By CLARE LONDON (23 page)

I’d unintentionally hit a trigger again. He sat up suddenly, his eyes blazing and his hands gripped into fists, his legs tensed as if he was ready to leap up—or thump me. “Why the hell do you think, Max? I’ll tell you why! Because I wanted you, and then I had you, and it was a thousand times more exhilarating than I’d ever imagined. I didn’t want to give that up!” As I gaped at him, he rushed on. “You met me on equal terms, unlike the sycophants who meet me through my family or the girls and men who enjoy my body as a way to attach to my money.”

“You’re not telling me you haven’t taken advantage—”

“Please. I know, I’ve had fun, I’m not denying that. There was always satisfaction—but only for a moment. No one has ever given me more, Max! But you give as much as you take. You’re honest with your desire. I never felt that you surrendered to me, only that you willingly participated. We enjoyed each other, and I didn’t see that we needed anything else. I trust you, Max.” He stopped, his mouth half-open, his expression stricken. “I cannot find enough words. I want you. I don’t want any other.”

My head struggled to work around the twist in my heart. “No, believe me, your words are fine, Seve.” Shockingly fine. “I just never knew you felt… as strongly as this. You could have said something.”

“Of course I could.” There was misery in his voice. “But I never have. I don’t act that way, Max.”

“But you’re doing it now.”

“Yes. Well… trying, perhaps. For you. To try to make you understand me. I need you to understand me.”

What I needed was to kiss him—to touch his skin, to absorb his warmth. My desire was both torture and thrill: a hunger that always teetered somewhere between striking and seducing. I suspected it was the same for him. It had been that way with us from the start, hadn’t it? Fierce and frustrating and fabulous. But I’d never heard him speak this way about personal feelings. About me. I wasn’t sure it was any protestation of love—I mocked my own ridiculous feelings in that department. But it was something more than indifference. Dammit, much more. I let the warm, tentative hope trickle a little way into my heart, still afraid it’d bring disaster and disappointment in its wake.

I was tired and hurt and unusually vulnerable. But that seemed to be my default status nowadays. I didn’t move away when Seve reached out to pull me closer. “Seve. It’s not over yet.”

He sighed into my ear, his lips brushing the lobe. “I know. But we’re free from it for tonight, maybe?”

“You said you trust me.”

“Shouldn’t I?” He brushed the hair back from my neck, and I found myself leaning into the caress.

“Peck knows,” I said. “He knows I have information on the club. On the drugs and the… on other things. I should go to the police with it.”

Seve stilled. “Yes, you should.” He turned his head to look into my eyes, his expression wary again. “That’s the right thing to do.”

I laughed rather harshly. “Who knows what’s right and wrong at the moment? I wish I fucking well did.”

His phone rang again, a muted, generic ringtone. Seve cursed.

“Answer it,” I said.

He pulled it out of his sweats pocket, glanced at the caller ID, then canceled the call. “No. It’s only Mama. I’ll call her back later.” He tossed the phone onto the table.

“I can leave.”

“Shit, Max!” The bitterness was startling. “Don’t you ever listen? Or do you just not hear? Tell me—why did you come here tonight?”

I tried to think it over carefully, but then just let instinct take over. “To see you,” I said. At heart, it was the raw truth. “To be with you.”

He nodded and drew in a sharp breath. “Why do you want that?”

I knew only too well, but I was scared to say. “Forget it.”

“No,” he said, quickly and sternly. “I won’t forget it. We won’t forget it. But if you have to go….”

“No.” It was my turn to say it. I slipped off the couch to kneel at his feet, and kissed him swiftly but firmly. “We’re free from it for tonight, right?”

IT HAD been a surreal night, and I was confused about everything that was going on—what I suspected, what I knew, and all the other crap that I didn’t. But I’d never felt in any danger from Seve himself. I wanted to see behind Seve’s distress, to learn more about him. Meanwhile, the solace we both sought was a familiar one.

“Come and sit with me, Max.” Seve peeled his shirt off over his head, exposing his bare chest. The living room was lit by a tall uplighter on the floor by the couch, and its muted light made the beads of sweat at his throat glisten. It made me want to lick them off. I sat up beside him on the same couch and he started opening the buttons of my shirt. I helped him push it off my shoulders and soon I was half-naked too. He tangled his fingers in my hair and I bent my head to his. We began a kiss that was tentative to start with, then as fevered as always. He tasted of warm saliva and cool water. The combination was delicious, though it didn’t seem exotic enough for him tonight. He slipped his other hand inside my jeans, over my arse. His palm caressed the dip at the bottom of my spine until his strong finger snuck down between my cheeks, searching for the welcoming pucker.

Except that I didn’t feel totally welcoming. Yeah, he’d said things to me that had really shaken me up—that had excited me in ways I hadn’t expected or hoped for. And he’d sounded totally sincere. But I was still cautious, even if my instincts were telling me to get over myself and run with it. I wanted a truth that I could rely on. There were small flames of rebellion inside me that weren’t extinguished yet, not enough for me to be able to roll over and let him in, physically and otherwise. Not that easily.

I lifted my lips from his, just to make it clear. “Not tonight. Not yet.”

Just as earlier in the club he’d accepted my refusal to leave with him, he calmly accepted my reluctance to fuck too. He must have known that he could have easily talked me around, but he didn’t try. Instead, he pulled my head back down to his and the kissing continued, but he was more careful. More respectful, as if he wasn’t sure how much I wanted. He slid his hand back out of my jeans, and placed it on my groin instead. He started to rub me. The denim was a barrier between our flesh, but his fingertips played a firm little tune up and down my dick. And it was really, really good.

“Let me do this, at least, Max.”

He flipped the button of my jeans and tugged down the zip. I was back in boxers, for all the protection they gave me. He peeled the waistband gently over my hot, oversensitive tip, then pulled me down on the cushion beside him.

“Ouch.”

He stopped, his expression turning to worry. “You’re injured? I forgot….”

“It’s okay,” I said. I shifted to favor the side Peck had kicked. “Let me empty my pockets before I stab myself on something.” I pulled out my wallet and phone, my door key, the crumpled envelope from a birthday card one of the Vs had brought Louis, a couple of pound coins, and the red lighter. I tumbled them all on the coffee table beside the couch.

Seve looked at the pile. “I have never seen you smoke.”

I shrugged. “I don’t. It’s a… souvenir. From a friend.” I’d borrowed it from Stewart one night to help a friend get their onering gas hob going. When I offered it back, he’d waved it away with a smile. Keep it, he’d said. Easy for me to buy another one next week. Then there’d never been a next week—not for him, anyway.

“Max?” The word was almost a sigh as Seve ran his hand gently down my arm.

“I’m fine,” I said firmly. I turned back and leaned into him again. “Don’t treat me like an invalid.”

He didn’t. When he took hold of my dick again, he wasn’t as gentle and the friction was more intense. His strokes were strong and exciting, and he knew exactly where to torment me—how to make me shiver. He tugged the skin over my swelling shaft, teasing out the precome and smoothing it all over the tip so that his hand moved more easily.

I whimpered. Every sweep of his hand dragged the ache in my groin with it, and my hips jerked upward to meet him. My nerves were stretched so tautly I winced every time he varied his touch. He paused at the base of my cock, kneading my balls gently with the pad of his palm. His thumb caressed the hairs, uncurling them with a tug, then letting them bounce back into place. And all the time he stroked me firmly and demandingly, squeezing me toward a climax that I knew was going to be so fucking poignant it was going to be painful.

When he pulled down the waist of his sweats and tugged one of my flailing hands toward his own cock, I grasped it eagerly. I started to pump it in time with his movements. He gave his own soft groan as I worked the flesh up and down.

“This is mad,” I gasped, though I wasn’t exactly sure what I meant. That it was bloody uncomfortable, scrunched up on the couch? That I should just give up and go to bed with him and let him fuck my arse like my body so obviously wanted? That I shouldn’t be here at all? He tightened his grip and I yelped with pleasure. That last one just wasn’t an issue.

“No. This is good.” Seve’s smile was tight as, like me, he fought to postpone the inevitable ecstasy. He rolled against me, his breath harsh and shortening rapidly. Although the couch was a generous size, we were still awkwardly crushed together, but he never lost control of his hand, of me. We lay face-to-face, still fully clothed from the waist down except for our escaped pricks, and we jerked each other off like teenagers discovering each other and not yet prepared or experienced enough to go further. It took longer to come than I’d expected, though I’d been aroused so quickly—but that was part of the joy. We savored each other and the feel and touch of each other’s flesh, and it was very, very fucking good.

“Make as much noise you like,” Seve hissed in my ear. “No one will hear us.”

How did he know that was what I wanted? I was panting and swallowing moans in the back of my throat. I’d had to be quiet in some of the astonishing places we found to fuck, and I’d assumed that applied even to this private but pretty exclusive flat of his. But now I let go. I gave a loud, echoing yell, and my body arched up off the cushion as the climax racked through me. It was a brilliant, gasping relief to let the noise out, to express the shuddering pleasure that burst up through my cock, spewing hot and sticky come all over my stomach and Seve’s supple fingers. The world swam out of focus around me, and I clutched the arm of the couch, trying to anchor myself.

“Uh… Max… so good.” Seve’s voice was ragged as he shifted against me. His cock gave a sharp throb and I squeezed him one more time. He gave an impressively fierce yell of his own and jolted against me so that we both nearly rolled off the couch. Come spurted from his cock, his head pressed down hard on my shoulder, and I could feel the shudder rippling through him. I folded my arms around his chest and held him as he jerked and twitched. I could feel the thick gloopy stuff being squashed and spread all over our stomachs. We’d be well and truly messy together.

We lay for a minute or two, silent except for our heavy breath, and that slowed after a while. Seve didn’t pull away from my embrace, but I stirred awkwardly underneath him. “I need a shower.”

“Take one.” His voice was soft. “There’s plenty of hot water. Stay with me tonight.”

His face was close to mine, and I stared at the soft swelling of his lips where we’d kissed, where we’d snapped at each other’s tongue as the climaxes approached. He nuzzled my ear, his eyelashes brushing my temple. I knew what he wanted.

“I’ll stay, Seve. But just a shower. Just a bed. Nothing else tonight.”

He sat up stiffly, pulling his sweats back up around his waist. A smile tugged at the corners of his mouth. “I know. I heard you.” He got up off the couch, stretching the muscles of his shoulders in the graceful way he had. “You know the way to the bathroom, right?”

IT WAS an expensive shower with a booster pump, and the steaming water came out fierce and scalding hot, just as I liked it. It felt like a guilty pleasure, enjoying the fast-flowing water and good soap. Pampering my aching body, reveling in the sensual delight of touching everywhere for a perfectly good and yet purely selfish reason.

I stood for a long time, checking out any new bruises, pleased to find I wasn’t seriously damaged from my new hobby of throwing myself at locked doors. I washed my hair a couple of times, running my fingers through the kinks. Streams of hot water ran down my back, fast and furious, and I luxuriated in it. How good it’d be to wash the whole damn lot away! The present confusion and the whole of the miserable past. The loss of my friendships and my innocence. The missed opportunities—the sense of constant failure. Perhaps that was exactly what I was trying to do. I rubbed harshly at my skin so that it began to burn with sensation. I washed out the smell of Seve and his leather couch, of Peck’s cigarette ash, of the club, of the bleak backyard….

I felt Seve there, in the room, seconds before I turned and saw him. I was in searingly hot water, but goose bumps scattered across my body. He’d drawn aside the shower curtain, and clouds of steam floated gently out over the whole room. He stood there, watching me, tall and still and completely nude. Steam condensed on his shoulders and chest and made his cropped hair look blacker and sleeker.

“Max.” His eyes were bright like a fox’s in the moonlight, and his gaze ran from my legs up my naked, dripping torso to my face. They lingered there. Perhaps there was a question in his eyes—perhaps it was just lust.

“Not tonight, Seve.”

“I know. I just want to watch you.”

I looked down at his cock, which was thick and erect again. Jutting high and swollen, reaching for me. Free of its confines, it sprang out from the curly black nest of hair. Seve sucked in his stomach with a tight breath. He really wanted me.

“You want to take care of that, Seve?”

“What do you mean?”

I smiled. A trail of water ran down my cheek, and I licked it into my mouth. “Let me watch as well. Do it for me, Seve. Touch yourself.”

There was that same look on his face, like the first time I’d sucked him off and swallowed his come. Was this something he’d never done? Yet I knew how he liked to watch me jerking myself off. Seve still had a lot to learn, it seemed. I leaned back against the tiles of the shower cubicle and turned the water flow down. The dribble of water continued to run down over my skin, but now it caressed my growing erection. Seve’s naked body was a sight for sore eyes. I wrapped a hand lazily around myself and gestured for him to continue.