by Lily Harlem
His face was interesting, not classically handsome, and not all out rugged. But when he spoke I was drawn to watching his mouth, and his pale eyes seemed to draw me in. He had depth, secrets, and I wanted to know more.
I spotted steak and chips on the menu and rang down my order, adding red wine to it. Flicking through the TV again, I came across an old episode of Friends and left it on.
As I watched the antics of Monica and Chandler, I found my mind wandering again. Would Lloyd call me? Or should I call him? Where would be a good place to meet in central London? Somewhere hip but not so hip the music was loud and we wouldn’t be able to chat. I wanted to get to know him. Oh, but maybe not a bar—he’d said he wasn’t drinking. A café, perhaps? We could have coffee or tea or hot chocolate, whatever he fancied.
Thirty minutes later, and getting restless for my food, I wandered to the window. I was on the fourth floor, and had a view of the main street. Cars were parked in neat rows and more moved past each other. It was dark now, the moon rising in a velvet-black sky, but in the city, the glow never dulled to anything less than warm amber.
Several pedestrians were out and about. The usual Parisian dog walkers, a couple with their arms linked, and a tall, broad man in a black leather jacket and pants, teamed with chunky biker boots. He was securing a crash helmet in the back-box of a large motorcycle. He finished what he was doing, put the key in his pocket, and then looked up at the hotel.
For a split second I thought he was staring straight at me. I felt his gaze land on mine, hot and intense. My heart did a strange flip and I stepped backward, pulling the drapes neat again. I flicked off the TV. The silence in the room was deafening so I put it back on.
“Damn it,” I muttered, feeling jittery. I rubbed my fingertips together, remembering the release of sparks earlier. Lloyd saw me do it. He’d admitted he had. But why wasn’t he more curious? Most people, surely, would have been fascinated at such a spectacle.
Is that why I like him?
Perhaps him knowing my dark secret and still wanting to talk to me, go for a drink with me, had made him all the more appealing. He hadn’t run a mile, called me a weirdo, or rushed to the press.
He still might.
I could imagine the headline. Top London Model is a Fire Starting Freak.
I shuddered, hating the hurt and worry such a report would bring my mother. She was such a soft soul. I never wanted to cause her heartache, only help her and be there for her, the way she had me throughout my childhood. I touched the cross on my necklace, and then gave it a quick rub before removing it. I worried about sleeping with it on and breaking the chain.
Perhaps Lloyd would have to pluck up the courage to tell me his secrets—and I was sure there were some.
Knock. Knock.
Not bothering to add a t-shirt, I opened the hotel room door.
“Mr Linnet. Your meal, sir.” A smartly dressed waiter pushed forward a trolley holding a large silver dome, cutlery and a small bottle of red wine, unopened next to a glass.
I handed him a few Euros. “Thank you, I’ll take it from here.” The delicious scent made my mouth water as I tugged the trolley closer.
“Very good, sir.” He smiled, stepped away and turned.
As he did so, I spotted movement at the end of the corridor, near the elevator. I paused, realizing it was the man I’d seen on the street; the one in black leathers who’d looked my way. He appeared to be holding a small box and was walking toward me.
I hesitated, half in and half out of the hotel room, my hand resting on the handle of the trolley.
He walked with a confident swagger, his biker boots thudding on the red and gold checked carpet.
“Are you Darius Linnet?” he asked as he approached. His voice was low and rasping.
“Yes.” Was he a fan? A crazed stalker?
“Good.” His jaw line was peppered with dark stubble. “I have this for you.”
“Thanks.” I took the box he offered. It was purple and silver striped with a lid.
“It’s from Oui! to say thank you for today.”
“Oui!” I smiled. Ah, he was a delivery person. “That’s kind of them.” I nodded at the elevator. “You could have left it at Reception, save you coming up.”
“It’s no trouble.”
He was staring at me, the way people who recognized me often did—though his stare was more intense, brooding, and heavy.
I wasn’t looking my absolute best since there were no clever make-up artists tucked in my suite, but that didn’t seem to bother him as his gaze drifted to my chest, my tight abs then lower still, hovering on what was likely a bulge in my sweats as I hadn’t bothered with underwear after my shower.
He might be big and macho, but he’s definitely gay.
His appreciation was obvious. His previously flattened lips curled into a smile and his eyelids became a fraction heavy as he blinked slowly.
“Thanks again,” I said, retreating into my room, and trying to ignore the tingling in my cock his attention had elicited.
He didn’t reply, instead he nodded once, then moved backward until his shoulders hit the wall opposite. He folded his arms and crossed one leg over the other, toe pointing into the floor, as if settling in to stand there for some time.
“What are you doing?” I asked.
“Waiting for someone.”
“Oh…well I hope they don’t keep you long.”
“Doesn’t matter if they do.” His gaze was still on mine.
I shut the door, feeling a bit strange after the encounter, and placed down the box. After setting my meal on the dresser and pouring a glass of wine, I tugged off the lid of the box.
Within it sat two bottles of perfume. They were the ‘his and hers’ versions of Phantom’s Kiss. I smiled and picked up the female one, removed the stopper and sniffed the top. My mother would like it. It was flowery and light, her kind of scent.
The male one was denser, as if to counterbalance the ladies’. It had a spicy tang, perhaps black pepper or aniseed, I wasn’t sure which.
I set them back in their box beside my suitcase, took a sip of wine, and then went to the door. Looking through the peephole confirmed that my biker delivery guy was still in the corridor. He was staring straight ahead, unblinking, his jaw tense.
I quickly backed away, then felt foolish. He wouldn’t have known I was looking at him.
My appetite had diminished, but I sat and ate what I could. I hadn’t had lunch so knew I needed nourishment. I found my thoughts straying to Lloyd again, and wondering what he’d eaten for his evening meal. Would he have gone to a restaurant alone? Or perhaps out with friends, a girlfriend, colleagues?
Girlfriend? For some reason I hoped he didn’t have a girlfriend.
With the steak and chips more or less eaten, I placed the plate back on the trolley and covered it with the dome. After draining the last of the wine, I used the bathroom then found myself hovering around the doorway again.
I had a desperate urge to look through the peephole. See if my biker delivery guy was still there.
“Oh, just do it,” I muttered.
I placed my eye up at the glass.
I caught my breath.
Yes, he was still there. He hadn’t appeared to have moved, and again he was staring straight at my door.
Fuck.
What was he doing? Was he going to stand there all night? Should I call Reception? Security maybe? Or should I pull open the door and ask him outright?
I decided on the latter, then hesitated. He was a big guy, bigger than me. If he was a crazed fan then I didn’t want to aggravate the situation, but I did want to find out what he was up to.
I reached for the dinner trolley, then opened the door. I’d go with the pretence of wanting to remove it from the room.
“Oh, hi,” I said, feigning surprise at seeing him as I lined the trolley up with the corridor wall.
He nodded, once. “Mr Linnet.”
“What are you doing? I mean, h
ow long are you going to be waiting here for?” I asked, trying to sound not particularly interested.
“Shouldn’t be long now. My buddy is staying in this room.” He jabbed his finger at the door to his left. “I’m waiting for him to get back so we can finish up a game of poker.”
“Ah, okay. Well good luck…with the poker.” I smiled and shut the door, but not before getting a good look at his legs. They were thick with muscle and the leather not only hugged them perfectly, it created some very interesting bulges and creases around his groin.
A rush of heat went over me as I slipped the chain, securing myself in. Damn it. Today I’d seen not one but two guys who’d made me flustered. Each different, and each equally alluring.
I flicked off the main light and flopped onto the bed, my head almost disappearing in the huge pile of pillows.
You’re going to have to admit it, Darius.
I sighed. I knew my inner psyche was right. I was gay. It had taken a long time to admit men gave me a stirring in my cock women didn’t. Men fascinated me. Men’s bodies, intriguingly, were all the same yet very different, and their minds equally so.
My mother would hate it. She’d never understand. But I’d reached a point I knew I had to be true to myself, even if I kept that truth hidden from her.
And the rest of the world?
I could do that. Of course I could. I was hardly on the party scene and if I had a relationship with someone like Lloyd, someone who wasn’t in the business, I should be able to keep it under wraps.
Assuming Lloyd is gay and fancies me.
Not Lloyd then. How about the big, hot biker outside the door right now? If I were to proposition him what would he say? If I let him explore my body while I found pleasure with his, that would be okay…wouldn’t it?
I grabbed a pillow, then held it over my face and released a silent scream. It was that or allow the heat to grow in my chest, the burn to grow in my arms and then I’d have no choice but to release sparks into the bathtub.
But I’d released once today, and another build up of heat wasn’t likely for forty-eight hours at least. Unless something really alarming or exhilarating happened, that was.
Frustrated as I was, I also felt a strange kind of relief. Admitting to myself where my sexual orientation lay wasn’t as hard or as shocking as I’d thought it might be. Neither was deciding to act upon my desires should the chance arise. I guessed that was the way with an inner sanctum, it was somewhere already visited. A place which had grown with me since day one even if I’d kept it quiet and in darkness.
Eventually I set the alarm on my phone, turned off the light and closed my eyes, hoping for sleep. It stole across me quickly; my body melting into the bed, my heavy limbs stilling and my thoughts scattering.
My dream took over my half-wakeful thoughts and I found myself where I often did in sleep, at least for the last five years of my life: standing on Tower Bridge staring at the Thames and a small bricked-up archway in the wall lining the bank of the river. The archway had once led to Traitor’s Gate, a watery entrance to the Tower of London and the cold, dark cells within its prison. Above me ravens circled, casting cool shadows over my body. An old-fashioned car, it’s exhaust spluttering, limped past with a lone driver. A dirty beggar child held his hands forward, then his image evaporated. The scents were different to modern day London, pungent and foul. I was grateful for a slight breeze that lifted my long hair and caressed my cheek.
I ran my hands over my chest. My breasts were large and firm, the nipples sensitive. Slipping lower still, I smoothed over the deep dip of my waist then the flare of my hips. It was how I’d come to expect myself in a dream.
Female.
There was a small rowing boat on the river holding three men. One was clearly a prisoner. His arms and legs were bound and he was blindfolded. They were edging toward the area of Traitor’s Gate. I felt I knew him, the prisoner, but of course I didn’t.
But still something drew me to him. So I began to walk over the bridge, toward the turrets of the eastern side of the Tower, the way I always did. People stared at me as I hurried along, my dress swishing against my legs and my breasts jostling with each step.
I left the bridge with an urgency growing inside me. I had to get to this prisoner. He had a key for me. I didn’t know what the key was for. The need for it was powerful, though, and growing with each step. It was like needing to breathe when underwater, or gasping for a drink when walking through a desert.
“Hey, pretty lady.”
I slammed to a halt and pressed my hand to my chest, my flesh warm as my breasts heaved in the low neckline of the dress.
A stranger appeared before me. Except he wasn’t a stranger, he was familiar somehow, and handsome, so handsome. Beautiful. Just my sort of guy.
“Here, for you.” He offered forward a bunch of flowers, red roses, his biceps flexing against his white shirt.
I hesitated, searching the river for the prisoner. He’d gone.
“Take these, my love,” the stranger said, crooking his finger beneath my chin and turning me to face him. “And know that I have found you, that I am coming for you…soon.”
I woke and sat bolt upright, blinking in the darkness. That part of the dream had changed.
I’m coming for you…soon.
Usually he just said he was there, and that was it, the end of the dream. The prisoner, the stranger, my female body would be no more.
There’d been something sinister in his voice, too, a grim determination. His words were still echoing in my head, each syllable rattling against my eardrum as if they’d actually been spoken at my side.
My heart pounded. I pressed my hands to my chest, relieved to find the breasts from my dream had gone and as usual my pecs were hard and masculine. I’d become used to the imagined female body, it’d been there since my teens. I never dreamt as a male. For a while I wondered if everyone had that experience, but my mother said that wasn’t the case. It was because I was special, like my sparks. She also said it wouldn’t be wise to tell people about that either.
So I hadn’t. And when I’d once orgasmed as a female then woke to a softening cock and a wet patch, I’d kept that to myself too.
I lay back down and turned over. The clock read two a.m. Briefly I wondered if the biker was still outside the hotel room or if his friend had come to play poker yet. Was he really playing poker, or was that a metaphor for something else entirely? Something naked, hot and sexy?
I reached down, slipped my fingers around my cock and began to rub root to tip. I needed to release the tension the dream had created. It was sexual tension combined with frustration. I didn’t know what it meant, or who the prisoner was. All I understood was it took me back in time in the city I called home.
What is the key for?
Gritting my teeth, I sped up, working my cock to full hardness.
I arched my neck and moaned as my balls tightened. The friction of flesh on flesh created a pleasant heat which drove me on.
I thought of Lloyd, of him doing this to me. His hand around my cock and his breaths quickening as he went faster and faster. Then of the biker and what he might be doing with his friend…what if I was his friend? Bent over, taking him, allowing him to enter my body, pushing me to orgasm with his no doubt huge cock.
“Ah fuck.” I gasped, then as the first shot of cum left me, I imagined Lloyd on his knees before me, taking me into his mouth, swallowing my pleasure.
I jerked my hips, shoving into my own hand. Another spurt of release dragged a groan from my chest, then another and another.
Eventually I emptied. After lying still for several minutes, allowing my breathing to settle, I reached for some tissues and cleaned up my mess.
Resting on the bed again, a nice sense of satisfaction came over me. It was different to usual. I was more fulfilled.
It’s because I had someone—no, make that two people—to think of as I came.
Two real, living, flesh and blood men who w
ere both drop dead gorgeous.
Chapter Four
Oscar
I stared at the door, then stared some more. The thing about being immortal is time has no meaning. If I stared at Darius Linnet’s hotel room door for a century it wouldn’t matter to me. I could do it. And I would happily.
For like Lloyd, I too, was certain he was the one.
His cambion energy came off him in waves. It was pouring from the room now, like a scent seeping from around the door and filling my nostrils. It was hot and powerful, it held so many tantalizing secrets.
When I’d first seen him I’d wanted to hold his face in my palms and study his eyes, the shape of his nose, his lips. Kiss him, explore his taste, the outline of the blood vessels beneath the surface of the skin on his neck.
But of course I couldn’t.
That would send him running for the hills. I’m a big guy, surly too. People often cross the road to avoid me.
Most of the time they are right to. I could drain them dry in seconds.
But Darius…damn, I wanted to taste him, quench a thirst that had been growing for a few years now, but more than that I had the urge to protect him, to get to know him, to discover his secrets and show him some of mine.
A little after two a.m. a low muffled moan came from within his room. He was alone. I could guess what he was doing.
My cock hardened as I thought of the outline of flesh beneath his sweats earlier. It was easy for me to imagine his shaft solid and erect and with Darius’s hand wrapped around it.
Within seconds the space issue in my leathers had me shifting from one foot to the other. If I hadn’t been standing in a public corridor, albeit an empty one, I’d have joined Darius in a late night wank.
When he groaned again, I had to suppress the urge to break his door down and go to him. The man was too damn gorgeous to be sleeping alone and resorting to his own hand. If he wanted me to tip him over the bed and sink deep then I would, tonight and every night for all eternity.
Darius Linnet was the one.
For me.
For all of us.
