War Games Read online

  War Games

  The technical bit…

  ©Copyright Kim Dare 2010

  Original inspiration image chosen by JenMcJ

  Cover Art image purchased from www.stockphoto.com

  Proofing services by Jason Huffman of www.parentheticalproofing.com

  This is a work of fiction. All characters, places and events are from the author’s imagination and should not be confused with fact. Any resemblance to persons, living or dead, events or places is purely coincidental.

  All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced in any material form, whether by printing, photocopying, scanning or otherwise without the written permission of the author, Kim Dare.

  Applications should be addressed in the first instance, in writing, to the contact e-mail address listed on www.kimdare.com. Unauthorised or restricted acts in relation to this publication may result in civil proceedings and/or criminal prosecution.

  The author and illustrator have asserted their respective rights under the Copyright Designs and Patents Acts 1988 (as amended) to be identified as the author of this book and illustrator of the artwork.

  First published in December 2010 as part of Kim Dare’s newsletter.

  Warning: This book contains sexually explicit content which is only suitable for mature readers. By reading any further, you are stating that you are 18 years of age or over.

  Dedication

  This story was inspired by an image chosen by JenMcJ. She’s one of the amazing moderators on the Goodreads M/M Romance Group, queen of the marathon chats, and a genuinely wonderful person. She also gave me my first ever positive review on Goodreads back in March 2009.

  Due to privacy issues, that image she chose could not be included in this file and the image on the cover is a replacement. However, the original can be viewed on www.kimdare.com/free_reads.html

  War Games

  No arse that good should be put at risk that way!

  “Toby—what the hell do you think you’re doing?” Jack McKenna stepped out from behind the yards of bloody stupid camouflage netting that had been draped around each silly little ’war zone’. As he moved into their line of sight, the group of young men clustered around Toby, all stopped laughing very abruptly.

  Tilting his head back as he lifted a hand to shield his eyes from the sun, Toby smiled up at him with the same puppy like enthusiasm that seemed to come so naturally to him. “I’m…de-fusing a bomb?” he hazarded.

  McKenna frowned down at him for several long seconds. “If you could manage to do that without blowing your arse into a hundred different pieces, I’m sure the board of investors for the company would appreciate it,” he snapped.

  He forced himself to turn away from Toby then, and go to check on all the other lunatics who’d been let out of the asylum for a day of military themed

  ‘corporate bonding’. Still, even as he strode away from the boy, he couldn’t help but think he’d find it a hell of a lot less frustrating to work for the country’s leading computer games manufacturer if Toby did manage to get himself blown up.

  He should be counting his blessings, McKenna told himself, as he glanced into one of the other areas set up to represent a somewhat more historical war zone and did a quick head count of computer geeks. At least being given fake bombs to play with was distracting Toby from following him around like an untrained pup all day. He should be making the most of being able to turn around without tripping over the boy.

  Still, somehow, McKenna soon found himself wandering back to check on the group of game designers that just happened to include Toby. But that was only because the boy obviously needed more supervision than everyone else, McKenna told himself, as he glared at the expanse of cargo netting. It wasn’t because he actually liked keeping an eye on the silly little fool. And it certainly wasn’t because he was actually starting to fall for the boy.

  “Your boyfriend’s not a happy bunny, is he, Toby?”

  Boyfriend? McKenna’s footsteps halted, stopping him just before he came within sight of any of the men clustered around Toby and his bomb.

  “You’re going to get it if you’re still sitting on that thing when he comes back!” someone sing-songed.

  “Only if he’s lucky,” another man said. A cruel brand of laughter stained every word.

  McKenna ground his teeth together so hard, his jaw started to ache.

  “Never mind,” one of the other professional gamers said, with obviously fake sympathy. “I’m sure the big strong security guy will forgive you if you—”

  A jab in the ribs cut the guy off as McKenna stepped forward. The lanky red-head stopped glaring at the man who elbowed him once he realised why his friend had tried to shut him up.

  “Toby.” McKenna called him out of the group with a jerk of the head.

  The younger man immediately scrambled to his feet, as eager as ever to obey any order McKenna was willing to throw his way.

  Striding away from the group, looking for a quiet space where he could have a few sharp words with the boy without being overheard, McKenna didn’t even have to look over his shoulder to know that Toby would be trailing after him like a pup eager to catch up with his master.

  “Are we going to do one of the other leadership challenges?” Toby asked, as McKenna found an empty area cordoned off by yet more bloody silly netting.

  It seemed to have become somewhere to dump all the equipment that wasn’t being used that day. Grabbing the boy’s arm, McKenna pulled him into the relative privacy behind the camouflage. “No,” he bit out. “We’re not.”

  “Oh,” Toby blinked up at McKenna, as he loomed over the younger man.

  “One of the instructors said—”

  “Enough with the corporate bloody bondage,” McKenna cut in.

  “Bonding.”

  McKenna glared down at Toby, his momentum temporarily grinding to a

  halt. “What?”

  “Corporate bonding, not corporate bondage. Bondage isn’t the same thing at all,” Toby informed him helpfully, as if he really didn’t have a clue that he was talking to a man who lived half his life in leather.

  Studiously ignoring everything else, McKenna pushed on. “It’s about time you learned to stand up for yourself.”

  Toby tilted his head to one side as he smiled up at him. “It is?”

  “When another guy starts winding you up and putting the boot in, you need to learn how to shut him down, and shut him up,” McKenna informed the younger man.

  Toby’s eyebrows went up a little. “I do?”

  “Why didn’t you say anything when they were having a go at you?”

  McKenna demanded.

  The younger man shrugged.

  “Well?” McKenna prompted.

  “Okay, so maybe I should have said something,” Toby said, dropping his gaze and kicking at a stone with the toe of one dusty boot, for all the world like a kid caught playing in the road, even after he’d received repeated warnings.

  “Maybe?” McKenna pushed.

  “Okay—so I’m sorry I’m not in any particular rush to tell them you’re not interested in me. Happy now?” Toby muttered.

  “Not interested…” McKenna repeated blankly.

  “Look, if you’re going to go all psycho just because a gay guy—”

  “You’re gay?”

  McKenna wasn’t an idiot. He bloody well knew when another man was

  checking him out. Shaking his head, he quickly rephrased to ask the question that he really needed an answer to.

  “You’re out?”

  The shorter man stared up at him as if he’d lost his mind. “Well, only for the last five years or so…”

  “They all know you’re gay?” McKenna asked. Even though he knew he was

  doing a blood
y good audition for village idiot, he couldn’t quite convince his brain to wrap itself around the idea.

  “They’re gamers,” Toby said, with another shrug, as if that explained everything.

  McKenna glared down at him, without the slightest clue what the boy was babbling on about.

  “It doesn’t matter if they’ve made millions. They’re still basically the same computer geeks who couldn’t get laid in uni,” Toby explained, cheerfully. “There’s still a bit of them that doesn’t care if it would be gay sex. They’d still be pretty impressed that one of us is having sex at all!”

  McKenna glanced over his shoulder, in the general direction of the other gamers. There were at least three other security men keeping an eye on them. It was unlikely they could get themselves into too much trouble if he took his eye off the ball for a few seconds.

  “The only one who seems to have a problem with me being gay is you,” Toby went on. “Which is pretty bloody hypocritical, because—”

  “What?”

  “Because,” Toby pushed on, with obvious determination. “I’m pretty sure I’m not the only gay man in this conversation.”

  McKenna stared down at the other man for several long seconds. “I have no problem with either of us being gay.”

  Toby‘s smile grew a little wider.

  At the back of his mind the little bit of McKenna that hadn’t completely handed control over to his cock waved a red flag. “But I’m not a gamer,” he reminded them both.

  He was the company’s new security chief. He was the babysitter, not one of the damn kids. He was forty-something, not twenty-something. Even if he did care for the boy far more than he should, he had to be responsible and sensible and lots of other things like that. And he had to force himself to say the end of the sentence.

  “I’m not interested in playing games with a gamer, either.”

  “What about with a submissive?” Tobias Smithson said. To his enormous relief, the words came out perfectly calmly, as if he were flirting rather than scrambling to offer the older man whatever it took to make him show any kind of interest in screwing him. “Are you interested in playing with one of those?”

  Toby smiled as McKenna continued to glare silently down at him as if he’d grown another head.

  “Computer geek, remember?” Toby babbled on. “If I can’t find out all about it on the net, it’s not worth knowing!”

  Suddenly, McKenna’s expression changed. The pale blue eyes turned frostier than ever.

  Oh-oh! Toby’s smile stayed frozen in place as a warning siren went off in the back of his mind.

  “You really think you can find out about submission on line?” McKenna asked, his tone ominously mild. “Do you really imagine you can understand what real dominance is just by reading about it on a website?”

  Toby swallowed as the taller man stepped forward, closing the gap between them. He had to tilt his head back to keep his gaze on the older man’s face as the security guy towered over him. He didn’t even realise he was walking backwards until he stumbled back against one of the wooden partitions propped up against a pile of boxes on the far side of the enclosure.

  Jerking away from the rough wooden boards, Toby automatically tried to step forward. He found his way completely blocked by a huge expanse of tall, dark and very pissed off security guard. McKenna didn’t even attempt to retreat and give him more room. Unless Toby was very much mistaken, McKenna really wasn’t the kind of man to retreat—ever.

  “Answer the question.”

  Toby opened his mouth. Damn! He couldn’t even remember what the bloody question was. He frantically scrolled through his memories. Websites. Dominance.

  That was it!

  There were things it was really stupid to play with. Fire… Loaded weapons…

  Plutonium… Dominants who didn’t like dealing with brats… Even knowing that,

  Toby couldn’t keep the words back. “Try me.”

  McKenna raised one dark eyebrow at him.

  Toby had to clear his throat before he could manage to get another word out, but he pushed on regardless. “If you don’t think I can handle you in full dom mode—try me and see.”

  McKenna suddenly took a step back.

  Toby dropped his gaze, cursing himself for playing the wrong card.

  “Hands behind your back.”

  The younger man’s attention snapped back up to McKenna’s face. His mind went blank. Luckily his arms were more than ready to act without his brain’s interference. Toby quickly put his hands behind his back.

  “On your knees.”

  That order went straight to Toby’s cock. As he lowered himself onto the dusty ground within the confines of the camouflaged pen, his gaze caressed its way down the older man’s body. The combats McKenna had been issued with when they arrived there that morning did little to hide layer upon layer of gorgeous muscle.

  Even better than that, they completely failed to conceal the fact that Toby wasn’t the only one with a hard on.

  Unable to help himself, Toby licked his lips in anticipation. His right hand tightened its grip around his left wrist as he somehow forced himself to resist the temptation to reach out and touch. He didn’t have permission to do that.

  Toby whimpered his pleasure as the simple fact that he suddenly needed McKenna’s permission for all sorts of things, rushed to his shaft and made him harden all the more quickly, until he wasn’t sure his own combat trousers would hold.

  The older man stepped forward, closing the gap between them. Toby tilted his head back to look up and meet the other man’s gaze, before dropping back down to where the outline of McKenna’s cock showed through the grubby fabric.

  Even as Toby’s hands stayed behind his back, he couldn’t help but give in to temptation in another way. Leaning forward he mouthed the dominant’s erection through his trousers.

  A hand moved at the edge of his field of vision. A second later, Toby’s cap landed on the ground several feet away. There were no shadows to hide behind then, nothing stopping the older man seeing every single emotion that passed across his face.

  Still fully dressed, Toby became acutely aware of just how exposed he was.

  Doubts rushed through him. He was making an idiot out of himself, throwing himself at someone who was way out of his league. It would have been bad enough to humiliate himself in front of a mere crush, but Toby already knew the older man was far more than that to him.

  He had to pull himself to his feet, find a way to make a joke out of it and laugh it off. Suddenly, that was obvious. But, at that same moment, McKenna’s hand came to rest on the back of Toby’s head, encouraging him to stay exactly where he was and to continue to worship his cock through the dusty fabric.

  Eager to please, hoping that somehow McKenna might not think he was an idiot forever, Toby kissed and licked at the other man’s fly, opening his mouth to try to taste him through the material.

  Years seemed to pass before McKenna took any notice of his frustrated whimpers and finally reached for his zip. Toby watched, fascinated as McKenna deftly freed his cock from behind the fabric and stroked the length in his fist.

  Permission be damned—there was no way Toby could stop himself leaning forward again.

  The security guard’s fingers immediately moved against Toby’s scalp, but his hair was too closely cropped for the dominant to get a grip on it. A second later, McKenna’s hand came to rest on the top of his head instead, the wide span of his fingers holding him still and keeping him back, so his lips were just an inch away from the tip of the dominant’s erection.

  Toby looked along the hard length to the neatly trimmed dark hairs around the base, then back up to the older man’s face. A slight smile was playing around McKenna’s lips. Toby didn’t know why he should be surprised at that. In every fantasy he’d ever had involving McKenna, the guy was a tease. And, apparently, he had a bloody good read on him.

  When he tried to lean forward and wrap his lips around the head, McKenna
continued to hold him off, keeping him in place while he casually jacked his shaft for what Toby was sure amounted to several consecutive lifetimes.

  Finally, McKenna allowed him to lean forward just far enough. Toby quickly took the tip of the other man’s cock into his mouth. Eager to show that he knew what he was doing, he swirled his tongue around the glans and swallowed down his first taste of the older man’s pre-cum.

  Murmuring his pleasure, Toby tried to take him deeper, but McKenna wouldn’t let him. He frowned up at the dominant, but the larger man seemed to be completely unmoved by Toby’s silent pleas for more.

  McKenna kept him exactly where he was, only allowing him to suckle and lap at the tip. Toby’s own cock strained against his boxers, desperate to be freed. His knees protested at the hard ground. His eyes blinked in the bright sunlight. His whole body screamed out its frustration. Still, his hands remained obediently behind his back.

  Just as Toby became sure he would lose his mind through the sheer need for more, McKenna finally rocked his hips, pushing himself further into his mouth.

  Toby closed his eyes as he moaned his approval.

  The first thrust was shallow. The second wasn’t.

  Instinct took over as the tip of McKenna’s cock kissed the back of his throat, Toby tried to sway away from him. His hands moved towards the dominant’s hips to try to control both their movements. At the same time, he blinked his eyes open and met the older man’s gaze.

  It wasn’t about a blow job, that much was obvious. It was about submission. It was about showing McKenna that he could hand over control to the other man, about proving that was what he wanted to do, and that he’d love every minute of it if McKenna would just give him the chance.

  Toby slowly returned his hands to where he’d been ordered to keep them. He tilted his head back slightly, offering up his mouth for McKenna to do with as he pleased, and he saw the expression in the older man’s eyes change. It looked suspiciously like approval—almost like respect.

  The next thrust McKenna offered him was shallower, easier to take. He didn’t have much freedom to show off, but Toby still did his best to offer everything he could to his lover’s cock as it slid between his lips. His eyes dropped closed as the friction against his lips and tongue sent pleasure racing around his body, faster and faster by the moment.