Then the pleasure seizes me in its grip like the storm overhead, and I start to thrust deep and hard, grunting each time I bottom out. He cries out, lowering his hand to grab his cock as he writhes under me, the thunder crashing overhead. I can feel the spray of the rain from the open balcony doors cold on my hot skin and the ticklish sensation as the gauzy curtains blow over our bodies.

Then the lightning flashes, lighting the room, and he screams and arches up. I lower my head to watch come shoot from his cock, jerking in creamy spasms over the taut skin of his abdomen and chest. My balls draw up, and I gasp before feeling the come shoot out of me hot inside the condom as I batter into him, riding out the most intense orgasm I’ve ever felt, inside the tight clench of his body.

I don’t know where I go, but when I come to properly we’re lying on the bed, our bodies still wet and the sheets damp beneath us. The storm has moved away, and there’s just the gentle patter of the rain on the balcony outside. I look down and smile at Jesse. He’s curled into my side, his head resting on my chest and his arm and leg flung over me almost as if he doesn’t want to let go. The thought warms my chest.

His eyes are closed, showing off how ridiculously long his lashes are. Like black feathers. As I watch him, his eyes open and I find myself speared by the chocolate-coloured depths. For a long second, we study each other. All the fire he greeted me with has gone now and in its place is what seems to be confusion.

I’m instantly seized with the fierce desire to ease him. I think it’s always been there, to be honest. It’s in the way I took him off the jobs with younger men and made him dig gardens for old people, the way I’ve always watched out for him and tried to smooth his way. A bit like an aging Walter Raleigh, I think wryly. Trying to spread my cloak on the ground so he doesn’t get soaked by life’s problems.

“Alright?” I ask quietly.

He nods solemnly, his eyes fixed on mine.

“What are you thinking?” I ask, suddenly seized with this huge curiosity about how he thinks and feels. It’s at this point that I should back away, because that’s always been my launchpad in the past to becoming fascinated by someone. I wait for the panic to hit that I’m feeling it towards this beautiful boy, but for some reason it doesn’t come.

“I’m thinking I like this,” he finally says, and my heart clenches at the courage it must have taken to say that when I’d treated him so badly this morning.