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Tristan’s smile widened and he said, “Great. It can’t be today though. I’m too tired to leave the house. Pick me up around three tomorrow. I have back-to-back lunch dates, but I should be done by then.”
Dates. He called them dates. Leo wondered briefly if it was just because it made Tristan feel better about what he did, or if it was some sort of quasi-legal thing to avoid arrest. Would it be rude to ask? Then he wondered what the hell he was thinking, because if he was questioning if it was rude to ask, then obviously it was.
And at that moment all thoughts left his head entirely, because Tristan swanned over to the fridge, opened it, and bent at the waist to pull a yoghurt off the bottom shelf, giving Leo an uninterrupted view of what seemed to be miles of leg. When Tristan stood and stretched, then peeled back the foil lid of the tub and licked at it with a deep, sensual groan of pleasure, Leo had never wanted to be a tub of yoghurt so badly in his life. All he could think was Holy shit. No wonder people are willing to pay him.
Hell, Leo was almost tempted himself.
Chapter Five
The great thing about back-to-back Bad Boyfriend gigs, Tristan reflected, was that it made it so easy to pull stunts like the one he was currently engaged in. He’d made a pig of himself at the all-you-can-eat seafood buffet on his first date of the day—with plenty of winks and crude references to the aphrodisiac power of oysters, which had horrified Amelia’s parents just like she’d ordered—and now he wasn’t hungry at all, which meant that sitting opposite James and his parents, it was easy to push his menu away disdainfully before declaring, “Actually, I can’t eat any of this. I’m a strict vegan.”
James’s father, who had hated Tristan on sight and done nothing to hide it, scowled at Tristan from under a set of impressive John Howard eyebrows. “How can you be a vegan? You’re wearing leather pants.”
“I mean yes, but I didn’t eat the meat that came wrapped in this leather, though, did I? Although”—he raised his eyebrows at James and gave a saucy wink—“James will probably be eating the meat that’s wrapped in this leather later, if he’s lucky.”
He watched, satisfied, as both his faux-date and his parents blushed scarlet and stared fixedly at their menus. Tristan beamed. He was killing this.
Really, it was laughable how easy it was to upset people simply by mentioning sex, and how much he’d like to have it with their offspring.
James’s brief for their date had been simple—and more common than Tristan had ever imagined it would be when he’d started this. “My parents don’t like my boyfriend, just because he’s a mechanic and not some white-collar professional. So I need you to be really, really offensive over lunch. Then I can tell them we broke up and when I get back together with Dylan, they’ll be thrilled.”
He’d put a lot of effort into looking unsuitable for Sunday lunch, and he was proud of the result. When Harry had been the Bad Boyfriend in Bad Boyfriend, Inc., he’d leaned more towards ill-fitting, atrocious fashions in eye-searing colours, but that wasn’t Tristan’s jam. As far as he was concerned, there was no reason he couldn’t look inappropriate and hot—the two weren’t mutually exclusive. After all, he never knew who he might meet while he was out. To that end, he was wearing the aforementioned leather pants, a gold mesh singlet that stopped at his navel, his hair in a bun that was the sexy sort of messy, and some killer eyeliner that he frankly felt was wasted on this particular audience.
Although…James was looking up at Tristan from under his lashes and biting his lip in a way that suggested he wasn’t all that put off by the idea of Tristan’s trouser meat. Maybe, after this was over, Tristan could take him home and they could celebrate a job well done, so to speak.
Tristan picked up his wine glass, took a mouthful and gargled loudly while he considered it. Yes, he decided. A nice little afternoon delight might be just the thing for a Sunday.
Except, he remembered sadly, James did have a boyfriend on the scene. And Tristan had promised to take Leo, Jimmy’s pretty-but-repressed nephew, to the sex shop this afternoon. He brightened at the thought. Teasing Leo could be its own kind of fun.
James’s mother, Athena, cleared her throat. “There’s a nice pear and walnut salad on here you could have,” she said, in what was obviously a valiant attempt to get the conversation back on track.
Tristan raised an eyebrow. “No, thanks. Walnuts look too much like little tiny ball sacs for my liking. If I’m putting a scrotum in my mouth, I’d prefer it to be the real thing.” He blew James a kiss.
James’s dad’s face went red. “Have some bloody decency!” he snapped, whacking the menu against the table with a loud thump. He turned to James and pointed a finger. “What the hell is this, some sort of joke? You can’t possibly be dating this—this dickhead.”
Tristan held his breath. Not always, but occasionally, there was a moment where a date could go horribly, spectacularly wrong, and this looked like it might be one of those times. He was already banned from four restaurants, surpassing both Ambrose and Harry’s records, and he wasn’t looking to make it five. He quite liked this place, scrotal salads notwithstanding.
But James swallowed and sat up straighter in his chair, a determined glint in his eye. “Just because you’ve set the bar so high that Tristan doesn’t meet your standards, it doesn’t mean he doesn’t meet mine,” he said tersely.
“Set the bar high?” his dad sputtered. “The bar was on the ground, and you started bloody digging with this one! He doesn’t even have a job! He has a man bun!”
Which, rude. And technically accurate, but that wasn’t the point. Tristan took another slurp of his wine.
“Yeah, well, Dylan had a job, and you didn’t like him either, all because he drives a Commodore and doesn’t spend his Friday nights at Young Liberals fundraisers!” James snapped.
His father’s mouth closed with a click at that, and Tristan relaxed. He could tell from the hangdog expression on James’s dad’s face as he examined the back of his hands and the way his wife was elbowing him in the side that this was going to work out just fine.
He drained his wine glass, then, because he believed a thing worth doing was worth doing properly, he picked up the wine bottle and drained the last half-glass from that as well, before standing and stretching. “And on that note, I think I’d better go. Meeting you was a time,” he said to the wide-eyed parents. Then he waggled his fingers at them, blew James another kiss, and sauntered out of the restaurant, confident that his work here was done.
Tristan debated keeping his leather pants on for his outing with Leo, just to see if it would make his shy little number-cruncher blush, but in the end, the thought of sweating in them for an entire afternoon when he wasn’t getting laid or paid at the end of it seemed like too much effort, so he switched them out for a pair of ancient soft-washed jeans and a fitted V-neck tee. He still looked fabulous of course, but now he was comfortable as well. He was just running lightly gelled fingers through his hair and trying to decide if he wanted it to look just-fucked or utterly fuckable—the difference was subtle, but definite—when there was a knock at the door. He tugged a few strands to the left, putting him firmly in fuckable territory, and padded down the stairs.
When he opened the door Leo was standing there, but it took Tristan’s brain a second to catch up to the fact that it was Leo, because for the first time since Tristan had met him, he wasn’t wearing a suit or a collared shirt or some sort of office-jockey outfit. Instead, he was wearing well-worn black jeans and a slightly ragged Nirvana shirt that gaped around his collarbones a bit, giving a glimpse of more muscle than Tristan was expecting. His hair, rather than being gelled to within an inch of his life, was a tumble of soft curls, and when combined with the way his T-shirt clung to surprisingly muscular biceps, Leo somehow managed to look more attractive dressed down than he did in a suit and tie. It was suit porn in reverse, and Tristan’s dick gave an interested twitch. Tristan let a sexy smile spread across his face. “Well, well, look at you. Have you been hiding all those muscles under your suits this entire time?” Leo gave him a look that suggested he wasn’t sure if Tristan was making fun of him or not, and Tristan was reminded that he possibly hadn’t made the best impression so far. He’d have to remedy that if he ever wanted to see what else Leo was hiding under his proper exterior and sensible clothing. Maybe those biceps meant he could hold Tristan up against a wall while they fucked. Although, with the height difference…
Tristan was dragged out of his musings by Leo clearing his throat. “Can I come in?”
Tristan stepped back and opened the door farther, yanking it over the lumpy bit in the floor. Determined to get in Leo’s good books, Tristan led him through to the kitchen and nodded at the mismatched chairs surrounding their tiny kitchen table, indicating Leo should take a seat. “I just need to grab some shoes. Want a beer while you wait?”
Leo hesitated then nodded and sat. “Yeah, that’d be nice.”
