Gabriel froze, realising what he’d implied by those words. ‘He was my boyfriend. I’m not a–’
‘I know. Sshh, sweetheart. I’ve got you.’
‘Eventually I decided I was better off under a bridge than with him, and I left.’
‘Look at me.’ He tilted Gabriel’s face up and kissed his nose. ‘You don’t ever have to do anything you dinnae want tae do.’
Gabriel pressed his lips to James’s. ‘I want to be so close to you. Inside you. If you want that.’
‘I want that.’ James kissed him. His splayed hands moved soothingly down Gabriel’s back, over his backside then thighs and up again.
‘You cannae hurt me, angel. It’s not possible. I’ll get the lube and make it so good for you.’
‘I want it to be good for you,’ Gabriel protested, and so James kissed him some more, and rocked his hips up.
‘It will be good for me, Gabriel. The thought of you fucking me is fantastic. I want tae feel you inside me.’
‘Please,’ muttered Gabriel. ‘Please, please, please, yes.’
James retrieved the lube from the bedside cupboard. He returned to kissing until Gabriel was rutting again, his thick cock sliding in the soft space behind his balls, over perineum and more sensitive skin.
‘Help me, sweetheart. Here you go.’ He squeezed lube generously onto Gabriel’s fingers. Gabriel kneeled between James’s legs and worked a slicked finger, then two, against and then into the tight pucker. He kissed James’s chest over and over, licked his nipples, sucked on the curve of his pecs.
James slid down on the bed and lifted his legs, resting his ankles on Gabriel’s shoulders. He spread his knees, and made himself hard. Gabriel bent to suck him, then sat back to watch his fingers moving in James’s arse.
‘Christ,’ Gabriel murmured, ‘look at you, Jamie.’
‘I can feel your fingers in me,’ said James with a wanton grin. ‘I can feel everything they’re doing. Put another in. I can take it. I can take anything you have for me.’
Gabriel cautiously slid two fingers out, added lube, gently rocked three fingers in.
James jerked his hips to meet the sensation. When he’d been alive, he’d loved this, with boyfriends and girlfriends both. It turned out he still loved it. Gabriel’s fingers were hot inside his cooler body, and it felt as brilliant as he’d imagined.
‘Come on, angel,’ he urged, spreading his legs wider. ‘I want to feel your cock in me. I want to feel you fucking me.’
Panting, Gabriel withdrew his fingers, squirted more lube onto them. He rubbed them up and down his own aching shaft. He shuffled forward on his knees, held his cock against James’s entrance, relaxed and slick and ready for him, and slowly pushed.
Both men groaned as Gabriel breached James’s body. Gabriel kept slowly pushing. James clutched at the sheets and rolled his hips to meet the push, until Gabriel was fully seated inside him.
Gabriel held his quivering thighs still, and bent his head to drop a kiss on James’s chest, then on his mouth.
‘So hot inside me,’ James said. ‘Fuck me, Gabriel. Now.’
Gabriel moved slowly at first, then faster. Slowly again. Long, slow slides and short, rapid thrusts. Then hard and fast, a few strokes.
‘Give it to me,’ James urged him. ‘You cannae hurt me. Fuck me hard.’
Gabriel moved again, long and slow, then faster, faster, fast and deep, their bodies meeting with a slap and the slick squish of lube and Gabriel panting and James urging him on with short, deep syllables: Yes, fuck, yes, fuck me, harder, aye, good, good, fuck, aye, harder, give it to me, give it, more, all of it. Fuck me, baby. Angel. My angel. Fuck me.
Until, with a sharp, deep cry, Gabriel threw his head back, thrusting with abandon, and came in waves of pleasure so intense there was nothing in the world except his pleasure and James’s rough voice saying, aye, that’s it, come mae bonnie, aye.
He collapsed against James’s wonderful, cool body and panted hotly against James’s chest. James let Gabriel’s cock slip free while keeping Gabriel wrapped up tight in arms and legs.
‘That was so good, sweetheart,’ he said, nuzzling into Gabriel’s hairline.
Gabriel said something almost incoherent.
‘I’m good,’ James replied, kissing Gabriel’s brow. ‘That’s all I want right now: you, happy. We’ll do something for me later.’
Gabriel hummed agreement and they snuggled, too content to stir.
They might have stayed wrapped up together for the whole night after, except Gabriel’s phone burst loudly into the triumphal brass- and-strings urgency of Ride of the Valkyries.
‘Michael?’ James asked, smirking.
‘Anthea,’ Gabriel corrected him. ‘Michael’s The Mikado.’ He thumbed to answer the call. ‘Anthea, what–’
‘There’s a problem with your brother, Mr Dare,’ said Anthea, brisk and emotionless. ‘He’s started to lose time.’
‘What the hell does that mean?’
‘It means he has periods that he can’t account for. Mr Dare, your brother has three times returned to his senses, either at his desk or in another part of the building, and he can’t account for the preceding period, of up to half an hour. He’s no memory of what took place, or how or why he changed location. In short, your brother and I both fear Frazer’s influence on his mind is growing.’
Gabriel tried to imagine what it would be like, to lose a half hour of his day. A half hour of his mind. ‘Jesus. How’s he doing?’
‘He is doing remarkably well,’ said Anthea. ‘But he and I agree it’s time to activate the Fortunato protocol.’
‘No.’
‘We must wall him off, Mr Dare, for our safety as well as his. We don’t know what Frazer may learn if he’s in command of your brother’s mind even for brief periods.’
Two spots of high colour flushed Gabriel’s cheekbones. ‘You’ll look after him?’
‘With my life, Mr Dare,’ said Anthea matter-of-factly. ‘I’ll wait to hear from you.’
Gabriel disconnected the call and clutched the phone in his hand, as though he could throttle the bad news out of it. ‘You heard all that?’
‘Aye.’ James closed his hand over Gabriel’s. ‘It’s up to us, now.’
Chapter Eighteen
They discussed the contingency plans for their contingency plans. Gabriel pretended, poorly, that he wasn’t deeply troubled by his brother’s situation.
When they had run out of contingencies, James said, ‘Let me show you that thing I was talking about.’
‘What thing?’
‘That’d spoil the surprise. Put your gloves on. And a scarf. Hat too. Haven’t you got a warmer jacket?’
‘I’ll wear a jumper under my leather one. What about you? That field jacket of yours won’t be thick enough, will it?’
‘I don’t feel the cold.’
Gabriel whipped his dark green scarf around James’s neck anyway. ‘The colour suits you.’
James dressed more for freedom of movement and the largeness of his field jacket’s pockets, which he had filled with Secret Items. He darted away from Gabriel when he tried to find out what they were.
‘Be good,’ said James, mock-stern, ‘or you won’t get your treat.’
‘This isn’t your old plan to poison me and dispose of me in the Thames, is it? Because I’m wise to your wiles, Doctor Sharpe, and I have built up immunity to arsenic through careful small doses.’
‘Curses, foiled again. I shall have to tie you to the railway tracks after all.’
‘Sounds all right, actually,’ murmured Gabriel, pressing his body suggestively to James’s thigh and hip.
‘All in good time,’ James replied, cupping Gabriel’s arse and giving it a squeeze.
The walk to Plaistow station took a while. Gabriel fell into another troubled reverie. James kept pace with him in silence, near enough that their arms brushed as they walked. The District Line took t
hem to Tower Hill Station. They emerged into the crisp night and skirted west, around the walls of the Tower of London, through the half empty terrace and towards the Thames.
‘You’re taking me to the Tower?’ asked Gabriel, attempting levity again. ‘That’s a bit Elizabethan of you, isn’t it?’
‘Not tonight, but it’s a fine idea. We’ll break in after dark. You can have your way with me in the White Tower.’
‘But not tonight?’
‘No. Tonight it’s this.’ They emerged on the embankment alongside the Thames. Ahead of them, spanning the murky water, was Tower Bridge.
‘Tower Bridge is my treat?’ Gabriel was puzzled.
James grinned. ‘No. Showing you London from the very top of the Bridge, where the flags are, is your treat.’
‘But it’s closed this time of night.’
‘I’m not going through the front door. More like the pigeon loft.’
Gabriel looked up the structure’s vast height to the walkway spanning the two towers. The London city flag and Union Jack flew either side of the city’s coat of arms in the centre of the walkway.
‘Up there, you mean?’
‘Aye.’
‘How?’
‘I thought we’d climb. If you’re game.’
Gabriel beamed like a concentrated ray of excited sunshine.
‘When?’ He stood taller, so eager to be on his way up he was stretching towards the summit already. He bounced on the balls of his feet like an eager sprinter at the starting post.
‘We’ll wait till it’s quieter,’ said James, gratified by the enthusiastic response. ‘You’ll have to do exactly as I say, mind.’ He handed over a wad of cloth from his pocket. ‘You’ll need this, for starters.’
Gabriel shook out the thin tube of black wool. ‘A snood?’
‘Military grade. It’s from my own kit. Good for protecting the neck, lightweight, easy to pull over your mouth when there’s dust and debris around or it’s windy.’
Dubiously, Gabriel pulled the snood over his head and arranged it around his throat. He tested the sensation of it over his mouth and nose, arranged it over his ears. In minutes he’d found four different ways to wear it, making James laugh.
‘A bloke I served with used to shin up date palms and use his as a basket for the fruit,’ said James, ‘I once saw a wee lass wearing one as a skirt.’
Gabriel, recovered from his snood snootiness, was genuinely thrilled with the article. He played with it as they wandered along the embankment in the chilly November air. James talked about his time at medical school. Gabriel told him stories of his university days. They avoided any talk at all about Frazer and what lay ahead in that regard.
By eleven pm, the embankment and the Bridge were sufficiently deserted for James to enact the next part of his scheme.
‘Put that on. Do up your coat and for God’s sake, hold on. Don’t squirm.’
He shook out a few mountaineering straps that had been rolled in his pockets. In a dark corner beside the bridge, he fastened Gabriel into them, and had Gabriel climb onto his back. He fastened the straps securely around his own waist and shoulders.
‘Hold tight. Pull the snood up. You’ll need it later. Close your eyes if you like.’
Gabriel’s gangly weight on James’s back hardly made a difference, although he had to be careful with his centre of gravity as he made his way onto the elegant curves of the suspension beams leading to the first abutment of the Bridge.
Gabriel made himself look this time, keeping his eyes wide open to watch London open up beneath him as James ascended, swift and sure, past the first abutment, along the second set of suspension cables and girders, to the roof of the southern abutment. James found footholds and handholds to reach the turrets.
Once on the roof, he scurried sideways in a fashion that Gabriel might have found creepy if he hadn’t been so thoroughly fascinated. When they reached the central span, James crawled onto it, found a comfortable place to stop, and manoeuvred until he was sitting, feet over the edge.
Gabriel’s legs were locked around his waist, arms around his shoulders, and his breath was hot against James’s ear through the cloth over his face. He was hot between his thighs, too, where his arousal pushed against James’s lower back.
‘My strength kink is showing.’ His huff of laughter was muffled and subdued by awe.
‘No wriggling. It’s distracting. Just relax and enjoy the view.’
Gabriel rubbed his nose affectionately against James’s neck, then made himself ignore his erotic response to James’s body and abilities. He settled, finding it comfortable and even comforting to be so intimately wrapped around James’s body like this. He rested his chin on James’s shoulder, cheek against his ear, and looked at his city.
His artist’s eye picked out lights, from the muted glows of living rooms and bedrooms to the harsh, bright glares of street lights, vehicles, neon signs and floodlit monuments. He could see the different qualities of darkness in the places between the lights: the greys of office buildings, and a deeper, moving dark of the trees in Green and Hyde Parks to the west.
James, with his keen eyesight, verified what Gabriel saw when asked, but mostly Gabriel clung to him, like a child on the shoulders of an adult. The artist drank in the lofty flood of colours, shapes and sounds sprawled in a panorama in front of him.
He knew this city best from far below, in the dank, dark and dangerous alleys, hollows and walkways of the homeless. He knew the city’s grime and pain and sorrow, but here was the majesty of his London, too. The cone of the Gherkin, the sharp line of the Shard, the ring of the London Eye. St Paul’s and the Tate. Parliament and the murky ribbon of the Thames. The motorways and the pedestrian malls, the narrow, secret streets and the rooftops: tessellated, sloping, flat or turreted. Glinting lights in the dark, marking the traffic or the tower blocks, flight paths and phone towers. His familiar world shown to him, unfamiliar, in the cold, sparkling night.
‘This is one of the best, most beautiful things I’ve ever seen,’ he breathed when he could speak.
James grinned, his vampire teeth unsheathed and unthreatening, totally at home in his skin.
Overwhelmed with emotion, Gabriel tucked his nose behind James’s ear and kissed him through the snood. He tightened his arms and legs around James’s torso in a spooning hug.
‘You’re brilliant,’ he said. ‘I’ve spent all my life fighting or hiding from things stronger than me. You make me feel like I don’t have to hide. I don’t have to fight alone. You brought light into me, Jamie. Right inside of me. Whatever happens next with Frazer, however it all turns out, I want you to know that.’
James pressed a hand over Gabriel’s, clasped about his chest.
‘You know this may end very badly.’
‘Yes.’
‘I spent years in war zones, patching up the consequences of things ending badly. I was caught in a few bad endings myself. It’s frightening how fast things can go pear-shaped.’
Gabriel’s arms tightened again around his chest.
‘There’s something important we need to discuss. I hoped there’d be years to think about it. But we may not have years.’
‘It’s all right,’ said Gabriel.
‘It isn’t. I’ve led you into this.’
‘You didn’t. Frazer had his eye on me and Michael for a long time. He’d been working with West for a long time too. Maybe fate brought us together. I’ve just finished telling you how glad I am about that, so don’t be a twat.’
James’s laugh was thick with emotion. ‘Well, when you put it like that,’ he said, ‘I’d best send a thank you card to fate. Only good manners for introducing me to my soulmate.’
‘That’s better.’
‘If fate tries to take you away again, mind you, I’ll beat the fucker to death. Which brings us neatly back to the topic at hand. Gabriel. I need to know–’
‘Yes.’
‘You do
n’t even know what I’m asking.’
‘Yes I do. Do you honestly think I haven’t been thinking about the possibility of becoming a vampire, since West tried to kill me? I’m a bit flaky, but I’m not an idiot.’
‘I’d never try to turn you without your consent.’
‘I know that.’
‘But we may not be in a position where I can ask, or where you can answer. Best to clarify it now.’
‘I didn’t take you for a pessimist.’
‘Take me for a realist,’ said James, ‘Which is what I am. I never counted on being turned into a vampire without getting a say-so. Things are what they are, Gabriel. I need to be prepared, but I won’t act without your consent.’
‘You’d let me die?’
‘I would be letting you die if I tried to turn you. That’s what it means to become a vampire. You die and then some bastard brings you back.’
James clenched his hands into fists. ‘But I don’t know that I could let you stay dead. I’d want to try to bring you back. I’m selfish. I can’t bear the thought of losing you. I would… struggle to let you go, if you couldn’t be saved. But. I promised myself in Afghanistan, once I was back in what approximated to my right mind, I’d never do to another person what was done to me.’
‘James–’
‘I could never do to you what was done to me. Nae without cause. But death’s more than a vague possibility here. We’re going into battle. And Sergeant Datta dreamed of a body I think is you. It feels inevitable. So. I need to know. If there’s no other way to save you, do you want this? Would you want me to let you die human, or do you want me to turn you? There’s nae guarantee you’d survive the turning. I’d never attempt it if there were any other chance you’d live. It’s your choice.’
‘And if I choose to die human, you’ll honour that?’
‘I’ll let you die, if that’s what you want,’ said James, voice low but firm. ‘I swear. I’d let you go rather than turn you against your will.’
‘I don’t want to leave you if there’s an option,’ said Gabriel. ‘So if the worst happens, you have my consent. I understand the consequences.’
Ravenfall Page 24
