Breaking: Fall or Break, Book 2 (23 page)

“I was frozen in terror,” Conrad said. “Oh Christ, look at you. Here I am moaning about one small bruise. Do they hurt?”

“Does yours?”

“Nope.”

“Liar.”

Conrad held out his hand. “Let’s have a shower.”

When Archer slid his hand into his, Conrad’s heart bounced on his stomach and lodged in his throat. Archer rubbed his palm with his thumb and Conrad melted. Who knew that holding hands could turn him on like this?

When the bathroom door opened to reveal a large tub, Conrad grinned.

“Perfect. Just what I wanted,” Conrad said. “In fact, the only thing I want. A hot bath.”

Archer put in the plug and started the water running. “Want bubbles?”

“Fuck, yes. I want those as well. Just those two things.”

“How about a shave?”

“Three things.”

Conrad returned to the bedroom to gather everything off the bed and brought them back to the twin sinks. He squirted a dollop of shaving foam onto his palm, but before he could rub it on his face, Archer took his wrist and moved it to
his
face rather than Conrad’s. Conrad stood stock still, his cock growing harder by the second as Archer guided his fingers over his chin and cheeks.

A squirt of foam into Archer’s hand and Conrad did the same, moving Archer’s fingers around his face.

“I wasn’t intending to shave my ears,” Archer said.

Conrad laughed and rinsed his hand. He watched as Archer began to shave, pulling his skin taut before dragging the blade through the foam. Conrad dragged the razor down his own cheek and wished he could have shaved Archer himself.

“You a long and slow stroke kind of guy?” Conrad asked.

“Except when short and fast are better.”

Conrad chuckled as he rinsed his face. He checked the temperature of the bath, turned off the water and climbed in.

“You can have the end with the taps,” Conrad said.

“I’m sitting behind you.”

The hard ridge of Archer’s cock pressed against his spine, and Conrad groaned. Archer ran his hands down the sides of Conrad’s body, his thumbs sliding over his ribs, avoiding the bruise, and the sensation soothed more effectively than the hot water he sat in.

“You stood in front of me,” Archer whispered in his ear.

“You already said that.”

“Why?”

Conrad’s heart thumped hard. “We already covered that one too when I went into the sea.”

“This was different.”

Yes, it was, you big lug.
But Conrad was damned if he was going to tell Archer why he couldn’t step away and let someone he cared about be killed.

“Didn’t you think he’d fire?” Archer asked.

“I think I knew he would but I was wearing a vest.”

Archer pressed his face into the back of Conrad’s neck. “I don’t know what to say to you.”

“You don’t need to say anything.”

Archer sighed and leaned back, pulling Conrad with him. “There’s something I want to tell you.”

Conrad had a quip on his tongue and held it back. He could feel the tension in Archer’s body.

“I used to be a climber,” Archer said quietly.

Used to be.
Why did he stop? “I couldn’t do that. I only have to look out of the window of a tall building to feel ill.”

“You’re not a risk taker.” Archer caressed Conrad’s chest.

“Excuse me. Crutches, sea. Bullet, chest. I didn’t know that vest would work. Sex in a bathroom? Plus it’s not exactly an easy job being a barrister. I live from case to case.”

Archer tugged his head back so Conrad looked up at him. “I’m talking about in your personal life. You’re someone who considers and decides. Seven years with the same guy. You had your room and you played at taking risks but you never actually put yourself or your lover in danger. Most people don’t.” He turned Conrad’s head so that he was facing away from him again and Conrad understood there was something important here that Archer couldn’t say to his face.

He rubbed shampoo into Conrad’s hair and it was hard not to groan with the pleasure of having his head massaged.

“I’m not saying you’re average,” Archer said, “but faced with scaling a mountain, the average person would dread it and if they had a choice, they’d run the other way. At the foot of a mountain, I only saw adventure, a chance to prove myself.”

“What you did for a living wasn’t hazardous enough?”

“As far as dangerous situations are concerned, people have three choices. Avoid things that scare them. Tackle the fear and prove it groundless. Or actively seek out those situations that provoke the fear response.”

Conrad understood. “I’m somewhere between one and two. I’m not going to jump out of a plane. But I did force oysters down my throat until I found a way not to.”

“Oysters weren’t going to kill you.”

“I thought they were. My brother told me they’d still be alive when they reached my stomach and would eat
me
from the inside out.”

Archer chuckled. “I’d have liked your brother.”

“You like danger,” Conrad said. “Something in your psyche makes you a risk taker.”

Archer splashed water onto Conrad’s head to wash off the shampoo. “True and yet in most situations, I eliminate as much risk as possible. I’m not reckless or irresponsible, but I do dangerous things because it’s a rush. I don’t know whether it goes back to my childhood, but I remember an occasion when a boy told me to meet him after school because it was my turn to get beaten up. I thought I’m either going to spend the day scared shitless, or I run away and spend the next day just as scared, or I accept what was going to happen. There was no point being afraid. It wasn’t going to change anything. It would make me feel worse.”

“Did you beat him up?”

Archer nipped his ear and Conrad squirmed. “No. He blacked both my eyes, and I lost a tooth.
That
was for smiling. I kept getting up and he kept knocking me down. Everyone watching shouted for me to stay down but I wouldn’t give in. Even though I lost, I felt I’d won. And I did. He never touched me again after that. That’s the feeling I had when I climbed. It made me feel alive, made me the winner. I could forget everything that irritated me because on the mountain, I had to concentrate on what I was doing.”

“What happened?” It was obvious something had.

Archer slid his hands down Conrad’s chest, skating lightly over the bruise. “I had a climbing buddy. His name was Chris. He trained with me for the SIS. We met up a few times a year to climb.”

Conrad heard and felt his shaky exhale.

“You create strong bonds when you share a rope. You have to trust your partner and your partner has to trust you. The more stressful the situation, the stronger the bond. Chris was the only person in my life I’d ever relied on.”

“Was he gay?”

“Bisexual. That wasn’t enough for me. I didn’t want part of him. I wanted
all
of him. He had a girlfriend but he hadn’t committed to being het. I thought I had a chance.”

Conrad met his gaze.

“We were climbing in Nepal. I came back, Chris didn’t.”

Conrad waited. When he tried to move, Archer held him where he was. The cock at his back was no longer hard. Clearly, Chris was dead. Had he fallen? Been hit by a rock?

“At high altitudes, climbers carry oxygen and when they reach the point the oxygen will run out if they don’t turn back, they turn or die,” Archer said. “The summit might only be yards ahead, the weather perfect, and the final ascent relatively easy, but—You. Need. To. Turn. You know the risks and yet the top still tugs at you like the most powerful magnet in the world. You know you should go back, and still make the mind-fuckingly stupid decision to go on because that siren song in your head won’t fucking shut up. After four minutes without enough oxygen, brain cells die. You breathe faster, feel exhausted. Your body doesn’t respond to your commands.

“You’re dying faster than at any point in your life. You know all that and still keep going. Because you might make it. That’s what you tell yourself. You might do it. You’ve come so far you don’t want to stop now. All that time, all that effort, the desire to tick off a summit you conquered. You
have
to achieve your goal, realize your dream, beat the fucking mountain.”

Conrad felt Archer tense.

“So which guy was I? The idiot who decided the summit was possible or the idiot who followed?”

Conrad wrapped his hands around both of Archer’s and held tight.
Please don’t make me guess.

“Chris wouldn’t turn. I wasted oxygen trying to persuade him. I couldn’t let him go on his own, so I went too, even though I knew it was a mistake, possibly a fatal one. We made it to the top and I readied to come straight back down. No joy in that summit for me but Chris was exhilarated. Careless. Full of his fucking self-righteous cocky bullshit that he’d been right and I’d been wrong and how we’d fuck when we got down. We’d never fucked before, only messed around.

“On the way down, he put a three-inch cam in the rock. He should have doubled up the protection and he didn’t. He wasn’t thinking straight. It pulled and the carabineer clipped to the rope on the next cam broke and he fell, hit a ledge and tumbled again but he was still on the rope. I almost came off. He didn’t answer when I called. Not at first.”

Conrad had a horrible suspicion he knew where this was heading. Archer’s voice had dropped and his fists clenched in Conrad’s hands.

“I secured myself, tried to pull him up, but couldn’t get him over the ledge. I eventually climbed down. The weather that had been so tempting had changed in the blink of an eye. Biting wind. Snowing. He was alive but he’d broken his leg and an arm. The bone in his leg was sticking out of his pants. I did the best I could. There’s no cell service up there. Too high for helicopters. The only chance of help is from those you’re climbing with. It came down to definitely dying with him or leaving him and trying to save myself. I chose to save myself.”

Conrad let go of Archer’s hands and rolled over. He sat in front of Archer, wrapped his legs around his waist and cupped his hands around his neck.

“I hope you don’t expect me to be sorry about you being here,” Conrad said.

“I haven’t talked about this since the inquiry. His family…shit, it was hard. They asked me not to go to the memorial service and I understood that, but his girlfriend Laura blamed me for the whole thing, even the choice of climb. While Chris was hanging on the rope, he told me he was going to ask her to marry him at Christmas. Letting me fuck him would have been a goodbye. I wasn’t supposed to have feelings. I’d been trained not to have them but something broke in me then. Guilt at being unable to save him, a sense of loss because he had been my friend, the first and the best I’d had, so I felt betrayed that all he’d wanted was for me to be his last fling before he married. Wasn’t easy discovering I had a conscience.”

Conrad could barely breathe.

“Chris had bought the ring. He asked me to go and see her, tell her where he’d hidden it. She refused to meet me. Instead, she sent me a lot of emails. Abusive stuff. Claimed I was the one who wanted to go on. Not true. That I’d cut the rope. Not true, though Chris asked me to and I almost did. But I’d had this idea that if I could get down quickly enough, maybe he could be rescued. By the time a team went up, he was dead.”

“Did anyone ever tell you it wasn’t your fault?”

“But it was.”

“Of course it fucking wasn’t. You didn’t put the single cam in the rock. He fell because of his mistake. Why should you pay for that with your life as well? You tried to talk him out of going for the summit and you could have turned back then.”

“Maybe I should have.”

“Maybe. No one can know what they’d do until they’re in that situation. Easy to say you should have tried harder, done something different. You’re good at analyzing situations and taking the appropriate action. I’ve seen you at work. I crawled into that sea cave because you told me to. You probably saved my life. There was a choice to make on that mountain and you made it. It was the right choice.”

Archer stayed silent.

“But now you run,” Conrad said. “Run from your past, from your memories, from your enemies.”

“I run to keep fit, to empty my mind.”

“Maybe, but you know it’s deeper than that. Try something different.” Conrad moved closer until his chest was pressed against Archer’s, his legs around Archer’s hips. “Try running to, not from.”

Conrad’s heart ached for this guy. “You were fucked up by your childhood, messed up by that climb, you’re buttoned up tight, your protective layer so thick you’ve deprived yourself of happiness.”
Oh yeah, doesn’t that ring a bell.
“I’m just like you but for different reasons. You’re my second chance. What do I have to do to make you see that I’m yours?”

Archer stared into his eyes.

“Do you have any idea what I’ve done for you and I’m not talking about pulling you from the sea or standing in front of bullet? I’ve let you break down my walls. I’ve made myself come to terms with what I’m capable of. I know how much you wanted to fuck me but it had to work both ways, I had to want you to fuck me too. I stopped running. You can stop running too. We’re both broken but we can mend each other.”

He reached back to pull the plug and kissed his way down Archer’s neck. Both their cocks were hard again. But when he put his hand on Archer’s dick, he pushed himself up and turned on the shower. Conrad yelped for five seconds until the water warmed up.

Archer disconnected the shower hose and sprayed foam off both of them. When he held it over Conrad’s head and water poured over his face, into his mouth, he saw Archer’s Adam’s apple rise and fall. When Conrad tried to do the same for Archer, he wouldn’t let him.

Conrad blinked the drops from his eyelashes and turned off the shower. “Did they waterboard you?”

“How do you know about waterboarding?”

“Second Tuesday of the month, waterboarding night.” Conrad had taken a risk joking about it.

Archer smiled. “I can think of something better to choke you with than water.”

“Champagne?”

“Better than that.”

“There isn’t anything better than that.”