With or Without Him (23 page)

“You know, tonight was the first time I’ve ever walked along holding a man’s hand,” Haris said.

“You hugged me too,” Tyler mumbled.

“I don’t know what came over me.”

Tyler snorted into his chest. After a shuddering exhalation, he sat up straight. “And I almost got us beaten up. I’m sorry.”

“It’s okay.”

No, it wasn’t. As usual, he’d been an idiot. He hadn’t thought about the consequences. He already knew the consequences of telling Haris what he usually did on a Saturday night. He could picture the look of disgust on his face. But would Haris understand him better if he told him what had happened when he’d been a kid? Would he understand why paying off his debt was so fucking important? Tyler didn’t want Haris to feel sorry for him, and if he told the truth, he would.

He wanted to tell him but there were words he’d banned from his head because they brought intense pain—mother, father, brother, sister, love, home—and every time he let himself think about that night, his world fell apart all over again. The pain never lessened.

Tyler raised his gaze to his and knew Haris was waiting for him to speak. He also knew Haris wouldn’t push him if he didn’t.

“Once upon a time, I was part of a loving family. I had an older brother and sister and I worshipped them.” Tyler clenched his fists on his knees. “We lived in a big house in the country and I had everything I wanted.” He swallowed hard. “Better warn you. No happy ending to this fairy story.”

Haris stroked his fists and when Tyler didn’t uncurl his fingers, he laid his hands over his. “What happened?”

“Claire died when she was twelve. She and Noel died and I didn’t.” His voice cracked. “I never talk about this.”

Haris stayed silent.

“When I was seven years old, my father shot and killed my brother and sister and my mother. He’d have shot me too but he couldn’t find me so he turned the gun on himself. The police said I was lucky.” He gave a short laugh. “Yeah, lucky my family had been wiped out and I survived. Imagine how fucking lucky I felt.”

“Oh God,” Haris whispered.

“Until tonight, I’d forgotten Noel had cancer. What sort of brother does that make me?”

“You were a little boy. A traumatized one. It’s forgivable.”

Tyler gulped. “I can’t remember what they look like. I thought about them every hour of every day for months after it had happened until it finally sunk into my thick skull that they weren’t coming back, that no one was coming to take me home, that home didn’t exist anymore, and it never would again. What I had was the only life I’d get. Then, one day, I realized their faces were no longer in my head. I couldn’t remember what they looked like.” The pain of that made his heart hurt. “It was like losing them all over again.”

“No photos?”

“There
had
been. A care worker made me an album with pictures of us. She thought she was being kind, but I took out all those of my dad, cut them into tiny pieces and ate them.” He let out a strangled laugh. “I have no idea why I did that. Then I cut up all the other photos too because I was so angry they’d left me.” He sucked in a breath. “My dad pulled the trigger, but I blamed my mother for not seeing what was coming. My stupid brother and sister could have hidden like me and they didn’t. Irrational fury.”

“Had you seen what was coming?”

“No.” Tyler shook his head. “Dad took us for a meal and told us we were going on holiday. He made us happy for the last time. He did that deliberately, aware of what he was going to do. That night, after we got back, the first thing he did was kill our two dogs. He shot Noel and Claire in their bedrooms. He probably looked for me in my room, I heard him call me, but I’d snuck down to see why the dogs had made a strange noise. When I came back into the house, I went upstairs to tell my mum that Bruno and Matty were…dead, and she grabbed me and put her hand over my mouth, whispered for me to be quiet.”

Don’t tell him all this. Don’t…
But the words poured out.

“I heard my dad calling me and calling me, and Mum pulled me into a guest room. She was all…wet. I didn’t…I didn’t realize what… She wrapped her dressing gown tie around my mouth because I never shut up. She knew I never shut up. I had to keep quiet. She kept whispering that I had to keep quiet no matter what anyone said. ‘Keep quiet, baby. Keep quiet.’”

Haris stared at him without blinking.

“She pushed me into the bed and covered me with cushions and pillows. I heard him come into the room. Mum begged him not to hurt her, pleaded with him, and he said, ‘I’m sorry’ and shot her again.”

“Tyler,” Haris whispered.
 
“I’m so sorry.”

He took a shaky breath. “She fell on me and I couldn’t move. But I knew I wasn’t supposed to move. I wasn’t supposed to speak so I lay still and waited. I heard him banging around, looking for me, shouting and I was getting wetter and wetter and I couldn’t figure out why. I knew…the moment she died. She…breathed out for too long and she didn’t breathe in again. Eventually, I heard another shot. There was no more noise after that. But I still didn’t move, not even when the police came. I found out later that I lay under her body for twelve hours. They only discovered me when they lifted her up to take her away. I was red from head to toe with my mother’s blood.”

“Oh God,” Haris murmured.

“So now I have a problem with blood and with being gagged. Well, I have a lot more issues than those but they’re the big ones.”

“Why the hell did he do it?”

“Pride.” He released a bitter laugh. “As a little boy, I didn’t understand, and in a way, I still don’t. That pride could make him kill his family? He was in debt and about to lose the house, his business, everything. He was faced with having to take us out of our private schools. Bailiffs were coming to seize the contents of the house. We had no relatives to go and live with. No friends my father could face. I was told by my counselor that my father had been trying to spare his family the distress and grief that he was experiencing. What a fucking pile of shit.”

Tyler turned to him, the tension in his jaw making it hard to speak. “He was a selfish wanker and he should have killed himself and no one else. Noel had nearly died of cancer and we’d all been so fucking happy when the chemo worked. He had his life back and our father took it away again.”

He shook his head. “I don’t allow myself to think about this. I hadn’t even remembered about Noel’s cancer until tonight.” He turned a bleak gaze on Haris. “I don’t want to think about it anymore.” He slid his hand onto Haris’s crotch.

Haris gripped his wrist. “Tyler,” he whispered.

“Let me.”

Tyler pushed the button free on his pants, carefully unzipped him and pulled his cock out with both hands.

“Tyler, no,” Haris muttered.

“Please.”
I can do this. I’m good at this. I can make myself forget, make you forget I told you.

He slid his thumbs up the side of Haris’s cock and Haris shuddered and threaded the fingers of one hand in Tyler’s hair. He loved the way Haris’s shaft hardened in his hand, swelling with blood, the veins snaking the length growing more prominent. Tyler dragged his finger across the slit and brought a pearl of silky pre-come to his lips. Staring into Haris’s face, he slowly licked his finger.

Haris reached for the intercom button. “Wilson. Don’t go straight home. Take us a roundabout route.” He slumped back on the seat, his gaze still fixed on Tyler.

Tyler laughed. “How long do you think this is going to take?”

“As long as you want, I suspect.”

Tyler bent his head and sucked him all the way into his throat.

“Jesus Christ,” Haris muttered and his body stiffened.

Saliva leaked out of Tyler’s mouth as he let the shaft slide back and forth between his lips. As Haris tightened his hold on his hair, Tyler sucked hard and hummed around him. He played the cock like a musical instrument, fluttering, twisting and teasing with his tongue until Haris panted and groaned. He tasted good, sort of sharp and flat at the same time and he kept getting bigger. And doing this stopped Tyler thinking.

Haris pushed down on his head, gripping his hair with both hands now, and Tyler let him control the tempo. He kept his lips tight around him, maintaining the pressure and he didn’t stop humming because he knew how good the vibration felt.

“Oh, oh, ah, fu…Je…oh…” The sounds that burst from Haris’s mouth were cries of wonder, and Tyler felt a thrill of delight that he could bring this classy guy to incoherency.

He brought his thumb to Haris’s balls and rubbed gently down the seam of his sac. His nuts were hard and swollen and he thought of all the little sperm swimming around in there. Four hundred million ejected every time a guy came. Fourteen gallons over a lifetime.

“Tyler,” Haris whispered.

Haris was coming. Tyler could feel it in his body, hear it in his voice, taste it in his cock. He sucked harder, moved his mouth faster and a spurt of salty-sweet semen hit the back of his throat. Haris shuddered as he emptied himself into Tyler’s mouth. Tyler didn’t let his cock free until he’d swallowed every drop.

Haris yanked him back up onto the seat and wrapped his arms around him. “What are you smiling about?”

“I just swallowed four hundred million potential Haris’s. Oh no, half might be female.”

Haris laughed.

“I wonder what sperm think when they reach the stomach,” Tyler said. “Are they programmed to look for an egg to fertilize even there?”

“As far as I remember from my sex ed classes, sperm have no sense of direction. Eggs send a chemical lure to guide them and only one in five swim the right way anyway. Hence the joke about men never taking directions from women.”

“Hey, do you think our sperm are gay?”

Haris chuckled. “Probably. I know which direction yours are about to go.”

Tyler groaned as Haris unbuttoned his pants.

Chapter Thirteen

When Stan Deeds put a brown envelope on the coffee table in front of him, Haris’s heart began to race.

“He’s changed his name,” Stan said. “Used to be Tyler Griffith.”

“He told me about his family.”

Stan raised his eyebrows. “Yeah? Well, I remember the case. I was in the police then. Not my district but the idea that all those people coming and going at the crime scene could miss a kid hiding in the bed? Shocking.”

And it had left Tyler scarred.
Fucking understatement of the year.

“Anything else of significance?”

“Generally, he seems like your average student, up to his ears in debt. Though he’s been reducing that over the last few months. On three out of four Mondays, he makes a cash deposit of five hundred pounds into his account. Last week he put five hundred in on Thursday as well. Details are in the envelope. Needless to say, you did not get this from me. If you want me to find out
where
he’s getting the money, he’ll need to be followed.”

Did he want to know? Yes and no. “Not at the moment,” Haris said. “But inform me if he deposits any cash today.”

“Fine. Now, the other matter. You
are
being followed. You were tailed to the Natural History Museum and back again last night. You need to have a word with your chauffeur. Driving in random circles isn’t going to throw anyone off.”

Haris let out a strangled laugh. “So it’s a white Fiat?”

“Not last night. It was a black Peugeot. I checked the license plate. A rental car picked up in Hackney. If it had been one of the big companies, I could have got a name, but it’s a two-bit business and I didn’t want to set bells ringing. Unless you want me to? Any reason to think you’re in danger?”

He shook his head and then nodded. “Maybe. There was an incident on Saturday night. Tyler and I were pushed under the wheels of bus at Hyde Park Corner.”

Stan’s eyes widened. “Pushed? Not an accident?”

“Someone shoved me and I knocked Tyler down. It felt deliberate and no one hung around to apologize. The tailing of my car and the bus incident might not be connected…”

“But you think they are?”

“I honestly don’t know.”

Stan leaned forward. “If you want my help, you need to tell me who would want to cause you trouble, maybe even kill you.”

“If I knew, I’d tell you.”

Haris didn’t like the way Stan looked at him. But he was an ex-cop. He guessed Haris was lying.

“Any business deals gone bad recently that someone might have taken personally?”

“I’m always putting someone’s nose out of joint, but then people piss me off too and I don’t go around following their car or pushing them under buses.”

“Someone from your past?”

Ah, there’s the rub.
What did Stan know? Haris thought he kept his secrets well hidden, but Stan had proved adept at uncovering information
for
him that lay well below normal levels of accessibility, so it was likely he’d also uncovered information
about
him.

“It’s possible,” Haris admitted. “How about we confront whoever’s following my car. I’ll get Wilson to take a predetermined route and you can have people waiting to box him—them in.”

“Do we need to be armed?”