my weakness.  Strange how warm water and warm tears are the same temperature no matter what.

I tried to think things through as I made myself coffee, clad in a towel wrapped around my waist.

People break up all the time.  At this very moment, somewhere, two people were saying goodbye.  Actually, one was saying goodbye while the other listened and tried to understand what the hell went wrong.

I tried a new tactic, self-confidence.  I was Orlando Bloom, not just anyone.  I was famous, I was good-looking—I could easily have my choice of lovers.  Even when I was with Viggo, people made it very clear that once I was done with him (amazing how everyone assumed that I’d be the one walking away) that they would be waiting.  Hell, one call and any number of people could help me forget Viggo.  I knew Lij was in town and he was always good for a hot and friendly shag.

I lowered my coffee cup, resigned.  Friendly was not what I wanted.  After Viggo, I seriously doubted that I could ever be satisfied with a friendly anything.

***

I don’t do histrionics. 

Instead I dropped two tabs of X that Lij had given me at a rave we’d gone to a few weeks ago.  He’d slipped them into my pocket but somehow I’d forgotten to take them.  I chased both down with a few glasses of Viggo’s favorite shiraz, lay back on the couch and waited for the warm, fuzzy feeling to steal over me.

If Sean was fucking Viggo—and I had little doubt that he was—I wanted not to care.  I certainly didn’t want a repeat of last night.

Would he take Sean the same way he took me, or would he let Sean fuck him?

And yet, I wanted to see it for myself—I wanted to know what made that goddamn northern bastard so special that he could just waltz in like hail the conquering fucking hero and just take what didn’t belong to him.  I wanted to know why Viggo could so easily discard me the moment Sean showed up like the prodigal son.

I wanted to see if Viggo fucking Sean was any different from Viggo fucking me.

Lij would have my head if he were to ever find out, but I grabbed my car keys from the dining room table and walked out into a rare cool and quiet Los Angeles night.