Reflex

by Madelynne Ellis

  “It’s not—”

  “Every night? Sure it is. Don’t bullshit yourself. I know she screws with your head, but that’s because you let her, and that’s because you want her. If you didn’t you’d have forgotten she existed by now. Know what else I know?”

  Spook tilted his head very slowly to one side. Their brows still pressed together. His blue eyes were scarily focussed.

  “You get a kick out of watching her dangle at arm’s length, which is cruel, but I get it. It turns you on.”

  “Fuck off.” He pushed Xane, but there was little power behind the shove, and Xane stood his ground. They stood at an impasse a moment, until Spook closed his eyes, blocking out the sheen reflected in their surface. “It’s not deliberate.”

  “Course not.”

  “Fine, only a little.”

  “It’s all right. It’s allowed.”

  Spook scratched uneasily at the back of his scalp. After a moment, he stilled and began sucking on his upper lip.

  “Look, I know you don’t want to talk, but—”

  “I was hard.” He reached out and grasped the lapel of Xane’s jacket with his uninjured hand. “When that prick grabbed me. I was hard. I was fucking excited.”

  Xane pulled him closer, ignoring his hedgehog-like spines, so that he had him locked in an embrace. “Listen. That wasn’t what excited you. The bastard took advantage. You were already aroused. You were talking to Allegra. She’s why you were worked up. She’s the reason you keep meditating in your bunk, because she’s tuned right into your psyche. You were hard because of what you crave, Spook, not because of anything else. And what you crave, and need, I might add, is what she’s offering.”

  Spook pushed him away. “I don’t need.”

  “Yeah. Yeah you do. At no point in the last decade have I ever seen you more desperately in need.”

  “It’s not happening. I’m not going near her.” He raised his hand as if Xane had to be warded off.

  “Hey, look at me. We’re talking about Allegra, not me.”

  “Yeah,” Spook acknowledged, though it took another couple of seconds for his shoulders to sag.

  “I wish you’d speak to me. I’m not trying to make it my business, Spook, but I get that whatever is going on between you and Allegra Hutton isn’t easy for you.”

  “There’s nothing to discuss.”

  “Right.” Course there wasn’t. “Then at least tell me what I can do to help right now.”

  That prompted a little huff of laughter. “Damn, fuck all, and you know it. Where’s there to go?”

  Xane drew back a way. “There is…” He sucked his tongue. There was one option. It’d been rumbling around inside his head since they’d left the arena, but part of him was desperate not to act on it. He’d spent the whole last few weeks bracing himself for the final night of the tour. Losing himself in endless lust-filled moments with Dani and with Luthor so that he didn’t have to think about it.

  Crazy, since it had been his decision to make Monaco their final destination. It’d felt right when they were booking dates. After all, it was where Steve had died. The thing was, it was also the last place he’d seen Steve alive, and he hadn’t been back there since. What ghosts would he find lurking there? What demented demons?

  “Monte Carlo’s a two hour drive.”

  Xane inwardly winced as the words left his mouth. Cold sweat settled over the skin on the back of his neck. He’d rather not head there, but he’d committed to it now, having said it. His galloping heart would just have to get used to the fact. The priority here was Spook, not him and his guilty conscience. Truthfully, he’d always wonder, if things had been different, would Steve have lived? But he couldn’t change the past. What he could do was make Spook’s present easier. That was worth a little heartbreak.

  Spook’s brows concertinaed.

  “The apartment’s empty. It’d be space to drink yourself into oblivion if that’s what you want. We both know you’re not going to get any damn privacy on the tour bus, not a whisper of it, and a hotel…” He shook his head. Spook needed to be somewhere safe… familiar, and more importantly, where no one was going to kick up a stink if stuff got broken. Currently, Xane had one eye on the door expecting security to march in and escort them from the premises following the stunt at the bar. Ava was exactly the type to involve the polizia.

  In any case, reporters always constituted a poor choice of punching bag. Likewise, bars weren’t the ideal locations to let rip. Sometimes though, you snapped. As his cousin Ric had once pointed out shortly after the loss of his wife, sometimes the demons got out and smashed the living fuck out of shit regardless of your will or whim. And they rarely gave a damn about the consequences.

  “You don’t want to be there.”

  Well observed. “In another twelve or so hours I’ll have no choice.” Xane nervously rotated the ring piercing in his lip. “You can talk to me about Allegra on the way. Help me keep my mind off it.”

  That earned him an uneasy chuckle that dissolved into something far too close to a sob.

  “You know that eighty per cent of me wants to delete her from my memory. If our paths never crossed again it’d be too soon. She’s all demand, Xane. I can’t give in to it.”

  The fear coming off him made Xane want to swaddle him inside another embrace, but he reminded himself that there was only so much touchy-feely stuff Spook would tolerate, and he had a feeling he might need to hold some in reserve based on how the night was shaping up.

  “What about the other twenty per cent? Tell me about that.”

  Spook covered Xane’s mouth with his uninjured hand. He shook his head slowly, eyelids falling. “I’m not nearly slaughtered enough to have that conversation.”

  “Then I’ll grab a few things from the bar on the way out.”

  Two desperately blue eyes pinpointed Xane with laser-like accuracy. “Xane…I don’t think…” A shiver racked Spook’s body, knocking his already precarious balance for six.

  “I’ve gotcha.” Xane leant him some support. “What’s your poison? Rum? Cognac? Vodka? Damned expensive whisky?” He led, and Spook took a hesitant step forward. “Come on,” he encouraged. “We’re gonna make some cab driver’s day.”

  “Monaco?” Spook sighed after another five paces. He stumbled and cursed again in Swedish when he put out his injured hand to catch himself.

  Xane got a firmer grip on him, hooking Spook’s arm around his shoulders. Once he got him safely to his place at the Hotel de Paris then he’d get that hand and Spook’s other cuts properly cleaned and dealt with, before sorting out the emotional trauma screwing up his head. For the moment, he was relieved to see the bleeding had stopped, and at least the damage was to his left hand. There remained the possibility it would muck with his playing, but he’d worry about that later. The gig was still a lifetime away at this point.

  “Waddabout the rest of the band?” Spook asked, but not until they were outside the aquarium waiting for the cab Xane had co-opted his girlfriend into calling. She was watching them pensively from beneath the blush of a street-lamp while leaning on Luthor for support. Ash and Ginny had already left for their sleepover, and Liam had muttered something about joining Troels and Tony back at the arena. Paul had… Actually, he didn’t know where the big guy had trotted off to. Maybe to have another late night chat with Elspeth.

  “They can catch up with us in time for the gig,” Xane reassured Spook. He’d kept his promise and got them another bottle from the bar. So far, the top had stayed on the vodka, and Spook’s coordination was shot enough Xane didn’t have high hopes on him being able to unscrew it. “Don’t worry about them. They’re fine.”

  By the time he finally bundled Spook into the taxi, his friend was a dead weight against his shoulder. Two minutes out of the city, he was comatose.

  -7-

  TEN YEARS EARLIER

  Xane had been feasting on the sight of the guy for a good ten minutes. There was precious little else to do while he was s
tuck outside the counselling services office waiting for his cousin to emerge. Grief and loss group session. Forty minutes down, another twenty to go. Ric’s wife had washed up on the beach dead four months back. The assumption was that she’d wound up in the water deliberately. Maybe that was true and maybe it wasn’t. Xane hadn’t been around at the time. Certainly, Scarlett had her issues, and now Ric had them too. The counselling had been happening for several weeks, but this group thing was a recent addition. Xane wasn’t sure it was doing a lot, but Ric kept turning up, so he kept coming along with him, sitting on the bench in the little green quadrangle opposite and watching the world drift by.

  The surrounding buildings were new builds, not very interesting, and largely soulless. The park manicured into submission. Not a weed or wild flower in sight. No songbirds, only pigeons. He’d grown bored of conducting staring contests with them pretty fast. Bastards inevitably won.

  Nor had Xane managed to glue onto paper the lyrics that had been tumbling around his head for days. Probably because he knew it was pointless. The band wasn’t really a thing anymore. A singer and a drummer did not a rock band make. Hence his focus on the guy…

  Maybe he played. Wouldn’t that be a turn up if he did? They’d be hot property overnight even if the music stank. Girls, guys, they’d all go wild for him. He was the sort of bright spot capable of energising anyone’s day. He was sure as hell enlivening Xane’s.

  Tall, kind of lanky. He had white blond hair that was pulled away from his face in a messy bird’s nest of an updo at the back of his skull, and eyes so blue a tropical lagoon would get jealous. Blue enough that Xane knew they were blue from several feet away.

  Xane continued watching him another couple of minutes. The guy lingered by the iron railings kicking his heels against the paving, head mostly bowed.

  Was he waiting for someone, or just killing time?

  It was a moment of madness that took him closer.

  “Hey,” he said. “I saw you come out. Do you know if they’re nearly done? The group session?”

  Blondie blinked, owl-like at him. Despite the dark circles that hollowed out his face, those baby-blues were something else. Lord God, there was even something entrancing lurking inside them. It was a shadow, a blur, a blip, a splinter that he couldn’t quite put a finger on. Nothing as obvious as sadness, nor so all-consuming as rage, but something…

  Curiously, his intense scrutiny of the fella didn’t get him a response. “Never mind. I guess you don’t know.” Xane carried on up the steps, like he meant to ask at reception. Really, he figured he’d take a detour to the facilities and piss. Hey, it passed time.

  “They’ll be a while yet. I came out early.”

  Fuck me; blondie had a voice. One laced with a little foreign lilt that marked him out as… As what? European. Northern European if the hair colour was to be relied upon. Scandinavia somewhere?

  “Are you waiting for someone?”

  “Are you here to pick someone up?”

  Oh, hey, was that a sliver of innuendo in there?

  “My cousin. You?”

  “No one.”

  The guy rolled his lips together. Xane had never seen anybody look more like they needed a smoke than this guy, who, incidentally, he was certain was a non-smoker. It was just the stance, the attitude, the sunken defensiveness. He needed a barrier, something with which to hold this annoying fucker who was intent on engaging him in conversation, and hell, maybe a whole lot more, at bay.

  “I should probably go back in. Not going to fix anything standing on a street corner.”

  “Except any cash concerns.”

  The guy stomped past him up the steps and back into the building.

  “Sorry,” he muttered.

  By the time Xane entered, the guy had vanished, and the waiting area was the same sterile pale grey piece of serenity it usually was. A small ceramic pot housing three bamboo shoots and a heap of pebbles stood at one end of the space at a right angle to reception. Xane slumped into the chair beside it and palmed one of the rocks.

  “Sir, could you not mess with the arrangement.”

  “Right.” He tossed it back into the pot again and stood. “Toilets?”

  The receptionist pointed with her pen.

  Xane was washing his hands, slowly, really slowly, when blondie came out of the cubicle and stood right by him at the sink.

  There they were again, those blue eyes with all their shadows. Stunning. His lips too. That mouth was something else. So sensual, so superbly kissable.

  “See something you like?”

  Xane’s mind jolted to attention. He dropped his gaze, and that’s when he’d wound up truly ensnared. Xane had never seen scars so livid or horrifically unapologetic in their existence. Long evil looking things they were, that ran from the guy’s inner wrists almost up to his elbow joints. Still red, still tender-looking. Young scars. There was no mistaking what they were, or what they represented. One glimpse, and they were burned in his brain. What’s your story? What had made this beautiful man think he couldn’t go on?

  “Not such an appealing prospect after all?”

  Xane lifted his chin. On the contrary. “I’ve a real weakness for broken things, especially pretty broken things.”

  “I’ve a suspicion you’ve a weakness for pretty much anything that breathes. I’m not interested.”

  “And yet you’ve checked me out enough to know what makes me click.”

  The guy gave a dismissive huff out of his nose, and shook his head. He turned to the opposite wall and the hand dryer, which began to hum.

  “You gonna tell me you’re not into guys?”

  That earned him an eyeroll. “I’m not, as such.”

  “No?” He raised his voice to be heard over the drier. Admittedly the guy wasn’t lighting up his gaydar, but there was something, some spark of curiosity that he couldn’t put a name to.

  “No.”

  “It’s my riveting conversation that’s kept you here talking, then?”

  “Do you deep throat?”

  “What?” The dryer growl stopped. “Do I what?” He’d heard. Heard perfectly clearly. It was just such an out of the blue sort of remark.

  “Do you cry and splutter when a dick hits the back of your throat?”

  Xane laughed. This guy. Seriously?

  “Fifty quid.”

  “Mate, I don’t pay for sex.” Although, he was currently intrigued enough to be almost tempted.

  “I’ll give you fifty pounds, but I get to record you.”

  “Wait.” Xane backed up against the sinks, abandoning the attempt to utilise the drier. He wiped his hands down the sides of his jeans instead. “You want to pay to film me choking on your cock.”

  The guy stared at him, curiously still, even more curiously earnest.

  “Mate, you don’t have to pay me. And I know someone who’ll pay us both, and pay us well, to film it.”

  Dammit, come on Ric. How many minutes of this session were left? He needed him to get out here now—’cause, hello. Photoshoot.

  -8-

  PRESENT

  You want it. You want it good. You want it hard.

  Dirty filthy little fucker.

  I want you to come in my hair.

  Bend me over your knee.

  Next time you should fuck me in the arse while I’m all trussed up.

  It’s okay to want to feel something.

  You did nothing wrong.

  You’re gonna pay for it, you prime piece of shit.

  Too many voices. Too many demands. They were all warring inside Spook’s skull, and there simply wasn’t room. Soon enough, the pressure would be enough to crack the bone.

  Bones did crack so easily.

  He wrapped his arms tight around his middle as pain flared out across his ribs and stole his breath.

  “Bloody fuck,” a voice called from somewhere to the left of him.

  Spook couldn’t see the speaker, though the voice was desperately familiar. Nor did
he seem able to open his eyelids to confirm the speaker’s identity. It was as if the pressure in his head had caused his eyes to seal shut to prevent an explosion or something.

  “Pull over. Pull over now. He’s about to puke.” The same request was made again in a couple of additional languages.

  The car jerked to a stop, throwing them forward, before he was roughly dragged sideways by someone holding onto the top of his shirt sleeve.

  “Move, dammit. Come on mate, little cooperation, unless you really want to spew over your own lap.”

  That did indeed sound nasty. Spook allowed himself to be tugged across the car leather and into the open.

  Being upright, though, that wasn’t such a good position.

  Air; moist, and laden with salt, swaddled him in a refreshing embrace. Vision restored, the thick line of trees bordering the road came as a shock. He couldn’t smell any pine, no leaf litter, only a tingly, metallic-scented anathema. It filled his nostrils, his whole head. It stuck to his tongue, and wouldn’t come off even when he scraped his teeth against it.

  Someone gathered his hair and tugged it. “Hey,” he began to protest, only to buckle at the waist as his intestines attempted to climb out of his throat. Steaming acrid foam splattered the tarmac before him and ran into the bordering scrub. His muscles protested the expulsion, cramping up so that it was impossible to move, though move he did as more acidic froth burned away the lining of his nostrils.

  “And that’s why drinking on an empty stomach is a dumb idea,” Xane remarked, his grip still firm upon Spook’s long hair, keeping it clear of the projectile zone.

  “Fuck off,” Spook mumbled, shaking his head, to pull himself free of the grip. He raised his arm to wipe his mouth.

  “Not on my shirt,” Xane protested, and thrust a wad of presumably stolen ‘Acquario di Genova’ napkins into his visual field. “Have you any idea how much that cost?”

  “Nah, and nor have you.” Even worse for wear he was aware of the vastness of Xane’s bank account. Spook dried his lips, before spitting his remaining stomach contents into the tissue and turning his head to seek somewhere to dispose of it. There was no litter bin to hand, so he dropped it over the smouldering pile of stench instead.