Hurt/Comfort
by
Rainbow Award Finalist for Contemporary Romance
A burned out salary man and a comfort worker, both grieving, in need of a second chance at happiness…
Koji’s boss forces him to take a vacation before he destroys his health. Driven to satisfy everyone’s expectations except his own, Koji is on the verge of fainting. He has just enough energy to make one request of his boss: let him choose the place where he’ll take his forced vacation. There’s one place, a hotel for gay men he’s heard of but never dared to try, nestled in Shinjuku, Tokyo’s swanky gay quarter. To ensure Koji actually does it, he has Koji make the reservation then and there, and has him escorted out into a taxi. His attendant, Naoto, is everything Koji has ever fantasized about… in strict secrecy. But Naoto’s healing hands and kindness unleash the beginnings of the inner freedom Koji has been craving his whole life. But the pull of duty is woven into Koji’s very DNA, as is guilt toward his father who blames him for his own loneliness.
Naoto is still grieving the tragic death of his partner when he’s asked to tend to the new arrival. He has a soft spot for men desperately in need of comfort and looking after Koji becomes the comfort his own heart has needed for so long. For the first time in three years, Naoto feels the call of life and passion. Unfortunately, the man who’s awakened it seems not so ready to give up the very forces that almost destroyed his body, as they’re destroying his chances at happiness.
What will happen when the week is over? Is it really possible to just go on with life as normal when everything both men have ever yearned for is just within their grasp?
Cover Artists:
Genres:
Pairings: M-M
Heat Level: 5
Romantic Content: 5
Ending: Click here to reveal
Character Identities: Gay
Protagonist 1 Age: 26-35
Protagonist 2 Age: 26-35
Tropes: Healing Power of Sex, Hurt / Comfort, Love Can Heal / Redemption
Word Count: 71538
Setting: Tokyo
Languages Available: English
Series Type: Same Universe / Various Characters
Koji-san…Koji-san?
Koji heard his name repeat in the air close by. Like a mosquito it buzzed in his ear, annoying and insistent. He’d answer…in a minute. This was too important. He kept typing, eyes glued to the monitor. The Meiji Memorial Hospital account was his baby. Nothing else mattered.
The mosquito buzz stopped a moment, followed by the sound of a throat clearing. Once. Twice. Then a third time.
The sound was soft and feminine. He caught a whiff of perfume, and then long, pink lacquered nails drummed softly on the desk beside his keyboard.
READ MOREHis hands stilled over the keys and he looked up, following the scent of perfume. The symbols and letters he’d been focusing on hovered in his vision. Behind them was Tomoko. His boss’s secretary. He blinked and her face came into focus. Worry lines marred her usually smooth forehead.
Worry lines? Tomoko standing at his desk, working so hard to get his attention? A strange feeling tickled in his gut, penetrating the fog of words and numbers imprinted like ticker tape across his vision.
“Koji-san, Mr. Miosuke wants to see you.” Tomoko’s voice was soft and courteous as usual, though it sounded as if she were speaking from the end of a tunnel.
Her words took a few extra seconds to process. When they did, his stomach tightened. “Do you know what he wants?” Miosuke usually only summoned people to his office when they’d done something wrong.
The young woman shook her head, though her frown remained. “No, Koji-san. He just said now.”
Shimatta. When Miosuke said now, it was never good. He was in trouble, no doubt, though he couldn’t imagine what he’d done wrong. Maybe he should have been working eighty-hour weeks instead of seventy-five.
Slowly he rose from his desk, heart pounding, and followed Tomoko past the rows of cubicles where his fellow engineers tapped away at their keyboards. The clacking sound that he’d stopped noticing long ago, now echoed through his brain and matched the rhythm of his heart. Then there was that ache in his neck, the one he never noticed while typing, and rubbed it with one hand as he walked.
Too bad he wasn’t into women. He couldn’t even distract himself by watching Tomoko’s stockinged legs as she walked in front of him. Tomoko was pretty and her round bottom pressed against her tight skirt with each step she took. But he might as well have been watching his sister, Gina, for all the sight aroused him. The only thing that drew him was Tomoko’s long sleek hair. But it stopped there. He tried to imagine that long sleek hair brushing across the back of a broad-shouldered guy full of hard, rounded muscles and a thick cock. It worked…for a second. Miosuke’s door loomed ahead. Besides, a fantasy didn’t work as well as the real thing.
Not that there was anyone in the office to distract him either. None of the guys around him fit the visual either. The only guy who’d ever come a bit close had left for another job a long time ago. Koji remembered him briefly as he followed Tomoko. A few stolen blowjobs in the broom closet before stealing back out into the hallway, making their way back to the office separately, as if nothing had happened. It had been hell. A hell he hadn’t wanted to repeat. Other than that, eighteen hours a day at his desk didn’t allow time for more than jacking off in the shower.
“Go on in, Koji-san.” Tomoko smiled though the worry still showed in her eyes. She held the door to Miosuke’s office open for him.
Koji pulled in a deep breath and walked in.
The older man looked up from his desk, gave a brief nod and gestured to a chair. Like Tomoko, the man had worry lines, but unlike Tomoko, the hard look in his dark eyes made Koji feel pierced through the middle.
COLLAPSE
