By CLARE LONDON (6 page)

“MAX, you’re not sleeping well, are you?”

I peered up over the top of my book. I immediately forgot what had been on the page, despite having skimmed over it four times already. One-man-against-the-world thrillers were proving way too implausible for me. “Sorry, Jack. Have I been disturbing you or something? I only get up for a drink or a read.”

Jack was standing in the doorway of the living room, wiping his hands on an apron with “Kiss Me Quick” on the front. “Or to cook something. Or to have a shower.”

I flushed. So perhaps I’d been a pain in the arse this last week. But I had things on my mind. Things that kept me awake, that nagged at me, that refused to be laid back to rest.

Jack wriggled out of the apron and threw himself down in the armchair opposite me. “It’s not a problem for me. I sleep little anyway. And Louis expends all his energy dancing and socializing, so he’d probably sleep through the Second Coming. It’s you I’m worried about.”

“No need,” I said hastily. “But sorry if you’re losing sleep over me. I’ll stop roaming about at night. You need your rest to keep up with the new job.”

Jack had recently been promoted. His employer was working closely with the local police on a new initiative against drug crime, and Jack had been co-opted onto the liaison team. Louis all but itched with pride whenever he tried to explain it to me, with me smiling and trying to look like I understood every word.

Part of the reason we’d built such a strong friendship at school was the complementary mix of our three personalities. Jack was the steady achiever, Louis the smart extrovert. I was… well, what was I, apart from the bridge between the two? I’d been one of those guys they all said had great promise. I was the one with plenty of energy and drive—I’d do something with my life. Unfortunately it didn’t take me long to start misusing that energy, kicking back at authority as soon as I was old and big enough to stand up for myself. Not that the school wasn’t good, that the teachers weren’t sympathetic to teenage boys. Shit, I wouldn’t have had their job for all the tea in China and places beyond, especially with kids like me in the class. But I was full of aggression and bravado and the confusion that comes at that time. Bloody hormones in a rage too. What was I really doing with my life? I was setting the scene for a few messy years, is what.

I was high maintenance. And I always fought to go my own way, even when no one was challenging me. I always took the difficult route, always expected struggle and opposition. I got into fights, was disruptive in class if I didn’t understand the subject, and came in late, hungover, and sometimes stoned. Louis and Jack tried to rein me in. Tried to convince me I wasn’t a moron and shouldn’t act like one. That I could understand mathematical principles, carry out a successful science experiment, and write something more lyrical than my name on the toilet wall. But I was just too far up my own arse to listen to my peers.

It was a small miracle I lasted long enough to get to Brighton University. In fact, I think the school head put in a few words for me, just to get me that one last chance. The three of us were still together, the Uni life was good—it should have been a brave new world for me. It just didn’t go that way.

The partying had started in the late school years. I knew I was gay from an early age, knew I was highly sexual as soon as I learned enough about it. And I liked the thrill of finding out how my body worked—I liked to see the games we were all starting to play with each other, the drama and the physical excitement. And I found I was particularly adept at all of those. I kept fit and I had the gift of the gab to pick up casual partners. I was enthusiastic too.

I lost my virginity in Compulsion, the first term of Uni. It was called something like Beach Bubbles then and was into the cocktail crowd. Clubs changed their names a lot according to fashion and to new owners. I was only just legal—not that that had stopped me drinking illegally for the past few years—and I’d scammed my way into an over-twenty-fives night with a fake ID. I picked up a pretty fit bloke and we were all over each other. Can’t even remember his name or if we swapped any details except the “yeah, right now” look. We stumbled into a cubicle in the gents’, full of beer and a smoke and laughing at something that probably wouldn’t have been funny to anyone sober. And so it happened. Made me wince a bit, and it was over in the time it took to pull a vending machine condom on and then peel it clumsily off, but I was excited at the way it made me feel. Loved the power of how it obviously made him feel too. By the time I’d got through that first term, I was well on the way to quantity over quality. Didn’t have much idea of inhibition; restraint was an alien concept. Yeah… if you’ll pardon the pun, I was way up my own arse.

“Max?” Jack was frowning at me. “You look miles away.”

Not just miles but years. Or maybe not even that long ago. Jack wasn’t entirely right—I was sleeping at night. But it was so restless that each morning I felt as if I’d had no rest at all. Louis usually teased me because I was difficult to wake in the morning—I was notorious for sleeping like the dead, just like him. If there’s a fire, he’d say…

I’d burn, would be my flip reply.

And that’s what seemed to be happening to me now. I was burning up, but with needs and wants, not flames. Last Saturday’s escapade had nagged at me every bloody night this week. I was disturbed out of all proportion. I mean, life went on, regardless. I worked extra shifts at the construction site, I cooked a couple of suppers for us at the flat. I thought about changing my job or signing up for night-school Spanish or getting my hair shaved—all the usual nonsense that went through a bloke’s head during the day. But I just couldn’t settle. I scooped up a bunch of secondhand thrillers from the charity shop to read in the evenings, and I even tried watching the TV soaps with Louis. He’d recently filmed a minor part in one of them and now he was hooked on the whole damned lot, but I eventually drove him mad asking who was related to whom all the time. Nothing eased my mood. I found myself pottering around the town in my lunch hour, wondering whether to buy another good shirt or two and trying out samples of men’s cologne. I’d never bothered about those things before. I nearly got discovered by one of the site managers—also on lunch—as I was thumbing through packs of new underwear. Decent but way too expensive stuff. Totally weird.

I was burning for all sorts of other reasons. Something had lit up under me, and I couldn’t put out the heat. “What’s the time?” I asked.

Jack blinked hard, distracted just as I’d hoped he would be. “Eight p.m. Why?”

“I’m going out for a drink with one of the guys from work. I’ll… I said I’d meet him at eight thirty.”

Jack didn’t grace that with a reply, just peering at me. What, he didn’t believe me?

I got up, showing off my firm intention to go out. “Is Louis dancing at the club tonight?”

“No, he has the weekend off. He’s round at his mother’s for the monthly visit, but he’ll be back soon. He’s bringing in some good wine. We’re celebrating our anniversary tonight.”

I smiled to myself at the sudden flush on his face. Did he really think I hadn’t noticed the extra candles on the table, the smoked salmon chilling in the fridge, the smell of something special in the oven to follow? They were over each other like treacle on special occasions. What’s more, they’d appreciate me going out, even though they’d never ask.

And I wanted to get out of the flat. I wanted some space to think about it all. To try to calm my restlessness. To shake off the smell of Seve that I imagined still lingered in my nostrils, and the abrasion on my fingertips from clutching at the rough bricks of that backyard wall. To relive the memory of him behind me, the press of his body, panting, gasping, thrusting hard against my back. Deep up inside me, stretching me, filling me. His unfamiliar but firm hand around my dick, tugging me along with him, ripping a reaction from me that had been as deep as it had been dirty.

Shit. I was shocked at myself. Why couldn’t I get this into perspective? It had just been a quick, fierce fuck at a club, a whole week ago. It’s not like I hadn’t done it before. Yeah, I was trying not to make casual sex with strangers a habit nowadays, but I wasn’t giving it up for life, was I? Yes, you were, prompted my nagging conscience. It was part of my old life, not the new. I seemed to be having trouble with the separation.

Seve didn’t feel like a stranger. All I could think about was him.

That night, I never met anyone for a drink. In fact I never had any intention of it. I went straight to Compulsion.

HE DIDN’T appear until after midnight. The dance floor got darker and hotter and noisier, and I’d cursed my fixation at regular intervals ever since I arrived. I was drinking beer again and had been leaning against the bar for hours like some lazy whore. The number of approaches I’d turned down was five so far: four guys, one girl. I started out civil, then got progressively sharper. When the next person approached with the same hopeful leer and what he thought would be a seductive line, I glared so hard that I saw him pale. He veered quickly off in another direction.

And then Seve was there beside me. I never saw where he materialized from. His smell was spicy and teasing, and suddenly I was awash with all the other sensual memories of last Saturday. I swallowed hard, determined not to behave like some horny teenager, and turned slowly to face him. His long-fingered hand was curled around a drink as before, and his smile was almost sly. He had the same jeans on, I think, but a darker shirt with some kind of green shine to it. There was a slim silver chain around his neck and a tiny silver stud in his ear. The beard was newly trimmed, the skin of his cheeks and throat smooth.

He nodded at the retreating clubber. “Not your type, Max?”

He remembers my name. Something twisted painfully inside me. I’d been thinking he spent the last week fucking so many strange blokes in the backyard that he’d never remember just one.

“Don’t know.” I was having trouble making my tongue work—just the sight of him did things to me that I’d hoped were long buried. I dropped my gaze away from his. “Been a while since I even thought about what my type is.”

“A while?” That bloody voice—soft, rich, cool. “Since last Saturday?”

I know I flushed. I prayed that the lights were low enough that it wouldn’t look too obvious. “Yeah, well, last Saturday was—let’s say—unusual for me. Can’t say it’s on my regular weekend list of Things to Do.”

“Me neither.”

I felt him staring at me and I met his gaze. His eyes flashed like fireworks, like warning flares. He was still smiling, but his expression was guarded, with pursed lips as if he wasn’t sure what else to say.

“You come here often?” I blurted out. Shit. And after I’d been so rude to those others tonight, coming up to me with far more original chat-up lines.

“I do now,” Seve said.

I started to laugh, then bit it back. “I’m not asking for me,” I said with a grin. “It’s just I haven’t seen you around before.” I tried to remember what the club had been like when I last came to see Louis dance, before it was sold into its latest guise. That was over a year ago, of course. I was sure I’d have remembered a bloke like Seve, however crowded the place had been.

He paused before replying. “I haven’t been in Brighton for long.” He shrugged very slightly, his muscles moving like the last gentle ripple of an evening wave on the beach. “I’m with the new management.”

It figured. The way he seemed to exist apart from the crowd of dancers and drinkers; his confidence with the club; the way he got past security.

“Do you have a problem with that, Max?”

“No way. I mean… no. Unless I’m causing you trouble as a customer, of course.” I laughed again, realizing how stupid that sounded the minute the words left my mouth.

But maybe the embarrassment was all on my part. Seve certainly didn’t seem disturbed by my prattling—far from it, in fact. If there was one thing I could recognize in a man’s eyes, it was lust, and I suspected Seve’s was reflected in my own. His smile creased the corners of his mouth—his lush, greedy mouth. The mouth that I wanted to be touching very, very soon. My gut ached, and I felt warmth creeping down my spine like heated goose bumps. And I knew the feeling wasn’t because I’d been drinking.

I knew I had to keep cool. Then I looked into his confident gaze and thought, Who am I kidding? “Look, Seve. About last Saturday—”

He interrupted me. “You want some more?” He put his drink down beside mine on the bar.

“Yeah.” I knew he didn’t mean the beer. And I knew he knew I knew. Whatever.

“But?”

I stared at him. “But what?”

He shrugged again. The fabric of his shirt shifted on his shoulders. Even over the deep, throbbing beat of the latest dance number, I imagined that I heard him sigh. The chain glinted in the hollow of his shadowed throat, and he casually ran a single finger down the side of his glass. My jeans went unbearably tight around the crotch. Fuck it, what was going on with me?

“It looks to me like you do have a problem.”

“Me? A problem?” I stared at him and he stared right back. He was reading something in my expression that I didn’t know was there. Something that was holding me back from him, from the pleasure he was offering me. Was he annoyed? He might just turn around and leave. Fuck, I didn’t want that to happen. But I also didn’t know what I was getting into if he stayed.

His white teeth teased briefly at his lower lip. “You’re not sure. I don’t know whether it’s about me or yourself.”

I blinked hard. What the fuck? “It’s not a bad thing, to want to know what’s going on.”

“No. It’s not. Have you always been like that?”

I flushed. “No.” But that’s how I want to be now.

Seve nodded. “You’re right, it’s not a bad thing. What can I tell you?” He stood in that relaxed but assertive way, his shoulders back, his neck tight. Fucking gorgeous.

“Okay. Who are you, why are you here?”

He shook his head a little impatiently. I wondered if he had other things to do, like he’d said last Saturday, but when it came, his answer was calm and his tone pleasant. “This club is part of a newly formed franchise. The owners have other clubs opened or scheduled to open soon. I’m interested in a career in the entertainment business, so I was recruited for this job at Compulsion during its reopening.” He extended a hand with a wry twist of his mouth. “My name is Severino Nuñez.”