Splendid Isolation

by Helena Maeve

  Smile. Smile for me.

  Manuel didn’t realize he was staring until Cole straightened, a wrinkle deepening the crease between his eyebrows.

  “What?” he barked. He’d caught Manuel in the act.

  “Nothing.”

  “Please. You always have something to say. What is it now? Is my music taste too banal for you?”

  Manuel shook his head. He wanted to respond, but there was nothing he could say to that. Nothing truthful, anyway.

  With a disbelieving snort, Cole snapped The Magus shut and stood to return it to the bookcase. The lines of his suit adjusted of their own accord. He was no worse for wear, despite two hours in transit and a close brush with death before that.

  Her Majesty’s Service made flesh.

  “Was Arthur in the house when it collapsed?” Manuel asked, seizing on that stray thought and blurting it out before he could talk himself out of it.

  Cole had enough ammo to use against him. Attachment to a kid barely measured up.

  He didn’t turn around. “Yes.”

  “Is he—?”

  “Yes,” Cole retorted.

  A hollow opened in the pit of Manuel’s stomach. “I see.”

  “He did his duty. If you were hoping to co-opt him into whatever scheme you and Robin are planning, let me assure you, you picked the wrong man.”

  “He was a child,” Manuel shot back, riled. “And you people murdered him.”

  He knew it wasn’t true, even as the words left his mouth, but grief made nuance difficult.

  Arthur deserved better. Every dead twenty-year-old twisted and corrupted by Section or its sibling agencies deserved better than a truncated autopsy and a pack of lies delivered to a grief-stricken family.

  Cole rounded on him with eyes blazing. “Us? They were trying to kill you. Whoever it was that bombed the Cottage picked your room for a target.”

  “Oh, don’t try to pin this on me. I didn’t ask you to lock me in there.”

  “What did you think would happen when you turned yourself in? Brownie points? A knighthood?” Cole’s voice rose discordantly over the warble of saxophones and trumpets.

  “I thought you’d have me executed!”

  Cole blinked, a faraway look in his eyes. “That…wasn’t the deal.” Astonishment was glaringly obvious on his aquiline features.

  It could only be another mask worn to dissimulate his contempt for Manuel.

  “I know what you promised Robin. I also know you don’t have the authority to make deals.” Allowing Robin to believe otherwise had been easy. Robin wanted an easy way out. He wanted to stop the killings and buy them all a little respite. His naiveté had worked in Manuel’s favor. “You think I’d sign up for handcuffs and beatings willingly?”

  That powerfully British cliché of a stiff upper lip found its proof in Cole’s tightly clenched jaw. “What happened at the Cottage was a mistake. I would never sanction—”

  “Wake the fuck up,” Manuel growled.

  Pain shot up his thigh when he advanced on Cole, but he didn’t let that stop him. His hands were free of cuffs for a change. He felt his old strength returning, fueled by the burn of resentment.

  “What do you think this is? Your people are mining my brain for information before you dispose of me. One way or another, this is the end of the line for me. Some little cocksucker with a fetish for kicking the shit out of people who can’t fight back isn’t high on my list of grievances.”

  Fear flashed through Cole’s gaze, but rather than retreat, he jerked up his chin, defiant. “What do you care about, then?”

  You. The lie rose to the tip of Manuel’s tongue, where it festered and made all other lies seem small and obvious by comparison.

  “Not much,” he confessed after a beat.

  Sure enough, that crinkled Cole’s eyes with familiar contempt, a sneer building on his bowed lips. The son of a bitch smiled.

  Incensed, Manuel snagged a bandaged hand in his shirtfront and pulled him close.

  It was a jagged, harsh imitation of a kiss, nothing at all like the timid brush of lips they’d shared at the Cottage, before the second and final blast.

  Cole grabbed his wrist and collar, slotting a thumb into the dip of Manuel’s collarbones and pressing down. He stopped just short of curtailing his breaths.

  Manuel didn’t let go for the threat.

  He slammed Cole into the bookcase, kitschy canine china figurines and empty vases rattling when he pinned him there with his body. It was an uneven struggle. His bruises ached where Cole dug his fingers into his flesh, spurring him to new depths of longing.

  “I hate you,” Manuel gritted out, tearing his mouth away with a snarl.

  Cole released his collar and fisted a hand into his hair. “Feeling’s sodding mutual.”

  Then they were kissing again, and this time the angle was right, lips and tongue slotting together just as they had twenty years earlier. Manuel ground down into the hollow of Cole’s hip, his dick already stiff with blood. It had been too long since he’d had the privacy to touch himself, much less the inclination to try.

  He couldn’t even remember if his last lover had been a man or a woman. It made little difference.

  Manuel seized both of Cole’s hands in his scuffed grip and forced them above his head. The sharp echo of a whimper was music to his ears as the edge of the tallest bookshelf dug into Cole’s wrists.

  He relished that helpless burst of sound like he savored the shudder that ran through Cole when their hips aligned, cocks brushing through layers and layers of fabric.

  “Let me fuck you,” Cole growled.

  “In your dreams, you bastard.”

  Cole grinned against his chin, raking his teeth through prickly stubble. “Never stopped you before.”

  Just for that, just for being such a cocksure little prick, Manuel reversed them and pushed Cole to his knees. He had both height and strength on him, which made it easy to get him in place, but there was nothing simple about knotting a hand in his hair and dragging Cole’s wicked mouth against the bulge in his trousers.

  Manuel tilted his head back into the bookshelf, breathing out through his nose. This was the closest he’d come to a blowjob in a year. He was half afraid of coming undone in seconds.

  He gritted his teeth against the moan that surfaced at the warmth of Cole’s exhales on his cotton-covered erection. It was poor form to tighten his fingers in Cole’s hair and roll his hips, but Manuel did it anyway. He wanted so much. He knew he wouldn’t last. Even if Cole didn’t somehow come to his senses before Manuel managed to get his pants down. Urgency thrummed in his veins as he clasped his cock in a tight grip and tugged it free, pulse fluttering when he made to pump his hips.

  He knew how this went—the quick burst of satisfaction, the greedy tug at a partner who wasn’t all that sure about him—everything familiar down to the exchange of money at the end of the night.

  He knew the guilt that came after, too, which was why the air in his lungs turned to soup as soon as he felt Cole lap sloppily at his fingers and the column of sensitive flesh clutched within.

  “You don’t… You don’t have to.”

  It was a last ditch attempt to prevent the inevitable, but Cole paid him no heed. The second he wrapped his lips around the slick, flared cockhead, Manuel was gone.

  He squeezed his eyes shut, helpless to resist the flood of pleasure that rushed through him. Between his jerky fist and Cole’s lazy licks, he came so hard he thought his knees might give out. The ache in his thigh flared, a reminder of what taking risks got him, but it was a distant sensation, subsumed by the surge of heat in his limbs.

  Cole sucked him throughout, eyes half-lidded and expression soft. It took Manuel a good minute of gasping and shuddering to realize that Cole had a hand working between his legs and he was stroking himself at the same time.

  “Get—” he started, but had to stop and clear his throat before he could speak. “Get up here.”

  Confusion creased Cole
’s brow, but he tipped back his head until Manuel slid, slick and shiny, from his lips, and rose. He moved slowly, the predator to Manuel’s cornered prey.

  A shiver raced down Manuel’s spine.

  “Let me fuck you,” Cole breathed.

  His lips tasted of salt and skin, and his breath carried the bitter-tangy flavor of cum. Manuel didn’t care.

  “Yeah,” he choked out. “Okay.”

  Chapter Six

  The first thing Manuel noticed about the bedroom was the massive armoire that dominated the far wall. The second was the bed he tripped over, knees giving way to the faintest brush of Cole’s fingertips along his spine. The rest of him capitulated swiftly thereafter.

  He caught himself with both hands on the mattress, wincing as the bandages pulled against the abrasions on his palms, and twisted around at the waist to keep Cole in his sights.

  Suddenly, it seemed imperative to know where Cole was, what he was planning. A soldier’s instinct, perhaps, but born of a different kind of adrenaline rush to battle frenzy.

  He didn’t have far to look. Cole towered over him, casual as he peeled off his jacket. Urgency had driven their thoughtless tryst downstairs. It had faded since. Manuel’s pajama bottoms stuck to his belly, breaths coming in harsh, exhausted pants. And still he couldn’t tear his gaze away, couldn’t back down.

  Cole wrenched his tie over his head and tossed it carelessly to the bedroom floor. His dress shoes followed suit. He took his time unbuttoning his shirt, as though relishing the suspense.

  Manuel anticipated every sliver of naked skin. He all but whined when he discovered that Cole was wearing an undershirt. Very prim, that, and possibly weather-appropriate, but all that mattered in that moment was that the offending garment deprived him of the view he craved.

  “You look…” he started and didn’t know how to go on.

  “What?” Cole rasped. He was peering back at him through lowered lashes, haughty even as he tugged off his undershirt.

  Manuel shook his head. Good didn’t cover it. Handsome belonged to the regency romances he most definitely didn’t read.

  Hot was the language of men half their age, loving for the first time and certain that they’d found the one.

  Cole’s shoulders had been knobby and narrow once. The latter was still true, but now lithe muscle definition hid beneath his suit and tie. His stomach was flat, too, but he didn’t have the constitution for rippling muscle. He didn’t need it.

  “Some desk job,” Manuel murmured as he reached up to unfasten Cole’s belt.

  “Is that a compliment?”

  It was, but Manuel had better things to do with his mouth than admit to being impressed. He barely had Cole’s zipper down before he leaned in, resolve failing him. He craved the taste of Cole, the sharpness of skin and pre-cum nearly forgotten after a long abstinent streak.

  “Easy.” Cole tangled a hand in his hair, fingers tight with reprimand.

  Manuel glanced up. “You don’t want—”

  “Undress me first.”

  You finicky bastard.

  He obliged with unsteady, bandaged hands and too-thick digits. The expensive, cut-to-fit fabric of Cole’s trousers rustled as Manuel eased them down his trim hips. He’d never been one for dress-up, but the thought came to him then that he could get off just dressing and undressing Cole like the world’s oddest Ken doll.

  Except there was no mistaking Cole for a plastic imitation. Manuel scraped a thumb over the curve of his dick through the thin cotton of his briefs. “Black, huh? Isn’t there some theory about the color of one’s underclothes…”

  “Shut up,” Cole huffed, a plea kitted out as a reprimand. “Finish what you started.”

  It might have been a taunt—another reminder that Manuel was a quitter while Cole himself stuck out the rough patches—but if so, it was poorly timed. Manuel’s reptilian brain had dutifully taken over, wiping clean the slate and replacing intellect with pure instinct. Desire vibrated through him as he freed Cole’s erection.

  Cole raised one foot, then the other, helpfully stepping out of his underwear. “Better.”

  “You don’t say,” Manuel muttered under his breath.

  He’d never been one to lie back and think of England, but he didn’t resist Cole’s shove. He landed on his back on the scratchy cotton bed sheets, breath knocked out of his lungs. He wondered if the bedding was Section-issued, too.

  And what, he mused, was the company policy on sleeping with turncoat assets these days?

  Thought evaporated swiftly.

  The last time they had done this, they’d been crammed into a too-narrow shower cubicle. Cole had been thinner, which should have made it an easy fit, but Manuel was not. He’d had fewer tattoos back then. Fewer scars, too. And Cole hadn’t been so bold as to crawl up the length of his body, pressing delicate kisses all over his thighs and belly, much less sink his teeth into the ridge of bone at the base of his ribcage.

  Experience changed some things for the better.

  Manuel couldn’t resist touching him. He tried, for appearances’ sake, but his hands found their way to Cole’s elbows of their own accord. Touch-memory recognized the small scar on the back of Cole’s right upper arm, relic of a tumble down the stairs of his parents’ house when he was a kid. Or a stray bullet. Or a hot poker.

  Truth was mutable. Evidence was up for interpretation.

  “You’ve changed,” he gasped, spine arching.

  Cole moaned around a dusky nipple, sharp teeth digging into his flesh until Manuel half worried his nerve endings were about to snap loose.

  “Not complaining,” he added. “’S’just…you were never this…”

  To shut him up, Cole pressed a hand to his mouth and kicked his thighs apart. “Maybe I wasn’t clear. I don’t want to talk. I don’t want to hear you. Is that understood?”

  Manuel had eighty pounds on him, easy, and the know-how to put them to good use. More importantly, Cole hadn’t snapped the handcuffs around his wrists after his shower, leaving him the freedom to grab and pull as he pleased.

  I could have you under me in an instant. And after that, what?

  Cole’s eyes were dark with want, a longer strand of hair drooping onto his brow. Manuel reached up to brush it back. No one should look so perfect.

  “Are we clear?” Cole asked again, softer.

  Manuel couldn’t speak around his fingers, so he nodded.

  We’re clear. Do your worst.

  He shuddered as Cole sat back, bone-white and dangerous even without his army of torturers. He bent Manuel’s knees up to his chin—a familiar position, if not one he’d been in lately. Adrenaline fluttered in his veins.

  Above him, Cole settled in place.

  Like a finger elegantly pressed to the trigger of a loaded gun, there was a certain inevitability to what came next. Manuel opened his mouth for Cole’s fingers, sucking lazily because it was something to do while he waited and tried to relax—and failed, badly, because he’d never wanted this enough to crave the hurt of it.

  And hurt, it did.

  Manuel dug his fingernails into Cole’s wrist and turned his groans into the pillow. “Fuck… Fuck.” His eyes watered, first as a reaction to the burn of the stretch, then as the gut-punch of Cole’s lips on the arch of his foot left him untethered and confused. He didn’t have better luck with Cole’s tender kisses around the angry red weal that circled his ankle.

  Handcuffs had bitten deep into skin when he’d kicked up his legs trying to avoid the blunt force of the baton. The chafing was hard to miss. Manuel hissed through his teeth at the lingering sting. He made believe he’d already made his peace with humiliation.

  Cole was as gentle with him as he hadn’t been the first time, many years back.

  He ran warm palms up and down his thighs, futilely stroking taut muscle before finally settling a hand over Manuel’s spent cock. The post-orgasmic discomfort had faded, but he was still sensitive. No matter how much he wanted Cole to touch him, Manuel
still grabbed for his wrist, gasping.

  “I can’t—”

  “I know,” Cole told him, the set of his expression unyielding. “Let go.”

  Manuel swallowed hard. I can’t. I can’t take it.

  His cheeks burned with more than mortification. He’d asked for this, hadn’t he? He wanted Cole to use him, to strip choice from his hands. He wanted to sully the memory of whatever it was they’d had all those years ago with a tawdry reprise.

  He could think of no better way to put out a flame that had never quite died.

  Cole seized his wrist with his free hand. “Do you trust me?”

  “Not by a long shot.”

  He smiled, tepid and merciful, like some terrible god unmoved by his subjects’ pleas. “Let go,” he repeated. “I’ve got you.”

  This time, Manuel didn’t think to resist. He allowed Cole to press his hands into the mattress, body lengthening over his until they were chest to chest and Cole could screw into him freely, as hard and as deeply as he wanted.

  There was strength in Cole’s lithe frame. He didn’t need handcuffs to pin Manuel when his fists served equally well. His gaze was equally persuasive, holding Manuel anchored as he moved inside him.

  The pace he set was slow and deep from the start, the way Manuel remembered. It was the kind of fuck that promised to last.

  Overwhelmed, Manuel sought his lips with pathetic, embarrassing enthusiasm. If nothing else, he wanted to feel Cole’s lips on his and maybe, if he was lucky, to drown his moans in the slick heat of Cole’s mouth. But his attempts were thwarted time and time again, Cole hovering just out of reach with a knowing smirk.

  He whimpered when Cole pulled out, though the noise was muffled by the kiss he so longed for. Contusions and weals stung as he arched into it. The decadent relief of being given what he wanted carried him for a while, tempering the ache inside.

  Cole rubbed against his hole with sharp, jerky thrusts of his hips, sending flickers of muted discomfort up his spine. It was a long moment before Manuel pieced together the staccato pace of Cole’s heart, and the fluttering, hot breath on his cheek. Usually it took a lot more—or it had, when they could still follow up an all-nighter with a race against the clock, a hard, breathless fuck.