Risk Aware Read online

  Riptide Publishing

  PO Box 1537

  Burnsville, NC 28714

  www.riptidepublishing.com

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are either the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons living or dead, business establishments, events, or locales is entirely coincidental. All person(s) depicted on the cover are model(s) used for illustrative purposes only.

  Risk Aware

  Copyright © 2016 by Amelia C. Gormley

  Cover art: L.C. Chase, lcchase.com/design.htm

  Editor: Kate De Groot

  Layout: L.C. Chase, lcchase.com/design.htm

  All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system without the written permission of the publisher, and where permitted by law. Reviewers may quote brief passages in a review. To request permission and all other inquiries, contact Riptide Publishing at the mailing address above, at Riptidepublishing.com, or at [email protected].

  ISBN: 978-1-62649-412-1

  First edition

  May, 2016

  Also available in paperback:

  ISBN: 978-1-62649-413-8

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  Tattoo artist Geoff Gilchrest is convinced his life is some sort of cosmic joke. Why else would a hemophiliac also be a masochist? He’s given himself more than one elbow bleed since puberty just doing what guys do when alone and bored, so forget about whips and chains. How many partners would contemplate playing with someone even a mild flogging could kill?

  Gallery owner Robin Brady knows he can deliver what Geoff needs: to be taken to the edge of danger but never beyond. But Robin came to Saugatuck to get away from the leather scene and heal from a betrayal by his former sub, so he’s not sure he should get involved with Geoff. His ambivalence isn’t helped by the fact that Geoff’s unwillingness to communicate about his well-being hits Robin in some very raw places.

  Geoff’s hemophilia isn’t the obstacle he thinks it is. Instead, a lack of trust—on both their parts—is what could end them before they have a chance to begin.

  For Paul and Tristan, whose love and support keep me going.

  And for Leta, Tristina, and Chris, who helped me whip this thing into shape after almost two years of bashing my head against it.

  About Risk Aware

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Author's Note

  Dear Reader

  Acknowledgments

  Also by Amelia C. Gormley

  About the Author

  More like this

  Geoff

  “Is that the last of them?” my sister asked, helping Jace stack boxes. She dusted off her hands as I glanced around the crowded self-storage room. Funny, they always sounded bigger than they were. When Ling and I decided to move everything from Colorado to Chicago in a U-Haul, a ten-by-ten space had seemed like plenty of room for storing the stuff we weren’t able to bring ourselves to part with.

  “Almost.” I slipped an arm around her waist and kissed the crown of her head as she obligingly tucked herself under my chin. It had been nearly a month since we’d gotten the call from our mom’s neighbor that our mom had passed away, and we were still feeling a little shaky about all the changes. “Guess it’s pretty much over now.”

  She squeezed me harder. “Yeah. The inscription on the urn will be done tomorrow. We can pick it up in the morning, before my flight back to Philly.”

  “Sounds good. When does your plane leave?”

  “One thirty. I should be at the airport no later than noon.” She snorted and shook her head. “Part of me wishes this had happened a few weeks later, so I could have taken care of it while I was on vacation. But then, I wouldn’t want to be traveling in spring break traffic.”

  “Nah.” I kissed her temple. “Be glad for it. Now you can still have something of a vacation.”

  “What about you?” She drew back and smiled at me. “What are you going to do now that you’re in Chicago to stay?”

  I shrugged. “I don’t know. I’m still a little shell-shocked that I decided to leave LA at all.” In a spur-of-the-moment decision that was fueled by grief more than logic.

  “Is Rogier still leaving you scathing messages?”

  That was enough to brighten my mood. I grinned. “They’ve gone from scathing to positively blistering now that he’s noticed I took all my designs with me.”

  Jace clapped me on the shoulder as he squeezed past us toward the van for another load. “Good boy.”

  “Well, it was about fucking time he stopped passing my work off as his own.” I released Ling and followed him.

  “I still don’t get why you stayed with him for a year after your apprenticeship ended.” Ling’s voice echoed down the stairway from behind me, bouncing off cinder-block walls, heavy with disapproval.

  I emerged into daylight and scrambled up into the back of the truck to grab another load. “Because no one else reputable wanted to hire me. I’m pretty sure he spread a rumor that I lied about my HIV status so none of the other studios would poach me.”

  “Fucking asshole,” Ling hissed, lifting the final box, then called out to me as I started down the ramp with my own, “Careful!”

  I gave her a flat look, more determined than ever to carry that box no matter what it cost me. “I’m fine.”

  It would have been nice to see some contrition, because she knew how I felt about that shit, but Ling arched an eyebrow. Jace stood by with his own armful. He didn’t speak a word, though his bland expression made it clear what he thought of my rejection of Ling’s concern.

  After a moment, Ling shook her head with a wry quirk of her lips. “They’re your joints,” she muttered as she carefully walked down the ramp.

  Now I was the one feeling contrite. She was the last person on Earth who deserved my grousing, and while it wasn’t in her nature not to occasionally be concerned for my health, she was never overbearing. We’d both been a little off since Mom’s death, and I think I, in particular, kept wondering when Mom was going to reappear, inserting herself into the middle of everything in a well-intentioned but carrie
d-way-too-far effort to protect me from life’s bumps and bruises.

  “Sorry.” I offered Ling a sheepish look as she passed.

  Her eyes softened. “Forgiven. Now, back to Rogier. You might have been better off going home to do your apprenticeship. There was that great tattoo studio—”

  “Oh, please. Like I was going to spend three more years than I had to in that town.”

  She gave me an iffy smile. “It wasn’t really a bad town. You just had bad experiences there for a rather unique set of reasons. I’m kinda gonna miss it.”

  “I guess,” I conceded grudgingly. As things went, our hometown actually hadn’t been that bad a place. My issues had been due to a lot of bad luck: unfortunate genes, public ignorance, family and social dynamics. Still . . . “There was no way I was going to move back that close to Mom.”

  “Hmm, good point.” Ling shifted her box higher and turned toward the building. “So, did you hear from the realtor?”

  “Yeah. He says the new buyers are ready to close on the house. The money will be in your account well in time to pay next year’s tuition.” I rolled my eyes when Ling grimaced. “Don’t give me that look. That was the deal. I got the life insurance policies, you got the real estate. It’s done, so quit arguing about it.”

  “But you need it more than me.”

  “Oh, so you’re not planning to go for your PhD now?” Our footfalls made twangy echoes in the stairwell until we reached the unit. I heaved my box onto the nearest stack, wincing at the strain in my arthritic elbow. Then I wiped the expression off my face before Ling caught sight of it.

  “I am, but I can get loans—”

  “Absolutely not.”

  “But your medical expenses . . .”

  It always came back to that, didn’t it? Once they began to grasp the reality of the expense and potential for disability that would come with my health issues, my parents had cut back our household expenditures to a bare minimum in order to afford the largest life insurance policies they could. The legalities of adopting Ling had been their last major splurge. We’d been well within the comfortable middle-class income bracket, but we’d lived like we subsisted at poverty level. Dad had worked a weekend job as well as his full-time job. All so they could be certain my health wouldn’t bankrupt me.

  I sighed and crossed my arms, pressing my back against the wall to make room for Jace to squeeze in and offload his armful.

  “Ling, my sweet baby sister, you know as well as I do that the proceeds from the sale of that cheap little bungalow on the wrong side of the tracks at the ass end of Nowhere, Colorado, aren’t a drop in the bucket where my medical expenses are concerned. So, with all due adoration, shut the fuck up and take the money.”

  Jace chortled. Ling narrowed her eyes at me, another argument blossoming on her tongue. It died unspoken.

  She tsked once. “Fine. You’re right.” With a sad smile, she hugged me again. “No sense wasting our last afternoon arguing.”

  “You can lighten the burden of your unwanted wealth by taking me out to lunch,” I offered.

  “It’s a deal.” She lingered with her arm around my waist. I laid mine across her shoulders, closing my eyes as I pressed my nose against her temple. Dad and Mom were gone, and it was just the two of us. I wasn’t proud to admit that I found that as much a relief as a cause for sorrow, but it was what it was. Maybe now I could live my life rather than holding back to spare others stress and worry.

  It would be different from here on, I vowed to myself, hugging her tighter. This was me leaving the old behind and beginning anew. The only thing that could drag me down now was myself.

  Funny thing about grief: we’re led to believe that all our other needs simply stop while we’re dealing with it, but they don’t. It makes us feel guilty, like it’s disrespectful, like we should have more appropriate matters on our minds while we’re mourning, but it’s true. Which was why, an hour after Ling called to let me know her flight had landed safely and Jace left to go work out, I strolled into an adult video store and selected a booth. I settled in on the semen-stained sofa to watch my movie and wait.

  While I might still need time to process everything that had happened in the last month, that didn’t mean I wasn’t craving a release to take my mind off things. This trip was a very uncomplicated solution to that problem. Here, at least, I wouldn’t have to deal with crowded clubs and the meat markets full of shallow tops cruising for only the cutest, fittest bottoms—of which I’d never be one. My body was too thin and untoned, because I couldn’t do the sort of intensive working out required to build a lot of muscle definition. My nose nearly required its own zip code.

  I’d seen the video before, but I’d enjoyed it. Big, mean leather daddies and a cum-slut bottom filled the screen, covered in straps and riveted harnesses. The first segment had the willowy, brainy-looking twink strapped to a Saint Andrew’s cross, the apparent victim of an abduction by a group of massive, muscle-bound men decked out in leather. He pleaded for his life, for mercy, for more, as they whipped him with a heavy, braided cat-o’-nine-tails until his back was striped, until he sobbed and screamed, his pale skin looking this close to breaking. Some of those welts were fucking livid.

  I groaned and opened my jeans.

  Then they cut him loose and grabbed him by his hair, forcing him to his knees. One of them pushed him over on all fours and rammed a ginormous dildo up his ass while the rest of them took turns jerking him around and skull-fucking him until he gagged. One drew out only long enough to let him cough up thick strands of spittle that oozed down his chin before another one stepped up to shove his cock so deep in the bottom’s throat I could see it moving, shifting the musculature of the guy’s thin neck.

  Jesus. I stroked myself slowly, not in any rush to get off yet. I envisioned myself in that bottom’s place, whimpering, sore, welted, bruised, stuffed full of cock. I wanted it. I wanted it so fucking bad.

  A sound and movement in the next booth drew my attention. My dick hanging out of my fly, I practically jumped off the sofa to sit on the convenient stool next to the hole in the wall. That stool was a nice touch and not something I found everywhere. At least I’d be able to walk in the morning.

  I laid my glasses aside and wriggled my finger in the elongated vertical hole. A moment later, a dick appeared, covered in loose, sliding skin so dark a brown it was nearly purple, hard and good to go. Fuck, yeah. I hated it when they arrived semisoft and expected me to get them up. With him at the ready, all I had to do was open my mouth, lean in, and go to town, licking and sucking like it was my favorite flavor popsicle.

  It didn’t matter who was on the other end of that cock. Didn’t matter what he looked like, what his story was, whether he was married or single, out or on the DL. As far as I was concerned, he had no issues, and as far as he was concerned, I was likewise issue-free. For all he knew, I was capable of taking the brutal things that bottom in the video was taking. I liked the idea of someone thinking of me that way.

  He was clean and warm, just musky and salty enough to reward my senses, and thick and long enough to be a little challenging. I sucked actively and pulled back when he tried to push deeper, to signal that I didn’t want him to fuck my mouth. Which was a lie, because I totally did, but even now the worry-filled voice telling me what I could and couldn’t safely do never quite went away.

  The stranger rewarded me with a low moan. My ears might as well have been attached to my dick for the way it leaped at the sound. I grasped myself, stroking slowly enough to draw it out a bit.

  A deep, gruff voice muttered, “Yeah, suck it, whore.”

  I would have smiled if my mouth hadn’t been otherwise engaged. I’d gotten a talker, the kind who said exactly what I wanted to hear. There was enough of an inquiring note in the words to let me know that if I backed off or indicated disinterest, he would stop. Some guys wanted total silence, a complete lack of interaction, but words worked better for me. I made an encouraging sound and sucked harder. Yes, that
would be quite agreeable, please and thank you. My hand pumped faster on my cock.

  He sighed after a minute. “Fuck, that’s good. You been here waiting for me all night, you little slut?”

  I agreed wordlessly and willingly. Oh yes, yes, I had.

  “Fuckin’ little liar. Bet you’ve been gobbling every dick that’s gone through here for hours, just a cum dump waiting for another load.”

  A whimper rose from my occupied throat, distressed and caught out. It didn’t matter that it was fiction. It was what I wished were the truth. I wished he was the latest in a nonstop line of strangers who had used my mouth and left, coating my throat with their spunk.

  I couldn’t have that, couldn’t seek out the physical roughness I craved. No matter how badly I wanted it, hard hands wouldn’t seize my hair, damn near pulling it from my scalp as merciless cocks battered my throat. These cruel words were the harshest treatment I could get. At least, without a lot of hassle I didn’t want to deal with.

  “Suck me harder, whore,” he snapped. “Cram it down that slutty throat.”

  I made a discouraging sound and drew back a little. No, sorry, I would not be taking him that deep, despite his persistence. But I didn’t stop sucking, swirling my tongue around the head, teasing the frenulum, moving as fast as I could without going so deep I bruised my palate or throat. He gave a dissatisfied grunt.

  The dirty talk stopped after that exchange. Perhaps my refusal to deep-throat had displeased him enough that he’d lost interest in the game, or perhaps he was getting close enough to popping that he’d dropped the thread. My dented self-esteem feared it was the former, but the sounds he was making told me it might be the latter. Sure enough, he grew more rigid, and I was about to pull away when he choked out a warning.

  “You gonna swallow my load, cum bucket?”

  I drew off to whisper, “On my face. Let me have it on my face.”

  He groaned loudly, like this was a perfectly acceptable alternative.

  “Fuck yeah. Won’t even let me fuck your throat. You don’t deserve to swallow my load, slut.”