Burn

by Scarlett Parrish

  If he chokes and I get blamed for it, I don't give a damn. A huff of laughter burst out of me and I smothered it just in time, not wanting to spoil the mood but I doubted anything could have distracted James. He sucked cock like he was born to do it and I was happy to let him. I'd never had my dick in an anonymous almost-stranger's mouth before and felt like laughing with the sheer exuberance of it.

  He slipped a cool hand under my balls and the cold of it contrasted sharply with the warm of his tongue, his mouth, holy fuck, the back of his throat. He gave them a gentle squeeze at the same moment his throat thrummed with the vaguest moan and I thought, no way. No way is he enjoying this as much as I am.

  James's free hand groped around for something, I didn't know what, on my thigh, waist...I had no idea. But when my confusion and the darkness around us conspired to make my hand fall against his own, he latched on and pulled it immediately to him, threading my fingers through his hair for me.

  Oh. Yes. This. Definitely this.

  "God." The first word I'd said in I didn't know how long and it was blasphemous. My hand tightened against his scalp and I threw my head back. The brickwork again scratched at me but it barely registered. I looked up and my field of vision blurred. I closed my eyes and saw stars. "Fuck."

  My fingers twitched against James's scalp, wondering how tight I could pull. Something told me he wouldn't mind if I got a bit rough, but that same something again whispered, not yet.

  It happened quickly, much quicker than it usually did. Maybe it was down to the fact I'd been horny since I'd first seen him in Archangel's.

  Maybe it was the fear of being caught. Either way I started swearing under my breath. Something I was given to. The swearing, anyway. I still had some presence of mind left, a desire to get away with this, a prayer that we not get caught. "Fuck. Fuck." Again my hand tightened when he moved, that fucking amazing tongue of his making my eyes water every time it moved. "I'm gonna --- "

  I came before I could even say it, my hips jerking forward automatically.

  My knees buckled, but James being there held me up. And he kept sucking my cock until a split second before it would have become uncomfortable.

  Drawing back, James gasped. Breathless, as if the situations had been reversed. He pulled himself to his feet and the heat radiated off him, a stark contrast to seconds before when he'd been kneeling and I'd had nothing before my face but cold air and a promise of an orgasm.

  He neared me, only by a fraction, and I twitched by an even smaller fraction, but he noticed. "It's all right." His warm breath, a quiet laugh, reached me, and he slipped his arms round my waist. "I swallowed. I'm not into snowballing, but I remembered you wanted me to kiss you."

  "I ask for a..." My speech cut off, and it took a second or two for me to catch my breath. Laughing again, I managed to finish what I'd been trying to say. "I ask for a kiss and get a blow job. I definitely got the better end of that bargain, I think."

  "There's more where that came from," he murmured, kissing me at long last. Only a light peck on the lips. Something tentative, which seemed strange, given what he'd been doing seconds before.

  "Kisses or blow jobs?"

  "Both." He shrugged. "If you want them."

  "If I --- "

  And he kissed me again, less tentatively, parting my lips with that fucking amazing tongue of his. I tasted the vaguest hint of saltiness.

  Didn't mind one bit. I shivered.

  "We should go somewhere warmer now," James said.

  "I wasn't shivering from cold."

  "I'm that good a kisser, am I?"

  "That as well. I'm rather taken with the way you suck cock, too."

  "I should charge money for it. Sucky sucky, only twenty quid. Fuck. I mean dollah."

  "Twenty? Damn inflation."

  "Okay, seeing as you taste so good you can have a freebie. And that's something else to cross off your list. Anything else you'd care to try, Texas?"

  So we were back to nicknames and teasing. The threat of intimacy had been there for a fleeting moment, but it was gone and probably just as well. Strangers did this sort of thing better than friends. Or even acquaintances. People with any sort of familiarity.

  "Yeah, I'd like to tuck my cock back in before we get away from here. I think I'd scare people if I stumbled out into the street like this." With shaking hands, I somehow managed to right myself, do up my zipper without doing myself an injury, and struggle through buckling my belt.

  "Yeah, you're not wrong." He stepped back again, holding a shadowy hand to his darkness-obscured face. "I think you nearly dislocated my jaw."

  "I'll take that as a compliment," I shot back. "Although if there's anything I can do to make up for it..."

  He brushed some dust from the ground off his knees, straightened up again and faced me. I wished I could see his eyes instead of just this silhouette. "Now that," he said, laughter coloring his voice, "is an offer I can't refuse."

  Chapter Four

  It turned out James lived nearer to downtown than I did, within walking distance in fact, so we opted for his place rather than mine.

  "And I don't have a nameplate on the door, so you don't have to worry about seeing my name," he told me without any prompting or questions from me.

  "I never even thought of that."

  "Only just moved in a few weeks back, you see. Well, a couple of months." He shrugged as we walked, but there was something in his demeanor that had switched on me. Like he felt duty bound to give me something, an explanation but not the full story.

  Maybe he'd switched his job, or lost one, for all I knew. Been thrown out of his last place? No, he didn't seem the type to give a landlord any trouble. But then I hardly knew him, so wasn't best placed to judge.

  Didn't stop me being willing to go home with him, and given that I'd already had my most precious possession in his mouth and he'd done nothing but given me an orgasm sweet enough to make my head spin, I reasoned I'd be safe enough.

  "One of those things I haven't got around to," James added, and I wondered if he was expecting me to surrender to my curiosity and ask why he'd moved. What his backstory was.

  "As long as you don't live in a slum, I don't mind. Too much." I winked, relieved we could now see each other's facial features and expressions.

  Sure, I could look at him now but the strange thing was I couldn't really read him.

  Scarlett Parrish "My flat is the best that money can buy," he said proudly, adding a grin, and I wondered if it was fake jollity, employed to cover over whatever he wasn't telling me. "Okay, the best that I can afford."

  There was no elevator in his building.

  "Sorry, top floor. Bit of a climb."

  It was just as well there were only four floors in this building; I'd looked up and counted the windows before entering, just in case. "Doesn't matter. I've got legs." Although they were still just a little shaky from earlier. We'd walked here at quite a pace to keep warm, but I suspected I was still feeling the effects of that knee-trembler up against the brick wall. Not that I was complaining. It was definitely a feeling I could put up with. "As long as it's worth it in the end."

  James looked back over his shoulder. "Oh, it will be." And carried on climbing.

  I shivered, but not from the cold this time, even though we were in a stone-and-concrete building. I had no doubt that what he promised was the case.

  "And here we are," he announced, unnecessarily but hospitably.

  I leaned on the balustrade as he unlocked the front door and he stood aside to let me enter first.

  "Come into my parlor, said the spider to the fly," he said in a singsong voice as I walked past. The door clicked shut behind me, not a terminal sound at all, but one which underlined what I was --- we were --- doing.

  "You'll note for your convenience I enabled my telepathic powers before I left home tonight and cleared away anything that could identify me. James it is and nothing more."

  "Sure you haven't left any letters lying about?"
I teased.

  "Pfft. Letters? Everyone e-mails these days."

  "That how you keep in touch with your family?"

  He nodded. "Yep." There were no emotional clouds in his eyes to suggest a rift with his loved ones.

  Good, I thought, not knowing why this pleased me. Good for him. "All bills secreted somewhere safe?"

  "Good God, man, what do you think I am? I'm Scottish. We don't pay bills. We run up debts to utility companies then do a moonlight flit. It's the Caledonian way!"

  "Are you ever serious about anything?"

  "As little as possible. Now. Fancy something to drink? Coffee? I've only got instant, I'm afraid. I'm more of a tea-drinker."

  "How terribly, terribly British of you."

  "You're not wrong. I even go to a local import shop to get my favorite teabags, what, what, tally-ho, and all that. So. Tea? Coffee? Juice? I guess I mean soda, don't I?"

  "No, I'm all right, thanks."

  "Sure you don't want to keep yourself preemptively rehydrated?"

  I cocked my head and gave him that look. The "do try to behave, except, not really" look.

  James laughed and hung his jacket up. "Take your coat off if you like. I'm just going to put the kettle on. Jeez, I never feel more British than when I'm surrounded by Americans. It makes me want to say God save the Queen and have the Union Jack tattooed on my arse."

  "Shit, you don't, do you?"

  "You'll just have to wait and see. Have a look around, entertain yourself while I'm in the kitchen."

  I hung my jacket on the hook next to his and did as he'd suggested, looking around while he made himself a terribly, terribly British cup of tea in --- and I had a peek just to check it out --- the tiny, galley-style kitchen.

  "Two clocks?" I pointed at the wall. Stupidly. Of course he'd know he had two clocks. It was his apartment. "Is that...?"

  "The time here and in Glasgow, yes."

  "That's very romantic of you."

  "Romantic? Me? Piss off."

  But I couldn't help noticing the color rising in his cheeks as he turned away to retrieve something from one of his kitchen cupboards.

  There wasn't much room to roam about and investigate in the small hallway, but there was still a lot to look at. Framed photographs were dotted here and there on spare patches of wall that weren't occupied by coat hooks or doorframes. "What's this one?" I called through.

  "You're looking at the photos?"

  "Yep. The red brick building." It looked very grand, like a museum or something. "Wait, got it." A nearby photo gave the game away. A close-up shot of the entrance, over which gold lettering proclaimed "Kelvingrove Art Gallery and Museum." Above that, a weatherworn, time-damaged statue of someone I had not a hope of identifying. A religious figure, clearly --- the crook and mitre gave that away. On either side of him sat two female figures, heads buried in thick tomes on their laps. Probably Bibles. "Looks more like a churchy thing to me," I commented.

  "Yeah, it does."

  I jumped; I hadn't realized he'd been approaching. "A memento of home, this?"

  He nodded. "I used to go there a lot. That side of the building, you go in there and you're surrounded by different gift shops. They even have a separate one for kids. All cuddly toys and coloring books, that kind of thing."

  "Not that you would ever buy anything from there, of course."

  "Of course. I'm far too mature for that. There are stairs leading up to the art galleries and museum itself from there. Mind, I usually go in from the other side of the building. You know how us types like to get in through the back door." He winked and disappeared into the kitchen again, throwing a few words at me about the kettle nearly being boiled.

  "And what's so interesting about that side?" I shouted back, trying to smother a laugh.

  "Big staircase," came the reply. "You get to jump up to the main floors of the building and enter the museum itself instead of fighting your way through the touristy basement first. Why?" He stuck his head round the doorway. "What did you think I meant? Are you sure I can't get you anything?"

  "Quite sure. I'll just carry on eyeing up your home town. To think, you said you'd seen more culture in a yoghurt pot. You're not doing it any justice."

  "Okay, so I was joking. I know. Me; I'm normally so bland and humorless."

  "And what about this...what the shit; they've got a giraffe in the atrium?"

  Abandoning his kitchen duties for the moment, James sidled over and leaned against the wall beside me. "Duh. Where else are they going to put it?" As if it was the most natural thing in the world to have a stuffed giraffe in the entryway to a museum.

  "And a Spitfire? Suspended from the ceiling?"

  "I'd like to have seen the giraffe in the Spitfire. Okay, you'd have to open up the cockpit and shove its legs in, but it'd be a sight to behold."

  "Looks like it is already," I commented, straightening up and eyeing a couple of other photos.

  "Hey, I never said Glaswegian culture had to make any sense."

  "I'm just glad you don't run the place."

  "I'd be fired within a month. I'd have the taxidermy penguins fly-ing the spitfire and put that marble bust of Queen Victoria somewhere highly inappropriate."

  "Why am I not surprised you --- Holy shit, is that what I think it is?"

  One photograph on James's wall took my breath away. A painting of the crucified Christ, viewed from above, his face obscured by the angle and by his hanging-head posture.

  "A Dali? Yes. Yes, it is. Been kept there since the early fifties, I believe. It's stunning in the flesh. Well, on canvas, I guess you would say."

  "Wow."

  "Good God, Texas; I haven't heard you so awestruck since you shot your load down the back of my throat."

  "I can't believe you're being so crude while I'm looking at that painting."

  "Is it the fact it's Christ that makes you feel guilty, or the fact Dali painted it that makes you feel reverent?"

  "I'm not sure. I'll need some time to decide. Reverent, though? Very grand word."

  "It's how I felt whenever I went to look at it." James cocked his head and stared at the photo, almost in his own world. "It's in its own little chamber, very small, with only two little archways for access. I liked having the room to myself. I could sit on the little bench in front of the painting and stare at it for hours. You get very relaxed in there. It's a dark room --- probably something to do with protecting the integrity of the paint. Like another world..."

  We fell silent for what seemed like an eternity, but was probably only a few seconds. James staring at the painting, or rather, the photograph of the painting. Me staring at James.

  He obviously felt attached to his hometown, the city of his birth.

  There was a huge pull there for him, I could tell, so I wondered why he didn't go back. Not that I was trying to get rid of him and I'd hate to see him go. At least, right that very minute. We had unfinished business between us to see to first, but I couldn't help wondering why he resisted that pull if he felt so fondly of the place. I wouldn't have gone so far as to say he seemed homesick, but he missed the place. He definitely missed it.

  "You're free to have a wander round the rest of the place if you want."

  "Oh, I'm..." I couldn't work out how to finish the sentence. Not that nosy? Not that bothered? I didn't want to appear dismissive but there was something in the thought of raking through his personal effects unsupervised that would make me feel invasive, like I'd stepped over a line. And it wouldn't matter that he had invited me to do so.

  He seemed incredibly trusting. Maybe I had an honest face.

  Maybe he had a black belt in judo as well as a gold star in cocksucking, so if I turned out to be a psychotic burglar, he'd be confident of handling me.

  "So what do you..." I began, my voice trailing off when I thought better of it and tried to distract myself by studying the rest of his photos.

  "Yeah?" He appeared in the kitchen doorway again, this time clutching a steaming Homer
Simpson mug in both hands. "God, I needed that. I'm a caffeine addict."

  "Should drink coffee then, shouldn't you?"

  "Strip away my last vestige of Britishness, why dontcha? Anyway, what were you saying? You were about to ask what I...?"

  "Oh, nothing. Nothing." I waved a hand in the air and it froze there for a few seconds, emphasizing my discomfort. I shoved both hands in my jeans pockets and pretended to study another framed photograph.

  I'd been about to ask what do you do but something had stopped me. Just a creeping suspicion, the threat of discomfort if I let the words spill out of my mouth. This man, "James," was a good guy. Fun. Friendly.

  And that was what bothered me. I wasn't scared of asking a question he would then refuse to answer. Something in me shied away from the question because I knew he'd answer. That thread of familiarity we'd already woven promised to grow into intimacy with not much encouragement. If I asked him anything about his life, about the kind of shit that mattered, he'd tell me.

  And that was why I didn't want to know his real name. Names were the tip of the intimacy iceberg.

  Chapter Five

  James sipped his tea, maintaining that two-handed grip until the last drop was gone. He drank tea like he sucked cock.

  Everything was done with enthusiasm. The offer for me to wander round his place, observe his soft furnishings and other framed photographs. Rinsing out his mug straight after drinking from it. "I operate an empty sink policy. I don't leave dishes to sit overnight. I can't lie awake in bed thinking about things I've left half-done."

  "Speaking of bed..." I winked.

  "I'm very glad you didn't take the easy way out and accuse me of being anal."

  "As if. My jokes aren't that cheap. There's no value in the punch lines if they're handed to you on a plate. Especially when a guy confesses to lying awake at night thinking about dirty dishes and other chores?"

  "No chores tonight, though."

  "And hopefully no simply lying awake." Very little sleep, I hoped. None of it down to stress keeping either of us awake.