by Josh Lanyon
I’d never have met Stephen.
“Let’s get you back in bed,” he said, and obediently I rose and climbed back up the stairs with his help.
* * * * *
He ejected the magazine and laid the Glock back on the stand. I met his eyes.
“I am sorry about the mirror. I know it was an antique.” I inched painfully down in the bed. “I’ll pay for it, naturally.”
He had stepped into the bathroom. He returned with a glass of water and a couple of pain pills—at least I thought they were pain pills. I wouldn’t have blamed him for knocking me out for the rest of the night. He said, “Forget about the mirror. Everything in this place is an antique. Including me.”
I snorted. Tossed the pills back, washed them down, and got over onto my good side, pausing as a spasm caught me off guard.
“All right?”
I nodded quickly. The little thrill of anguish faded and I eased down. It was better once I was lying flat. I said tentatively, “Will you stay for a bit? Just till I drop off?”
He barely hesitated. “If you’d like.”
“I’d like.” I sighed. “I’d like it every night for the rest of my life.”
He didn’t respond to that, but he went ahead and climbed into bed and I reached for him. He gathered me against him and it felt easy and natural—and right. He held me for a bit and then said, “How are the ribs?”
“Hurting like hell.”
I felt him smiling against my hair. “I bet. We could try lying —”
“I don’t care. It’s worth it.” And it was worth the ache of knitting bones and muscles to lie like this, to have the freedom to rest my head on the warmth of his bare shoulder, feeling the steady thump of his heart against my own, feeling his breath warm and even against my face. His arms were hard and muscular but they seemed to cradle me.
He said quite kindly, “You’ll get over it, Mark.”
I thought about not answering, but I said finally, “You may be right about my ribs, but you don’t know a damn thing about my heart.”
He didn’t say anything.
After a time the pain pills kicked in and my ribs didn’t hurt so much despite the awkward position. Stephen’s body was relaxed but I could feel him awake, feel him thinking. I wondered what his thoughts were, but it no longer seemed crucial to know. Somehow in the long stretch of silence I felt we had reached some kind of truce, even a sort of understanding.
I said softly, “I think I might be losing it.”
He considered it. Said equally soft, “You might have temporarily mislaid it. I don’t think you’ve lost it.” The smile in his voice was reassuring. I believed him.
Then Buck, curled up on the floor somewhere beyond the foot of the bed, suddenly groaned in that exasperated way dogs do, and we both chuckled.
Dawn was scented of the lilacs that grew along the back of the house. For a time I lay there watching the first fingers of sunlight reach through the curtains, stretch across the ceiling. I listened to Stephen breathing softly beside me. The soft rosy light reminded me of the artwork in the copy of the Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam—the first gift I had given him.
He had hated what I did for a living. He didn’t pretend for the sake of politeness—not even in the very beginning. But I liked that about him. I liked his blunt honesty. It was unknown in my trade. With Stephen it wasn’t about politics—although it bothered him that it wasn’t about politics for me either—he was a doctor and he saw what was happening in the Middle East purely from the humanitarian standpoint. He saw war—all war—as a terrible tragedy.
And he was right, of course. But it did seem a little beside the point.
Even once I had decided to leave the service we still argued about it. About war, about espionage, about the Middle East itself.
I wasn’t sure where my own fascination with the Middle East stemmed from. One too many readings of the Jungle Book? I vividly remembered flipping through the lush illustrations of my great-uncle’s copy of the Rubaiyat. I had been nine—not long after the death of my parents in a plane crash. My great-uncle David, a Fellow at Grey College, was my only close relative, and I had gone to live with him.
“Two old confirmed bachelors, that’s us, my boy,” he’d used to say cheerfully.
He died when I was eighteen.
He had a sumptuous collection of Asian and Middle Eastern art books and literature. But it was the Rubaiyat with those astonishing watercolors by Edmund Dulac that had first caught my attention, opening a doorway into another world. A world of romance and adventure and mysticism. A land of white peacocks and moonlit temples and secret gardens and princely men in turbans. Granted, by the time I’d been recruited by the Old Man I wasn’t stupid enough to imagine that was the way it really was, but combined with my adolescent fondness for Ian Fleming, I suppose I was a natural recruit for the latest version of The Great Game—and an eventual posting in the Land of Light.
And some of it had been just as I imagined. The land—the part that wasn’t blasted to bits—was starkly beautiful and strange like any fairytale landscape, the people were as alien as characters in ancient legends, and the history fascinated me—but that was where the magic ended. Violence, deceit, betrayal…that was the coin of the realm.
And yet…
Until Stephen it had not seriously entered my mind that I could walk away from it. Not even after I’d been shot in a botched operation in Calcutta. What was there to walk away for?
I was distracted by the feel of Stephen’s morning erection prodding my belly; I’d been up and awake for some little while myself. I smiled inwardly, nestling still closer, fitting my hips to his, moving carefully against him. I could feel his heat through the thin cotton of his pajama bottoms.
His breathing changed as his cock swelled and filled, shoving its way through the fly of the constraining pajamas. I bumped my hips against his in soft, stealthy movements that might weave themselves into his dream—or not.
He mumbled something sleepy and opened his eyes.
I smiled into his sleep-hazed green eyes, and he smiled back—and it was just like old times. There was happiness in his eyes and his mouth found mine in a sweet, sleepy kiss. He tasted smoky, like a darker version of himself. I fingered the mussed silver of his hair, running my hand down his bristling cheek, a cheek flushed and pink as a boy’s.
He closed his eyes again. Maybe he thought he was dreaming. If so, I didn’t want to spoil it by saying a wrong word. I kissed him again and slipped my tongue into his mouth, touching his tongue delicately with my own. He made an approving noise. His tongue swirled lazily around mine.
It was killing my ribs to hold my arm up, but I stroked the silky soft hair on the nape, resting my hand on the back of his neck, drawing him closer, deepening the kiss. I slipped my other hand inside his pajama fly, finding and holding the velvety softness of his balls. He touched me back, and I sighed my pleasure as he ran a slow hand down my torso, light as a feather over the taping on my ribs, then smoothing his palm over my abdomen.
“Rub my belly for good luck,” I whispered.
He smiled, not opening his eyes, and gently rubbed his hand across my navel.
“Now make a wish,” I told him inaudibly, and kissed him.
His hand slowly slid down till his fingers tangled in the pubic hair where my cock nested. I murmured encouragingly into his mouth.
Languidly, we caressed and stroked each other. So drowsily intimate, smelling pleasurably of the clean linen and our warm bodies. Reaching beneath the bedclothes, he freed himself from his pajama bottoms. And I hurried to follow suit, painfully wriggling out of my briefs—and that was lovely: bare naked skin finding bare naked skin.
He slid his hands beneath me easing me over onto my back, and I liked his strength and his carefulness, though I didn’t need him to be careful. I felt fine. Better than fine. I smiled up at him and his eyes were open. He wasn’t smiling; his lashes shadowed his gaze, but there was something tender in the serious l
ine of his mouth.
I let my legs fall open as he leaned over me, hands planted on either side of my shoulders, cock brushing mine but his weight off my body, the sheets and cover tenting over us.
“It’s okay,” I whispered, running my hands down the smooth skin of his ribcage and flanks. I reached up, cupping his taut buttocks with my hands, inviting him to settle on top of me. He resisted. “I want you to.”
“Shhh,” he said, and I shushed as his warm mouth found my throat, trailing moist kisses down to my collarbone and finally closing over my nipple right above the stiff taping around my ribs.
I sucked in a sharp breath, half pleasure, half pain as I made the mistake of arching against the feel of that mouth on puckered skin. Our cocks rubbed against each other, stiff and velvety and slick all at the same time.
The moving finger writes, I thought as Stephen’s prick inked a salty message against my abdomen and groin. My own cock slid against his, penning an urgent answer. I thrust up against him, biting back frustration as the reminding twinges of various cuts and bruises and breaks made themselves felt.
“Shush now,” he murmured.
And despite wanting his weight on me, pressing me down into the pillowy softness of the feather mattress, despite wanting our bodies locked together in heat and hunger, I sealed my lips. This felt very good, that delicious friction as he rocked against me, our cocks thrusting and scraping against each other despite the fact that it had a distant dreamy quality to it. I found it hard to believe that Stephen and I were really lying there fucking, and yet at the same time it had a sense of inevitability.
Slowly, relentlessly, tension built to that unbearable peak and then suddenly that spurt of wet warmth, a fountain of delight spilling out of me in dulcet pulses. Splashing his groin and belly, splashing my thighs. Lovely, loose release murmuring through my nerves and muscles and bones.
Poised above me, Stephen shivered down the length of his body, hips freezing. He bit off a sound, shot thick cream across my belly and chest, sharply pungent with his essence.
His left arm gave way, then his right, and his body lowered solidly onto mine. He panted into my ear and hair, and I wrapped my arms around him, holding him in place when he’d have lifted off me. My heart thudded in slow, happy time with the beat of his. I closed my eyes savoring it, treasuring that moment, wanting it to last forever. I hoped he wouldn’t regret it.
And having writ, moves on. Nor all your Piety nor Wit shall lure it back to cancel half a line…
“I’m hurting you,” he muttered after a bit, trying to lift off again. I hung on, knowing he would have to permit it. He wouldn’t risk wrestling with me.
“Then we’re even,” I whispered. I felt the tension in his body but couldn’t have stopped the words if my life had depended on it. After a heartbeat or two he relaxed.
We drifted while the sunshine spread across the floorboards. After a time I came back to alertness and realized Stephen was easing off me. I let him go reluctantly, relieved when he lowered himself beside me, wrapped his arm around my middle, and went to sleep. I closed my eyes and drowsed, content—even confident that everything would be okay.
Nor all your Tears wash out a Word of it.
Lulled, I closed my eyes. I felt him rise an hour later, easing off the mattress. The dog followed him out of the room, nails clicking on the hardwood floor. I heard the old plumbing rattle, and a short time later the house settled back into sleep.
Chapter Six
.
I was having breakfast—French toast with red raspberry sauce—when the phone rang. I watched Lena answer it, watched her eyes slide my way. I felt certain it was something I wasn’t going to like—although after the start my morning had had, I felt it would take a lot to ruin it.
“It’s a Mr. Holohan for you,” she said at last, holding the phone up.
For a beat I couldn’t think who Mr. Holohan was. Then I said, “Tell him I’m not here.”
She was shaking her head—not entirely regretful to give me bad news. “He said you would say that. He said he has to talk to you. It’s urgent.”
I rose, taking the phone with a sound of impatience, and went out on the back porch.
“You said I had forty-eight hours.”
The Old Man snarled, “Oh for God’s sake, man. Forty-eight hours is nearly up!”
“No it’s not. I’ve still got…” I looked at my wristwatch, calculating.
He snapped, “Mr. Hardwicke, our prior arrangement is rescinded. You’re to come in now.”
“You can’t arbitrarily rescind —” He could of course, and frequently did, but my rage was chilled by his next words.
“Listen very carefully. This morning the Cousins raided an illegal embassy in Kunar. Your name was discovered on a hit list of enemies of the Taliban.”
In the following silence, I could hear Buck in the distance barking at something in that mechanical, repetitious way dogs do when they can’t remember what got them started in the first place.
I said when I could think clearly, “My name? My actual name? Why the hell should my name be on anything? I’m just —”
“Think, man. Use your head. Arsullah Hakim was the younger brother of Mullah Arsullah.”
It rocked me. Mullah Arsullah was a senior Taliban commander. I said after some rapid thinking, “Still. What are the odds? I’ve left Afghanistan and I won’t be back. And even if they’re hunting me, why should they look for me here? And if they did…”
They had my real name. It was, admittedly, a shock.
“The Istakhbarat has operatives looking for you. There’s a price on your head. One million rupees.”
“There is no Istakhbarat,” I argued. The Istakhbarat was Afghanistan’s former intelligence agency under the Taliban regime. Officially there was no Istakhbarat. Unofficially… “Anyway,” I swallowed hard. “A million rupees. What’s that work out to, about fifty quid?”
He said flatly, “It’s over two hundred thousand American dollars. But that’s merely added incentive. Killing you is a matter of honor. A matter of pride. You must come in now.”
“I’ve still got twenty hours,” I said.
“Oh, for God’s sake, Mark,” the Old Man said. “Is it worth your life?”
“It might be.” I heard the words and realized I meant them.
He argued of course, but even he had to admit the odds were against terrorists tracking me to this small corner of the Shenandoah Valley.
“Are you willing to take the chance with Thorpe’s life?” the Old Man asked finally, unanswerably.
“You’ve said yourself the chances of my being found here are practically nonexistent.”
“Then you’re willing to take that chance? You’re willing to risk his life?”
I was silent. If I left now, I knew it would be over. Stephen wouldn’t believe such a melodramatic reason for my pulling out, and even if he did, it wouldn’t matter because I had screwed up too many times. I was out of chances. I might not even have a chance now, although it had certainly felt this morning that I did.
“You know damn well I’m not,” I said bitterly. “I’ll call you this evening and set up when I’m coming in.”
* * * * *
Despite the phone call, I felt better that morning than I had for days. I was finally able to stay awake for more than an hour or two, and I spent the morning checking out teaching programs at local universities. I told myself I was just curious. Then I told myself that even if I did have to leave for a time I could convince Stephen to…
To what?
Each time my thoughts sheered off like a low flying plane narrowly avoiding treetops. I concentrated instead on the different websites and the wealth of information offered.
The University of Shenandoah had something called a Career Switcher Program for individuals who hadn’t completed teacher training curriculum but had “considerable life experiences, career achievements, and academic backgrounds that are relevant.” I had considerable lif
e experiences, and a decade of survival in my business was quite a career achievement, but was any of it relevant?
I was well paid and I’d saved a considerable amount over the years. Other than having acquired a number of first editions of Dickens, I didn’t spend a lot—even on the rare occasions I’d been home for any length of time. I could afford to go back to university and get a proper teaching degree. And I liked the idea of teaching, especially of teaching history. It hadn’t been something I’d said because I thought Stephen wanted to hear it.
If I could find some place local…
There were all kinds of colleges and universities. Blue Ridge Community College, Southern Virginia University, James Madison University. I studied pictures of brick buildings and smiling young faces and tried to tell myself it wasn’t too late. I could still do this. People went back to school all the time.
I could start school in the fall—if Stephen liked the idea. If Stephen was willing to give me another chance.
A little before lunch time I had a surprise visitor: Bryce Boxer.
“Stephen’s not here,” I said after Lena showed him into the study where I was surfing the Web on Stephen’s desktop and making copious notes on courses of study and prerequisites, tuition, and fees.
Bryce approached the desk, and I clicked to reduce the screen. His blue eyes met mine, and I could read the suspicion there. What did he imagine? Credit card fraud? Chat room scams with underage boys? It was obvious he didn’t have the details of why Stephen and I had broken up, but he saw me as the bad guy.
Granted, I was the bad guy.
He said, gaze returning to my face, “Yeah, I know. I wanted to…speak frankly to you. Man-to-man.”
Queen, I thought. I said politely, “Go ahead.”
He picked up the Civil War cast iron rifle piece that Stephen used as a paperweight and then put it down again. He seemed to have trouble coming to it. I pushed back in the chair, folded my arms, waiting.
