I wanted to sink my teeth into his elegant neck.
Reluctantly, I settled for a quickened pulse as Kim unbuckled his belt. I’d never noticed what underwear he wore—and now I knew why. Because there was no underwear, not today, at least, only a narrowing trail of dark hair that led to the one thing I definitely recalled.
Swallowing, I snapped his elegant hands as they pushed his jeans down his hips, stopping tantalizingly short of what I wanted to see most. Camera forgotten, I dropped my phone in the box of photographs and stepped into Kim’s personal space. My hands covered his, shoving his jeans down those final few inches, and our lips met in the kind of kiss that made me wonder what we’d been doing all day when we could’ve been doing this.
I pushed him against the wall, absorbing his low groan, and revelled in the way he fell slack in my arms. His cock dug into my stomach. I broke away only long enough to pull my T-shirt over my head, and then I dropped to my knees and took his dick into my mouth with a slow, wet, slide of my tongue.
“Jesus!” Kim’s head hit the wall with a dull thump. His legs quivered, and for the first time since I’d met him, his composure slipped. “Jesus, God, yeah.”
I grinned at his incoherency and fumbled for my wallet and the single condom and sachet of lube that remained in it. Thank fuck, because I don’t know what I would’ve done if yanking Kim to the floor and riding his dick had been off the table.
Supplies retrieved, I tried to find the willpower to release his cock from my mouth—a tough ask as his every sound and shudder travelled through me. I tore at my own belt buckle, desperately seeking friction, and dragged my teeth along Kim’s dick until he growled and pulled my hair, thrusting into my mouth, scraping the back of my throat.
“What do you want, Jas? You want me to fuck you right here? Screw all the bad memories out of you?”
It could never be so simple, but screwing Kim on the hardwood floor of the home I’d shared with Rich was going to happen. Besides, Rich was the last thing on my mind as Kim and I stripped away our remaining clothes.
Kim lay back on the distressed floorboards, naked and beautiful, his inked skin too flawless for me to resist running my tongue over his chest and biting down on his nipples. He squirmed beneath me and groaned, deep and low. His fingers dug into my hips, and I took the bruising touch as my cue to get a move on.
Biting my lip, I sank down on Kim’s dick, paying heed to a subconscious plan to take it slow, ease him in, but my body and my brain didn’t seem to be connected, and the moment he pierced me, all bets were off. I ground down hard, pressing myself so tight against him that bone crunched bone. He gasped, and I swallowed it with a kiss that conversely calmed me, even though an inferno was building in my gut.
I broke away. “We need to stop having fuck-hot sex if we’re just going to be friends.”
Kim’s only answer was a groan, coupled with a brutal upwards thrust of his hips.
I took the hint and braced myself on the wall, riding him harder until Kim took over, drawing his knees up and driving so deep into me that I saw stars. Crying out, I dropped my head to his chest, absorbing the clean scent of his sweat. With him fucking me like this—so rough and raw—I was going to come without touching my dick, a phenomenon that had always blown my mind, but with Kim? Damn. Every nerve in my body was set to explode, and digging my teeth into his tender flesh was the only thing tying me down to the world.
Kim came with a yell, and I followed a heartbeat later, throwing my head back, my mouth open in a silent scream. He shuddered and jerked beneath me, and I shot all over his belly, coming with more force than I could ever remember coming before.
“Fuck.” I fell sideways, pulling off Kim’s dick a little fast for comfort.
“Easy.” Kim rubbed my back. “I’ve got you.”
Oh how I wished that were true, but as breath returned to my lungs, perspective came with it. Jumping on Kim, however willing he might have been, hadn’t changed the fact that, in this damn fucking flat, Rich was all I could see.
Perhaps sensing the conflicting chaos brewing in my treacherous brain, Kim shifted and tightened his arms around me. “Don’t freak,” he said gently. “We’re friends, remember? I’ve got you.”
The warmth of his embrace was stronger than the simmering heat of our third scorching encounter, but the disquiet in my gut remained. Fucking Kim felt as natural as breathing, but that meant nothing in the cooling light of reality. Kim’s lingering relationship with Red bothered me less than I’d assumed it would—if it bothered me at all—but as I pulled back from Kim and briefly saw nothing in him but Rich’s betrayal, I knew that I had a long way to go before I could think of letting this happen between us again.
We dressed in silence. Kim, perceptive as ever, seemed to know that I didn’t want to talk. He pulled his clothes on and drifted back to the window, his lean shoulders framed this time with shadows as the sun disappeared behind the building opposite. “You can’t hate him forever, you know. It ain’t good for the soul.”
“I don’t hate Rich.” It sounded hollow even to my own ears. “I hate what he did. And how it makes—made—me feel.”
“Same thing.”
Kim didn’t turn around. I yanked my T-shirt over my head and went to him, sliding my arms loosely around his waist from behind. “It’s not the same thing. I don’t think about him anymore. It’s just being here . . . it feels like the scene of the crime.”
“That why you wanted to fuck me here? Some weird sexual exorcism?”
“Maybe.” I couldn’t lie to him. “But I would’ve wanted to fuck you wherever we were.”
Kim finally looked at me. I half expected him to be frowning, but his grin was as easy as always. “That’s sweet, but we should probably stop fucking each other. No offence, mate, but you seem a bit lost, like you really do need a friend.”
That, I couldn’t deny. I gave in to the craving to press my face against his back. “You’re right . . . about all of it. I guess Red walking in on us actually did us a favour. Put the brakes on before things got too complicated.”
“Things are only as complicated as you allow them to be. I’m not saying we shouldn’t ever fuck again, just that you’ve obviously got some heavy shit weighing you down. And I don’t reckon you’ve done much talking about it, eh?”
I shrugged. “Nope. My family is an open book, but I’m the anomaly. A reticent loner, like my mother.”
“You don’t have to be alone, Jas. Maybe here”—Kim gestured out of the window—“but not back home. There’s a soul for everyone in Porthkennack, even if it’s just a pal to make you a brew when you’ve been up all night with the moon.”
I’d heard it said before that everyone found a friend in Porthkennack, but as a child I’d never believed it. Running riot on the farm with my brothers every summer, I hadn’t needed friends, hadn’t wanted them, but Christ, I wanted to be Kim’s friend. “How are you going to make me a cuppa in the morning if we don’t have sleepovers?”
Kim stepped out of my loose hold and turned to face me. “In good time, Jas. Speaking of which, it’s getting kinda late. What time does the estate agent’s place shut?”
Shit. Truth be told I’d forgotten about the real reason for traipsing all the way to London. I glanced at my watch. It was long gone seven, and even with the estate agent’s Thursday late-opening hours, getting there before they closed looked like a distant dream.
Damn it. Always a fucking shambles. “I gotta go.”
I made for the door. Kim moved like a snake and blocked my path. “We’ve gotta go, Jas. Friends, remember?”
Well, okay then. There wasn’t time to debate his generous interpretation of being my friend. We dashed through Hoxton, hoofing the sack of wood, and the photos, between us, to the estate agents and made it with seconds to spare. Perhaps because the process was rushed, I didn’t feel much as I signed the flat away and handed over the keys.
Or perhaps it was Kim’s steady presence at my side. His silence was
like a blanket wrapped around my shoulders, and later, as we tubed it back to Paddington, I found myself staring at him and trying to imagine the chaos his life must’ve been when he’d been drinking.
“You thinking about us fucking on your bedroom floor?”
“What? Oh, um . . .” Heat flooded my cheeks, as instant as my attraction to him had been when we met. “No, actually, I was thinking about you in a totally different context.”
“How so?”
I shrugged. “I’m trying to picture you as a raging alcoholic.”
“Why?”
“Because I can’t.”
“Suits me. Hopefully, you never will.”
“Think you’ll make it this time?”
It was Kim’s turn to shrug. “I try not to think about it at all. Just take each day as it comes.”
“Are you tempted a lot?”
“Not on days like this, when I’m distracted by shit that matters. It’s harder when I’m bored . . . and alone, which is probably why Lena finds it so hard to stay away.”
I could imagine other reasons why Red would find it difficult to stay away from Kim, but I kept those to myself. If Kim didn’t know how much I wanted him by now, then we’d been screwing each other all wrong. “I like being alone. Need it sometimes—the peace and quiet, the solitude. I can’t think straight when I spend too much time with other people.”
“Ah, so that’s why you never thought it was weird that your ex was away so much? Because it suited you not to?”
“I guess so.”
The train rumbled into Paddington and jolted to a stop, throwing us against each other. The contact was electric, and my breath caught in my chest, but the doors opened before I could cross the invisible line we’d sketched out since we’d left my Hoxton flat behind.
We got off the train and rode the escalators up into the overground station, Kim still guarding the photos and his precious wood. In the main ticket hall, we found the big screens in the main ticket hall were awash with red, signalling that many trains heading southwest had been cancelled. Brilliant. I scanned the screens over and over, searching for a way home, more eager to escape London than I’d ever been, but the situation—whatever it was—seemed to get worse by the second.
Kim touched my arm. “There’s a sleeper heading out from platform nine. We’ll have to leg it, though. It leaves in two minutes.”
How he’d seen that in the mess of red on the screens, I had no idea, but I took his word for it and set off at a run, following the bustle of people who’d obviously had the same idea. The sleeper trains took all night to reach Truro, but a seven-hour train ride was better than no train at all.
At least, I thought so, until I remembered too late that sleeper trains were mainly made up of two-man cabins. And as luck would have it—or not—the only spaces left on the train was a single seat next to the communal toilet, or a cabin with the world’s smallest double cot.
“Take the cabin,” the Network Rail worker said. “Your tickets aren’t usually valid for the Night Riviera, so make the most of it. Got phone chargers and everything.”
Like I gave a fuck about charging my phone, which was just as well as it turned out the phone “charger” was a two-pin AC plug socket.
Kim dropped his bag by the tiny bed. “You can have it, if you like. I can sit in the seat.”
As if. I stuck my head out of the cabin door. “Neither of us can sit in the seat. It’s taken.”
“Oh.”
Oh, indeed. I sat gingerly on the bed and wondered what Kim was thinking. Was the idea of sharing an actual bed with me so horrible? Or was he doubting that we’d make it all the way home without fucking again?
His face gave nothing away as he sat down beside me, but his jaw-cracking yawn implied the latter was unlikely. I leaned into him, closing my eyes briefly as he did the same. “Thank you for coming with me. I’d probably be in some arse-end pub by now if you hadn’t, or some dodgy gay bar. I tend to put my dick in all the wrong places when I’m upset.”
“So much for solitude.”
“Solitude is my sober happy space. Drunk me is a total cock slut.”
“Nice.”
“Not really.” I didn’t have to look at Kim to know he agreed, but I did anyway and found nothing but acceptance in his steady gaze. Part of me yearned for a reaction, for judgement, but most of me was eternally grateful that I could be so freely candid. “Sex addiction is a thing, right?”
“It is. I’ve met a few sex addicts in rehab, and it’s supposed to be one of the hardest addictions to treat.”
“No magic pill, eh?”
“There’s no magic pill for anything.” Kim lay back and closed his eyes, his body rocking with the motion of the train as it pulled out of Paddington. “You just have to find better ways of coping with reality.”
Reality. Huh. For me, that meant a long journey home to a new flat that was, by design, even more lonely than my life in Hoxton had become. Or did it? Perhaps it didn’t need to be that way. I kept my family at arm’s length by choice, and rarely saw them outside of the farm, but Kim and I had vowed to be friends, real friends, and I couldn’t imagine feeling alone with him by my side.
I looked down at him. Lying back with his feet still on the floor, he couldn’t be comfortable. I nudged him, absorbing his sleepy groan like a warmth-starved vulture. “Get in the bed. There’s a duvet and everything. We can top and tail, if you like?”
“Top and tail?” Kim cracked an eye open. “After we’ve both been traipsing around London all day? Fuck that.”
“Fair enough. You take the duvet, I’ll sleep on top.”
Kim sighed and pulled the duvet back. “Jesus, Jas, just get in. I’m sure we can manage a few hours kip without ruining our beautiful friendship.”
Put like that, how could I argue? Besides, as Kim rolled onto the bed, there was no way I could resist the call to slide in behind him, moulding my body to the curve of his, all the while leaving as much distance between us as the narrow bed allowed.
Kim chuckled.
In the dim light of the room I imagined his knowing grin lighting up his face. “What are you laughing at?”
“Would you still be my friend if I said I was laughing at you?”
“Probably.”
“Would you still be my friend if I asked you to put your arms around me?”
I sat up, propping myself on my elbow, and peered over his shoulder. His eyes were closed, but the set of his jaw was different somehow, like vulnerability had crept into him while I hadn’t been looking. I put my hands on him and cautiously scooted closer. It was on the tip of my tongue to tell him I’d wrap my arms around him anytime he wanted, but I said nothing as I pulled him close and buried my face against his neck. Didn’t need to. Hundreds of miles from home, rocking in limbo on a train that smelled of damp and stale sausage rolls, I only needed him.
I didn’t see Kim for a week or so after our impromptu London trip. He drove me home from Truro station in a van that stank of chicken shit, and then disappeared into the gloomy early morning, leaving me to immerse myself in a design job that was a world away from the rustic barn back on the farm.
Pharmaceutical companies. Ugh. I’d branded one as a favour to an old friend a few years ago, and somehow it had become a thing—too sterile to keep me inspired, but too lucrative to ignore, a fact I found truly depressing as the days slipped by in a dull haze of bland corporate logos.
A week into the project found me half-mad with boredom. One night, in a fit of rebellion, I shut down my technical drawing software and opened the folder of photos from Red’s band gig—the hot and heady rock concert that had brought Kim and me together with a literal bang. There was no reason for me to fiddle with the images—the good ones had long ago been sent to the band’s manager and plastered all over Facebook—but something drew me to my favourite shot of Red.
I opened the image, splashing her all over my twenty-seven-inch iMac screen. Dressed all in black, her hair a rio
t against her pale, inked skin, she was as stunning now as she’d been that night, but it wasn’t her I saw as I zoomed in on her curves, rotating the image this way and that. Kim had been on my mind since the day I met him, but the pang in my chest as I thought of him now was new, and I realised with a start that I missed him, even though I had no bloody right to.
With a head full of slender bones and tattoos, I went to bed, for once sleeping through the night and waking up at a respectable time. My dreams had been filled with the gentle motion of the sleeper train, and I woke half expecting to find Kim in my arms, like I had that hazy morning when the train had passed through Taunton.
I didn’t, obviously, and the disappointment of finding myself alone was harsh enough to drive me from my bed and out of my minimalist flat. The seafront was moody and damp, my favourite kind of morning, despite the perpetual grey tones that took a bit of processing to bring my shots to life.
Camera in hand, I roamed the promenade, snapping anything that took my fancy—the people, the seagulls, the frothy waves. A steady trickle of youngish folk disappearing down one of the cobbled side streets caught my eye. It took me a while to figure out that they must’ve been heading to one of Porthkennack’s biggest off-peak visitor attractions: Blood Rush, the tattoo studio Kim worked for.
Curiosity was an evil thing. It would’ve been so easy to just go home, but of course, I didn’t. Instead, I shouldered my camera and followed a girl with tangerine-coloured hair all the way to the door of the gothic-punk studio, though I drew the line at going in, distracted by the vintage photographs in the window.
I was still studying them when I sensed a presence beside me—a slim, inked-up presence that definitely wasn’t Kim. In fact, I was fairly certain that I was staring into the keen eyes of Brix Lusmoore.
A theory confirmed as the man extended his hand. “Brix,” he said. “You’re Gaz’s brother, ain’t ya? Jasper?”
I shook Brix’s hand. “Jas, but you’re right about the rest, and we’ve met before, actually, when you brought my old man some chickens. Where did you get these images? They’re awesome.”
Junkyard Heart (Porthkennack Book 7) Page 7
