by L. J. Greene
“Coleridge,” he started.
“Yes?”
He reached out a hand, like he wanted to caress my face, but stopped himself. “Well. Goodnight.”
“Goodnight.”
It was that hovering hand that stayed in my mind and wouldn’t let me sleep. Ten minutes of staring into the dark made my mind up for me. I had questions that needed answers, and I needed the answers then, that very moment, or I felt I’d never sleep again.
I would never have admitted it to myself, but all I really wanted was to see Leo, to let him touch me again in the way he still obviously wanted to do. It was repeating in my memory, that half-extended arm, the way his fingers had stroked at air instead of at my cheek. There was an aching hole inside me that demanded filling. I sat up and had a few mouthfuls of bourbon from the bottle I kept to hand in the bedside cabinet, but even that couldn’t anesthetize me. I wrapped myself in one of the robes from my closet and made my way to his room.
In hindsight, had I knocked, events may have played out quite differently. As it was, I opened the door and slipped inside without a second thought. It wasn’t until I turned from locking it that I realized my mistake. The Angel Michael, half naked, red lipped, chin shining with spit, was on his knees in front of a bare-chested Leo, who was seated on the end of his bed hastily tying up his pajama pants.
“What the hell’s going on here?” I demanded.
“Michael, you’d better go,” Leo said.
Michael grabbed up his clothes and pulled them on lickety-split, while I tried to keep my tingling fists out of his face. His usual sulky expression was replaced with watchfulness as he sized me up. I was blocking the door, and I couldn’t blame him for his hesitation. I must have looked fit to do murder.
Leo gave an impatient tch, and marched towards me. He pulled me aside, unlocked the door, and threw it open. “Out,” he snapped at Michael, who slunk away still buttoning up his shirt. Leo locked the door again behind him before turning back to me. “I’m sorry you had to see that,” he said to me. I could see the still-heavy line of his erection pulling at the cotton of his pajama pants.
“You may as well open the door and let me out, too,” I growled, and pushed him in the chest. He seized my wrists and held them where they were, pressed up against his hot flesh. Under my right palm I could feel his heart beating fast.
“You’re being unfair,” he said. “I’ve stayed away from you like you wanted, haven’t I? But you don’t know how much I’ve needed you. If you won’t love me, I can’t be blamed for seeking someone who will. It’s not as though you haven’t looked for company.”
“Love? How can you even say the word? I don’t believe for a goddamn minute you’ve ever felt it.” I shoved at him again, yanking my wrists out of his grasp. He stumbled backwards until he hit the door, then covered his face with his hands.
I was embarrassed for him, but didn’t know how to set it right, so I stood there like a dummy until he looked up and said calmly, “Yes, you’re quite right. What would I know of love?” He pushed himself off the door and went to light a cigarette. “Why are you still here?” he threw over his shoulder. I’d never heard him sound so hollow.
“Beats me,” I said. I let him smoke his cigarette down and thought about people I’d spoken to, chased after even, just for the sake of a little human contact. He was right about me, though I didn’t like it; I had a roving eye. I thought about Montgomery Clift and the dinner invite I’d wanted to accept. About coming on to the Magnolia Girl by the pool at Chateau Marmont. About Alice in the stables. What wouldn’t I have done with any of them, given half a chance? “Look, I shouldn’t’ve said that, what I said about—about love.”
He stared at me in the great bronze mirror on the wall. “I don’t understand you,” he said. “At all. You blow hot and cold.”
“You don’t understand me?”
“One day you love me, then you’re throwing me over. You agree to be friends, and the next day you can barely tolerate being in the same room as me. I wish you’d settle on one thing and stop—” He broke off, and thumped a fist gently on the mirror frame.
“Stop what?”
“Stop giving me reason to hope,” he muttered.
I felt the first stirrings of regret. “I was mad. I’ve been mad with you since I got here.”
“With reason,” he sighed.
“With reason,” I agreed. “But I guess I’m mad at the wrong guy. You were right, what you said. It’s better to stick together. I don’t know how much I believe you—how much of what you say is true—but as they say, it’s better the devil you know. And at least I know you.” Even Cresswickham had said as much.
“I’m poison, my sweet. You’re better off without me.”
“Aw, cut it out. Feeling sorry for yourself doesn’t suit you.”
He gave a surprised laugh.
“Is the money worth all this?” I asked. “Is it really?”
“It’s not the money.”
My throat half-closed, I croaked, “Do you love him?”
He came close to me and took my face in his hands before he tentatively, with his eyes fixed on mine, leaned in to kiss me. I let him in, let him have me how he wanted me, just like I always had. When he’d kissed me deep enough to start my heart hammering, he pulled back and said softly, “No. I don’t love him.”
I should have pushed him away. I should have run back to my room and washed my mouth out to get his narcotic off my tongue. He was filling up my head and dulling my sense. “Then why do you stay? I’ve gotta know, Leo. I can’t go on with you like this, not when my freedom’s at stake. I’ve gotta know what he’s holding over you.”
“Oh,” Leo said, “I’ll tell you, alright. It’s just not a tale that puts me in a good light, so I don’t like telling it. But I can see you won’t rest until you know.”
“Then spit it out.”
Chapter 25
I sat in the armchair near the fireplace and waited. I wondered if he’d try to put me off again, but he was as good as his word. He prowled around until I told him to seat himself as well, but he refused. “I’d rather not stay in one place while I tell it. If I’m moving around perhaps the terrible truth of it won’t be able to catch up to me.”
He had a dramatic soul. “Alright, suit yourself. Just get on with it.”
“I told you Reggie and I met after we were injured in the war. I’m afraid it wasn’t quite like that.” He paused.
“Out with it,” I said, peeved. “Quit stalling.”
He paced the room like a caged animal looking for an escape, but he never faltered in his story. “Where did you serve?” was how he started it.
“I was too young for the draft,” I said. I tried to sound sore about it, but deep down I was still relieved. I don’t have a warrior’s heart and I don’t have any stomach for killing, so I was lucky an accident of birth kept me home. I came of age twelve days after the Japanese surrender was announced.
“I was too young, too,” he replied. “And my eyesight is quite poor at a distance. But do you know what I did? I lied about my age, memorized the eye chart, and got passed for service.”
“Brave of you.”
“Oh, yes. I was certainly a valiant little fool. I knew my mama would never let me go, so I didn’t tell her. I just left her one night with a goodbye note and ended up in Tunisia. My older brother, Johnny, enlisted in the Army right out of school, and he was raring to go. His letters home were full of friendship and laughs and fun. But it didn’t take long to realize that war was not the glorious game I’d imagined.”
“I didn’t know you had a brother,” I said stupidly. The idea of a naïve, youthful Leo, grubby and exhausted and risking trench foot, had thrown me.
“I don’t,” he said. “Not anymore. He was K.I.A.”
“Sorry to hear it.”
He brushed over it, but I could see the pain in the way his brows furrowed. “So there I was, young and lively and ready for glory, and what I got was watch
ing friends and acquaintances ripped apart by machine guns while we tried to defend the Kasserine Pass.”
“You held it in the end?” I asked, trying to recall my war history. It had all seemed so remote to me even at the time.
“We did, but it was a blue ruin from start to finish. I should have died. I almost did. I was caught unawares one morning and I just stood there like a frightened rabbit.” He paused, his eyes hard. “It was Reggie who saved me, you see. Jumped on me to knock me down and took a bullet in the back for his trouble.”
“God’s truth?”
He said softly, “If I were going to tell a lie, friend, it wouldn’t be one like this. We’d been having it off behind the latrines and lost track of time. The sun was coming up. The Krauts started shooting as soon as they saw us on the way back. So there we were in the middle, Reggie just about dead and me playing it. He was begging me to get us to safety, calling out to our boys for help, and I knew he’d get us both killed by a sharpshooter unless he kept quiet. But he was in shock, getting delirious. I held my hand over his mouth to keep him quiet and he started moving, trying to get away, so I…”
He stopped and looked at himself in the grand mirror over the dresser.
“War makes people crazy,” I offered.
Without any sign of hearing me, he went on. “I wrapped my fingers around his neck and choked him ’til he shut up. Thought I’d killed him at first. He was a dead weight on me. I could hardly breathe myself, but I didn’t dare fling him off or we’d both be shot. I remember staring up at that azure sky, the sun burning my eyes, and all I could hear was the noise of bullets and Reggie’s labored breathing, starting and stopping. Sometimes I thought he was gone. But then he would start up again, rattling into my ear.”
I could hear it, too, or imagine it, and my own breathing seemed louder all of a sudden.
“I woke up in a med unit. Someone up above was looking out for us, one of the nurses told me. I fancied it was more probably someone down below. But there it was: we both survived, and I owed him my life. We hadn’t known each other long, but he’d fallen for me already, and he didn’t seem to remember anything of what had happened. They found some medical reason to discharge me permanently, though I was quite well. Do you know, I’ve always wondered if Reggie bribed them?”
“He’s just the kind of rat who would,” I pointed out. I couldn’t help myself, getting a crack in against him if I could. And I wondered just how much Cresswickham did in fact remember.
“In any case, I was discharged. But the higher ups were desperate to salvage something from the Kasserine Pass. They awarded me the Medal of Honor, if you can believe it. They said I’d earned it because I dragged Reggie with me when I crawled back across that wasteland after nightfall. I couldn’t even remember what happened, and no one wanted to listen when I told them Reggie had sacrificed himself for me first. They didn't like him much, you see. Still. I should've insisted on the matter.” He gave an uneasy moue, then shook it off. “They told me I needed peace and quiet to recover, suggested a sanatorium in Switzerland. I was quite taken with the idea, but I had no money. Then Reggie asked me to come home with him to his country estate, and I had no pressing need to return to Pittsburgh. I felt I should, if only for a time. Besides, he promised we would travel once he was well again, and I wanted to see the world without the danger of getting my brains shot out. And I cared for him too, or thought I did at the time. Love seemed an infantile notion once it had passed over.”
Did it, I wondered? The inferno that had raged in me for Leo was certainly nothing childish. It was the furthest thing from innocent I could imagine.
Of course, I only called it love because I didn’t have the heart to call it what it really was.
Leo gave a long exhalation. “There; I feel better having got that off my chest. You know all my secrets now, dear heart. All except one.”
“Which is?”
He gave me a strangely shy look. “This one I can’t tell you. I can only show you. May I?” He crossed to me slowly, like a man approaching a frightened animal, and sank to his knees by my chair. With a slither, his arms went around me. When he kissed me his mouth was bitter with tobacco smoke, until his tongue got deeper in my mouth. He drew back, hands cupping my face, eyes bright. “Can you guess, lover?”
But something had occurred to me. “You haven’t told me everything,” I said, pushing him back. “The man still cares for you, that much is clear. So why’s he put up with your lovers? Why not have you in his own bed? Do you refuse him?”
He gave a little sigh, as though he were tired of explaining how the world worked to a child, and rose to his feet. “Why, he’s impotent; didn’t you realize? The bullet, you see. It knocked him out of order and so he hates to be touched. Reminds him of it.” At my horrified expression, he laughed and pulled me out of the chair and led me to the bed. “He still has all the parts. He’s not maimed; they just don’t work. He spent half his fortune trying to have it fixed, but it was no use. It’s a sore spot for him, as you can imagine.”
“Sure I can,” I said fervently, as we crawled onto the bed. They way Cresswickham avoided my touch, his sheer distaste for physical contact—it made sense now. The only time I could remember he’d touched me, he’d yanked at my hair hard enough to draw tears. And I’d been blindfolded and held down, suffocating on his scented cravat. I stopped Leo again from kissing me. “Is that why he likes to watch? He can’t get it up himself, so…”
“Probably.” He went back to suckling at my lower lip, his fingers busy with my clothes.
“Wait.” I was suspicious again. “The Marquess of Holford got the draft? He couldn’t just buy his way out of the army?”
“Oh, he joined up as soon as Churchill declared war. He has a very English sense of duty. Pro patria mori and all that. Shall we stop talking about him now?” He’d somehow got my pajama shirt open without me noticing, so it made sense to let him help me out of my pants.
But while I did, my mind was still working over the story he’d told me. It had a ring of truth to it; as he’d said, he wouldn’t tell such an embarrassing tale about himself.
“So you stay with him out of guilt. Is that it?”
“For God’s sake,” he said, and gave a real sigh this time. He swept my discarded clothes off the bed. “I suppose so, partly. There are myriad reasons. It became rather difficult to extricate myself, he saw to that. I have financial ties to him. And I do worry about Alice. Reggie has changed so much over the years. He’s become so…”
“Twisted,” I supplied, remembering my conversation with Betts the first night I’d come to the mansion, and my recent heart-to-heart with Alice in the stables.
“Yes.” He pushed me down on the bed. “I worry that if I’m not here, he may turn his sadism on Alice instead. I can’t allow that.”
“Oh, no. No,” I said, although my fascination at the thought made me ashamed of myself. I was starting to understand how Cresswickham’s mind worked—or thought I was—and the specter of what might befall Alice was horrifying.
But somehow enthralling.
“She’s his own sister,” I breathed. “Surely he would never…”
Leo said nothing, but started to kiss along my collarbone, tugging his pants down. “I’m sure that wouldn’t matter to Reggie,” he murmured into my neck. “You know how he is.” He dropped a hand to palm my cock, and I spread my legs for him. “I wonder, though, what he’d do. I wonder if he’d use the lash he likes to use on me sometimes. If he’d make her scream and cry and beg for him to—”
“Stop it,” I gasped, and grabbed his wrist. My cock throbbed in his hand, but I felt sick at the conversation. “It’s not decent, that kind of talk. We shouldn’t think about—”
“You’re right,” Leo said soothingly, and gave me a little squeeze. I could feel his hot length against my hip. “No, you’re right. But you like the idea, don’t you? Do you like the idea of him punishing me? He has all sorts of cleverly-designed physical torture
s that he likes to use on me. Perhaps you should watch one day, just to see. I’m sure he’d like you to watch. Would you like to watch?”
“No,” I said, but it was a lie, and Leo knew it.
“I’d like you to watch,” he said, and grasped me by the jaw when I tried to turn away. “Don’t be shy, lover. And don’t pretend it doesn’t excite you. It excites me to think about it.”
“Don’t,” I growled, and twisted out of his arms. “Stop this. It’s warped, this game you’re playing. I don’t know what the hell you’re doing it for.”
My prick had died in his hand, but I refused to feel embarrassed about it, not this time. I was right, after all: what he was suggesting was unthinkable. He sat back against the pillows and regarded me with an even, blank face. “Alright,” he said eventually. “I’m sorry. I suppose it’s all a lot to take in, what I’ve told you tonight. Would you prefer to go back to your own bed?”
“No,” I said, and reached for his hand where it lay on top of the covers. “No, I don’t want to leave. I just want…”
He seemed almost puzzled. “What do you want?”
The words wouldn’t come, and even if they had, they would have been too fanciful, too overblown, too unsafe to admit to him. So I kissed him instead. I pulled his face towards mine with gentle hands and licked at that acerbic, taut-lipped mouth until he relaxed it. “Come on,” I said at last. “Show me this secret of yours again.”
Chapter 26
He was gentle with me then, perhaps more gentle than he’d ever been. His hands were soft and kind as they moved over me. I felt like he was getting to know me all over again, searching out my vulnerabilities and the places that made me jump, arch, buck to his touch—and yet I was worried I wouldn’t stay hard for him, though I was large in his hand.
“You can rough me up some if you like,” I told him, my lips pressed into the curve of his neck as he fondled me with too-tender fingers.
“Whatever you want, bunny.”
